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Showing posts from June, 2020

COVID 19 in Chiapas Mexico

I received word last night. Tim, Juan Jose wrote, in Comitan we are very sad. Marve, my uncle, was very sick for a month and almost died. Many friends and co-workers are sick or have died. Juan Jose said he did not believe in COVID before but that he does now. Today, he wrote, there are many people on the street in special funeral clothing. I thought I was in Wuhan, China at first but no, this is Comitan. We are not going outside.  I’m sad too, with my friends in Comitan in Mexico just north of Guatemala. Marve lives a few houses down the street from Juan Jose. Marve and his wife have a tortilla making business inside their house. They make tortillas for the families in the Cruz Grande neighborhood. In America they would have been retired by now but since Mexico has no Social Security they are working in their seventies. Theater on the Central Plaza, Comital, MX Thanks to Wikipedia They are my age and I think of them. I think about how they suffered while Marve

Prestigious Peabody award for CNN documentary featuring local farmer

A CNN documentary on immigration and food security, featuring Todd County dairy farmer Pat Lunemann, along with Long Prairie mayor Jodi Dixon and Chief of Police Kevin Langer has won a Peabody award, acording to the project’s producer Matthew Reynard. The purpose of the documentary was to show CNN viewers that many immigrants live in rural America and that they are vital to our economy, especially food as regards production. In addition to Todd County, CNN visited Worthington in Nobles County and Storm Lake in Iowa. The George Foster Peabody Awards program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and online media, according to Wikipedia. Reynard, and his team, chose Lunemann as a subject because he employs immigrants at his dairy, has spoken out publicly in support of just immigration reform, and has made it clear that a food security policy in the U.S. must