{"id":19752,"date":"2017-02-14T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T00:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19752"},"modified":"2017-02-14T00:02:56","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T00:02:56","slug":"19752","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19752","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday, Father of Our Country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LAREDO, Texas <\/strong>— They love the Father of Our Country way down yonder in this bustling South Texas community.<\/p>\n

I consider it an interesting thing to witness.<\/p>\n

Why is that? Laredo sits at Ground Zero of the U.S. immigration debate. The president of the United States wants to build a wall separating the United States from Mexico. It will have a direct impact on this city of 236,000 (and counting) residents.<\/p>\n

We drove here to get away from the cold weather that continues to plague the Texas Panhandle. We found it — and then some! — in the Rio Grande Valley. They were setting record high temperatures during our stay at Lake Casa Blanca International State Park.<\/p>\n

Laredo this past weekend celebrated its 120th annual George Washington’s Birthday Celebration. The city publishes a glossy magazine commemorating the event, which it describes as “one of the biggest celebrations that contributes to Laredo’s history and a must see in South Texas!”<\/p>\n

It began in 1898 when the Improved Order of the Red Men sought to bring together various ethnic groups in Laredo. In doing so, they discovered that George Washington himself was a member of the order.<\/p>\n

Princess Pocahontas also became part of the celebration to honor her role in saving the mayor, who had been held captive by Indians who had raided city hall.<\/p>\n

It’s all a huge deal in Laredo, where one — such as yours truly — might not expect to see such a huge tribute to our nation’s first president and the commander of the colonial forces that fought the British during the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

The event began as a two-day celebration. Now it goes on for several days and it fuses all aspects of a diverse and cosmopolitan community, bringing them all together as one.<\/p>\n

Is there a lesson to be learned from this?<\/p>\n

I believe so.<\/p>\n

If only all American communities could celebrate our founding president’s birthday in such a manner.<\/p>\n\n

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LAREDO, Texas — They love the Father of Our Country way down yonder in this bustling South Texas community. I consider it an interesting thing to witness. Why is that? Laredo sits at Ground Zero of the U.S. immigration debate. The president of the United States wants to build a wall separating the United States … Continue reading Happy birthday, Father of Our Country<\/span> →<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1424,1901,2245,6926,4784],"class_list":["post-19752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-washington","tag-immigration","tag-laredo-tx","tag-the-wall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19752","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=19752"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19757,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19752\/revisions\/19757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}