Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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The 21st century: How’s that been working out?

Instead of a retrospective commentary on all the major events of 2017, I thought it better to look back at the entire 21st century.  We’ve been living in the ’teens now for almost a decade, most of us born back in the 1900s; learning, buying and updating new tech every year; rather easily accepting social change like gay marriage,  legalized marijuana, and admitting to smart phone and social media addictions.  So far it’s been a century of … adapting.

At the turn of the century, we could see where we were heading as far as the World Wide Web and even cell phones with cameras.  We knew practically every home would have a computer if not one for each family member as well as school classrooms for every student.  We could see that every book would be electronically converted for reading online—as well as every book ever written, every song ever recorded.  With websites, social media like Myspace, and YouTube, we could foresee the day everyone would indeed be famous for at least fifteen minutes.  We could see that each of us would become more independent as far as shopping and paying bills online, watching new movie releases via computer, and—most importantly perhaps—reading and researching scads of information, articles (real and fake), blogs and websites (official and unofficial) courtesy of the internet.  What we did not foresee in that last futuristic insight, however, was how divided our nation would become politically, empowering extreme thoughts and action from the ‘alt right’ and socialist left.  Americans of the 21st century do not seem to share the same basic democratic philosophy and values of our country’s Founding Fathers.

2001 tech odyssey

In the year 2000, I had yet to own a computer.  I didn’t even know how to get online or surf the web.  My only experience was at work where I used computers since the 1980s, learning to handle a mouse in 1992.  The small-town newspaper where I later worked had one new big computer that a newly hired computer technician would operate to put together an online edition.  We reporters would ask the computer tech to print out news stories, research figures, or phone numbers of people we needed to interview if we couldn’t find such information ‘old school’—because the computers in the newsroom were not suited for internet connection.  Too, the computer guy would print out any emails we received.  Reporters each had a work email address tacked onto our published articles and sometimes received email but had no computer on our desks to check such correspondence.

By 2001 not only did I own my first home computer (a blue Mac), started paying a monthly internet bill of $10, and created my first personal email address, but the newsroom also got the same computers.  Finally at work we had the internet at our fingertips.  I relished checking The New York Times every day as well as double check spellings of people, places and things, historic dates, facts and figures.  I also enjoyed surfing the net for entertainment websites, from Lucille Ball to Loretta Lynn, The Beatles to The Rolling Stones—whatever popped into my pretty little head.  The whole world was at my fingertips … I imagine everybody on the planet with internet access felt the same way at this point in human history.

Later that year I had moved to a big-city paper and not only was handed a laptop for the first time but also given a cell phone with an assigned phone number and expected to have at hand 24/7.  I was elated, feeling part of our fast-paced modern times, my own era.  Then suddenly right after 9/11, many websites were down like The New York Times, and network news was covering only this American terror story of the century.  New information was not coming across the internet as fast as everybody wanted and expected coast to coast.  We were thrown back into a dark age of sorts, realizing our modern times without internet, satellite and electronic technology.  We may have feared a bit, but within a few weeks life and high tech went on.  Within the decade, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and iPad—both turning out to be must-have technology for all consumers, adults to children.

Best of times, worst of times

So far the 21st century has brought into the collective consciousness the best and worst of Man simultaneously: perpetual wars yet life-saving medical advancements; the first African-American president followed by a successor voted in to dismantle his legacies; commonplace mass shootings here in the U.S. while millions of citizens march on world capitols for social and government reform; men of ultimate power and prowess brought down by women who alleged sexual harassment; a plethora of internet fake news stories alongside crucial investigative reporting of the truth; police shootings of unarmed black men, many captured on camera, giving birth to fiery protests and national alarm; hacked websites and internet interference to alter elections as people vote on dubious computer ballots; presidential candidates knocking the U.S. government, one for favoring the rich over the poor, the other for favoring the poor over the rich.  Incredulously, the latter won—and has never ceased to Tweet up a storm.

Nowadays with everyone using 21st century technology—tech that when built is only meant to last three months before another advancement and necessary replacement—it seems there is a lot of static in the air.  We can hear it on cable news with arguments left and right and see it throughout the day with an onslaught of online stories and instantaneous imagery.  It’s as if we don’t know what to believe anymore.

This is because we read online only what we want to read, see only what we want to see, believe what we want to believe.  With all the internet travel and social media fads, we’ve left our brain on auto pilot—everything happening so fast.  No time to think.  Just react.  The Information Age has become … no way to live.

Remember the 1900s?  How simpler life was then?  Why, just the last part of the century, what technology did we have to have: telephone answering machines, electric typewriters, word processors, VCRs, CDs and CD players, Walkman, Pong?  More importantly, for those of us who can recall those olden days, we had more time.  Who would have thought it about the late 20th century, because we were warned then that technology was advancing too quickly and would leave humanity in a tailspin, many incapable of keeping up?  Still we were able to live our lives ‘off line’ instead of online (there was no internet).  We never lost human contact because we left the home to shop and socialize, used our voices for conversation instead of typing disjointed thoughts to send rat-a-tat-tat as emails or Tweets.

In the year 2018 if we’re honest about how we’ve been using and abusing technology, we’ll admit to being frazzled, on edge, fearing everyone in the world even our own family and neighbors.  Our president, after all, is a reflection of us, and this era will go down in American history.  Don’t blame the latest cutting-edge technology, social media or fake news.  We’re the ones with the problem, the sickness, susceptible because we are humans with minds and souls.  All the uproar that has infected millions of us is contained within the mind.  The one thing we’ve seemed to have forgotten amidst all the fun and necessity of high tech is that technology is science: machines and wires, circuits and chips and binary code, and an on/off switch.  Humans are not machines, though machines are getting to be more like us.  Humans are not thinking beings who feel but emotional beings who think—a lesson to contemplate from The Twilight Zone that is the 21st century.

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Valdez tosses hat and star into the Texas Governor’s ring

The odds of beating Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2018 are slim to none, a moot point already settled in the minds and hearts of most Texans republican or democrat.  We all know our state with its dominant conservative underpinnings and dogmatic religious scaffolding—where the people as a whole don’t take kindly to words like ‘progressive’ and ‘neo’ and are slow as molasses to change or accept changing with the times.  Why no wonder states up north think of us Texans as a bunch of stubborn mules.

With Abbott as governor, our state has taken a backward turn specifically on morality issues.  Case and point: fetal burials.  That’s right.  Any fetus from abortion or miscarriage within the womb of Texas must be buried proper—as if a fetus really is a fully formed newborn baby Texan.  Why all the women who suffer miscarriages have to be placed in the same hot snipin’ controversy as abortion is beyond rational thinking.  To punish those who miscarry is also beyond empathy.  And that has become Texas, our Texas.

On the related issue of family planning, however, Abbott did some good a couple of decades ago as Attorney General.  Remember when he practically single-handedly went after deadbeat dads (and some moms, too)?  We don’t even hear the term ‘deadbeat dad’ anymore.  Families who were owed back child support finally had someone who listened, seriously pursued the whereabouts of ex-husbands and children’s fathers, left no house or apartment or trailer or family member or employer unbothered to doggedly find parents who individually owed tens of thousands of dollars to their rightful children.  No ifs, ands or buts.  It was a beautiful coming together, so to speak, of what is fair and just and legal.

On this sore subject, before Abbott came along the general rule was if a father was out of work and can’t afford to pay child support, throwing him in jail as punishment would solve nothing; he certainly couldn’t earn money behind bars, heh heh.  So, many Texas children were financially unsupported by their fathers for … well, probably since the great state of Texas formed in the 19th century.  We’d grown accustomed to it.  But then modern mothers and computer technology capable of locating the whereabouts of anyone changed the old ways and excuses of deadbeat parents.

Just a shot away

But recently Gov. Abbott, a fiercely loyal party republican, took on the status quo of sanctuary cities like Houston and Dallas, cities where local law officers didn’t take on the federal role of immigration.  Abbott banned ‘sanctuary cities,’ a phrase not really legal yet muy caliente among the philosophical right.  A so-called sanctuary city means local authorities will not pursue immigration status of citizens; in other words, illegal immigrants are allowed to remain and live and work in certain U.S. cities.  If the feds come knocking, however, illegal immigrants always could be deported.

Neo conservatives like President Bush and new democrats like President Clinton saw eye to eye on the subject of illegal immigration.  Businesses brought in cheap labor.  Then it became necessary for the government to look the other way when it came to snooping around for the legal status of human beings, millions of people living all over the U.S. not just in Texas and California.  In the manner of his former job as attorney general, Abbott threw down by threatening state funds from Texas counties with sanctuary cities.  Some elected officials stood up to the Governor on this controversial issue, again one that may call for some level of human empathy.  One was former longtime Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez.

Valdez was born in Texas to a large family of migrant workers.  Prior to being elected sheriff, she earned two college degrees and worked in the military as well as the federal government in law enforcement.  Now she is running for Texas governor on the democratic ticket.  Her recent candidacy drew controversy when the Dallas Police Association summarily backed Gov. Abbott.  Folks wanna know why.  Was she ineffective as sheriff?  How?  Was she not tough on crime, too soft on illegals?  Could her stance or public perception come from her upbringing, her background, her ethnicity, her ties to migrants and her family heritage?

Valdez has not been a major political player in Texas.  But she gained nationwide recognition as the first openly gay female Hispanic sheriff in the U.S. back in 2004.  Liberal supporters may believe she is unique for modern Texas history, even our future: Hispanic, female, gay.  But see, this is Texas, ya’ll: a real big state with thousands of small towns, more small towns than big cities.  Small Texas towns haven’t yet totally embraced gay and lesbian, let alone transgender, people—many who move to the cities for support and the pursuit of happiness.  The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex has become the number one haven for gays, lesbians, transgender, and bisexual people and couples—this demographic population larger than those in San Francisco and New York.

But there’s Dallas, and then there’s Texas.  In many ways, the city and state are incompatible (though Dallas voters as a whole remain a major republican stronghold, proving deep Texas roots all right).  That’s what the rest of the U.S. doesn’t know about Texas and Texans.  The people have become as diverse as the state terrain: from grassy plains to rugged mountains, sandy seashores to towering forests.   For a long time, we’ve been able to just pack up and move far away enough to get along yet still call ourselves Texans.  But like everybody else has found through travel and relocation, Texas is becoming a small world after all.

 

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Texas weather is worldwide

Oh this Texas weather!  It’s December already, and the beginning of the work week was over 80 degrees while the end was close to freezing.  Now on Saturday I had to turn on the AC as I decorated the Christmas tree!  A quick look at the Farmer’s Almanac indicates another mild winter in Texas.  Oh we’re accustomed to freak weather, like the snow dusting in Houston and Austin.  Houston, for those who have yet to experience the city, is tropical: humid and mild year round.  There are Houstonians who do not own winter coats.

All this freaky weather, especially hot spells in December, bring to mind the cries of climate change and how it is most likely manmade.  I won’t say hogwash, yet I don’t jump on the band wagon to save the environment either.  I’m aware that each recent year has been hotter than the one before and each subsequent year the hottest on record.  I know scientists continue to monitor the earth from space and send back images revealing continued ice loss among massive land and water regions at the top of the world once frozen solid and home to polar bears and other life now struggling for survival and undergoing an evolution of sorts or extinction.

I also think back to the coldest winter in Texas I’ve ever experienced: December 1983.  It was so cold that the temperature stayed close to 0, and the pipes froze in the trailer where I lived for a spell during college.  My car would not start during that lingering bitter cold wave; I feared the engine block was cracked.  The folks I spent Christmas with that year joked about standing in front of the open refrigerator to feel a warm breeze.  It was that cold.  But then the other Texas winter I’ll never forget was the following year: December 1984, when I baked a turkey wearing shorts and sandals because the weather was so warm.  I learned way back then that weather is unpredictable and changes drastically year to year.

Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute

Remember that old joke: If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute?  Well, a similar joke has been said among the Irish about their entire country: You can experience all four seasons in one day.  That got me thinking about all this climate change uproar.  I’m a big fan of Al Gore, saw his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, wondered why he and Tipper divorced after decades of marriage and romance shortly after his renewed fame from said movie.  So concerned for the sudden drastic and consistent changes in the environment, I even started praying daily for God to help us save our planet: guide scientists and mechanical engineers to create better fuel and/or automobiles or transportation modes, help us to ensure a global food supply, and help us with escalating fires like the constant ones still spreading for years throughout California.

Experiencing the lingering and increasing heat from year to year coupled with something we Texans thought we’d never ever have—earthquakes!—might make many start pondering end-time prophecies and near-futuristic permanently doomed climate scenarios such as in movies like Blade Runner.  Over the past couple decades, summers have become harder for me to enjoy.  The sun feels like it is literally searing my skin when I am outdoors for just a few minutes in July and August.  I’ve wondered why, given the obvious hotter summers, our schools are not closed in July and August and maybe half of September instead of June and July especially in Texas.

I’ve traveled to Delaware, New York and Boston in the summers only to experience just a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat in my home state.  Is anyone else having trouble breathing in the Texas heat like me?  I wonder if I’m just getting old(er) and growing discontent, if my skin is getting more sensitive, have I become totally spoiled by summer AC.  [In Texas, AC—whether in cars, homes, hotels or business buildings—is a necessity practically every day of the year.]  Then I think about my grandparents and all the old-timers generations prior who lived full lives without AC.  HOWWWWW?  These are folks who used little or no deodorant, bathed weekly, had no indoor toilets, wore more clothes than we do, and walked everywhere in their small towns.

Climate, fry-ment

The difference between people now and a hundred years ago must be the earth was a bit cooler, the heat tolerable, right?  Our planet obviously is undergoing vast temperature and climate changes, and we should care about it.  However, I don’t know how suddenly these changes have been going on.  Al Gore swears by it as his plantations have become unproductive over the span of a decade due to climate change such as lack of rainfall and super storms.  He tells a Southern joke about when we see a turtle on a post, we can bet it didn’t get there by itself.  ?

The climate debate is not only about the science [the Trump administration summarily removed all references to ‘climate change’ in at least one government website] but if we modern humans are totally to blame.  That is a bitter pill to swallow.  In my lifetime, I’ve seen pollution and smog levels go down dramatically, cleaner air and water, bans on aerosol cans and many other restrictions on a list of chemicals including Freon.  To non scientists like me and most people, the skies are blue, rain falls, sun shines, seasons change, food is plentiful, God is great, and life and humanity go on.  All is seemingly right in the world.  And we don’t want to hear otherwise.

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The man thing: Women and society have had enough

Men.  Man, what’s going on?  Or should the question be what’s been going on, all along … since the beginning of time?  A lot of famous men in show biz and politics are being accused of sexual misconduct, if not outright assault, by the fairer sex.  Most of these alleged—and acknowledged incidents (thanks Louis CK)—occurred decades ago usually when the victims were young women or teens.  Every day we learn of a new allegation, another long-time famous and powerful man from the movie industry to government, Republicans and Democrats, gay and straight.  Al Franken?  Well he has the distinction of working in both man-made realms.  Perhaps the reason all the dirty laundry is coming out now is due to Bill Cosby and Donald Trump: one left to ruin, the other still elected President of the United States.  Both scenarios cast perspective on our society: No one really cares about what women say when it comes to men and sexcapades especially from decades ago.  It will always be he said/she said.  Not so fast.  The days of giving the accused good ol’ boy a fair shake until proven guilty may be coming to an end as women’s stories, their recollections, are now believed by millions and millions of people, women and men, living in this newly created era.

In trying to figure out all this unseemly activity between the sexes, it may appear a lot of men do not know how to behave in the presence of a woman, especially if the woman is not his date or even interested in him in a romantic way, if she’s just his friend or co-worker or employee.  Seems men have a need to be the aggressor and women to be unimpressed, coy (which confuses men) or willing to play along.  Monica Lewinsky confided to Barbara Walters that she hiked the back of her skirt to let President Bill Clinton see her thong underwear: She wanted to let him know she was available for play.  What a national mess that turned out to be, and whether or not Hillary Clinton wants to admit it, that impeachment ordeal had a lot to do with Americans declining to give her the presidency.

Boob tube

In retrospect the blurring of appropriate and inappropriate behavior between the sexes came along with the bawdy TV sitcom, and long-time rerun, “Married with Children.”  In the opening credits, tired shoe salesman Al Bundy plops on the couch to mindlessly watch TV but not before pushing his hand down his pants, just a little beneath the waist.  Either he’s just being a guy and wants to relax and let his meal settle (Al hardly ever ate a meal), or it suggests masturbation.  That show first aired three decades ago.  Through the years we’ve seen an onslaught of FOX TV shows with women as mere sex kittens, gratuitous sex scenes, not to leave out other networks and cable TV with the likes of “The Man Show,” along with sleazy horror movies and video games where women must be raped, popular comedic phrases like “I’m rich, bitch” and a generation of misogynistic rap lyrics.  Women have been objectified on a modern sociological scale, still perceived only in sexual context.  Damned if she does.  Damned if she doesn’t.  Damned either way.

When Christianity was forming, there was an all-male sect that believed women to be pure evil, so they best stay away or face eternal damnation.  That sect died out.  Then the Church rethought the significance of Mary, the mother of Jesus, so maybe women weren’t so bad after all, even serving a divine purpose as men most assuredly believed their own place to be in the eyes of the All-Male God.  Yet in practically every society, women continue to be second-class citizens.  Women still generate suspicion in men who through the ages have claimed the opposite sex to be everything from witches to whores.  It’s been a man’s world all right.

Along with the male inability to see women as equally human, there is the underlying abuse—which is about power.  So a male masseuse giving a back massage to a female client pushes muscles until fingers come in contact with a nipple; an Olympic doctor performs sex maneuvers on pre-teens under the guise of gynecological exams; a man simply whips out his thing just to see a woman’s or women’s response; a grungy man hides to spy on women shopping the bra and panty section at a department store.  A sixth-grade boy ‘accidentally’ trips and falls into a girl and clutches her breast simultaneously.

Sugar and spice

Wanna know why boys and men get away with this behavior over and over again?  First, women are self deprecating by nature: “I could be wrong, but I think he touched my …” So they second guess themselves.  They don’t want to accuse and go public if perchance the incident were an innocent, nonsexual misunderstanding.  Women are often unsure of themselves or their memories of what really happened.  “Men can’t be that nasty, can they?”  [Pssst.  A man would tell us yes.]  Then there’s the fact that women are too damn nice.  They don’t want to tell and retell a dirty secret.  And ultimately, a lady thinks everyone else will assume she was at fault, a tease.  Really?  Just socializing or doing business with a man means sex stuff can occur?

Freud was first to report what unwanted sexual advances do to young girls.  Repeatedly he found through psychoanalysis that his adult female clients, most of whom were deemed neurotic, were consciously unaware of childhood sex abuse usually by the hands of their fathers and male relatives.  He was so disgusted with this unbearable truth—that speaks more about his own sex than the women he helped—he quit the field he pioneered.  He just couldn’t take it anymore.  Television drug counselor Dr. Drew has been publicly candid about the secret truth that comes out in therapy, how common the issue of childhood sexual abuse is found to be the reason for drug abuse and addiction.

Statistics are one in four girls and one in six boys are victims of sex abuse.  And again, most victims never tell the secret.  The “Me too” campaign is trying to change all that.  Society is being persuaded to not only listen to a female when she speaks of an uncomfortable incident or situation involving a man and his unwanted sexual behavior but also to believe her.  If there is any good that will come out of confronting past and current sex and power abuse by men against females of all ages, it is that not all men are this way.  There are honorable, decent, good, law-abiding men in this world.  They’re out there somewhere.

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Pain management may lead to opioid addiction

Everyone is addicted to something: drugs, alcohol, sex, food.  This is a paraphrased quote from our ‘all too human’ former President Bill Clinton.  He used to tell us he felt our pain, so we elected him twice.  Then we discovered he was a serial womanizer and carried on with many affairs.  He was impeached essentially over his sex life.  But Clinton understood something about the human condition perhaps because he understood addiction.

Now that President Trump has declared the nation’s opioid crisis—with more deaths every day than car wrecks and gun deaths combined—maybe something can be done to save lives.  Last year 50,000 Americans died from this addiction, the great majority no doubt slipping into death unintentionally.  But drug deaths have been going on since, well, rock and roll: Jimi, Janis, Jim, then Elvis, later Michael, most recently Prince.  Their deaths were accidental, too.  They weren’t suicidal, just abusing drugs.  They were caught in a trap.  And at least two had money to seek modern-day treatment.  They couldn’t say they had no idea they were addicted to drugs.  They knew the game, played, and lost their lives—and in so doing caused a great deal of grief to their families and millions of fans around the world.

Something for the pain

Why do some people get addicted to drugs and others don’t?  Since the days of LSD, our scientists know so much more about addiction, brain chemistry, and genetics.  Will power may be a part of the equation.  Americans have a long history of cramming that thought down the throats of our loved ones, especially the older generations to the younger.  Still every day more and more people get hooked particularly on a cheap heroin derivative.  It might have started with an injury or surgery and some very effective pain pills.  The prescription ran out in a week or so and either was refilled by someone else or the street dealers came around or were pursued.  But when the addicted start committing crimes to support their habit, everyone knows the situation is deadly serious and must be stopped one way or another.

What is a family of an addict to do?  Television shows like “Intervention” chronicles such plights.  We are allowed to see how low the addicted go, how they have their daily plans to score dope, how they search their body for a vein that isn’t blown from overuse, how awful they look, how they lie and steal and prostitute as their lives are absolutely worthless … to them.  That’s the addiction, the sickness, the change in the brain.  And after addiction, through recovery they may find little joy in living the clean and sober life.  That is part of the price of addiction and sobriety.  Addictive drugs can rewire the brain’s pleasure sensors.

Science has taught us no one is really to blame for becoming addicted.  About the only thing we can do besides stop being judgmental is to be empathetic.  “Look, that could be me,” and with the right level of pain and new pain killers, anyone can get addicted.  That’s what the fear is about our latest drug crisis: It crosses every race, age, religion, and socio-economic level.  But the same was said about black tar heroin, then cheese, maybe even meth to some extent.

Comfortably numb

Pharmaceutical companies are being blamed for convincing doctors that pain management is true medical care nowadays.  Hah, what a laugh, based on my own experiences.  One of my doctors never refilled a pain killer used when passing a kidney stone.  The specific pain killer now is highly regulated with our government telling docs to avoid prescribing it altogether.  So I suffered through a day or two of horrific pain using over-the-counter alternatives that do not work.  I knew I’d live, however.  I knew the pain would go away.

In 1990 I underwent a state-of-the-art dental procedure to remove impacted wisdom teeth.  They were sideways and were never going to sprout, so I took the option which involved anesthesia.  The moment I awoke from the surgery, the pain was excruciating.  I was given a week’s supply of Percocet, which for me really didn’t alleviate the pain.  I cried myself to sleep every night, praying for the pain to go away.  But I could not imagine not taking that pain killer.  How much worse would the pain be, I feared.  Sure enough, when the pills were gone and I called the dentist for a refill, I was told to take Tylenol.  I knew Tylenol wasn’t going to relieve that level of pain.  So I suffered for another week or so of agonizing hellish pain; it felt like my teeth had been ripped from the roots.  And that’s exactly what had happened during the oral surgery.

What was never said to me was the pain will go away.  Now we are learning that doctors want us to experience pain after surgery because that indicates our bodies are healing.  Who knew?  I figured there were the old-school docs who wanted patients to ‘suck it up’ when it came to pain after procedures and the modern docs who sympathized (not unlike Bill Clinton) and would permit patients some sort of prescription pain reliever.  I guess we’re seeing the old-school docs were right all along.  Think back to the days before anesthesia (not that I would ever want to go back, so keep it coming).  Yet those old-timers, our forefathers, lived.  Perhaps we are made of tougher stock than we realize.  Maybe we’re going to have to start discovering our inner and outer toughness.

This latest drug epidemic involving opioids brought to mind a nurse I met who cared for terminal patients.  In 1994 she was speaking to hospitals nationwide to promote better pain management for patients in the end stage of a terminal disease.  Back then doctors were very reluctant to prescribe pain killers even for the dying.  This made no sense, as the good nurse said sarcastically, “Terminal pain is no time to be giving Tylenol 3.”  She also said something else a non-medical person like me—and most of us in the general population—would know: People don’t understand opioids can be increased indefinitely.

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Age brings wisdom to accept ourselves

How do we measure a year, asks the song from the musical Rent.  As I approach another birthday this month, I look back at not only this past year but all the many marks of time preceding it.  As we continue to live on, year after year, life is seen in a much bigger picture.  To me, life is marked in phases and stages.  It would be hard to explain how someone raised in a Dallas suburb ended up living in East Texas for many years and then traveled the world for education and pleasure.  But that is the wonderful thing about life: We never know what we’ll end up doing.  So, here’s to our personal adventure called Life!

Mine began humbly enough.  For three and a half years, I was the center of my parents’ undivided attention.  One of my earliest memories is our family of three moving into a new three-bedroom brick home.  I helped by carrying a mop and bucket in the house.  I remember the floor, though carpeted, felt hard as cement, which was its foundation.  My next early childhood memory was the day my brother was born.  In the hospital waiting room, while my dad was not watching, I managed to walk away until I was almost in the very room where my mother was giving birth.  I was stopped and pushed back to the waiting area by a nurse in white stockings and attire as they wore in those days.  Perhaps I heard my mother’s voice in labor and was searching to help her.

Next thing I knew, a party was held at our house with everyone coming to see the new baby.  The tiny creature was on top of my parents’ big bed.  He still had that skinny stem on his belly.  Feeling left out, I remained in the hallway then found myself carving my name on the wall.  What would Freud say?  For a few years, my name remained there until Dad paneled over it.  In those early sibling years, my brother and I shared the same bedroom.  But I saw myself as much, much older and ready for some independence: riding my big trike up and down sidewalks along the neighborhood street.  I asked to move into the guestroom, changing it into my own bedroom.  Some girls around my age moved into the house next door, and that’s where I liked to socialize and grow ever more independent.  We played Barbie’s a lot.

The next memorable milestone for me was my first day of school.  I had wanted to go to kindergarten, which was not required back then, but my parents could not afford it.  Instead because of my birth date in the fall, I had to wait an entire year before starting first grade.  I remember feeling the whole year was a complete waste of my time.  (What kinda kid was I anyway?)  My mother was a teacher at an elementary school where she arranged for me to attend.  On the first day of school, she walked me down a long corridor of lockers, then outside to the new modern wing for first and second grades, bent down and pointed at the glass doors and told me that was where I was to go to first grade.  My teacher came outside the door and the two ladies exchanged pleasantries as I walked inside by myself with enthusiasm and satisfaction and the real taste of freedom.  I had waited my whole life for this day!

But soon I would discover a few things about life and myself.  First, there are kids older than me, and they were tougher, too.  I was intimidated by them and yet could not wait to reach their big impressive ages.  Second, there were kids in my grade who were preordained to be popular.  And I was not one of them.  Looking back it seems somehow kids take one look at each other and just know upon meeting who’s well liked and who’s not.  What were we judging this on: the most stylish clothes and hairstyles, shoes, sophistication, charm school, parents with prestige and money?  How would we even know such things instinctively?  Who knows the psychology of a first-grader?  In time I would gladly accept my place as a product of middle-class blue-collar heritage.  Within a couple of years, I would learn to utilize that work ethic and make a name for myself in accomplishments that mattered to me: creative writing and performing on stage.

I won’t continue to bore with memories of junior high, high school, college and beyond, but suffice it to say, that thing about popularity is universal.  How a class of kids can be mesmerized by another person their own age is fascinating, and accurate.  You’d think the littlest ones among us would be the most sincere, able to discern the value of every peer and adult.  But kids are highly impressionable, more likely to chase after a person who seemingly glows on the inside and out.  Now with decades-old hindsight, I suppose seeing the way the world was made me more sarcastic and cynical toward my classmates, the cliques common in every school.  I never belonged to one.  Independence meant everything to me.  Besides, I liked sitting on the sidelines in observation and making the occasional sardonic quip to entertain the like-minded.

If we live long enough to mature with grace through many decades (crossing two centuries for me), then we come to realize the popular ones were just like the rest of us.  I wasn’t left out as much as I placed myself out of the white hot spotlight of school fame.  But I was critical of them, and I’ve lived to regret the way I was back then.  No doubt for some, popularity was a trap, attention and expectations never pursued.  What’s left behind for all of us are memories and pictures of beautiful kids with sparkling eyes, fabulous smiles, radiant glow and presumed successful life in all endeavors.  But the reality was and is every person has equal sorrow, hardship and loss along with love, accomplishment and success.  We of a certain age come to realize this about each other: Life may be hard but still can be and should be a joy.  If we live long enough, life gives us wisdom to understand ourselves and appreciate each other, then and now.

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Too late for gun debate?

We were warned against mentioning gun control following the Las Vegas massacre—to not refer to it as a massacre or a slaughter but just another mass shooting.  We were allowed to call it the deadliest in American history.  Then as I was leaving a parking lot at the end of the week, I saw three decals on the back of a vehicle: an assault rifle, an American flag in the shape of Texas, and a cross.  The stance celebrates freedom to have a military-style rifle; live in Texas, USA; and be counted as a follower of Christ.

Imagine Jesus Christ with an assault rifle or any gun.  That would go against everything he stood for.  He is the one who suggested when someone hurts us to turn the other cheek.  That is a reference to pacifism: to not fight, to allow yet another slap on the face or physical injury, even death.  Christianity is not a religion about being locked and loaded, ready for a fight, ready to use firearms, shoot if shot at.  It’s not a religion that permits possession of and carrying a sure-fire deadly weapon for personal safety.  Christianity is about going out into the world unarmed, with sincerity and faith, and most importantly being ready to suffer and die for religious beliefs.  But if Christianity and Jesus are going to be dragged into our American gun control debate, used as some proof of ultimate religious consecration, I’d go back to reading The Bible’s red-word-only sections.

Jesus did not carry a weapon to destroy his enemies.  The Romans, however, would have loved assault rifles.  It fits their renowned blood thirst and machismo, their insatiable need to prove their ultimate strength and brutality.  Perhaps the U.S. is modern-day Rome.

The National Rifle Association—with its scant lobbying funds compared to the Chamber of Commerce and pharmaceuticals—can be blamed but a little for our nation’s escalating mass shootings, now reaching slaughter in scope and carnage.  It’s not the NRA’s fault.  These shooting massacres are the fault of every American citizen.  Who the hell thought any private citizen should own military-style assault rifles, the kind that spray bullets and kill dozens in seconds flat?

When it comes to the general public and guns, I take the word of the police chiefs and sheriffs whose associations did not support concealed gun laws.  The seasoned officers tried to warn us a couple decades ago: Every and any body should not have a gun.  But that’s what has happened, all kinds of people getting powerful guns legally and otherwise.  And Americans don’t believe in having one firearm; there are enough guns in our nation for each and every one of us, infant to elderly.  That clearly means many Americans own more than one gun.

Somehow the American love of guns and high-powered rifles has got to wane.  Our fascination with guns has gotten us into so much trouble, brought on so much heartache, been the cause of more injuries and death especially among young people than almost any other cause statistically.  The NRA may have a valid point in blaming the most recent mass shooting on the movie industry.  With a body count of 59 and hundreds injured, the scenario is reminiscent of big-budget Hollywood action movies.  But … see, movies are fantasies; they’re not supposed to be reality.

Americans have loved guns for a long time.  Our forefathers may have thought it just and good for us all (well, white men of a certain age) to have a musket around the house to prevent Red Coats or any foreign figure from taking over our burgeoning nation or from preventing our own leader from declaring himself a dictator.  Maybe thinking if every property owner had one or two firearms, it would be really hard for a foreign army to kill us all and take over our new government back in the 1770s.  Well, we’re in the at-home assault rifles and nuclear age now.

There has been comic speculation about guns and man parts, as a reason why some men have to have so many powerfully large guns (to make up for a physical lack).  If so, that is proving some American men to be the head cases that would shoot people at malls, churches, concerts, etc., etc. and then himself.

If gun control cannot be a debate in 21st century America, if Americans just cannot deal with the thought of reconsidering at least military assault rifles, then we have no choice but to look inside the mind of our fellow citizens who own tons of guns.  The federal government does do that on occasion, and look what happens: Ruby Ridge, Waco and in retaliation Oklahoma City.  All of which proves my point: Americans are generally gun crazy.  And being that way and staying that way is just plumb crazy.

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Vietnam War documentary reveals truth, lies, loss and rue

It was the spring of 1980.  I was a high school junior in American history.  After spending six weeks on World War I, another six weeks on World War II, a week on the Korean War, finally we were going to learn about the Vietnam War.  I could not wait.  The whole hippie ’60s era of which I had little recollection fascinated me.  The teacher began to talk about the reasons for our involvement in Vietnam while our youthful eyes wandered around the room to study black-and-white pictures of the times of which he spoke: American combat soldiers on patrol in the jungle; that famous scene of a teen-age girl wailing over the dead body of an anti-war protester; impoverished Vietnamese villagers; war protesters placing flowers in the rifles of riot police.  What a mass of confusion.  Complex.  Intense.  Crazy.

As I recall, the history lesson on Vietnam was rather abbreviated.  Odd, considering this war was much longer than the world wars and certainly more controversial.  It had just ended five years ago.  I wanted to know all about the war protesters, the draft, the bumper sticker “Pray for our POWs and MIAs”—so much to learn from just awhile ago.  To the history teacher, it must have seemed like another lifetime, so much had changed.  Yet the ’60s was the era I wished I had been a part of (at 17 already summarizing the rest of the ’70s as boring musically and socially).  Bob Dylan had said of the national calm during the remainder of the ’70s “wounds were healing.”  But a recent piece of American history would remain missing from my schooling.  Why?

During the ’60s and early ’70s, the war may have always been on TV, but it never captured my childhood attention.  As I grew into a teen, rediscovering The Beatles and watching retrospectives on the tumultuous ’60s especially the millions of young Americans who marched in protests which often turned violent for some reason, I found out the secret about Vietnam: It was our national disgrace, our collective painful humiliation, a wound still bleeding from the heart of America.  Perhaps Vietnam was like our  country’s heart attack, and afterwards we were forced to live more cautiously and carefully.

The ones with firsthand knowledge of the war were mute, too.  I doubt one Vietnam vet would have spoken to our American history class when I was in high school.  Many men who served in Vietnam were so proud when returning home from the war, wearing their dress blues or greens, only to be verbally assaulted by thousands of angry protesters, their own generation.  “They sh— on us,” one vet told me when I was a reporter in the 1990s.  “What?!” I asked in disbelief.  “They threw bags of sh— on us when we arrived in San Francisco,” he said.

Sounds of silence

A couple of older cousins fought in Vietnam and returned somehow changed.  Quiet at large happy family Christmas gatherings.  Somber.  Aloof.  Aged.  One of my kin was shot up so badly, he had to be put back together with metal rods.  I felt so sorry for him and all the guys who had to go fight in Vietnam.  Their youth was taken away.

So timely was “The Vietnam War,” the lengthy PBS documentary.  A lot of questions were answered, mostly by the men who fought the war, on both sides.  The war was not so complicated.  It was simply that old adage: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  In the beginning, Americans were honorably compelled to fight communism at all cost.  A few years later, however, the war became a one-way ticket for the working class and minorities while other young men with names like Bush, Cheney, Quail and Clinton never had to go to Vietnam.  It was the days of the draft.  At home many Americans were earning a living off of the war machine.  The soldiers, guys on average 19 years old, were not equipped to overwhelm the enemy; their M16 assault rifles were no match for the enemy’s AK-47s.  That fact alone led to countless deaths, injuries and permanent disabilities.

Then there’s the Vietnam vet who was deaf in one ear, married with a baby, in college and still drafted as a combat soldier.  He showed me an album of Vietnam snapshots, images that jolt the memory: one moment carefree, the other disconcerting.  He was a slender young man in black-framed glasses, rifle at the ready, walking a jungle trail, smiling at the camera like a small-town Texan.  Then he picked out one for me to see: a row of eight military boots, each containing a rifle.  “What’s this about?” I asked.  He took some time before responding, waiting to collect his thoughts or let emotion pass.  That’s how his platoon honored those killed the night before in an ambush.  It was a battlefield funeral of sorts.

The dead of night

Not to be too hard on my old high school American history teacher, he did tell us THE lesson of the Vietnam War: America cannot be the savior of the world.  The cynicism struck me cold.  It had been just a few years ago in elementary school when we were told our country was the greatest because we cared about other nations.  That’s why we were involved in world affairs, from fighting communism to helping the Third World through the Peace Corps: It’s the American way.

The lessons of Vietnam are sordid and sundry: Americans aren’t right all the time and weren’t right about communism; invaders cannot win the hearts of the invaded or know the terrain like natives; and all the money in the world cannot force cultural change.  Almost upon arrival, American soldiers were told to go back home by the Vietnamese themselves, the very people we were there to save from communism.  That’s what the vets said in the documentary.

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It was the fall of 2001.  I was covering a Support the Troops rally shortly after 9/11.  People were cheering a parade of American troops marching off to Afghanistan.  One of the supporters was a Vietnam vet.  I had mentioned the high school American history lesson about that war.  “It seems here we are, trying to save the world again,” trying to engage conversation, get another point of view, play devil’s advocate.  He offered no response, just looked at me with the knowing eyes of experience and explained a very small percent of the military actually go into combat.  He felt the U.S. was doing the right thing sending troops to Afghanistan.  This time America had been attacked, so it was totally different from Vietnam.  Truth be told, even since Vietnam, the U.S. had continually engaged in military battles from Central America to the Middle East—as if we never learned THE lesson anyway.

But there is another lesson from the Vietnam War for Americans, given all that had happened here and abroad, its status as a police action and undeclared war, the human loss, financial cost, and disillusionment.  People around this big old world are mostly tribal, and Americans are not.  That’s a colossal difference especially when it comes to war.  Maybe the Vietnam lesson is we can’t save the world from itself.  Maybe America should let it be, the concluding song of the Vietnam War documentary.  For those touched by that war and its everlasting memory, the better choice is Blackbird.

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Confederate statues under attack by twisted history

“I do declare the reason why Dallas is removing all its silly ol’ Civil War statues is because the mayor is a Yankee.”

Old times not forgotten

Angry protests can erupt when the ruling leaders do not have deep roots in the soil they now call home.  A Dallas media poll revealed the majority (70%) supported waiting to remove Confederate Civil War statues.  Then an African American news correspondent remarked those statues in public parks and spaces make him feel uncomfortable and he should stay away.  Whites would say hogwash; blacks would say amen, so different is the American experience among the races.

I’m not sure how the plight to remove every Civil War statue from the South became a big, loud deal, but here we are in 2017 with much bigger fish to fry.  The economy, public education, worldwide terrorism and possible nuclear war can take a back seat to the hottest protests in America.  What started this movement against Confederate Civil War statues, things no one black or white thought about or looked at for decades?

Maybe it has been the constant reenactments of Civil War battles.  Maybe it’s because former slaves were never given what was promised to each and every one, 40 acres and a mule, if history records accurately.  Maybe it’s because African Americans were treated like second-class citizens for a good century after the Civil War, even with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 mandating everybody living in America is free and enslaved by no one.  Maybe it’s because of the brutal yet legal reign of the KKK in the early 20th century.  Maybe it’s because laws like Civil Rights in 1964 had to be passed; racial segregation had to be abolished; public schools had to be integrated; neighborhoods, employers, businesses had to be federally warned against discriminating based on race.  Maybe it’s because Martin Luther King Jr. Day is not a recognized and honored holiday across the nation city by city.  Maybe it’s because of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by on-camera deadly shootings of blacks by almost always white officers.  Maybe it’s because DNA has exonerated dozens of black men wrongfully imprisoned and undoubtedly means some were executed for crimes they did not commit.  Maybe it’s because the largest gang in America is made up of whites not blacks or Hispanics.  Maybe it’s because of the African American church massacre in South Carolina by a Confederate flag-waving self-proclaimed white racist.

That damn war

I didn’t know or remember my parents and I don’t see eye to eye on the Civil War’s outcome.  One day I brought up the movement to remove the Confederate flag still flown in some Southern states.  I compared it to Germany losing WWII.  The Nazi flags were removed, summarily illegal to display.  It was a punishment.  They had lost the war.  I implied the South lost the Civil War and the Confederate flag never should have been allowed to fly again.  “We did NOT lose that war,” my parents told me.  “We” I pondered my parents saying.  What a bond to the past yet somehow lost on my generation.  My parents were born into the Depression Era.  At the time “Gone With the Wind” showed on the silver screen in Atlanta, Georgia, and any black actors in the movie (and there were lots of them) were not allowed to attend the Hollywood gala opening.  Isn’t that incredible?  It is even more incredible that the lessons from America’s Civil War, still our most deadliest because all who died were Americans, are not agreed upon by historians and especially those of us from the South.

Southerners were taught no one won the Civil War; both sides lost.  Modern Northerners don’t think that way at all.  And the Civil War was not only and just about slavery but a whole list of other grievances against Northern aggression, we Texans were taught in school.  Here’s a non-slavery list of causes for the Civil War, according to Wikipedia: partisan politics, abolitionism, Southern nationalism, Northern nationalism, expansionism, economics and modernization.

In the 1860s during a political debate, Abraham Lincoln asked his challenger if he still supported slavery.  Lincoln held a mirror to society, which had included and begun with our nation’s very own forefathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners.  Lincoln saw slavery as immoral.  Yet Southern commerce and culture were ingrained in racial segregation.  Really it was about cheap labor and the inability to see a people who hailed from Africa as human beings.

Incredulously, Lincoln considered sending former slaves back to Africa, anything to preserve the Union.  History—like mankind—is messy, violent, unjust, cruel, contradictory and often less than truthful.  More recently President Barack Obama, trying to come to some compromise about the growing controversy over Confederate hero statues, suggested displaying them in museums but still removing them from public places.

Slavery and racism is the story of America.  It’s our past, our present, and apparently our foreseeable future.  Education that includes a lot of world history may enlighten some to see slavery wasn’t created by America but throughout human history had been spoils of war and a fact of life when one nation took over another.  Maybe that revelation could ease tensions and alleviate the need to maintain anger about the past—our collective bloody, horrible, bigoted, prejudiced, shameful entwined history.  Where does my generation fit into all of this?  Well, we were the kids who went to school with and befriended others from different races and backgrounds.  It was the 1970s—and for a brief shining moment we were living The Dream.

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To live in Houston, go with the flow

There aren’t a lot of times in life when we have a chance to start over.  Divorce.  Death of a spouse.  Or the devastating hardship of losing a home to a disaster like fire, tornado or hurricane.  Such is the case for tens of thousands of Houstonians.

Texans living in and near Houston show courage in facing a brutally gargantuan storm but also in dealing with the aftermath and the necessary prompt clean up.  Those of us across the state, living nowhere near Houston, pray and contribute in any way we can.  But we all collectively share heavy hearts.  Imagine the total loss.  Perhaps many who lost everything in the hurricane can cut their losses and find another place to live and work, create a whole other life somewhere else … if they want.

Even Texas Governor Abbott speculated Houston cannot rebuild as it has time and again from past hurricanes.  In modern memory, Harvey is the Father of all Hurricanes.  Amidst the flood and fury, tornadoes touched down, too.  The ordeal was epic and, of course for many a Texan, biblical—that lingering thought in the back of the mind that God poured out His wrath for some reason.  No, we must try to remain rational about what happened.  Houston, like New Orleans, was built at sea level and is prone to flooding.  The wonderful warm Gulf Coast waters are susceptible to hurricanes every season.  It’s a way of life tens of millions along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic coastlines enjoy while others find such a life of occasionally boarding homes and leaving town to escape a possible hurricane foolish.  Yet for many, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the dewy humidity and mild temperature calls and beckons.  It is intoxicating, so give them all a break.

Houston’s population swelled up to two million people, twice the size of Dallas, in recent decades.  Houston is the center of state-of-the-art cancer research with probably the largest medical employment anywhere and with at least one of the nation’s top universities.  Unlike Dallas which was never supposed to be a major economic center in Texas, Houston was always our state’s main business artery, being a seaport.  It was located perfectly for international trade and commerce.  There are the highly intelligent who work at NASA, and then there’s Houston’s oil and gas industry with lots of good-paying jobs and/or lots of jobs.  Whatever the reason for living in Houston, there were even more for loving it.

Love and loss

President Trump and the First Lady were practically on the spot once the area was declared hurricane free.  They saw for themselves the devastation, no doubt smelled it, too.  And the President was prompt about opening the nation’s wallet to help the needy and destitute survivors of Hurricane Harvey, even generously contributing $1 million of his own money.  Houston will stand again, a bright light along the Gulf Coast.  A couple of days later, The First Couple returned to southeast Texas to help out.  Their sincerity and efforts were appreciated and appropriate.

Even a National Day of Prayer was set by the President to help heal spiritual wounds from such loss of property, business, jobs, food, money, even plans for the future.  Healing spiritually over such physical loss is very hard.  Any of us could put ourselves in the place of others who’ve lost everything.  But as is said about such situations, until it happens, we don’t really know how people are impacted emotionally.  As a reporter, I used to talk with families at the time of a loss from a fire or tornado and return a year or so later to find how things were going for them.  What I discovered was not only could those survivors chuckle and laugh about what had happened, even about how sorry they felt for themselves at the time, they all said the same thing, along the line of “I got better now than I had before.”  They were referring to new or renovated homes, TVs, furniture and clothes.  But they could have subconsciously meant their emotional and spiritual lives were somehow improved having survived the loss of everything.

Life has a way of healing our wounds, if we let it, if we really want to heal.  But healing does start from the soul, from the spirit—for it is the human spirit that endures every hardship.  Expressions like “Let go and let God” become a source of strength—because at times of total loss, we are not in control.  We are left to float by ourselves or so we assume.  Only when we are hit hard with loss can we see our own resilience and find how tough we really are, how humans survive anything often with restored humor.  God made us this way, installing a safety valve so to speak.  Houstonians know this better than the rest of us who do not spend our lives along the coast.  They see hard rain falling, palm trees blowing close to destruction.  Yet after the storm, they experience the calm, the rejuvenation, the eternal optimism and overwhelming joy from just being alive.