Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

So I’m turning 60 in a couple of days, another big birthday, and I’m feeling kinda blah. This will be a sick birthday since I caught a cold, and it will be a working birthday plus additional hours on that particular day. Yet I know it will be my special day, that date on the calendar that marks me as a Scorpio, that hour of birth at dusk my most powerful moment of the day, an exact week before Halloween, for whatever cosmic and metaphysical reason the day of my birth on planet Earth in 1962.

Turning 50 was a milestone ten years ago. I know a lot of people who never made it that far, now this far in life. Turning that particular age had such a monumental impact on me that I decided to go back to college for a master’s degree. Didn’t know it at the time, but I’d end up traveling the world, going to India of all places (yet the country I always wanted to visit). So you never know where life will take you. A bit later I started writing this blog and then founded my own educational nonprofit business about the importance of journalism in our country’s democracy. Throughout the past decade, I became that person I always wanted to be: someone who marches at rallies—that greying frumpy woman with rimless glasses or shades protesting in March for Our Lives (calling for sane gun laws to end mass school shootings) and Reproductive Liberation March and Bans Off Our Bodies (to keep abortion a private legal choice for girls and women). Chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” and “Hell no, we won’t go back!!” with my elderly hippie colleagues and a mass of middle-aged and young adults. Proud to have participated and mostly glad to have the physical ability. A few elderly in these protests walked with canes or sat on the sidelines in wheelchairs. I respect them so much for Being there.

All last year at age 59, I felt every bit 60. My muscle strength is notably declining, sight dimmer, more vitamins & ’scripts necessary, bones stiff, chronic aches (a middle finger is twisted; doc asked if it was from over use—rim shot, very funny), my mind a bit forgetful or occasionally a tad confused especially when driving errands. Hey, I’ve got a lot on my mind these days. Sixty is going to be tough. I see. I either succumb or get tougher.

One of my parents is dealing with a compilation of diseases requiring long hospital stays and 24-hour care. That reality weighs on a child turning 60, too. I see. This is nearing the end of life, very likely. I realize each day the importance of every moment, how touching the lives we encounter with kindness can be and will be transformative for them, even though at home I resort to my curmudgeon self, the Scorpion sting. Sor-ry.

Curtain call

While I was enthralled in grad school and enthusiastically traveling the world, I made a plan to work on a doctorate at 60. And here I am. IDK. That aspiration has to wait a bit. Reality is paying for other obligations. Not sure why I was so gung ho on a doctorate anyway other than personal fulfillment and ego. For 50 years I was never interested in earning a doctorate. Maybe being in the real world these past few years, away from all those college professors, has set me straight.

I had a dream recently, what is called a Big Dream, very meaningful to the dreamer. I am sitting alone in a white corridor, and I know I’m dead. I don’t know how I died, figured suddenly like a car crash. But I’m confused and sorry to be dead. Then a man casually is walking down the corridor toward me. I know he’s Jesus; he’s got long hair, a beard, but wearing today’s casual men’s clothes. As he gets closer to me, he morphs a bit and wears small round glasses; I know he wants to appear like John Lennon to make me feel more comfortable and perhaps to make me realize that I, too, am dead. He’s got a hand in his pocket and a pleasant smile. He says, “I’m here to take you Home. Ready to go?” But I stay seated, confused, unwilling to move, to move on into eternity. He’s surprised by my reaction and asks, “Aren’t you excited?” And I respond, “I just wanted to accomplish a few other things in life.” And JC says to me: “You’ve done A LOT with your life.” Hmm. Wonder if he meant ‘Come on, enough already.’

So what are those things I want to accomplish? I guess that is what I should be focused on more instead of just work and busyness and succumbing to debilitating body ache. Actually, I have done as much as I could in some areas of interest. The internet has allowed a lot of people to pursue their dreams and talents in writing, performing, all the arts, business, teaching, preaching. It is an incredible age we live in. Now getting those online ‘hits’ is another factor. Eh, I leave it up to the cosmos as far as fame and success here in cyberspace.

Turning 60 is important. Time to stop putting off anything wished we’ve done or said. My family says “I love you” every time before parting. And we never ever did that for 50 years. I remember the first time. It was blurted out by my dad as I was leaving. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. The family unit is a mystically close relationship that I both observe as an outsider and participate in as my role. In Hinduism, the religion is layered with complexities because the culture believes life is very complex. Their millions of gods and goddesses represent every facet of life, and they believe each person has many facets, plays many roles. We are parents, children, relatives, friends, enemies, spouses, bosses, employees, pastors, congregants, etc. We each live many roles—and we do not act the same way, as the same person, in each role.

Shakespeare said the world is our stage and we the players. We are acting out our lives. If we’re lucky and healthy in body, mind and spirit, we become who we want to be, do what we want to do, accomplish all we want, and in so living become what once were our dreams. Through time and age, we learn this and our comings and goings on Earth will make life better for those who follow us. Happy birthday everyone! Make each one special with a new revelation … and another aspiration. Rock on!

At long last, Alex Jones, star of his own ultra right-wing radio show called Infowars, is found ultimately responsible for lies, slander and defamation against parents whose little children were shot to death at school. After the mass shooting in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Infowars, starring Jones, erroneously claimed and maintained all these years that it was a leftist plot to change gun laws. Jones figured the Black U.S. President Barack Obama was hated enough for the Infowars’ audience to believe Sandy Hook didn’t happen. It was so horrible, it couldn’t have happened, he knew millions of Americans would believe. Some disturbed young man, depicted in MSM with the same peculiar grainy black-and-white photo, and dubious past never thoroughly analyzed even in a TV series or movie? It’s simply made up. No way could a skinny guy use a military-style assault rifle and successfully shoot open a locked steel door, kill every brave adult (principal, counselor, teacher) who got in his way then calmly proceed to his old classroom where as a youngster he was allegedly bullied—and shoot, repeatedly, 20 little kids unknown to him. No, that just didn’t happen, Jones angrily pressed … over and over and over again—his listeners in total agreement. No way a 20-year-old guy takes loaded firearms into a school and shoots a bunch of students until stopped or shooting himself.

Practically every one of the deceased school children were shot five to six times, their bodies red meat. They were no longer recognized as human beings.

And so because they did not resemble real children, perhaps that is the reason millions of Americans chose to believe a lie. No way did this school shooting happen. Besides, Connecticut is so very far away from Texas, the base of Jones and his Austin business.

When I heard of the elementary school shooting, whispered by a fellow teacher in the halls of the elementary school where we taught, and that the dead were little children, tears welled in my eyes. I knew it happened. No doubt. School shootings not only occur on a regular basis, our nation continues to do nothing to stop them.

The message to troubled adolescents is this is normal instead of abnormal. America has made school shootings a part of life at school for at least one generation.

Strong delusion

But school shootings are not the only repeated nightmare Americans live through. Believers of the gospel according to Alex Jones chose to pursue the parents of all those dead little ones in a school called Sandy Hook. (What kinda made up name is that? And Newtown? The whole thing sounds fake. Fake news! Government conspiracy! There’s no other explanation).

So from the get-go, Infowarriors went after the grieving parents with a vengeance. They shouted them down in public, mocked them as ‘crisis actors,’ questioned their tears. The warriors said the parents never had a child attending Sandy Hook Elementary School. They’re all Democrats, Jones’ warriors presumed, and therefore are in on the big government plan to confiscate every Americans’ guns or just the military-style assault rifles that kill and maim lots of people in seconds. The Infowarriors took to social media, harassing the Sandy Hook families, as the sad parents with dead children from this school shooting came to be known. Not a stone was left unturned in the private lives of those parents. The parents were yelled at while mourning their children at the funerals, scorned at their children’s gravesites, stalked everywhere they went. Their homes were repeatedly vandalized, their addresses and phone numbers and workplaces made public for even more crazy Americans (the manic types with a lot of time on their hands and minds) to stalk and harass and intimidate them—for years, all these years. Parents moved from home to home, from town to town, state to state, trying to get on with their lives and, yes, take the high road in avoiding the crazed and ignorant Infowarriors but to no avail.

They had no choice but to sue, and they sued the Big Fish. Let the police deal with the little people who harassed them and vandalized their homes and property. Then the plaintiffs waited for the slow wheels of justice. They were in the right. They deserved to live in peace after their children’s murders.

Their story, every bit of it, is true.

So Alex Jones owes the Sandy Hook families he tormented on air with spiteful words and sarcastic self-assured cynicism—all of it an ‘act,’ he told the Texas judge presiding over a child custody battle with an ex wife. He’s just an entertainer, he said on the stand—and Infowars, just his current gig. He can’t help what his fans believe is truth and bluster and therefore can’t be responsible for their actions toward real people he constantly and loudly defamed on air. He maintained his right of free speech even if lies with terrible consequences.

But the Sandy Hook parents, who like any parent of a murdered child, could care less about the millions of dollars they may or may never get from Alex Jones. Today and in the foreseeable future, they contact parents whose children are shot to death in American schools—because the same Infowarriors use social media to bully, harass, intimidate and in the end terrorize any parent whose child is killed in a mass school shooting. The same bunch went after the parents of Uvalde immediately after that elementary school shooting this year. (Uvalde, what a made up name. A Texas town? Yeah, right. Never heard of it. Can’t be real. Never happened. Government just wants our guns! Never!)

First off, I never asked for or expected the federal government to pay off in full or part my college loans. Secondly, I’m not going to ask for it either. If, however, the government comes offering to reduce my student loan debt from a master’s degree, I may take it.

I’m kinda confused about the extreme agitation of Americans who oppose college student loan reduction. It seems their real anger is at any American who went to college for any reason, any degree, any additional knowledge or even skills. Behold, another generation gap. My parents did not provide for my college education. They did what they could to help with books and personal items but did not have the money to pay for a college education. College was something I not only wanted to do with all my heart but had to complete to be a public school teacher.

While in college, the student financial aid office told me about Pell Grants for which I qualified along with the work-study program. I applied and received Pell Grants and work-study on-campus jobs that pretty much covered my college expenses. Afterwards, I had to pay $50 a month for two federal student loans I (and not my parents) took out the first two years of college back in the early 1980s. The Jimmy Carter loan came with a two percent interest rate while the Ronald Reagan loan had a nine percent rate. Making that $50 a month payment was hard most of the time when starting out as a full-time worker, mostly with low-paying jobs that did not require a college degree. I wasn’t instantly hired as a teacher, see. But the loans were paid off and long ago.

By the way, I was so grateful to my country for providing me the golden opportunity to go to college that I did a lot of volunteer work after graduating, mostly at a homeless shelter. I was trying to give back to our society to make the world a better place. I was idealistic way before college. It had a little to do with held-over attitudes from the 1970s.

Through the ups and downs of life, I managed to have had a career in journalism and then, 16 years after college, finally got that first teaching gig which turned into a second career, albeit with two layoffs during the Great Recession. It was then I decided to go back to college. Grad school, it’s called in the world of academia. It had been 30 years since I’d been in college. I searched online options and old school campus scenarios and after much contemplation decided to pursue a master of liberal studies, AKA liberal arts. At age 50, I wanted to take courses in a variety of subjects. But on a teacher’s salary—yet in a career where it is expected you will always return to college and earn higher and more degrees—I had to look into financial aid.

I signed on the dotted line and agreed to attend night school twice a week along with summer sessions, accomplishing the goal in two and a half years. I was so proud. I know I did the right thing, wished I had done it a lot earlier.

After six months or so, I had to start paying the debt with a monthly bill five times what it cost for a bachelor’s degree back in the ’80s. I own a house now and am growing older. In short, life happens and impacts the budget from time to time. Even so, I kept my payments even when unemployed. Then the pandemic came, and for some reason college debt collection and payments were put on hold. Still is.

I’m very happy to pay off what I owe. After the new roof and other necessities, I figure it’ll take maybe four more years. That’s if nothing major happens.

When did college become a dirty word?

I’m not sure why my parents—featuring a mother who was a teacher and spoke of her college daze as the most fun time of her life—did not create a fund for me starting at birth in the early 1960s. But I didn’t have time to cry about it in 1980-81. I talked to the high school counselor who provided all sorts of college applications for student loans and grants. I filled them out by myself, only asking my parents for their income information. They earned too much for me to qualify for grants, so a federal student loan was my option. I also worked a lot of jobs while in college, something that I’m proud of but not really. Those jobs (sandwich maker, singing waitress, university news service reporter, music librarian assistant, writing tutor and freelance newspaper writer) took a lot of time from my studies—the purpose of being in college in the first place. Two of the part-time jobs were work-study. But by my final year in college, the federal government cut that program to bare bones. Somehow, penniless, I no longer qualified for work-study. The writing lab director kept me on anyway, explaining with a wink it’s all just paper.

I guess I was prepared for a bleak future in getting financial aid for college. My senior year in high school, the government teacher talked about our country’s divide in whom should attend college, making it clear one should already have the money before attempting to enroll. I never heard such a thing. It was the first time I feared I may not get to go to college. Some people believe college is only for the rich? For those who can afford it upfront? For those who upon graduating high school must work for years to save for college then attend? I disagreed with the premise and told her so, choking back tears, not realizing that a lot of Americans do not support the idea that anyone who wants to go to college should be ‘afforded’ the opportunity.

While in college a couple of friends had to quit. They had been attending on Social Security (one’s parents were dead) and the GI Bill. The Reagan administration cut the GI Bill and the Social Security provision which provided college tuition for kids whose parent or parents were deceased. The government’s line was budget cuts were necessary to balance the budget. College was only for those who can afford it and not for anyone else even if already in college. The friends made plans to live with relatives and work a job and save all that money to return and finish their education. I hope that is what happened. But I also know how for young adults, life can interfere with a goal like obtaining a college education if you don’t finish it while young. Young people get married, most have children quickly, start working whatever job they can get, and life goes on into covering a growing family’s necessities. For many women, college may be attempted but is never completed, left as a dream and perhaps their life’s biggest regret. I grew up seeing it often.

It was a C-SPAN series on all the American presidents, starting with George Washington, that made me realize why I was so adamant about the American right to attend college. The program on President Johnson revealed he was the one who believed a college education should be provided to any American who wanted it. I wanted it, more than anything. I’d pay for it one way or another. And I believed (and still do) that in this country, anyone who wants a college education should be able to get it. Johnson, architect of the Great Society, supported a college education because he knew the number one reason for poverty was the death of a parent, usually the father. A college education was a tremendous leg-up for a family facing generational poverty.

So I’d like to thank President Johnson who somehow, probably while speaking in his televised national addresses overheard as I played in the living room, put the idea in my little head that I and all Americans had the right to a college education. Still believe in that right. You just gotta work for it and yes pay for it, too. I thought that was what the federal student loans were for.

Nowadays our nation has changed from cheering on and even encouraging young Americans to go to college, to pursue that BIG dream if it’s their life’s goal and a necessity for specific career paths. No, now we hear mostly from bitter folks (ironically even by those with a college education) who believe college to be a complete waste of money and time, that people are much better off getting a trade (that’s like college, too) or just any job after high school and somehow working their way up to the top. College has become way, way too expensive, and many graduates will never pay off their debt.

This is the fast-paced high-tech age. America cannot be the greatest nation on earth if only a small percentage of the population is college educated. Most jobs do not require a college degree, and everyone doesn’t need a college education. But I believe a lot of people would benefit from it. There is nothing wrong with gaining more education and knowledge, to become smarter.

The highly criticized and equally lauded multi-billion-dollar cost to reduce student loans (ONLY to people earning less than $75,000 a year) will take many years and is, believe it or not, small potatoes within our very wealthy nation’s federal budget, in the ballpark of $22 trillion. Compared to two perpetual wars and all the other ga-zillion-dollar misadventures in which our nation has engaged in recent decades under ‘fiscal conservative’ administrations—the real reason for turning modern Americans into grumpy gusses—the student loan reduction act isn’t going to break the bank.

By far the strangest change in America’s political right is the turn-around from anti-communist anti-Soviet to blind adulation of Mother Russia and its forever leader Vladimir Putin. At 70 he’s leader until 2036. Putin, the man without a face, KGB anti-American anti-Western spy, hasn’t changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and, we smugly thought back then, the collapse of communism. And because America’s conservative republicans sing the Russian leader’s praises, particularly citing his grand gestures toward Christianity, democrats are the ones holding up law and order and making known the line in the sand. Democrats, who used to be called communists, pinkos and reds back in the 20^th century, are the ones warning of Putin and pointing out how corrupt, even murderous, his government is. I never thought I’d live to hear an American president gush over a Soviet leader, but Donald Trump repeatedly kissed the emperor’s ring and went so far as to accuse the FBI and CIA on the world stage as completely wrong about Russia and Putin.

They, who in our country are represented by the color red, claim Putin to be Christian, and all is right with the world.

Have they even read the words of Christ in the Bible?

There is not one thing about Putin that is remotely Christ like.

Calling him Christian because he calls himself that is insulting to Christians everywhere.

The root of all evil

After the Soviet Union fell, business people in the new Russia wanted to emulate American and Western capitalism as quickly as possible. But in our nation’s beginnings, America was very strict Christian, intentionally so from the Pilgrims and the Puritans and all the other Christian groups who left Europe to start over in the New World—to practice their religion without persecution. Christians who are sincere in putting their faith first do not cheat in business dealings. They don’t shortchange customers, sell flimsy garments or unsafe products. Not intentionally. Christian businesspeople go out of their way to make things right because not only is it good for business but it’s the Christian thing to do.

Russian business people in the 1990s toured this country to study our practice in commerce. They could not believe sales clerks would count back change so that the customer would see he or she was getting exactly the correct amount, what was owed him or her. Sales staff were courteous, helpful, kind and friendly with no sinister air as most Soviets expected and experienced in their homeland during decades of communist rule.  Fair business dealings, ‘do right by the customers’ and ‘the customer is always right’ mantras were unheard of and not practiced in Soviet Russia. The people were screwed in every possible manner when it came to business. Their cars did not run. There were always bread lines and lines for essentials. People spent hours in lines and then when finally entering a store, shelves were empty. Their water was impure. Their air polluted. Their nuclear plant accident produced ghastly birth defects and deadly cancers for generations to come.

Americans used to try to figure out how the Soviet Union, our arch nemesis, was a nation that could put a man on the moon yet incapable of building a reliable washing machine. Something was missing. Ingenuity? Perhaps. But the Soviet goal was and remains to produce smoke and mirrors and put all their money into one major project like building a rocket that could blast the stratosphere and land on the moon.

We beat them to the punch in 1969. And we could mass produce automobiles and machines that catapulted American life into the envy of the world.

Now Russia is admired along with their life-time leader? By republicans?

What happened? How did our two political parties go full 180?

I’ve never forgotten what we were taught about communism during the Cold War at school and church:

Communists do not believe in God.

Communists believe the people exist only for the benefit of the state and not the state for the benefit of the people.

The ultimate goal of communism is world domination; everyone will be communist even if by force. Objectors will be killed.

Communism—a government system whereby everyone takes care of one another, food is plentiful, no one is homeless, social ills like addiction and criminals are handled with heavy hand, everyone from garbage collector to brain surgeon earns the same wage, and everyone thinks exactly the same way—was proven to be ineffective at least in the Soviet Union because humans are flawed, jealous, stingy and basically not all that altruistic.

Hmm. The central belief, for those of us who witnessed via TV news the spread of communism in eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, is the forced disbelief in God and religion. Bibles and all religious books, statues, pictures, prayer beads, etc. were destroyed. I won’t mention how the Communist revolution dealt with Buddhists monks and nuns in order to wield the government’s power. Unspeakable. Unconscionable. Evil.

See, hear, think

In the former Soviet Union (and really in present-day Russia), the people had a saying that explained their basic survival: You see one thing, hear a second, and think a third.

Entire classes of school kids were punished by standing straight as a rod with eyes staring forward for hours on end.

This is communism as I understand it from listening to people who lived in that kind of regime. Citizens have no rights. People are arrested on trumped up charges and thrown in putrid jails to languish without a trial or legal representation. Prison is hard labor. The criminally insane are thrown into jails, too. People spy on each other to report wrongdoing to the government, hoping for a reward or bump up among the party (better housing, more money, better job). The rulers at the top are always fat and live a life of luxury. You can see why a brutally suppressed and brain-washed people would come to think cynically about any government, that none is better than the other even America. And what do Putin and his followers say about our country? They think we’re trash … because Americans are not a pure race. We’re mixed ethnicities and cultures. They think this is awful and has brought down every great society in history. Ah, this would explain the republicans’ newfound enlightenment about their old foes the Russians. See, our country is indeed wrestling with our formerly touted melting pot. Some people aren’t supposed to be thrown into our once savory stew of humanity.  

Putin’s communism in the middle of this century has a big problem: the internet. China simply censors it. But that’s not how satellites and invisible waves work. Everything’s out there one way or another. The Russians know how others live all over the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians were grateful to return to churches and worship God without fear of the government surveying them and chiding them as emotionally weak and inferior. Somewhere along the line, Putin decided to confirm himself a Christian.

But let us not forget that Jesus did not call himself a Christian; people called his followers Christians because they emulated his manner. Christians constantly forgive. They strive against excessive living. They give freely to help their fellow man. They pray and stay in constant contact with the Lord. They are not known to be brutal. They do not practice cruelty though history does not reveal former self-proclaimed Christians as righteous souls and innocent. Christ taught live and let live, judge not, and love your neighbor like you love yourself.

The Christian life is not just an adjective people call themselves to get along with certain populations in the world. It is a way of life that others can see and can believe. It is love, kindness, affection, honesty, freedom, integrity, faith, humility, gratitude—none of these are Putin’s attributes and are hard to see in a lot of politicians. So, stop claiming to be Christian if you’re not. At least with communists, we knew what we were dealing with.

The ‘sky is falling!’ crowd is convinced a global recession is moments away if not here already. They cite the old economic adage (or economic pop psychology) that a second consecutive quarter of economic downturn means the country is in recession. But this economy is real strange even to seasoned and highly educated economists. For one, there aren’t massive layoffs. Two, the unemployment rate is like three percent; the chamber of commerce would say anyone unemployed in this economy just doesn’t want to work. And businesses are in hiring mode for some reason, perhaps residuals of the pandemic when we were all told to go home. Perhaps millions of mothers decided to stay home with their little kids and not return to work just yet. On the other hand, inflation and higher gas prices are the underlying factors that may prove a recession yet.

Granted I’m no economist, but I understand ‘what goes up must come down.’ We weren’t going to ride the wave of economic prosperity forever. So what if there’s another recession? You know what? We live through them. Grow up silly billies.

One is the loneliest

In the 1970s, as a little kid I remember always hearing two big adult words: inflation and recession. These words were a constant in the news day after day, year after year after year with no end in sight. There were always layoffs, keeping everyone on high anxiety. Can you imagine? My laid-back denim-rock youth generation raised by nervous nellies. Many parents in my working-class neighborhood and even relatives were given pink slips sometimes more than once. At one point it seemed my parents (a teacher and a building maintenance engineer) were the only ones working who never were laid off. We were lucky. Plus, dad always made money on the side doing electrical work and auto body repair.

I don’t know for a fact about the 1960s’ economy, but I listened to the Greatest Generation fondly reminisce about the era. Working adults at the time recalled the ’60s with a feeling of contentment due to middle-class prosperity. Man, talk about a generation gap. Part of what drove the good-time economy was the war machine, the hippies said. See, the Vietnam War was never meant to end. And so when the war did end in the early-to-mid 1970s, tens of thousands of people lost their jobs that supported the military industrial complex, jobs like making helicopter parts and all kinds of machines needed, well, as the anti-war protesters said, for killing people.

Economically, I grew up in maybe the worst time to follow the Great Depression. Our entire nation suffered from ‘a malaise,’ as President Jimmy Carter said in a televised address. Times were so bad and getting worse every day (there were long car lines for gas and rationing based on license plate numbers) that I truly believed there would never be a good economy. Yep, doom and gloom is all I ever knew. The 1980s in many ways was the worst decade of my life even though I was in college, and it was OK to be poor in your early 20s. Jobs were scarce across the nation. Things weren’t good for people who were not wealthy or gainfully employed. During President George Bush I’s reign, I landed a clerk job at The Dallas Times Herald only to see it and all media thrive during the Persian Gulf War and by year’s end as newspapers continued folding, so did mine in December 1991. I was unemployed and on unemployment for several months and when finally employed not able to make ends meet. (Thanks Mom & Dad for the help!)

Hope springs eternal

So when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, I was caught by surprise and remember saying to my roommate: “Guess everyone else must’ve been as bad off as I’ve been.” At the time a newspaper government reporter, I covered the Clinton presidency quite a bit, seeking any local angle on many of his economic and social programs.

The Clintons’ (Bill and Hillary’s) economic philosophy—don’t sit on the money; spread it around—was influenced by the New Age. One guru named Deepak Chopra advised in his many books to see money in a spiritual way instead of as strictly physical. Don’t think of money as scarce, and don’t be stingy. Chopra teaches that money has energy. We should give money to pay for our needs and as charity to help those who are disadvantaged. That’s just what the Clinton/Gore agenda did; they didn’t sit on the money (as did previous administrations). They budgeted and made sure to take care of the poor and disenfranchised.

And the strangest thing about that newfangled philosophy (one their naysayers ’dissed) was: IT WORKED! So with all his human failings, President Clinton opened the nation’s coffers and ended up balancing the budget and leaving a major surplus. This feat was unheard of, unimaginable to generations of Americans including mine. The economy kept booming. My mandatory 401k retirement fund doubled, tripled, quadrupled each quarter. Chopra teaches that the Universe (or God) is abundant supply. We should give of our money, pay our bills and do so cheerfully, realizing that what we give multiplies—as the old economic philosophy goes, a dollar spent rolls over seven times benefiting other businesses and individuals in the same community. Makes you think.

Recession was buzzed around again during the 2000 presidential election (the one Vice President Al Gore won but lost). Republican George W. Bush had to follow along with his Vice President (international oilman Dick Cheney) that our nation was in an economic downturn. HOW?!? During 2000, many major industries kept laying off tens of thousands of workers. All year long. What was up with that? The election was settled early in 2001. The major layoffs continued until 9/11 threw us into a full-blown undeniable recession with layoffs especially in the telecom field. The military was brought in full force to stop terrorism, fighting overseas in the Middle East. The war (well, two wars) was supposed to be like the Persian Gulf, a major economic boon especially to the oil business and mass media. We were supposed to be liberators, in and out. But that’s not what happened.

The economy struggled during President Bush II’s terms. Layoffs never stopped. No industry or business was safe—because we had become and remain a global economy. By the time Barack Obama was president, teachers were being laid off. What a mess. All those students weren’t going anywhere, and the lucky remaining teachers had twice as much workload. That’s when the Texas Legislature got involved and put a stop to mass teacher layoffs. But the Great Recession of 2008-2009 was pretty bad even for me, twice laid off.

Sure, recessions are drags; nobody likes ’em. But we shouldn’t fear an economic downturn. On the positive side, recessions bring lower prices because no one can afford to pay more. I recall unbelievable deals at department stores. It was like they just wanted the stuff outta the stores. Deals, deals, deals—if you have a job.

Recessions, more than the good times, are part of a bigger economic picture. We’re all in this together. The bad times teach us a lot about ourselves and each other. It’s full of job loss, lower wages, few benefits, longer work hours, family belt tightening, financial hardship, major relocation, and unforeseen challenges. Surviving recession requires grit.

Most public school teachers in Texas are not certified, according to a recent news report. This concerns me, not only because I am certified to teach two subjects, but the public may not care much or consider this development a bit of a tragedy in the ongoing American presumption—for generations now—that public education is broken beyond repair.

Back in the 1950s, when my mother was in college studying to be an elementary teacher, graduates with the degree were deemed certified to teach any subject. They were ‘teachers,’ hired to teach whatever subject was necessary: coaching, history, math, music, science, civics, even more than one subject.

Then the progressive ’60s came along, and teacher certification became a whole new ball of wax. Teachers needed to major in their chosen subjects (except for elementary teachers who were still expected to teach all the basics). Secondary teachers needed to choose a major like history, P.E., music, science, language arts, foreign language, government, business, etc., etc. So when I was going to school in the ’70s, teachers knew their subjects well like reading, math, history, band, and whatever the schools offered and the district and state curriculum required.

Then the ’80s came along with society’s alarm over high school graduates who were functionally illiterate. At the time, I was in college studying to be a teacher, and in Texas the rules changed drastically every two years after each Legislative session. First, every current teacher and professor in the state was tested in reading and writing. Though the teachers’ passing rate was at 98%, a few teachers lost their jobs. A coach and a shop teacher come to mind. There was talk among us college kids that the whole thing was racist, a stunt to put out mainly Black teachers who did not attend white-only colleges back in the Jim Crow days.

Then those of us who still wanted to be teachers had to take pre-certification tests in reading, writing and math. Ugh. I was never good at math but had to pass the subject to be a teacher … of any subject. Later we had to take certification tests in not only our subject(s) but also education itself. Somehow in those days, I ended up taking a good 40 hours of just education coursework including student teaching. And even before student teaching, we had to take brief workshops in teaching reading. We were told the State of Texas considered every teacher a reading teacher—and if a student graduated illiterate, we all could be blamed and our certificates revoked. Ugh.

There’s an art to teaching

Those education courses ended up being like a minor for all-level students like me: those studying music, P.E. or art. There were a lot of classes, tucked into the required general undergraduate course of study and your major subject. And truly, most education courses ended up being fun, enlightening, and easy compared to college in general. Maybe that last part is why the public is OK with teachers not necessarily knowing ‘how to teach’ when starting out. The public expects a novice to learn on the job like a cashier, bank teller, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, legislator. The problem is: schools are Kid World not the Real Work World most adults know well.

Kid World is not like family life either. Believe it or not, kids in school generally act nothing like they do in front of their parents. Parenting and teaching are not the same thing either; the goals of parenting and teaching are not the same; neither are their respective outcomes.

But I credit all that education coursework for preparing me for what to expect when walking into a class of 20 students any grade K-12. And I was surprised to learn from day one everything I had been taught about student behavior and attitudes was true.

Back in the mid ’80s, along with all the teacher tests, were required education courses such as: History of American Education, Multicultural Education, Lesson Planning, Classroom Management, Educational Technology, Early Childhood Development and Educational Psychology (more than one course).

And the year I graduated, earning my Texas teacher certificate the same date, the Legislature reduced those courses to about 18 hours, kicking out Multicultural Education for one. That lone course was in many ways the most important to me as a WASP (you know, White Anglo Saxon Protestant). Didn’t even know I was one or how ‘we,’ white people, think, act and behave especially toward non-whites. Educators of future educators knew the projected demographics, so we’d be prepared. They weren’t wrong … about anything.

In the 1990s, the Texas Legislature, trying to fill so many open teaching slots across the state—which continues—allowed anyone with a college degree to be a teacher. Some school districts hire on the spot; others create 50 hours of online coursework to complete within the first year of teaching; some districts create an alternative certification program. But an AC teacher may never have to take college education courses of days gone by.

The philosophy of the Texas Legislature, allowing college graduates to apply for and receive teaching jobs even if not certified, was that secondary students would benefit from the wealth of knowledge shared by an adult who had spent a career in banking or the military, for example.

But now most teachers are sans ‘certification.’ Does that really benefit young people? Most teachers quit within five years of trying out the career, granted whether they’re certified or not. I’ve seen new teachers quit the first week, first month, first semester, and first year. Can’t blame them. They are educated and can find other opportunities for work, maybe earning more money. Besides, not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. I’d say most people.

What I’ve learned as a teacher is: schools and students first must have continuity and consistency. They need routine, day after day, year after year. Students need to know the people teaching them were willingly prepared to teach in our nation’s schools. They need to feel sincerity, excitement, passion, and dedication to the subject taught by their teachers. And young people can tell, and they often expect, adults who will breeze in and out of their lives, leaving them when the going gets tough. Other than parent, there’s not a tougher job than public school teacher. The educated adults who stick around—if at all possible—as school teachers make a positive life-altering impression on kids. All of us remember our favorite teachers … for a reason.

Wonder if they realize by now the eyes of Americans are studying them up and down. After dozens and dozens of mass school shootings since, say 1994, there’s an obvious profile. White. 18-22. Drop out, unsuccessful in school. Insecure. Loner. Angry. Suicidal. Desirous of military-style assault rifles.

The American people are left carrying on as if living in a war zone because war rifles are the weapons of choice in this bloody Ground Hog Day we just can’t stop. So now everybody must remain on high alert wherever we go, work, play, worship, shop, travel, drive, perhaps for another generation or so.  Because the 20 million war assault rifles circulating in this country aren’t going away any time soon as well as their body-blasting bullets.

Texas released a final report on the Uvalde school massacre, blaming a confederacy of dunces among law enforcement agencies who stood back for more than one hour and allowed it to happen. The state’s insult against the community’s law officers makes no sense to the families of the deceased and all the students who survived being shot.

The state report detailed the shooter. He had attended the very school where he carried out his child-killing spree, even walking right into the elementary classroom where he sat for a year long ago and was bullied every day, according to his old teacher. High school classmates called him ‘school shooter,’ he was so dark, creepy and suspicious. The only thing he had never done was handle guns; his family never indulged his fantasy by giving him one as requested for birthdays and Christmas. The report states the day of his murder plan was the first time he shot a gun.  

Suicidal depression

With all the school shootings and mass shootings elsewhere by young males, society has focused on security, fencing, armed campus police, metal detectors, active shooter training, key card entry doors, and counseling shell-shocked children and teens—we’ve neglected to focus on prevention. We’ve become that cynical, calling each mass shooting Tuesday in America. But most of the young mass shooters primarily are suicidal … but they don’t wanna die alone. They’re so angry at the world, some shoot their families first then go out to a public place and shoot as many people before turning the gun on themselves or being killed by police. Our country averages one mass shooting a day, according to statistics by Giffords, the nonprofit founded by and named after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who bravely survived a gunshot to the head during a mass shooting.

Giffords’ statistics bring to light what we should have been focusing on: preventing suicide by firearm. Every year 41,000 Americans are killed by firearms: EVERY DAY 110 killed with guns. Almost 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides, 38 percent homicides, 1.3 percent police shootings, 1.2 percent unintentional/accidents, and less than one percent undetermined. Giffords goes on to state, “Firearm access triples suicide risk. Waiting periods and extreme risk protection orders offer people in crisis a second chance.” More shockingly, Giffords’ research found: “Three million American children are directly exposed to gun violence each year.”

Along with our national watch to prevent suicides, whether family, friend or neighbor, a new suicide prevention hotline has been rolled out: 988. Easy enough for everyone to remember. Trained staff, even people who once tried to commit suicide, answer phones to help others in emotional crisis, distraught people who want to end their lives right now.

The latest phrase in public schooling these days is SEL: Social and Emotional Learning. This was created in part to help the nation’s students who had to deal with a year or two of online learning away from schools, classmates, teachers and in a way reality. But SEL is geared toward helping any student who’s in crisis.

All the adults spinning over continuous mass shootings have looked at the issue not from the developing brain of an adolescent, the usual suspect in school shootings. The frontal lobe of the human brain, the part in our foreheads that allows us to think before we act, is usually not fully developed until mid 20s, and brain scientists are now discovering for some humans mid 30s. Young people see every issue in extremes: “You always say that!”; “You never do this!” They really think they’ve got life all figured out at age 16. They only see black and white, right and wrong. If they feel wronged, they’ll seek revenge. This is the way of youth, which again can last way into the 20s and 30s for some people, particularly males.

Seeing life in shades of gray [the way life really is, we come to accept] is incomprehensible if not impossible for most adolescents. With their frontal lobe not fully formed, some truly conclude nothing will change in their lives, there’s no hope, no meaning, so what’s the point? We’ve all been there. But you know how young people won’t listen to those of us with more time on the planet. Wish they would. Any one of us could tell a kid how to find the positive in themselves or any situation, how people change and circumstances change and nothing lasts forever. School was not the best time of our lives for many of us. We’re randomly put together in classrooms and expected to deal with assorted personalities, from the bully and the popular to the meek and the rebellious.

‘Keep ’em talking’ is an easy enough first step in suicide prevention. That is where so many families fall apart. Everything ends in an argument. Parents refuse to understand feelings or issues that are very important to a young person. Young people feel left on their own, hearing their parents say time and again, “Life’s tough, kid.” If the family is the fabric of a great nation, well then, America, we have a lot of patch work to do.   

Check out the Giffords organization to stop gun violence:

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A liberal colleague—someone terminally ill yet kept working to the end—shared with me, of all people, what may have been her final thought about American politics: “All my life, I’ve seen the political pendulum swing to the left or to the right. It never stays in the middle.”  Strange words she seemed intent on departing to me, an acquaintance more than a friend. I didn’t realize politics was on her mind. Maybe she sensed a kindred spirit. She was at the head of the Baby Boomers, I at the end. Whatever the reason, this seemed a final statement, and she wanted me to know her Big Lesson … from living in this nation.

Right she was about the political pendulum. I’ve realized it, too. Republican leadership finds it necessary to cement moral beliefs into law, and Democratic leadership jackhammers such restrictions to govern with a free and open mind. So I was not surprised to find in my lifetime that abortion would become illegal again and no more a woman’s right.

Aren’t we aware of America’s hateful history regarding women? Hanging them for witchcraft. Throwing them in jail for midwifery and treating sick neighbors with herbs. Writing into law the legal age of consent for ‘women’ to be age 10. ! Making contraceptives illegal and later only available to married women. Laying on thick the double standard between the sexes. Permitting sexual harassment at work and anywhere else. Terminating employment when a female worker is pregnant (even if married). Forbidding women to open bank accounts or credit accounts without their husband’s signature. Making women change their last names when married. Allowing men not only to send their wives to asylums for ‘hysteria’ but granting divorce for any reason and leaving former wives homeless and penniless.

Yeah, we’ve come a long way, baby.

What life on earth has shown me is: When it comes to human relationships, nothing ever changes. Girls chase the boys who do not like them. Guys pursue gals for sex. Pregnancy sometimes occurs among sexually active teens. Unintended fathers rarely stick around through marriage or fatherhood. Some grandparents, perhaps feeling guilty for mistakes made in raising their teens, end up raising their grandkids. Teens who get pregnant and keep their children end up in a cycle of poverty they will never break. And the daughters of teen moms often end up the same way. The same-sex parent’s influence runs deep.

Sorry to sound cynical, but cynicism is why Roe v Wade was approved across the nation 50 years ago. Abortion was going to happen no matter what. For some, men and women, boyfriend and girlfriend, religion and unborn human life go out the window when money is the issue: big money to not only pay doctor bills but hospitals, insurance, food, diapers, medical care, education, clothing, furniture, formula. The statistics about abortion found that more women than men opposed the procedure but most women who sought abortion already had at least one child.

The facts of life

Money is the bottom line in a lot of human decisions. That is another Big Life Learning Lesson for me. If you want to solve a mystery, ‘follow the money’ will usually lead to the answer. Why would a woman have an abortion? Follow the money. Women are, more so than men, the practical ones.

So after the political Right finally overturned Roe v Wade, word was they were plotting to go after women who had abortions over the past five decades and then somehow have the time and money to look for any woman who had a miscarriage—because of another old hypocritical American belief about women are to blame for a miscarriage. The Right could not be gracious about their big political, social, moral and religious victory. Seems they are out for blood … just like our American ancestors in 17^th century Puritan New England.

My other Big Life on Earth Lesson is about judgement, always against women. That’s what all the witch hunts were about, sticking it to women. A modern look into the real reason for the witch hysteria is, you guessed it, about money and land ownership and men in their communities lusting after women’s (often widows’) literal treasure. Now the Right has us thinking that a new witch hunt is underway, this time seeking any woman who pursues or has ever had an abortion—and here in Texas ‘awarding’ the snoops $10,000 of MY tax dollars per conviction.

The mistakes young people make, always as I previously said, come with lifelong heartache, not always an unexpected pregnancy and the birth of a child but more often a lingering cynicism—that love itself is an illusion. Many songs about being used and cheated and just as many about romance lovers swear will last a lifetime. Love, whether from one or both in a romantic relationship, can and does lead to a new life. The circle of life, the outcome of sex, is beautiful … but not always, not for every single person or all couples.

This far into the 21^st century, Americans are not about to stop loving who they love, being who they are, making love to whom they want. We’d like for cooler heads to prevail when it comes to sex. But that’s not human nature.

Abortion is an issue that many Americans have worked to overturn. Their belief is life begins at conception, now at fertilization. My God. So Puritan-sure of themselves. My point is: Life is a Mystery. The detected heartbeat law, passed in half the states to prevent early abortion, is before the heart is formed. So what is making the beat, visible in a sonogram at six weeks? The elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease are alive as far as a beating heart, yet they are not living.

Americans love to entwine politics with high moral philosophy like when life begins and when life ends. That’s why just as many people who are anti-abortion are also anti-euthanasia, ending a comatose life on machines. And yet the same crowd supports capital punishment for the criminally condemned.

Judging is what Americans do best whether women (who make up more than half the population) or racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, the homeless, the addicts, the insane, the unsanitized. American laws regress and progress perhaps in equal measure: Eisenhower to Kennedy, Johnson to Nixon, Bush I to Clinton, Clinton to Bush II, Bush II to Obama, Obama to Trump. Banning abortion no matter the circumstance—butting into millions of women’s and girls’ lives with no business to do so—is regressive. It’s judging women and girls and lives most people have not lived. Why is the scripture “Judge not” overlooked, overruled? We were a better nation when we did not judge abortion. People are better off tending to their own affairs instead of others who they do not know or care about.

Hear that music in the air?  Or more likely on the air waves?  For more than a year now, National Public Radio has been presenting the favorite songs of the Covid-19 deceased.  As the songs play family and friends talk about their loved one who died from this specific disease.  One group talked about their friend whose funeral song was My Way and how once they all had intended to tour Latin America.  After the friend’s departure, the friends took a group vacation to the locale, and during a night of dining and celebration the familiar music of My Way was played through the sound system with the words sang in Spanish.  They took it as a sign their friend was enjoying herself right along with them.

And now … the favorite songs of the deceased children in Uvalde are being presented as brief well-intentioned uplifting features by reporters.  The premise is that remembering the favorite songs of these children will somehow put a smile on the face of grieving families and friends—as if hearing a song somebody liked in life creates a positive way to honor the deceased.

These are kids around the age 10.  I’d sure hate for someone to bring up my favorite song at that age had my life been cut short.  Everyone knew mine was We’re an American Band by Grand Funk Railroad.  Talk about inappropriate.  I couldn’t understand most of the words, just liked the beat and the noise.  I got the 45 for my birthday and played it all the time.  The disc was yellow.  Cool, huh?

The next year my favorite song was Nothing from Nothing by Billy Preston.  My mother liked it, too, because of Preston’s upbeat piano style.  For my birthday, she got me his album The Kids & Me featuring that song.  I played the album all the time.  In the next couple years, I was awestruck with two two-album masterworks produced by the legendary Stevie Wonder.  That was a great musical era … of and for songs.

Sing, sing a song

When I was a kid, there were soft rock songs about just singing (how happy it makes you feel to sing songs), even about songwriting like Barry Manilow’s I Write the Songs.  Songs are my favorite art form, too.  I’ve been an amateur songwriter since age 10, my first song a hard rocker called Whirlpool of Love.

And because the selected songs performed at funerals are something I’ve paid a lot of attention to, I chose a couple for my own memorial service, ahem, many years from now.  Ready?  I don’t think you are.  I think you’re rolling your eyes.  OK, OK.  Remember: I’m intense.  And keep in mind the era of which I came, greatly influenced by the eclectic music of the 1970s.  Here goes:

The preamble will be Time by Pink Floyd.  I’ve always loved this song and the band, their music a notch above the Beatles, and I’m a huge Beatles’ fan.  However, in deeply contemplating the songs for my eventual memorial—songs I’d like to leave loved ones by which to remember little ol’ me—not one is a Beatle song, not even In My Life.  Never liked that song all that much though it is quite a lovely sentiment.  I prefer the edginess of Time because of that last line “Thought I’d something more to say.”  Whatever disease or event that ends my life, I imagine I won’t be ready for The End.  Like those school children.  One in the classroom even said, “I don’t want to die.”

For the conclusion of my life’s memorial, my selection is …

Carry On by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young!

God, I love that song. I dig the whole folk-rock, guitar strumming, picking, vocal harmonies, bouncy tempo, psychedelic organ—the whole groovy hippie vibe.  Great song.  My message through that song choice, of course, is that survivors carry on with living! Dig in! Travel! Enjoy! Live!

And when I die

Hmm.  I love that song, too.  I guess I should plug it into my memorial set.  The song’s refrain “And when I die, there’ll be one child born in a world to carry on,” just gets me in the pit of my soul.  Really makes you think, doesn’t it? How brave songwriter Laura Nyro was to pen the entire song and all the acts who recorded it from Peter, Paul & Mary to Blood, Sweat & Tears to Sammy Davis Jr.  This song I only remember vaguely in childhood.  As a kid the lyrics stunned and shocked me.  It seemed blasphemous, like a song atheists would want at their funerals.

But the song acknowledges a new generation follows us and makes us realize our lives aren’t permanent. We just hope our dreams for the world and all people—world peace, good will, niceness, understanding, helpfulness and empathy—will prevail. It all will be left to people who follow us. God only knows what they’ll say and think about our own time spent on the planet. 

The line “one child born in a world to carry on” implies life, perhaps human life, continues elsewhere maybe not only on Earth.  Maybe the songwriter was saying humanity won’t be destroyed but continues elsewhere if our planet is doomed by nuclear war or pollution or something unknown.

Songs are mystical. They have the power to mesmerize us into calmness, fury, acceptance, depression—every human emotion from love to hate but mostly love. The melody stays with us, an enchanting ear worm, as we ponder poetic lyrics for a message from here to eternity … and vice versa.

In Dante’s Inferno, a Renaissance work of fiction that details nine circles of hell, the deepest one is not a burning pit.  Quite the contrary, it’s ice cold.  Think of the saying: She’s cold.  It means the person is pure evil; that person has no soul.

The pit of hell, the most desolate realm of evil, came to mind after debating this week yet again the issue of gun control.  At this point—after the mass shooting deaths in Uvalde coupled with the revelation that gunshot wounds are now the number one cause of death among children in the U.S.—I am ashamed of my country and my state.

This week’s mass shooting at an elementary school may not have occurred if Texas did not encourage 18-year-olds to buy military-style assault rifles—those weapons of war that spray bullets to kill many people in seconds flat. These are guns that blow bodies to bits.  That is the reason, if we’re being honest, the parents of the 19 dead schoolchildren were asked for DNA to identify mounds of bloody flesh.

Not left unnoticed, gun-loving Americans display little to no remorse, just like the typically young gunmen who commit these heinous bloodbaths.  I bet their eyes have never welled over any of the dozens of publicized shooting massacres which undeniably have increased since the federal assault rifle ban was lifted.  What an evil mistake.

That damn movie

Since Bonnie & Clyde, the movies were never the same.  And our culture followed suit.  Both became more violent and high-powered guns more glamourized and expected.  Dallas’ famous gangster couple drove state to state lickety-split carting shooting machines that were used to fight the first world war.  Oh for the days when the public used to debate handguns in 1980-81 when John Lennon then President Ronald Reagan and his press secretary James Brady were shot. In between those two eras, high-powered assault rifles were not easily obtained by the public and rarely used. We used to not have mass shootings. We only saw them in the movies.

The movies weren’t the only visuals that relied ever more on heavy artillery, blood and blasts to flesh and an obscene body count.  At the end of the 20^th century, video games came out with the premise to shoot as many ‘people’ as you can, and you win.  The ‘shooter’ games featured a gun to hold and red blood spurting from dead bodies on screen.  Boys loved playing them, their parents seeing no problem with developing killer instinct.

Then Columbine happened.

Oh how shocked our nation was as we watched on our TVs the surreal image of high school kids running from their school, hands held up in surrender less the cops take them for the assailants.

Since 1999 and Columbine, nothing has changed when it comes to mass shootings, at schools and everywhere else.  Mass shootings have only increased.

As we grappled with Columbine, psychologists told us ‘the brain thinks everything we see is real.’  So we ought to be careful what we watch and what we spend hours watching.  After the mass shooting, they told us the youth generation as well as American society has grown numb to gun culture and shooting deaths.  We are several generations now who’ve seen people get shot on TV shows and movies several times a week, perhaps hundreds of times a year.  The shooter video games also desensitize us so that we never stop and ask ourselves “What am I doing?” when we kill and kill and keep on killing in order to win a bloody game.

Let’s play Dysfunctional Family Feud!

The Uvalde school shooting brought out empathy in me, and I don’t even have children.  But it wasn’t hard at all to put myself in the place of a mother whose kid was shot to death at school or even the parents whose children are hospitalized with gunshot wounds.  The news and reality of a growing death toll was like a punch in the gut.  I opened my mouth in a silent cry, like a wailing mother.  The reality of what happened, what we’ve gone through vicariously time and again with no end in sight, brought tears to my eyes … because I know a parent who loses a child wants to die herself.

But in my world, others remained stoic. Unmoved. Glacial. Stiff upper lip.  I could hear their responses as to why no remorse: “We don’t even know those people.”  And … since Sandy Hook, “We don’t even know if that really happened.”  All mass shootings in the U.S. are real, not like Dante’s imagined Inferno.  Yet he knew something about evil being cold.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Texas Governor and Legislature have yet to admit their extreme error in allowing teen-agers—notoriously irresponsible and unable to soberly think of the consequences beforehand—to purchase and own virtual Tommy guns.  Bonnie and Clyde weren’t much older when they brandished submachine guns into banks to steal other people’s money and shoot anyone who got in their way including law officers.

Shoot, a few days after the Uvalde elementary school massacre, the Lone Star State hosted the NRA convention, despite a couple of big-name music acts backing out and a tasteful change in plans to substitute a video address by Gov. Abbott instead of his scheduled live appearance.  Any date the NRA chose would be framed by a mass shooting, they’re so common.  At least pro-gunners were met with thousands of Americans who demanded responsible gun laws instead of irresponsible ones like here in Texas. 

In debates on gun control among people I know—practically everyone 2^nd Amendment spouters—I’ve been told that high-powered military-style assault rifles have been in use since the 19^th century and have been available to the public.  Horsefeathers.  Then I’m told, incredulously, the solution is more guns; if everyone had a high-powered assault rifle, there would be no more massacres.  Then I’m countered with what they think the real issue is: not military-style assault rifles or too many people with guns but mental illness.

Americans, please.

We have our share of crazies who hear and act on “KILL! KILL! KILL!”  But we don’t have any more sociopaths than we’ve always had before these military war rifles were easily available.  What we do have is lax gun laws, nonchalant cynical gun rights advocates, American greed, and the NRA mantra: The solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.  They have the gall to declare classroom teachers should be armed with guns.  The American education system has come to this?  This would never have been allowed in the days of the wild west … unless the teacher was Belle Starr.

Folks in the NRA suggest instead of being ashamed of our great nation over all the senseless shooting massacres, Americans should just ‘deal with it.’  Times have changed, and we need to learn to live with many people having lots of guns and daily mass shootings at ‘soft targets’ and funerals and medical bills and lawsuits and reconstructive surgeries and physical therapy and counseling and opiate addictions and ruined lives and unhealed trauma and getting over it and moving on.  There ain’t no turning back the clock.  Ain’t no going back to the days of Bonnie and Clyde … er.