re: #96 HappyWarrior

Nativism is I think one of the most ugly traits. We’ve all been newcomers once in our lives. Whether it’s a new school, state, country, etc. I think there is something to moving around making you more open minded.

This Mark Twain quote gets a lot of play but it’s rock solid wisdom: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

I grew up the only child of teenage mom whose shotgun marriage to my dad only lasted a couple of years in the 1970s in suburban New Jersey. There were a lot of downsides, and I could have ended up in a lot of bad places in life if not for winning the lottery of having loving grandparents who helped raise me and were able to take me on a lot of travel. Nothing influenced me as much as experiencing a large chunk of North America and a lot of foreign countries and cultures as a child and teenager.