Month: February 2023

I’ve always felt … that I belonged … in a slightly different, earlier era. For me, it’s the ’60s. I dig the whole crazy era: the music, the hippies, the lava lamps, the slang, the psychedelic graphics & clothes, the whole taking-it-to-the-streets energy and organization that literally changed our culture—into the one I grew up in. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, hair peace, contraceptive peace, and eventually as time melted into the ’70s ending the draft and lowering the voting age to 18.

Of course, I only know any of this from TV shows, movies, documentaries, talk shows like Donahue and schoolbooks and teachers.

But another career crisis brought up what at this point have been lifelong feelings deep in my psyche: I just don’t belong here in this time. My life would have been so much better if I had lived at a different time. Or just in my lifetime, if opportunities had arrived at earlier points, my careers in journalism and education would have been … smoother. ?

So, in this 21^st century age in which I live, I decided to research the internet on my iPhone and type in the search bar: Why do I feel like I do not belong in this time period—you know, just putting it out there into the cosmos that may or may not be cyberspace.

And from my lonely sincere question flowed a plethora of earlier posted comments by many other humans on earth … who feel exactly the same way.

Huh.

I read musings by people who in great detail pondered why they feel like the life they are living is just not working out as it should and that in reality they should be living in an earlier time. (One did write to say his real life is from the future and in this era, he has traveled back in time.) Several wrote about a desire to live in the antiquing age of 1920s or 1890s with many simply liking the 1950s and hippie ’60s like me. They brought up the fact that perhaps their longing for an earlier simpler time has to do with being influenced by TV (reruns) and movies of times in which we have not experienced given our age now.

If nothing else, I gained the knowledge that basically everyone on earth, well maybe Americans or Westerners or modernists, live with this overwhelming feeling that we just don’t belong in this time period and we’d rather live in an earlier time, perceived as happier, stable … a time period that, for lack of a better phrase, would put up with people like us. A few young adults went on about liking the clothes, movies and music of the ’80s—like they thought that was the era to live your youth. Well, honey, I was there throughout my 20s. The 1980s was the worst decade of my life. And the music at the time made me LONG for the folk rock of the 1960s. So, in the 1990s I started going to the Kerrville Folk Festival. Talk about belonging!

Out of place

If it is simply part of the human condition to long for a life in a previous era, even life in another country, then that’s just the way it is. Still, all my life I kept my deep lament to myself, never expressing it until very recently.

This feeling of ‘I don’t belong here’ or ‘I don’t belong here anymore’ is part self-pity and part depression. Life is just not going the happy-go-plucky way we think it should go, so it’s give up and lament about how much better our lives would have been in (fill in the time and place). I wonder about people who really experienced the worst times on earth like wars, like the folks in Ukraine or the Middle East or the Holocaust.

I think of my parents who thoroughly enjoyed their teen years and young adulthood in the 1950s. Best music, best cars, best clothes, best TV, best prices, best everything.

And I always thought of the flip side going on in the ’50s, which was not so carefree and wonderful for Blacks and gays and women, practically everyone who wasn’t white and male. And there was polio, too. And the worst cancer treatments.

But I don’t want to take away someone’s pleasant moment of nostalgia. In many ways, that’s all people have that makes them feel happy. The old photos, music, movies, books, clothes create a time we can experience vicariously if we didn’t live through it to begin with.

The irony of all this ‘why do I feel like I don’t belong in this time’ is answered if not resolved instantly by the internet. And I’ve always believed that each of us is meant to be here and now doing whatever we do, riding the ups and downs of life. We don’t like the bad times, but time and again we survive them. Besides, nothing lasts forever. We need to focus on the life we’re dealt, the Now in which we are living, even if there’s just so much about these times we can’t stand. Nothing our human predecessors didn’t feel and deal.

One time in the early 1980s when the Texas Lege decided to do a major overhaul of the state’s public school system, the elected officials zeroed in on the teachers. See, back then the whole country was in an uproar about kids graduating who could not read. How could that be? This sort of thing doesn’t happen in other modernized nations, just in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Obviously, kids were being passed on from grade to grade until handed a diploma and good riddance from our high schools. It was indeed a national disgrace. So the Texas Lege decided to do something about it once and for all.

Teachers were the only suspects. Every week, they were with the state’s kids more than their parents, supposedly teaching them subjects like literature, grammar, math, science, history, social studies. Texas was out to brand teachers with the letter F, I guess, for Failure. Anyway, teachers found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to pass a competency test or lose their jobs. Yes, teachers, every single one of them, including anyone like college professors who also wanted to maintain their Texas Teacher Certificates, had to take the test. Anyone who failed the reading and writing teacher tests would lose their certification and subsequently be fired and not allowed to teach without returning to college and acquiring proper certification again.

It was a certifiable Texas-size mess. Public school teachers, young or seasoned—teachers of kindergarten to high school, football coach to band director to elementary classroom—had to take the one-time teacher competency test. Many probably retired and scoffed at the idea, but most who wanted their jobs (paying around $17,000 in those days, and that was after Gov. Mark White increased teacher annual salaries by $5,000) studied up on their writing and reading comprehension and vocabulary skills. Who knew what the State was going to put on a teacher competency test?

But I am happy to report, at that time practically every single teacher in Texas passed the competency test, around 98 percent. Woo doggies! However, there were some who failed. A coach and a shop teacher come to mind as they spoke to the media about it, poor guys.

Among aspiring teachers in college in the 1980s, we thought this pathetic attempt to force teachers to take a ‘competency’ test had racist undertones. Regardless, our turn was coming for our set of competency tests in writing, reading and even math. And the pre-professional skills tests remained to test Texas college students who want to be certified teachers. Supposedly they had to pass all three tests before they could continue with the education coursework required for a certified Texas teacher.

One other thing the Texas Lege did in the 1980s to overhaul public education was to write into law exactly what teachers shall teach (‘shall’ a legal term meaning ‘must’). There’s even an app for it now. Each subject for every grade level had all its concepts divided into legalese like 5.1, 5.2, etc. And the breakdown goes further and more precise, like 5.1.a, 5.1.b, etc. Each line is a specific concept that teachers shall teach, document as having taught, and mark as student mastered.

While I was in college, older students took required courses for a degree and teacher certification. Then that route was changed. The tests came along and then state law called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, first published as a manuscript in the mid 1980s. Fortunately for me, everything I was taught to teach was in there, the new law. But before then, teachers were free to teach or concentrate on anything they wanted, any set of skills they felt were of more importance than others.

Also, new teachers of the 1980s were told the State considers every teacher a reading teacher. So if any student graduates who cannot read, we all are responsible and could face legal consequences along with our schools and districts. Read: lawsuit. Got it. Make sure every student can read, and do something about it if a student cannot read. Gladly.

Tinkering with Texas’ past, present & future

As this is an odd-number year, the Texas Lege is convening in Austin with a publicized priority to do something about the state’s public schools. The mass shootings, the trans students, the Black history, the Mexican history—this is just all too much for our aging Legislators and Governor. Their gray heads are ’bout to burst. And aren’t most of them still white men unwilling to see other perspectives in this shared experience called life?

According to The Texas Tribune article (link below), the good news is legislators from both sides of the aisle agree the big state surplus should be used to increase school safety, increase teacher salaries, change school finance, and require a mental health course for every student prior to graduation. The state has been losing teachers big time for decades. There are school districts where the majority of teachers aren’t certified. A lot of people don’t want to go to college to learn to be a teacher only to be scrutinized from the get-go with competency tests. Then there’s the salary compared to other careers requiring a college degree. And an assortment of newfangled education philosophies out there, like no one should make a career out of teaching, do it a few years and get out (forget the pension; the state would love for teachers to forget about it), or just get a degree and go teach ten years to have the college cost reduced or paid off. No education background necessary. Texas started allowing anyone, with any college degree, to be a teacher. And for a few, that career path turns out to be a lifelong worthwhile enjoyable challenge. But as everyone knows, especially Texas legislators, not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. That has always been true—why most teachers quit within five years.

But the Texas Lege this year also wants to tinker with students’ expressed sexual identity and mute talk about racism in the classroom. These are the hot-button issues of our time, as the Texas Lege sees it. No, they really aren’t. Families have been dealing with sexual identity issues forever; this is their private issue, not one the State of Texas insists being involved.

As for race discussions in the classrooms of subjects like history, today’s white students are way ahead of our Texas legislators when it comes to our state’s and country’s racial history. They get it. Black lives do matter to today’s white students. Whites do have privileges and advantages just because they’re white. Texas history and American history cannot be taught correctly and thoroughly without acknowledging how a bunch of white people got control of all this land, from sea to shining sea. Where are the Native people of this land, this state? Why were they kicked out of this territory and pushed all the way to southeast Oklahoma? Why did plantation owners have to have slave labor, every single one of them from Africa? How can any human being, so-called God-fearing Christians, own another human being?

Kids today want to know the answers to our history. But the good old boys in the Texas Legislature aren’t about to spill the beans. Too late! By now the truth of our collective multicultural history is very well known—every disgusting detail. Today’s students are the Texans who don’t have a problem with truth setting us free. They have what it takes to make the future better for everyone not just some.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/02/texas-legislature-public-education/

At age 80, Paul McCartney has lived a charmed life. Even he can’t believe his fame and fortune, first as a Beatle—the one John Lennon credited for 75 percent of the band’s repertoire— and then McCartney’s next very successful band Wings. Back in the day, Paul was not my favorite Beatle; mine was George Harrison with Lennon a close second. Oh who am I kidding? I LOVE all The Beatles including Ringo Starr (who’s already 82).

One of the greatest highlights of my life was getting to see Paul McCartney live during his tour in 1990, the first time he included Beatles’ songs in his concerts since the band broke up. He opened with Live & Let Die, and each time he came to the refrain, explosions went off. After the first one, the stage was engulfed in smoke … and I thought, of course, “Oh my God, they killed Paul McCartney!” The explosions continued every time he sang the word ‘die.’ When the smoke cleared, McCartney and the band were still standing, playing the familiar riff after the refrain. Wow!! The concert continued with Jet and most of the stadium audience standing throughout the entire concert. Later he told us he wanted to go back to the 1960s, and we cheered in anticipation as he commenced to singing many of the original greats from The Beatles. His wife, Linda, was right there on stage with him doing a great job on keyboards, and his bandmates were top musicians. After a big finale, they bowed and left together, and we all remained, like under a spell. We didn’t know what to expect, but we weren’t going nowhere. Then sheepishly Paul returned to the dark stage, a spotlight shining on him. He was wearing a long night shirt and pointy night cap, holding a lamp, telling us “Shhhhhh!” We laughed and laughed. This was so unexpected. He left the stage, and a minute or so later, the entire band returned, wearing Dallas Cowboy jerseys, and presented the anticipated encore which concluded with McCartney’s compilation from Abbey Road, the one that begins with Golden Slumbers and ends with the lyrics: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

I left the concert walking on a cloud. McCartney looked particularly attractive with his feathered hair just starting to gray. A lot of us waited above the tunnel where we knew his limousine would drive out soon. We were hoping to get to see him wave at us.

And when I go away

I have to admit, the music of Paul McCartney, his voice and songs, were the soundtrack of my youth in the 1970s. His voice was so distinctive, so pleasant, even my mother knew it was him on the radio. I didn’t have any of his records with Wings, but I had a lot of The Beatles. I read Beatles’ magazines, that still existed long after they broke up, and tacked their posters on my bedroom walls, even a set of early Beatles’ headshots in my high school locker. They were the epitome of cool even if they were history and slightly before my time. I was aware the Beatles were just a couple years younger than my parents. But the Beatles were way cooler.

Through the decades, Paul has remained highly productive every year of his life: writing songs, recording albums, and touring the world. He is a big ham, and his fans are all right with it. Given his age, his voice has lowered and has lost the golden tones we are used to hearing our whole lives every day on rock and pop radio. Still, he insists on getting out there and performing. I don’t know of many people who seem to live life to its fullest, but Paul McCartney is one. He’s probably a beautiful person, too. I’ve heard in interviews, he goes out of his way to meet and greet, shake hands and chit chat with all around. Wow. What a guy.

I guess I’m saying given the reality of his age, I realize sadly Paul McCartney at some point won’t be here anymore to grace us with his presence. And I’m gonna miss that. He’s given the world some of the greatest songs ever written and sung with one of the most versatile, mesmerizing yet distinctive voices in pop music history.

But in the end, it’s McCartney’s songs, his body of work, that will remain eternal—his gift to the world. The greatest lyric ever written, I think, is from his song Hey Jude: Take a sad song, and make it better. The song My Love is one of my absolute favorites, an all-time great love song, along with Maybe I’m Amazed. Wow! As a true fan, I could go on and on.

As a songwriter, he’s the master. Singable melodies, easy to remember just like Mozart. Lyrics that are pure poetry, his advice to anyone trying to write a song. Ah, how McCartney can turn a phrase; his wordsmith rivals Lennon’s. But most importantly, the messages and meanings of a McCartney song are profound:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night,

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

A theory is he wrote the song about Blacks in America, who had to fight to achieve civil rights—which is also how we and history will remember the 1960s along with The Beatles and the Vietnam War.

And let us not forget, Paul McCartney can play, like, any instrument. His first solo album McCartney was all him on instruments and original songs. That alone makes him a fine entertainer, someone who deserves to be in show business.

Some years ago when I was a newspaper reporter, occasionally I dreamt I was interviewing Paul McCartney. I dreamt this for years every so often: Paul and I would be walking outdoors around his country estate in England or wherever it is, and I’d be asking him questions—and then he offers me a marijuana joint which I gladly partake. In the dream I say to myself and to Sir Paul, “I can’t believe I’m standing here smoking marijuana with Paul McCartney!” Then I’d wake up, but throughout the day I would hum and sing McCartney songs with a happy carefree demeanor. Wonder what that was all about? I guess the dreams may have been simply a stress reliever.

There was a time, too, when I almost got to interview the man himself. He was on tour again in the U.S., and as entertainment editor of a newspaper, I got his tour manager’s phone number. I called and left a quick message asking for an interview. I had my questions written out on a legal-size notepad kept in the top drawer of my desk. I was really trying to make this interview happen. (Beatles’ shriek!) But, alas, ’tweren’t meant to be.

There are singers we’ll remember … because of their songs. Paul McCartney is one worth remembering. So listen up nursing homes of the future: We’ll want to hear Beatles not Sinatra. Meanwhile, just glad Paul—who answered fans’ questions in an online video—is still with us here among the living and so cool and kind. And just one more thing. I think I’m in love with Paul McCartney.