{"id":1834,"date":"2009-05-12T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2009\/05\/12\/come-to-texas-see-the-world"},"modified":"2018-03-05T02:48:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T02:48:50","slug":"come-to-texas-see-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1834","title":{"rendered":"Come to Texas, see the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>You have to love a kid who wins a Rotary-sponsored speaking contest and then declares to a visiting newspaper editor that he wants to come to Texas and &#8220;see the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nir Lifsitz spoke to the Rotary Club of Be&#8217;er Sheva\/Omarium Tuesday night about the environment and the need to protect the planet. He gave his five-minute talk in Hebrew &#8212; which, of course, was &#8220;all Greek to me.&#8221; But my Rotary host, Alon Bendet, asked me immediately after the competiton, and before the results were announced, which one I thought won. I said the young man mentioned here was the clear winner. Alon agreed.<\/p>\n<p>But as we were taking a break, Nir approached me and asked me about Rotary in Texas. We visited for a few minutes. &#8220;Have you been to Texas?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;No, but I intend to come, because I want to see the world,&#8221; he answered with the same self-confidence he demonstrated in giving his talk. How do I know of his self-confidence? His body language spoke universally.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What is the capital of Texas?&#8221; he asked. I told him Austin. &#8220;Why isn&#8217;t it Dallas?&#8221; he wondered. Well, he knew about Dallas because of the Cowboys and the Mavericks, so he figured that Dallas needed to be the capital. I reminded him that Dallas isn&#8217;t even the largest city in Texas; Houston and San Antonio are larger.<\/p>\n<p>He also figures that it&#8217;s a daunting challenge for American students to learn the capitals of all 50 states. He rolled his eyes and wondered how any American kid can accomplish such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>I was ashamed to admit that many of them never learn the capital of, say, South Dakota (which is Pierre, by the way).<\/p>\n<p>Still, I have a hunch that the young man will knock the socks off most Texans he meets when he finally arrives.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have to love a kid who wins a Rotary-sponsored speaking contest and then declares to a visiting newspaper editor that he wants to come to Texas and &#8220;see the world.&#8221; Nir Lifsitz spoke to the Rotary Club of Be&#8217;er Sheva\/Omarium Tuesday night about the environment and the need to protect the planet. He gave &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1834\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Come to Texas, see the world<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28458,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions\/28458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}