Everyone Is From Somewhere

 German roots, Texas towns, Bad Bunny, and why culture should build bridges... not walls.

Growing up in Wisconsin, I never really questioned where our traditions came from. They were just… there. The family farm sat next to the village of Germantown. Summer festivals meant polka bands and beer gardens. Oktoberfest season brought accordion-heavy songs I sometimes couldn’t understand but somehow knew by heart. German last names were everywhere. Sauerkraut and brats showed up at community picnics like they’d always belonged.

Only later did I realize how much of that was inherited. Chosen. Carried forward.

My great grandparents and their parents before them moved to Wisconsin for land and opportunity. They brought pieces of home with them. The music. The food. The dances. The way you gather. The way you celebrate. Those traditions weren’t relics. They were anchors. Ways to build community in a new place without losing yourself in the process.

When I moved to Austin years later, I didn’t expect that same feeling to resurface. But it did.

Out in the Hill Country, I started to recognize familiar rhythms. The beer gardens in Fredericksburg. The beer halls in New Braunfels. Places like Naeglin’s Bakery, the oldest bakery in Texas, still turning out recipes rooted in German tradition. Gathering spots like Krause’s Beer Hall, where music, food, and long communal tables invite you to stay a little longer than originally planned.

There’s comfort in that familiarity. A small echo of Wisconsin showing up in Texas. And it made sense. These towns were settled by German immigrants who did exactly what my ancestors had done further north: they built community, and they held onto what mattered.

Even though I took a couple years of German in high school, have almost a half-century of polka band and Oktoberfest listening under my belt, I still know less than five percent of the words in most of those Oktoberfest songs.

But the music still lands.

Because music doesn’t require fluency. It carries feeling. Pride. Memory.

Maybe it runs deeper than I realized. Both of my kids’ grandpas are musicians. I used to play a pretty mean tuba. My wife and I had a legit Oktoberfest band, Die Freistadt Alte Kameraden Band, play at our wedding reception in Wisconsin. The sound wasn’t just entertainment. It was a connection to something special.

Die Freistadt Alte Kameraden Band at reception in Port Washington, WI -  2014

So when I drive through small towns outside Austin and stumble onto an outdoor beer garden with a polka band tucked into the corner, something in me relaxes. The music. The culture. The traditions. They connect me to a sense of home, even when home has shifted.

All of that sat with me this week as I scrolled through the wide range of reactions to the Super Bowl halftime show.

The frustration. The disappointment. The anger from some who couldn’t understand a single word because it wasn’t in English. And beneath that, in too many cases, frustration rooted in something deeper and uglier, amplified by the current political climate.

I’ll admit, I felt moments of cluelessness too. Not only because of the language barrier, but because I’m not exactly hip to the latest pop stars. And sadly, I’ve also been unsuccessfully trying to learn Spanish on Duolingo for over three years now.

But to be clear, I thought the halftime performance was incredible.

Bad Bunny captivated me. The production. The energy. The pride. It felt like a window into the love someone with roots in Puerto Rico feels for their culture, and the connection people still living there hold just as tightly. I could feel the intention behind it. The care and the joy.

I couldn’t help but think about friends and neighbors of ours with Puerto Rican roots, and how proud they must have felt watching that moment unfold. I especially thought of my sister in law who holds Puerto Rico so close to her heart. I even felt a little bummed this was the year we didn’t have friends over for the Super Bowl, since our one friend that comes over is from Puerto Rico.

This year especially, the halftime show has become more than entertainment. It’s a cultural moment that has drawn enormous attention to the NFL. And this year, it also revealed something uncomfortable.

Something that should have been a celebration of yet another thread in the American fabric became another point of division.

That breaks my heart.

Because music is one of the few things humans have that’s supposed to transcend language. It’s meant to communicate feeling when words fall short. Dance, rhythm, melody, they connect us before we ever understand lyrics. And yet here we were again, taking something uniquely human and using it to separate neighbors instead of bring them together.

We forget this sometimes, but almost all of our musical traditions in the U.S. are rooted somewhere else. Different languages. Different histories. Different struggles. Different celebrations.

Everyone is from somewhere.

Some of my neighbors here in Austin have roots that run deep in Texas. Others have only lived here a couple of years. Some trace their family history back centuries on this land. Others arrived recently, carrying pieces of home they’re still figuring out how to plant.

That sense of community and respect for others is why I’ve felt such a strong connection to the Texas Forward Party and its values-driven approach, and why I decided to get more involved last year. The more I listen to friends and neighbors talk about what feels missing right now, the more I hear the same refrain: love your neighbor. It’s an old idea for a reason. Respect, grace, and tolerance are still some of the most powerful tools we have for bringing people together.

My first yard sign I created for TXFWD - Love Your Neighbor - 2025

Culture, history, and tradition shouldn’t be weapons. They should be bridges. They should work the way music and food always have, inviting people in, not pushing them away.

To be honest, I doubt I’ll ever be a die hard Bad Bunny fan. It’s not going to be my everyday jam. But then again, not so long ago, the youth of another generation were told their music was the devil’s music. The dancing too suggestive. The artists immoral. The language improper.

The kids revolted anyway. They kept dancing. They kept singing.

And to this day, the one artist, the one who was once considered the worst, the king of hip swinging scandal, is adored by millions and still the King of Rock and Roll to my dad.

As a parent, I want my kids to inherit more than just traditions. I want them to inherit perspective. To know where they come from, and to be curious about where others come from too.

Because everyone is from somewhere. And if my kids can grow up grounded in their roots while staying open to new rhythms, languages, and stories, then they’ll carry forward the kind of community spirit that makes places feel like home.

Family first. Neighbors first. Humanity first.
Rooted in Wisconsin. Growing forward in Texas.

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Walking Slower in Texas

 A parenting story about slowing down, affordability, and time.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with someone who had moved to Texas decades ago from the East Coast.

“You learn to walk slower here; otherwise you’re drenched in sweat in the first five minutes.”

But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like quiet wisdom. Texas has a way of teaching you to slow down whether you want to or not. You don’t rush from place to place in the heat. You don’t sprint across parking lots at noon in August. You learn to pace yourself. You conserve energy, water, breath. You learn patience the hard way.

That does not come naturally to me.

I am wired to move quickly. To finish things. To optimize. To treat life like a race or project plan with dependencies and milestones. Even my downtime sometimes feels calculated. Slowing down can feel uncomfortable, like I’m wasting time or falling behind.

Which is probably why my kids keep finding ways to remind me that speed isn’t always the goal.

Slow down. School Crossing.

That reminder showed up recently during STEAM night at my son’s school. There were various science, tech, and arts related activity stations set up across the school for the night. And who doesn’t love a good punch card challenge. The kids were challenged to complete all the stations for the chance to win a big prize. We were moving from station to station, figuring out where to go next, and I was very much in logistics mode. Keep things moving. Stay on schedule. Don’t linger too long.

At one point, my six-year-old looked up at me and asked, “Dad, how do you spell my full name?”

He already can spell his first name. He repeated it back, proud. Then he moved on to his last name, sounding it out carefully. Thoughtfully. He got it right.

Then he paused and asked, “Is that my full name?”

In my head, the answer was easy. Yes. Close enough. Let’s keep moving.

But instead, I stopped myself.

“Well,” I said, “your full name also has your middle name.”

And just like that, everything slowed down.

We stood there together while he worked through it - likely for the first time. Sound by sound. Letter by letter. No rushing. No correcting. Just waiting. It took longer than I wanted it to. And it mattered more than I expected. He did miss one letter, but he was too proud for me to dampen the moment.

Patience is one of those values we all say we admire, until it costs us something. Time. Momentum. Comfort. Control. As a parent, patience rarely shows up in grand gestures. It lives in small moments like this, when you choose not to hurry someone along, when you let them struggle just enough to grow, when you resist the urge to optimize the experience for your own convenience.

That moment stayed with me because it connected to something older, something deeper.

Growing up, I heard stories about my German great-grandmother. Stories about thrift that went far beyond money. Food wasn’t wasted. Nothing was taken for granted. You didn’t rush through meals or throw things away just because you could replace them. Affordability, in her world, wasn’t just about cost. It was about respect. Respect for resources. For labor. For time. Very likely molded by the times she lived in (Depression-era hardship, war, and farm culture).

Nothing was infinite. Everything mattered.

Now it seems like affordability is more narrowed down to dollars and cents. Prices on shelves. Numbers on a spreadsheet. And those things matter, deeply. But real affordability is bigger than that. It’s whether families can afford time together. Whether parents can afford patience. Whether kids can afford to learn slowly without being rushed through childhood.

Texas has taught me this in its own way. You conserve water because it’s scarce and precious. You slow your pace because the heat demands it. You plan differently, not to squeeze more in, but to endure longer. Patience can also be a form of sustainability.

Parenting, I’m learning, works the same way.

If I rush my kids through everything, I might get through the evening faster. But I’m borrowing against something more valuable. Their confidence. Their curiosity. Their sense that they’re allowed to take up time and space in the world.

That’s not a trade I want to make.

We talk a lot about affordability in public life. Rent. Groceries. Gas. And we should. But there’s another layer that doesn’t get as much attention. Can families afford to slow down? Can kids afford adults who wait? Can communities afford patience instead of constant urgency?

Because when everything feels rushed, people get sharper. Less generous. More reactive.

Patience, it turns out, is a resource too.

That night at STEAM night, nothing monumental happened. We didn’t win anything. We didn’t check off more stations than the other kids. But my son walked away with the pride of knowing his full name. And I walked away reminded that sometimes the most valuable thing you can give a child isn’t an answer.

It’s the time to arrive at it themselves. And something I’ll likely be working on for the rest of my life.

As I think about thriftiness, affordability, and the values we pass down, I keep coming back to this idea. Real wealth isn’t speed. It isn’t optimization. It isn’t how quickly you can move on to the next thing.

Sometimes it’s learning to walk slower. To wait longer. To sit in the heat a bit. To let a six-year-old figure it out.

Because those moments don’t cost money.

But they are priceless.

Family first. Neighbors first. Humanity first.

Rooted in Wisconsin. Growing forward in Texas.

If you’d like these reflections delivered to your inbox, you can also follow this blog on Substack: wiguyintx.substack.com