Category: Commentary

I suppose that I have always been one of those people who asks a lot of questions and I don’t always have a filter when it comes to my queries. I remember my mother shushing me on a city bus when I observed the black people huddled in the back and wondered out loud why they all looked so tired and sad. I must have been only about five years old, but I somehow sensed that there was something wrong with the picture that I saw. My confusion only mounted when I later encountered the water fountains and bathrooms labeled “Colored” and “White” in the department stores. I wanted to know who had come up with these strange ideas and why they thought they it was okay. My mom nervously put a stop to my chattering with her response that,”It’s just the way it is.”

One of my favorite tales was the one about the boy who saw that the Emperor was parading naked down the street while the people cheered as though there was nothing strange about the scene. I understood the frustration of the little kid who kept shouting that the Emperor had no clothes and wondered why the adults ignored him. I often felt that those protecting me from difficult topics did not understand that I was not fooled by trite answers.

We just celebrated the Fourth of July, Independence Day about a week ago. We sometimes seem to forget that while our founding fathers were imperfect men, their greatest quality was a willingness to question the way things were done. They created a form of government that they hoped would give power to the people to see problems and then create solutions to maintain freedom. Of course we all know that there were many people left out of the rights and liberties defined in the first laws, but over time our government evolved to include black citizens and women. Eventually those people in the back of the bus who had to use separate facilities when I was a little girl earned the same rights as the rest of us, but still struggled to be fully accepted and respected in our society. So I, along with others, find myself still asking many questions about issues that seem to be out of sync with how our nation should be. 

Does that mean that I am not patriotic, or could it be that I am actually concerned with making our freedoms stronger and ever more inclusive? Should we just place our hands over our hearts and ignore the naked problems in our country or would it show more love and respect for our nation to call out things that are unjust? Did our founders intend for us to have blind allegiance or would they have applauded those courageous enough to insist that no single way of believing should be the law of the land? 

Over the history of our country we have found the best versions of ourselves when women marched through the streets demanding the right to vote or when crowds joined hands to insist  that segregation and voting suppression was morally wrong. The real beauty and strength of the United States is on display whenever people are unafraid to ask why something is happening. We need the voices of people who point out the problems. 

I remember when I was a teenager growing up in Houston, Texas we joked that there were two dominant groups of kids, surfers and cowboys. It was a silly way of classifying each other because few actually had surf boards are rode horses. It was our way of delineating progressives and conservatives. When I was in college the labels changed from anti-war to supporters of the war in Vietnam. Society tended to see those who donned uniforms as the real patriots and defenders of freedom, but those who protested what they saw as an unjust war were just as dedicated to saving our country. There were simply two different ways of defining and solving a problem that our country faced.

I’ve read that when the American revolution began only about a third of the colonists wanted to break away from the British Empire. Another third were staunch Loyalists and the remaining people just wanted to be left alone. I suspect that this has been mostly true throughout the history of our country. Perhaps it is true of the world in general. Some people are fervent about holding on to the way things have always been done, others are determined to make changes that they believe are needed, and another group just wants things to settle down again. It is part of our human natures that all too often leads to literal and figurative wars. 

There is a push of late to protect children from uncomfortable truths. I laugh at such an idea because my experience has shown me that young people are much more open to honesty. They observe the world with unfettered curiosity. They see things that adults have chosen to ignore. They are overjoyed when their questions are taken seriously and when the answers are truthful. 

Our country was fought for and founded by men who were product of an era of enlightenment. They saw that the old ways were no longer working and they risked their lives to create a new way of living that promised more freedoms. They did not create a perfect union. Humans rarely achieve such perfection, but they did set up a system that would allow future generations to adjust to the evolution of the world. They were the original inquisitors who had the audacity to question the king. They wanted a government that would allow different factions and beliefs to coexist. They wanted to guard against monarchical one size fits all decisions about privacy, religion, and the way we decide to live and think. They made a good start, but we won’t keep our republic if we do not exercise our rights to vote and we refuse to learn how to listen to and address important questions.

I suppose that I am a bit spoiled. When I was growing up I enjoyed a great big extended family. They were my lifesavers after my father died. It was never just me, my mother and my brothers surviving alone. There were grandparents, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins who filled my life with support and joy. We constantly celebrated together on birthdays, at Christmas and even on summer weekends. We spent every Friday and Sunday with them. My social calendar was filled with so many events that I never felt alone. My relatives would stop by to check on us and even to bring us food when we were sick. It was a beautiful relationship that made me believe that I would never be alone. 

As usually happens, things changed over the years. The family grew to a point that made it difficult for everyone to continue meeting together as they once did. My grandparents died and my aunts and uncles began to follow them to the great beyond. It became more likely that my family would gather most often for funerals than parties. Still, I continued to enjoy lots of fun times with my brothers and their wives and children. We almost religiously celebrated all of the birthdays together and special occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, baptisms, first communions, graduations, weddings. I always knew that I would be surrounded by loving people multiple times each year with special dinners and meet ups in between. 

Then came Covid and it all fell apart. The annual dinner to celebrate my mother’s heavenly birthday was not even mentioned this year. Not a single person has enjoyed a raucous great big family birthday party for almost three years now. We did manage to get together for a graduation and a baby shower but mostly the glue that kept us together has dried out and cracked just as it has with friends as well. It is as though we all became accustomed to being alone and we don’t quite know how to restart the gatherings once again. Maybe some have even realized that they don’t really want to do so anymore. 

I know that few families have enjoyed the rock solid commerarderie that has defined my life and that I took for granted.  We certainly still love each other, but we have become busy and we are moving in many different directions. Perhaps it was always inevitable that our unwavering dependence on each other might one day have to change. Even if we succeeded in getting every single person in the family to attend some event, we would practically have to rent a hall to accommodate them. Still, I do miss the way we never forgot the birthdays even if we were far away or sick. 

There are lots of discussions about what constitutes a healthy family. I don’t think a really good family has much to do with its make up or how often it gets together, but rather how often the members check to see how everyone is doing. When I was a child I never once doubted that someone would always care for me and my brothers. Even when a schoolmate suggested that I would have to go to an orphanage if my mother also died I was able to assert without reservation that my aunts and uncles would take care of me. I had every confidence that I was never alone. That knowledge kept me strong. Those constant interactions with my big crazy family helped me more than anyone might measure. I worry that young people today, even in my own family, do not have nearly enough of that sort of reassurance. 

I’m not a party girl by nature. Nonetheless I see invitations to parties or parties held in my honor as a kind of confirmation that somebody really cares. It takes a person acting as glue to get those things started and I think that most of us are just out of practice and some are even still a bit worried about Covid. I know that I used to be the supreme hostess but I haven’t scheduled anything since 2019. Perhaps it’s time for me to attempt to glue things back together, rather than simply lamenting that nothing is happening. 

I like that one of my neighbors constantly brings our cul de sac together with little gatherings on his driveway or in his backyard. We all think of him as the force that pulls us out of our homes and into relationships that go beyond waving as we drive off to work. I need to take a page from him and do better. I’ve let my introverted tendencies get a bit too comfortable of late. It’s long past time to bring the family back to life. I have to step up and be the glue.

My Grandpa William Mack Little is a cipher. He listed his mother as Marion Rourke in the family bible, but try as I may I have never been able to find any sign of her on Ancestry.com. or anywhere else. The same goes for his father James Mack. It is as though my grandfather just popped up in a cabbage patch one day. Nonetheless he had a story of family that included being raised by his grandmother after his mother died shortly after he was born. I can’t find a thing on her either. For that matter I don’t find any proof of Grandpa’s existence until he is well over forty years old. 

Grandpa told me all about his grandmother and wove stories of living with her in the backwoods of Virginia near a coal mine that his she ran. He was quite the teller of tales about his childhood and his early teen years. He even had a wonderful story about the time his father and stepmother had smallpox and he was fetched to take care of them. When his grandmother died he was only thirteen and had to help a judge choose a guardian for him. He didn’t think his father would be a good choice since he had never supported him before that time. Grandpa suspected that his old man would just squander the small inheritance from his grandmother, so he chose a man named John Little, This was supposedly his uncle, although I can’t find a connection to Mr. Little’s family and my grandfather anywhere. John Little was actually Captain John Little, a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Sadly Captain Little died from typhus after being sent to help with hurricane relief in Cuba in 1900. By that time my grandfather was twenty one years old so he had already set off on his own doing mostly construction work but he missed having the guidance from his uncle. 

Grandpa traveled all over the United States finding jobs wherever they were to be had and staying in rented rooms. Perhaps his vagabond lifestyle is the reason that he was never registered in a federal census until he was a middle aged man. He never really settled down, not even when he met and married my grandmother. He took the family here and there looking for work just as when when he was single. Most of his jobs ended up being in Oklahoma and Texas so that’s how he ended up in Houston with my father in tow. 

Most of Grandpa’s adult life took place before the introduction of Social Security and because he had been without work during the Great Depression he never managed to save a great deal of money. Nor did he have a very large pension from his union. My grandmother’s cancer and the hospitalizations it required wiped him out financially. He ended up living in a rented room from the time he was eighty eight until he died at the age of one hundred eight. 

Grandpa had lots of grandchildren and great grandchildren so I was shocked when I learned that nobody was willing to join together to pay his funeral expenses. I was just shy of being forty years old at the time and my brothers were still in their thirties. We weren’t swimming in cash but we were able to put enough together to have our grandfather buried next to my grandmother. We remarked that we would install a grave marker later because we had already stretched our budget on caskets, flowers, cars, police escorts and all the rituals associated with laying a great man to rest. 

We would visit the cemetery often and I rarely mentioned how much it bothered me that my grandmother had a headstone, but Grandpa did not. On one of my birthdays my husband suggested that we visit the cemetery, since my grandfather and I shared a birth month. It seemed like a wonderful way of remembering him and not just focusing on myself. 

When we got there I was surprised to see that my grandfather had a marker of his own that was styled the same ways that Grandma’s was. I was overjoyed when I saw it because if ever there was someone who deserved to be remembered for all time, it was William Mack Little. It seems that my sweet husband had purchased the stone as one of my birthday gifts. 

While I have received many wonderful gifts over the years I have to admit that nothing has quite topped that incredible surprise. My grandfather had been like a second father to me and I had gained so much wisdom from him. He was the person that I always wanted to see whenever I was feeling anxious. Just sitting with him and listening to his never ending stories always set me at ease and reminded me how lucky I was. I don’t think I ever adequately conveyed to him how much I loved him or how much he had meant to me. My thoughtful husband had understood my feelings and honored both me and my grandfather with his gift. 

It’s funny how we humans like to give things to each other. Sometimes our gifts are expansive and sometimes they are tokens. Presents are an indication that somebody cares about us. When they say the old phrase that “it is the thought that counts” it rings true with me because on that wonderful birthday I received a gift that topped them all. 

The Olympics have a storied history. Most people know that they actually began in Greece, but what few realize is that those male athletes of old performed their feats in the nude. There have been lots of changes since those days and many events added that the ancient Greeks would not have understood. It seems that we humans have invented so many sports over time that it is difficult to decide which competitions to include every four years. 

I recently learned that in the early twentieth century croquet was featured in the Olympic games. Evidently it had become a very popular Victorian era pastime and somebody thought that spectators might enjoy watching a rousing game with representatives from around the world pushing the wooden balls around with their mallets. The hoped for competition only lasted one time in the menu of sports for the Olympics because when the day of the competition came there was only one spectator. So much for the wide world of  croquet!

In truth I would love to see the Olympics return to their roots, with clothing of course, as well as the inclusion of women. If I were to only watch certain events they would all be in track and field. Somehow those seem to me to be the very essence of human athleticism. Other than better shoes and aerodynamic clothing, it is only the athlete who determines the winner. Track and field is about strength and speed and a bit of thinking. It shows the human form at its finest. 

I often think about how track and field events are not dependent on the economic or racial status of an individual or a country. A talented individual  from a third world country is just as likely to be a competitor as a wealthy individual. Track and field is an equalizer and I love that aspect of the sport. 

One of my sporting heroes is Jim Thorpe, the native American who won the gold medal for the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912. As a child I read books about him and a movie about him continues to be one of my favorites. I was both delighted and fascinated by his story. Later I would feel he same way about Jesse Owens whose four gold medals in sprints and the long jump flew in the face of Hitler’s Aryan superiority theories. 

I suppose that I love stories like these because I have watched economically disadvantaged students struggling to compete with wealthier students who have had training in various sports from the time they were children. It’s very difficult to overcome the economic challenges of going toe to toe with athletes who have the advantage of the finest equipment and private trainers. When an individual manages to win on sheer native talent there is something quite stunning and inspiring about that.  

Of course today there are talent scouts everywhere searching for gifted athletes wherever they may be. The Jim Thorpe and Jesse Owens stories are rare. The Olympics are a big money event and those who make it there have been carefully trained with lots of investment in time and money. This reality does not make them any less talented, but it takes away some of the excitement of hoping to see an unexpected hero emerge. Today’s games are often a foregone conclusion and in most cases the predictions about who is most likely to win come true. 

I wish that those who broadcast the Olympics would devise a system that allows viewers to choose what they want to see. Of late there is far too much blathering from the commentators and focus on sports that have little interest for me. I know that volleyball is important to some people, but I am not one of them. I’d much rather be allowed to pick another event that is happening at the same time. I’m sure that others agree with me. Why not let a mega fan watch all of the soccer games rather than only the ones that have been chosen by the television crew.?

I understand that the producers have to pick and choose what to show or else the expense will be unbearable, but in recent years the programming all too often focuses on sports that make me yawn. I suspect that is why viewership is down. Perhaps the Olympics have become a bit too commercial and maybe they have added too many new sports over the years. I really don’t understand why anyone would think that shooting should be included in the mix or for that matter horse riding. 

I’d like to see the Olympics go back to more of a focus on the basics. The last one felt like an abysmal fail, a pandemic notwithstanding. The whole thing has become far too commercialized. Jim Thorpe lost his medals because he got paid to play ball while he was training for the Olympics. Now such a tragedy will not occur because athletes are allowed more leeway in earning funds to keep them afloat while they practice. Still, we seem to have gone too far in the other direction as athletes make a fortune with ads and endorsements that seem to be the driving force behind what the stay at home spectators get to view. Some of the glory is tarnished by the commercialization. It’s really time to get back to the basics again, but please keep requiring the athletes to wear clothes.

I spent most of my teaching career in public schools educating minority students. Those children taught me as much as I taught them. They introduced me to cultures and life experiences that I had never known in my mostly isolated childhood. I had grown up in the segregated south and generally had only witnessed people from other races or ethnicities from afar. From that distance I saw the unfairness of how black citizens and those from Mexico and South America were being treated in my city and the country at large. I new that there were designated areas where they lived away from the enclaves that housed me and my white family and friends. As a teen and young adult I advocated for a more equal and just nation for them and then I found myself in a position to love and cherish the historically underserved members of my community when I became a teacher. 

I have been profoundly moved by my experience with the minority children of my city. They and their parents educated me. I learned about their determination to rise up even as they were often being persecuted. I saw how incredibly difficult it was for many of them to overcome the prejudices and propaganda that had historically lied about who they were. They were good, hard working people, not the lazy violent souls that some portrayed them to be. From them came stories of profound inspiration as well as deeply disturbing examples of grievous abuse by a society that often heralded itself as the greatest country on earth. I listened to them and began to realize that I was not somehow some kind of beneficent helper for them, but rather a means for them to gain enough knowledge to continue to gain the kind of freedoms that I already had. 

I have marveled at the successes of those same students. I have proudly watched them achieve incredible goals, but I have also learned of heartbreaking incidents when not even their college degrees were enough to convince a future employer that they were polished enough to land a job. Instead it was suggested that they were still “too ghetto” for the professional world. The fact that they had grown up in poverty in a rough part of town and had still managed to earn college degrees by dent of determination did not seem to matter. The prejudices against them were more subtle than those hurled at their elders, but they still existed nonetheless. 

I mention all of these things because the vast majority of people my age and those with whom I went to school scratch their heads at my political and religious beliefs. They are of a more conservative bent and point out the violence and crime that seems so rampant these days as evidence that there are people among us who need to somehow be taught to be better. They lament what they see as a deterioration of the niceties and faiths of the past. They want to reel in the country’s leaning toward what they see as chaos and they genuinely believe that we have lost our way and that we are not as safe as we once were. They are fearful that our country is on the brink of becoming an ungodly anarchy. 

I hear them as much as I hear my former students but I disagree with their rationale and ideas for fixing the difficulties of our nation. Going back to a time where freedoms were mostly limited to the WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) is not the answer. In fact it is a rotten idea that will only compound the many problems that we face. We must protect the rights of every citizen and everyone must feel free to express their opinions. We cannot allow our individual religious beliefs to seep into our public institutions as a mechanism of controlling thoughts. I am a Catholic who is adamant that my beliefs should be my own, not a way of forcing others to comply with me. Prayers are lovely. I say them all day long, but they do not belong in public schools. Rules of freedom and privacy dictate that each person be allowed to think in his/her own way. Freedom should be about choices, not dictatorial laws and court rulings that favor one belief system over another. 

I believe that our founders understood the slippery slope of mixing religious fervor with the laws of the state. Our decisions about what should be a matter of choice and what should be curbed have to be based on rational information rather than emotional feelings. We also must surely understand that the men of 1776 while quite learned could not have adequately imagined how changed the world would become. Nonetheless they created a Constitution designed to be fluid enough to adapt to the times, not become a rigid and outdated document. The process of legislation and adjudication was meant to create laws and precedents that would evolve over time. Even at the time of the birth of our nation there were men who understood that slaves should be freed and that all men and women deserve the right to vote. They assumed that such changes would naturally occur. They did not mention every single eventuality that might need to change but they created a system that would make our freedoms living and breathing, not static and unmoving. To insist that something cannot be Constitutional because it was not mentioned in the original documents or throughout history is absurd because so much has changed through science and research and education that few of the founders would recognize the incredible advances that should have made our country more equitable, not less so. 

I pray daily, but like Thomas Jefferson I believe that God gave us a brilliant intellect that He expects us to use to solve problems rather than waiting for Him to perform miracles. I think that God exists in many different forms in hundreds of different cultures. There is no one perfect way of believing or living and we have to respect those differences. To me that means that no religion should ever be allowed to encroach on the freedoms of any individual. We should each be free to influence our children as we see fit and to model our beliefs with loving example. Forcing others to be clones of one set of beliefs is anathema to the very freedoms that we all cherish. Sadly we seem to have forgotten that very important lesson. One size never fits all. If we are to err should be in granting more freedoms to more people, not less.