Great Decisions: Mexico

It is Monday night and this is my third blog entry. If you have read so far, you may think this is all about the Westfield Library, because once again I'm writing about an event there. I promise, there will be other topics covered here, one today, as this entry is really a double feature.

Again, Monday night is foreign policy night with Great Decisions from the Foreign Policy Association. (More on this program in my entry from 2007-04-12.) The way the program is structured in Westfield, we typically have a speaker from this region that is an expert in the subject matter at hand. Unfortunately, the speaker scheduled for "Mexico" today canceled on short notice.

So instead of a speaker we watched the respective video from "Great Decisions - TV" which is airing on PBS as an accompanying TV program for the Great Decisions series. The program is a bit stiff and not particularly exciting because it is all interviews and some of speakers come across as a little bit too self-important. Still they make some good points and seemingly are truly experts in their field. You can watch some additional interviews at the site but not the actual program which you would have to buy on DVD.

Nevertheless, I still like the format with the expert speaker a lot more. If for nothing else, the speaker is there to answer questions and provide perspective. So with "Mexico" only being covered in a fairly short video the evening was more a discussion, which had its own appeal. The interaction between the participants was high quality. People tried to stay with the facts, were oriented towards solutions and didn't argue along the typical partisan lines. I really enjoy this type of interaction, so I'm glad we have that in Westfield. In summary, a lot of new insights about this more and more important neighbour to the south.

But the evening wasn't over. However, my time for today is so I will continue with this tomorrow.