Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

For years it seemed in my neck of the urban woods, only one beggar holding a sign for money stood at every major thoroughfare. ‘Clever-like-a-fox’ we drivers passing by would think, noting the beggars always choose the busiest intersections along highways. Lately, they’re accompanied by groomed and well-behaved dogs, usually pit bulls. It’s surprising how clean and calm those dogs are, given their days are spent breathing in auto exhaust fumes from millions of passing cars and hearing loud nerve-racking engines. Dogs I know would bark angrily at all that noise.

But since the pandemic I suppose, we’re seeing A LOT MORE homeless people who’ve taken to sleeping everywhere and anywhere along our busiest city streets. They hang quilts somehow beneath overpasses where they evidently live and certainly sleep. They roll all their stuff in shopping carts or suitcases, again along the busiest thoroughfares. So we’re bound to see them when driving to and from our work-a-day jobs. And now after the pandemic, the homeless population has EXPLODED along our city streets—witness all their stuff strewn for blocks.

My city is no different from other cities and even suburbs and rural towns across the U.S. Homelessness has multiplied and expanded into our country’s most perplexing, yet solvable, problem. And yes, Americans, we are the ones responsible for solving this problem.

King of the road?

Most Americans are a paycheck away from joining the homeless population. When driving past their clusters or solitary adults, we think the same thing: drugs and/or mental illness. And we’re accurate to a point. What kind of person would stand on a street corner begging for money? Their signs never say HELP! as much as NEED MONEY or just $. No amount of a month’s collection would cover rent. So the coins and bills must go for drugs and liquor, solace for addiction and street life.

But during the pandemic of 2019-2021, thousands of jobs were cut, meaning tens of thousands of families had no choice but to leave their housing immediately and figure out where they are going to go and how they are going to live. It would explain why our nation’s public schools have lost tens of thousands of students with no way of finding them. They’re not enrolled in private schools, other public schools across the country or home schooled. Where’d everybody go?

We expect government social workers to find and help perpetual beggars. Yet, it’s always the same guys and occasional gals individually pan handling at street corners and more and more at convenience store entryways, store parking lots and during winter inside professional office buildings.

Why aren’t the cops clearing beggars from dangerous street corners? Surely the police don’t need citizens calling 911 every time we see a beggar. Yet day after day, the same faces are seen begging for money and maybe food. Street beggars nowadays usually carry a water bottle with them.

There’s a whole underground of homeless folks who’ve banned together and deal with their situation as intelligently as possible. One may pay for mobile phone plans they all share. Another pays a monthly health club membership for restroom and shower access. Another knows the best times to pick through restaurant garbage bins. There’s a way to survive on the streets, sort of. It’s clever and probably organized by our growing number of homeless veterans given our two 20-year wars. If anyone knows how to survive on nothing, it would be a person with firsthand war experience.

Who are the homeless? Years ago newspaper reporters got to know a few who were willing to share their hard-luck stories and provide access to their lifestyles. One couple raked in lotsa dough begging on the streets. Beats working for ‘the man,’ they’d say. There were addicts admittedly who, if you can believe it, had not reached rock bottom, still able to move and groove and pan handle on the streets.

Left unsaid about our nation’s homeless problem are the ‘burnt bridges.’ Perhaps quite a number of homeless individuals crashed on couches of family members who after a respectable amount of time kicked the relative freeloader to the streets. This happens all the time in many families. It’s called tough love.  

Speaking of love, why haven’t the mega churches mounted a campaign to go out and help the homeless and stop the crisis? If I were homeless and had absolutely no family to turn to, the places from which I’d first seek help are the largest, most impressive-looking churches. That’s where the money is. And when a beggar asks me for money, I advise him or her to ask a big church. Seek help there. But I can tell when the smile turns upside down, my sage suggestion goes in one ear and out the other. I ain’t gonna give them any money.

I used to, for years, until the city banned citizens from giving to pan handlers standing along the streets. When I was much younger and idealistic, I volunteered at a city homeless shelter, one that took in families with kids instead of individual adults. The kids were taken by bus to school every day. Most parents had jobs, even junk cars parked in an adjacent lot. But … the families could not afford rent, groceries and utilities on a low-income job or even two or three jobs. They were on waiting lists for low-income housing. They were allowed one month to stay at the homeless shelter, then they’d have to pack all their stuff in trash bags and go out to find another shelter with their kids in tow. The families would make the rounds and return within a year. Their plight never ended. Meanwhile, the kids are growing up.

The mean streets of America

People who don’t have a home due to whatever reason still have one thing: freedom. It’s why addicts stay away from family who love them. It’s also why people from dysfunctional families would rather live on the streets than return to live with parents and siblings they know well. Family abuse was a big reason women told me why they refused to move in with the families who raised them. Hurt, anger and hatred are so deep, emotional wounds so fresh, living on the streets and staying high is preferable.

The issue of mental illness prohibits most people from reaching out and personally helping the homeless. There’s a story about a homeless woman in NYC. A businessman walked past her every day for ten years. She yelled obscenities and smelled bad. One day she was gone, the man noticed. A year later, she spotted the businessman, the one who always saw her and ignored her. She had been taken to a hospital where she stayed until the right medication made it possible for her to live a normal life. She went up to the man and bawled him out, telling him if she had been bleeding from a physical wound, he would have called an ambulance and tried to help her. But because she was filthy and yelling, obviously mentally ill, he left her alone.

Americans could ban together and end homelessness, at least reduce it. People should never have to resort to living on the streets. And the homeless are first human beings, second dealing with major problems THAT CAN BE FIXED. Austin’s building tiny houses for their homeless folks, and LA’s giving some homeless people $1,000 a month—trying something instead of doing nothing. Habitat for Humanity has been a nonprofit solution where the recipient family must contribute ‘sweat equity’ in the building of their new simple house as the rest is installed by volunteer carpenters and electricians—usually all in one day. But it requires a city’s blessing and private landowners to donate property for the cause.

Until we admit there’s an undeniable crisis in America with homelessness, the rows of one-man tents, hanging quilts and strewn clothing will continue to stretch from sea to shining sea.

I love a good protest, have spent a bit of my recent adult years joining causes I wholeheartedly believe in like gun control and women’s rights. But … I’m not so quick to join today’s college protest. I’m for a free Palestine yet won’t chant against Jewish students and Israel.

Maybe it’s a generation gap. If the protestors were shouting “End the Gaza War NOW,” I’d be right there with ’em. But if I’m hearing and reading and seeing them right, the purpose of all those somewhat organized protests on college campuses now spanning the U.S. are vehemently anti-Israel, anti-Jew and pro-Palestine only.

None of the college youth is shouting END WAR NOW. NO MORE WAR. That was a main feature of the anti-Vietnam War protests on colleges in the 1960s. Young men were being drafted into an endless war. Then the draft ended, and so did college protests. It took years for peace on campus to happen, but college life was, as the young kids would say, “boring” by the mid ’70s.

Yes, enough of the bloodshed and carnage and complete annihilation of the Gaza Strip. I agree. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, the great majority innocent women and children, are now dead, killed by Israeli military. And Israel isn’t stopping yet.

In fact, the U.S. college protests always make me think one thing: why Israel went to war with Hamas to begin with. There was no reason for Hamas to attack, capture, rape, burn and kill mostly women and young females in a barbaric act they proudly displayed online October 7, 2023.

And it seems young people of college age aren’t up on world history. Because of the Jewish Holocaust by the German Nazis of the 1930s and ’40s, Israelis are more than willing to go to war with any nation or terrorist group that comes calling.

Hamas came calling.

And Israel is kicking their ass.

Free the hostages already!

Why is no one replying to the pleas to stop the war by first telling Hamas: “Return the hostages, and all this stops right now?”

Rumor is the Israeli hostages along with a few Americans, held in God-knows where underground, are dead. Hamas recently set free a 4-year-old girl for some unknown reason. Where’s all the others?

Instead of backing out of the war they started, Hamas is proposing Israel first return thousands of their people captured or imprisoned by Israel for a few dozen hostages from Hamas’ October terrorist rape and death storm.

And way over here at U.S. universities, which are specifically sought after by families abroad with means including those in Arab nations, students have shouted vehemently for the destruction of Israel. No more Israel. Like that is gonna happen. Listen, kids, the world will never let that happen.

Political talking heads have tried to theorize the college anti-Jew protests, saying the world’s young people today simply have no knowledge of world history, the reason why Israel was established in 1948 – by world order. The history is the teeny tiny area that is now Israel (all of it, mind you, sans oil) has done nothing but cause an evil hate to spread yea all these many decades. But in truth, hate for the Jews goes way back many centuries to ancient times. In the Middle East, people hate Jews like whites in America hate Blacks. But in America, laws were established to ensure the races live together. Racially integrated schools taught us how to get along. Racial hatred still exists today in the U.S., but it’s a helluva lot less bitter and murderous as it was a century ago.

What will it take for Israel and Hamas to proclaim peace? Israel states peace can never be achieved as long as a terrorist organization maintains its ultimate goal is to erase Israel off the map.

So, Israel and Hamas feel the need to totally destroy each other. That premise hasn’t changed for Hamas or Israel.

War is stupid and always unnecessary in the eyes and minds of the naïve. And that is the adjective of youth today and yesterday. For grown-ups, war is almost always a last resort, a forced and costly no-good situation, unpopular by at least half the masses, but a necessary evil when the alternative is annihilation of a whole nation and people who in this case happen to be Jews.

What kind of idiot would have a problem with mail-in ballots for voting? Answer: American idiots. A Facebook meme listed countries that do not permit mail-in ballots in their elections—promoted like this is a good thing the U.S. should ban, too. Two countries that struck me as odd to include, if’n you wanna ban mail-in ballots, were Russia and war-torn Ukraine. What kinda idiot would tout Russia as a government we should emulate? My bet is someone who doesn’t remember American high school during the Cold War. Back then we were told, correctly, that the USSR held sham elections. And all these years later, the long-time Russian leader, who hails from the notorious if not pure evil KGB and laments the breakup of his dear USSR and losing the bleak and dreary Eastern Bloc nations it suppressed like a steel boot pressed tightly over the people’s throats, maintains nothing but sham elections especially when he’s on the ballot.

Other countries that indeed do not allow absentee voting, which would include mail-in ballots, are: Scandinavia, almost all the former Soviet Eastern Bloc nations now relishing Western politics and freedom, and some European nations like France, Portugal, Belgium and Italy, also Greece and Turkey.

Nations that allow mail-in voting alongside the USA include Great Britain, Germany, Poland, Iceland and Spain.

But over here, because former President Trump lied about mail-in ballots as a possible means of corrupting the national election, half the country believes it and wants it banned.

To them, I offer one word: disability.

And a second word: lawsuit.

What separates the U.S. from all the other nations on earth? Our inherent ‘right’ to sue anyone anywhere anytime for any reason. Psst. That’s how the Americans with Disabilities Act came to pass as law of the land. Someone sued, at the time for not being able to park his car close to a shopping center’s front door when he was paralyzed and could not walk from the parking lot.

Hindsight is blind

Remember when we thought we had only one day to vote every four years for President of the United States? And tough taters if you had to work, bub. Actually, early voting has been provided since our country’s founding.

I’ve voted since 1980 and have never heard of voter fraud—not in this country. A lot of it went on in banana republics south of the border.

I also remember our country having a problem with low voter turnout in elections. And that was a national disgrace that became a big concern to fix in the 1990s.

So to get more people to vote, to participate in our democracy that we’re trying to maintain here in the U.S., all kinds of conveniences were created or touted—again, not to create illegal voting (because hardly any Americans were going through the trouble of voting anyway—the problem was apathy not ballot stealing or voter fraud). The election goal was to provide opportunities for every eligible American citizen to cast a ballot and exercise the right to vote.

These measures included—within a certain timeframe—expanding mail-in ballots (generally, for people over 65, the disabled, pregnant, imprisoned, and even people who are overseas yet maintain U.S. citizenship like those in the military). And nowadays many states opt for no-excuse-necessary for a registered voter to receive an early ballot. Election officials think it’s still a good thing. Another convenience highly touted was early voting in person. Polls were open every day for two weeks or so whereby any registered voter could cast a ballot generally from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. This is the norm today.

There have been other helpful goings-on that apparently American soreheads perceive as an imagined potential problem, such as political party workers picking up voters living in certain neighborhoods to deliver them to the polls. You know, in this country your vote is still private. NO ONE WILL KNOW WHO YOU VOTED FOR, not unless you tell. You have no obligation to vote for anyone a transportation driver endorses.

American elections, when you really think about them or return to our nation’s history instead of chasing internet white rabbit holes into conspiracy theories, are sacred. I don’t know if other nations see voting as something spiritually relevant or uplifting.  

As for Americans with disabilities, that is and always will be a growing and equal-opportunity segment of our population. Any of us could join them, whether temporarily like a broken leg or cancer treatments and no ability to stand in person at a voting line or permanently like loss of limbs, sight, or hearing.

I’ll leave voter registration (Aha! Our nation and every single community in it has always maintained a way to keep tabs on all legal voters after all.) including determining who is eligible and ineligible to vote by mail to our thousands of duly elected county clerks. Psst. They handle every single election local, state and national. And for the know-nothings out there, like a former U.S. President who when running for the office in 2020 had voted only once in his life and otherwise was not a registered voter, county clerks take an oath to uphold all election laws and are well aware they risk prison if allowing anyone to vote who is not in truth eligible. That goes for the staff down at the county clerk’s office, too. The FBI also monitors voter fraud. What kinda idiot would have a problem with the FBI? Never mind.

All these years later, I still don’t get it: the continuous adulation by my fellow Americans of former President Donald Trump. It’s called Trumpism. They’re called Trumpers. They number a solid third of all Americans. Some speculate there’s a real possibility that half the country or slightly more will vote him back in office later this year.

Just about every person I know loves him still. He’s got their vote. But I live in Texas. He’s got our state, too.

For years I’ve pondered the Trump phenomena—why millions, maybe a hundred million, of Americans young and old believe in him. Believe is the right word. It’s an emotional (or rational) bond. His followers (and that’s the right word, too) especially the poor truly feel that Trump represents them. Did they all watch his show The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and chuckle at his gruffness when saying his trademark line, “Yah fired?” Doubt it.

Weren’t we all aware of his once handsome looks; three marriages with children; constant celebrity; magazine covers; enviable wealth and success; and his name stamped on his plane, NYC golden tower, assorted buildings (hotels, casinos) and many other products (books, board game, business institute, bottled water, steaks) and even international projects (state-of-the-art golf courses)? Doubt it.

All of us who disapprove of Trump and a second Trump presidency—and we’re a comfortable majority of Americans—are on the same wavelength. We’re not all Democrats or liberals but also Independents (what Trump claimed to be during his earliest presidential attempt) and a number of real-deal Republicans like Mitt Romney—patriotic Americans who think about character, intelligence and ability when choosing a U.S. President.

Four years later, why Trump?

Knowing so many people in my life—I’d say 95% of all family, acquaintances, and colleagues—who absolutely will vote for Trump, I stand back and ponder, incredulously, “Why?” Why don’t others see Trump, the subject of serious jail-time felonies and defendant in assorted federal and state trials, as the other half of our country does? We think he should never be President of the United Stages again.

Is it really our media divide, deciding to hear only what we each accept as truth from ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ journalism? [Psst. There’s no such a-thing.] Perhaps that is part of the problem. I won’t watch Fox—not after all their shameful wrongdoing following the 2020 election. I won’t forget that dead serious judgement against Fox, just under a billion dollars. What they did—maintaining 24/7 that Trump won and our country’s election was rigged—will be the greatest media scam and sham of my lifetime. Then there’s the 90 or so lawsuits against the former president for alleged illegal activities, one by one going to court practically every week. And the verdicts are guilty so far.

Decency is a character trait we should consider when choosing a person to vote for as U.S. President. And yet decency does not matter to those who support Trump for President. From the moment he started making campaign speeches, Trump mouthed on about his assumption that our government, the USA, was as corrupt as all others—that no American has a right to say or think that we (our form of government) are better than other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and North Korea.

AND millions of Americans said Amen.

Not able to capture the Independent voters, Trump, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican in the last election. Back then the Republican convention had a knock-down drag-out fight over handing the party to Trump. Yet he won their wholehearted support. Then he won the national election, by electoral college not by popular vote. It was so shocking to half the country that network reporters wept on the air and a million or so women marched in DC to protest the election of Trump. They did this because of his misogynist attitude toward women (the p word tape) and that he intended to overturn Roe v Wade. And he surely did.

Next thing we knew, it was four years of happy-pappy Republicans and assorted daily domestic and foreign political chaos while the rest of us managed to live low key if not ashamed in Bizarro America.

And now a third to half of Americans want to go back to all that … drama?

Which brings me back to my ponderance: Why Trump? Why him? His own native city and state can’t stand him & won’t vote for him. That alone should tell the rest of us something. Don’t any of us know Trump. Nevertheless, it’s ignored by residents in the ‘fly-over’ states.

I’ve always thought people like Trump because he says what they wish they could say—without admonitions of shame due to political correctness or something called wokism. People that like Trump love first his big mouth, that he says whatever the hell he wants, and they’re entertained by his televised speeches.

Since the vast majority of his supporters are white and older white people, I always thought his fans (and that’s the right word) would like to go back to the old days in America’s history when whites freely called Blacks the n word and called Hispanics the s word and women the b word and w word and c word. And they think people who are offended by racial epithets are the ones with the problem. I know what I’m talking about here.

No, the folks who support Trump, warts and all the alleged illegal shenanigans, follow him in a way that is beyond what makes sense politically and culturally. But they do have something in common: a collective pessimism about politics in general. They think or have grown to believe that it really doesn’t matter who’s the U.S. President. They think, like Trump proclaims, our country is just as dirty and corrupt as our enemies—all nations that are not free societies. They have forgotten—because Trump isn’t about to remind them—that Democracy is messy … but compared to all the other governments on earth, it’s the best choice for all humanity.

Instead, the American pessimists maintain a “Get real” and “Grow up” cynicism that binds together followers of Trump. They’ve lost faith in America as the greatest country that has ever existed (ironic given their MAGA caps). And they no longer believe in what made the U.S. great: a nation of immigrants, a mix of cultures, a free public education, a country where a poor person could work up to a good-paying job and middle-class life, where free press and free speech and no sanctioned state religion were considered sacred, where more sects of our society have been provided equality through constitutional amendments, where the people rule and not the elected officials including the President himself—and accepting and fully understanding and supporting the Balance of Power.

The support of Trump is not just a practical choice by his flock. It’s much deeper and personal—more like a religious movement. Trump always reminded me of Jim Jones. Still does. And his opponents say his followers have ‘drunk the Kool Aid,’ referring to the mass suicide by Rev. Jones’ religious followers or fanatics. ‘Drinking the Kool Aid’ means the followers gave up thinking for themselves. For some reason, they want someone to lead them and do all their thinking for them.

And in this country, that’s very dangerous thinking.

In coming to terms with our nation’s political crisis whereby millions would choose to support Trump over anyone else, I know most of his supporters are at heart good moral people, even church-going Christians, who cast their vote for Trump after praying to God for guidance—the same God I pray to.

Mom recalled a moment from her childhood: the days of black-and-white photos, radio shows, and the dark ages before rural electricity and indoor plumbing. The year was probably 1947 in god-forsaken Oklahoma. One day she was searching for her mother, pregnant at the time with her 12^th child. The search had an air of tragedy, Mom recalled, because her mother was always around the house and would never abandon all the other little kids of various ages running loose, the oldest already married with children of their own. Mom was 10. She searched all around outside their ramshackle house located in the poor side of a small rural community. She called for her mother several times, yelling loudly in the deep woods. Finally she spotted her mother standing at a creek, looking somberly, in another world, seemingly unable to hear my mother. Grandma had clasped the hand of her 11^th child, a two-year-old toddler, as she stared at the body of water, ignoring my mother’s calls—pleas by this time. She knew her mother feared water and drowning. Why was she so close to this dark hole? Where was she really?

Though Grandma eventually acknowledged her daughter and with my little uncle in tow walked way back to the house, Mom suspected her mother was thinking of suicide and taking her youngest with her for some reason. But this thought was left unsaid in the chores and rugged living when re-entering their life in the woods.

Grandma knew something was wrong with the baby she was carrying. It never kicked in the womb. Grandma spent more than two decades of her life either pregnant, breastfeeding or weening. She also had a few miscarriages before the change of life stopped her from getting pregnant all the time.

My grandfather was no help. The couple had been advised by doctors to stop having children. But sex was the most important thing in my grandfather’s life, a life that left him poorer than he’d experienced as a kid. Grandma said he was an indulged child and always wanted a large family. He got one but due to the fateful era of his working years, the Great Depression, jobs were nonexistent, and he simply could not afford to care for his enormous family of nine boys and three girls. Mom said the family ate meals at a large picnic table with the kids sitting on long benches, their father in a chair at the head of the table—shouting down the rowdy brood every night to listen to the news.

The most important thing to know about my mother’s father was he didn’t care enough about his wife, once a very attractive dark-haired and dark-eyed beauty with a round face and luscious lips who loved to Charleston and swing her legs up real high. After a couple of decades, Grandpa didn’t realize what a dozen pregnancies and births had done to her body—a woman’s body—not to mention her spirit. They married young. Grandma was thought to be 16, but ancestral research indicates she was likely 14. Mom said her mother knew she married too young but that her home life was “real bad.” What could that mean … except …?

Grandma gave birth for the twelfth time, a home birth or at least not a hospital delivery. The folks could never have afforded that luxury and in this case necessity. Then grandma saw it, the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck. The baby, oh alive but not kicking, had never received the nourishment needed to be a healthy human being. They named her Lynn. For reasons unknown to me, the little baby was taken in by a neighboring family with just one child about my mother’s age while Grandma recuperated. The baby was left with that family for an entire year. I was surprised to learn that fact rather recently. Then I realized that birth, that life, that devastation of a perpetual baby state for God knows how long, must have been unbearable for my grandparents. No doubt, they and the siblings like my mother checked in on Lynn every day. And when it was time for my family to take Lynn back home, that little girl friend of my mother cried no: “They don’t love her like we do!”

Earth Angel

My mother was the one who ultimately cared for Lynn, though attending school every day. For years Grandma was taken to bed, perhaps suffering a severe depression but also was physically ill. She bled all the time. Everyone referred to Lynn as a ‘late in life baby’ because she was born with cerebral palsy to an older woman. In those days, women of a certain age who had babies were thought to be too old as the ‘change of life’ was approaching. But Grandma was about 38. Still, a woman should know the best time to get pregnant and expect a healthy baby is in your 20s. By our 30s, things are shutting down, more so in our 40s, and more often things go wrong with the expectation of having a perfectly healthy baby. By ages 45-50, one in four births will have Down Syndrome.

Lynn never walked or talked and couldn’t sit up. Though a happy being, she was like a rag doll with no ability to grasp objects, no control over her bodily functions. She would never be able to care for herself. The family feared she might swallow her tongue. She was fed baby food and had to be diapered, cloth diapers in those days. She was bathed about as often as the rest of the family, perhaps once a week, then dressed and pampered, held and coddled, before placing her in her baby bed and lifting the rail so she wouldn’t fall out. She could not turn herself over, so family took turns turning her during the night. When lights were out, many times Lynn would cry. She didn’t want to be left alone in the dark. Can you imagine?

On Saturday nights after Mom had done all the family laundry and commenced to ironing all the clothes, she’d listen to the radio and sing along. She noticed Lynn, an older child by then, would pay attention, though Lynn’s eyes never tracked anyone speaking directly to her. She wasn’t blind. She could hear. She could grunt. She could laugh. And, Mom noticed, when she sang a sad song that brought tears to her eyes, Lynn wept, too. Mom thought Lynn understood the lyrics somehow. She thought Lynn was intelligent. And people with cerebral palsy are usually highly intelligent. It’s just their bodies work against them.

By the 1950s when Mom graduated high school, she had no intention of ever leaving her family home and expected to care for her baby sister, who grew to have a long lean body, dark complexion, dark hair, and wide-set eyes—the family trademark. But the older sister, who married young and was raising three kids of her own, wanted Mom to go away to college, an opportunity my mother was going to pass. My aunt talked with Grandma and Grandpa about Mom going away to college, and everyone agreed she should go. My aunt bought Mom a big suitcase and filled it with a few dresses, slacks, a couple pair of shoes, a coat and personally drove her to the bus station and saw to it Mom was going to have a future—without being the perpetual caregiver to their baby sister. Still, Mom would frequently return home to visit family and Lynn. After college, she got a teaching job in a town far away. Life for her was just beginning. She would soon marry and eventually have two kids to raise. All along, my parents would take Lynn home with us for a week or two every year. I vaguely recall the time, but I know Aunt Lynn slept on the couch. I remember how it was covered with sheets and perhaps pads in case of urination or the other, how Lynn was tucked in at night before we’d go to sleep. I guess she never rolled off the couch.

By 1969 my grandparents were dead, and Lynn had been placed in a nursing home in the family’s town, so the ones who lived nearby could visit her often. She’d been placed in a nursing home when family realized Grandma, thought to be an old woman in her 50s, could not take care of Lynn, an adult-size baby in many ways. In every way. My uncles had formed a country band and would set up at the nursing home and perform concerts. Lynn’s face would beam. She loved her family. Perhaps she understood, too, that among their own lives, they could not take care of her. It would require a total sacrifice of someone 24/7.

Then Lynn died. She was 21. Died in her sleep, we were told. She was dressed in a lovely nightgown in her coffin. I’d never seen a dead body before or my mother cry. Her older sister smiled and comforted her, telling her quietly this was for the best. Mom’s tears were bitter; she felt the family had betrayed Lynn, left her alone to wither away and die.

Many years later when my mother became an old woman, she recalled her thoughts about Lynn’s death in a nursing home. She had come to realize, she wanted me to know: “Nothing is what it appears to be.”

So … today with all the talk about abortion—whether it should be legal or illegal—I’ve always first thought about my dear sweet Aunt Lynn and the thousands of other lives born similarly and yes tragically every year: human beings who will always need care every minute of their lives. The great majority of families know absolutely nothing about this situation, cruel or at best bittersweet. Should our free society force this on families who, let me assure you, cannot cope with this outcome? Seems a strange position for the U.S. government or State of Texas to play a part in. This is not government’s business.

And let me tell you something else: When a person like Lynn comes around, notice how the public will pay her no mind. Heads turn away and eyes roll when a person as debilitated as she is rolled into the grocery store. People like Lynn cannot control their loud screams and grunts and gross sounds that little kids will laugh at while all the adults want nothing more than to pay for their stuff and leave—leave the scene, thanking God they don’t have to deal with this situation. They might even kiss the heads of their normal children for everyone knows there but by the grace of God …

Like the rest of the family, I’ve been haunted by the memory of Lynn. Mom sometimes would say she was a burden to the family, already dirt poor and struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. I told her, “I think Lynn was her own burden. She would’ve died if no one fed her and took care of her.” Mom was silent. In Eastern religion, there is a theory about souls like Lynn who incarnate in a body that will not function. They think these souls have reached the highest spiritual plane; they cannot do anything, so they will never sin. They have chosen to live a life of utter dependence on family and humanity else they die. A cousin sent me an old snapshot of Lynn: lying flat on her back on a couch, her hair short, big widespread brown eyes, mouth open–just like I remember her. Then I noticed the position of Lynn’s forearms and hands, a twisted position she could not help. Each of her forearms was bent up at the sides of her chest and her hands away from her body. She looked like this all the time. All along, she was showing us her wings.

In the fall of 2003, I abruptly switched careers: from award-winning newspaper reporter and columnist to public school teacher. My teaching career has been more bitter than sweet. Yet I am proud of my work and occasional accomplishments, each day go in with the attitude of making a positive influence on a generation growing up in a time very different from my school days long ago.  

I wish the public knew or admitted what goes on when kids are in school. When it comes to students in mass, it’s as if there’s a strange temporary yet every cotton-picking day persona change not unlike Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My mother, who’d also been a teacher, would say when I was growing up: The way a kid acts when his parents aren’t around, that’s the real kid. Kids are different when they are among their peers, and they are the majority in a classroom. They maintain an ‘us against them’ (students against the teacher) mentality. And … so did the rest of us when we were kids, worse when we were teens.

Another thing I was surprised to find about teaching in the public schools is the consistent problem with heating and AC ventilation. One room will be super cold year-round while another blazing hot. Not a single room is a comfortable temperature throughout the school year. And if anyone’s reading: THIS HAS A LOT TO DO WITH KIDS NOT LEARNING. When a kid is physically uncomfortable, you can forget about learning taking place. So our public schools’ HACV systems really should be fixed – like these systems operate in the business world and homes. I worked many jobs in the ‘real world’ (the non-school world) and there were hardly any heating or AC problems. Our schools should be as comfortable as our homes, banks, churches, shopping centers, and all public indoor spaces.

Following my mother’s advice concerning discipline management in the classroom, I’ve started every school year with my foot down. My rules are short and sweet: Listen, Respect, Participate & Be Careful. And can you believe how hard those rules are for students to follow? When I first started out as a teacher, I just assumed I was the one with the problem. That’s what administrators, college professors and teaching experts would say. I read every book to be a better teacher, researched online articles on discipline management, and attended every course to enact better discipline including Boys Town. To no avail. Kids will wear you down from day one to the very last minute of the school year. It’s why few adults stick with teaching long enough to retire. The average timespan is five years, with the great majority of people ever trying the teaching field lasting one to three years. I’ve seen new teachers quit the first day, the first week, the first month, and especially never to return after the December break.

Teachers that have what it takes to make it a career, I think, truly love the hunks of time off: a few national holidays, two weeks for winter, a spring break and now somehow a fall break and the legendary summers free! To the real world, it must seem teachers hardly work at all. I think back to my real-world working years, with its standard two-weeks only vacations, often as I continue teaching especially on a hard day (which is most days). And when push to comes shove, really finding another job and quitting, I take a breath and say “Na.” As long as society puts up with all this time off (and I think parents really like it, too), nothing’s gonna change. In the 21^st century, we’re still not evolving to year-round school. I think we should. (Slap my mouth!) No really, I think we should. Year-round schooling would benefit students’ ability to maintain what they’ve learned.

Teaching: the hardest job

I look at the few teachers who are popular with their students. Kids of all ages light up at their sight, say hi and hug them, a mutual hug. I admire that characteristic. It’s uncanny. I can’t explain why some teachers (very few) are … beloved. I am not in their category, and neither was my mother. She’d always tell me as I continued this career that disciplinarians are not popular. Those are the choices as a teacher: the popular one whose students seemingly do what they want in their classrooms or the more authoritarian one whose classrooms and instruction are seemingly more structured. Parents have relayed to me their kids say I’m kinda strict. And those same parents respond to their kids, “Yea!” Maybe I’m on the right track.

Can you believe I’m still trying to figure out how to be a better teacher? Maybe that’s a good sign. I remember a bumper sticker when I was a kid: “I teach. I care.” That’s me. For now.

I’m getting older, well, my body is getting older, and I actually tried retirement a few years ago. It didn’t work out especially when the pandemic hit. You gotta have a lot of money to retire. So as we sang in the real work world: I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

Seriously, as a career teacher, I’ve seen some sad situations my students endure when not in school. If nothing else, I want to take their minds off their problems and get them mentally and emotionally to a better state. I know as kids, they’re not in charge of their lives. Yet the ‘power play’ is with the teacher, the authority in the classroom. I’d say the number one issue with ‘problem’ students is: They think they’re grown.

Back in college, the Education faculty would tell us students they want us to be Super Teachers. And by that they meant: caring for each and every student, having some fruit or cereal around for students who say they’re hungry and let them eat in class, purchase a neglected child appropriate shoes or a coat if needed, have some plants in the classroom (because they help the brain with learning), use lavender scents (to keep emotions calm), design our classroom to be organized with colorful décor that appeals to kids or the age we teach, paint the focus wall darker than the other three walls, display items important to us so our students get to know us better and more personally (like photos of our spouses, children, pets, vacations, or pictures of us at their age), sponsor after-school clubs, attend students’ extracurricular activities such as sports and performing arts, and provide all their teaching supplies (pencils, pens, paper, scissors, rulers, etc.). Wow. All that with an annual salary back then around $17,000.

Nevertheless, when I took on my first teaching job, that is what I did. The kids were rough, from very rough neighborhoods. God knows what they endured when not inside their school. My intention, regardless of the students’ attitude toward me as a new teacher, was to be the Best Teacher Ever. On day one, I fell flat on my face. Despite my ‘governmental reporting’ background, playing hardball with politicians and elected officials from city councils to state legislatures and the boys in D.C. plus investigative and feature series, school was the toughest beat. Kids say anything anytime anywhere and especially to your face. They’re not polite. They’re emotionally hurtful and a few physically combative. I’ve been kicked, pinched, cussed out, shoved, bitten and scraped with a sharp object. My job was to be professional. I commenced to high standards even if a handful of my students participated. At my first school, I had a headache every single day from start to finish, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Bent over backwards

So within four years, I found myself at another school and pushed my students even harder for success—their success. And it was while reading the results from our first attempt at a UIL contest, where we/I failed miserably, that for the first time my back gave out. It was like suddenly a ton of bricks fell on my back. My backbone felt broken, twisted. I couldn’t breathe. I never let on with my students my back just went out.

And I should have. I should have been honest with them about the pain I was experiencing. That kind of honesty is what the popular teachers do. They tell their students everything about them. I remember those kind of teachers: They were usually young and attractive, sometimes single but then dating and soon married, talked to us about buying clothes or dating, dancing at clubs or seeing some famous music entertainer at a concert, getting a new pet, going on a great vacation, eating exotic foods at a restaurant.

Not me. My theory has been I’m there to teach not be the kids’ friend. So that day my back gave out, I somehow got through the class and called a doctor. Through X-rays, pain shots and prescription pain pills, there was nothing wrong with my back. The pain was unbearable and real—yet maybe psychosomatic.

Throughout the first half of my teaching career, my back went out at least a dozen times. It would go out after summers off right when we were getting ‘back’ to school when we should be energized and up for a new challenge but instead were told of new rules, regulations and teaching methods we must follow. My back would give out right at major events I was leading when I was relying on dozens of students, from assorted impoverished home lives, to show up and never knew if they would or not. Determined to keep teaching, the good news is my back hasn’t gone out in years thanks to chiropractic therapy. One advised against standing eight hours a day. (Principals expect teachers to be standing and walking around the room checking students’ work.)

These days the latest problems in the schools are students with phones and ear buds. Kids literally tune out teachers, not to mention the lessons. I appreciate all the countries (Great Britain and China, to name two) and all the states in the U.S. that are finally banning phones for students in school. Any educator could see the HUGE mistake letting kids have phones at school would be. Kids are not adults. Learning will not take place when a student is constantly checking the phone. Ditto for wearing ear buds … in class. I suppose the college kids do it, but these distractions are the number one reason why public school scores have dropped dramatically. Constant cell phone use has scrambled the brains of some people, like they’re addicted. I see it every day. It’s because they’re young, at the beginning of their lives.

Teaching through the pandemic—when teachers were expected to teach online and society actually presumed school-age kids would stay focused throughout online classes—brought to mind the ancient philosopher Socrates. He was the consummate teacher, showing us teaching and learning are best in person.

Twenty years in the teaching biz has taught me more about myself, traits I needed to correct or adjust in dealing with young people and all people. I know I’ve made a positive difference in the lives of some of my students, which number more than 3,000 by now. Despite the extreme lows and not near enough highs, the emotional anguish, being at the center of our society’s myriad problems—teaching has been an honor. And every day I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.

I thought the lady on the phone was asking what I thought about June.

“June?” I repeated, or thought I was, back to her, thinking this was some kinda prank. I decided to answer the phone in the first place as a break from housecleaning on a spring Saturday afternoon about 12 years ago.

“Yes, June. What do you think about June?” sounded like what she said, repeated brusquely with a distinct Brooklyn accent.

“June? Like the month of June?” I asked again, probably sounding every bit a dumb Southern hick, really trying hard to clarify what seemed a bizarre question out of the blue.

“No, not June. Jews!” came the reply.

“Jews?!” I asked, even more baffled about this strange question, and to me.

“Yes, Jews. What is your opinion of Jewish people?”

“Oh, you mean Jews, like the Bible & God’s chosen people?” I clarified, still unsure why in the world anyone would call someone in Texas about their opinion of Jews. Not that Jews don’t live out here and suffer through the oppressive heat and backwoods state government like the rest of us.

I answered positively: I think Jews are great people. I hold them in the highest regard.

Then she continued with what became an obvious survey that somehow included little ol’ me: “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the greatest, where would you rank the Jewish people?”

I replied straight up: 10.

Then questions continued with ranking the Jews, Israel, the Arab people, and Palestinians in particular. These questions came at a time when not much was going on in that part of the world—not like it had been for decades, dominating nightly news: always the Israeli/PLO conflict. Always no peace between those two nations, those two ancient people. But that seemed long ago as Israel signed peace accords with a few Arab nations including the Palestinians. I remember the televised historical moment well: With our mouths agape, we saw PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, whose organization was known for terrorism, shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin over a peace accord during the Clinton administration. Things seemed optimistic back then. We don’t hear about the PLO anymore or Arafat and Rabin, both dead—Rabin assassinated by one of his own people for trying to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

When the surveyor questioned me about which side I was on: Israel or Palestine, that’s where I had to be honest and not so much solidly pro-Israel. In two questions, I ranked both nations or people at a level 4 or 5 on questions, especially about which side I thought truly wanted peace. She asked why. So I told her. I’ve paid attention to the situation from the news including 60 Minutes and other in-depth coverage in print, TV, radio and online reports about the two feuding nations (ancient hostilities than go back to Bible times—”Father Abraham had two sons: Ishmael and Isaac …”) and concluded both nations “give as good as they get.” She didn’t understand that expression and wanted me to elaborate. I said I don’t believe either side wants peace anymore, which would mean vowing to never war again. Neither side is willing to put down their arms or their emotional and physical defenses. I couldn’t blame Israel, I noted. The Arab world has always hated Israel, a speck of land on the world map—created internationally after World War II, for obvious reasons.

Then, aha!, the survey queried my knowledge of the Carter Center, which I support, and how I feel about President Jimmy Carter, whom I love. Now I understood how I was on a list to survey about Israel and Palestine. If I recall correctly, when pressed about the Gaza strip, if it should be returned to the Palestinians or if Israel should remain in control of the area, I said I think it should be returned to the Palestinians. I thought there might be peace then. I admitted to being extremely naïve on this subject—all of it. Who am I to have any opinion on it? I don’t live there. And whatever happened to the two-state solution?

But during the Trump administration when the U.S. suddenly decided to recognize the capital of Israel as Jerusalem and Palestinians in Gaza elected as its government Hamas—an organization that wants Jews cleared out of the Middle East for good—I knew war was inevitable.

Caught unaware

Where I’ve lived most of my life, north and east Texas, and having been raised by a blue-collar country music- and gospel preaching-loving family, I never heard the phrase ‘dirty Jews.’ Seriously, never. Only read it in school studies of the Holocaust and maybe heard it in movies. But in a graduate course called The Psychology of Hate, the Dallas director of the local Anti-Defamation League brought up the phrase ‘dirty Jew’ as if we’ve all heard it, like it’s some ethnic slur we all grow up hearing.

Not in my family. Not among my friends and neighbors. I’d say I never heard anyone even say the word ‘Jew’ unless talking about a biblical passage—even then rarely.

What I know of Jews is from comedians and their dry humor: Billy Crystal’s line when Jimmy Swaggart cried sorely when a-comin’ clean to his congregation about a sexual secret: “I’ve sinned against you,” Crystal mocked the reverend in heavy NYC Jewish accent, “I bought retail! So, sue me.”

Perhaps like most Americans, all I know about Jews is humor. The big-name comedians seem to joke a lot about themselves, their culture, their families’ struggle to assimilate into American culture—which Jewish people have struggled to do throughout history in every nation the world over.

Now … 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered and many more injured and physically taken away from their homes like it’s Nazi Germany.

Israel was caught unprepared. News prior to the Hamas attack was of a divided Israel with many public protests and half the country distrustful of its leader who many now blame for a slow effort to stop Hamas during the shocking murderous rampage which included rape and kidnapping. So until further notice, it’s total war until Israel or Hamas drives their eternal foe to the sea.

Meanwhile, those of us who are news junkies will see reports 24/7 every possible angle of the war, from both sides. Just like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The truth is we Americans are war weary. We just ended two 20-year wars, leaving many families without loved ones or returned military to deal with injuries, a third of which are unspeakably cruel and lifelong. We spent a generation of blood, time and treasure to war in the Middle East. American society will remain more angry and violent for a generation to come directly linked to the once-proclaimed ‘perpetual’ twin wars.

And what did we learn? We learned that our natural human instinct is to be at peace not war.

There is extreme controversy for supporting the Palestinians, thousands of them killed and being killed and removed by Israel’s military—or as Arabs say in that part of the world “by Jews.”

Why entire cultures of people hate Jews even to this day, I’ll never understand. But Israel’s response—ferocious and unrelenting—is understandable. They know their enemy … apparently better than they know themselves.