A Dove for Peace

This has been a holiday weekend in San Francisco, of course, like all over America, but besides being Memorial Day Weekend, this was also Carnival, which turns my neighborhood into a giant echo chamber with Salsa and dozens of other types of Central and Southern American dance music blasting from the many parade floats moving through this end of town.



So many diverse cultures were on display yesterday that it was again a striking reminder how useless a term like "Latino" or "Hispanic" is when describing immigrants from beneath our Southern border.



Even the languages vary, in some case considerably. Various dialects of Spanish, Portugese, and a number of native tongues were dominant -- English, broken or fluent, was only spoken by a minority of the participants.



Some performances were truly inspired.



Just a reminder that our country is fast becoming the most diverse on earth, and that's a good thing.



For those willing to pay attention, our cities are becoming street colleges that teach culture, language, history and the beauty of difference in a way that anyone who can appreciate music cannot fail to grasp.



There also was the token nod to old America in the form of the classic car club.



Nice, though in this case, not made in America!

-30-