Author: Sharron Burnett

I was a young woman in my early twenties when my husband Mike and I arrived at 8519 Anacortes Street in Houston, Texas. I had two little girls and many hopes and dreams for myself and my family as we moved our belongings from an apartment to our first home, a sweet nineteen fifties house on a huge tree filled lot at the end of the street. Even as we were still carrying our things inside we met our neighbors, most of whom were a bit older than I was with children who were in middle school and high school. I was literally the new kid on the block and the ladies who lived on either side of me would become my mentors, my fonts of wisdom and my very dear friends. 

Once I had unpacked my worldly goods and created a livable environment inside the house I noticed that the ladies who lived on either side of me, Carol Hall and Betty Turner, would gather under the shade of the trees each afternoon to sit together relaxing for a time on their lawn chairs. Both ladies had large very active families that they headed with such skill and grace. I was already admiring them from afar and so one afternoon when I saw them lounging in their usual spot I gathered a chair of my own and joined them. To my delight they enthusiastically welcomed me to their little circle, a spot that I would grow to treasure. 

Both of the women were sweet and kind and filled with a kind of folk wisdom that I needed as I nervously guided my own family from toddler days to teen times to young adults. I literally grew up in their care like a little sister always wanting to tag along and one day be just like them. Betty was always the calm optimistic anchor of our little group. She had a ready smile that was so genuine that it lit up even the darkest days. There was a twinkle in her eye and just enough mischief in her laugh to set me aright whenever I got a bit too serious about life. Her folksy wisdom and generous heart made her a favorite in our neighborhood. Virtually everyone had a story of how Betty had become like a mother or grandmother to them. Kids who were not her own called her MawMaw and everyone loved her just as she had loved them. 

Betty was one of the most talented people I have ever known. Her culinary skills were legendary and with her bigger than life personality I always thought that she would have been a star if she had hosted her own cooking show. She made baking and preparing a feast for a huge crowd look easy and she had an eye for recipes that were mouth watering. Anytime she served a ham she would save the bone for me because she knew that I liked flavoring dried beans with the leftover scraps. On special occasions she would send over a cake or a batch of cookies, delights that we devoured all to quickly.

Betty’s five children grew and left home to begin their own adult lives but they often gathered together in their former home with their spouses and their children who became like extended family to me. I knew that I might knock at Betty’s door any time of the day or night and be welcomed with open arms. There was no problem of mine that Betty was not willing to help solve even as she cared for an aging mother and a husband with multiple health issues. Somehow Betty seemed to be blessed with boundless energy and a joy for life that was unflagging. 

After almost thirty five years Mike and I decided to move from the home where we had raised our children and celebrated every major milestone of our lives. I announced our intention to leave our little nest with a somewhat heavy heart because I really could not imagine what it would be like to no longer have the luxury of sitting with Betty and Carol under the trees. I wondered who would keep me sane and laughing the way Betty always did. 

The next fifteen years seemed to fly past at warp speed. I was busy being a Dean of Faculty at the school where I worked and I was now the one with married children and grandchildren who kept me happily busy. My mother came to live with me just as Betty’s had done with her. Whenever I became frustrated with all of my responsibilities I thought of Betty and the calmness that always seemed to emanate from her. I saw her smile and heard her laugh and followed her example. 

Eventually I retired from work. By then Betty’s husband had died as had Carol. Betty moved from Anacortes Street to east Texas. I sent her Christmas cards, talked with her on the phone now and again and followed her on Facebook. Eventually Mike and I would camp in our trailer near her home and get to visit her in person. We would sit with her for half a day laughing and munching on goodies that she had made. 

Somehow I never wanted to leave Betty’s presence because each time we visited I left feeling calm and so loved. After my mother died Betty even told me that she would now be my mother. I should have told her that in many ways she had been playing that role unofficially throughout my adult journey. Her impact on me was immeasurable.

Mike and I had planned to visit Betty again last spring. Covid-19 came and our plans had to change. I hoped that the danger of the pandemic would pass and we would once again be sitting around her dining table admiring the crafts she had made, listening to her stories and just enjoying being with her. Sadly Betty was diagnosed with advanced cancer several weeks ago and life was upended for her and her family and everyone who knew her. She died last week feeling closer than ever to God and knowing that her pain would soon be over and she would be in the arms of her Lord and savior. 

A world without Betty Turner in it is hard to imagine. She gave so freely and so lovingly to every single person who came her way. She made each of us feel special. She provided the best advice without ever being preachy. She was the essence of joy. I will miss her but she is forever in my heart. My tears are filled with happy memories that will never fade. I smile as I think of her. 

Enjoy your time with God, Betty. Say hello to Carol and Dave and all the folks who are no doubt celebrating with you under a big shade tree. You have earned a very special place in heaven. You were always my angel on earth and now I ask that you save a spot for me until I get to join you again one day.

So here we are on election day 2020. When the votes are counted we will know who is going to be the president for the next four years and who will represent us in the House and the Senate. Whatever happens, whoever wins, I would like to think that we will accept the choices and move forward, but I sincerely doubt that it will be as easy as that. There is so much rancor and anxiety in the country that I suspect that the verbal conflicts and political jousting will continue until we as a people finally decide that we have had enough. Who knows how long that will take or if it will ever happen. In the meantime the winners will move forward with their ideas and the losers will take stock to determine what they may have done wrong. 

The political landscape is changing whether we wish it to do so or not. The Baby Boomers and their parents who remain are slowly fading away. Newer generations will have more and more of a say in how we should do things and their ideals gaze into the future rather than looking back on a time that no longer exists. It is the way of the world. The clock does not stand still. 

All eyes are on my hometown of Houston, Texas, a kind of microcosm of what is to come. It is the most diverse city in the United States. It is home to people from across the globe with no one race noticeably greater in numbers than another. It is a vibrant population rather than an aging one. Somehow with all of our differences we manage to mostly get along and we always come together in difficult times. Perhaps no other city better represents what all of America should hope to be in learning how to embrace the many different aspirations of our citizens. 

My most fervent wish is that the United States of America will begin a process of healing in the coming years. Politics have pitted us against one another for far too long. We cannot even remember when it all began, although I have a few ideas regarding that. If we are not careful we will become like the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq or the IRA and England of a few years ago. Our disagreements will become ever more senseless and brutal. It’s time for the adults in the room to deliver us from the misery that has plagued us since the back and forth of political battles began around the year 2000. An entire generation has grown up in an ugly atmosphere of never ending retribution that only seems to become more and more serious with the passage of time. Perhaps it will be in the ranks of our younger citizens that we will finally find leaders with the will to work together to solve our very real problems. 

First we must get beyond the horrific effects that Covid-19 has had on our society. Somehow when we most needed to work together as a nation we lost our way, focusing instead on unimportant matters and making our efforts about personal freedoms. We divided into camps rather than responding uniformly to the needs of our most vulnerable. We wasted time and energy arguing when we should have agreed to a plan designed to keep our society both safe and still operating as fully as possible. 

Next we must be willing to genuinely demonstrate our willingness to hear and understand our differences in a way that will unify rather than divide. I fear that if we continue to barter in hate and an eye for an eye we will find ourselves on the brink of disaster. There is surely a way to live together in harmony and respect without domination. I long for the day when members of our political parties will once again join together to create legislation and programs for the good of all of the people and all of the states, not just the ones that vote for them.

There are certainly challenges that belie partisanship. We have to face the realities of climate change now or face the consequences of ever more dire scenarios. Waiting to do something will only lead to a catastrophic future. Repairing the damage we have done does not mean a return to the dark ages if we focus on encouraging innovation and a willingness to change some of the ways we have always done things. We need not be pessimistic about such a process for it will surely lead to even better times than those in which we now live. There can be a brighter tomorrow if we are willing to tap into the inventiveness of our minds.

We must consider ways of protecting freedoms while also working for a common good. We will no doubt need to compromise here and there but our trajectory should always be forward. We must honor our old and our young while supporting our workforce. No single religion or race should dominate our laws. We have to find ways of providing state of the art medical care to all citizens, not just those lucky enough to be able to afford high priced health insurance. We need to rationally honor our religious differences and be willing to understand those whose sexual orientations are unlike our own. Mostly we should begin to shun anyone or any group that knowingly attempts to divide us with fear and hate. 

The voting will stop for today but the hard lifting will begin tomorrow. If we are not up to the task we will leave our children with a harsher world than necessary. Why would we ever want to do that?

Tomorrow anyone who has not yet cast a vote for president will have one final chance to be heard. This has indeed been one of the strangest and most contentious presidential races in my memory. The only contest that comes even close was in 1968, the first election in which I was allowed to vote. Back then the Vietnam War had driven a wedge between Americans who remained loyal and supportive of the ongoing conflict in southeast Asia and those who questioned the wisdom of continuing to fight a war that felt increasingly disturbing. Ultimately Richard Nixon, the more conservative candidate, won and ironically he decide to end the Vietnam War without victory. Later he would resign his office after being accused of obstructing justice in the Watergate incident.

The country was weary from all of the furor of the nineteen sixties and it mostly settled down for many years. Sure there were startling incidents taking place now and then but for the most part we simply concentrated on the job of daily living. I think that on the whole we were exhausted and so we said little about the divisions of race and ideology that had brought us to the incendiary moments of that 1968 election. I suppose it never really occurred to us that many of our differences were still simmering below the surface. We had not so much solved our problems as just ignored them. 

So here we are in 2020 and it feels as though the scabs that appeared to have been a sign of healing have been ripped off to show that the wounds of the past have continued to fester. While some of us were leading comfortable lives others were struggling mightily. We learned that racism is still alive and well. We realized that Russia is still engaged in a cold war for world power. We saw that certain sectors of society became wealthy beyond all imagination while others were barely able to get by from day to day. We watched climate change creating the most devastating wildfires ever seen and a hurricane season so unrivaled that we finished our own alphabet and had to resort to naming storms with Greek letters. At center stage is a worldwide pandemic that continues to rage across the globe with dire predictions for its impact on the coming weeks and months. Instead of drawing together the way we did after the attacks of 9/11 we have once again become a divided nation feuding with an ever more dangerous rhetoric that is literally testing friendships and family relationships. 

Words matter. They can be used to lead, to comfort, to provide guidance or they can create confusion and anger. Words reveal the true intent of the speaker. They tell us how that person really feels about us. They either bring us together or purposely divide us. Tragically at the very moment when we most need to be joining in a unified effort President Trump has chosen to create a great divide, to reopen the chasm of 1968 that actually traces its roots all the way back to the Civil War. Each day he gathers in rallies with his followers to mock anyone who dares to disagree with him. He entertains eager and devoted fans with words, phrases and sentences that should never leave the lips of our top leader. He derides scientists, taunts his opponents with the kinds of names most often heard from bullies in a school yard, boasts about his own prowess, intellect and accomplishments while rarely offering any concrete suggestions as to how we might overcome the real challenges that we face. 

President Trump likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln but he is nothing like that truly great man. Trump’s words and actions tell of his lack of compassion, his unwillingness to responsibly serve all states and all citizens. Instead of attempting to keep our union together he divides it into red and blue states, suggesting that those who do not vote for him will go to hell. He is only interested in what each of us can do to keep him in power. When anyone disagrees with him he tosses them aside no matter how loyal and hardworking they have been. He calls women nasty monsters if they have the temerity to challenge him and even seems to excuse an attempt to kidnap a governor by noting that she is not doing a very good job. He denigrates opponents by calling them sleepy, crazy, losers, suckers. He demeans our entire nation when he speaks in such horrid ways. He demonstrates that he is not a leader at all and certainly not one with the empathy and eloquence of Abraham Lincoln.

Words matter and his words are like poison darts. There is nothing amusing about the way he manipulates the citizenry. He lies and poses and even goes as far as thinking that he knows better than the entire medical community when it comes to Covid-19. He holds super spreader events even in communities filled with older citizens who are among the most vulnerable to the ravages of the virus. Because he pokes fun at masks so often that the majority of those who attend such events tempt fate by standing in tight groups with nothing on their faces. He does not seem to care if anybody gets sick as long as they adore him and vote for him. He and his words are dangerous.

Donald J. Trump’s words tell me that he is a foul and uncaring human. They tell me that he does not have the first idea how to be a true leader. They tell me that his spirit is mean and selfish. His words warn me of the destruction that he will inflict on my beloved country if we give him four more years in office. My words for him and for anyone who still has not been to the polls is quite simple, “Vote him out!” 

My home is decorated for Halloween just as it always is. I have a skeleton hanging near my front door and some fall colored lights scattered over the branches of one of my plants. A little witch greets visitors from a wreath on the door. A string of ghosts light the sidewalk leading to my porch and a cute little guy named “Spooky” welcomes all who come in search of treats. 

There will be no tricks from me this year, only a large tub filled with sweets for the children who decide to visit just as they always have in spite of the virus. I will be missing from the festivities. I usually don a costume of some sort or wear a silly t-shirt and hang spider earrings from my lobes. This year I will not take the chance of bringing illness into my home by greeting the little ones as they come. I will have to depend on the honesty of children in taking only a handful of candy from the tub so that others will have some treats as the night’s festivities occur. 

I really do not know what to expect. I am unsure that I will have the hundreds of visitors who normally come my way. It will be very different and I will miss all of the joy and delight that this annual celebration always brings. I usually purchase bags and bags of chocolates and sweets of every kind and spend a long evening smiling and laughing at the unadulterated cuteness of the children. By the time the crowd has thinned and my supply of treats is almost depleted the teens show up, often wearing their school colors and demonstrating their impeccable manners. Who knows what this year will bring.

Everything has been so very different and yet I have managed to have a subdued but lovely time during the last crazy months. I suppose that my childhood and my mother’s influence taught me how to be flexible and how to find joy in the smallest of  things. My mother quietly struggled after my father died but she hid her worries well. We might not have cookies in the house or sodas but she would turn a batch of cinnamon toast grilled to a delightful crispiness into a luxury. She even knew how to make a drive across town feel like a grand adventure. When times were tough she was as flexible and creative as Play doh and she taught us that we might not always have our way but we had the power to control how we felt. 

When I was teaching at KIPP Houston High School we had a principal who regularly signed off on her emails with the phrase, “Plow on!” I must admit that I did not like the metaphor in conjunction with education. It made it seem to me as though teaching and learning was back breaking, unexciting work. I even told the principal how I felt. Now in this year of 2020 with so many horrors all around I find myself understanding her rationale for using that phrase. Sometimes in life there is a job to do that may even become difficult but we have to keep plowing on to create something beautiful. Sometimes that job of plowing provides us with a purpose bigger than our own desires. It actually makes life more meaningful and bearable. 

There is a time for some sacrifice in every person’s life. From time to time that sacrifice becomes a common goal for all of society. I think that is where we are now as a nation, but when I see and hear so much grumbling and refusal to honor one another I worry that we as a people have become too self centered, too focused on our own selfish demands, tone deaf to the needs of our fellow citizens. Sadly some among us express their wants with a demeaning kind of crassness that was once the domain of playground bullies. Now it is commonplace in the mainstream to insult people with whom we disagree with epithets and sometimes even threats. How this was translated into so much divisiveness in a time when we should all work together is beyond me. 

I do not mind at all if people choose to follow a different way of doing things from my own. I have walked a different kind of pathway for most of my life. Still, I would like to see us all show more respect to one another than is presently the case. If I say that I have found a way to please the children who will come to my door hoping for a treat on Halloween night, I do not need to be engaged in an argument about all of the ways that my plan is wrong. I am not afraid, so do not think that of me. I am simply choosing to be cautious, maybe more than some and less than others. We each know our own limitations. If someone worries about their children grabbing candy from a giant tub of unattended goodies on my porch, then I would expect them to simply pass by my house. I respect their concerns just as I hope that they respect mine. 

I would like for all of the second guessing and judging and anger to end. I am fine and from what I can see so are those who are responding differently to the pandemic. I have found a tiny slice of happiness even in this very distressing year of 2020. I have created ways to enjoy each day just as my mother taught me to do. I have maintained my connections with people from afar and that is not as bad as it may sound. I have changed my ways for the time being believing that my adjustments are temporary. I have released myself from routines that were not necessary to guard my health and happiness. I have found a way to make my life good for now. Just as my Mama told me I know that how I feel is my choice. For now I intend to happily plow on.

As we near the end of a very painful and unusual presidential election year I remain hopeful about the health of our country and our freedoms. We have heard a great deal regarding the power of the media to influence our thinking and in turn the choices that we make as we vote. I have often noted my concern whenever I hear soundbites being repeated over and over again. Such utterances almost always smack of rhetorical devices used as propaganda. Now as I await the final rendering of the people I find myself parsing all of the sound and fury to which we have been inflicted during the past year. I think of the way campaigns are run and I truly wonder if we actually make our choices based on facts or if we are too easily swayed by cults of personality. 

Many months ago a childhood friend confessed her disappointment in President Trump, a man that she had supported in the election of 2016. She had come to believe that he was unfit for the job based on the daily Covid-19 briefings that he held during March and April. She said that she literally ignored news programs, editorials, newspapers, speeches at rallies and other methods for distributing information about the president. She only wanted to hear his words, see his actions in a moment of national importance. She told me that from one day to the next she witnessed him fumbling to keep the nation safe from the virus. She saw him as an incompetent executive and she based her assessment only on her own observations of his behavior. She decided that she must vote him out of office for the good of the country. 

I was rather impressed with her methodology. She did not allow herself to be influenced by the way others viewed the president, but simply by using her own observational skills and expectations of how a national emergency should be addressed. As she outlined her concerns I saw the rationality of her approach. She told me that she would not need to listen to stump speeches or watch debates because she had seen and heard and all that she needed to make a reasonable decision. She would not vote for President Trump this time around.

I have thought about my friend long and often as I and everyone else have been bombarded with a spate of election year frenzy. I realize that it is rather absurd to make a momentous decision based on a single debate or rally or speech. We need to peel away the frills and concentrate only on what the candidate is doing and saying, not just during the election cycle, but all of the time. We should quietly and patiently observe just as my friend did. If we strip away the flags, the music, the bombast what do we see? If we forget the lofty promises and look only at what actually happens we might ask ourselves if the candidate’s actions have been satisfactory or sub par. If we listen do we get a vivid picture of what kind of person the contender actually is? What kind of references does the applicant for political positions have? Who are the people who support him/her?

I would love to see changes in the ways that we run our presidential primaries and elections. I believe that the present methods are flawed and do not always result in finding and rewarding the best qualified candidates. I have studied the history of the electoral college and realize that the methods by which those votes are doled out has changed over time. They were not always a matter of winner take all, but used to be divided based on proportion of votes. For example if a candidate won in a state by fifty one percent instead of getting 100% of the votes he/she got only 51% of the electors and the other candidate received the rest. It seems rather tragic to cancel out the actual votes of the people with a system of winner take all and yet since the end of the nineteenth century it is a method that we have accepted as though it is written in the Constitution. The fact is that the Constitution does not address how the electoral college votes should be allocated. 

I also find that we get way more information about a candidate from a town hall than a debate. First of all, the debates really are not true debates at all. Secondly they have turned into a kind reality show that is more annoying than informative. I like the idea of having two forty five minute back to back town halls shown on all of the major television stations in which each candidate must answer the same questions about issues without commentary or argument or even analysis. Let the voters get the information from the mouths of the contenders and then let those same voters decide what they like and do not like. 

I would love to see an end to the pompous conventions that trot countless speakers across the stage that have little or nothing to do with providing us with factual information. I find these events to be a total waste of time and money that would be better spent elsewhere. Introduce the candidate and allow him/her to speak to the nation. Leave off the decorations and images of smiling supporters standing in the background. We do not need the distraction from what should be the message that we need to hear.  

No matter who wins the current election I believe that we all know that things have gone off the rails with both parties. We have turned over the elections to Madison Avenue. They have become expensive advertising ventures designed to sway our emotions rather than to inform us. It’s long past time to make some very necessary changes.