Category: Commentary

I am a very quiet person, hardly noticeable as I move through life. My voice is so soft that I have to exert myself to be heard at times. I tend to prefer being anonymous, not making waves. In many situations I would rather give in to another person’s demands, or perhaps compromise to keep the peace. I’m fairly easy going most of the time, but when I sense that a person or a group is being unfairly treated I rise up like a roaring lion to protest. I become a person who even surprises myself by my willingness to go to battle for what I see as a just cause. I suppose that I am an enigma in those moments because up until then nobody even notices that I am in the room.

As a child I mostly blended into the woodwork. I obediently did whatever my elders asked me to do, and luckily all but one of my teachers was kind and gentle. That one teacher lost my respect because of the way she treated her students. I was not vocal about her, but I took notes and made promises in my heart that I would never behave like her. She was the first person who taught me how to be a better teacher simply by swearing never to do some the the horrendous things she did to her students. 

In high school I had little need to move beyond my naturally easy going way of facing the world, but outside events were pushing me to a passion for standing up for those who are abused. I remember confronting a group of raucous boys who got carried away with taunting a female classmate and terrifying her in the process. I think that because I had always appeared to be a little mouse they were astonished when I raised my voice and stood up to them. They immediately stopped their abusive behavior without pushing back. Even I was stunned that I had so quickly and seemingly easily derailed their obnoxious game of inflicting insults on a sweet girl who did not deserve their terrible treatment. I felt proud that I had been unafraid to speak out, even though inside my heart was pounding and I worried that I might be their next victim out of revenge. 

In college I continued the process of becoming the real me. I used the anonymity of a group to march for the civil rights of my fellow black students. I wrote papers outlining my concern with the way the war in Vietnam was being mishandled. I found avenues for expressing my views in an effort to foment change. I chose t0 practice my writing skills and enhance them for greater impact. I decided to become a teacher because I believe that it is a profession upon which our entire civilization is built. 

When my mother became very ill with the symptoms of her bipolar disorder, keeping her well became another of my goals. For many years I silently sought help for her and devoted time away from my family and my work in search of treatments and therapies that might beat back the horrific side effects of her mental illness. At the same time I was afraid to admit to others that she was so sick. It was only when I had fully embraced the reality that her illness was no more shocking than heart disease or diabetes that I finally went public with the truth. Informing others about mental illness became yet another passion that has guided my life’s story.

Family and people are all important to me. Status, titles, wealth would be nice to have but those things have never been a driving force. My concern is always with the well-being of each human. It’s a demanding task that sometimes discourages me when I see entire groups of people behaving like those teenage boys from my youth who were bullying that girl. Somehow humans often so get carried away with their prejudices and faulty beliefs that they do ugly things. Often they simply join a crowd hoping to be part of a group without really thinking about what they are doing or how they are behaving. Theirs is a kind of ignorance that I have spent my life attempting to undo. My holy grail has been to show people how to suspend their judgements and critically assess situations on their own. 

It is not always easy to move against the flow of a crowd. Sometimes when I do so I find myself wondering if I am the one who is wrong. Just as I ask others to do, I regularly question myself and analyze my reasoning to be sure that I am not just parroting ideas that sound warm and fuzzy, but maybe are not the right way to do things. I attempt to be flexible, understanding, willing to really listen to differing points of view. Mostly I try not to judge, because I have found that most people really do want what’s best for others, but they just have different opinions about how to accomplish that. I know that I need to hear what they have to say just as they should consider what my beliefs as well. 

I often think of the founding of our country and how those men who came together to declare independence and create a new nation were often at odds with each other. Melding together all of their differing ideas was torturous and yet they somehow found ways to compromise even as they worried that those adjustments would ultimately be the downfall of the government that they created. The one thing that they seemed to share was a passion for freedom even as they did not extend those rights to all segments of the population. 

I suppose that I share their passion and do not take lightly the fact that I was born in a time when women and minorities began to finally see those freedoms extended to them. I fight to protect those rights for everyone in a fair and just manner. I teach to provide everyone with the opportunity to learn and grow and represent themselves. I point out the flaws in our system, not because I am unpatriotic, but because I believe that our democracy dies in darkness. When those in power are bullying any group I find my voice once again and I roar.  

There is a great deal of ranting and raving about student loan forgiveness. There is also a great deal of misunderstanding about the cost of a college education and how disproportionate it is to the salaries that students receive after graduation. Most people who are complaining point to the fact they they either decided not to pursue a degree or they paid for theirs with summer jobs and part time work. They find it unfair to suddenly decide to give the current crop of debt holders a break. While I can understand their concerns, I’d like to point to the realities of today’s college experience to demonstrate the unusual difficulties that so many of our college graduates are enduring. 

Let’s begin with the post World War II experience. Young men were returning from the war to a booming economy in the United States. Not even the lack of a high school diploma barred individuals from getting good jobs with benefits that were often free along with a promised pension. Veterans were able to earn college degrees at the government’s expense, sometimes in courses taken at night while still working all day. Actually having a degree or needing one for employment was more of a luxury than a requirement.

By the late sixties when I was a student the cost of a year of college at a state university without room and board added was around a thousand dollars. My first year was free because I had a scholarship, but I was a rookie and did not realize that I had to fill out paperwork to renew it even though I had a 4.0 GPA. I lost my free ride, but I had worked during the summer for around $200 a month and I was able to cover all of the first semester and I supplemented my funds with a four hour a week teachers’ aide job. All in all I doubt I paid more than about five thousand dollars for my education. Paying as I went was not all that difficult back then. 

In the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties my daughters went to college at state public universities. I was shocked by the increase in the price tag because it was not proportionate to the gains my husband and I had made in our income. I was a teacher and he was a banker but we still had to take out loans to get both of them through their business and environmental science degrees. We watched the cost of the college climb exponentially in the eight years that our daughters were there. When they graduated with usually sought after degrees there was a downturn in the economy that left them scurrying to find employment of any kind at salaries that were not proportionate to the cost of their diplomas. It took about ten years to pay off the debt which essentially doubled over time because of interest rates.  

Fast forward to today and the picture for young people is even more gloomy. Few jobs are available for high school dropouts. Most entry level jobs require a four year degree and those do not come cheaply. In fact, just getting into a public university is incredibly difficult. Many like the University of Texas, where one of my daughters went, are essentially closed for anyone not in the top seven to ten percent of their high school class. Further culling is done for specific majors like engineering or business. The same is true for Texas A&M. Even the University of Houston which was once considered a fall back school is now out of reach for most students. Then comes the cost.

I was able to send my eldest daughter to the University of Texas with room and board for about seven thousand dollars in her freshman year. That represented a third of my teacher’s salary before taxes and deductions. By the time she graduated the price had increased to ten thousand dollars which came to about fifty percent of what I earned. We paid progressively more for the youngest daughter to attend Texas A&M University. We watched the exponential growth of tuition and fees in horror. Now those same schools can cost as much as forty thousand dollars a year with housing and food. Students without scholarships may leave with a huge debt to pay with a starting salary of fifty to seventy thousand dollars a year. Accounting for the cost of living and the deductions from their pay, they are living on the edge even after working hard to fulfill the American dream.

I have former students who competed for spots in some of the top business schools in America and were hardworking enough to earn those coveted places. Then they graduated only to realize that the promised rewards of high paying jobs for practical majors were not forthcoming. They found themselves paying a third of their salaries for housing, a tenth for medical benefits, and another tenth for their student loans. If they added deductions for social security, taxes and medicare they were barely making it from month to month, especially since the cost of food and gasoline had also risen. Some of them even got caught in the downturn caused by the pandemic or the oil bust, and graduated at a time when few jobs were available. I know of a student with a petroleum engineering degree whose graduation coincided with massive layoffs at oil companies. He went to work as a laborer on an oil rig hoping that he would land a job when things improved, but he missed his window of opportunity and now works at low level jobs well beneath his capabilities. He still has his student loans to pay and is drowning. 

We thought nothing of forgiving PPP loans for business people who more often than not did not pass on their good fortune either to their employees or their customers. Even our former president has escaped loans and forfeited payments with legal maneuverings and bankruptcy. We don’t seem to get nearly as angry about that kind of forgiveness as we do with our generation of college students who believed that they had to get degrees to be engineers, accountant, teachers, nurses in spite of the prohibitive costs. There was no way that they might have paid as they went because it would have required full time jobs to earn the kind of money that they needed. So the took out loans.

My granddaughter was accepted to Cornell this past spring. It had been her dream to go there since she was very young. The price tag for this Ivy League university was well beyond her means or those of her family. She kept the acceptance letter as a memento and chose a more reasonable alternative. She wrote over one hundred essays to various groups offering scholarships and won enough of them to shave the cost of her education in half for at least her freshman year. She worked all summer as a receptionist at a beauty salon and sometimes even washed hair. There is nothing lazy or spoiled about her but she will still have a very large debt to pay on the day that she graduates. As compassionate Americans we need to be willing to fix the glaring problems associated with earning a college without jealousy or contempt for the young people who only want to be prepared to take on the challenges of the future.. It is a worthy investment for us all to give them a fighting chance to begin families and purchase homes like we did. Our nation depends on them to take on the difficult jobs that require their knowledge and skills.

I still think of school starting after Labor Day, even though that has not been the case for decades now. When September rolls around I begin to imagine cold days ahead that will mitigate the heat of summer. I much prefer lower temperatures that seem to make everything cozier. While I love the ocean, I prefer walking along its shores in a sweater with an cool breeze nipping at my nose. Perhaps it is my birth month of November that makes me fond of the colder times of the year, or maybe it’s just a personal, quirk. It may even be that the mild winters where I live are more comforting to me than the harsh heat of summer. I am more than ready to see the mercury drop in my thermometer. 

I like starting a fire in my fireplace and wearing my favorite sweaters that never seem to wear out. Nothing soothes me more than reading while sipping on a warm mug of tea. I enjoy wrapping myself in a soft and cuddly blanket and wearing slipper socks on my feet. I prefer long walks that invigorate me without making me sweat and gasp for air like in the summer. 

I read that my part of the world will become hotter and hotter as we humans add to the changes of climate. I’ve already noticed that it takes longer and longer to reach the cold days that I so love. There have been times when shorts were more suitable for comfort on Christmas day than a crazy sweater. My boots seem to last forever because there are so few days when it is cool enough to wear them. There seem to be fewer and fewer wintry days with each passing year. 

Those of us who prefer cold winter days tend to be in the minority. Most people revel in the sunny summertime. They love the warmth on their arms and the freedom of wearing skimpy clothing and playing outdoors. Those are the months when I feel sweaty and miserable. I spend most of my time indoors because when I go outside the air feels oppressive. I long for the cold when brisk walks energize me. I seem to come alive in the late fall and winter.

I have a friend who craves chilly rainy days and I have to admit to feeling the same. People laugh at his obsession with weather that others consider to be dreary while I understand his joy in such moments. Perhaps both of us would change our minds if we had to endure a harsh winter in upstate New York or on the plains of North Dakota, but down here in the south of Texas we rarely feel a chill in the air. 

One year I traveled to Minnesota in November. It was already much colder than the worst of our winters along the Gulf Coast. I needed a warm coat to wear for an upcoming trip to an Austrian ski town. A friend suggested that I check out the stores where we were. We set off in search of a suitable jacket and soon found a display of sale items that suited my needs. I found a wonderful down coat with a fur-lined hood and immediately claimed it as my own. As I was paying the cashier she remarked that I was getting a great deal on the piece that I had chosen. She noted that the annual sale of spring outerwear was always a hit with the customers who put such finds away for when the winter became a bit more bearable. It amazed me that there was actually a place on earth where such a heavy garment might be donned in the month of April when those of us down south are already well into wearing our summer gear. It occurred to me that I may not enjoy winter nearly as much in a place where it seems to last as long as our warm months do down here.

I haven’t had many occasions to wear that big coat that I purchased in Minnesota, but it sure came in handy when we had the big Texas freeze a couple of winters ago. The so called rolling blackouts of the power companies stretched into days of frigid temperatures inside the house. I wore that down jacket all day long as I shivered in my rooms. I found myself thinking of that episode of Little House on the Prairie when Pa was away and Ma had to deal with a deadly blizzard. it wasn’t quite that bad, but most of us down in the south aren’t really accustomed to sustained days of freezing. Even our plants and pets suffered during that time.

Perhaps what I really like is weather that is not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Sadly these days everything seems to be extreme. We either endure weeks of temperatures in the high nineties with no sign of rain or our streets are inundated. As we crisscross the world there are fires and famine or floods and destruction. We can’t seem to return to the gentle rolling of the seasons that I remember so well from my childhood. 

I used to rearrange my closet each September. I would move my summer gear to the back and place my fall and winter garments near the front. Now I don’t even bother because I rarely need to use the winter items. I miss the crisp cool fronts that rolled in each October making our classrooms without air conditioning bearable. Now it’s a good bet that we’ll still be sweating on Halloween. 

I’ve had to learn to adjust to the fact that I won’t see much winter like in the days of my youth. I’ll take whatever cooler times I can get. I often think of walking to school with the cold nipping at my nose. I’d push against the wintry air feeling invigorated, but I was always more than willing to accept a ride with my friend Judy when she and her mother stopped to take me the rest of the way on such days. There was something more normal about those times than what we all seem to experience now. 

I don’t know what the future will bring. I worry that my flat city will one day find itself under water as the earth continues to heat up and the oceans rise. I wonder if my grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to relocate much like the migratory societies of old. Where will there be a good place to go?  Will my old coat from Minnesota suddenly become a great way to stay warm in the spring as they travel north? Who knows?  I keep wondering where the winters that I so love have gone.

I took a leap of faith several years back and followed one of my principals to a large urban school district where I would serve in an administrative position designed for the purpose of mentoring and facilitating the teachers. I had worked for years in a smaller, more low key school district where it seemed as though I knew people from almost every other school as well as all of the top officers at the administration building. I had a wonderful reputation there as well as offers to rise to even higher leadership positions, but I wanted to assist the principal who had helped me to make my way up the career ladder as he navigated the more shark infested waters of one of the country’s largest urban school districts. I agreed to come work for him and for the teachers at the school that he led.

He had warned me that the environment was not always as warm and fuzzy as the one that I would be leaving. Nonetheless I saw opportunities to expand my knowledge and skills as an educator, and I felt up to the challenge as long as he had confidence in me. Nonetheless I was a bit nervous as the first day of back to school inservice drew near. A good friend noticed my anxiety and took me out for a final leisurely lunch before I would be bound to the new campus for the next many months. 

While we were chatting and exchanging a few jokes she pulled a small package from her purse. I opened it to find a gold star pin. She explained that she wanted me to wear the pin on my first day so that I might remember that I was more than capable of being a guide and a helpmate for the teachers with whom I would be working. She said that the star was a symbol of my excellence, but also a reminder that I was but one among many individuals working to make a better world for our children in schools. Her gift and her words were so profound that I found the confidence to face the uncertain future. With the pin firmly planted on the lapel of my suit and a smile spreading across my face I introduced myself the following to the wonderful teachers whom I would be assisting .

I soon learned that it would not be easy sailing in my new role. None of the teachers knew me and they were reluctant to believe that my forays into their classrooms were for their benefit. I was an outsider and in their minds it was possible that I was little more than a spy for the principal. Many of them had worked in the school for decades and they felt that it was a bit audacious of me to come wearing that star and looking like I was the new sheriff’s deputy in the town. 

While I was attempting to demonstrate to the faculty that I was at their service, I learned about the problems of a navigating the business end of a large governmental agency. When the first paychecks arrived, mine was missing. It almost took an act of Congress to clear things up, but I finally managed to provide them with the documentation they needed to prove that I was actually a working employee and had been so for the past month.

On top of all of the furor in the payroll department I suddenly learned that someone was using my checking account to make large purchases. Since my husband was a banker he checked such things several times each day and took care of the problem immediately. Unfortunately I had to get a new checking account and begin again with the process of routing my pay go to my bank by direct deposit. It would be almost six weeks before I finally saw any money for the work I had been doing. Since it covered three pay periods it was a very large check.

Strangely I began to notice whispers and strange glances as I went about my daily routine of observing and conferring with teachers. I finally asked a faculty member who had been quite welcoming to me what was creating the uncomfortable environment around me. She laughed and explained that the clerk in the office who handed out the pay stubs had noticed my large paycheck and had multiplied it times the number of checks I would receive in an entire school year to determine my annual salary. Of course the amount that registered on her calculator was three times what it was supposed to be because of the delay in my first two checks. Without taking that into account she spend the rumor that I was making more money than even the principal. 

From there the talk got even juicier. Somehow one thing led to another and there were stories that I had just purchased a million dollar home and that I had to be some kind of spy for the district to be making the kind of money that was generally the exclusive domain of the higher ups. There was great concern about who I was and what I was trying to do inside the school. 

Eventually I was able to clear up all of the confusion, but I always felt as though a slight element of distrust lingered in many people’s minds even though I did my best to prove to them that I really was there to assist them and nothing else. I often supposed that the star pin from my friend must have muddied the waters even more. I can only imagine how I must have appeared to a faculty that has endured many big changes in a very short span of time. 

Rumors are grist for gossip and we all know that once something is uttered, it is often impossible to take it back. I probably struggled more at that school than I ever have in my entire life because the clerk planted a seed of doubt in many people’s minds. The good thing is that overall it was an incredible learning experience both for me and the faculty. I even reached a point at which I was able to laugh about the whole thing, especially that million dollar house that I was supposed to own.

It’s only September, but I am already seeing signs of ghosts and goblins in stores. Halloween, a yearly celebration of folklore and frivolity is surely on its way with witches and cauldrons always part of the featured characters who lurk about on the night of tricks and treats. We humans have an attraction to stories of wicked women with gnarled faces who cast spells. Such stories have been around for centuries and remain the grist of fears and sometimes even injustice. 

Shakespeare alluded to the power of witches in Macbeth when a group hovering menacingly over a fire predicted the hero’s ultimate fate in words filled with irony and intrigue. These creatures set the ominous stage for murder and mayhem. Without them the play would have been just another story about the lure of power. 

These days we mostly laugh at the idea of witches able to foresee the future or cast dastardly spells on their enemies. Witches are an almost comic representation of our human foibles, but that was not the case in Salem, Massachusetts in a time when science was unable to explain strange happenings. With religious fervor and a lack of understanding a kind of group hysteria ruled the day, resulting in trials and sentences that were sometimes deadly. 

From 1692 to 1693, over 200 individuals were accused of witchcraft and prosecuted for their so called crimes. Nineteen of those people were sentenced to death and hung. The unfortunate series of events began when a group of girls began exhibiting strange fits that included convulsions and fainting. They claimed to have been taken over by the devil and named several people as witches who had cast spells on them. This lead to many months of hysteria and overly dramatic trials. 

What had once been a quiet seaport and farming town became infamous for the tragedy that the false accusations created. The lurid reputation of the era has become a kind model of the devastating consequences of embracing superstitions. Nonetheless it would be naive to believe that mythical thinking no longer exists. History has demonstrated again and again that, especially in difficult times, people are willing to suspend rational thinking and accept almost magical explanations for what is happening around them. 

It might be argued that the people of post World War I Germany fell for the lies that much of their misery had been cause by their Jewish neighbors because they were grasping for explanations for the hunger and want that they were experiencing. Hitler used their fears, anxieties and already developed prejudices to convince them that ridding themselves of certain people was actually justified. It’s the same age old trope that allowed slavery or turned ordinary people into witches. 

During the 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy created boogeymen out of writers, actors and ordinary people in response to the cold war with the Soviet Union. Much as with the Salem witch trials he began hearings claiming that we were overrun with Communists intent on killing our democracy. Many of the people named in the hearings lost their jobs and became pariahs when in fact they had done nothing wrong. It was indeed a witch hunt of a different kind. 

Today we have so many bizarre stories about Covid-19 and the scientists and healthcare community attempting to help us that doctors are being threatened with death and hospitals have had to hire extra security. The stories of tracking devices in the vaccines and made up mortality statistics abound. The anti-science fervor has gone from simply not accepting the precautions and treatments to accusations that scientists and doctors are purposely putting citizens in harm’s way. 

We have groups who falsely believe that the presidential election was fraudulent, that teachers are grooming students for devious purposes, and that a deep state of politicians are trafficking children. The hysteria surrounding such beliefs is the same as those that the colonists of Salem felt back in the fifteenth century. We humans are still easily manipulated into accepting fantastical theories over the simple truth. 

One of my all time favorite college classes was called “Folklore.” I learned that just as there were people of old who actually believed that King Arthur existed, in modern times we want so badly to know that Elvis is still alive that there are sightings of him all over the world. We share stories that John Kennedy did not die but instead lived out his days on a Greek island. More recently a crowd gathered in Dallas in anticipation that John Kennedy, Jr. was going to return to tell us truths that we needed to hear. 

Sometimes it’s easier to believe fantastic stories than face the truth. You would think we might have learned from the tragedy of Salem and other superstitious times, but it seems that we still have a long way to go. The myths and legends may seem silly or even funny until they hurt someone. If it sounds too fantastical, it most likely is and that should give us pause to check for the facts. Nobody should ever be harmed by lies.