Category: Commentary

From the time of my father’s death I have found solace in learning. Anytime I became blue I was able to redirect my mind to reading a good story, diagramming a sentence, working some math problems. Eventually I became a teacher and that work gave me a sense of well-being even in the most difficult moments. Learning and teaching provides me with a momentary form of escape even to this very day. 

We’ve all struggled through the last two years in one way or another. I’ve had moments when I felt like just hibernating like Rip Van Winkle until all of the troubles of the world blow over. I then change my mind because I must admit that I would also miss out on the many wonderful things that happening simultaneously with tragedies, death, violence and the other things that sometimes worry me. That goes for every year of my life. 

Charles Dickens had a way with words when he spoke of the best of times and the worst of times happening all at once. Many mourned during 2021, and I certainly suffered too many losses of friends and relatives, but I can also count innumerable joys in the mix as well. Somehow the year was a brew of good and bad that provided me with more joy than sadness.

Two of my grandsons graduated from Texas A&M University and then immediately found wonderful jobs. They’ve already enjoyed kudos and bonuses from their bosses and learned much along the way. Two other grandsons graduated from high school and began their college educations at Trinity University and Texas Tech respectively. They made it successfully through the first semester and eagerly look forward to finishing their first year of studies this spring. They are enjoying their schools and making new friends and moving  closer and closer to becoming adults in the working world. 

I had several wonderful trips in 2021. I enjoyed camping with my brother and sister-in-law in east Texas where we visited an incredible rose garden and found treasures in an antique store. During the summer we traveled through the panhandle of Texas seeing the sights and meeting up with a good friend. Eventually we found our way to New Mexico where we enjoyed delightful sunrises and sunsets along with a fabulous afternoon with a cousin. We walked through museums and shopped for unique wares. We were able to visit Colorado twice, a particular joy for us as we both saw the summer skies and the golden show of fall leaves in that magical state. 

I got actual hugs in 2021, a grand departure from my isolation of 2019. I had lunches and dinners with good friends. When Christmas came I was able to reprise most of my traditions including celebrations with friends and a fabulous Christmas Eve with my extended family. On Christmas Day I was blessed to be with all of my children and grandchildren in addition to four of my nieces and nephews. My heart was filled with joy and appreciation of each moment unlike anything I have experienced in my life.

I attended a big neighborhood party and dressed up in my Victorian finery for the Dickens on the Strand festival in Galveston. I was able to take two continuing education classes from my favorite professor at Rice University. I learned that we humans have worked throughout the decades to improve life and that our earnest efforts are slowly bringing rewards more and more people, but we still have some work to do.

In 2021, I learned not to take even the simplest pleasures for granted. Everything seemed to taste better, look better, feel better because of my unbounded gratitude. I realized how many blessing fill even my most uneventful days. I was overjoyed to receive my two vaccinations and then a booster to give me some assurance that I will not have to endure the worst effects of Covid-19. I felt quite thankful that I live in a place where such wonders of medicine are readily available, along with treatments if I get sick. 

Happily I was able to teach mathematics to a wonderful group of children. Those days made me so incredibly joyful and calm. I feel fortunate to still have such opportunities to make a difference in my community. I am thankful that my mind is still working and that I have almost as much energy as I had when I was young.

I look forward to 2020. Two more grandchildren are graduating from high school in May. It will be fun to see where they decide to go to college and to watch them enjoying learning new ideas like I do. Who knows what the future will bring, but for sure 2021 was not a bad year at all. If the coming months are even half as wonderful as the past twelve have been I will be very content.

For months now we have all heard that Covid 19 will only be tamed if enough people worldwide receive vaccinations. The trouble with that idea has been a lack of sufficient vaccines being distributed in areas of the world like South America, India and Africa where storing and distribution of the mRNA vaccines is often too complex. While those of us in the United States and Europe were arguing over who was willing to accept vaccines, much of the rest of the world was sadly lacking in meaningful efforts to get more people vaccinated against the virus. Now all of that is in the process of changing thanks to the work of two dedicated doctors who reside right here in my city of Houston. 

Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Maria Elena Botazzi, co-directors of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, have created a safe and easily produced and distributed new vaccine for Covid 19 called CORBEVAX that is already approved for emergency use in India with other underserved countries to follow. The “no strings attached”vaccine will be sent with no patent restrictions or costs. Donors are already lining up to fund the global project whose aim is to bring the jab to as many corners of the world as possible. 

The vaccine has been produced using safe and long used protein technology which is less expensive to create than many of the current vaccines. CORBEVAX is also easy to store, not requiring refrigeration which might hamper bringing it to isolated communities. It was specifically designed by Drs. Hotez and Botazzi for use in middle to low income countries in a humanitarian effort to stem the tide of Covid for all populations.

Dr. Hotez has been one of the many faces of medical academia to emerge during the current pandemic but his work on providing vaccines for tropical diseases and other threats around the world has long been recognized as important in stemming the tide of many illnesses. Sadly the politicization of vaccines and diverging opinions about Covid have sometimes resulted in attacks on the motivation and honesty of Dr. Hotez and others from the medical community. He has been dubbed by some as “Dr Doom” because of his insistence that we will never fully conquer Covid without vaccinating most of the world’s people, not just those in the richest and most developed countries. From the outset his goal has been to educate everyone about the efficacy and importance of global vaccination efforts. 

Now it appears that Dr. Hotez’ dream of finding a vaccine that will be easy to create and distribute to all corners of the world has come to fruition. It is an exciting prospect to realize that the incredible work of Dr. Hotez and Dr. Botazzi  will soon make vaccines a reality for people all over the globe. What is even more remarkable is that neither doctor will profit from the vaccine beyond their usual salaries from Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine where both are doctors, researchers and professors. 

I feel a great sense of pride in knowing that I live in a city that is home to such a great institution as Texas Children’s Hospital. Even better is realizing how many truly inspiring and dedicated individuals are toiling daily to keep our children and their parents healthy. We too often forget the importance of what is happening in the heart of the Medical Center that brings people from all over the world in hopes of finding treatments and cures for their illnesses. Now we also learn that we have two pioneers in the world of virology and immunology working feverishly in our midst for the good of all of humankind. There is something incredibly comforting in knowing that. 

I’ve been following Dr. Hotez on televised interviews and on Twitter for many months now. I have followed his advice regarding my own behavior during this time of pandemic. I have read his latest book and realized how the global impact of disease links all of us together whether we wish to acknowledge this basic truth or not. We can no longer isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. A sneeze in Africa more often than not eventually affects us all and vice versa. 

I congratulate and humbly thank Dr. Hotez and Dr. Botazzi for their brilliance and diligence in working day in and day out to produce and distribute safe vaccines for many different diseases. While we babble on and on about the efficacy of taking advantage of the miracles of vaccines they are dedicating their lives to keeping all of humanity safer from the many diseases and viruses that threaten us, while taking insults and threats on the chin. They are unmitigated heroes in our midst. 

If you are the praying kind of person you may want to thank God for these two remarkable doctors and ask Him to keep them safe while they continue their work. After all, I believe that they are doing the Lord’s work. They and others like them are the miracles that we need.

We purchase all kinds of products that we hope we will never need to use. Most people have home insurance, flood insurance, car insurance, health insurance and life insurance. Years may go by without ever making a claim, which is actually a good thing. We don’t want to be involved in tragedies of any kind, but when and if they happen we want to be covered so that our situation is not also a financial disaster. 

We wear seatbelts in our cars even if we’re never been in a serious accident. This one is especially important to me because I’ve heard again and again that my father probably would not have died if seatbelts had been installed in cars back in 1957. There were no real safety features in his automobile and so his chest slammed into a steering wheel that did not collapse upon impact. His heart almost immediately stopped. His lack of a seatbelt changed the lives of me and every member of my family.

I have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen. It’s a new one that replaced the one that we used when our oven caught fire. With quick action we were able to prevent what might have been the loss of our kitchen or maybe even our entire house. We confined the fire to the inside of the oven so that our only cost was purchasing a replacement oven and buying a new fire extinguisher. 

We don’t always get evidence that our precautionary payments or actions have been worthwhile. Sometimes we go a lifetime without ever having to use the safety features of life that are there just in case. We might dream of countless other ways that we might have invested the money that we have paid for flood insurance until we see the homes of friends and family members filling with water. Then we are reminded of why an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

So we go through life visiting our doctors for annual checkups, being immunized for diseases, following traffic rules, installing smoke detectors, locking our doors at night, creating contingencies for unexpected dilemmas. We can’t always foresee the future, nor can we be one hundred percent certain that the measures we take will prevent us from ever having to endure tragedy. What we are able to do is mitigate some of the cost of accidents, disasters, health problems. We invest in the tools available to us hoping that we never have to use them. 

Our human responses to the current pandemic vary according to our beliefs, but one thing is certain. Covid 19 is very real and it is determined to mutate in a battle to stay alive in our midst. We may have gone past the point of being able to fully control it with a totally vaccinated population, but we seem to have prevented it from being as dangerous than is once was for those who have had two vaccines and a booster.

Insurance cannot prevent a fire in a home but it has the power to make the price of repairing the damage far less than it might otherwise have been. So it is with Covid after completing three doses of the vaccine. I may catch the virus, but the odds of it sending me to the hospital or causing my death are miniscule. Taking the vaccine is my insurance policy, one that I hope I never need but have in my back pocket if the occasion arises. 

I see the current responses to the pandemic as a no win situation. If the governmental decisions is to have a long list of fail safe responses in place, a hue and cry of wasting money and limiting liberties ensues. If the response is to wait until there is a surge, there are complaints that we should have been better prepared. 

The truth is that we have too many people who have been unwilling to get vaccinated, wear masks whenever they are indoors and generally sacrifice in a concerted effort to rid ourselves of this plague. Instead I have watched too many asserting that those of us who have done those things are fearful and hysterical, as though taking precautions has suddenly become a sign of some kind of weakness. 

We have countless measures in place that are designed to keep us safe. I follow them without thoughts of somehow losing my liberties. Why a worldwide pandemic would suddenly lead to risky behaviors in the name of freedom is beyond my comprehension. Why would we not take advantage of every possible means of avoiding the more severe consequences of this virus?

I have grown weary of those who accuse the medical community of growing rich because of Covid. They obviously do not know or understand how exhausted and frustrated all of our doctors and nurses are. A year ago we were celebrating them as the heroes that they are. Today they sometimes fear for their safety because of a spate of misinformation that is fueling a hateful campaign against them. 

I am tired of being accused of being fearful simply because I am very careful not to bring Covid to the immunocompromised members of my family or to the ones whose hearts and lungs were already weakened long before the virus came along. 

Those of us who are doing everything possible to keep our families and friends and neighbors safe are not on a campaign of hate or propaganda against those who are following rumors and unscientific ideas. We truly want everyone to be safer from the worst effects of Covid. We do not want anyone to suffer or die. 

We have made Covid 19 a political football when instead we should be as united against it as we should also be against any foul hurtfulness that befalls our fellow humans. We need to admit that no single individual is to be blamed for the shifting vagaries of the virus. Instead we should all be asking how we might sacrifice like the brave doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers, firefighters, store clerks, delivery people do every single day to finally put an end to the virus. If we can’t come together in such times then surely we should all be very worried. It’s time we all began to use the insurance that those in the know are offering us. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Be safer. It’s a great investment that hopefully you will never have to test.

I’ll admit to watching Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” and thinking that it was a bit hokey. That film premiered in 2006, and brought attention to the gathering storm of global warming or climate change or whatever term one wishes to use to describe the effect of human over consumption of the earth’s resources. I remember thinking that the documentary was a bit too anecdotal and hyperbolic, so it had little effect on the way I lived my life. 

I suppose that I was filled with the false hopes of wishful thinking because since that time I have witnessed an exponential rise in the number of horrific weather-induced events, not just in the United States, but all over the globe. The growing evidence that we humans are inflicting enormous strain on the environment seems to have grown since Al Gore warned us of our need to change our ways or bear the consequences of our actions. 

My own grandchildren have begun crusades to halt the growing trends of destruction, but they understand that unless their efforts are universally adopted our planet is doomed to more and bigger life-changing events produced by the weather. They are moving away from the Texas coastal plain where they were born in the belief that the oceans will indeed one day engulf large swaths of land. They have purchased electric and hybrid cars. They are eating less and less meat, and some have even sworn off of animal protein totally. They preach the gospel of climate change with conviction, but mostly they worry that we may already be too late to avoid the horrors of what is yet to come. They believe that if only we would agree to throw ourselves into a concerted effort to save our environment there might still be hope. 

There is much merit in what they have to say, as frightening as it may sound. Somehow the evidence provided by damaging worldwide weather events no longer feels simply anecdotal to me. Their frequency and amplification of damage no longer appears to be bonafide proof that things are not just simply as they have always been. There is definitely something very different about the climate that does not bode well for any of us. 

I grew up in a southern state known for its warmth, but there were still regular days of colder weather from November to the middle of March. I actually wore out my winter gear in past times, but now I may not wear my sweaters and winter coats for more than a few days out of the year. I’ve seen hurricanes but nothing like the multiple days of driving rains that inundated Houston and surrounding areas with flooding that destroyed the homes of many of my friends and family members. I’ve watched the Bay Area of California endure so much drought that once green spaces have turned a crispy looking brown. My favorite haunts in Colorado are subject to regular fires that damage wildlife and homes. All over the world I see dramatic changes in climate that we talk about, but essentially ignore. 

We seem to think that a little girl named Greta who is militant in her climate activism is little more than a pig-tailed upstart of a child. Instead of listening to her concerns we poke fun at her and pretend that she is immature and will soon enough learn how things really work. We bash anyone who suggests sacrifices that we all need to make if we are to create a trend that begins the process of healing our beautiful earth. 

Think of how effective it might be if we all agreed to having meatless days a couple of times each week. How would it hurt if we used less energy by changing a few of our habits? It’s not that difficult to go back to some of the ways that we did things when I was a child. I remember when liquids came in reusable glass bottles that we had to pay a deposit on until we returned them for future use. I lived in a hot and humid climate without air conditioning until I was in my twenties. Not every day requires keeping the temperature at a “perfect” level. That goes for drying clothes as well. Those old backyard clotheslines were wonderful as long as the day was dry. It is a bit more work to hang wet laundry out to dry, but it is worth the effort if it results in much less consumption of energy that brings done the alarming warmth of the earth.

We need to launch a worldwide effort to make a difference. We should each be doing something every minute of every single day that helps with the cause. Such actions need not require a great deal of extra time or effort. Simply turning off lights, mowing lawns less often or even turning them into xeriscapes is a way to create passive resistance to the waste of our resources. 

We have many issues on this earth but the one that should unite us is a goal of changing the way we do things with a determined will to combat global warming before it destroys us. Science tells us how to do this, but so far we have mostly ignored the cries for change. Nature is warning us on a regular basis that we are past due for doing something about the mess we have made. That inconvenient truth is made real with every drought or flood that plagues us. It’s time that we faced reality and made a truly concerted effort to reverse the trends that we have created before it is too late.   

My brother was born on January 6, Three King’s Day. In many parts of the world Christmas celebrations continue all the way through this date, but in the United States all thoughts of the holiday season have generally been relegated to the past. By a few days into January it’s time to look forward and move on from partying. We Yanks tend to get serious about the work at hand by diving full force into jobs and school work. Nonetheless, since it was a special day for my brother, our household always continued with the revelry in spite of a lack of participation from most of the rest of the folks around us.

I remember my dear mother struggling to find gifts for my brother in stores that looked as though they had been visited by looters. She would encounter empty shelves and even when products were still available they were all too often defective in some way. I suppose that she might have planned ahead by purchasing gifts before Christmas and setting them aside until January 6, but her budget and her personality forced her to prepare for each occasion one step at a time. Thus, she created unique traditions for my brother to make do with whatever she might find. One of her yearly offerings to him was a bag of his favorite cookies, fig Newtons, that he could enjoy without having to share with the rest of us. Somehow with a bit of imagination Mama always managed to make his day as special as he was. 

I have never cared much for the dark and often dreary days of January. I find myself missing the decorations and lights of Christmas. By January they are more often drooping and looking out of place, so most folks rush to take them down as soon as possible. After all the work and rushing around to prepare for Christmas we celebrate in one enormous burst and then return quickly to our work and resolutions. January is almost an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. Birthdays and anniversaries in that month are all too often forgotten as people set out on the long journey around the sun one more time. 

From the time I was a child I have harbored a love/hate relationship with January because of its association with a return to school and work. I have a sense of dread about going back to the grind after all of the enjoyment of the holidays. It’s a feeling akin to returning to a routine after an especially wonderful vacation. On the one hand I want to stay suspended in an unending fairytale of fun and on the other hand I’m more than ready to return to the day to day realities of living. Even now when I am retired, I find myself feeling a kind of pull and tug of emotions when January rolls around. I am anxious to enjoy the possibilities of what lies ahead, but also cautious about the kind of events that might bring sorrow into my life.  

No other month of the year elicits both joy and dread like January which I know is actually rather silly. There is nothing particularly unique about the month. It’s place in the year is simply a random creation from a long ago attempt to organize life with a calendar that marks the passing of seasons. It is simply a demarcation of time that allows us to keep track of how many times our earth has revolved around the sun. That countdown might just as well have begun in the spring or summer or fall. Our reaction to January is nothing more than a learned response to the invented traditions to which we adhere, and yet it has always held the same blend of optimism and anxiety for me. 

As a teacher my colleagues and I always looked ahead to the long semester during which we knew that our students would lose their focus and begin to drift away into spasms of spring fever. January began the long haul of the school year, the time when the pencils and book bags and shoes were no longer shiny and new. It took lots of energy and creativity to maintain the interest of our students and sometimes even to motivate ourselves. Once we got back into the groove everything was fine, but summertime and sunshine always seemed to be so far away. 

I still cling to my brother’s birthday as the last hurrah of the holiday season. In some ways I have always enjoyed his birthday more than my own, because it has been a way to keep the holiday fires burning a bit longer. I keep my Christmas decorations shining brightly in his honor every year even though he is not at my home. I’ve never fail to attend his birthday party with the exception of last year during the before vaccination times of Covid. His special day is one last opportunity to laugh and feel the warmth of a family gathering before we all put our heads down to the tasks that lie before us. This year we get the added bonus of a baby shower for my nephew and his wife. That will add a bright spot to January that should bring lots of smiles. It will be March before we have another birthday to celebrate but if all goes according to plan the new baby will create another reason to celebrate in February. Then it will be almost spring and we will be looking forward to the times when the sun will shine most of the day, a situation that my body and mind seems to crave. Who knows it may also be the moment when we can finally say goodbye to Covid and begin to rebuild the more normal aspects of our lives with hugs and kisses and love all around.