January 2009 - Posts
By Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent
MIDLAND, Texas – I'm sitting in the lobby of the Hilton in Midland, Texas where it's standing room only around the lobby television, as images of the millions who have packed Washington are flashed on the screen.
A crowd of guests, police officers and hotel workers are glued to the screen as the swearing-in ceremony is about to begin. Even at this venue, thousands of miles from the Capitol, the excitement is palatable.
The irony, of course, is that these people have gathered for a ceremony as well – one that will be considerably smaller in size but just as heartfelt. This is where President George Bush is heading after the inauguration ceremony.
Midland offered Bush a send-off party eight years ago ahead of his inauguration. Today, the community will welcome him home. It will be a brief stop before the President and Mrs. Bush head to their ranch in Crawford.
In many ways, today is the end of an era for Midland, for Crawford and in fact for the entire Lone Star State… as Texas prepares to welcome another president home.
By Mike Taibbi, NBC News Correspondent
It took awhile to find it. I'd just moved to a new apartment and a new office location and there were still boxes to unpack in both places – but there it was, a plain manila file with my handwritten words on the tab, Records/Honolulu."
I read the first few paragraphs of the "Confidential Report of the Department of Public Welfare, Territory of Hawaii," about Donald Grant Funk Salinas, a "lightly-tanned youngster of Filipino-Dutch-Chinese-Hawaiian background ... underweight and frequently ill ... never under the care of his natural mother for any length of time."
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| Budding reporter, Mike Taibbi, at 17. |
The report, five single-spaced pages written by a social worker on behalf of a couple looking to become foster parents, was about me.
Three years ago, returning to Hawaii more than a half-century after I'd left the place where I was born, I'd made a formal request for any records connected to my birth and early history.
The social worker's report was one of several documents in the package I eventually received.
I'd read everything once and had a few conversations and e-mail exchanges with a half-brother I’d been put in touch with, the oldest of the three sons my "natural mother" went on to have after she'd matured and married following a troubled childhood that included having a child as an unwed teen. Her maiden name was Camila Salinas and she’d died in 1998.
Once I had the bare bones of the story – mine as well as hers, including two photos of her – I had put it all in the file and packed it away, until now.
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