An old gold-mining town in eastern California. Not far from Aurora Nevada where Samuel Clemens - before he became Mark Twain - almost made it rich as a miner, not writer. Prospectors were in the area by the late 1850s; it became a formal town in 1876. The population peaked near 10,000 people during the boom years of late 1870s/early 1880s. The mines were productive up to the beginning of WWII but the population had fallen to below 700 by 1910. Considered a semi-ghost town by 1915, a fire destroyed much of the town in 1932, the last resident left in 1943, and it became a California State Park in 1962.

"Denver Public Schools argued a drop in school attendance was due to a new Trump administration policy of not shielding schools from ICE raids"

"A federal judge has ruled against the Denver public schools system’s attempts to block immigration officials from carrying out raids on school grounds, marking a win for the Trump administration as it looks to ramp up its deportation efforts."

"The school system also argued that rescinding the policy had caused schools to devote time and resources to teaching students and staff how to remain safe from immigration enforcement."

What the Denver Public Schools didn't bring up is that they receive Federal funding based on the number of students enrolled. Even I remember those two days a year when the schools begged us to "Please, oh please, come to school" on such and such a day.

Yeah, I'll be hard-hearted - I have a wife that went through the legal process of becoming a citizen. It's not a simple or easy process (it's a pain in the butt actually). Those people are here illegally, costing money that could be used for legal residents, and should be deported. As they say: "The family that gets deported together, stays together"

I would suggest to Denver Public Schools to quit teaching staff and students to break certain laws and padding the enrollment numbers - and that if they wish to continue in such manner, that they do so on Denver dollars, not Federal funds.

But that would mean a return to semi-private, locally-funded schools, eh?

And somehow, I doubt Denver residents would go for it once they knew how much would come out of their pockets and not mine and yours.

Schools should be supported by local communities ... preferably by those with school age children - though that could be debated. But not Federal funds.

I have no information about the exact date that the lights turn off at American Digest but I imagine it will be quite soon. I've been running this site at a semi-beta level but the time is coming when I need to lock certain features down - I gave myself until darkness at the old site.

You've had a couple of months to see this site in operation ... as have I - and I've only had to block one reader. I didn't like doing that but ... I won't go into my reasons why.

If there are any suggestions any of you would like to make - format, style, text size, font, colors, the idiot running the place, whatever - now's the time to let me know. I can't/won't promise I'll implement any or all but everything will be considered (some items I've beaten my head against the wall about but some things are "what it is is what it is").

Once I lock certain features down, it will become more difficult to modify later.

As they say, speak now or forever hold your piece.

:)

A comment by John Fleming over on AD struck me this morning. I hope he doesn't mind if I copy his words:

"Some people might like it, conversing with your ghost. But at some point, either your heirs will pull the plug on your echo, or your echo will become so antique that all the new folks are not interested in what you might have said about anything. And then as Gerard says, digital dust to digital dust."

On occasion, simply heading out in some random direction from a point in the back-country brings surprises. I found this grave somewhere out in the Nevada desert. Nothing much out here but sagebrush, badger holes, and the fading ghosts of lost dreams. Any "town" that might have been nearby had fallen into ruins of less notice than this old iron fence. Any headstone or marker - like the body within - had long returned to that from which it came.

An elaborate fence, someone buried with love, care, and expense - they themselves now gone a few generations ago.

I doubt I could find it again.

But I wonder what was once here; the lives lived, hopes flourishing, a town of future substance being built ... being Nevada ... on the hopes of some mineral strike that would turn "our town" into a new metropolis.

Then the mines played out.

Genesis 3:19
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”