By JOSE DELAISLA, Hispanic Link News Service

HOUSTON - At her urging, I met Anabelle for lunch at her country club where two weeks earlier a Tea Party event was held. She was upset because e-mails continued arriving from friends, who she thought knew better. Many of them are seniors, all Republicans, and mostly very well off.

I have an acquaintance that is so sarcastic -- should I say cynical -- that when I told him I was writing about education reform, he asked how would it affect high-school football.

After decades of studies about how the nation's children should be educated for the challenges of the 21st century, pom-poms should not rate very high.

HOUSTON - My father was in a trade that got displaced, just as many people today face a future where their skills are disappearing. He started out as a typewriter repairman during the World War II years, then went up the ranks of the small business where he worked and became its general manager.

Photographer Wilhelm Scholz and I were recently on the phone talking about photos he took and which one worked best in a presentation we were preparing. Three years ago, we traveled to, among other places, the Arizona desert just south of Tucson. Our book documents how people are moving all across the world, following the seven directions.

In Houston, Marvin Nathan and Martin Cominsky, both of the Anti-Defamation Committee, wrote in response to a Houston Chronicle series about how law enforcement can fail to deport criminal undocumented immigrants who commit illegal acts.