What We've Been Up To: Another day at the Zoo

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Another day at the Zoo

Last week we went to the zoo again (with annual passes, it's virtually the cheapest thing we can do) and of course, the kids loved it. We got to do the sea lion show for the first time and it seems like every time we go there we find something he hadn't seen before. In particular, the kids love the children's petting zoo. My little man likes to chase the goats yelling "Dog! Dog!" and my little girl likes to use the "Big Girl" bathrooms (Translation: Potties so close to the ground that you're basically sitting on the floor and sinks at your knees). Oh yeah, I guess seeing all of the the wild animals was fun for them too~

I suppose they would have been more excited about these guys if they'd seen the Lion King. Have you noticed that ever since that movie came out everyone knows these little guys' names? Nobody could have cared less about these little guys or the wart hogs before that. Nice going Timon & Pumbaa.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt

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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Another day at the Zoo