as soon as i get up now, i've been turning on the morning show. now, before you get all upset that i'm leading my day with tv (i'm sure all of you are yoga-at-6 a.m. type-people), understand that i do it for the weather. these days, new york is hovering between really hot and humid, raining and downright cold and you never know which of these is going to happen on any given day.

it's also practically impossible to tell the weather from inside my apartment. (when we move to a place with a wall of windows, that will change.)

while i'm waiting for the weather, though, i usually get all sorts of other news and tidbits. about eating whole grains, or the traffic jam in the tunnel, or a human interest story about a dog. that sort of thing.

then, i saw a segment on hispanic immigrants and what they name their united states-born children. the story was that a lot of parents are naming their kids to help them integrate into u.s. culture instead of naming them to preserve their heritage. no more marias and joses - it's all jennifers and brians and the occasional "america".

i've been thinking about this particularly because i'm signing kids up for summer reading which means i'm seeing hundreds of names of children who were born in the u.s. to immigrant parents. and, perhaps not surprisingly, they are following that trend. inventive spelling rules, though, when it comes to english sounds ("jhenifer" and "antoni").

when my parents named my brother and me, they gave us names that would work in spanish or in english. in my case, the names are even spelled the same in both languages (not so lucky for my brother who had an identity crisis upon discovering his legal name was "juan david" and not "john david" and refused to sign his passport for three days).

regardless, i am seeing these children adapting quite well to the u.s. they speak english to me and translate for their parents, they all have ipods and cell phones, and they move with the ease that comes with a sense of belonging.

maybe it's the names... maybe it's not.
maybe it's worth it... maybe it's not.