Author: Sharron Burnett

Sometimes we meet people and only see them a few number of times here and there. Sometimes those people touch our hearts in ways that last forever. Such a person for me was Jeannie Kendrigan. 

My father-in-law had one family member from his birthplace ine Puerto Rico living in Houston, his cousin Dr.Efrain Garcia. Efrain became like a brother to my father-in-law and the men’s wives became the best of friends. Thus my husband Mike and I often received invitations to events at the Garcia house. It was always a beautiful family time with unrivaled hospitality. Dr. Garcia’s sister-in-law, Jeannie Kendrigan, was a frequent guest who joined the celebrations spreading her joyous friendliness to anyone who was present. 

Jeannie was only about four years older than I am so we almost immediately connected with each other. She was still attending college when I first met her. She was a student at Dominican College where she studied to be a teacher. In fact, she and my mother took some classes together. Somehow the coincidence along with her outgoing personality drew me to her immediately. 

Jeannie had grown up in the Chicago area along with her twin brother and two older sisters. Given our slight age difference we might have been sisters. We seemed to have so much in common even though I had spent all my days in Texas. Jeannie and most of her family had moved to Houston at the invitation of her sister. To my great joy we were often included in gatherings because I so enjoyed being with the entire family, and most especially, Jeannie.

Jeannie was a “tell it like it is” person. I loved her frankness, but she was also incredibly kind and thoughtful. I always knew where I or my beliefs stood with Jeannie. She was never rude but she did not lie either. I have always been diplomatic but in awe of people willing to be one hundred percent honest about their beliefs. Jeannie somehow knew how to be up front and polite at the same time. I was in awe of her skill.

Jeannie eventually graduated and became an elementary teacher for the Houston Independent School District. During her long career she held posts on several campuses and no matter where she was working she enjoyed talking about how much she loved her job and her students. Her eyes would light up and a smile would stretch across her face as she spoke of the joys of teaching them how to read. She was definitely someone who loved her career.

Jeannie never married but she was a super aunt for her many nieces and nephews. She spent the whole year looking for the perfect gifts for the people in her life. Sometimes she even made special items with lots of her love tucked inside. She was devoted to family and kept busy with them and with her students. She exuded joy and contentment.

After Jeannie’s father died she became her mother’s caretaker. The two of them lived together for a time. When her mother became too incapacitated to remain at home, Jeannie helped her move to a nursing home and then visited with her every single day, often checking in with her mom before going to work. She was more generous and good hearted than almost anyone I have ever known.

Eventually I saw less and less of Jeannie. Sadly we mostly renewed our friendship at funerals. Still I found myself drawing a bee line to her whenever I had the opportunity She was frank, funny and rather wise. I felt so comfortable with her, as though we somehow had an unspoken connection. Maybe it was because she had a classic Midwestern friendliness or maybe it was because we were both teachers. Whatever it may have been i found myself numbering Jeannie as being one of my favorite people.

The last time I saw Jeannie was at the funeral of my father-in-law’s cousin. She was wheelchair bound by then and accompanied by an aide from her nursing home. She still had her welcoming smile and unchecked wit. More than ever she was saying whatever came to her mind. I loved being with her. She inspired me to be more bold.

Jeannie Kendrigan had a fall that sent her to the hospital earlier this month. She was optimistic about her recovery but not even her energetic spirit was able to insure that she would get well. She died still sending optimistic and loving texts to her loved ones. Last week we gathered for her funeral. I missed her wit and her honesty about life. It was difficult to know that I would not see her again. I surely hope that she knew that I thought she was wonderful, one of a kind, a person that I truly loved and admired. Perhaps we’ll meet up again in heaven one day. I’d like to think that it is so. Until then I have such wonderful memories of her and all of them make me smile.

Sometimes I read a book or watch a movie or documentary that burrows into my heart and stays on my mind days and even weeks after I first learned about it. The nineteen nineteen movie Mr. Jones left me pondering about the cruelty that we humans sometimes inflict on each other. The film tells the true story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist in the nineteen thirties who had gained a small moment of notoriety for landing an interview with Adolf Hitler long at the beginning of his rise to power in Germany. After the success of his story Jones became obsessed with the idea of also interviewing Joseph Stalin which prompted him to travel to Russia to see if he can strike journalistic gold again. 

Once in Moscow Jones learns that a friend and colleague has been murdered. After doing some research of his own he finds out that his associate was following leads that would have put the lie to the accepted belief that the Soviet nation was economically sound. Jones decides to set aside his dream of talking to Stalin and to instead visit Ukraine where the truth of Soviet economic status seems likely to found. He embarks on a journey that will uncover evidence of the Ukrainian Holodomor of nineteen thirty two to nineteen thirty three. He sees firsthand proof that theSoviet policies of nationalizing the farming of grain in Ukraine led to a famine that left millions dead or starving.

The imagery of the film left me in tears, particularly one scene which portrayed a young child crying for his mother who had died while holding him. I began to think of the many times that I have read of famine here or there around that world and not really considered what that means. I found myself grieving for the many times in history that people have died from human negligence or lust for power. I thought of current situations around the world that are leaving innocents vying for food even as we Americans waste and throw away enough to feed everyone. I suddenly realized how much I take for granted. I began to consider what I might do to help. I cried for those who died back then and thought of the photos I have seen of Palestinians in Gaza holding bowls in hopes of having them filled today. I wondered why we humans seem inclined to all too often look away when we see such situations happening in far away places or even near our homes. What makes us want to cover our eyes and stuff our ears?

History is repeating the story of Gareth Jones even today. He spent time in a Russian prison for his investigation. He was branded a spy and a liar by Russia. Eventually he was freed and returned to Great Britain where he told his truths while being branded a man who had lost his mind. He would be spurned by society and relegated to ridicule until he convinced William Randolph Hearst to run his story. It would be decades before there was enough proof to demonstrate that Mr. Jones had always been right. 

I suppose it is natural to want to believe the best of people and nations. Most people did not want to think that Hitler was really going to carry out the promises of Mein Kampf. The starving of millions in Ukraine was too horrible to believe. Even when we see photos of the concentration camps or the bombed out buildings in war zones after the fact we find it difficult to believe that we humans can be so cold hearted with each other. Surely the cries and whispers of pain must be hyperbole or lies. How could such thing happen? Why is there so much disbelief when history has shown us again and again how cruel humans have the capacity to be? It is far easier to get over the enormity of evil needed to enslave other human beings by explaining it away with beliefs that the people just did not know better. Surely, though, a voice must whisper to us that they did know better but just did not care.

There is a wave of ignorance demanding that we wear kid gloves and happy faces when teaching our young about history. Such an egregious process of hiding the truth only makes horrors all the more easy to produce. When evil is cloaked in ignorance it does our young far more harm than when we are truthful and teach them how to be careful of false promises that wrongly abuse others. Ignoring or hiding truth inevitably hurts the innocent. Pretending that all is well when it is not continues the most horrific stories of humankind. The heart of darkness beats ever stronger when we pretend that all is fine in the face of evil. 

I am feeling plaintive and sorrowful today as I think of how almost a hundred years have passed since the Ukrainian people were so brutally starved and forced into labor for the benefit of Russia. I think of how little we have learned since Hitler came to power and how we are still trying to just smile and bury the truths so that we might fool ourselves that none of it matters because it does not have a direct effect on our lives. 

Sadly that is exactly the wrong way to be. Mr. Jones was right. The truths must be told no matter how difficult they are to face. It is up to us to prepare our children to be just by being always honest. Young people can handle the truth but they are destroyed when they learn that we have been lying. Sometimes we don’t want to hear something but we must. It is in knowing what is real that we can learn how to change for the better. 

If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. — Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to Congress and the first African American to run for President of the United States. While she did not get too far in her quest she did manage to inspire a generation of young women, including me. Somehow her courage taught me to be more fearless than I had once been. I began to speak up whenever I witnessed injustice. I used my ability with words and suddenly found courage to speak up for people too vulnerable to advocate for themselves. Eventually my boldness led to being a Peer Facilitator for teachers and then the Dean of Faculty for a group of extraordinary educators. 

I often found myself in a position of having to take a deep breath to dismiss my fears as I fought for what I believed was best for both the students and the teachers. I fully understood the difficulties they encountered and knew that there were times when their voices and needs were being ignored. I had evolved from a girl afraid of her own shadow to a woman who was unwilling to stay silent when problems needed to be addressed. I sometimes rubbed the powers that be the wrong way, but I kept my honor and dignity intact. 

I have to be bluntly open about my profound disappointment that the American electorate once again took a pass on the opportunity to finally put a woman in the office of President of the United States. The voters seem more inclined to risk going with a deranged and felonious man rather than a highly educated, intelligent and experienced woman. For the rest of of my days I will not understand the reasoning of the millions of people who thought it better for the country to trust a man known for lies, egregious insults and the bungling of a worldwide pandemic. 

I wonder if the people even took the time to listen to each candidate and to compare and contrast what they had to say. Donald Trump peddled hate and fear. He called the United States of America a garbage dump. He spoke so grotesquely about Kamala Harris that in another time that alone would have been enough reason not to vote for him. He implied that she slept her way to the top and only rose in the ranks because of DEI rules. He even questioned her race. The words he used about her are not fit for printing so I will refrain from writing them down.

So who is Kamala Harris really? She is the child of a Black father and a mother from India. She graduated from Howard University and eventually earned a law degree. She worked as a District Attorney and then as the Attorney for the state of California. She spent time as a Congresswoman in the House of Representatives and became the Vice President of the United States during the Presidency of Joe Biden. 

Kamal Harris was never an immigration czar as Trump liked to call her, but she did research the problems at the border resulting in an eventual reduction in the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States. In fact when statistics are compared it is evident that just as many illegals entered during Trump’s tenure as President as they did during the past four years. With Harris’ efforts the numbers were going down. Trump has greatly exaggerated the problems and failed to mention that when a bipartisan immigration bill was proposed he asked Republicans to cause it to fail so that he would have an issue to use in his run for the presidency. Imagine losing an opportunity to actually fix the problems just to make him look better. 

Most people seemed confused that Kamala Harris did not have the power of the presidency because she was not the President. She had nothing to do with the difficulties in the pull out from Afghanistan.In fact that fiasco was signed into a treaty that Trump brokered and as soon as he was elected the Taliban congratulated him and thanked him for the treaty that resulted in a disastrous situation. Nor was she or even Biden the cause of the price of eggs or oil. Avian flu killed countless chickens and oil is priced internationally, not by the President. Surely Trump knows how things work but he forgot to mention the restrictions on the power of a Vice President. Perhaps he was till angry that his own Vice President who refused to defy the Constitution by accepting a made up slate of electoral votes in the certification of the 2020 election. Maybe he did not want JD Vance to realize that under Trump he will be forced to be a loyal puppet.

Kamala Harris ran a campaign of joy and optimism. When voters were blindly shown her platform without naming her as the author they universally chose it over the concept of a plan from Trump. She warned us about the problems of tariffs and how they will actually add to the costs of many of the products that Americans use. Over thirty Nobel prize winning economists agreed with her. Instead Harris advocated for raising the taxes of the wealthiest one percent and lowering those of the middle class.

She had plans for bolstering Social Security and Medicare and providing families financial assistance for to care of our oldest citizens in their homes. She had plans for helping our young working people purchase a first time home, something that seems father and farther out of reach for them right now. 

Kamala Harris promised to do her best to unify the country after years of infighting between the two political parties. She wanted to name Republicans for her cabinet and heal the wounds that Trump has inflicted on our nation for over eight years. There was nothing outlandish or mean about her. She is a brilliant and compassionate woman who proved her mettle in a debate which she won against an addled Trump who went off in unintelligible and hateful rants about Haitians eating the dogs and eating the cats .

I am saddened that the Americans took a pass on this remarkable woman, often for the silliest reasons most of which are not even true. As I watch Trump selecting inexperienced and questionable people for his cabinet only because of their sworn loyalty I am dumbfounded. I wonder if he even knows that they are supposed to be swearing their allegiance to the Constitution which he seems more than willing to rip apart. He is an unserious man who somehow managed to defeat a very serious woman. For now I weep for my nation and hope that somewhere an American woman will pull up a folding chair and finally find a way to the official table. 

Dreams are lovely, but they are just dreams, fleeting ephemeral, pretty. Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. —-Shonda Rhimes

I had so many dreams as a young girl. I used playtime to pretend that I had actually reached the many goals that rattled around in my head. It took a bit of time for me to make any of them come true, but I have to admit that it was fun thinking about possibilities. 

For a time I played with my Madame Alexander doll along with my neighborhood friend, Candy. We used boxes and scraps of cloth to create what we called the New York City apartment for our miniature women. She was a bit more modern than I was because she actually had a Barbie doll which she insisted had been named after her older sister. Indeed her sibling was beautiful like Barbie so I had no difficulty believing that her story was quite true. Anyway our dolls, Suzette and Barbie, lived in the world that we created and it was lovely. They were airline stewardesses who travelled the world when they were not enjoying the scene in the Big Apple. 

I suppose that there were moments when I actually imagined myself wearing one of the cute uniforms of the hostesses of the day. It sounded like an exciting lifestyle even though I had not once flown in the sky myself. Like so many fantasies it was fleeting and soon I saw myself as a teacher instead. 

I often had a difficult time enticing other kids to become my students. After all we already went to school five days a week from September to the end of May. Doing pretend homework wasn’t exactly the fun time for them that I believed it was. Still, I always managed to find takers on whom I would use the books and already prepared quizzes and tests that I kept in a cardboard box filled with school supplies. I even had report cards that I thought very much resembled the real thing. At the time I played at being an educator I never totally imagined that one day I would indeed fulfill that goal. 

I suppose at the top of my list of potentials careers was working as a writer for a newspaper. I often gathered my cousins or the neighborhood children and interviewed them. I had a little spiral notebook in which I took notes of things happening on my street. Because I did not have access to a camera I illustrated the pages of my paper with drawings of the events or people who seemed to be the most important. I used blank typing paper for each page and put stories in columns with eye catching headlines. I included opinion pieces and comic strips and even advice on how to do certain things. There was a sports page featuring the locals who played football or baseball or who ran up and down the street. I believed that my little creation was wonderful and even duplicated each issue so that I might sell my news for a dime. I imagined that one day people across the the world would read my stories and that surely there would be some prizes for my efforts. 

As my interests waxed and waned there would be so many lifestyles that I imagined for myself. Perhaps I would be a renowned actress or a model whose face would appear on billboards. Maybe I would become a nurse or maybe a detective like Nancy Drew. I occurred to me that being an architect like my neighbor, Mrs.Wright, might be fun although I did not totally understand what she did. I only knew how happy she appeared to be doing her work. There was always the possibility that I might find a Prince Charming just like in the fairytales and live happily ever after being a wife and a mother. I didn’t know any women back then who were lawyers or doctors or engineers, so somehow such professions never occurred to me. Besides, I’ve always had a distinctly creative bent that is more artsy than scientific. 

When It finally came time to go to college and declare a major I was baffled as to what I actually wanted to be. The dreams of my youth were fuzzy and undefined. I must have changed my major five or six times before I finally settled on earning a degree in education with a major in English and a minor in mathematics. I suppose I wanted to be much like my favorite English teacher who was so inspirational that he remains my all time favorite teacher to this very day. Still, in the back of my mind I had a secret longing to be like the editor of The Daily Cougar, Edith Bell, who wrote so magnificently about student life. By then I had become rather practical, thinking that I probably wasn’t as good at stringing words together as I needed to be to make a career in writing a reality. 

As things worked out I was asked to use my knowledge of mathematics on my very first teaching assignment and from that moment forward that is what I taught. The idea of writing faded but never went away. My schedule was so busy that I did little of it, but I always grabbed the opportunity of writing a school newsletter or sponsoring students who wanted to create a newspaper. I devoted my life to my family and to my job, working hard on each thing I did and hoping that somehow I was making a difference. 

It all went by so quickly. One day I woke up and knew that it was time to retire from my full time work as an educator. My daughters were grown and gone. All of the things that had demanded my time once again seemed only like a dream I had no idea what to do with myself, so I began writing again and feeling wonderful that I finally had to time to put my stories and thoughts into words. I’ve been joyfully blogging for around twelve years now. I have written a book that I still don’t quite know how to launch. I teach math a few times each week and have a new generation of students. My heart is full because I seem to be making things happen and creating change. I suppose that is what each of long to do with our time here on this earth. My work was hard but always fulfilling. Who knows. Maybe one day I’ll write something that is so profound that it will launch a new chapter of my existence. That would surely be a dream come true.

I woke up on my seventy sixth birthday feeling pensive. There is a great deal on my mind these days, a kind of heaviness that I don’t usually encounter on the days surrounding my entrance into this world. For most of my life November 18, has been a day of great celebration as I realize that most of my worries are silly and of my own making. I am a ninety-ninth percentile introvert which means that I spend a great deal of time in my head creating “what if” scenarios that rarely become as dire as I have sometimes imagined. At this moment I can’t help thinking that much of what I cherish most about my long life may in fact be in danger. The only other time I recall feeling this way on my birthday was in the same year that my father died when I turned nine years old. 

My life and that of my family was literally turned upside down by my father’s death. Suddenly we were catapulted into a world so very different from what I had ever expected. Nobody ever predicts the sudden death of a man in his early thirties and yet there we were living in a constant state of uncertainty that sent me more inside my thoughts and worries than I have ever been. On top of a total lifestyle change I had to endure the cruelties of a teacher who lacked compassion and understanding for me and my classmates. All in all I remember feeling nothing as my birthday approached beyond a sense of doom. 

That is the moment when my dear mother came to my rescue just as she would always tend to do. She somehow managed to purchase and hide a brand new Schwinn bicycle for me that helped me feel joyful, free and independent from the worries that had built up in my mind. Somehow she knew what I needed to restore just a bit of joy and normalcy in my life. That bike became symbolic of the control and steadiness that had been missing in the months since my father’s death. He had after all been the one who patiently taught me how to keep my balance when the training wheels had been removed from the smaller bike that I had outgrown. Advancing to a full sized bicycle not only reminded me of the many things that my father had taught me, but also showed me that my mother understood the importance of helping me move forward in my life. It was indeed the perfect gift in a moment when I was beginning to lose hope.

I rode that bike into my teen years. it conveyed me to parks, libraries, homes of friends. it gave me freedom to be myself and to celebrate just being alive. It helped me to realize the  joy and confidence that was always there inside me. 

On birthday seventy-six the bulk of my life is behind me. Now both my father and mother are gone. I think of the lessons that they taught me and I suppose that in my musings I find that the world is in a very dangerous place.

My father showed me the power of reading and learning. My mother taught me to importance of kindness and compassion for my fellow humans. These things taken together warn me that we are embarking on a very dangerous time in history. A man who seems unlikely to think rather than to vengefully react will soon be our president. He has vowed to expel millions of immigrants and to punish those who have voiced opposition to his ideas and actions. It feels like a very dark and uncertain time once again. I have known such dire feelings and they make me anxious for my daughters and my grandchildren and all of the beautiful students whom I have taught. I worry that the wonderful world that I have known will change in the most terrible of ways. I sense that I must do something but I do not yet know what that might be. 

I long to feel the gentleness of my mother and the wisdom of my father in unravelling my fears. I want to ride my blue bike with into the wind somehow fixing everything that now seems so unfixable. I want to see that I have been silly in being afraid of the man leading us who reminds me so much of that horrific teacher who seemed only to care about herself. I wonder if seventy six year old me can be part of setting things right again for surely this is not a time to wallow in fear and sadness. 

The signs point to trouble for the United States and for the world. An immoral man has been chosen to lead us. He is selecting immoral people to loyally helped him to upend our democratic traditions. He wants to rule with an iron fist, get even with anyone who has ever opposed him, break rules, attack the foundations of our Constitution. 

This time I am not just in my own head. Good and wise men and women are as worried as I am. Mine are not the imaginings of a nine year old child. I have a lifetime of experiences on which to rely. I will blow out the candles on my birthday cake and make a wish that we will be able to stop this man from taking down our security and our freedom simply because he is angry. Then I will do whatever it takes to make my wish come true. I have learned that we each have to take charge of even the most horrific situations. I am ready!