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From Dead Bird Mall to Red Bird Mall once again

The former Red Bird Mall now resembles historic ruins.  For decades hardly anyone wanted to shop there, preferring to venture across Dallas or in recent years nearby Cedar Hill for its trendy outdoor walking mall.  Many cities across the U.S. are burdened with mid-century malls.  Old and gray and huge as the sea, they remain sprawled across a good hundred acres—taking up way too much space and offering no tax revenue.

The death of a mall is a pitiful sight especially for Baby Boomers like me with memories that keep us forever 16.  The biggest thing to have come to my neck of the Dallas suburbs was this very mall.  Opening in 1975, it seemed destined for eternal business with anchors like Sanger Harris, JC Penney and of course Sears.  The mall shops were crazy eclectic but competed to fulfill our every want and need.  More shoes and dress shops than a busy gal could visit in one day, a couple of record stores (for the latest album rock) and eateries galore made the mall an inexpensive teen date: a place to roam and people watch.  Christmas time was especially crowded.  As a teen I always liked going to the mall.  It made me feel alive.

My first real job was at that mall where I scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.  We wore pink baseball caps and smocks.  I learned to operate a cash register, figure tax, and count correct change back to customers.  After school on the days I went to work, the price of a single scoop had increased a penny or two, sometimes a nickel.  If I recall correctly, a scoop at some point was 20 cents then more and more, corrections noted in pencil near the register.  The owners, a married couple, wanted to train me in management.  Turned out the young assistant manager was stealing from the register and summarily fired.  But I had greater dreams to fulfill and passed on pursuing management.  Besides, the job paid $2 an hour when the minimum wage was more than that.  When I inquired about the discrepancy, the owners explained if a company is small, employees don’t have to be paid the federal minimum wage.  After some months, I quit to finally earn minimum wage at a barbecue joint.

But working at the mall really appealed to me.  Many occasions I’d approach every single store, on both floors, and ask for an employment application.  Through high school and early college, I usually could land a job at the mall.  My sales clerk experience included the children’s clothing department at Sears and a clothing store called Woman’s World that specialized in the latest fashions for larger ladies.  I enjoyed my breaks at Sears because I could go to the candy and nut counter for a bag of warm cashews and an Icee.  At the ice cream shop, employees got a free scoop for coming to work.  I usually passed but when succumbing to temptation chose Daiquiri Ice on a sugar cone.  I was trying to be sophisticated.  Besides, I liked the cool turquoise color.

 All’s fair in mall and war

Because of the mall’s location, in south Dallas, a lot of whites referred to Red Bird Mall as Black Bird Mall.  What an awful thing to say, just because a lot of shoppers were black.  But see, the majority whites at the time were not yet willing to be inclusive or think of the community and our country as multicultural and multiracial—as I had come to realize in college.  The racial epithet of sorts was around 1989.  Yes, there was crime at the mall, perhaps more than other malls in Dallas, still at the time unverified as fact by the general public.  It seems an urban legend started the moment Red Bird Mall opened: a horrible story about a little boy attacked in the mall’s restroom.  Hearing the story as an adolescent, I believed it and was on guard if ever having to use the mall restrooms, eerily placed down long corridors.  After I grew up, going alone to the mall seemed unsafe.  I could tell things had changed.  The young crowds seemed rough, loud—and most importantly to business—weren’t there to shop.  But neither was I most of the time in junior high and high school.  I did shop for and buy a prom dress at the mall my junior year: a lacy baby blue evening gown and a very fond memory.

In an effort to rejuvenate the mall, it was renamed Southwest Center and its interior walls redecorated in a style reminiscent of the Old Southwest, more New Mexico and old Mexico than modern Dallas, Texas.  It just didn’t fit for those of us born and raised in this area.  As the poor economy of the late ’80s and early ’90s continued to threaten businesses from independent shops to national retail chains, my old shopping ground got a new nickname: Dead Bird Mall.  It was a hilarious yet honest depiction given all the mall vacancies.

Eulogy for a dead mall

A year ago the Dallas mayor proclaimed intentions to yet again reincarnate Red Bird Mall, first off to rename it as such because originally it referred to a nice upper middle-class Oak Cliff area of Dallas.  The city is working with businesses like Starbucks to once again populate the vast concrete territory still harboring some semblance of a mall.  But perhaps malls should be a thing of the past.  As wonderfully convenient, though costly, as shopping malls were—everything under one roof—times have changed.  People shop online first to purchase so many things.  Then there’s Wal-Mart and Target.

So what’s gonna bring ’em out to the modernized Red Bird Mall?  Perhaps a lot of small single buildings connected by outdoor walkways, fountains, floral landscaping with shade trees, benches, ponds and nature—a beautiful place for meditation, reading online and waiting while others shop.  Rule one should be in considering a new shopping development to revitalize Red Bird Mall: Why do people want to go there?

In retrospect, maybe we should list all the reasons people stopped going there: safety, loud unruly crowds, loitering, theft, assault, guns, drugs, evening hours, humongous terrain, accessibility, health issues, and impractical shops.  Consumers of the 21st century may have no need for the old mall experience that millions of us hold dear in our memories.  Our generation knows better than most: The past tends to be romanticized … because we don’t want to reminisce about the way things really were.

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Wanna run for Congress? Millionaires need not apply

New Rule: From now on, anyone running for U.S. Congress and Senate, cannot have an annual salary more than, oh I don’t know, $100,000.  ?  Sound good?  Still unfair?  No more than $75,000?  Something that would put him or her in the league of regular folks, maybe no more than $40,000?  Come on now, there are a lot of people in this country who earn salaries like $30,000 and $40,000  a year and even raise kids.  But the point I’m trying to make is NO MORE MILLIONAIRE POLITICIANS!!  Yea!!!!!!  Rahhhhhh!!!

With our usual federal government shut downs, it seems it’s not so much a liberal-conservative fight as a disconnection between millionaires and regular folks.  Millionaires have never cared about poor people (and for them that includes the vast middle class), what the Millennials used to refer to as the 99 percent (of us).   Remember when the kids protested on Wall Street just a couple of years ago?  Then we elect a self-promoted billionaire as president?  What’s up with that?  How did our nation change on a dime?  Just wondering what happened to the collective rage against all people rich.

Only millionaires play chicken with people’s lives and livelihoods.  Regular folks would never do such a thing.  We have more empathy toward our fellow man, sort of.  I mean, we are Americans, and since the Reagan ’80s our national motto has been “I got mine. You get yours.”  Works out great for some folks, maybe even most Americans with the wherewithal to earn a college degree or born with business savvy and ambition or tech or high-paid trade acumen.  But not everyone does well in our great land.  There are all kinds of reasons: physical disabilities, chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, low self-esteem, low intellect, anti social personality disorder.  Then there are issues dealing with race, color, sex, religion and ethnicity.  People of color have been saying for decades there are points against them in our great nation when it comes to who gets the jobs and promotions and why.  It doesn’t matter how many bi-racial family ads are on TV now.  The nation as a whole hasn’t let go of discrimination.

Billionaire Boys Club

So now really we have a billionaire club infiltrating politics.  And since politics is about governing people’s lives, I’d say it’s unfair and I’d go so far as to say non-Christian.  Wouldn’t you?  OK, let’s leave the issue of religion out of it.  Let’s not ask “What Would Jesus Do?” when it comes to a government shut down.  After all, the great majority of our nation’s millionaires and billionaires and Congressional representatives proclaim to be Christian.

The first time I was ever aware of our government’s money problems was in 1981.  That was the first time I heard our government was broke.  And we’ve been broke ever since.  Well, there was that shining moment when President Bill Clinton proudly announced our new national debt was $0.  That’s zero dollars.  The politicians, especially the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ had convinced us concerned Americans the budget could never be balanced. Shame on them.  Clinton was lucky he rode the perfect wave of the telecom boom … which turned into a tech and dot.com bubble that eventually burst.  Nevertheless, he did prove our national debt could be resolved.

Now I’m just thinking out loud, but does anyone else think our entire federal budget is just a house of cards?  We’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul?  If we are truly unable to keep our government financially operating time and again, then something’s, like, major wrong with our nation.

The one person I would never trust to fix our perpetual federal debacle and international embarrassment is a millionaire.  Wanna know why?  Because I know that millionaires never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever spend their own money.  Trump never did contribute faithfully and willingly and lovingly to his own presidential campaign.  He’s got to be the first in American history to not gamble on his own presidential bid.

And the likes of him, billionaires and millionaires, are in charge of our federal budget?  Something’s out of whack.  And it’s been out of whack for too long.

Roll over Tom Jeff’rson

Our nation’s Founders in their wildest dreams could have never imagined the vast financial mess of our great country, supposedly the greatest and richest on earth.  How could a nation built on democracy, free will, equality, and even everybody’s pursuit of happiness go so profoundly astray financially?  Maybe it is the guaranteed ‘free will.’  Humans don’t do well with free will.  We have a tendency to put off tomorrow what we don’t want to do today, like pay the electric bill.  We get credit cards to take care of our needs then our wants, then we can’t pay them either, blaming high interest rates.  Over a period of five decades—our prime working years—life becomes a series of calamities: illnesses, job losses, home and car repairs, spouse death, divorce, stock market crashes, loans, inflation, recessions, raising kids, college, etc.  We find we aren’t any better off than when we’d first begun to work.  The future looks bleak.

That’s the kind of thinking that got Trump elected.

The bottom line about governing is very simple: THE BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID.  That’s how families do it as well as cities and states.  In government jargon, it’s called a zero budget, where they figure out the money coming in over a year or two and budget it.  We don’t dip into money that does not belong to us like Social Security, Medicare, education and the military.  We don’t borrow from nations to fight our wars, because those nations may turn around and use our debt against us.

The real shame about being an American is how we allow millionaire congressmen (a few of whom, by the way, have nothing better to do than show us their junk on the internet) to play Kick the Can with federal financial obligations.  Why do we allow them to do this?  Too much trouble to get involved?  We don’t want to be thought of as old coots firing off phone calls, letters and emails to our elected officials in hopes they actually will be persuaded by our angry words to change their ways?  Why are we afraid of people we elected into office?  Who’s really in charge of this country?  We’ve forgotten: The people have the power.

For a couple hundred years, our form of government has allowed us to elect others to govern, to run the business of America.  And if the ones we’ve elected can’t govern, then we the people are going to have to start doing it.  A change in qualifications for office—especially banning millionaires—would be a good start.  I think the constitutional framers never intended for a bunch of rich men to run the United States of America forever.  Our 18th century American forefathers, those who lived during the Age of Enlightenment, who were free thinkers and fans of Western philosophy, knew a democratic government could only work and last if it’s tended to by all citizens including farmers and laborers, and not just and only by educated dandies.

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Age brings wisdom to accept ourselves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Confederate statues under attack by twisted history

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

Old times not forgotten

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

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

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

That damn war

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

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

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

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

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

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From Obamacare to don’t care

What must the world think of Americans now since reneging on expanded public healthcare—and once again going alone from what works in every modern nation on earth?  They can think what I’ve come to know: Americans do not like taking care of other people—and by that I mean they only want to take care of themselves and their own families.  In fairness, I may be too hard on my countrymen.  After all, the rest of the world really can’t think of Americans as the unkindest people on earth.  Americans are usually first to donate to world catastrophes like typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes and famines.  We probably raise more money and send more tax dollars than any other country in that regard.  Didn’t we practically rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II?  What about all the global goodwill from our Peace Corps volunteers?  Isn’t that the kind of altruism for which the world knows us, holding Americans in the highest esteem, the very best of humanity?

Chaps and spurs

Where did Americans get the idea that everyone should just take care of his own?  Well, from wearing blinders for one thing and never seeing how nonwhite people are treated in our own country and have been mistreated here for centuries: Africans, Native Americans, Asians, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Muslims, Mexicans, etc.  But mostly, I have a hutch, this ideal of proud American self sufficiency evolved during the late 20th century … from watching TV shows like “The Rifleman,” “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Big Valley” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

America is the only country with a cowboy heritage.  And we’ve romanticized our pioneering Western spirit to the point that fiction has become reality in our minds.  None of us, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents really know how life was lived way back when, how men treated women, how parents treated children, how communities of mostly one race and religion treated others who did not fit in physically or socially.  We don’t know why Wyatt Earp hung up his guns in public places.

One thing we can assume is within the hundreds of small rural communities that cropped up across the American Western frontier post Civil War, people cared for one another.  If one family lost their home to a fire, the community probably helped rebuild and donated clothing, food and furniture.  Seems like our kin would have done that.  Seems like that’s what the Good Book tells us to do, to help our fellow man especially in time of need.

Modern times

There are a few reasons why Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost.  One was Obamacare.  Democrats liked it; Republicans hated it.  Universal healthcare, like any policy President Obama tried to create, was blocked by Republicans.  President Obama had to take his healthcare policy all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Court found that health insurance was a right of every American citizen, not just for the gainfully employed.  So, expanded Medicaid was crammed down the throats of every American.  Americans don’t like being told what to do now.

From small business owners to young single adults, millions of Americans did not like Obamacare and its punitive clause to collect money from anyone not insured one way or another.  It did not matter that every single doctor, hospital, pharmaceutical and insurance company, and the entire medical profession supported the new law because it meant healthier people through immediate diagnoses and treatment—and maybe assured salary and career future.

Typical of Americans, the good ol’ days was romanticized as the better situation: when anyone who could afford insurance had it and the rest could just rely on Medicaid—which we all have to pay into anyway.  Self reliance and rugged individualism, that’s what built this country!

T’ain’t true!  What built our country was Americans working together, multicultural Americans working together, being allowed to work together.  Having strong charismatic leaders, more father than friend, and one goal at a time built this nation, made America the greatest place on earth.

The world probably still thinks America is great, probably believes in America more than Americans do themselves these days.  Our history is unique, yes built on self sufficiency and reliability and determination and total liberty.  But our nation was not built on mass disdain toward the down-trodden and underprivileged—the poorest, weakest and sickest among us.  Whatever their demographic number—10 percent, 25 percent, half the nation and more if we include the over-50 crowd—a nation is known for how it treats its own people.  That’s certainly how America judges all the other countries—often why we get involved overseas, to make things right, make a difference, improve the lives of our fellow man.  It’s the American way.

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Marijuana: all together now

Quietly—with little notice or even controversy—Dallas passed a new marijuana law.  Called ‘cite and release,’ the ordinance allows citizens to possess up to four ounces of weed without having to go to jail.  Like, wow.  This blows my mind.  Finally the Man gives a wink/wink to all the people, young and old, who smoke pot … who are never ever going to stop smoking pot … for the past fifty years or so … whether it’s legal or not.

We are seeing nationwide a huge shift in the marijuana debate.  There is no debate anymore.  NORML is normal.  Just breathe, breathe in the air …

It was bound to happen, though I figured it would be rather late in my lifetime.  I remember when Ann Richards was given a hard time by the mass media for not answering the drug question as she ran for Texas governor.  George W. Bush never had to answer the drug question either.  Barack Obama answered and still was elected president twice.  So our nation has changed.  The majority of Americans do not care about this particular drug being illegal anymore.

The ’70s show

You will not believe this but … back at my old suburban high school, there were two outdoor smoking lounges for the students.  Before my arrival, the campus had conducted a big debate and vote to allow a student smoking lounge so kids would stop smoking in the restrooms.  And it worked really well.  Yeah, in my day, the kids who smoked—and they were the cool kids even with subtle coughs and throat clearing and that awful smell on their clothes—would come to class, lay their pack of smokes on top of their desks, and pay attention to whatever subject was being taught.  I’m not kidding.

Of course, along with the leniency toward smoking cigarettes, which were somehow legal for kids to get in those days, (I forget this point; seems like only age 18 and older could buy them, so how were we allowing kids to smoke cigarettes anyway?) came a pushing of the envelope.  On occasion the sweet aroma of marijuana wafted from the teen smoke lounge and intermingled with the Camels and Virginia Slims.  Society forgot that kids push boundaries.  That’s what they do.  That’s what childhood is for.  Society also had forgotten that teen-agers are kids, albeit really big and immature kids.

I guess adults in those days were not going to see past the smoke and mirrors.  Cocaine and heroin were the big drugs that worried parents.  As the kids themselves would say, marijuana is like an aspirin compared to hard drugs.  Then some kids did get hooked, searching for that elusive high and rush from harder drugs.  But overall few who tried marijuana became drug addicts for any lengthy period.

The dance continued until the mid 1980s when the student smoking lounges—did I mention there were two, one for the new freshmen campus—were closed down.  The times had changed dramatically with a full-fledged, alleged war on drugs in America.  Youth were being programmed to just say no to drugs.  But teen life and modern childhood come with a lot of baggage, more so if the kids come from parents who themselves do drugs.  And that scenario was played out in a major anti-drug TV commercial: the one where the father walks into his adolescent boy’s bedroom and confronts him about a shoe box of pot, demanding to know where he learned to do this sort of thing.  “You!” the kid retorts, “I learned it from watching you!”  The father hangs his head and turns sadly in defeat.

Half baked idea

From Woodstock when Jerry Garcia held up a joint and proclaimed “Exhibit A,” police departments cutting out marijuana questions on recruit applications, to all the free-wheeling, pot-smoking, drug-toking movies and rock lyrics and concerts of the past half century, finally the figurative smoke has cleared.  The debate is OVER.  Pot won.  My generation of former high school cigarette and pot smokers must be dancing in the streets.  That is, if we can get off our hind ends without a walking cane.

Medical marijuana is becoming legalized throughout the nation and is recreational in Colorado.  For the past few years, the Texas Legislature has some young elected official who tries to open the marijuana laws only to be shut down by the Old Gray Guard.  But it’s just a matter of time before Texas sees the light, like Dallas.  The majority of the voting public—democrat and republican—do not care about marijuana remaining illegal and especially with a prison sentence.  And our prisons are mostly full of people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

The reason for Dallas City Council’s change of heart to permit a small amount of marijuana without a trip to jail came from listening to minority communities.  A black ministerial alliance had asked for a cite-and-release solution for up to four ounces of weed, explaining how rare it is for black youth—but really many, many people of all ethnicities and ages—to get a break if caught by police for low-level offenses related to, say, driving, no license, no insurance, no registration, and then a bag of weed, too.  If someone’s in jail, that person often loses a job, and many other financial problems follow.  It’s a hole the individual can never escape financially.

The flip side, the law-and-order side, is Don’t Do Drugs.  It’s that simple.  But a society is not at all simple.  There has never been in the course of human history a simple place, a simple time, a simple era.  And societies evolve and change slowly yet radically … especially in the span of fifty to sixty years.

Marijuana may be nothing to go to jail over.  It obviously does not create a violent streak.  The effects of marijuana are not the same as legal alcohol consumption or manufactured illegal narcotics, even prescription drugs.  Some pot smokers may feel the need to try harder drugs and will even spiral into addiction and criminal activity.  But like the old hippies have been trying to tell us since the ’60s: Marijuana grows on God’s green earth for some reason.  What could it be?

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The O’Reilly factor. Figures.

When I was a newspaper reporter, I used to watch Bill O’Reilly every night.  I figured I needed to stay in the know, and his show did present several sides of an issue, at least two sides.  My liberal friends cringed at the thought and asked how I could stand him.  “I don’t like watching him,” I replied. “I like to watch the sparring.”

In the late 1990s, O’Reilly did seem to cover important topics, inviting many liberals to come on his show to debate.  He also had many show biz types like Suzanne Somers who was writing books about nontraditional and holistic cancer treatment.  Being a man, he fawned over her, smiling while discussing her monumental stardom after just one year on “Three’s Company.”  Keeping her hair white blonde didn’t hurt.  Besides, her eyes sparkled, too.

O’Reilly kept his show cool bringing in Republicans from heavy metal bands to Hollywood actors and actresses.  The question always came up about people of their stature turning conservative, usually a quality their fans did not realize or assume.  The answer was the same:  They had traveled the world and seen dire poverty and social injustice.  Their minds were opened to the benefits of capitalism especially in nondemocratic and socialist nations.  O’Reilly smiled, his eyes sparkled in agreement.

Then something happened that turned me off “The O’Reilly Factor.”  George W. Bush was running for president, and O’Reilly appeared to be his number one fan.  Bush would come on the show and unpretentiously say things like, “Why do I need to go talk to Al Sharpton?”  O’Reilly gushed: finally a political candidate unconcerned about political correctness.  O’Reilly had lost his objectivity.

I stopped watching “O’Reilly” every night, catching it occasionally while flipping the channels to see a topic of interest.  What I started noticing especially on Thursday nights was the ‘babes’ he had on to ‘spar’ with him.  These professional women usually were educated attorneys well respected in their fields with specific details on topical and controversial court cases or arrests and could provide insight and maybe a counter to O’Reilly’s societal cynicism.

But I couldn’t get past the visual: the lips, the makeup, the hair, the tight dress, the full bosom, the cleavage.  What’s up with that?  The FOX network came along with shows like “Married with Children” and “The Simpsons” to cater to America’s love of the bawdy and OK maybe the body, the female body.  Somehow this in-your-face sex appeal crossed over into the FOX News division, too.  No other female network newscasters and reporters look or dress like the FOX girls.  There’s a reason.

Oh and somehow FOX News becomes the leader in conservative news.  How can this be?  Just put two and two together.  Or just two.  For all the sizzling hot female correspondents sparring on “the no spin zone,” O’Reilly remained aged and aging, turkey neck in check.  Never a face lift or jowl tightening.  Good thing for him there’s a double standard.

So what I’m saying is a professional woman cannot be taken seriously by men, white or blue collar, when she’s showing her cleavage.  It just isn’t possible.  My God, men are only human!  As much as I would like to blame O’Reilly for sexist jerk comments and boorish behavior—to the tune of millions of dollars in she-said-he-said pay offs—the women have to accept some part.  Sexy is a game we can never win in the real work world.  To my younger sisters who think they can portray themselves as overtly sexy and still be respected for brains and beauty … you can’t fool Mother Nature.

 

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Texas public schools need 21st century spending

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

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

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

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

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

Time’s a-wastin’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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So long Charles Manson, so very long

Charles Manson’s not feeling well these days.  Sniff, sniff.  The infamous lifer guilty of mass murder was moved from his prison cell to an undisclosed hospital.  At long, long last, maybe society will finally be rid of this notorious sociopath.

 

For almost fifty years, Charles Manson has remained so well known he’s like an uncle in prison.  Because of him, much has been debated on the nature-versus-nurture theory in child development: Would Charlie have turned out the same if he had come from a loving home, or is he indeed proof of a born sociopath?  With several books and autobiographies, TV movies and news magazine specials, interviews, articles, websites and perpetual interest, Charles Manson’s life and crimes are like a tattoo on our society—perhaps never to be removed.  Even his heroes the Beatles commented on him back in the day.  (John was more sympathetic; George was not.)

 

Did you know that Manson and the attorney who prosecuted him were born the same year, in 1934?  Prosecutor and defendant—clean-cut suit with college, unkempt hippie with prison smarts—were the same age during the trial.  Vincent Bugliosi was always available to comment on Manson through the decades until his own death a few years ago.  Sharon Tate’s mother, a physical presence at every parole hearing, also passed away.  Alas, Manson and his aging girls live on behind bars.  Originally after their collective trial, they had received the death penalty in California.  But that punishment was later deemed cruel and unusual in our society.  That was during the liberal ’70s when even the likes of heinous murderers, though never forgiven, were going to be treated in the manner of a loving society.  Life without parole was considered fair and just.

 

A lot more vicious crimes have occurred since 1969, back when some hippies on a hot August night went on a senseless rampage of carnage not once but twice, leaving blood-smeared taunts and warnings at the police and society.  More discreet mass murderers roamed free in the decades to follow—each news account a revelation that scared us, mostly women, out of our wits.  Nowadays no one sleeps with the windows open and doors unlocked, and those who can afford it place a premium on home safety by adding dogs and alarm systems.  Manson and his creepy crawlies had a lot to do with ushering in these commonsense changes in the American home.

 

Another decade or so after the Manson trial, the death penalty was restored as being perfectly sound in the case of certain kinds of murders.  These crimes had to meet criteria such as involving a child or police officer and taking place during another offense such as burglary or rape and being particularly gruesome.   In the past decade, Texas boasted the number one killer of capital offenders.  And more of the condemned were black than white.  Once upon a time, lethal injection was deemed a viable solution that lets the punishment fit the crime without offending society’s growing inclination against other forms of execution.  As the years rolled on, however, we became increasingly aware of many men in prison who were proven innocent through DNA.  So now, like the ’70s, society is questioning the death penalty, and many states already have banned it—because it stands to reason some who died in the death chamber were innocent.

 

I am against the death penalty and support life in prison.  A lifelong prison sentence is exactly how some murderers should pay for taking one or more human lives.  We have to pay more money to provide lifers with housing, food, health and education.  But doing so reflects a society’s clear conscience.  I am a product of the ’70s after all, having grown up knowing about Manson and the murders and his commuted sentence from death to life in prison.  So I shed no tears about Charlie or any mass murderer spending the rest of his life in prison—even if living to be 100.  We have all the time in the world.