Month: November 2018

A Chance Meeting

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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Maybe I’m just a cockeyed optimist but I am slowly but surely seeing signs that there are more and more folks who are ready to ditch the incivility and fighting in our society and join together in bipartisan ways to repair the wounds that plague our society. I can only hope that we are about to turn a corner, and I don’t want to get overly excited just yet. Still I like some things that I am observing.

A Facebook post from one of the local television stations reported a chance meeting of Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz at a Houston airport as they were both traveling to Washington D.C. for the current session of Congress. A young woman from Texas A&M spotted them in the encounter and was overjoyed to note that Beto walked up to Cruz and offered his congratulations on his reelection to the Senate. It was a grand gesture given that Cruz’ opponent had been Beto himself. The two men than conversed pleasantly without any sign of recrimination. They young woman sensing the importance of the moment even persuaded the two leaders to pose together for a photograph with her.

There was great joy on social media that such an occurrence had transpired. Folks commented that it was refreshing to witness old fashioned manners, something that has been sorely missing for some time. The level of support for civility indicated to me that most of us are truly fed up with the ugliness that has so dominated discussions and attempts to tackle our current problems. It is as though we all understand that rigid partisanship gets us nowhere.

Mitch McConnell claims to be ready to work with Democrats. Nancy Peolosi says that rebuilding infrastructures and relationships is a great place to start. Fox News joined in efforts to get Jim Acosta readmitted to Whitehouse press briefings. There is a kind of quiet revolution attempting to take hold and I for one pray that it will become the new wave. I seriously think that it is bad for everyone to have a combative environment festering front and center all of the time. We have to rebuild trust and demonstrate that we understand that in the end we are all connected by the same desire for good lives for ourselves and our children. The main differences are to be found in how we hope to achieve things, and those are the areas that can be made to work as long as we understand that compromise is not an innately bad thing. Sometimes it is the means of incrementally changing for the good of all.

Progress and change is often slow, and perhaps there is a reason for that. It is in some of our natures to be cautious. While others want to be “gung ho” risk takers in getting things done. What we have surely learned is that some values are grand and to be cherished and others become outdated as we learn more about the world around us. Surely there are ways to move forward, but with some circumspection. We know from our individual lives that nothing is ever perfect, and sometimes we have to adjust because of that. Clinging to old ways can be lethal, but so can running headlong over a cliff without thinking about the consequences.

We really do need many types of people shepherding our decisions and our laws. There is nothing wrong with questions or suggestions that maybe we have been wrong in our thinking. It is possible to debate for all the right reasons rather than destroying simply for the sake of power. We need fewer waves of agreement and more willingness to back away in order to view the big picture. We don’t need Democrats or Republicans as much as we need the best people who want to work for all of us.

In the most recent elections something rather sad occurred. Because of the current tendency to judge the quality of a political candidate more on party than beliefs there was a great deal of lever pulling. Many voters disregarded the individuality of each person running for office and instead voted only on party lines. A very good man was caught up in that trend in Harris County Texas. His name is Ed Emmett and he had done a yeoman’s job as the County Judge for many years. In particular he was brilliant during both hurricane Ike and hurricane Harvey. Even those of us who do not live in his county relied on him for leadership, and he never let us down. Sadly he was defeated by a young woman who is only twenty seven years old and has not even lived in Texas for very long. Her resume only includes degrees in Political Science and a few ideas about flood control. She has no experience looking after millions of citizens during a disaster and yet she won mostly because so many of the voters pulled the Democrat lever without even thinking that they were unseating a very qualified and good man from a position in which he had consistently performed well and without partisan considerations. I now worry about what will happen if and when another disaster comes our way.

We are weary as a nation. We know that the way we have been behaving feels very wrong. It’s time that we understand that it is good to see Beto and Cruz talking with one another. Working together for the common good has been the secret to the success of our nation throughout its history. It’s time that we return to the days of bipartisan thinking. I hope the small signs that I am seeing will lead us that way. 

Happy Birthday To Me

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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By the end of this weekend I will have turned seventy years old. It’s a bit of a milestone. Most of the classmates with whom I attended school have already crossed that bridge. It’s far older than the average lifespan of people determined by actuarial science in the year that I was born. It’s a rather sobering sounding number by anyone’s standards, and for the first time in my life it actually seems to indicate that I am growing old.

I suppose that it would be best to accept my fate since it is the most natural of events. In fact, being able to add another year, another decade to my history is cause for celebration. In a time not that far past being seventy was not that common. It would have landed me among a blessed few. Still, I have to admit that reaching that age is a bit unnerving, not so much for superficial reasons, but because the unknown becomes a bit more murky after the age of seventy. It is indeed a very good idea for me to hold tight to every single day that remains in the rest of my life, for it is uncertain how many they will be, and certain that they are growing fewer with each passing year.

Save for accidents, wars, or natural disasters I have two possible scenarios for living out my days. One side of my family tends to enjoy good health until about the age of eighty when things fall apart. Most of the people in that group either suffered from heart disease, which I do not have, or they became afflicted with cancer like my mother, and both of my grandmothers. The other branch of my family lives very long lives, well into their nineties and beyond, and mostly in relatively good health with the ability to read and think and discuss clearly. My grandfather was literally in almost perfect condition until he celebrated his one hundred eighth birthday. I now have three aunts, siblings of my mother, who are living well past their mid nineties and slowly but surely approaching the one hundred mark. It remains to be seen which group I am most like, but given my present condition it appears that I more closely resemble the latter.

That realization gets me to a point of concern, for I vividly recall my grandfather quietly noting that growing as old as he did has the capacity of bringing sadness into an otherwise optimistic life. By the time of his death all of my grandfather’s children save one had died. His beloved spouse had been gone for thirty years. He had depleted his savings and lived from one month to the next on a ridiculously low government check. While he admitted to being fortunate because he was able to live independently until the final few months of his life, he still felt more and more alone as each passing year brought a new one. He missed the friends and family members who had one by one gone before him. In particular the death of his children was a sobering blow. He was blessed to be able to rent a room from a dear woman who became such a friend that he called her daughter, and rightly so. Still, he admitted that he had grown weary and was ready to get to heaven.

Long life is surely a blessing and I intend to enjoy mine and pray for good health in the coming years, but I’ve actually reached an age at which I am beginning to comprehend my grandfather more and more. He was a joyfully optimistic man, but I understood the worries that he hid so gallantly behind a curtain of courage. His conversations in the later years centered on nostalgia, and a kind of folksy wisdom that he wished to impart to us. As he continued to be with us year after year he became almost immortal and saintly in our minds. It was just as shocking when he died as it might have been at a far earlier age. We mourned the loss of a truly great man, but also understood how selfish it would have been to keep him with us any longer.

I suppose that these are somewhat dreary thoughts on a birthday weekend, and this is truly the first time that a new year of life has brought me such musings. There is something about the number seventy that tells me that I must enjoy each day with far more gusto than ever before. I must embrace my friends and my family and somehow let them know how much they mean to me with every single encounter.

Today the world is brilliantly beautiful to me with its vibrance and possibilities. There has never been a time in my life when technology, medicine, science and creative arts promised so much to even the most common human. Like my grandfather before me I see the past, present and future with new eyes. I understand that even as we quibble with one another and face problems that never seem to end, these truly are “the good old days.”

Mankind is without question a magnificent piece of work. I can see clearly beyond the ugliness and my view from this point in my life is glorious. I suppose that I realize that life itself is my most precious gift, and though my joints ache on most days, I am still filled with an inner energy that takes me to glorious places in my mind. I have learned like my grandfather that the world has a way of righting itself in spite of the quarrels that we create. The young take our places and lead us into a future that will no doubt only get better, without walls or artificial divisions. That sounds very nice, and I intend to go joyfully forward and push my concerns aside for another day. Happy Birthday to me!

Visions of Sugar Plums

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

One of my annual pilgrimages is to the Nutcracker Market in Houston, Texas. It’s a yearly gala hosted by the Houston Ballet in a fundraising effort that has grown into an extravaganza that takes place just ahead of the Christmas season. It provides a gathering of unique merchants from all across the country inside the vast halls of the Reliant Center, offering everything from holiday decorations to furniture. It is also one of the most interesting places to people watch, or should I say mostly women watch. Thousands of ladies converge on the event starting early on a Thursday morning in November, with a rare male joining their ranks now and again. It is a carnival, a celebration, and at some moments a truly crazy experience.

I have to admit that I had never even heard of the Nutcracker Market until one of the school administrators with whom I worked told me about almost thirteen years ago. She was shocked to learn that I had never been and decided to show me the ropes by inviting me to join her in taking a “sick” day from work and playing a bit of adult hooky. I reluctantly agreed because it was not my style to be anything but dependable, but the lure of adventure ultimately caused me to agree to her plan.

I was mystified as to why she insisted that we travel in one car on the morning of our glorious day off until we reached the entrance to the parking lot and sat in a long line of traffic waiting expectantly to get inside. We had to leave the car so far away from the hall that we must surely have satisfied our daily exercise routines before even reaching the next huge line of women purchasing tickets. Even though we had begun our journey early in the morning it was almost ten before we finally walked into shopping Nirvana.

Since I have a tinge of Attention Deficit Disorder I was almost overcome when I saw the swarms of people, the array of colors, and the bazaar like atmosphere that lay before us. Thanks to my friend I was able to keep a semblance of focus under her tutelage. She took me to the best vendors first and even insisted that we buy mimosas to calm my anxiety of not knowing where to first turn. We walked from one stall to another in a determined hike that must have been miles. All along the way were women feverishly searching for items that they might never find in a big box or department store. My friend was a veteran of the Nutcracker wars so I felt confident that I would not make any mistakes. She knew where to find the less frequently visited restrooms, and how to secure a table for lunch which she insisted had to be catered by a tamale company that came every year. We talked and laughed and tried on clothes and filled our bags with gifts for friends and family and for ourselves as well. When our purchases became too heavy or bulky my friend demonstrated how to get tons of things inside one bag that we paid to be stored for us for a small price until we were finished shopping. When we finally felt the first tinges of exhaustion we realized that we had been inside the strange world for well over eight hours, and it was growing dark outside. We left as happy and chatty as when we had started earlier that day and vowed to return again.

My friend left the school where I had been working and I lost contact with her but I was hooked and had to go back to the Nutcracker Market each season. Over the years I have found different partners and groups willing to accompany me to the astoundingly celebratory event. During all that time I have watched the crowds swell to unimaginable sizes and the outrageousness of the shoppers become more and more interesting. I still go into a kind of ADD trance when I first enter the scene, and I doubt that I would be capable of navigating the rows and rows of merchants without someone to keep me focused. Those with whom I have gone come and go, either because they have moved away or they just can’t quite handle to zaniness. Nonetheless I remember my times with them with great fondness.

This year I attended the market with my sister-in-law, Allison, who is a great partner in any situation. She’s full of energy and laughter and has a knack for taking on any challenge with a relaxed and optimistic attitude. I was quite grateful that she was driving because the craziness began in the parking lot where there were already of groups of women sitting in lawn chairs enjoying breakfast and a few cocktails to gird their loins for the shopping battle ahead. We ended up parking so far away that walking from my home would not have been a much farther distance. As we searched for a spot to leave her car we saw ladies wearing matching shirts and exotic headdresses. There was a carnival atmosphere in the air and I became as excited as a child.

As usual my brain froze up once we got inside. I knew the drill but there were so many choices and my mind started jumping around like a pinball machine. Allison took charge much to my great joy, and after a time I calmed down enough to actually see what I was doing. We found great gifts from friends and family members and chatted like two sisters. Our bags became as full as Santa’s sleigh and still we walked and walked and walked viewing the great wonders and sampling soups and candies and muffins. As is always the case we lost track of time, and of the world in general. For those wonderful hours we were in our element, just having fun without a care, bonding the way women so often do.

About seven hours into our adventures our feet and our knees and our pocketbooks told us that we were done for this year. We took a trolley to the edge of the parking to retrieve Allison’s car and drove through the parcel pickup station to claim the treasures that we had found. We returned home a bit tired, but feeling so close to one another for what we had shared. It had been another wonderful day at the Nutcracker Market.

I’m already plotting and planning for next year. I hope that Allison will want to go again because she is a fabulous partner. Visions of sugarplums danced in my head as I dreamed last night. I suppose that if truth were to be told it was not the actual shopping that was so much fun, but rather the time spent with my sister-in-law and thousands of women letting their hair down and having a good time. We were a motley crew with smiles on our faces, and for a brief moment in time our cares and woes were set aside.

A Quiet Revolution

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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Sometimes it’s good to get away from the never ending information stream that surrounds us on a daily basis. Even with a concerted effort it can be almost impossible to drown out the the noise that has become so much a part of life in the world today. We are literally exposed to an overload of news and opinions that swirl so closely together that it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two. Fact becomes opinion and opinion becomes fact. We find ourselves growing cynical in an upside down universe where believing is sometimes fueled by misinformation and propaganda posing as truth. We feel overwhelmed, and attempt to cope by purposely creating a “time out” for ourselves, a brief moment in which the sound and the fury is silenced so that we may sort out our thoughts and renew our spirits.

Thus it was a couple of weeks ago when I traveled to a an enchanting campground in Arkansas just outside of Hot Springs. The view from my trailer was gorgeous and tranquil, so much so that I suspect that my blood pressure went down several notches. An added bonus was that I had no cell phone coverage or Internet. I was essentially ignorant of the happenings in the world outside of my little cocoon, save for the brief moments each morning when I visited the ranger station to check on family and friends. At first it was uncomfortable and even a bit frightening to be so cut off from the barrage of information,  but I soon found myself feeling a sense of well being and independence. I did not miss all of the furor and rancor and editorializing that sometimes feels so unavoidable. I relaxed, communed with nature, and even allowed myself to enjoy a few foods that I had cut out of my daily regimen. I slept like a bear hibernating in a cave, and felt an inner peace with myself and the world.

Then came the news of the senseless shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. It raddled my new found feeling of security, and thoughts of what had happened rolled around in the back of my head even while I tried to maintain the lovely distance from anger and hate that I had been enjoying. I wanted to speak of what had happened, but I remained mute lest the emotions of joy and tranquility that I had would be replaced by sorrow and anxiety. I pushed my feelings down as far as I possibly could and did my best to retain the sense of well being that my little retreat from reality had been providing me. I found myself wanting to wander off in the forest that encircled our campground in the hopes of finding refuge in some Thoreau like cabin in the woods where I might live my life immune from ugliness. Of course, I understood that such a world is in truth an impossible dream. A voice in my head was calling me back to a place where reality lurks, a place where people struggle and suffer and find little ways to keep a hold on happiness and optimism even when cynicism appears to be the best armor.

I came home and threw myself into performing mundane tasks that required me to avoid the television, the radio, the Internet. Still I was unable to escape the dreadful feeling of how much more divided our nation has become, and how our differences are causing so much unnecessary anguish. There are lost souls among us whose diseased brains taunt them to do despicable things. There are purely evil people whose putrid hate compels them to hurt innocent people who have nothing to do with the imagined slights that make them rage. We have an epidemic of incivility and fury that is making those of us who are stable to feel somehow uncertain, and those who are sociopaths to feel entitled to violent retribution. It is unsettling and frightening when even the people who are supposed to be our unbiased reporters and those designated to be our leaders only know how to respond by arguing and accusing one another of outrageous sins. Little wonder that we are witness to a level of murderous aggression unlike anything that I have witnessed in all of my years on this earth.

I want so badly to find a level of wisdom to impart that will literally change the course of our present history. I have hoped and prayed that there will be a tipping point after which we bind our wounds and join hands in a united effort to insure that the precious lives of good people will not be cut short when they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our children should not have to practice lockdowns in their schools. Churches and synagogues and temples should not have to form emergency committees whose job is to take action if a shooter interrupts a worship service. We should not have to carry clear purses to big events lest to insure that no weapons will be used to destroy others. There is really no excuse for our willingness to  accept that occurrences of violence are now simply part of the way things are. We should not feel compelled to arm ourselves in places that should bring us joy.

How can we expect the unhinged among us to remain calm and without rancor when we are fighting with one another at every turn? Why are some of our politicians inciting unrest, suggesting that being tough and angry is the only way to solve our problems? We are pushing and shoving one another with words and actions. We are engaged in a kind of national anger fest that sees no end. For now there are flareups of murder here and there, but if we do not find some way to seek our common good I have come more and more to fear that we will find ourselves engaged in a real civil war, not just one of words. I now find myself praying continuously that there will be a revolution of good people to bind the wounds of our country and bring us together to quell the sickness that festers in dark places.

I grieve for the souls who were killed in Pittsburgh, good people who were only trying to honor their God. I grieve for anyone who has been a victim of the kind of unspeakable tragedies that occur far too often. I challenge all people of loving hearts, and I believe they are many, to convince our leaders that we will no longer just sit back and tolerate the hate. I want to see a swell of support for kindness, in the style of the peaceful and measured protests that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once led. We need to join hands with all people of the world regardless of religion, political affiliation, sexuality to demonstrate our intent to being civility and kindness to the forefront. We must work together to fix the real problems that we face, and let those who would thwart our efforts know that we are no longer interested in fighting and bickering. We must much honor those whose lives have been lost by becoming better than the evil. We must forego the hysteria, and bring order to our world. Love must prevail.

Demanding Money From A Pauper

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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It is a fact that virtually every material thing that exists on this earth is in limited supply. Chief among them is money. Each of us attempts to operate within a budget that is determined by our income and the purchases that we must make. Of course credit allows us to sometimes buy things that we might not be able to afford in a cash only world. Our homes are a perfect example of that kind of thing. Unfortunately many Americans are under water financially due to an inordinate reliance on credit. They are barely able to make minimal monthly payments and fall further and further into debt. Thus it also is with our federal and state governments, but most of us who vote and make demands on the tills often ignore the reality that we can’t just print more money to fulfill our desires, nor does money grow anywhere on trees. We instead insist that each of our favorite causes be funded without concern for the many many expenses that are required to keep all of the various programs running. Like individuals with a penchant for using charge cards to fund their desires, the government is bloated with debt without considering ways in which expenditures might be curtailed to get a handle on the runaway tab.

In a home if things get really bad we have to learn how to trim the budgetary fat. We may cut back on eating out, attempt to lower utility bills by turning out lights and raising the temperature on hot days. We cut off the cable and shop for better deals on food. We try to pay off bills and save more money for the future. If we are dedicated to repairing our budgets we will begin to see results, but we have to be willing to make sacrifices. We realize that we can’t always get what we want when we want it.

For some reason when it comes to both state and federal governments we have our pet projects and insist that there never be changes or reductions in funding even as the danger signals indicate that trouble is on the horizon. We ignore the basic concept that we either need to lower our expenditures or raise taxes if various programs are to remain viable, and we are almost always reluctant to do either of those things. Lawmakers who come up with rational ideas for saving pensions, educational expenditures, Social Security, Medicare and such are generally accused of being mean spirited or even intent on “killing” people. Those who insist that if we all pay our “fair share” we will be able to provide for everyone are thought to covet far too much of our incomes. So we are at an impasse. Things rarely change and the very real problems continue to fester.

A recent episode of Frontline focused on the dire straits of many of the pension plans for public sector workers and teachers. Such programs have often been poorly administered and have made risky investments that further put the many retirement programs in peril. In some states the funds will be gone in a few years and yet there are thousands of individuals who worked for a lifetime expecting to receive a particular income in their later years that now may or may not be there. Efforts by state legislatures to fix the problems by changing a few of the current rules have been met with anger. According to Frontline the money will soon run out in far too many places, but the workers are unwilling to accept ideas that might actually save the programs from going broke and leaving them in the lurch.

I think that all of us who vote need to insist that our lawmakers be honest with us about the state of our governmental budgets. We must accept the fact that we are dangerously headed toward an untenable situation if we do not begin to address the issues surrounding our out of control spending. We will have to both give and take if we are not to suddenly find ourselves so broke that our programs, infrastructures and basic services begin to fray and fall apart. The looming disaster has been on the horizon for many years and we have been unwilling to face the consequences of our avoidance behaviors.

It’s time to educate the public about the unvarnished truth without partisan attempts to wrest control by using our budget as a political football. We have to quit demonizing those who genuinely try to fix these problems. It is in our best interest as a nation to demonstrate a willingness to make the needed sacrifices to insure a more secure future for our country and its people.

At least twenty years ago I took a class on Benefits and Compensation. The professor warned back then that failure to address the glaring budgetary deficits would one day result in chaos. Already there are whole cities and even states that are being crushed by staggering debts and responsibilities that they are unable to provide as promised. It does us no good to make monetary demands from a pauper and yet that is what we continue to do as our government devolves from riches to rags with each passing year in which we do nothing.

As citizens we have the power to demand that our lawmakers serve us and the country. It’s time we become better educated about the state of affairs and open our minds to those who have ideas for fixing the problems.