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

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

One is the loneliest

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

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

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

Hope springs eternal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s an art to teaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suicidal depression

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the Giffords organization to stop gun violence:

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

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

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

Yeah, we’ve come a long way, baby.

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

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

The facts of life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sing, sing a song

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

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

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

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

Carry On by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young!

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

And when I die

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That damn movie

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

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

Then Columbine happened.

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

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

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

Let’s play Dysfunctional Family Feud!

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

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

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

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

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

Americans, please.

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

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

Oh, yes, I am wise, but it’s wisdom born of pain.

Yes, I’ve paid the price.  But look how much I gained.

If I have to, I can do anything.

I am strong.  I am invincible.  I am woman!

I may have been a decade old when abortion was legalized and therefore don’t remember much about it other than it used to be a legal option for girls ‘in trouble.’  But since then I’ve spent decades on the planet, all of them as a woman in America, sometimes watching documentaries with old news footage of the women’s marches in the 1960s and ’70s.  Looking back at the chauvinistic male responses, even by news reporters, to this day and age, seems to me when it comes to abortion, men haven’t changed one bit.  Condescending and sexist as ever and when they age, the loudest and most powerful among them turn into mean old coots.

Did you see how the DC legislators acted during a routine senate banking committee hearing?  They were listening to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and the old coots, of their own volition, brought up the issue of abortion—the most overemotional highly controversial subject.  They wanted to know if abortion were made illegal, what would be the economic impact on American life.  She told them economically it would be devastating to our country.  Their reaction was “How dare you, you Cold. Heartless. Bitch!”  [They really didn’t say that. But really they said that.]  And here’s the kicker, if she were a male economist, the congressmen wouldn’t have acted that way.  They wouldn’t have brought up the issue. But she was a woman, so.

Does it take an educated economist to point out an additional 800,000 babies born every year from now on would directly burden taxpayers and American families especially those headed by poor teen mothers?  What kind of idiots have been elected to Congress anyway?

Perhaps to counter the super-famous feminists of the 1970s (Steinem, Freidan, Abzug), since the 1980s to today anti-abortion leaders have always been men.  If only they’d get female leaders, women’s voices to speak up and spread the word against abortion.  But see, that’s just it.  Men have a need to go on and on about this most intimate women’s issue and legal right.  Men were the ones who bombed the women’s clinics where abortions took place and stalked and killed many doctors for performing abortions.  Why weren’t lots of women, many who also are pro-life and against abortion, shooting up clinics and killing doctors?

Cause for pause

If only we could hear from the tens of millions of teen-age boys and grown men who lost their chance at fatherhood due to abortion. 

What?  Shh. What’s that?

Nothing?

Not one cry or teardrop.  Well, not many and in public.  This is the usual male role in unintended pregnancy after sex.

Americans used to cuss the government for butting into their private lives.  They used to think the abortion debate could be resolved by a single-issue national vote and let the people decide: legal or illegal.

That’s how we talked in the olden days.

Have you listened to this nation lately?

This is a democratic country whereby no one trusts the other political party, where states like Texas throw away citizen votes, where people feel the need to train as ‘poll watchers,’ where election judges are intimidated to find more votes so Republicans win.

This latest drama about abortion becoming illegal nationwide—however truly the only issue I care about at this time, because I don’t believe abortion should be illegal—is to mask our most pressing problems.  In Texas, abortion blather covers up the real problem of our backwoods utility grid.  Just this weekend we were urged to turn ‘up’ our thermostats (say from 70 to 75)—because the Lone Star State’s electric grid cannot keep all homes and businesses cool.  And this is just the middle of May.  Our independent state grid failed us twice in the dead of winter, so.

When government can’t fix the most important problems—or any problem—emotional issues like abortion will keep our minds preoccupied.

OK, I’ll play.  Making abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest is a sign of a sick society albeit typically Southern gothic.  One in four girls is sexually molested in this country; it just stands to reason that many of these young victims of crime end up pregnant, and they’re just kids.  Calling abortion murder, sending women and doctors to prison for abortion, making contraceptives illegal, and guaranteeing a fertilized egg and human fetus constitutional rights are rantings of deranged old coots.

In the old-fashioned battle over abortion, here’s a 21^st century idea: If we’re going to make abortion illegal again, the overlooked males involved in 800,000 annual unwanted pregnancies should be named criminals, too.  Our society has the means to find every single guy through DNA technology.  Jail time: one year.  Tack on another year for each additional unwanted pregnancy he commits in his lifetime.

I leave the conversation with this fact of modern life: so many Viagra commercials lately

…

I’ve been changed somehow.  I didn’t want to change, didn’t expect to change.  But change has been forced upon me.  I’m not numb, just sickened, politically sick to my stomach.  No, I know this feeling, at first debilitating and silent.  For months the feeling welled up from the pit of my being then almost needed to be thrown up.  It’s me experiencing anger.

It’s my apparent delayed reaction to how unreasonable Texas and now other states have gone in the Republicans’ effort to make abortion, regardless of any reason, illegal.  Texas should be ashamed of its additional ‘snoop’ clause, allowing anyone from anywhere to alert ‘authorities’ (lawyers) about the possibility of a female out here having an abortion and drag to court others guilty by association like public or private transit drivers.  What the hell is that all about?

The conservative right-wing effort abolishes the guaranteed privacy of female Americans from adolescent to adult, 12 or 50, 10 or 45, 15 or 40.  No exceptions for rape or incest.  That’s the reason for half of all abortions.

The self-proclaimed pro-lifers—the same ilk who shot and killed gynecologists, harassed and shamed pregnant females entering health centers, and bombed and burned down women’s clinics—took leave of their senses back in the 1980s.  But now … they’ve crossed into full-blown abnormal psychology likened to mass histrionics.  It is immoral that men like these are running our state governments, and nothing can be done about it.

Why play hardball with this issue?

Our Texas Legislators and Governor have placed all their eggs, pun unintended, in one basket for the almighty vote.  The one-issue voters.  This deeply divisive, emotional, religious and controversial issue brings in the ‘hallelujahs’ by loud-mouthed religious conservatives with plenty of stones to throw.  Sinless, are they?  Not in my book.  So unwilling to put their money where their mouths are, the conservative crowd is notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to tax dollars going to the births, hospitalizations, housing, feeding, healthcare, daycare and full education of babies born into poverty.   

Don’t be cruel

Ironic this was the number one song of the 1950s, the era to which the political Right has wanted to return America since Reagan.  Like the ’50s was the golden age of … what?  Whiteness?  That’s what it looked like to Baby Boomers raised on I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies.

They want us to forget about the ’60s, man!  They want us to pretend the pill and women’s liberation were never commonly touted among the middle class.  They think women ought to stay home and raise their babies, that daddies never go away …

Time has marched on, and we are a changed people: more open, rational, loving, accepting, diverse, inclusive, empathetic, understanding.  But Texas leaders don’t reflect that. No one wants to go back to the 1950s or even the 20^th century.  Yet accompanying my state’s drunken political power and mass insanity has come an ugliness and hatred I’ve never witnessed.  It’s comparable to the story in To Kill a Mockingbird.  That same furious vitriol but in the story against Black people, hated and downtrodden citizens living within the white characters’ Southern hometown.

But Texas’ hatred is bigger than race: This is hatred of women—half the U.S. population, actually more than 50 percent.

Today old white men dare think we’re just gonna go back in time with them to the simple days of the 1950s when women knew their place, were surely virgins before marriage, the double standard accepted, men wore the pants, wives smacked if out of line, abortion illegal and thousands of women dead every year because of it.

The BIG question about when life begins is a religious belief not a scientific fact.  Pregnancy in its earliest weeks is tissue, not a baby.  A third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage anyway, and even this tragedy has gained the cynical scrutiny of today’s empowered Republicans who’ve long suspected and now proclaim the cause to be not God’s but the woman’s.   

In their moral certitude, the conservative Right will tell us life begins at conception, and that’s that.  They’ll tell—I mean yell at—millions of girls and women they do not know or care about, “You’re gonna have that baby, you hear me?!,” the Southern way of ending an emotional argument.

Everybody hears them, from their lips to God’s ears.  We bear witness to the consummation of power lust producing the most chauvinist, self-important, self-righteous, arrogant, indignant, ruthless, merciless, regressive, irrational Texan-American leaders—all who history will rank alongside our state’s and nation’s list of notorious bigots, racists, sexists, liars, hypocrites, kooks, and creeps.

All I said was “Democrat”—and the voting registration computer suddenly conked out.  I didn’t know what to think, tried not to ponder a conspiracy of sorts.  I mean, I am one of the very few Democrats I know still living here in Texas.  The poll worker kept hold of my drivers license and voter card; previously I had checked out as legitimately registered.  Why did the computer go kaput seemingly when I uttered the D word?

Other poll workers were called over to check out the machine for a few minutes, then the head computer Meister determined it needed a reboot.  That took a long time, ten minutes, when all I wanted to do was cast a ballot in the Texas March primary.  Incidentally I had had a very long bad day, was dead tired, but the poll was convenient.  So before heading all the way home, I voted or tried to after 5 p.m.  The whole ordeal of waiting in line, being validated by my drivers license (with my picture) and voter registration card, took maybe 15 minutes—with me standing in dress boots enduring unbearable foot pain.  A lesser American would have left; this was, after all, just the primary.

But in all good conscience, I could not stand back this year and allow the current Texas governor to remain in office without a fighting challenger.  Not with the current state of backwoods anti-progressive hypocritical Christian measures the Texas Legislature and governor have set in motion: from banning the federal right to abortion as well as removing hundreds of school library books and textbooks to the know-nothings misperception on ‘critical race theory’ and butting into the handful of families across the state privately dealing with their child’s gender questioning—red hot issues that are none of our concern AND are intended to make us forget about the hundreds of Texans who died, billions of tax dollars spent, and permanently increased utility bills we now pay due to last year’s deep freeze debacle which was supposed to have been avoided after a similar ruinous week-long deep freeze in 2011 that made us a national laughingstock during the Super Bowl.  See, everyone else in the U.S. is connected to the national grid and report hardly any problems like no electricity, gas, lights and heat during the winter.

But the most fundamental issue our Texas government has been monkeying with is the vote.

My eyes of Texas are upon them

Republicans in Texas and many other states went out of their way to stop citizens from voting especially mail-in ballots which is one Pacific northwest state’s only way to vote and works beautifully.  But in Texas and similar overtly suspicious Republican-controlled states, it is voter suppression unseen since the decades in this country up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Texas alone nonchalantly tossed in the trash 18,000 votes, claiming every single one of those ballots did not comply with newfangled measures supposedly to ensure rare if not totally made up voter fraud.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, voter suppression laws were passed in Texas along with the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Vermont and Wyoming.

This is purely a Republican charge.  I’ve heard them belly ache about voter fraud since the days of Nixon and suspect it goes back further.

Our right to vote is so important that it is the number one issue that will lead to the collapse of democracy, according to the world history book How Democracies Die.  It starts with a growing number of citizens convinced of voter fraud coupled with the pessimistic self-pitying sentiment that their vote really does not count no how because they believe there are mighty powers that are up to evil who in the end put into place who they want as U.S. President whether Republican or Democrat.  There is no hope, and the little people like you and me are not in charge at all.

Vote doubters are quick to quote “We the people” in impassioned speeches about how awful life is in America.  But deep down they do not believe that in this nation the People are the ones in charge.  We elect leaders to govern in the best interest of everyone.  Our leaders work for us. We have the opportunity to fire or promote them every election.

When few Americans vote—something else I’ve noted with shame my entire life—and the masses are apathetic until their right to vote is gone, authoritarian leaders take over rather quickly.

All of this because so many Americans choose to believe a lie.

The 2020 election was not stolen.  Democrat presidential contenders won both the 2000 and 2016 elections according to the votes.  But the electoral college voted differently than the popular vote.  And the anti-Trump rallies held on a single day in major cities across the U.S. following the dubious 2016 election, attended by mostly Democrats and millions of others who did not believe he legitimately won, furious as they were they did not assault police officers, carry guns, or attempt to overthrow the government.  They did not smear human feces along the marble halls of the U.S. Capitol.

The Russian leader was asked by candidate Donald Trump to help him win the election, knowing full well that their notorious government had the power to interfere with our computerized voting.  And they did.  Maybe.  And still could, I guess.

So on the March primary, I stood firmly and waited patiently.  I put out positive vibes.  Nothing to see here.  I stood self assured that I would get to vote, unlike my friend who was hassled for hours when trying to vote in the 2000 election in Florida.  Remember that?

No, I kept calm, cool and collected at the Texas primary.  Inhaling and exhaling, keeping my wits about me, keeping quiet and maintaining a sense of humor—and at long last was handed my ballot to go vote.  I don’t have to tell you I went down the ballot pressing the computer screen of mostly Democrats and most especially one that will give our present governor a run for his money.  Yes, money influences our elections and shouldn’t, something else I’ve heard all my long life.

But when we look at all the other government options in our world (and there aren’t but a few of them), democracy with all citizens voting is better than the alternatives.  At least for now we have our freedoms like speech and press.  Election nights may not be as ‘fun’ as a government professor theorized on why we Americans go through all the trouble to begin with.  Eh, I’m fine with it and must participate.  I want our esteemed leaders to know I’m watching their every move.  Every day.

The story of Elizabeth Holmes has been played out in news investigations, televised documentaries and a current miniseries called The Dropout.  She was a Texas gal and extremely intelligent Stanford dropout apparently in a helluva hurry to become a billionaire.  To come across as altruistic in her purely monetary life goal, she convinced herself and everyone around her that her billions would come from a 21^st century medical invention.  The invention would replace traditional blood tests, using a long needle and vials, with something like the new diabetic thin needle prick.  The sales pitch, in her made-up revolutionary invention, was that only a ‘drop of blood’ would be needed to test for more than 100 health issues and conditions.

Everyone saw this big-deal invention, well the company name Theranos, at Walgreens.  Then before anyone could blink or think, the partnership dissolved and the Latin-sounding name summarily removed from the pharmaceutical chain as Ms. Holmes was under federal investigation.  Recently she’s been convicted of business fraud and now awaits sentencing that is expected to be several decades in prison.

The theme of The Dropout is discounting the old adage ‘pay your dues.’  She thought she was too smart to have to spend a couple of years in prison, er, college with all that learning and full comprehension before, say, starting a business … in a field in which she was not qualified as someone who actually earned a degree involving years of lab work, experiments, and studies.  She wouldn’t know it, but that is the purpose of higher education.

Economic analysts blame Silicon Valley for Ms. Holmes getting away with her big lie for so long.

But the real reason this young woman was able to fool everyone, especially her board of old white men, is because she was white, blonde with large blue eyes.  She looked like their daughter or granddaughter—and they treated her like family.  They simply believed every word that came out of her mouth.  They gave her a lot of breaks when she messed up, too.

Perhaps for appearance, to come across as an eccentric genius, she wore her long blonde hair in a messy pony tail and often accessorized her usual black pantsuit with a white lab coat attempting serious medical scientist.  But it was all part of the smoke and mirrors.

White Anglo Saxon Protestant

Ms. Holmes would have never been able to get away with the enormous lie involving very important leaders and millions of invested dollars if not for her looks and white race.  She played the people she knew best, her own kind, because once upon a time her family had wealth, too.

White people have been told they are privileged whether upper class or middle class and even poor.  The sociological term is white privilege.  A lot of white people, however, in this country have denied this description as they certainly do not see they’re living the easy life.  They will say they’ve had to fight for everything they have, same for their parents and grandparents and on back in time.  They bristle at the notion that minorities like Blacks and Hispanics maintain white privilege exists.  Whites deny it and don’t believe it.

Then the Elizabeth Holmes’ story comes along and reinforces the stereotype.

White privilege can be said of the media’s coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  This story is the main news in every news source and has been since it happened.  The Ukrainians’ plight, having to fight the Russian war machine from taking over their country and losing their freedom, has been covered in great detail.  It is full-on 24-hour news coverage and hard to watch.

Compare it to similar wars that received little and inconsistent news coverage: Darfur, Congo, Syria, Middle Eastern nations and Asian countries, too.  The world is full of bully leaders intent on war and committing atrocities against people whose countries their armies have invaded. Ukraine is a predominantly white nation.  Why weren’t other nations in the world with the same type of invasion constantly brought to our attention 24/7?  Why aren’t they now?

People of color may wonder why.

Ms. Holmes got away with a lot maybe because of her high intelligence and conniving ways.

But who are we kidding?  She got away with a bald-faced lie because she was white and somewhat pretty.  The mass media cheered her on with virtually no questions asked because she was female.  White power begats white power.  Ms. Holmes went a step further in her self-deception: She felt entitled to great wealth.  Trying to cozy up to a renowned Stanford business professor, a fellow woman, Ms. Holmes was instead scolded by someone who could see right through her.  She was warned that because she was female, she could not skip all the steps to business success.

Nah.  Not when you’ve got white privilege on your side.

Another aspect of the Holmes’ con may be generational.  Every young person is in a hurry to be successful and financially secure.  Ms. Holmes’ goal in life was ‘billionaire’ not medical scientist or inventor of something to benefit all mankind.  Somehow her wiring was twisted.  The prize was not medical advancement but big money.  Being a young American in the 21^st century, her financial goal was not millionaire but billionaire.  What kind of goal is that?  It is the goal of a shallow empty person.

The lesson from Holmes—or for Ms. Holmes—is: yes, ma’am, you most certainly do have to pay your dues in life, and even then, success is elusive to most.  But, hey, life is not about money anyway.  Our lives are far more valuable than money.  It shouldn’t take an old wise woman to know that.  Ms. Holmes will spend a lot of time thinking about life and what it’s all about.  Meanwhile, talk of her redemption is already in the works, according to one documentary, because America loves a good redemption story.  Beautiful.