cheriebell69@hotmail.com

March 26, 2017

Native American one way or another

A Native American tribe made the news when trying to disenroll a woman, the mother of several children, and remove her family from a tribal home at Christmas. The ‘tribeswoman’ never knew generations ago, one of her great-greats erroneously enrolled himself as a member of the tribe. Recently the mistake was uncovered and brought to the tribal council’s attention. Perhaps nowadays every single tribal person is having their DNA checked to confirm legitimacy as a Native American, down to the specific blood percentage. After all, certain tribes divide casino earnings, maintain tribal employment, and may receive government benefits like housing, college, and some tax exclusions.

I share the woman’s pain of banishment as a former Native American, though her ordeal brings much more sorrow while mine was inadvertent and self imposed. With a family hailing from Oklahoma, the story had always been we have some Native American blood. Mom’s side claimed Choctaw then later Cherokee which Dad’s side had claimed, too. Turns out, the Cherokee ancestry was either misunderstood or bogus, because I had my ancestral DNA analyzed. I simply spit in a vial and sent it on to a lab at a cost of $100. Wild with anticipation, eagerly imagining the possibilities, I sincerely hoped to confirm a Native American lineage of eight percent or more. I would have accepted one drop.

Uprooted

My DNA analysis was filled with surprises to me, even to my mother who half-jokingly responded I no longer seemed to be her child. Horse feathers! Not only am I 100 percent European (85 percent Western European), I have not one drop of Cherokee blood. I knew about the German, Irish and English roots but was amazed to find some small genetic blood lines from Italy, Greece, ‘Iberian Peninsula,’ Scandinavia, and even European Jew. Mazel tov!

The analysis supposedly goes back 2,000 years—and in my case, did not coincide with my own ancestral online research. In other words, I had found official government documents to prove at least one ancestral line was indeed Native American: a Chickasaw woman married to an Early American English settler in Virginia around 1768. Yet my own spit couldn’t claim a drop of Native American heritage.

I checked with the website handling this research and learned that often our individual DNA does not match the ancestral paper trail, mainly because a person only holds so much DNA. The vast majority of our true multicultural heritage will not show up in our current bodies of very set DNA proportions. And it gets even trickier. Siblings and parents may have totally different ancestral DNA in their spit. In other words, my father may indeed have five percent Native American ancestry or my mother ten percent, yet that strain may not be passed on to me or my sibling.

American Mutt

Right away I stopped claiming to be a little Cherokee or Native American as I used to do to explain a profile with a knotted nose and increasingly round face. Oh I could go on and on about my Cherokee roots in the old days. Doing so now would be a lie. What became true to me, however, are ancestral roots deep in American history from the nation’s beginnings—and no trails to Texas until the very late 1800s. But rest assured: I’m Texan through and through, born and raised. I found that three ancestors fought in the American Revolution. No one in my family would have ever believed that. And I found a couple who fought in the Civil War, of course for the Rebel side against northern aggression.

The branch of the Chickasaw Nation was unknown to any of my family. The lone Native American ancestor was only mentioned as an unnamed Chickasaw maiden. She had a name. It just wasn’t easy to say or spell like Mary or Ruth. So she, and even her parents, went down in Early American documented history nameless. Yet I exist, and my mother exists, and her father existed, and many others before him because of her.

Another discovery from more recent history was back in the 1930s when two of my paternal and maternal great-greats recorded on the U.S. census their race as ‘Indian,’ meaning American Indian now Native American. Perhaps this is the situation of the former Native American woman who was kicked out of her tribe. Why were people claiming to be American Indian in 1930 when previous census records indicate they marked themselves as white? Maybe there were some government benefits to Americans claiming Native ancestry, no questions asked? For a long time in American history, white-looking folks never claimed Indian heritage because of the ramifications including job and community loss, verbal and physical assault, and lifelong persecution and humiliation. Maybe the 1930 census takers encouraged folks to mark their race Indian, if they could claim it, for potential benefits to make up for the U.S. government’s treatment of Native people. American history clearly taught me our country screwed the ‘Indians’ time and again, breaking every promise and treaty.

I think modern Americans like my parents and grandparents never gave much thought to our ancestral past or heritage. It was ancient history. This mindset may have begun after the Civil War, with Southerners picking up the pieces of their ruined lives and moving away … to Texas … to California. The Old West was when I had figured my family ventured to America, like victims of the Irish potato famine or amidst the flood of European immigrants in the late 19^th century. I was wrong. My roots run deep in the American soil, and not so much in my beloved Texas, ironic given the title of my blog.

Pssst. The real reason I did the ancestral DNA was due to one dead branch on my family tree. A great-grandfather presumably was living under an assumed name. I did find more than one name from his own census data in 1900, 1910, 1920, and he was one of my relatives who claimed to be Indian in 1930. In the only photo I’ve seen of him, he was dark or olive complexioned with dark eyes and hair. Maybe he was Native American, or Italian or Greek. But on all his census records, he never noted the names of his parents. He remains a mystery, but I thought I might unlock it through my DNA. But his secrets remain in the grave.

Americanized

I think all that Native American blood talk among my Oklahoma family may have been from grandparents and great-grandparents who supported the underdog, their self perception of economic struggles linked to being among the underclass, living in a ruling Anglo-centric society and culture but not reaping the benefits of what minorities today call ‘white privilege.’ There is a hillbilly attitude among my kin, proud outsiders who tend to their own. We are—and have been for many generations—Americans, fighting in every war, independent, with instincts more cowboy than communal. As a kid I once asked my grandmother about our heritage. She didn’t know, figuring herself to be Cherokee and Dutch (she was mistaken) and my grandfather “not much, more Irish than anything.” But she was the one with Irish roots, only one generation before heading to the New World in the 17^th century.

The most rewarding revelation from my ancestral DNA was to learn I am 25 percent Irish. I never knew it … yet always sensed it, deep in my bones, especially around St. Patrick’s Day and singing songs like Danny Boy, a melody so beautiful and lyrics so sad they touch the soul. If I have some underdog in me, it is mostly Irish. Weren’t the Irish the underdogs when pouring into America just a little more than a century ago, called epithets unfit to print?

My parents are essentially one-generation Oklahomans, some of their parents and grandparents not born there at all, except that grandma with whom I conversed about our nationalities. She was born in Indian Territory 1901. Maybe having grown up in Oklahoma—where the motto is ‘Native America’ and license plates feature a dream catcher—knowing about and living in the aftermath of the injustice, the filthy lies, the historical mistreatment of the Native people by our own ancestors was too painful. So a little white lie was created and passed down. My family never relayed a thing about being Irish, German or British but instead boasted or at least mentioned with a smile of pride a belief in a trace of Indian heritage. Even so, my folks doubted we had much Native blood. All could be lost with a finger prick. More honestly, none of us look Native. Who would believe we were even a bit Cherokee, least of all the Natives themselves?

March 19, 2017

Abba dabba Trump

See that man. Watch that scene. He is the drama queen.

It’s only been a couple of months now and every day a new drama with this guy, even 3 a.m. Twit storms. If the intellectual overload is not from the 24-hour news media just trying to report on the U.S. presidency, separating fact from fiction, and assorted televised political pundits spinning in place, then it’s the president himself saying whatever whenever.

It’s got me longing for the previous eight years of relative serenity with our former president: Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected. President Obama said that was how he would be as president, taking advice from his favorite predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. The American people, Lincoln and Obama theorized, want a leader who brings a sense of calm, where there is no daily uproar or scandal amidst dozens of investigations, whereby the People can just live their lives in peace and freedom and let their elected leaders take care of governmental affairs. This is not what we are experiencing now and may never for the next four long years.

Mama Mia

I can’t get this image out of my mind. It’s when both Obama and Trump met officially in the Oval Office shortly after the election. Obama and his key commanders met with Trump privately, revealing all the world’s secrets past and present and perhaps U.S. obligations and commitments. When the two world leaders sat down together for the international photo op, Obama had a certain smile on his face and a knowing twinkle in his eye … while Trump looked like he was sick to his stomach, like he really didn’t want to be President of the United States of America after all. I’ve seen the cocky Obama countenance in the movie Amadeus. The look is from Mozart when his secret rival Salieri asks with all humble graciousness for him to look over a new composition. Mozart takes a swig of wine from the glass goblet in hand and shoots his tongue in his cheek, his eyes smiling with sarcasm. The Obama look was ‘Checkmate.’ The look was ‘I know all your secrets, man.’ Trump’s look was ‘I’ve bit off more than I can chew. I’m President, leader of the Free World, the most powerful man on Earth, and it ain’t going to be any fun, too scary’—because the World, the universe, is a very dangerous and uncontrollable place.

Waterloo

How many bets are ongoing about the days left to the Trump presidency? Or his ultimate demise? Impeachment? Heart attack? Stroke? Just simply stepping down and leaving it to the rest of us? There are talk show hosts projecting an itch for war with Trump’s call to beef up the already mighty U.S. military complex. Trump has managed to offend several world leaders important to the U.S. including those south and north of our borders. There are millions, tens of millions, of American people hollering to keep ‘Obamacare.’ There is a split among Republicans, some fearing election turnout if Obamacare is killed and not replaced as they all had promised with typical political sincerity. On the other side are Republicans whose intent always was to dismantle and bury the very idea of affordable health care, hoping no Americans, the ones who matter anyway, would raise a fuss or even miss the humane benefits of universal healthcare.

There is 100% proof from our very own federal investigators of Russian connections and interference in the 2016 U.S. election simply to discredit Hillary Clinton and leave Americans thinking Trump our lone salvation. And just when Congress is investigating the Russian connection, Trump himself claims President Obama had his New York palace wiretapped. Obama did insist on a hot and heavy federal investigative report on Russian tampering in the U.S. election whether through hacking the Democratic national website and emails or infiltrating the internet with fake news that passed as legitimate by millions of American readers—Americans not known to take the time and trouble to verify everything they read online. Obama had this investigation report presented to Congress by the time he left office. Perhaps that is where President Trump is thinking his home was investigated by the feds.

There is President Trump’s dubious selection of multi-billionaires to lead major tax-supported federal departments, some of these new radical leaders touting their sole intent to dismantle and dissolve from the memory of the American people any benefits from their government programs. There is the Trump gold-standard budget that would kill federal funding to schools, education, health care, food programs, the arts and humanities, and any type of Democratic program created long ago to help the poor and disenfranchised. How did Trump ever get away with being a Democrat for most of his very rich life? And like other former weenie Democrats whose number one goal was to get elected at any and all costs, he proved a turncoat when sensing the rage of angry Americans over global economics and religious indignation—over circumstances they cannot control. And half the American people bought New Trump.

All the current political upheaval can be blamed on Comedy Central and their Trump roast. Every single celebrity on the dais told the Big Man over and over again how they hoped he would run for President and what a great President he would be. This is when the Golden Dream occurred. But the stars and celebs were referring to the former Cool Trump who was all business and pizzazz and nonreligious and apolitical.

But not only did Trump need to switch parties for some reason, he also needed to go far right. During the hotly watched televised Republican debates, Trump verbally assaulted every decent contender right in the morals as they were unwilling to punch back. They could have and should have. Evidently Americans don’t mind. Lesson for the future. The other Republican presidential hopefuls were first gentlemen and second politicians. Trump came across as the non politician, the savvy businessman whose immense wealth put dollar signs in everyone’s eyes. Yet he is the consummate politician and displays it and plays it every single day.

It’s been … exhausting—and remains dangerous for all Americans and anyone else living on the planet at this point in time.

March 13, 2017

A suburban Gibson’s girl

Long before Wal-Mart, there was Gibson’s Discount Center. That was THE low-cost department store in the small-town Dallas suburb where I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s. Gibson’s had much more to offer than the nearby Mott’s Five & Dime or Ben Franklin. Gibson’s was small compared to the sprawling and overstuffed big box chains of today and did not carry groceries. But when I was a kid, it had all the essentials my working-class family of four could afford: polyester shorts, pants, skirts and dresses; swimsuits; night gowns and children’s sleepwear; gloves and coats; baby stuff; bras, slips, undies, girdles and pantyhose; shoes slightly out of style; cologne and cosmetics; cameras and stereos; jewelry; school supplies, posters, and lunch boxes. It was like an indoor bazaar.

Since my mother took me and my brother there every week, I got to know the place well. By age 5, I started exploring the place on my own, simply breaking away from my mother usually shopping the clothing aisles. It was easy for a little kid to sneak under the racks of hanging clothes. In our family box of photos, there is a picture of me looking up at the Gibson’s camera clerk, who shot me as I was snooping behind his counter. I remember the man, dressed in a clerk smock, resembling a dentist. He was holding a new Polaroid color film camera and aimed down at me, saying enthusiastically “Smile!” Surprised, I looked up at him, and his snapshot caught me biting my lower lip. I figured I was in big trouble. He waited until my mother passed by to give her the photo of me caught committing a crime. Really he was just trying to sell a camera. The Gibson folks were professional and friendly and knew my family as weekly regulars.

Parting the bamboo curtain

During the early 1970s, Gibson’s was getting hip to the times and way in the back of the store installed a shopping section called the Tiki Hut. As I recall it, the section had a thatched roof that reminded me of Gilligan’s Island, a show I watched in reruns every day of my childhood. I was an older child then and loved exploring the weird items found only inside the Tiki Hut. First you had to walk through a beaded curtain made of bamboo. That was really fun to a city kid. I’d walk back and forth through the bamboo strands. I thought it was so cool and that someday when I was a teenager I’d want strands of beads to replace my bedroom door.

The steel-and-metal shelves contained an array of knickknacks from Far Away places like Taiwan, the exotic destination stamped on the bottom of most of the items. There were remnants from a sea-faring life like shells, knotted rope, treasure chests, and lots of brass items like statues of Hindu and Buddha gods and goddesses with strange poses and multiple arms. There were lots of wood carvings made from coconuts, like a smiling monkey with a pipe and sailor’s hat. There were incense burners of brass and wood. And of course this is where you’d find incense like patchouli, a fragrance I’d never in my young life encountered but instantly loved it. I’m sure I bought my first incense burners there, one long wooden and one tiny cone-shaped brass, though I never knew what to do with them for years. I didn’t want to start a fire in the house.

One item I got from the Tiki Hut was an imitation shrunken skull with long white hair. It was made of hard plastic … and glowed in the dark! I had it hanging in my bedroom when a squeamish young cousin of mine dropped by one night looking for me and ran out screaming after seeing that green skull smiling at her. That was funny. But I never knew the small skull would scare anyone. Guess I was a strange kid, a bit of tomboy.

In retrospect, my venturing into Tiki Hut lit a wanderlust which has remained to this day and age. I always wanted to travel the world and explore other cultures. And I was interested in the religions of the world, what people believe when it comes to God and the afterlife and why they believe it. As peculiar as I found those brass Eastern religion gods with multiple arms and awkward poses, some standing on one foot, I was curious. But mostly I was afraid to buy one, my mind echoing Bible school teachings about all the other religions and their false gods and evil spirits that abide in places like the Tiki Hut.

Rumours

By the mid ’70s at Gibson’s , Tiki Hut was a place I considered kid stuff. I had outgrown it and turned my evolving adolescent mind to the record albums in the music department. I spent hours studying rock album covers: David Bowie, Heart, The Eagles, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull. One album Tull put out, Aqualung, featured ‘scripture’ on it: In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. The blasphemy was so terribly shocking, and yet I kept reading. Dangerous stuff for a suburban teen-age girl to be caught in hand. I felt a little naughty seeing some of the sexual album covers that were the norm in those days. I’d frequently look over my shoulders. When I had a few dollars, I bought one of my first albums at Gibson’s, Toulouse Street by the Doobie Brothers, only to open it up at home and find an interior photo of the dudes, well, at a whorehouse.

Yeah in Gibson’s music section I could feel the rebel vibes: young guys with long hair, beards, jeans and denim jackets, often with their girlfriends, thumbing through the albums for purchase. FM radio or album rock was heard from the latest stereo system for sale. It was clearly where the cool hung out. As I recall, I ventured over there many a time from age 10, splitting my trips to Gibson’s between Tiki Hut and the music department. I fell in love with a clear yellow 45 disc by Grand Funk with the rock hit We’re an American Band and wanted it for my 10^th birthday. I got Billy Preston’s The Kids and Me with his hit Nothing from Nothing on another birthday, and mom worked out a deal with me to do a few weeks of household chores for a Glenn Miller memorial tribute double album set. I was in junior high band then and discovered a love for Big Band music and jazz.

I don’t recall seeing anyone I knew from school or my neighborhood all those years I roamed around Gibson’s. Yet I know they shopped there, too. It was the only place in town to explore and discover who you wanted to be someday when you were your own person. By the end of the ’70s, a big mall was built way over on another side of town, actually into Dallas. It was so huge and new that places like Gibson’s couldn’t compete to maintain fickle youth. Besides, the mall had several huge records shops … and Pier One—where I clearly saw my future in home décor, furniture tastes and clothing from the mystical and alluring Eastern world. But for me, Gibson’s Tiki Hut and music department opened the door to a new world of ideas, free expression and ancient knowledge.

March 4, 2017

God save us from American idiots

In the aftermath of 9/11, most of us across the nation continued living our daily lives. Every morning we’d go to work. The worldwide web was pretty much shut down as far as news sites, so there wasn’t a lot to read online. Network TV was carrying 24-hour-a-day coverage, so there weren’t a lot of new entertainment episodes to watch, just cable shows and retro TV. Airports were closed for a couple of weeks, so no one was going anywhere till the skies were declared safe again. At night many of us just stayed home, after dinner playing board games, thinking the same thing: Wonder if there’ll be another attack on other American cities? War was inevitable. Every American was hurt and vengeful.

Deep within our national sorrow—over this sudden shocking upheaval that dared change our daily lives, affecting jobs, business, industry, banking and the future—there were madmen loose. Each one acted alone with the same crazy idea to harm those who offended us so gravely. One was a fellow Texan. Every week or so in the Mesquite, Balch Springs and Pleasant Grove area, there had been random shootings at convenience stores. The victims were store clerks operating their own businesses. Soon the crimes were related, caused by the same assailant. Police suspected a 9/11 vigilante.

A profile of the murderous assailant was not as clear as his victims. They were men who appeared at first bigoted glance as Middle Eastern and Muslim: America’s new presumed enemy. But one of the deceased was from India and was Hindu, his body cremated and his wife, new to Dallas suburban life, left devastated. Another victim was a Sufi, Middle Eastern but not Muslim, shot because he wore the customary turban. One man was indeed a Muslim but no terrorist. All of these men had something in common: brown skin and maybe an accent that hinted of Arabic origins.

Eventually the police caught Mark Stroman, a white supremacist from Balch Springs who during his capital murder trial draped himself in the American flag. He was sentenced to death row and has since been executed. Rais Bhuiyan was the Pleasant Grove convenience store owner shot in the face by Stroman. Bhuiyan was left blind in one eye. A young, attractive and successful businessman, he had plans to marry in a family arrangement with a woman from his native land in the Middle East. But his fiancée backed out after his horrible attack, fearing life in America would be precarious, indeed deadly. Any Muslim would be suspect.

A world without love

With lots of time to think about his attack and attacker, Bhuiyan created a website called World Without Hate.org. He has come to believe American society’s race and ethnic problems are directly related to our love of technology, perhaps reckless. With each click for instantaneous revelation or messaging, our humanity has lost its compassion. Stroman was convicted of a hate crime, but Bhuiyan believes mental illness is the cause of hatred and murder. He calls on families to be aware of loved ones who talk crazy, shoot off their mouths, swear vengeance toward anyone who’s un-American or non Christian. These would be people who are always hostile, irritable, depressed, vengeful, anti social, brutish, batterers, alcoholics or hard drug users, unemployed or un-employable. The only salvation to American society is for people to alert authorities of such a person, no matter how beloved and accepting he may be within his own family. Because Stroman was treated by his family and friends as a madman, he was left alone with his thoughts and perceptions and spiraling insanity fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America.

Stroman was one of many 9/11 vigilantes, men who aimed at anyone living in this country who they thought were Muslim and therefore terrorists, all enemies of America. There were dozens of similar hate crimes nationwide against hundreds of people and their property such as mosques and businesses. It was a national shame.

If you can believe it, Bhuiyan and Stroman became friends after the trial. The victim went out of his way to visit his condemned assailant on death row. He wanted to understand this man—who was so unlike the Americans he befriended and knew on a daily basis from his store and neighborhood. He had to make the criminally insane somehow redeemable because he needed to heal, not his physical wound but his emotional and spiritual wounds. Add political wounds, too.

Namaste

India has been a friend to the U.S. for a very long time. Politically we share a love of democracy and capitalism. Isn’t it funny how practically every kind of modern American business these days has at least one employee from India? We find the Indians who immigrate here intelligent, educated, polite, gracious, interesting, and most of all accommodating. That is the Indian way, to defer to Western man.

But since the election of Trump, America has created a new set of vigilantes with murderous intentions. These are white men who are just following the punch-hard tactics that got Trump elected president. Trump came across as speaking for the common man, ensuring red-blooded Americans of jobs, making America great again, beefing up the military to bomb the s*&^ out of Muslim countries where terrorists abide. Never mind the majority of the populations in the Middle East who are not terrorists, just consecrated Muslims who pray several times a day. Then there is Trump’s stance on illegal immigration, referring mostly to people from Latin America, which gets twisted into the understanding that All Immigrants Must Go.

Presuming Trump’s election as a sign that white is right and white is might, there is a certain group of white men who consider it open season on anyone living in America who does not physically fit the so-called pure American profile: white Anglo Saxon Christian with deep roots in our nation, several generations removed from the last immigrant family member. To many Americans, those are the real Americans: the white proud pioneer families whose muscle and ingenuity built this country into the greatest nation on earth. And there is no convincing them that America had any help in the form of cheap human labor.

Recently a white man in a typical American city went on a shooting rampage while shouting ‘Leave my country.’ He was shooting at men who were from India—not Muslim, not terrorists. This is one of many hate crimes that have been occurring since the election. It’s like the fall of 2001 all over again.

India is deeply offended and confused (along with most of the world) with this new hard-line, hard-right political direction in America right now, supported and embraced by tens of millions of Americans with chants like ‘America first.’ In fact, educated Indians who had plans and visas to immigrate to America for set jobs have abruptly canceled their plans. They indeed are broken hearted. They had such hopes for a bright future in America, even becoming American citizens, the path many from India have taken for decades.

The world is seeing an ugly side of America, one built on fiction past and present, ignorance and evil racism. People who live here long enough figure it out. The one thing a certain type of white Americans hate is brown people, even brown U.S. citizens. In the minds of that white minority, they have a lot of hate to spread throughout America and around the world—practically everybody on the planet … including the ones who were here first.

February 20, 2017

To Russia, with Love

I’m a little confused about our love affair with Russia, alias the USSR, alias the Soviet Union, alias the Red Menace. As a Baby Boomer, I certainly grew up feeling the big chill of the Cold War. In those decades of the mid to late twentieth century, Americans had one arch enemy: the red communists from the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets, in turn, saw America as the big evil on the planet, capable of launching nuclear war—just as they could, too. It was spy versus spy: the freedom-loving Western world versus the Godless communist Soviet Eastern bloc. We were taught in school the Cold War was about democracy versus communism. Really the ‘war’ was about economic theory, capitalism versus socialism, than political philosophy. There was blatant hypocrisy in communism, which in theory sounds Utopian: Everyone is equal, even paid equally. That’s not how it worked, though. The rulers were always fat cats while the majority lived in deprivation, just happy to be alive, sort of. Time and again, history teaches that the human masses will topple governments that just don’t work in the best interest of all the people.

In 1980 President Carter campaigned to continue diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union to reduce the threat of a future nuclear war. But the Republicans—backed big time by the so-called Silent Majority, the religious right—maintained the USSR would never be a friend to the United States. Their candidate Ronald Reagan felt the same way, innately distrustful of the Soviet Union. That year would be my first presidential election, so I discussed the issue with many adults. And I could not believe my ears: Most folks I knew, all Texans, were voting for Reagan. I loved Jimmy Carter—despite the gas lines, inflation, lay-offs, energy conservation, and Iranian hostage crisis. He was a Democrat, and that was good enough for me. I was idealistic and believed Carter should try to make friends with the Soviets. I did not see them as people to fear, though I clearly recall their iron-fisted government as foreboding. Life in the Soviet Union featured food lines; cramped dingy apartments; criminal black markets; forbidden music, art and religious expression; censored news; lots of lies; and mandated job quotas. They had one thing going for them: Everyone had housing, something America still wrestles with.

While debating my support for Carter with a conservative Christian friend, I explained the one thing I liked about the president was his willingness to talk with the Soviet Union. Appalled by the very idea, that was exactly why my friend refused to support Carter, because the Soviets were just evil and could not be trusted. I realized then America needed to maintain the Cold War and dis-ease with the other world power. Once Reagan was president, he frequently criticized the Soviet leaders and often suggested the Soviet people compare the quality of life in America to their own. Later Reagan dubbed a state-of-the-art nuclear protection system for our hemisphere as ‘Star Wars,’ and that really upset the Soviet man on the street. They seemed to view this possible protection shield in outer space as some sure sign we were going to nuke them first. The ‘shield’ was to keep the nukes in outer space so no harm would come to our side of the planet.

What no one knew during the 1980s was the West had already won the Cold War. Democracy had won. Capitalism had won. How? Besides the Soviets’ love of jeans (yes, American blue jeans!) and black market rock albums, American television in communist nations probably had the biggest impact. Glamorous soap operas like Dallas opened the eyes of the masses living in the bleak Soviet bloc. But the biggest thing that really broke the Soviet Union was CNN. Once everyone on the planet could see with their own eyes what’s going on around the world and that there was nothing to fear especially from the West, the Eastern bloc dictated by the Soviet Union began to break away, country by country—because the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev allowed it. Finally the Berlin Wall was busted to smithereens. It was a beautiful moment in human history. Freedom had won over tyranny, trust over fear, love over hate.

She sold seashells by the seashore

The Soviets and others who experienced an entire economy based on socialist-Big Brother theory and propaganda were going to have to think differently about every aspect of their lives and livelihoods. Economically, they were going to have to turn around very quickly if they wanted to emulate what Americans take for granted: supermarkets with plenty of food, houses, reliable fuel and energy, cars, clothes, stuff, honest business dealings and money handling, plus competing for jobs and salaries and even self-employment through privately-owned businesses—all this because of total and complete individual freedom: of thought, word, deed, art and media. The New Russians tried. But one generation can’t create what has taken America and Western Europe hundreds of years to develop. They were starting from scratch. And an overjoyed America, still chanting “We’re Number One,” did not do much to help the Russians transform their lives in preparation for the twenty-first century.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia became the new-old name of the largest part of the former communist empire. Maps were redrawn and redrawn. It was messy for a decade or so. As the Russians continued to suffer trying to catch up with American capitalism—which in itself is cold blooded and ruthless—the days of the former Soviet Union became glorified memories. Enter a new leader: Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent with a hard-line penchant toward restored communism. He has proven to be a leader who insists upon total control and is willing to go to any extreme including imprisoning and killing enemies and of course censoring the media, incredulous in this internet age. President Obama slapped economic sanctions on Putin’s Russia for a military encroachment into Ukraine, a nearby European country that was begrudgingly part of the former Soviet Union long ago.

But President Trump has some kind of bromance with Putin, speaking admiringly of his counterpart in the First World. And why does Trump want to make amends with Russia? Oil, glorious oil! So both of our conflicting economic and governance theories have come full circle. But alas comrade, communism supports the government as controller of all mineral rights—not private citizens, land owners or businesses. Americans, the hardest-working people on earth, crave gasoline. How we gonna get to work without it?

President Trump is a businessman first. Putin is a communist first. America and Russia are like a divorced couple who are dating again. It’s crazy to outsiders, but the two lovers can’t fight the attraction. They are the magnet, and we are the steel. In communist Soviet Russia, there was a saying: You see one thing, hear another, and think a third. With Trump’s tough talk, twisting the truth, and blasting the American media—with its constitutional role to ensure a lasting democracy—perhaps now the old Soviet adage applies to the New Americans.

February 12, 2017February 12, 2017

The student outsmarts the teacher

(Squelch) Is this mike on? Pop, pop, pop. (chuckles) So, did you hear the one about the teachers who are evaluated by their students?! (laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh) Well, let’s just say the kids are getting away with a lot more stuff than they used to. (laugh, laugh) No, I’m serious, this is a thing. Schools are making students as young as third grade rate their teachers. (laugh, cough, chuckles) Teens evaluate their teachers, too, now. This newfangled mandate comes from the ‘world of academia’ where college students have been evaluating their professors. (sniff, chuckles) Can you believe we’re allowing school-age kids to rate teachers, like this means anything? And the student ratings count, like 15 percent of a teacher’s overall evaluation score. (gasp, uncomfortable gaze) Yeah, swear to God. And this is going on in practically every school district around and throughout the nation. (sobering stares)

I mean, can you imagine parents being evaluated by their kids? The likes of us rating our parents? (laugh, laugh, laugh) The people who raised us back in the day? (laugh, laugh) Boy would my butt be sore! (laugh, laugh, laugh) Oh, but the student evaluations are anonymous! Talk about payback! (laugh, laugh, laugh) You know in our day, a lot of kids would’ve scorched certain teachers especially if they flunked a class or were paddled. (“Yeah, really!” laugh, laugh) I can think of a couple of teachers that every kid hated. I won’t mention names, but these were ladies—and yes, for some reason now that I think about it, they were all women who every school kid happened to hate—who paddled some butts or sent kids—usually all boys for some reason—to the principal—who was always a man. Then the principal would heave-ho the paddle and lay on a few whacks, probably just practicing his baseball swing. (laugh, laugh) Remember, the boy would return to class, cocky disposition effectively obliterated (laugh), looking at the ground, sniffling and wiping tears, then dive into his desk and lay his head down in folded arms and cry like a baby. (laugh, laugh, chuckle, clear throat)

So now we’re letting Eddie Haskell and Larry Mondelo evaluate their teachers? (laugh, laugh, laugh) How fair is a kid, especially in elementary school, gonna be? (chuckle) No other profession allows kids to rate them, seriously anyway. Can you imagine kids rating police officers? Store clerks? Therapists? Doctors? Dentists? Oh and the kids do not rate the school principals, who as everyone knows have long ago put away the paddle or any remote sort of painful reprimand to effect discipline in our public schools.

Rough Room

Here are some sample questions from the student teacher evaluation. Really, these are statements that kids rate, like: My teacher is always in a bad mood. Or ‘My teacher is always very pleasant.’ Or ‘My teacher always takes time to work with me when I don’t understand a problem.’ Or ‘My teacher never supports my community.’ That last one, what the hell? Why is that an issue today? Wouldn’t a kid be led to believe that his teacher is supposed to live nearby, grocery shop, attend church and every baseball game with the kid’s family? (laugh, chuckle) What is this, 1959? Like we expect teachers to reside in the communities or cities where they teach? Do we expect all other professional working people to live in the communities where they just happen to have a job? (chuckle, chuckle)

The student answer choices are literally: Never, Hardly Ever, Sometimes, Most of the Time, Always. (laugh, laugh, snort) Yeah, you adults know what I’m talking about here. Sounds like quite a few of you have been in ‘couples counseling.’ (laugh, laugh, laugh) You know, where we are told to avoid telling our partners things like “You never clean the house” or “You always lose your keys.” (laugh, laugh, laugh) Psychologists remind us no one is ‘always’ or ‘never’ a certain way. To even use the terms ‘always’ and ‘never’ when referring to someone is a sign of an immature mind. It just may seem like someone screws up every day, especially if we don’t like the person anymore. (laugh)

The student teacher rating is just unbelievable considering kids see everything as black or white. They are not old enough to understand nuance, mood, life as shades of gray. We know a person is not the same way every minute of the day. Am I right? (“Yeah!”) So kids are going to check the Never and Always choices when assessing their teachers. That would explain why most of our teachers do not receive a 100 from their student evaluations or even rate an A. In fact, a large number are actually failing, in the minds of their students. (chuckle, laugh) No wonder so many teachers quit.

Education Major

Look, there isn’t an adult I know who wants to be a teacher. Come on, show of hands: Who wants to be a teacher, in our public schools? (laugh, chuckle) OK, I see a few hands, very few. I see that group of women back there raising the arm of the guy with you. Very funny. (laugh, giggle) You know why adults don’t want to be teachers? Because adults don’t want to hang out with lots of kids all day every day … even with summers off. You like your own kids, right? (laugh) OK, you love your children, I know. But you know kids can get on our nerves. They can disappoint us sometimes. And sometimes we don’t react well when a kid says some smart (bleep) thing to us or rolls the eyes or snickers—like they know more than we do.

What I’m trying to say is those who go into teaching are literally doing the Work of God. (applause, whistles) They are living, breathing, walking saints of God. (applause) They spend all day trying to teach and often end up having to handle kids from a variety of family structures or no structure at all. And now society is making school kids, including quite a number from rough childhoods with parents in prison or on drugs or overworked and too tired to raise them, rate their teachers—who usually come from a completely different background. Doesn’t seem funny anymore, does it?

Well, let me leave you with this final thought in praise of teachers or just to feel sorry for them. (chuckle, chuckle, “Good. Go.”) Wait a minute. Am I being heckled out there? The state of our schools and the teachers who still work in them is not comedy material to you? I find it quite laughable sometimes. Nevertheless, I have a couple more minutes before my set is through. Someone engage the heckler in a more scintillating topic like Trumpian politics till I’m through here. (chuckle, “You suck.”) All right already.

The heckler does prove another point. The other reason why some folks—maybe like you, just enjoying a comedy club tonight with a drink or two—don’t care much about teachers or the profession. It’s because we all had bad teachers when we were in school: the grumpy, the overbearing, the smug, the air head, the touchy-feely, the elderly, the chain smoker, the beauty queen, the jock, the disinterested, the loafer, the wannabe cool friend, the creep, the Hitler. What can we say? We were raised in a different era maybe.

I grew up with a teacher, and the one thing that struck me during my childhood was how professional she was on the job, not necessarily at home where she expected her kids to behave. Mom could swing a belt! (laugh, laugh) So I looked at my teachers in a different light. I had a little insight into them as people, unlike my peers who just didn’t like school, being in school, having to be in school, and having to follow rules. (laugh) I liked school a lot, not every subject like math and science, but I liked being in school, the formality and the structure. And I’ll make a confession: As a kid, I always thought the summer breaks were way too long. Like, why don’t we have year-round school already? (scant applause)

Like you I suppose, most of my teachers did not leave a great impression on me. But several did, even a lasting effect, perhaps life altering. Even in elementary school, I was mature enough to understand every teacher is different. My job was to try to get along with a variety of personalities, do what they said, and learn their subjects. I think today by letting students rate their teachers (which really is a way to prevent raises for the less-than-popular types—pssst, most teachers) we are sending a message. What is the message exactly? That kids count? That what children think of their teachers is important? That what a kid thinks is accurate and reliable, fair and honest? Have you spent a day in our public schools lately? (laugh) Kidworld is cruel, not unlike The Simpsons or Southpark. (laugh, chuckle)

So my guess is this latest experiment in trying to improve our public schools is solely to whip the teachers into a frenzy. It’s just continuing the illusion or delusion that our schools—a reflection of our society—are fine, just fine. (laugh, applause) You’ve been a great audience, thank you! Have a good evening everyone! Enjoy time away from the boss! (And for teachers, that would be the kids.)

February 5, 2017February 5, 2017

American fear: of guns and immigrants

The only thing Americans have to fear is … more guns than people in the United States. And most people with a gun in the home are not trained to shoot it. There are twice as many gun accidents than gun deaths—combined, however, they are in the tens of thousands every single year, and this excludes suicides. Gun proliferation in our country, our communities and neighborhoods, is more of an immediate threat to our security and sanity than immigrants from the Middle East or Central and South America.

Our own home-grown American crazies who have taken to high-powered assault weapons, the kind used by combat soldiers, are our most pressing concern—screaming for a solution. The political argument used to center on mental illness or gun control, as if we have to impose on the freedom of the chemically imbalanced or the proud American sportsman. By now we’d best deal with our own personal national epidemic of gun violence.

And our fearless leaders did just that, by eradicating a late-ordered Obama mandate that would have kept people with mental illness from buying guns. So the insane along with the rest of us can enjoy our American right to bear arms? What’s there to be afraid of if’n we’re all packin’?

But it doesn’t work that way. Time and again, we are caught off guard by a maniac or maniacs shooting up high schools, elementary schools, churches, mosques, playgrounds, cinemas, restaurants, funeral processions, Wal-Marts, shopping malls, apartments, residential streets, Christmas parties, birthday parties, courthouses, police stations, protests, police officers, nightclubs. Most of these mass shootings had nothing to do with Muslim terrorists and everything to do with easy access to assault rifles and unchecked mental illness.

1980

Remember the issues behind gun control—way back when Americans really thought reason and sanity would win over fear and power and money? First John Lennon was shot multiple times, then a few months into 1981 President Reagan and James Brady, then Pope John Paul II. Only one of these men died, another left with permanent brain damage, and two survived—Reagan and the Pope recollecting with a chuckle their brush with death. Their assailants were carrying only a handgun, and the movement against guns was underway. No one was safe since anyone could buy a gun even illegally. Many guns linked to crimes were stolen, usually during home burglaries and then passed down by sale or pawn. No questions asked.

Oh and then in the 1990s the uproar for the seemingly rational government background check for anyone wanting to purchase a gun. Those years of heated debate have faded into black and white memories. A decade later, shooting deaths not only continued (by the tens of thousands every year) but mass killing sprees were accomplished by high-powered rifles to ensure multiple deaths in a frenzied lust for bloody murder. The movie Bowling for Columbine about the Colorado high school massacre and the student assailants didn’t change Washington or the nation. Instead, Americans were more vocally adamant for carrying guns at all times anywhere, any place … just in case. They seemed to be chasing the very real opportunity to play hero, Clint Eastwood with a .44 Magnum—just like in the movies! Make my day, punk. It didn’t matter that every police and law enforcement association was against ‘any and every body carrying a gun.’ They had a point, being the ones who legally wear a gun and are without a doubt trained and licensed to shoot one. They know all about criminals, drunkenness and doped-up delusion, human passion, depression, and how quick guns kill. Yet society just didn’t feel safe letting cops fight their battles, real or imagined.

Holy terror, Batman

We got caught off guard by 9/11 and subsequent attacks like the Boston marathon and San Bernardino. During the presidential campaign, I had tweeted: If Trump wins, it will be because of San Bernardino; if Hillary loses, it will be because she always includes a Muslim-dressed woman among a multi-ethnic crowd of supporters for speeches. That was a turn off to Americans after two long, hard, vicious wars trying to combat Muslim terrorists. Call it prejudice, but it’s how Americans feel pain.

The terrorists who attacked our homeland wanted to bring what people in the Middle East deal with every day and have for decades. Terrorists are usually not highly educated and come from dire poverty unimaginable to anyone growing up in the U.S. An unschooled mind within a poor family and community is a dangerous thing. There is no hope … except for religion. Many Christian families can relate. The Great Depression drew throngs of folks to church, hoping things would turn around … and we would find God’s favor once more. Terrible times often bring people to their knees in prayer to God.

In these admittedly dangerous times in which we live … there still is no comparison between the numbers of Americans killed by terrorists in our country and abroad to the number of Americans killed and maimed by guns and assault rifles at the hands of our own. Many Americans will not part with guns because they have the Constitution on their side. In the beginning Americans were given the right to bear arms to form a militia—probably because in those more dangerous times there was the likelihood a ruler might attempt to overthrow our newly born democracy. It’s happened throughout history and still does in nations all around us.

But since 1776, guns have become awfully powerful … and fast! Our forefathers never could have conceived of such a thing in the days of muskets and reloading powder. A modern gun’s sudden death and damage today is faster than a speeding bullet—irreparable, perhaps doing more damage to our collective psyche than to the doomed human life.

We are the ones with the sickness, the mental defect, the dangerous and deadly personality quirk when it comes to our ideas about personal safety and guns. Our nation’s history was built by our own people who had to quickly size up an enemy: from Redcoats to ‘red skins’ then black and brown and yellow. By now it’s in our genes, our perpetual need for an enemy. So we shoot first and ask questions later.

January 29, 2017

Texas public schools need 21st century spending

I stand corrected: The Texas Legislature IS making a top priority of fixing public school finance.

All right now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work here. Everything’s on the table, that’s our motto (for now anyway). Let’s get this thing fixed here and now. After all, funding our public schools is pretty much required of the state. Besides, how hard can it be? It’s just numbers.

So a quick look-see across the internet reveals Texas ranks rather low in funding our public schools compared to big shots like New York and Connecticut and Oregon and Nebraska and dozens more of these United States. The national average for per-pupil spending is somewhere around $10,700 to $11,841. Texas ranks 38^thas we spend $8,075 to $8,299 per student. Dallas spends $9,559 per pupil while Brownsville spends $9,815, and out in Sulphur Springs each kiddo is allotted $9,262.

Seems all we need do is get the big picture. The Texas education budget is $37.4 billion—a whoppin’ fourth of the state’s whole budget pie! Now, the other thing we need to know is the number of public schools kids. That’s close to five million, give or take.

Why don’t we just divide the school budget by the number of kids (still) going to our public schools? No, this can’t be right? That ends up being $7,480. Blasted online calculator! Let’s take these two enormous figures to paper and pencil: 5,000,000 into 37,400,000,000. Owww, these zeros are making us see crazy! Brain hurts! Can’t think! Let’s just condense this: 5 into 37.4. We can tack on all those zeros later. OK, this can’t be right neither: still near $7,000 per little Texan?

Time’s a-wastin’

Texas public school finance has been made up of lots of convoluted mathematical formulas, which for decades ensured kids living in wealthy districts got a better education than kids in poverty. But that was supposed to have been fixed long ago by the Robin Hood plan to even out per-pupil spending in all Texas school districts. (Remember the rich districts were to give to the poor, until the biggest cities in the state ended up being on the list of the state’s poorest districts?) While figuring the figure, federal and local tax dollars kick in, and that might explain how our per-pupil spending is more than $7,000 allotted by our state education budget. Maybe we’re going about this all the wrong way. Instead of starting with a pile of money, maybe we should analyze exactly how much it costs to provide a quality education to a kid nowadays—ahem, these days being the 21^st century and not the 1900s.

A kid needs highly-educated teachers, and in Texas we are proud to proclaim we still insist our public school teachers be college educated and degreed. A kid needs to learn reading, writing, math, science, history, computers, health and physical education, and it would be nice to give ’em some arts like music, art, drama, and dance. A kid needs to eat while spending all day in school, but breakfast and lunch should be covered by federal programs, right? A kid needs textbooks [as we continue to witness the transformation to online texts, meaning eventually laptops with internet access for every Texas student] for at least twelve years. And a kid needs quality equipment in science and computer labs as well as gyms and sports and art and music rooms. And a kid needs a comfortable schoolhouse with heat and air within a consistently maintained and modernized building.

A kid learns best in a clean decent size classroom with subdued wall colors, more blues and off whites, no reds or orange. Kids learn best in small groups; the Texas elementary school standard of 20 per class is just too many kids. Kids need to see a nurse about assorted childhood scrapes and illnesses. Many kids need counseling. Yes, they do. Kids need recess or a couple of breaks during the day like any employee in the workforce. They need clean restrooms with toilet paper, soap and hot water to wash their hands, and operable water fountains. They need coats in the winter. They need parents who ensure their kids are at school on time and promptly picked up at the end of the day. Many kids need tutoring after or before school; they need one-on-one instruction to fully master each lesson less they fall behind.

Kids in school need to learn at their own pace, so that means more staff and teachers instead of less. They need to have their eyes and ears examined every year as well as checks on their emotional health and physical development. More health care assistants, nurses and counselors are needed.

Now getting down to brass tacks, Texas students learning English need a lot more assistance especially seeing how we consider this a big problem in need of immediate solving. Before any learning can take place, we all must agree that classroom discipline is a must. Student discipline and self control must be the first priority and teachers supported instead of criticized and politicized. And poor kids—who make up a great deal of our public school student population, if we’re being honest—will always need a leg up. They need to start school earlier than age 4 or 5. They need parents who know how to raise kids. We’re talking even more social programs to gain parental support and trust. Public schools should be run like private schools where there is no question about the final product: a well-educated student.

So given all it takes to educate a kid in Texas, in the 21^st century, to ensure he and she have a chance for a viable future as a productive citizen and by age 18 are ready for college or the workforce, $7,000 or even $10,000 or $11,000 per pupil doesn’t seem near enough, now does it? It’s an illogical equation in our fast-paced technological evolution where now the year is 2017. When it comes to spending on a kid’s education, there’s no time to waste.

January 22, 2017January 24, 2017

The give and take in government

Government giveth, and it taketh away. They get it from the Bible. So why is anyone shocked about dismantling the Affordable Care Act (passed during the Obama administration and referred to as Obamacare)? Our Government has a history of creating social and education programs—even lofty science ones like NASA—and then eroding or removing them through budget cuts, often when a new administration comes to power.

Back in the 1960s, old-timers tell of the Republican fight against Medicare and Medicaid. But since then, generations have forgotten all the fuss. Today not a single elderly person or the poor and disabled and disenfranchised and, well, everyone living in the middle and lower classes would want to see a single dollar cut from these programs. [Medicaid might take up less than 5% of the federal budget while Medicare is close to 30%. The military is around 15% while education funding is not even 5%.]

A quarter of a century before Obamacare, our federal government looked into passing universal health care, whereby no one would be rejected or dumped by an insurance company due to circumstances such as pregnancy (or just being a woman of child-bearing age), chronic health ailments and pre-existing conditions, or a previous cancer battle. The Clinton administration tried and tried and tried to get something passed along the lines of universal health care—like every modern country provides its citizens except the good ol’ USA. The President’s wife, First Lady Hillary Clinton, was appointed to lead the charge and instead found through round-table discussions with physicians, insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceuticals, no one could or would come to a consensus. Issues of conflict centered on lowering health care and prescription costs, cutting a physician’s salary basically in half, and increasing insurance rates to expand coverage. There could be no compromise.

Higher ideals

During the Bernie Sanders’ campaign, I learned of an era before my time, 50 years ago or so, when Uncle Sam would pay tuition of any American attending a public university or college. How kind of our government leaders in those bygone days, how unified they were for the common good: ensuring fellow Americans a college education. It had to do with the American Dream of the house, the car, the summer vacation—in short, pulling folks financially decimated by the Great Depression into the middle class.

When I chose to go to college in 1981, the times had changed. America was on edge with a rough, punk attitude. No one cared about anybody. Recession and inflation were common daily language, which for a high school kid left little hope for optimistic dreams or a brighter tomorrow. Those of us growing up in that gloomy era understood government could not help us. Don’t even ask. Nevertheless, I did.

I received a federal student loan to cover my first year of college, plus I took on a couple of part-time jobs. During my college years under the Reagan administration, budget cuts greatly affected government assistance for college. By my second year, I was eligible for only half the loan amount with triple the interest. Later I received a federal Pell Grant (thank God) and was eligible for college work-study. Throughout the remainder of college, the Pell Grant was cut in half year after year, though it always covered tuition. Incredulously, during my final year of college, I no longer qualified for work-study. What kind of crazy government policy was that? Reagan seemed to support kids working their way through college.

Other college students had government assistance taken away, too, affecting their plans and aspirations. One student was on the GI Bill, having been a Vietnam-era veteran but not one that saw combat. That was the new hitch in trying to balance the federal budget, I suppose. Another college friend had to leave when Social Security could no longer afford it. The government program used to provide a college education for youth whose parent or parents were deceased.

Those programs benefited millions of Americans until funds were cut. Education programs like those could only help our nation and future generations. The Social Security fund for college came from President Johnson whose programs and purpose was to ensure that any American who wanted to go to college ought to be able to do so. I grew up with that mindset, a natural assumption (maybe because I am an American) that I could go to college even if my parents could not afford it. I was grateful for the federal government supporting young people to achieve a worthy goal and a bright future for all.

Here we are today. Our federal government and millions of Americans do not support tax dollars funding a college education. Not only do we have a generation of college grads who cannot pay off their loans in their lifetimes, we have the same generation and younger disbelieving in college as the only way they can get ahead in life even if they are living in poverty. They are affected by negative government, family, TV shows, movies and pop culture with sarcastic online references that play down a college degree as making any difference. This cynical worldview has penetrated school kids who do not see the benefit of education or even a high school diploma.

Here’s the truth: Work options for people with a degree are much better than the vast number of jobs that do not require higher education whether from college, trade school or military training. Here’s another fact: Businesses desperately need workers at every level who can read, write, calculate and think to make quick assessments and decisions ON THEIR OWN. And businesses continuously lack the kind of employee who is overall intelligent, self sufficient and well rounded. For decades businesses have complained workers with only a high school diploma or less are not smart enough to keep up with technology.

Government budgets reflect what’s important to people already in power. It’s up to us Little People to let Washington know: We know how our tax dollars are spent, how the budget is divided, and what the government’s priorities are—because we know what used to be important back when America was great indeed.

January 15, 2017

Texas toilet patrol

Toilet patrol is nothing new in Texas. Our elected officials assume our moral compass—carrying on every odd year like that big fat-mouthed, uncouth, boastful cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn. This year in the Texas Leghorn, job number one is not ensuring public schools are adequately funded but instead plunging head first, eyes and nose closed, into the ethically and morally divisive issue of forcing transgender students to use a male or female restroom based on their birth certificate instead of their maturing rational human brain.

In Texas when it comes to complex physiological matters like s-e-x—and all other cutting edge scientific research that ends up radically changing moral presumptions while eroding blissful ignorance—our legislators remain shamefully behind the times. From civil rights to women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, workers rights and just plain human rights (air quality for instance,) the suits in Austin have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. They insist on being seen this way nationwide.

Biological scientists nowadays are proving that the transgender brain is different [not necessarily abnormal, but if this is easier to understand, then fine]. It has to do with brain and chromosome development in the womb. Wehhl … such advanced medical advancements are way above the average elected official. But when these findings were made well known nationally on a major and lengthy TV news report centering on Caitlyn Jenner (former American Olympic champ Bruce Jenner), the Obama administration summarily mandated all public schools in the U.S. will not discriminate from that rare student who is transgender, thereby allowing said student to use the restroom of his or her brain’s choosing and his/her emotional comfort.

Look what I’ve stepped into here! And in my beloved Texas where legislators wouldn’t understand this even if they could.

Small town toiletries

Another Texas toilet controversy I inadvertently stepped into occurred when I was a city government reporter in a small Texas town. Having been on the job a few months, one day some old feller called me to get down to city hall. He would not give details but could not contain his mischievous laughter. I called city hall, having no clue what to ask. No one answered the phone. Though my tipster had been laughing, I never assumed anything along the uncomfortable moral sphere.

So I got in the truck and drove a few blocks to the town square and walked into city hall. Sure enough, everyone was gone—all four of ’em: the city manager, city manager secretary, city secretary and office assistant. The police station was next door, so I walked over there and asked the police chief if he’d heard anything about city hall. The seasoned chief remained poker faced with a slight smile, his usual countenance, and as he put out a cigarette said nonchalantly he had no idea what the matter could be.

I returned to the paper and summarily called the mayor at his cable TV outfit. In his usual stiff manner, he claimed to know nothing unusual and added all was well at city hall. “Yeah, but nobody’s there and this man called,” I pressed.

Not ten minutes later the mayor with the city attorney walked into the newspaper office, darting at me while meeting the editor for a private conference. I couldn’t hear anything. But after the guys left, my editor quietly motioned me in, barely able to contain his laughter. Red faced and in a joking manner, he told me that the city manager had bored a peep hole between the men’s and women’s restroom at city hall.

I was speechless, maybe with a slight smile to fit in. I didn’t see anything funny about it at all, felt sorry for the city manager’s all-female staff, then recalled the time when the city manager asked if I needed to use the facility before an interview. I felt sorry for the city manager, too. He was young, educated, professional, clean cut, church deacon, married with kids, committed to his very serious public job—and I often noticed his vehicle still at city hall way after hours.

Of course he was taking no calls even when my editor left numerous messages at his home. We wanted a comment for the inevitable article. The media storm was immediate with area TV and radio calling me for information. The city council was trying to stifle the story, trying to be gentlemen and not get into a rather disgusting matter. They did not want to go public, preferring the city manager just leave his position (and town). That night the city council held its monthly meeting, and I was there covering anything that might come up off the agenda. The councilmen could not look the city manager in the face as he read through ordinances and other business, keeping his voice monotone.

Then the next day, the city council realized they were going to have to go public and called a special session with the media. All of us showed up, one radio personality jokingly calling the ordeal ‘pottygate.’ The mayor proceeded to tell everything: how pieces of sheetrock kept peeling off the wall around the women’s single-stall toilet, how a hole was discovered when the paper towel dispenser above the toilet was removed to restock, how the city manager denied any knowledge, how his staff believed him, how they all laughed about it at first. Then a private detective was hired, unknown to the city manager, and the report came back: He was the only one who ever used the men’s toilet at city hall. The two restrooms were side by side separated by a wall in a building built decades ago. The city manager confessed. He explained to his female staff that he just had to ‘see something.’ Embarrassed and humiliated, the women tried to file charges for ‘peeping Tom.’ But there was no crime other than defacing public property.

A few months later, Texas Monthly called me about the incident, wanting to include it in the annual Bum Steer awards. The writer asked my perception of the former city manager. He came across to me as ‘tightly wound,’ all business and no pleasure, always talking water and sewer lines and budgets and city improvements. And that should have tipped me off because small town folks love to shoot the breeze and get to know people. In that way he was odd.

A friend of mine in the big city read about the ordeal (the editor sent the articles to the Associated Press). She told me about a book she had read on male predators. Men of this nature start with an obsession with pornography. Then they need to spy on females in their private moments, may start acting out by driving in the nude or engaging publically in self gratification, before finally attempting to assault a female for sex.

The three-letter word

Sex and sexuality are as wild as nature itself: complex, unexplainable, against the rules of some societies and religions, compulsive to some extent, sometimes haunting our very dreams. There are laws against molestation and rape, and for the most part females are protected and certainly encouraged to alert police of assaults or suspicious behavior even a gut instinct. Women know very well about the creepy man, the weirdo who may stalk us in a public restroom or lurk around in the next stall. We teach our girls to always be on the look-out for such strange men. But our biggest fear is that a man, in his craven desire to rape, will don a wig and women’s apparel in order to walk right in our public restrooms, waiting for the right time to attack.

I imagine this happens, but I do not know for a fact that it does or ever will—not with all the cameras and cell phones and mirrors and females with their guards up. When and if a man masquerades as a woman to enter the women’s restroom to spy or attack, it’s a crime. The very thought is one of our many fears as women.

Getting back to our state Lege, some of our officials may think that allowing transgender women (who physically still may be men) to use the women’s or girls’ restrooms would be a temptation to molest us, especially little girls in our public schools. A transgender man or boy thinks he is a female. He/she would not want to harass or assault or even bother us.

Flip the scenario: A transgender boy (who physically is still a girl) is forced by state law to use the girls’ restroom at school. Not only would girls be uncomfortable and maybe even malicious toward a student in their restroom who looks and acts like a boy, but the transgender student would be going against his/her nature, too.

Texans like everyone else are going to have to keep an open mind about advanced discoveries in biology, chemistry, sexuality and brain science. New information sometimes forces people to change their thinking and how we treat fellow human beings. Perhaps we should start testing political candidates, too—allowing only the top ten percent on the ballot.