[AGL] report from the front lines

[Charles Loving]

I subscribe to the paper versions of various publications. The use of
computer technology to teach people is a great idea. But in rural areas
that system does not pan out. Places like Nieces Canyon ISD, Sanderson,
Dilly, South Side SA, Sabina, Uvalde, Bracketville, and on and on do not
have the resources. They struggle to feed the poverty stricken children.
Their students don't have WiFi or any contact with the internet because
they are poor. NCISD in which I live and have volunteered has a feeding
program that is five days a week. The kids get zero food on weekends unless
the ISD volunteers send home care packages on Fridays. The parents are too
destitute to buy sustenance for themselves or their families. Not a pretty
picture. But the bid ISDs like Austin, Round Rock, Leander and Pflugerville
have more resources.

Out here a some level survival is a crap shoot. People shop at the Dollar
Store. I have noticed what they buy and it is amazing. They get their
checks the first of the month and stock up on junk which is mostly what a
Dollar Store offers. There is milk and bread. There are a lot of smokers
who buy the $5.00 and $6.00 packs of cigarettes. These are people who also
deal in Meth or use it and are addicts.

Like one of the ranch foremen told me the other night at supper these
people don't want to work. He has six guys on the payroll and could use
more but no one wants jobs. He has to depend on immigrants and  guys with
green cards. Another rancher has his sons doing the work and his daughter.
They all graduated from Tech and came home to the ranch life. West Texas
has a different economy. A couple of days ago two Migra officers stopped by
to chat. They grew up here and work out of the Del Rio office. Paco is a
fisherman and  asked me if he could come a fish in our five acre lake. I
have known him for 15  years now and the DPS officer Martinez is also a
local. They are the reasonable ones.

The P&W guy thinks I am a little crazy for chasing raccoons in my PJs. He
stopped me one night with two in a have a heart trap in my pickup. Asked
what I was going to do with them? I said relocate them. He pulled his gun
and shot both. "Too many raccoons out here."

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 1:45 PM Michael Eisenstadt <eisenstadt0 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 4/3/2020 1:08 PM, Frances Morey wrote:
>
> The unavailability of journals and new ideas on internet is one of the
> guarded features of academia as institutional protection for their
> bailiwick.
>
> *Au contraire*. A great many journals are available free on JSTOR
> (=journal storage) which is provided free by the Austin Public Library,
> perhaps also by the Corpus Christi public library. Recent issues are all
> journals are all available but behind paywalls so you have to pay a lot of
> money for a paper that often turns out to be worthless. If you're a tenured
> professor your university picks up the bill for papers behind paywalls.
>
> However, there is a work around for paywalls. A pirate site in Khazakistan
> lets you through many paywalls if you can find the DOI number for the
> particular paper you want to read listed. Hie yourself over to
> www.sci-hub.tw having copied the DOI number. Imput the DOI in the window
> and presto shazam, there's the paper for download. The pirate site is run
> by a Russian woman. DOI stands for digital object identification/
>
>

-- 
Charlie Loving
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