Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

I … just … can’t be one of those people—the scornful masses who if given the chance would spew at millions of girls and women each year who find themselves ruefully, unexpectedly, unjoyously and secretly pregnant:

“You gonna have that baby!!  You hear me?!”

The noisy & ever nosy anti-abortion crowd has always been about one thing: judging females in their child-bearing years—essentially judging girls and women most of their lives.  Their cause is about butting into millions and millions of lives in which they have no business telling how to react and what to do in the matter of unintentional pregnancy.  Female lives matter.  Those who pursue an abortion are people who for many reasons (all no one’s business) know they cannot have a baby at this time in their lives. 

The Texas all-boys club who swiftly banned abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, AND for some bizarre reason encourage any nut in the country to sue people ‘involved’ in assisting an abortion in the state, is just showing their hind ends to the rest of a weary world.  Why not brand the female with a scarlet letter A?

Ever since Roe v Wade became law in the early 1970s, safe abortion was a private option.  I don’t remember when abortion was illegal.  I mentioned that to a sister as we marched in the national women’s rights protest against the Texas abortion ban.  Her response to me was “I do!”  Our country’s elderly women have not forgotten the hangers, back alleys, unlicensed assistants and other gruesome methods and humiliations endured by many a teen or young woman prior to 1973.  Deaths by self-induced and unsanitary abortions were so numerous and known to most women, feminist Gloria Steinem referred to it as “our Vietnam.” 

The decades since abortion was legalized in the U.S., the anti-abortion crowd seemingly swelled and grew self-assured and politically empowered.  Not only did they intimidate and scorn anyone trying to enter a women’s public health clinic, they also commenced to blowing up the facilities one by one, shooting physicians whose practice included abortions, and publishing names and addresses along with other personal and family information of anyone associated with medical centers where abortions are performed.  In short, the fanatical anti-abortion crowd was notorious for death threats.  Many physicians were murdered by the same people, practically all men, who claim to be pro-life.

Why is everybody getting to decide except the pregnant?

Perhaps if men had a better track record about unintentional pregnancy, abortion would be rare.  But male hormones, AKA male teen-agers, and grown men who find their lover pregnant have had a long history of fleeing the scene.  If truth be told, they may be the first to suggest abortion.  These are private conversations after all.  Abortion is quite likely many a man’s first reaction.  It takes a very special teen-ager or man to accept his consequences of ‘creating a new life,’ of suddenly becoming a father, of acknowledging his offspring, and finding a way to support his new baby.  But alas, this touching scenario is more fiction than the rule.  And every woman knows it, and girls will learn it.

Who was the ’70s feminist who chided: If men got pregnant, abortion would be a legal holiday?  I heard Cher say it.  She’s in that senior women’s group who remember when abortion was illegal, a dirty word, a dirty secret—a shame.  I don’t.  In college I heard rumors of girls who traveled out of state to have abortions … fearing in Texas they might run into their parents.  That’s how ashamed they were.   Many of my generation as young girls felt unable to talk to their parents about being pregnant.  Then the anti-abortion crowd forced the conversation by making abortion a parent’s decision.  No minor could obtain an abortion without her parent’s consent.  How awful.

The poor girl has to tell her parents she’s pregnant when they don’t know she’s sexually active.  In my day, a lot of parents would have flown off the handle if hearing the news.  I never bought the ‘pro-life’ side that parents are supportive and loving.  The reality I saw was parents pressing for the new life, their grandchild after all, and giving little if any consideration to their pregnant daughter, what she wanted to do.

Life’s a mess.  No doubt about it.  Trouble is, women deal with life’s messes all the time … and men just don’t have to.  Take the Texas abortion ban that assumes pregnancy at six weeks after a missed period.  Doctors don’t even want to see a patient who thinks she’s pregnant, even if a home pregnancy test confirms it, until she misses two periods.  This is the messy reality of which the Texas Legislature and Governor are unaware—and every 21st century woman in America knows it and are both laughing and fuming.  See, men, women aren’t like finely tuned cars, having periods every month like clockwork.  Sometimes the female body just doesn’t want to have a period for one or more months.  May be due to stress.  May be weight gain or weight loss.  May be over exercising.  May be hormonal changes.  Texas Legislators don’t know any of that either.  Did I mention there are tens of millions of women out here, each with her own cycle of which is in reality out of her or any man’s control?  Meanwhile, contraceptives have been known to fail.  I noticed Plan B’s off the shelf at pharmacies, well maybe just in Texas.

To be a woman is to be out of control.  We who are female accept our fate.  Yes, those of us with more testosterone would like to live like men: free a whole lifetime unencumbered without bras and monthly hygiene products.  Must be nice.  Especially between the years of 10 to, oh, 55.  It’s as if God has blessed men and cursed women.

Wait a minute.  That’s exactly what men want us to think.  They’ve written it into laws and cultures for centuries, only in my lifetime to have been overturned.  And it’s been a great lifetime for women since the 1970s, since 1973.

Heart & Soul

Like everyone in America, for years I wrestled with the issue of abortion. Scientists disagree on the moment life begins; they don’t all agree it’s at conception.  That is a belief not a biological fact.  When younger, I would have judged a girl or woman if she had an abortion.  You shouldn’t have sex if you don’t want to get pregnant, I would have thought, as indoctrinated.  But along my solitary spiritual path, I experienced moments of profound enlightenment—on this issue of abortion, which as long as I can remember has never ceased to tear this country apart.

First enlightenment: In the 1980s the Reagan/Bush administrations mandated a survey of women who’d had abortions.  The purpose was to find how abortion impacted the mental health and physical well being of these women.  The survey took years to complete.  The findings were supposed to conclude, as society believed way back when, that women who’ve had an abortion are emotionally unstable and their lives a wreck.  But that was an old wives’ tale.  The modern survey found that a good 98 percent of women who had undergone a safe and legal abortion not only completed their education whether high school or college but suffered no lingering emotional distress, went on to marry and have healthy children, and even work satisfying and rewarding careers.

That two percent or so who maintained abortion was the worst decision of their lives and they could never forgive themselves for what they considered murdering their unborn offspring, well among the general population 10-14 percent suffer anxiety and neurosis caused by assorted past traumas.  Abortion itself did not create mental illness in a woman, the report concluded.  This was according to the former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Second enlightenment: I support abortion but wondered about the ‘soul.’  Was abortion killing a human soul?  There are cultures in the other half of the world that believe a soul does not enter a body until a few months after birth.  A large number of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 30 to 50 percent, most in the first trimester, sometimes before a woman knows she’s pregnant, and more sadly in the second and third trimesters.  Collectively we mourn the life that was … as if fully formed and created, vibrant and healthy … in our minds.  Miscarriage is heartbreaking.  We even name the unborn before fully formed, before entering our shared world and breathing on their own.

The divide of our society on abortion is stitched into the fabric of American history and our puritanical past.  Today we believe our Puritan ancestors were uptight miserable people so sure of themselves, certain they were the Elect bound for heaven and everyone else doomed to hellfire.  It is ironic that a couple hundred years later ‘the scarlet letter,’ a story from America’s past based on Puritanical prejudices, remains an A, with all the same judgement, scorn, and sexual imagery forced deep down into the human subconscious.  Hypocrisy drives people insane.  As a modern country, leader of the Free World, we’ve been better off leaving judgement to God while privately following our individual spiritual convictions.

Why are we watching Impeachment: American Crime Story?  We know the entire lengthy sordid saga and its anti-climactic outcome, we who are middle aged and older and I mean the world over.  The FX series, which Monica Lewinsky is a producer, presents all the juicy details in addicting soap opera segments.  Each episode reveals intriguing behind-the-scenes storylines with plot and character development unknown to many of us who in the late 1990s had to deal with President Bill Clinton’s affair with a young White House intern, Ms. Lewinsky, and the subsequent big fat federal case made out of it, ram-rodded by his arch enemies the DC Republicans who would not stop investigating his every move (past, present and future) until they got him impeached.

And after an over-the-top drawn-out hardball investigation in which every single sexual detail between Clinton and Lewinsky was publicized online, in newspapers, conservative talk radio, and nightly news (not to forget late-night TV and weekly SNL and MadTV sketches) THEN painstakingly repeated during the impeachment trial—all of it seeming an eternity—President Bill Clinton was … shoot, what’s that word, you know when you’re not convicted?  Yeah, he was acquitted.  Do you understand?  The same federal legislative body who voted to impeach President Clinton for lying under oath about an affair turned around and voted to acquit.  That means he was found not guilty.  He didn’t do anything major enough to forcefully remove him from office.

Wee doggies

Because of a sexual harassment suit against him stemming from Clinton’s time as Arkansas Gov, in his second term as President, Clinton had been brought in for questioning by the plaintiff’s lawyers.  The deposition was videotaped and then presented on the news.  Being a lawyer himself and overly confident, he thought he could pull a fast one over his own colleagues.  One of his memorable responses was about the definition of the word ‘is.’  But when out of the blue specific details were brought out about his sexual escapades with a Ms. Lewinsky, he was caught totally off guard.  His countenance revealed embarrassment.  He was trapped.  The jig was up.  He lied in the deposition about the affair.  In anger he lashed out to the media who questioned him about the affair, lying yet again and this meant to all of us.  He lied to his closest confidantes like George Stephanopoulos.  He lied to his wife. 

Then when a certain unclean dress kept by Ms. Lewinsky became part of evidence against him (not sure how and why this mattered way back then), President Clinton was compelled to tell the truth.  He went on national TV one evening to confess he indeed had had an affair with the specifically named former White House intern and that it was wrong.  His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, did not speak to him afterwards.  He accepted his fate out in the White Dog House.  Meanwhile, wisecracking Texas Gov. Ann Richards made light of the whole thing when he came down here to support her cause.  She told the crowd: “Bill Clinton isn’t the first man to ever lie to me,” then quipped, “And he won’t be the last!”  Everyone laughed, she was so funny, as the President of the United States stood behind her, red faced, head bowed but laughing right along with his people, the Democrats.  We knew everything about Bill Clinton by then.

The good old days

Back in the 1990s, I was a government reporter.  For eight years I covered many of Clinton’s innovative economic programs, which by the way worked wonders in communities and surrounding regions.  He had a plan for everything.  If a community lost a major industry, federal money came in for former employees in the manner of education and job training programs.  The economy in the ’90s—which every Republican enjoyed while vehemently disagreeing with every step Clinton took—was the best of my lifetime as far as investment.  Funny how after the ‘impeachment plan’ didn’t work, Republicans started tossing the word ‘recession’ around just to see if it might stick, just creating a mild panic if possible.  They would not shut up about it as the 21^st century neared.  It seemed witchy, like they were ‘willing’ an economic catastrophe—because, see, when Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore naturally ran for President against Republican George W. Bush, the economy was in great shape and the budget was not only balanced but developed a bountiful surplus!  Clinton handed his robust economy to Gore, but the Dem didn’t win.  And the rest is history, perhaps more bitter than sweet.

During the Clinton presidency, there were always rumors of him being a skirt chaser, but then the rumors would go away.  Hillary always pooh-poohed any questions about her husband having affairs.  A well-educated, practical, dynamite mother, with a solid middle-class upbringing, the First Lady seemed a logical woman who did not bend to public pressure.  She was the epitome of emotional if not spiritual strength.  Every year, and for years after her time as First Lady, she was named in the top of the Most Admired Women in America and even in the world.  I thought she didn’t believe any of the allegations and so we shouldn’t either.  In fact, she always blamed “a vast right-wing conspiracy” for her husband’s troubles centering on rumored affairs and sexual harassment.  I also remember how every time he was ‘under the gun’ regarding an affair, he’d suddenly bomb the Middle East.  I’ve never forgotten that oddity especially for a peacenik that he claimed to be.  A dark comedy movie was made about his administration, something along the lines of the ‘tail wagging the dog.’

The national media is at fault in bringing us Bill Clinton warts and all.  Surely seasoned hard-nosed journalists would know the truth: that he carried on with a lot of women.  The rumors were played down to nonexistence.  Clinton had the ragin’ Cajun James Carville on his side, too.  And when Carville talks, ever’body listens.  He just makes sense.  But he knew, too, the public and private Clinton were the same.  Clinton’s friends—and he had a lot of them in very high places—played down silly gossip and lauded the great shape the U.S. was in.

Confused, because I don’t know these people or even people who know them, I would argue with others that there was no way Bill Clinton had time to have an affair with a White House intern.  He was a very busy man.  He traveled all the time, did a million things, and made few mistakes. 

But then he told us he lied and indeed had had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky.

From that moment, any time I saw his mug on TV, I cussed the lying sack of (**&.  I removed a framed photo of President Clinton arriving on Air Force One, taken by my brother who was in the Air Force and was part of military detail after the plane landed.

Time to think

As a reporter, I wasn’t sure what to think.  How naïve was I, insisting like Hillary that Bill doesn’t do things like chase women, supporting him till he confessed he lied about an affair?  How did I miss The Story?  Everyone who ever lived in Arkansas knew the truth; they told me all along.  Why did the national media miss the story, the truth about Bill Clinton, or not report it?  There were women who would have flings with Clinton.  The world thought he had charisma and was attractive.  The only person I knew who thought Bill Clinton was attractive and charismatic was Bill Clinton.  That’s reporter instinct.  I never bought into his charisma.  Maybe it’s because I’m southern, too.

Watching Impeachment and rehashing all our national memories and disgust with the former President, I’ve been impressed by the portrayal of certain journalists and the depiction of right-wing burgeoning internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge.  One journalist in the series knows Clinton harasses women for sex but cannot report about it without the women talking to him or confirming through public information like lawsuits.  When presented with Linda Tripp’s taped conversations of Ms. Lewinsky gushing about or sobbing over the affair with BC, the reporter refuses to take the bait.  He explains journalism ethics prohibits him from reporting a story based on conversations in which someone is unknowingly recorded.  Meanwhile, Drudge’s character literally goes through garbage for any gossip to type into his internet ‘report’ for all right-leaning readers to see, facts unchecked yet scooping real reporters.  At a DC Republican party, he’s commended as a journalist who sides with their political views.

Impeachment makes me ponder: What exactly was the crime?  A married man who’s the U.S. President lied under oath about an affair, so he’s impeached?  The Europeans during that time thought we Americans were petty, childish, cruel, judgmental and obsessed about sex.  My ‘Lou Grant’ editor held firm the whole ordeal over Clinton was politically motivated; the Republicans wanted to kick him out of office, they hated him so much.  And lying about an affair is nothing to be impeached over.  As a young adult back then, I wasn’t so sure and was persuaded by the community as well as the nation, even Oprah Winfrey, who were disgusted by the President.  Clinton did lie under oath, and his actions (lying and having an affair with a young intern) were unbecoming of a U.S. President.

Through the decades since, I managed to come to my senses about Bill Clinton’s presidency: My editor was right all along.

Clinton said everyone wrestles with an addiction, whether food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex.  Clinton as President said his hope for abortion was that it be ‘safe, legal and rare.’  Stephanopoulos’ book on Clinton was titled All Too Human.  Impeachment is a much-needed study of a time in American history when national politics was sport to the death one way or another.  Nothing has changed in American politics, but much has changed with the American people: from our lack of empathy then to our hard-wired cynicism today.

I am one of the 75 percent of Americans who supported ending the war in Afghanistan. Twenty years … what were we thinking?  It’s not a disrespect toward our military personnel, serving for American pride, custom, bravery and/or career training and college funding.  It’s not a lack of empathy toward Afghan girls and women who will once again live under harsh rules and unspeakable abuse and indecency.  It’s not misunderstanding a different culture, one that follows their religion with a sincere piety.  It’s not forgetting 9/11 and the attacks on our World Trade Center, Pentagon and attempt on the White House.

In 2008, years into our two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I voted for Barack Obama as President because I thought he would end the wars.  He ended one but not both.  Yet true to his word he was in charge when Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, was captured and summarily killed.  That was really all Americans wanted.  But our military remained in both countries.

Memory seems blurry, it’s been a generation ago.  But we entered Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks because … what?  Their people were seen in news footage on September 11, 2001, cheering the deaths and injuries of Americans and destruction of vitally important buildings? 

The Afghanistan government and the people of that country had nothing to do with 9/11.  We knew it at the time.  And to our shock, we soon learned their impoverished country was essentially living in the 7^th century, forced by intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and daily public beheadings and stonings by a severe form of Islamic fundamentalists: al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Decisions were swift, but the U.S. entered Afghanistan and then for some reason Iraq.  We were supposed to be fighting terrorism by these sects of Islamic fundamentalism.

But practically all of the men who were part of the highly coordinated and audacious 9/11 attack—soaring two American passenger airplanes directly into the Twin Towers in New York City—were from Saudi Arabia.  Our enemies came from that nation.  Yet we did not go to war with the Saudis.  We had too much to lose.  It is where the oil is.  Because we needed their oil, the U.S. has been hated in that part of the world for most of the 20^th century.

Apocalypse now

In the beginning of the Iraq-Afghanistan wars, there was lots of talk by American fundamentalist Christians about the End Times and a great war between Christians and whoever is depicted as the anti-Christ.  In my lifetime, the anti-Christ has morphed several times over: from all communists, the Soviet Union, China, and then out of nowhere Muslims and all Middle Eastern nations except Israel.  Just lately it has come to my attention that the anti-Christ is now the Democrats.  Yikes!  Hey.  That would include me.  How can I be my own enemy?

I’m joking a bit, but I never believed in war, any war.  No more war.  I vaguely remember Vietnam.  In the 1960s mentioning it was controversial in movies, art, TV shows and music.  Americans back then were to keep their mouths and minds shut and support the war, the police action that would become America’s longest war.  When Americans totally left, it was a shocking mess that we and the whole world witnessed on TV.  Our soldiers had fought a war to prevent the spread of communism.  Then we realized: the communists were in it for the long run.  Vietnam had a complex history way before the U.S. got involved.  It was convoluted.  The draft was still going on, and America’s youth protested fighting and dying for a cause they did not support.

And then it was over.  So, five years later in high school American history, I learned the lesson of Vietnam: America cannot be the world’s savior.

The rest of the 1970s and even the 1980s and ’90s were a good run of basically thinking we’d learned our lesson and would never go to war again.  The suits in D.C. authorized millions of tax money to keep nations from going to war.  Can you believe we ever did that?  And as I recall, IT WORKED.  Big money was something the U.S. could hold over other nations that happened to have bully and dangerous leaders.  Folks, it’s called diplomacy.  And that’s what I believe in.  Research the problem, help the people—and whatever we do, avoid war.

Then to my surprise, in 1991 we were in the Persian Gulf War.  Everyone watched it on CNN.  A few months later, the whole thing was over.  But it wasn’t.  I knew we would return.  We did not stop our arch enemy Saddam Hussein, the brutal leader of Iraq.

President George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney are responsible for getting the U.S. into two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Right after 9/11, we were cocksure the United States military would blow up the area back to the Bronze Age.  And we did.  And we thought it would be like the Persian Gulf War in 1991, a breeze.

It’s hard today facing the enormous loss of lives and trillions of dollars.  Twenty years?  None of us thought we’d still be left in what ten years ago the media dubbed ‘America’s Forgotten War,’ the war in Afghanistan.  Should the U.S. have kept a foothold in Afghanistan like we have in South Korea and other countries around the world?  Technology has changed modern warfare.  If necessary, we can hit precise targets, still with loss of life but not necessarily our own.  We don’t even have to be inside the country or anywhere near it.  But let us never forget and always remember that all war is about humans killing other humans.  That’s the point.

As Americans we are once again left feeling about Afghanistan like we did at the very bitter end of the long Vietnam War: good riddance, glad it’s over, let them solve their own problems, anger, numb, we made a huge mistake leaving & should’ve stayed, wishing we could fix life for the people there, determined to never get so entrenched trying to save a country on the other side of the world, ‘never again’ to war … most of all feeling sorry for our fellow Americans who served in the military over there, our Gold Star families and wounded warriors, the many with post-traumatic stress disorders, the good Afghans, and ourselves, of course.  From the President to every single American, we’re alone in stunned silence and defeat, feeling sorry as hell.

Jennifer Aniston shared a personal decision to stop talking with family and loved ones who refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccine, virtually writing them off.  For months she has tried to convince people about whom she cares to get the shot but to no avail.  She’s stood strong on her conviction that the vaccine prevents the new virus from spreading and in turn fewer people will catch it, end up in the hospital or even die from the disease.  But no more begging for the celebrity and well-known actress of Friends.  She’s tired of the illogical circular arguments and heated fights, each side trying to convince the other whose truth is the real truth—dealing with people who distrust substantiated news based on nothing but the facts and instead stubbornly prefer media whose purpose is not to objectively report the news but to promote and foster conservative politics.

I know exactly how she feels.

Since the Covid-19 vaccine, every week I have asked my parents if they’ve gotten it yet.  I am saddened to find their mindset remains with tens of millions of Americans who refuse and reject the vaccine, proclaiming their independence from a government mandate. My elderly parents have no intention of getting the Covid-19 vaccine.  Out of the blue, they simply do not believe in this vaccine, remaining highly suspicious of one that was developed at lightning speed and miraculously has effectively kept the vast majority of vaccinated from getting the virus and dying from it.

Counting flowers on the wall

These are the same parents who during my childhood in the 1960s and ’70s made sure their children were up to date on all recommended immunizations.  There was no debate or question about it.  Vaccines were universally accepted.  Parents didn’t have time to research every single childhood immunization.  Schools insisted parents keep their children’s immunization records up to date.  It was very serious business dealt every year before school started.  In those days, too, there was no internet—although concerned parents could go to the library and research the science behind immunizations against a host of once deadly and miserable childhood diseases they faced and more likely their parents contracted.  My grandmother talked about surviving yellow fever circa 1910.  She was deathly ill for close to a year and lost all her hair.  Somehow she survived, and in time her hair grew back.

My parents had practically every childhood disease of the first half of the 20^th century.  Vaccines were unheard of.  They also could have contracted polio but fortunately for them, they didn’t.

The people who raised me understood vaccines, the science, the urgency, the importance, and therefore ensured the best modern medicine for my healthy childhood.  I didn’t realize it as I do now: My parents provided those vaccines out of love for their children.  Throughout the years, my parents were the type to get the annual flu vaccine and got the pneumonia vaccine when it was developed.

But that’s not who they are anymore.

It’s like invasion of the body snatchers.  Something’s infiltrated their brains, their once reasonable thinking.  And since they refuse to have a computer and the internet and do not subscribe to news journals or newspapers, all the information they know about Covid-19 and the vaccine come from one source: Fox.  I won’t call it news because it’s not a news business.  Look it up.  It’s a conservative broadcast media network, specifically created to present news with a sharp political viewpoint, right of center.  It literally was founded to counter the mainstream news for perceived hippie leftist pro-Democrat bias. The number of Americans who refuse the Covid-19 vaccine equal the same number of Fox fans and more than likely the same number who did not vote for President Biden. 

And that’s the way it is

Just a few decades ago, we all got the same news even if covered by three different networks, dozens of major daily newspapers and radio stations and analyzed by monthly and weekly periodicals.  The news was fact based, substantiated, serious, no kidding, sobering—and most importantly real.

Today with the internet’s plethora of ‘enter-newsment’ or ‘newsertainment’—stories that are not journalism and play fast and loose with the facts, if even that—half the country has become brain dead.  They only read, hear and see what they want.  And if the internet’s unregulated array of dubious news sources doesn’t reach everyone, Fox cable does.  The format is nothing but Republican political opinion presented by the most attractive talking heads on the air.  The other 24-hour cable news networks also are mostly political opinion but presented from real-deal reporters in a calm level-headed manner. That’s a welcome difference to me.

But Fox knows a lot of people prefer emotional appeal on every subject nowadays.  How this century’s pandemic and vaccine have become an angry American political grudge match that has stressed and split families, friends and colleagues, not to mention doctors and their patients, beats me.  I suspect the uproar is from trusting the wrong media: the one that routinely plays on human emotions like fear, confusion, distrust, anger, impatience, jealousy, prejudice and hate.  Swirl in ignorance, and we all will remain in this real and deadly health crisis for a long time.  The problem is millions of Americans think they are smarter than doctors, scientists, public health experts, pharmacists, biologists and virologists.  And they all trust the same source for their information.  Their defense against the vaccine is ‘This is America’ and they can believe anything they want.  It’s dumbfounded.

It’s not a retrospective I’m inclined to write at this point: recalling memories of high school and my generation, when the ’70s met the ’80s.  But my gosh, it’s been 40 years now!  Each decade I’ve attended our class reunions, dancing to “Hey 19,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Celebration,” “Hungry Heart” and “Whip It.”  At our first reunion in 1991, about 200 of us showed up (from a graduating class at 600).  The gang looked pretty good, still managing to keep it together physically, most with promising career paths, new marriages, a few expectant mothers, others with photos of their young families.

Our 20-year reunion came one month after 9/11.  We had to talk all about it especially with classmates in the airline industry or the military.  Many classmates were deeply embedded with family life and solid careers as well as living in nice homes located a few towns (or states) away from our former stomping ground in the metroplex.  The 30-year reunion brought even fewer of us together.  That one I had intended to skip … because I’d just been laid off.  Me, the career gal.  I didn’t feel like celebrating with old high school classmates, undoubtedly more successful than I.  But a classmate since childhood shamed me into not going just because I’d lost my job.  Snap out of it.  Quit feeling sorry for myself.  I entered the outdoor event feeling like such a loser.  The first thing people at these things wanna know is whacha been doin’ and where you at now plus how marriage and kids are working out.

By that stage some classmates were grandparents, some widowed or divorced and remarried, and a few were starting to reap the gold standard of retirement after 30 years, no doubt hired right outta high school.  That would not be nor will it be my story.  After a while, however, I found the old high school chummery uplifting.  I spent a few hours catching up with old classmates (we were looking middle aged save a few remarkable standouts, the most popular girls in high school).

(Just Like) Starting Over

By night’s end, I was glad I’d gone to the class reunion.  Spending time with my generation—with people who knew me and expressed nothing but encouragement plus never doubted I’d get a new job immediately—restored belief in myself.  For the first time in a long time, I was overwhelmed with that youthful optimism when we all graduate high school.  Plus, I had gained the maturity of knowing deep down everything was gonna be all right.  Suddenly I was looking forward to a new chapter, feeling like I did when going off to college.  The unknown future was exciting.

Planning a 40^th high school reunion was debatable due to the pandemic a year ago when no vaccine was available.  But by now the Class of ’81 will reunite in person later this fall.  For me so much has changed since the last reunion ten years ago.  I got my first iPhone.  A couple months after the 30^th reunion, I enrolled in grad school, studied liberal arts, traveled the world, and after graduating felt inclined to start this blog and an educational nonprofit.  Like the song says, “We have grown.  We have grown.”

And as a much older grown up, by now I can cast perspective on life since high school.  Lotsa stuff learned from 18 to 58.  Life-altering experiences have taken me in directions I would have never thought or cared about way back then … but now looking back, the journey seems so right.  There is a theme to everyone’s life and a purpose for each of us.  Life is for learning.  That is my philosophy.  We each learn a set of lessons, not necessarily the same but often shareable anecdotes:

What I’ve learned since high school

Honesty is the best policy.  I don’t know my motivation way back then, but as a kid I could spin some tall tales.  Maybe it comes from creative writing, vivid dreams, a wild imagination or walking around with my head in the clouds.  The good thing for me is I learned to keep my big fat mouth shut in college, like on day one.

College was the right thing to do.  It’s not right for everyone.  But if the kind of occupation you want to do requires a degree, gotta go for it.  Don’t be deterred by debt.  We are supposed to be pursuing our passions in life.  If college is a dream, pursue it someway somehow, anyway anyhow even now.

Self confidence goes a long way.  People will believe in you if you believe in yourself.  No one will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself.

Unemployment happens.  Ha!  Does it ever and always at the worst time(s).  It’s not easy.  It’s humiliating, depressing, physically suffocating.  With everything within us, we’ve got to stay positive.  Those stretches of unemployment are like life’s biggest hardest tests.  My advice is always search for a new job, made easier now online.  The last time I was unemployed, I ended up applying for 1,000 jobs.  Leave no stone unturned; apply for all jobs anywhere.  This isn’t the only place to live either.  Life is a journey.  Go where the work leads.

Debt free is overrated.  Yeah, I’ve achieved it a couple of times in my life.  It was a great feeling.  Then … life happens.  And keeps happening.  Life is expensive, more so now than earlier in our lives.  Life costs money.  And that’s the way it is.

Body pain.  Only more aches and pains, no less as we age.  My advice: a good chiropractor.  And arnica gel!

Work till I die.  I’m OK with it.  Retirement (and I was inadvertently retired for a year or so) didn’t work out for me at all.  Perhaps I’m too young.  Tee! 

Call a spade a spade.  Or as my generation used to say, “Get real.”  We see and hear all kinds of bu(**&^ online.  We are at the ripe old age to know what’s good and bad, so let our voices be heard.  We’ve more than earned the right.  Just make sure our facts are straight.

Pursue our passions.  This is the secret of happiness and feeling our lives are worthwhile. 

Spirituality is an evolution.  As it should be.

Travel.  I never thought I’d get the chance to travel around the world.  But the opportunity came at age 50.  Plan some travels.  Explore our world, not just our country.

Choose our words carefully.  When we were young, we would shoot off our mouths and not care who was offended.  With the internet, social media and instant messaging, we need to be certain of what we send and how and where we say it.

Choose to be kind. Like we said in the ’80s: “Karma’s a bitch.”

Be generous.  No better feeling than putting money to good use, helping others, tipping at least 20 percent.  Makes you a better person.

Open mind.  You know what opened my mind?  Moving away from my hometown and living for years in several small towns and different places in one big city.

Embrace change.  This is how we deal with loss in life.  Life doesn’t stay the same.  Upon graduating high school, we were ready to embrace the unknown.  We wanted to experience all life had to offer.  We found life offers diverse experiences so that we will know joy and sadness—and in turn become kinder to others. 

Tech savvy.  Tech’s not going away.  We gotta get with the program, learn the latest hobbies, sports, music, movies.  It can be very frustrating to many of our generation and older.  We can always say we’re learning.

Stay active/Eat right.  We only grow older, or we don’t grow at all.  We know how to take care of ourselves much better than we did at 18.   

Believe in the future of mankind.  The world is not going to hell in a hand basket.  We’ve lived through lots of bad times  Why would anyone think ‘the end is near’ now?

Patience.  It’s a virtue.   

Time.  It’s a blessing.

The work by this year’s Texas Legislature is a national embarrassment and out of touch with the majority of people who call this state home.  Guns all around, no questions asked, visible at the ready for all to see come September.  Really?  Essentially banning abortion (well, after six weeks of conception) anywhere in Texas.  Tightening election laws to make voting and registering to vote hard on specific folks (the poor and minorities).  Even hornswagglin’ teachers who dare bring up the subject of racism … in this once proud Confederate slave-holding state … in this historically and ongoing prejudiced and bigoted nation.  Really?

All this bull is what the elected male-majority Texas Lege spent their time on in Austin this spring.  And making sure the message is loud and clear, the governor is damned determined to build a big ol’ towering steel wall along the Mexico border, this time with privately raised funds—no matter if property owners stateside don’t want it.  Texas essentially is out to prove which state is the most ultra conservative in the Union.  There’s no other reason for these kinds of backwoods barefooted ignorant Deliverance river raftin’ sinister law makin’.  To intelligent people—of the 21^st century, mind you—these new forthcoming laws make absolutely … no … sense.

Take, for instance, the new Texas law that will allow guns carried by anyone anywhere and without any training or certification.  WHO thought THIS would be a good law?  Ninety percent of the American people are sick to death over daily mass shootings.  Whoever came up with ‘guns and more guns for everyone!’ is taking a page from the bankrupt NRA and their impotent response when asked how to stop the constant shooting deaths: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.  Like that ever happens.  What a piece of fiction, straight out of Rifleman, Gunsmoke and all the romanticized westerns and shoot-em-up big-budget Hollywood movies.

Texas has pushed this issue right into a new generation that wants the Second Amendment gone.  The tired old comeback about ‘an armed citizenry prevents a tyrant or coup or the government itself from taking away our freedom’ doesn’t wash either.  Again, too much bloodshed … for decades … and none of it for any political reason—always some obscure young man with anger issues and easy access to military assault rifles.  How do we know this?  Because the ones who did not commit suicide or die by cop during their moment of shooting rage tell us the ease of obtaining a high-power military assault rifle made all the difference in accomplishing their mission: to kill as many people possible.

And Texas wouldn’t be Texas if not whining about abortions ever’ day, again for decades.  Abortion on demand is a federal law, a right women and girls have, and no state in the U.S. can take it away yet.  The lawsuits to restore abortion in Texas will cost millions of tax dollars.  Quite a cow chip to be a-steppin’ into.  The Legislature didn’t prove anything other than what’s on their minds and in their hearts: Females are dirty little *^%$#@s.  If Americans have said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: Government should stay out of private lives.

The ’21 Texas Lege is not well read because if they were, they would heed the warning: “Who controls the past controls the future.  Who controls the present controls the past.”  It’s from the book Nineteen Eighty-Four about an authoritarian government that bans words and cuts out history and truth to suit its purpose: controlling the masses.  In the book, the government calls itself Big Brother so the people will think it’s for their own good to obey.  In the real world in which we live, a democracy, history teachers (and any educator) do not need the Texas Legislature telling them what and how to teach.  This issue to ban race discussions in the classroom comes down to whites not wanting to come across as bigots and privileged in the past or today.

White people can put up with a lot.  But when it comes to Black people ‘pushing the envelope,’ such as protesting against citizens dying by the hands or guns of police or once again bringing up monetary reparations still owed from the Civil War, white people in this country will inevitably put their foot down.  They will not tolerate any more open discussion, let alone allow impressionable young Texans to hear or consider another opinion or learn the God’s-honest truth about our convoluted brutal history solely based on race.   End of subject.  If the Texas Lege hears one more word about it, they’re gonna cut a switch.

Educated people cannot live like this: told by the Texas government what to teach and what not to teach.  Who’s threatening whom?  Nineteen Eighty-Four has several slogans to instill fear of the government, but the Bible maintains “The truth will set you free.”  And it does, Texas Legislature.  We can handle the truth.  But apparently white legislators are the ones who can’t handle the truth of this state and nation.  Why not?  Money.  Some wealthy Americans, of the ilk who get themselves elected to government, have an almost evil penchant about holding onto their money—because they believe money is power. 

Things’ve changed

But the most evil and anti-American antics by the 2021 Texas Legislature were messin’ with election laws.  That body of predominately old white men think they can sit back and kick their boots up atop their legislative desks and just suppress voters.  Have they gone mad?  Yes, they bought into the former president’s sulking baby lie about winning the election and losing only because of rampant voter fraud and vote tampering.  [Can you imagine Democrats carrying on like that when Hillary Rodham Clinton lost to Trump?]  Simply put, Democrats believe elections should be free, fair and open, and Republicans think elections should be tightly monitored, restricted and maneuvered toward their guys winning. Republican state legislatures including Texas have been a-gerrymandering communities to create voting blocks in their favor in an obvious and pathetic effort to stay in power.  They’ve succeeded in only bringing out more voters, many who will vote against them, most not old, white or wealthy.

In the 21^st century, voting, like everything else we do, should involve technology.  But Americans have a big problem with trust, and that’s where Republican legislators align with the people.  American communities have held elections with no problems way before this crop of legislosers.  Anyone who runs the elections, all locally elected officials, know they risk prison if they fudge the numbers or dare tamper with the votes or results.  The Texas Lege didn’t need to waste time making a law that already exists so they can claim vote security.  Why’d they do it?  My guess is too many Democrats, too many minorities, too many working Texans with poor-to-scraping-by incomes.  You know what?  All those groups, targeted to be disenfranchised, could control this state and the U.S. if they vote.  So the Texas Legislature, in its missing-tooth wisdom, came up with pretend problems to ensure the vote remains secure (as if election tampering had been going on).  Really?  That’s news to us.

They did a double doozy on revamping election laws.  I don’t know if I will get in trouble for helping a fellow Texan find where to register to vote or how.  I think it’s everyone for herself and himself.  That is, after all, the Republican ideal.  Figure it out yourself: where to register to vote (fewer places now), where to vote (fewer places now), and when to vote (less time, no Sunday voting) and how to vote (strict guidelines on mail-in ballots especially for the questionably ‘disabled’ and ‘elderly.’)  

To the Texas governor and all the Western suits who made up these so-called laws that:

allow if not encourage any untrained idiot to wield a loaded gun in public;

stop a woman’s and girl’s right to abortion;

cut out school lessons involving racism in Texas and U.S. history;

and substantially interfere with our guaranteed right to vote including easy access to polls, voting times and days, and registration—

we’re still not going to forget the February 2021 deadly freeze.

No barbecue smoke will make 75% of Texans who lost heat for days or loved ones in zero-degree weather EVER forget.  See ya good old boys at the polls.  Run along now, ya’hear?

What can be said about President Jimmy Carter?  His post presidency has been the most active and public of his predecessors and successors.  It also has been the most altruistic.  It seems a year has not gone by when we haven’t heard of him involved in a number of humanitarian causes such as monitoring peaceful elections around the world.  And all along his wife Rosalynn by his side.  As long as I can remember, I’ve known about Jimmy Carter.  He was elected in 1976 when I was in junior high, just starting to become aware of world affairs and national leaders.  It was Jimmy Carter’s presidency and failed attempt at a second term in 1980 against Ronald Reagan when I learned the ways of politics: the differences between Democrats and Republicans—and that our nation was changing after a so-called liberal era.  Carter’s defeat, having been my first time to vote, was like a punch in the gut, being young and naïve and optimistic.  I couldn’t believe no one I knew supported Carter anymore.

Recently at a bookstore, I picked up a new book on him: His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life by Jonathan Alter.  I didn’t pick it up immediately.  I liked the offbeat cover, a colorful photo/animation portrait of Carter crafted by Andy Warhol.  After sleeping on it, I returned the next day to grab it.  Published in 2020, it was a heavy 700-page tome, and I read every word, learning something new and impressive about Jimmy Carter on every page.

The author, a former reporter during the Carter years, was surprised to find not a single book on his presidency and life had ever been compiled other than biographies penned by Carter himself.  As a news reporter in the 1970s, the author also witnessed mounds of legislation passed by Carter.  Carter is the third most accomplished president—meaning he got a lot done for this country, right behind the formidable Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson.  But Mr. Alter goes on to note that during the Carter administration, after Watergate, journalists were hyper cynical as was the nation.  Reporters wanted dirt, dirty tricks and maybe outlandish nonfiction stories with characters like Deep Throat that Hollywood would package as a movie deal.  Carter was … an honest to goodness sincere, optimistic, Christian, Baptist, environmentalist, highly intelligent Renaissance man and basic good guy.  No story there to jaded reporters and a tired nation merely surviving in the pessimistic late 1970s.

Touching history and the future

The Carter biography begins by summing up Jimmy Carter as someone who was raised essentially in the 19^th century, lived in the 20^th century yet possessed a clear vision of the 21^st century.  His family—led by a father who taught his son everything he knew about farming, mechanics and carpentry and a mother, Miss Lillian, who was a nurse and midwife birthing many children in Plains, Georgia, including a beautiful girl named Rosalynn, and who would serve in the Peace Corps in her late 60s!—was a dutiful quiet bunch save little brother Billy.  At dinner they all sat at the table together, politely eating while reading, every one of them a different book with no conversation.  The habit or ritual stuck with Jimmy and his wife and the children they raised.

Jimmy’s father was as prejudiced as any typical white Southerner of his era but not so Miss Lillian.  That woman, alone, attended numerous protests for civil rights.  She wasn’t a marcher, just an onlooker and quiet supporter.  She not only tended to the wounded African Americans harmed by police or white supremacists countering the civil rights movement, but she provided bail for arrested protesters as well as drove them to hospitals or back to their homes.  The Carters were devout Southern Baptists, but often Miss Lillian would take young Jimmy with her to African-American churches where mother and son enjoyed the live music and the emotion of the gospel—countering the reserved and regimented Baptist service.

As a kid Jimmy worked crop fields as expected by his father.  Being fair-skinned, however, he was pulled indoors when the sun was hot and replaced by Black children.  The boys would become friends, and Jimmy frequented one of the boy’s homes, eating dinner cooked by the boy’s mother whose kindness and dignity Carter credited with shaping his demeanor.  As he became a teen-ager, he was highly intelligent yet could never get along with or understand his father, a man who never praised his son.  At 17 Jimmy determined to study hard to get into the U.S. Naval Academy.  In 1943 with world war in full swing, Jimmy wanted to serve and was accepted into Annapolis.  On the day he left home for good, dropped off by his stoic parents, he never knew his departure into adulthood left them literally grief stricken and crying all the way home.  On occasion when his parents came to visit, they’d bring with them the beautiful young lady Rosalynn whom Jimmy began to notice and started dating.

Jimmy excelled at Annapolis and fully expected to serve in the war, but the war ended before he got his chance.  He and Rosalynn married and were off for years raising three sons in Hawaii, California, New York and Connecticut as Carter built an impressive naval career which led him into the innerworkings of nuclear submarines.  It was the sudden illness of his father that brought him back to Plains.  His father wanted Jimmy’s brother Billy to run the family peanut business, but the old man knew the younger sibling was reckless and lacked business sense.  After the patriarch’s passing, Jimmy, feeling weighted with heavy family obligation, moved his own back to Plains, Georgia—Rosalynn, after tasting real freedom and excitement living so far away, not happy returning to their small hometown.

Carter’s biggest regret

They returned to the South just as America was dealing with protests by African Americans for civil rights.  The Carters had become part of the country club set, but when the issue came up time and again among their white social friends, the couple simply would not comment on which side they supported.  Quietly Jimmy and Rosalynn and Miss Lillian supported civil rights and equality and nondiscrimination of Black people and all races and ethnicities.  But they never said a word.  Instead, they walked a fine line, had to as a large business owner with many employees.  Simply put, the Carter family had a lot to lose if they were outspoken like Pete Seeger or Joan Baez or Marlon Brando in those days.  The KKK would have burned down their business if not their homes and properties of all their employees.  Eventually as the issue of civil rights was not going away, the Carters lost all of their friends who soon understood the couple believed cultural change was progressive and suppression was regressive.

As an important businessman in his community, Carter made it his business to get into local politics.  He was head of the school board when segregation was ongoing, whites at one school, Blacks at another.  As the issues of inequities became known to him, he took it upon himself to tour every school white and Black.  He found all the Black schools lacking in every way.  He understood this could not continue, and he did whatever he could to improve the schools with proper books and supplies and a decent budget.  In his small community, word spread of the Carters.  Then one day his business building was painted with a racial epitaph.

Carter’s older sister Ruth became a Born Again Christian.  She talked with her brother one day about his deep depression which she assumed was due to leaving behind an exciting naval career to run his daddy’s smalltown business.  While Carter cried privately with her, they prayed together.  At that moment, Carter was Born Again, too.  Soon after he worked diligently for several months in other states as a witness for Christ in hopes others would be saved, too.  But his sister remembered a comment her brother said upon entering a higher phase of serving God: He believed he should be President.

Carter was elected governor of Georgia in the early 1970s.  One of his first tasks and honors was to declare a Martin Luther King Jr. state holiday, something he would propose nationally as president.  During his governorship, his popularity soared especially among country & Western musicians, usually from the South, and rock blues bands like the Allman Brothers with Georgia roots.  Day or night at the governor’s mansion, Carter greeted anyone who showed up.  He often had a drink in hand and with his huge smile graciously welcomed guests, young or old, Black or white, musicians or non musicians, even Bob Dylan.  Carter and his sons listened to Dylan’s albums throughout the ’60s; they bonded over the music and wordcraft.  Dylan and others in the entertainment world who met Carter back then spoke of an aura surrounding him.  He seemed … genuine.  Real.  Unjaded.  Holy.  Holy?  Yeah, holy.  Maybe just someone who was important though unpretentious.  Whenever Carter met anyone, including Bob Dylan, he would witness to them and ask if they wanted to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Whatever the reason, a few years after meeting Jimmy Carter, Dylan converted to Christianity.

The Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller in 1973 to monitor world affairs and study solutions for big problems abroad, tagged Gov. Carter to represent one of two slots open for Southern governors.  Carter applied his innate superior studious abilities to learn every world problem and devise realistic solutions.  In other words, he took the chance appointment to heart.  Soon he believed he had what it takes to run for U.S. President.  In those days he had a lot of competition but took it upon himself to go city to city, town to town, and ask for people’s vote.  Rosalynn and his grown sons had their own separate speaking engagements to introduce the country to Jimmy Carter.  At heart Carter set out to prove one very important thing: that a Southern man could be 1) not racist and 2) elected President of the United States.  One incident that came up was the competition with fellow Southerner George Wallace.  As Carter talked state to state, Wallace, who vehemently opposed Carter (the feeling mutual), finally bowed out and offered Carter his delegates—all pro-segregation and essentially racists.  Carter quietly refused to add the Wallace bunch to his numbers.

He won the national election against incumbent President Gerald Ford.  It was … unbelievable.  But Carter always believed in himself.  After the inauguration, President Carter and his wife and their little girl Amy walked hand in hand down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.  The family brought along an African American woman, whose prison sentence Carter had pardoned as governor, to be Amy’s nanny.  Amy attended Washington, D.C.’s, integrated public schools.  The nation had never seen anything like the Carter family.  As President, privately he prayed several times a day.  He asked anyone who was with him, including international heads of state, to join him in prayer.  He especially prayed before any major decision he had to make as president.  And yet he was a strict believer in separation of church and state and would not allow prayer to begin any governmental meeting or gathering.

With little fanfare by the press for four years, Carter commenced to reducing the military budget while significantly expanding Social Security and Medicare.  An environmentalist, he placed solar panels on the White House, which were summarily removed by the Reagan administration and decades later re-installed by President Obama.  Carter lived by his own recommendations to the American people like keeping the thermostat on 68 during the winter to conserve fuel.  He wore a sweater in the White House to keep warm.  He diligently tried to work with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear arms.  He believed in diplomacy not bullying.  A lot of Americans hated him for it, perceiving it as weakness.

Peace on earth, good will toward men

And it was Carter’s idea to bring peace to the Middle East.  Already good friends with Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat, Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to join a Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in September 1978.  According to the Carter biography, the leaders met for weeks trying to hash out an agreement whereby the two ancient enemy nations would agree to live together in peace and harmony.  More than a dozen times, Begin would come close to signing then back out.  Carter tore up each attempt and patiently, though growing frustrated, would begin again.  Finally, an agreement was announced, and the three world leaders signed the document, celebrating at the White House with hands clasped together.  The peace accord has remained intact to this day.  Carter was left out of the Nobel Peace Prize that year which the other two leaders received marking this remarkable accomplishment.  But years later Carter would receive the long overdue honor, with Willie Nelson, longtime friend and political ally, performing for the honor in Oslo, Norway.

The Iranian hostage crisis was perhaps Carter’s downfall, along with double-digit inflation and gas lines.  The Middle East was a hornet’s nest President Carter could not eradicate no matter how hard he tried.  Every day on the news and in the papers, the faces of the hostages left Americans feeling duped and stupid.  We did not feel proud of ourselves.  If only we could go in like a big budget Hollywood action movie and shoot up the enemy and free our people.  It was not to be.  Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to former California Governor Ronald Reagan, darling of the GOP and the Moral Majority who would become the loud and powerful evangelical Christian political movement.

The most ironic story about the Carter presidency, one whereby the leader was an outspoken conservative Christian (one who while in office taught Sunday School at a DC Baptist Church, hated abortion but believed government had no right interfering with a woman’s decision, who started a new Baptist church in his community when his childhood church refused to allow Blacks in the congregation) is that the Rev. Billy Graham—who boasted friendships with every U.S. President of his time, except Carter—never accepted an invitation to visit the White House or have a public or private conversation with President Carter.  Why?  Why not?  Those two should have had a lot in common yet politically did not.

President Carter started the Carter Center to help solve world problems.  Even as the Carters have grown into old age, they have taken a week every year to help build houses for the homeless through Habitat for Humanity.  They have raised tens of millions of dollars to solve little-known yet devastating Third World problems, such as the gruesome Guinea worm disease.  They have served this nation unselfishly much of their lives.  The author early in the story of Jimmy Carter shares an anecdote from people who’ve known him all their lives: When you first meet him, you like him; after you get to know him, you don’t like him; but when you’ve known him for ten years, you understand him.  Through great to little-known triumphs and bitter public humiliations, time has been President Carter’s saving grace.  He knows he’s on this earth for a reason.

We all prayed for a cure when this pandemic hit.  It disrupted every aspect of our lives from work and employment to grocery shopping, public gatherings, sports, the performing arts, church, public schools and college.  Even agnostics and atheists hoped for a quick cure or a medical breakthrough whereby everyone could carry on as before and never have to worry about this particular virus again.  Basically, we all wanted to go maskless again, breathe in the fresh clean air like God intended.  We also wanted to not think about every human interaction: Will we or the other get sick and though odds have it rare, die from this disease?  Throughout the horrible year 2020, many of us lost relatives, friends, famous celebrities and acquaintances to this new virus.  Deaths and hot spots across the country kept escalating with at last count 71 million Americans getting COVID-19 and more than a half a million dead from this new unasked-for disease.

Then … out of the blue, one day we hear of a vaccine.  Then another.  Then another.  Then a one-shot vax—all proven to fight and protect us humans from contracting COVID-19.  And if the vaccinated did get it, for the vast majority symptoms would be mild, we wouldn’t end up in the hospital or die from COVID-19. The coincidence is that virologists (doctors & scientists) had been studying corona viruses for a decade. They knew a vaccine was possible.

It was HALLELUJAH time!  Everyone should have been down on their knees praising God for delivering us from this one deadly virus, and so quickly, too.  It was a bona fide miracle.

But nooooooooooooo.  Not in the year 2021.  Not in the 21^st century.  Not in America, the anti-vaccine capital of the world.

The damage done

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  No, what we have here is a failure to educate.  No, what we have here is fear and loathing run amok.  There is no denying a generation gap of sorts has evolved between Baby Boomers (including yours truly) and the mini Boomers, children of the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll generation.  Sociologists could see this coming.  Every generation has to rebel against the previous.  So the ultra-liberal, ‘if it feels good, do it’ Boomers were bound to be slapped on the face by their grown children about something.  Religion?  Politics?  No, vaccines.  Well, they picked a good one.  We either had to crack open the books and study this for a spell or just yell and cuss and roll our eyes like we did in adolescence.  OK, like we still do about a lot of things the younger kids believe nowadays.

Because Boomers were raised pre-internet and have a distrust of government due to Vietnam and Watergate, we don’t believe everything we read especially online.  We trust some news sources but not all.  It’s best to maintain an open mind.  We’d like to think we’ve grown wise and less naïve.  We also think anyone younger than us is naïve as we once were.  In this regard we try not to be harsh with the young guns.  But for God’s sake, we’re talking about vaccines here.

During the 20^th century, vaccines were considered the single most important development to improve the health and lives of Americans and everyone else around the world.  But with every medical procedure, there is risk.  Still, with vaccines the risk is extremely low and even death or sudden disease or illness have been seriously studied, not ignored.  Big Pharma, with a new shot for everything these days and perhaps responsible for dozens of required childhood vaccinations, is a punching bag along with the unfixable U.S. health insurance industry (the insured in America have it directly due to a good job benefit).  Then there is the anti-support of physicians and the entire medical establishment—a profession very few people honestly know anything about except those who actually studied it and passed tests to earn licenses to practice medicine and work in the health field.  The medical profession is not for everyone though it is the number one field to enter this century.

So Americans young and, ahem, older have a lot of built-in cynicism.  Now the cynical are becoming the majority as the Boomers die out. [But not so fast.]  Boomers are naturally cynical, apparently a gene inherited in spades by the mini Boomers and their Millennial offspring.

We have a vaccine now that will prevent or weaken COVID-19.  What’s the problem?

The problem is now pharmacists and medical practices with ample supply can’t give it away.  All kinds of gimmicks are offered including a $1 million lottery.  Vaccine centers are set up everywhere including major league sport facilities and amusement parks.  Still, a quarter of all Americans swear they’ll never get the vaccine—well, this particular vaccine.  A quarter of the country gets their news and views from Fox News.  Coincidence?

What we’re seeing here is the culmination of an education system, both public and private, that has failed to teach young people how to research, how to trust, and how to be smart.  While public schools have students focus on passing state tests, private schools, particularly religious ones, have failed to instill a lifelong pursuit of knowledge.  Learning by teaching ourselves is not something we close the book on when graduating high school.  The ability to keep learning, to research intelligently instead of just reading and watching and listening to only what we want to believe, and the much-needed critical thinking necessary to maintain our nation’s experimental democracy as well as live healthier longer lives—that’s the wrinkle in trying to encourage most Americans to get the damn vaccine.

Boomers who grew up in chaotic violent times or like me in the mundane peaceful post-Vietnam War era know this protest slogan to be a universal truth: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.  Americans need to get with the program.  Grow up.  There’s risk in everything we do.  And when it comes to only a third of Americans being vaccinated against yet another virus to pop up on the planet, fear is the driving force.  There’s no fooling a Boomer.  Brave is our middle name.  It’s the only way to live, baby.

See, I want to know.  I was born in 1962.  By the time I entered school, the ‘colored only’ and ‘white only’ signs had been removed from public water fountains.  I grew up never knowing (never having or seeing a clue) about racial segregation—the ironclad Southern rules that applied in every single community large and small, urban and rural, with unspeakable brutality for 100 years after the Civil War.  My parents said little to nothing about it.  No other families I knew (100% white like me) said anything either.  After 12 years of schooling, the impression I had was civil rights was in the 1960s, and now everything was all right.  Or as the white suburban mothers might say, “Everything is fine, just fine.”  So, I bought it.

It was college in East Texas that I came to realize this whole other way life was in the South, for generations.  The way it was taught in American History: from Reconstruction to the Modern Age, it was like a miracle that society had changed—a complete evolution among people of an entire nation.  You know how rare that is?  Yes, as a kid I had watched “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” with its tear-jerking ending when the extremely old crippled little bitty Black woman, in an act of defiance, slowly stepped to an outdoor ‘white only’ water fountain on public property and bent down to take a sip of water.  See, in the movie, the white onlookers didn’t do anything about it.  The police just let her be.  So as a kid, I didn’t get it.

1619: Not that long ago in the great scheme of things

See, none of us really knows anything about when slavery started in Early America.  We who were educated in American schools were taught that it (slavery) was part of our history.  Teachers sugarcoated it to avoid the ugliness (the absolute crime) of American history, U.S. history … you know, US.  The educated blowhard can justify slavery was the way of the world for thousands of years.  Look at the Bible.  Look at the Jews in Egypt.  Funny, because the Bible was used to support slavery during the Antebellum South.  The Bible was quoted to insist some people are slaves and others slave masters.  “You disputin’ God’s Holy Word?  Get me a switch.”

The 1619 Project is an ongoing journalism project sponsored by The New York Times.  Its purpose is to place slavery at the center, instead of buried or along the barely perceivable periphery, of U.S. history.  The Project seeks to relate slavery of African Americans, brought in chains to the East Coast shores in 1619 to months after the Civil War, and its relevant consequences to not only former slaves and their future families but everyone who calls himself or herself an American today.

I’m an American.  So, because I knew what I did not know, I came up with a features series while writing for a newspaper in 1994.  Each month the newspaper mail included a list of story ideas based on history, like anniversaries of historic events.  Listed under July 1964 was President Johnson’s landmark Civil Rights Act, banning nationwide racial segregation in public places and racial discrimination in housing, employment, education, etc.  For six months I researched this event and the difference it made in the small East Texas town where I lived as a reporter.  I started with prominent African Americans in the community.  They were retired teachers and principals and a coach.  They had lived in the community all their lives and recollected well their childhood during segregation.  I interviewed each of them separately.  They all told me the same stories: They were not allowed inside public buildings like court houses, had to stay out of certain areas and streets, had to eat ice cream in the summer outside a popular air-conditioned restaurant, were allowed inside shops one day a week for clothes or hats (anything they touched, they had to buy), and had to sit in the balcony at the movie theater.

On and on, the same stories, the same history … which made white people and white business owners of that era still living in the community look pretty damn bad if not disgusting.  I didn’t know if I should pursue the story, I told my editor.  He understood and thought I should drop it.  Then I talked to white and Black people of the Baby Boomer generation, not the older folks of the community (who wouldn’t talk to me anyway about this story), but people who were teen-agers and young adults when the community changed in the summer of 1964.  Their recollections were more upbeat, positive.  They were of age in 1964 and realized racial segregation and discrimination was wrong, and change had to happen.  They were young enough to welcome it.  They were not bitter about the past.  Old times were best forgotten.

The series was called Rites of Passage: 30 Years of Civil Rights and included the remarkably sudden integration of the public schools and new federally enforced rules in criminal justice which had to be followed by the deputies and police.  I never found anyone in the community who removed the ‘white only’ and ‘colored only’ signs in places like parks and businesses.  But one was my father who during the era of Civil Rights worked for a national store in a major city in Texas.

So, when a U.S. senator calls for removing the 1619 Project, a nonprofit initiative, from the federal grant program, claiming it distorts American history, all Americans should be ashamed.  We’re already ashamed of our nation’s past with slavery and other wrongdoings.  Let’s call it what it was: evil.  But for a long time, now, we are finding that the evils were not only covered up or rewritten but also silenced.  Between the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and the Baby Boomers who protested the Vietnam War is the Silent Generation.  Americans by now are collectively enlightened about our shared ancestral past, having read real-life accounts and seen photographs, movies and documentaries.  Once upon a time, Americans used slaves as cheap labor, and after a civil war over this issue (good soldiers killed and were killed over this rich man’s cause), African Americans continued to be treated as subhuman until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

See, it’s the lies and silence that ignite social outrage.  Knowledge is truth, which sets all of us free.  America’s truth in history—the good, the bad and the ugly—is nothing to fear.  We can handle the truth. But the generation gap between much older and the middle-aged to younger Americans caught me unaware.  Look, the growing number of Americans will not cling to past lies such as America’s civil war was fought over a list of ideals (the inhumane institution of slavery being only one). And the progressive Southerner no longer will wax nostalgic over Jim Crow and allow suppressed voting rights while whistling Dixie and humming doo dah.  Like most Americans today, we find all of it backwoods and repugnant.

The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin began as the most overtly emotional display on nationwide TV.  And this is the chosen direction from the DA, usually stone-faced prosecuting attorneys who prefer the jury hear just the facts without raw emotion from those on the stand.  Instead, the prosecution’s first witnesses whose inability to control their tears may intentionally sway the jury—the one group in the courtroom who is supposed to consider the testimony and without bias collectively determine a just verdict. One news network covering the trial ‘gavel to gavel’ titles their coverage The Death of George Floyd: Derek Chauvin on Trial.  That’s not objective.  The trial is about the former policeman and his actions which a jury will decide may or may not have contributed to and caused the death of Mr. Floyd.  The punishment phase is not part of the ongoing trial.   

In court we heard the recording of Chauvin explain to a bystander, who somehow ended up on the stand early in the trial, the reason why he did what he did.  Chauvin comes across as an officer who was not enraged or out of control.  He explained the suspect was ‘sizable’ and appeared to the police as being ‘on something.’  Videos indicate Mr. Floyd was uncooperative and working against police who were trying to put him in a squad car.  Then Mr. Floyd ended up hand cuffed behind his back and belly down on the street, telling the police he could not breathe … yet he would not stop talking, and his words turned into prayers and pleas.  To the cops, he was a suspect, and they knew he was an ex-con, and he was not going to go with them to the police station for likely booking.

Police size up a call anticipating anything can happen.  They also carry a gun and handcuffs.  If a suspect has a weapon, police shoot to kill.  Police see situations differently than we do.  When confronted with an assailant, they think “It’s his life or mine.”  These circumstances are rare in a patrol officer’s life, maybe once or never in a 20-year career.

Contrary to opinion, Mr. Floyd did not die of a broken neck.  He could not breathe in the position he was in, held down by Chauvin.  Two autopsies revealed illegal narcotics, one a dangerous and deadly painkiller, the other an equally bad upper.  Who knows how long he had been taking those drugs and that combination despite a heart condition?  Mr. Floyd had spent time in prison and must have known if he were arrested for anything (misdemeanor or felony, DUI or petty crime), he likely would end up back in prison.

Then there’s the crowd that grew around the police scene and convenience store where someone had called authorities about Mr. Floyd passing a fake bill and therefore not paying for items.  The store owners have said after what all happened—the image of a white police officer pressing the neck of a handcuffed Black man until he died at the scene, the nights of violent fiery protests, the costly damage to businesses in the area—they’d never call the police again.  Cell phone cameras and cop cams recorded the event live and have been replayed around the world.  The scene touched a nerve among millions of people who protested against police brutality.  A shrine and mural were set up at the site where Mr. Floyd died … in the hands of police.

Law & Order, gavel gavel

Americans have made police officers out to be the ‘enemy of the people.’  The January insurrection showed the self-proclaimed law-and-order folks are anti-social, malcontents, against the law, coming full circle to criminals and felons.  With military assault weapons in hand, they stormed over Capitol police like they didn’t have to ‘stop in the name of the law.’  What’s so strange is some of the insurrectionists were cops and military, and some of the Capitol police supported and welcomed the insurrectionists into the People’s House.

Police are attacked from both sides: fascists who proclaim a love of authority but not when it comes to their whims and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement who have a right to call out bad cops for dozens of unwarranted shooting deaths more and more caught on camera. 

When it comes to law and order, we have to decide our shared ideal of the future.  Is it police who no longer carry guns?  Police who have a heart, shoot rubber bullets, or let their suspect run away because he or she does not want to be apprehended?  Or police are no longer called to handle anyone who appears to be acting weird or is doing something that poses a danger with a weapon?  Does every community need to create a separate group, and not call them a force, of psychologists and counselors who will handle people who appear to be on drugs and/or mentally ill?  And that mental health staff will be unarmed when the other person may be psychotic?  Should we have another separate group from police who will handle domestic cases (because they are the most dangerous calls for police)?

We want to believe the old way of policing is just not working and for Blacks and the disenfranchised has never worked.  We’ve grown so cynical that we believe, more often than not, justice does not prevail.  None of us civilians know what police deal with.  We’ve watched plenty of cop shows, though, so we think we’re know-it-alls.  Police have to follow laws and procedures.  They can’t arrest someone because somebody thinks something is going to happen.  And yes, in the cam world in which we live, we’ve seen some bad cops do horrific things like shooting the wrong people, shooting innocent people, shooting unarmed people, shooting people who run from the police.  Perhaps we don’t want our police anymore to overpower a suspect over petty crime.

We want police who are fair and just, who will protect the innocent and go after ‘the bad guy.’

Or maybe we don’t want police anymore.  In this country, we all can carry guns and think we can protect ourselves.    

Instead of seriously studying the problem (it seems to be just one BIG problem: inept bad and perhaps bigoted police officers) and coming up with solutions, the tables have been turned in a courtroom where a former police officer is accused by the People of not only manslaughter but murder, and everyone is pushing the jury to convict.  That is how the trial is coming across to rational minds.