Category: Commentary

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. ~Rabindranath Tagore 

Springtime is always so lovely where I live. I sit in my backyard gazing at the flowers that are blooming and watch the birds fitting from the trees to the bird feeders that I try to keep full for them. I have had a great life by any standards. I had meaningful and enjoyable work as a mathematics teacher and now I am enjoying the fruit of my labors with wonderful trips around the world. Nonetheless I truly believe that my real destiny is to leave some kind of legacy for the young people of the world. 

It is not enough for me to just enjoy my own good fortune. I want to be certain that I continue to plant proverbial trees that will bring shade and bounty to the next generations. That means that I must continue to share my talents and my riches (as humble as they are) with the people who will still be here when I have left this earth forevermore. 

I don’t know how much longer I will be on this earth, none of us know when our final hours will come. My grandfather lived to one hundred eight and I seem to be as robust and healthy as he always was but most of my ancestors died in their eighties and early nineties. By that estimation I am enjoying my last hurrahs. In that time I plan to work for the good of the young. I want them to have the kind of world that will make them feel safe and happy. I don’t want to leave them in a state of chaos or worry about how they will survive. 

I am still teaching although not as many hours each day as I once did. I am doing my best to help young people navigate through the complexities of mathematics. I want them to see how beautifully math explains the world. I want them to feel comfortable with numbers and patterns and the beauty of how things come together. 

I have to admit to getting a great deal of joy in being with young people who are not yet tainted by hate or cynicism. I admire their faith in each other and their trust that things will work out for them just as they mostly have for people in my generation, especially here in the United States. Nonetheless there is so much to be done if we are to leave the world in a better place than it now is That takes a willingness on our part to share our own good fortune with those who struggle. I know that I must not look away or ignore the problems that persist all over the world. 

I understand that I can’t fix everything that is wrong but I also adhere to a belief that a dear friend who is now gone taught me. He commented many times that we humans would be able to accomplish so much good in the world if we were willing to give just a bit more each time we saw a need. He likened his thinking to passing a basket at church where even a dollar coming from every person would swell the coffers. Generosity on a regular basis need not bankrupt us. It can be achieved even when we offer our time.

As we age we sometimes begin to worry about how we will meet the costs of the future. We hoard our money and take care not to fritter it away but we always seem to find what we can splurge to take that extra cruise or spend hundreds to see someone perform for one night. There’s nothing wrong with managing our funds so that we do not become a burden on anyone but surely we need to balance our caution with a willingness to invest in situations that can use our help in time, talents or treasures. 

We all have so much to give to young people trying to make a start in the world. Sometimes they have to pass up opportunities because they do not have the funds to participate. We should watch for such situations and make certain to contribute to their causes even if we are only able to provide a small part for the need. 

I heard about programs in Africa that were stripped of their funding by Donald  Trump’s destruction of many government programs. I was happy to hear that people from all over the world have made small donations to keep the most beneficial supports continuing. It’s nice to hear that people are coming to the rescue when other sources of funding are taken away. 

My grandfather loved to tell stories from his youth. The common thread in all of them spoke to the generosity of ordinary people who were willing to share small amounts of their own good fortune with those who were in dire straits. People working together are always more powerful than billionaires and always have been. So I plan to be constantly on the lookout for situations that might use my talents or some of my small treasure. If I just started a fund with what I spend each time I purchase a cup of tea when I am out and about I will be able to make a difference in someone’s life. 

It’s time for all of us Boomer to begin planting those trees if we have not done so already. We may not be here long enough to sit in the shade but we can imagine how wonderful it will be for the young people who are yet to come. That is a truly wonderful thing to imagine.

I grew up just down the road from NASA. The neighborhood where I lived had a rather large number of engineers and other people who worked for NASA during the early years. There was even a large building not far from my home that served as a temporary headquarters until the NASA complex was built in Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, Texas.

Lyndon Johnson was one of the most powerful voices in government even before he became president. He used his influence to lure the headquarters of NASA to the backyard of Houston. Land for the project was donated by Rice University which also promised to develop engineers and scientists for the project of traveling into space. 

Much of my education is a blur of learning facts and algorithms in various subjects but my middle school science teacher, Mrs. Colby, ignited my excitement for space travel. I already had a touch of her enthusiasm from my father who had purchased a book describing in vivid detail a future journey to the moon. My younger brother walked around our house with the volume tucked under his arm and he was always eager to show the illustrations of how such a dream might one day come true. Nonetheless, it was Mrs. Colby breathlessly and joyfully telling us about the future of space travel that ignited my interest in what was happening only minutes away from my home. 

I remember the time that she moved an old black and white television into the classroom so that we might witness Alan Shepard’s travel into space. It was a quick but dramatic trip that opened the possibilities of what would come next. Not so long afterwards Mrs. Colby brought back that television and we watched John Glen orbiting around the earth before returning triumphantly. 

NASA was a constant of my high school life. I had friends whose parents worked there and my brother still boasted that we would one day travel to the moon. I was twenty one years old when a crew led by Neal Armstrong walked on the moon and planted an American flag. The excitement that I felt on that day was indescribable and I found myself wondering if Mrs. Colby was as happy as I was.

I was married at the time and my husband was working for his uncle whose crew did much of the electrical work for NASA. He was crawling under the floor of the Mission Control Center pulling cables to enable the many processes needed to communicate to the guys on the moon and to the world that was watching. 

Eventually my brother who had been celebrating the idea of traveling to the moon since he was three years old graduated from Rice University with a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. While he was recruited for many exciting jobs it was the opportunity to work for NASA that allowed him to finally fulfill his dream. He would spend the entirety of his career working diligently as the focus on space travel matured and changed. By the time he was ready to retire he had played an integral part in developing the navigational system for travel to the International Space Station and had begun the process of shifting back to an idea of returning to the moon to colonize it’s surface.

In the meantime one of my grandson’s became my brother’s biggest fans as he too began dreaming of playing a part in the conquest of outer space at a very young age. Before he was three years old he was able to name all of the planets and their moons. He tagged behind my brother like he was some kind of rockstar. Now he is just finishing a degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Notre Dame University and will enter a PhD program at Ohio State University this summer. 

The siren call of space shouts loudly in my family but the opportunities at NASA are not as plentiful as they once were. One of the first things that Donald Trump did in his second term as president was to gut the funding, resulting in the necessity to dismiss forty percent of the employees. It almost seemed as though the glory days of NASA were over but the quest for space had become a shared venture with the International Space Station, so with the expertise and genius of engineers and scientists from all over the world a new idea about traveling once again to the moon gained traction. 

Once again I watched the glorious result of worldwide cooperation as the Artemis crew catapulted into space on the first journey to the moon in around fifty seven years. The weather was perfect and the launch was flawless making it a glorious moment in a time when it often feels as though we are moving backwards in our thinking. I felt the same swelling of my chest and the moisture of happy tears on my cheeks while messages from my daughters described their joy as well. I learned that my grandson had celebrated the launch with his fellow aerospace engineering students who are all soon to graduate to become the next generation of brilliant souls who plan to learn more and more about the vast world beyond the confines of our atmosphere. 

It was good to be able to celebrate something so positive and exciting in a time when we are too often quibbling with each other on this earth. I thought of Mrs. Colby who is no longer with us and I gave her a little salute for opening my mind to the possibilities of humanity in joining each other in peace. Somehow it seemed so fitting for all of this to happen during Holy Week just before our Easter celebrations. The best of humankind was visible in that launch and I look forward to witnessing the new discoveries that lie ahead. 

My neck of the woods endured a hurricane a couple of years ago. It was a somewhat small one as hurricanes go, but there was a great deal of damage nonetheless. Fences fell over and tree limbs landed on the roofs of cars. Sometimes entire trees fell across streets blocking anyone from either entering or exiting. Electricity was out all over town leaving food to go bad while waiting for the repairmen to do their magic. 

Having been taught to find the goodness even in times of great stress I could not help but notice how everyone in the neighborhood worked together to help each other. That tree in the road was gone within hours because people came from all around with their chainsaws and determination to be neighborly. There were outdoor gatherings with everyone sharing the roasted meats that were cooked before the prime cuts would be ruined from lack of refrigeration. Those of us with generators opened the doors of our homes to create cooling stations for those who were enduring the heat. A spirit of cooperation and genuine concern overtook the anxieties of loss. 

Nobody complained that some among us should have invested in preventive measures like keeping trees trimmed or installing generators. Nobody worried that there were older neighbors were less able to put in the needed labor. No one grinched that everyone should have purchased their own chainsaws rather than depending on others to have one in a time of need. We pulled together to do whatever had to be done and never noticed if the people we were helping looked like us or had views like our own. It was a natural reaction to help without worrying about some kind of rule of fairness. It was a wonderful time to be a neighbor. 

I think about such things when I see men and women representing the highest offices in the United States with chips on their shoulders. It feels as though they are pandering a whole new philosophy of cooperation based solely on what’s in it for us. It is a very selfish view of the world in which Trump’s minions insist that there is going to be a new world order based only on how it will profit us. In this new view it is going to be every man, woman or country for themselves. Help will only be available to those who are willing to pay us back tit for tat. It is a kind of business deal based on what other nations are willing to give us rather than our intention of working together for the security of all. 

I truly do not understand why the Trump administration is so boldly trashing our long time relationships with Europe and members of NATO and the United Nations. There seems to be a strange idea of carving out the world into three parts dominated by Russia, China and the United States as though only the leaders of those nations should be able to dictate how things are going to be. It is certainly audacious and in many ways unhinged. It forgets the role of history and how the United States became as powerful as it now is. 

Few people who endured World War II are still alive. Those who grew up in the aftermath saw a world torn apart save for the United States which was unscathed compared to every other place on earth. Europe was in ruins, financially broken and in need of being rebuilt. Enter the United States whose infrastructure was intact and ready to take on the task of producing all sorts of things that would propel the American economy into the strongest in the world. While everyone else was busy cleaning up the mess, our nation was raking in the profits of business that shored up our reputation and our bank accounts. The American way of life prospered after World War II with our economy sending more and more citizens into the middle class. 

Of course we sent help to Europe and that was one of the best things that we might have done. It was important for the devastated countries to get back on track. Leaving them to their own resources more than likely would have made them vulnerable to authoritarians rather than helping their democracies to grow. It worked out to the benefit of all and much later would insure that in times of need we would have allies on which we might also rely.  

This arrangement has not been without problems. Nothing is ever one hundred percent perfect, but there has never been a need to tear it all down simply to enrich our coffers. It makes us look more like a mob whose bosses threaten anyone who does not pay for protection. It’s an ugly philosophy that demeans nations that were once our steadfast friends. 

It irks me that Trump and his representatives are making demands that will do little more than continue to enrich the wealthiest Americans while at the same time tarnishing our reputation in the world. I know all too well that we have no right to brandish a “holier than thou” attitude because we have never been without our own faults just as our European neighbors have aspects that should be repaired. Still, getting along in the world requires trust and a true spirit of working together so that everyone has a shot at feeling secure.

We’ve tried the robber baron attitude before and it did not work because it flies in the face of human nature. It’s time we, the citizens, demand that Trump et al work in concert with the people who have had our backs for a very long time. Together we are all better.     

By my own admission I am probably the worst business woman in the world. I never worked for money but for love of the career. I tried taking a few business classes and felt utterly bored and repulsed. I suppose I was lucky to be married to a man who seems to actually enjoy reading articles from The Economist and listening to experts in the world of business. He freed me from any need to pore over figures or study the economic situation from one moment to the next. While he devotes much of his day to understanding what is happening in that realm I am free to write and interact with the few students that I now have. That is where my interest lies and he makes it possible for me to do that without being encumbered  by business decisions. 

In spite of my revulsion of the world of business I am fully aware of its importance in everyone’s daily life. I am fascinated in particular with the real movers and shakers of the world, not so much out of an interest in emulating them, but from the standpoint of understanding the psychology of what drives them to want so much more than what they actually need. In that spirit I am constantly watching documentaries and reading stories and editorials about the movers and shakers of the past and present. I admit to benefitting from many of the things that they made possible while also wondering why they are all too often driven to cross lines of decency to keep adding to their bottom line.

I recently viewed a series called Titans. It began in the Gilded Age that developed just after the Civil War and continued into the dawn of the twentieth century. The recurring theme of the program was that power seems to all too often corrupt even the most well intentioned people. Becoming wealthy is not enough for some individuals. They seem to be lured more by power than just money. Once they get on a roll there never seems to be a point at which they feel comfortable just living on what they have accumulated. They become consumed by a kind of greed that overtakes their sense of honor. They have to keep winning and all too often in that vein they eventually cross lines of legitimacy that ultimately ruin them and hurt others as well. 

I remember my grandfather talking about his life at the end of the nineteenth century when he was a young man just starting his journey as an adult. He talked about economic panics that left ordinary citizens scraping to stay housed and fed. He watched rich people taking advantage of poor souls who were ignorant of the actual value of things. It bothered him intensely to witness wealth being hoarded while seeing families in such dire straits that they were starving. He was very much a proponent of government guard rails that insure that every citizen will have enough to live decently. He understood that for many different reasons there would always be people who needed extra help and he applauded the idea of making sure that they will have what they need. 

In my grandfather’s youth the rich were only rarely controlled in their determination to do whatever it took to keep feeding money into their coffers. It was Theodore Roosevelt who first became a trust buster by setting rules that made the playing field of commerce just a bit more fair. Sadly the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression was proof that the so called Titans of wall street were still out of control. It would take Franklin Roosevelt to design programs like Social Security and proportional taxation among many other efforts to control greed and distribute national wealth.

Starting in the nineteen eighties some of the safeguards that had led to more and more opportunities for the common citizen once again came under attack. Taxes were greatly reduced in favor of the wealthiest Americans The theory was that if they kept more of their wealth they would distribute it with jobs and perhaps even philanthropy. Sadly that has not always happened. Today there are hundreds of billionaires in the United States who find ways of avoiding taxes of any kind. In addition Congress eventually gave them the ability to send millions of dollars to political candidates who are willing to legislate in their favor. It’s beginning to look more and more like the times of my grandfather’s youth when the richest citizens were calling all the shots and many ordinary citizens are struggling. 

As a teacher of economically disadvantaged students I heard a recurring story over and over again. These children lived in tiny apartments or rented houses sometimes without even having a bed to sleep in at night. Many of them spoke of parents who worked multiple jobs just to keep the family housed and fed. They spoke of mothers and fathers who left before dawn in the morning and did not return home until late at night so exhausted that they could barely walk. The oldest children became the surrogate parents of their younger siblings, feeding and bathing them before putting them to bed. Only then did they have time to do their own homework and studying. They too were perennially exhausted. 

We have many Americans who believe that creating programs like universal healthcare are forms of communism, but I would argue that such safety nets are  simply the decent thing to do. All too often the poor never get out of the rut in which they toil while wealthy people buy second homes and travel all over the world. We have a reluctance to ask them to give a little more to insure that the suffering among us will have the baseline assurance of having their most basic needs met. Why would we all be so greedy that we would not want everyone who is able to help the most desperate among us to climb higher on the ladder of success? It’s idealist, I know, but it would be wonderful if our nation became a titan of fairness just by asking all who can to give just a bit more. We did it before. We can do it again.

For as long as I can remember I have loved to write. I even created a neighborhood “newspaper” when I was a kid. I made copies by hand, carefully printing each story in my best script and drawing the illustrations with an eye to making them all appear to be the same. I sometimes gave out my subscriptions for free but most of the time I asked for anywhere from a penny to a nickel depending on how much effort it took to recreate each edition. I did the same kind of thing when I visited my grandmother on Friday evenings. Since it was family my offerings were gratis and I limited the number of copies to one per family. 

I never got much feedback on my efforts which was fine with me. It was just something that I wanted to do. It brought me pleasure to write almost as much as I derived from reading. I suppose that at the back of my mind I fancied myself as a great author whose stories and novels would make me rich and famous. Sadly my life took many unexpected turns and I was usually too busy as an adult just attempting to get by from day to day to follow my dream. Still, the thought of being a bonafide author lived on inside my heart. 

When I finally retired in my sixties I wrote an autobiography that lingers in the bowels of my laptop computer because I never seem to get around to formatting it and creating an ebook that that people might purchase. I suppose that my excuses might be mostly related to my fear that my writing would not be of any interest to others. Somehow it’s better to think that I just haven’t had the time to publish my work than to realize that mine is a mediocre vanity project about which nobody would care enough to expend a few dollars to purchase it. 

I remember my high school English teacher noting at one time that some of us were born to be admirers of greatness rather than creators. I’ve certainly done my share of enjoying the true talents of some amazing writers whose ways with worlds cause me to question why I would think that my so-called book would be any better than those silly little newspapers that I created as a child. I remain frozen in fear of failing and so I never really try to get my book into the public, which is an easy but embarrassing way out. 

I write a blog from Monday through Friday and there was a time when many people took the time to peruse what I had to say with daily devotion. As time went by fewer and fewer souls bothered to see what I had to offer. Perhaps it is because I have become more and more political in my musing for quite some time. Maybe the truth is that my words have become stale and what I have to say is just a constant repetition of meaningless ideas. All I know is that my audience has waned so much that even if I were to finally muster the courage to get my book on the market few would take the time to read its contents or even know that it was finally available.

Along the way a classmate who attended the same high school as I did noticed my blog and became intrigued with the idea that he too had something of worth to share with the world. He took a great deal of time to polish his presentations into a very professional format. More importantly what he had to say was quite simply amazing. I found myself in awe of his ability to string words together in a way that is so interesting that I wait with bated breath to see the next installment. His talent for both prose and poetry is stunning. His work is worth a read and I urge everyone who sees my blogs to visit his site at https://www.houston-iforgotsomething.com/my-stories. You will not be disappointed. 

All of this has made me wonder if indeed my greatest gift is to be an appreciator of talent just like my English teacher described. Perhaps what I was always destined to do is discover the gifts of others. I was exceptionally good at doing that as an educator. So many of my students surpassed me in their knowledge and achievements. I celebrate their successes and feel a level of pride in knowing that I was part of their journey. Now that I have witnessed the writing skills of my former classmate I find myself rejoicing once again that somehow I inspired him to present his work to a wider audience . His is a true gift that demands to be shared and it brings me joy to know that he found the courage to share his stories and poems from reading my own offerings. 

I still have that book in the cloud of my computer. I am considering making it a series on my blog site rather than worrying ever creating a cover and wondering how much to charge anyone who wants to read what I have to say. I never wrote it for the money, but for the love. It might be fun to get it out there to see if anyone finds merit in my very personal story. 

In the meantime follow the link above to discover a promising writer named J. Michael Boland. You will not regret taking the time to do so. In fact, I suspect that you will await his new offerings with anticipation. Frankly I think he will be discovered and we will all be able to say that we read his works before fame came his way. 

I’ll let you know when I revert to publishing bits and pieces of my book. I think it is something I should do before my thoughts turn to dust. Stayed tuned for a story called A Little Bit of Living coming soon.