Category: Commentary

I often think of my grandmother Ulrich coming to America on a small steamship all alone. She was such a quiet shy woman that it is difficult for me to imagine how frightening the trip may have been for her. I suppose that knowing that my grandfather was waiting for her at the end of the journey gave her the courage to leave behind the life that she had known in the Slovakian region of Austria Hungary. 

I ask myself what convinced Grandma and Grandpa Ulrich to take such a huge risk in coming to an unknown land. Things surely must have been terrible for them at home or they would not have been so daring. They would never again see their families nor the places where they had once lived. Theirs was a fresh start in a place that promised them an opportunity to improve their lot. Back then they were not restricted by quotas or any particular immigration rules. They were welcomed for the labor that they might provide in a rapidly growing nation. All they had to do was pass a medical exam upon arrival to be certain that they were not bringing disease with them. 

Once they were here nobody really followed up on where they were or what they were doing. My grandfather rapidly applied for citizenship and became naturalized within a few years of landing in Galveston. I don’t think my grandmother ever bothered to complete the process. I suspect that she saw less need to do so than her husband who would always be the main breadwinner in the family. 

They eventually purchased a small plot of land just east of downtown Houston and built a small home there where they raised four boys and four girls. Life was not easy but my grandfather often declared that it was far better than what it might have been in the old country. Like many new immigrants to this country they were often treated with taunts and suspicion. Their language and appearance was different and therefore considered inferior by some. They worked hard to overcome their hardships and by the time those of us who were their grandchildren came along nobody would have known that we had a rather recent immigrant history. 

Things have changed markedly since the days when all one needed to do is show up at a port of entry to find a place in the United States. Over time stricter and stricter immigration laws made it more and more difficult for people like my grandmother and grandfather to earn the opportunity to live and work here. Nonetheless the same desire for a better life without fear or poverty or a restrictive government continues to fuel the flow of humans attempting to enter our country by any means whether legal or not. The process that was once so easy for my grandparents has become a gooey mess.

Our approach in the past few decades has been an attempt to create easy solutions for problems that are incredibly complex. The result is that we ignore the realities of immigration problems year after year, allowing them to only become more difficult. Simply erecting a wall is not a permanent fix any more than becoming lax about enforcing current rules. For the most part nobody has done a good job of reforming our badly broken system. We are simply not serious about working together to find workable long term solutions. Instead we argue about who, how and what should comprise a system for immigration but never get past the shouting match. All the while we end up either being too draconian or too lax in our treatment of people who are not that different from my grandmother and grandfather.

Perhaps our worst situation involves the young people who were brought here as children and have never known any place but the United States but who are technically illegal immigrants. We can’t even agree on some form of amnesty and pathway to citizenship for them. Meanwhile situations in many parts Central and South America are so horrific that people are willing to risk everything to find a way of becoming part of our country. Walls and restrictions and rules only work so much when people are desperate.

Both former President Trump and now President Biden reacted to immigration issues too quickly upon taking office. President Trump made sweeping changes within weeks of his inauguration that were ill considered and perhaps even illegal. President Biden has done much the same in an ill fated effort to bring a more humane face to our immigration policies. Both sets of executive orders created chaos rather than solutions mainly because they were based on the idea that we can fix the problems easily and without sacrifices from each differing points of view or consideration of what rules we are willing to actually enforce. 

The last time we had sweeping immigration reform was during the Reagan era. That was well over thirty years ago. Since that time nobody has wanted to do anything beyond quick cosmetic fixes. It is long past time for our lawmakers to set aside politics and actually work together to create a reasonable solution for a problem that will continue to plague us until we become serious about how best to approach it. Unless we as citizens demand that our elected officials quit bickering and grandstanding there will be not good answers and we will continue to throw both money and resources to the wind. So far nothing has proven to be the answer. Now it is time to find one. Surely we have enough intelligence and compassion to figure it out. If not, then expect the difficulties to continue no matter who holds office.  

I always thought that the story of The Princess and the Pea was rather silly but I have to admit that I share some of the quirks of the little gal who stars in that tale. It does not take much to make me uncomfortable when I sleep. I’ve always had a bit of insomnia that comes and goes depending on what’s happening in my world but a sure way of blocking my slumber is to play with the natural timing of things. In other words, when a decree forces me to spring forward or fall back it will be weeks before my body finally adjusts to the sudden change. I will spend many nights tossing and turning and staring at the clock. Then I’ll be tired all day long as I attempt to come to grips with the new reality. 

I am a standard time gal. Everything about it works best for me. The first tiny rays of morning come peeking through my window around five thirty each morning and by six thirty the sun has risen as I watch the children in my neighborhood boarding the buses that take them to school. I am filled with almost boundless energy all day long and the sun goes down just long enough, even when days grow longer, for my body and mind to believe that it is time to rest at about eleven at night. I sleep well and don’t really need alarms to arise. It is a glorious time of year for me and then without fail comes the brutality of daylight savings time.

Springing forward not only feels like robbery of an hour of one day each year but it forces me to be totally out of sync for most of the months of the year. I can’t convince my mind or my body to relax enough to sleep until three or four in the morning. No matter how much exercise I do during the day or how dark I make my bedroom the plague of insomnia overtakes me and when I do finally fall asleep I am restlessly visited by strange dreams. I am usually awakened by the sound of the school bus which in my mind should be coming when the sun shines but instead is creeping along in the dark to meet children who look as sleep deprived as I am. On some days I am so exhausted from my nights of tossing and turning that I sleep in far longer than I wish, making my day seem shorter than it should and usually resulting in a headache.

Certainly I cannot be alone in my total dislike for the insanity of changing our clocks twice each year. Aside from the ensuing tiredness with which I must deal for many weeks there is the matter of adjusting all of our timepieces. Not everything works like an Apple watch to happily save us the effort of having to turn dials and punch buttons just to be on track. It is quite annoying to having to repeat the process over and over again. In some cases it has even resulted in damaging a particular clock as I remove it from the wall or flip it over to turn the dials. It is maddeningly irritating because there seems to be no rhyme or reason for doing this just because somebody decided that we needed more sunlight part of the year but might do without it during another time. 

Some states like Arizona rebelled long ago and decided not to participate in the biannual folly. Lawmakers introduce bills now and again that would either keep us perennially on standard or daylight saving time. Somehow nothing seems to come of those efforts and so we continue to wash, rinse, repeat so to speak. If I had my way it would be standard time all of the time which seems to be more in tune with our daily rotation on our axis. I think children should be able to walk or ride to school in daylight but if everyone insists on having sun filled nights I’m okay with that as well. I just want one way of doing things with no changes ever again. 

I find it amusing that we have people rebelling over wearing masks in public places but few openly complain about clock changing. If there is one right that is quite important to me it is the ability to sleep peacefully and clock gymnastics take away that freedom twice each year. I’ll wear a mask all day everyday rather than deal with insomnia. The mask is uncomfortable. Not being able to sleep is unbearable. I demand my right to keep my clock just as it was. I’ll see you an hour later or if you choose an hour sooner but please don’t make me change and change again to appease some silly rule. Where are the protesters when we really need them for something important?

I suspect that I sound a bit whiny and there will be those who tell me to just deal with the situation like everyone else does. Still, I really think that there are more who think like me than are apparent. Most of us are of a mind to just go along to get along and so for years and years we continue with the process even though we despise it. No doubt we are too tired to spend energy fighting time changes and when we finally adjust we keep going to catch up on the hours we have lost. Thus the hated cycle continues.

There is a great deal of talk of needing a bit more unity in the halls of government. Perhaps a great beginning to a more bipartisan nation would be to agree to live with one or the other mode of time and then never change it again. I wonder if it’s possible for us to find common ground on what should be a no brainer. Somehow I fear that we might end up in the kind of deadlock that makes us unable to really solve any kind of problem on matter how small, but I can only hope that someone will have the common sense to finally release us from the continual changing of the clocks.

About a year ago I felt compelled to call a friend whom I have known since the summer before I began second grade. We met on the day my family moved across the street from her family. We both hid shyly behind our mothers while they introduced themselves. Our friendship officially began when our moms pushed us toward each other and commanded us to go play. I followed Linda as she gave me a tour of the neighborhood and provided me with a brief biography of the people in each house. With each step that we took we became more comfortable with one another and by the time we had completed the circle we were chattering away. I suppose that Linda is officially the person who has been my friend for the longest time.

Our paths went in different directions over the years but somehow over the course of almost seven decades we always found our way back to each other and to the same easy conversations that started our journey together so long ago. We have laughed and cried through happy and sorrowful times but at the center of our relationship is a sense of trust, a kind of loyalty that overcomes distance and differences of opinion. At heart we are still the two little girls who love one another no matter what. 

I have had many good friends and a number of acquaintances in my lifetime. Fun and laughter have certainly been important components of these relationships but in the final analysis the glue that holds us together is our commitment to one another. The good times are the beginning of a great friendship but when we are able to weather the difficult moments the ties that bind us become ever stronger. The difference between an acquaintance and a friend lies in our ability to depend on someone in all times. That person who is willing to accept us and love us at our very worst is the truest of friends and in many ways transcends the gap of DNA and becomes family in our minds. 

I suppose that one of the truest tests of friendship lies in its endurance over time. We often become busy with the demands of life and seemingly drift apart. How we react when we do manage to come back together defines the level and strength of our relationship. There are some people with whom we feel free to bare our souls without fear. Such is the trust that we have in them. We know that even when our beliefs do not overlap we agree to disagree because nothing is more important than the love we have for each other. 

My friend Nancy is like that for me. Like Linda we often have long times during which we lose communication but when we do find our way back it is as though only five minutes have passed since our last reunion. We have an almost spiritual understanding and closeness that knows no limits. We can open our hearts confident that our honesty will be treasured and never abused. Being together even just by phone is as comfortable as it was when we were giddy high school girls and hopeful college students looking into a future which often turned out differently than what we had imagined.

There are also those ever faithful friends who are at our sides from decade to decade over the course of time. There is Monica whom I met on the school playground when we were six years old and declared that we were sisters when we were grown and raising our families. There is another Linda who is the definition of faithfulness and goodness. I had once admired her from afar and when she and I began to really get to know each other in college I learned that her beauty was far more than physical. Year after year our love only deepens as we share the milestones of being human. There is Cappy who married into my world and stayed even as the situation changed. Wherever she is and whatever her circumstances she is ever faithful.

There are people that we meet at work with whom we first share a common purpose but who we learn are much more than just colleagues. Even after we part ways in our careers we stay in touch, do things together and care deeply. Some of them are part of a kind of unofficial sorority like Chrystal, Aimee, Sharon, Trica, Mili, Jenny, Adriana, Maggie. We find joy in being together and solace in sharing our woes. We hold hands and call and text and support. We are an army of compassionate and caring women. 

Sometimes we are lucky to number the children of other women as friends who become like our own offspring as well. My door is always open to Lisa and Traci no matter the hour of the day or night and I know in my heart that they will reciprocate if ever I need a safe place to be. They are as much members of my family as those with blood ties.

Perhaps the loveliest of friendships are those that evolve in our twilight years. Finding someone who just gets us is so wonderful and Carol is my person for that. We lived entire lifetimes before we really discovered one another even though we knew of each other from our childhoods but now our togetherness feels perfectly matched as though we were meant for all time to be friends. The same kind of evolution has occurred with Dee and Stephanie and Kathy and Bree people from my past whom it did not know well enough to realize that we are indeed kindred spirits.

There are angels that enter our lives as well, very special people who seem to sense our very needs and moods from afar. They almost always appear just when we need them most. Zerin Sahai is my spiritual sister, a women who lives in faraway India but always hears my cries for help even when I do not realize I have been uttering them. She seems to know exactly when I need to laugh or complain or just hear a loving voice. Our relationship is magical.

I think we all know that deep friendships are treasures and never defined only by laughter, fun, good times. The test for our relationships lies in walking through fire together, being a shoulder to cry on or an ear just to listen. I am blessed to know all of these lovely women who have strolled with me in the most important moments of my life and continue to support me even when I am not so easy to be around. As my mother often mused friends accept each other warts and all. Friends are honestly our anchors during a storm.

Not long before we first heard about COVID 19, social distancing, masks, testing and all of the other phrases that have become part of our lexicon I attended an outdoor concert with one of my grandsons. During intermission we discussed various issues that were issues being bandied about in the lead up to the selection of candidates for the 2020 presidential race. It only took a few minutes to find that my grandson and I agreed on what the problems were but our ideas for solutions and how quickly we needed to address them were miles apart. He insisted on an urgency that I thought was unnecessary. I spoke of how our government is known for solving problems incrementally and I heartily supported that kind of slow and deliberate approach. My grandson insisted that we had ignored so many challenges for so long that we were running out of time. He predicted that our hesitancy would come back to bite us. I attempted to soothe his youthful anxieties to no avail. We ended our talk agreeing to disagree on how much time we have to seriously face the many dilemmas that threaten us. 

In retrospect it seems as though my grandson was a kind of prophet. I should have considered the fact that he has always been the calmest of my seven grandkids. He is in fact one of the least likely people that I know to cry wolf or make much ado about nothing. As I have watched event after event unfold in the ensuing year I clearly see his point that we have neglected far too many issues for far too long and now things appear to be collapsing around us. 

He noted that we had failed in decade after decade to address injustice, racism, equality. We sweep such matters under the rug and spout platitudes rather than admitting that we have much work to do if we are going to move past the kind of moments when a young Black man is murdered while jogging through a neighborhood. We all watched in horror as a man was begging for a breath for nine minutes for purportedly committing a somewhat minor crime. After his death at the hands of a police officer when frustrations filled the streets with people asking that we hear their concerns we once again were more disquieted by random acts of destruction. Many demanded a quick end to the protests and labeled the protestors as looters and criminals. We never really spoke of the root of the problems rather than the symptoms and found little agreement on much needed criminal justice reform. In general we just wanted the problem to go away. 

When we surged into the lead in deaths from COVID 19 we argued over petty things like wearing masks or quarantines rather than working together as a united community to end the spread of disease. While our counterparts in other parts of the world agreed to sometimes draconian measures of preventions we often ignored science and spent more time haggling over our freedoms.

For decades we have known that we have an immigration problem that demands a comprehensive overhaul but we spend more time arguing than proposing and accepting reforms. The challenges grow and grow and grow and we allow our leaders to do nothing beyond either locking the door to immigrants or opening it wide. The longer we wait to get serious the more difficult it will be to find reasonable solutions that will finally make a real difference.

In the last many months weather induced crises affected virtually every part of the United States. Each year it feels as though wildfires are more frequent and devastating. Parts of the west are so dry that it takes very little to create a disaster. All along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts hurricane season is becoming more and more brutal. Land that is being overtaken by the oceans. Tornadoes, wind storms, blizzards, freezing events are happening in places that have never seen such things. We repair what is broken by climate events but we seem unwilling to change our ways to help prevent total chaos in the future. 

Mass shootings have become a way of life in the United States. They are nothing knew but there are more and more of them. Surely we can accept that the proliferation of guns in the hands of so many people is not providing us protections as much as making it more likely that someone with an evil or sick mind will harm us. How many guns do we actually need? What kind of guns are literally overkill? How can we stop the madness before we are shooting at one another? Limiting the number and type of guns should not be anathema anymore than wearing a mask to prevent the spread of disease should be and yet there are those who literally threatened civil war if anyone dares to inject sanity into our gun laws. 

Our problems are mounting in education, mental health, voting rights, the economy. The task is daunting but if we lay down our preconceived notions and anger we should be able to work together to find doable answers for all of these issues and more. Our biggest problem right now is our unwillingness to do anything at all.

We have become like an old house or car that has been neglected for so long that we are falling apart all at once. Our proverbial roof is leaking. We are falling through rot in the floor. The glass in the window is broken. The pipes for the plumbing have collapsed. Everything needs a repair if we are to escape a total collapse. 

Our foundation is still good but even that was threatened on January 6, and half of the population seems to think that the assault on the Capitol was no big deal. In truth it is all a big deal. My grandson is correct. We need to prioritize issues one by one and enact reforms before it is too late. We have to stop wishing away our problems and thinking that if we wait just a bit longer all of the difficulties will go away. We can no more afford to do that than the owner of a car can keep driving on a flat tire. We are where we are not because one group wants to change the very face of our nation, but because we have failed for too long to maintain the infrastructures of our nation. it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get busy or the tragedies will only become more frequent and worse. What are we waiting for?

Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.

Never might a saying be so untrue. Physical wounds often heal but words have the power of being so damaging that their impact lasts forever. What we say and the imagery that we use to illustrate those thoughts affects minds and worlds. The power of propaganda and its subsets of racism, sexism and religious intolerance lie in the repetition of phrases and ideas in ways that distort thinking sometimes in subtle almost unnoticeable ways and other times with overtly ugly descriptors. Words have led to the destruction of individuals and entire groups and societies. Often those wielding the hammer of political clout do so with lies and fear and brainwashing in the name of freedom, using words that turn people against their fellow humans for egregious reasons. Sometimes hurtful words or representations are almost hidden in the unlikeliest of places. 

I grew up in the south in the middle of the twentieth century when pejoratives aimed at black people were commonplace, slipping off of the tongue with an ease that was far too prevalent. It assumed a kind of ranking of people based only on the color of their skin, not the content of their character. Words were regularly used to relegate black Americans to a lesser status than whites. It was wrong and hurtful and like a toxic poison being injected into the minds of the citizenry by racist powerbroker swho spewed venom with their lips like snakes. 

My seventh year of life was marked by a kind of awakening to reality which occurred in rapid succession. I knew of the segregation of people in my home town and listened to my father and grandfather discuss the ongoing battles for basic civil rights that were unfolding on buses, at lunch counters and in schools. Later that same summer I witnessed black families riding on trains with the rest of us while we visited Chicago. I noticed black people eating in the same restaurants where we dined without restrictions. I wondered why there were such differences from one place to another. Suddenly the segregation of the south seemed so very wrong to seven year old me and I cringed at the memories of things I had heard white people say about blacks.

When we traveled further north to Wisconsin I saw signs that seemed familiar but with a twist that I had never before known. Stores posted warnings insisting, “No Indians or dogs allowed!” I wondered how it was possible for one group of people to deny the rights of another based solely on birth. I remembered how my own mother had spoken of being the child of immigrants and enduring the touts and insults of other children in her neighborhood who called her and her siblings “dirty dumb Polacks.” 

Even though my mama always insisted that hearing the ugly words tossed at her had only made her strong, I somehow sensed even as a child that they had hurt her deeply. Those darts had been intended to scar her and they had succeeded even though she had done her best to simply ignore them. She fought for her entire life to prove that she was as good as anyone else. 

Not long after the family vacation that had enlightened me to the ugliness of words and the real stench of racism we moved to San Jose, California. I don’t think I knew a single Asian person before that time but I would soon see many of them in stores and even in my school. I heard a playground chant for the very first time that had a kind of lilting innocence and humor that I would come to realize was yet another way of denigrating people with a few carefully chosen words. It went something like this, “Ching Ching Chinaman sitting on a fence trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.” 

When my father explained its meaning I was shocked to learn that yet another group of people were having to endure the harshness of words intended to hurt them. My childlike mind simply could not and did not understand why there was so much unkindness in a world that had been so gentle to me. When I begged my parents for an explanation they told me it was just the way things were, a reality that even then I found impossible to accept. 

These days there are efforts to confuse us when words are used to demean an individual or group. Defenders of hate speech speak of our freedom to speak as we wish that is guaranteed in our First Amendment. Certainly our laws do not imprison or fine someone for being either openly or overtly hurtful but recent egregious rhetoric has been more often defended rather than condemned, especially when it comes from the mouths of those with the most influence and power. While I too am wary of policing speech, I do believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to call out the most horrific instances of words meant to insult and degrade any person or group. Blindly ignoring such utterances or even worse finding some misguided joy in them is becoming all too common and in the process violence toward certain people is escalating.

When we characterize every person attempting to draw attention to the questionable deaths of black citizens at the hands of law enforcement as looters, rioters and unpatriotic trouble makers our words muddy the discussion and ignore the realities of injustice that continue to plague blacks in America today. If our president jokes about the virus that has taken lives day after day for a full year by calling it the China flu or the kung flu he leads many to somehow believe that our Asian population is responsible for the suffering and losses that we have endured. When we are continually warned that immigrants crossing our southern borders are dangerous criminals, rapists, illegals we begin to classify them as somehow less than the rest of us who are only here by accident of our births. When we cling to slanderous labels for those whose sexual orientation is different from ours we dehumanize them and make their life choices seem somehow dirty. When we allow anyone to degrade or debase another human with words without calling them out our silence makes us complicit in the violence that too often follows such pronouncements. 

We cannot take away someone’s right to say something ugly and hurtful but we certainly should be willing to note the wrongness of their utterances. We have the right to refuse to give such people support or adulation or excuses. Sadly in today’s world we have far too many who are willing to look the other way just to satisfy their own comfortable existences. We don’t seem to want to rock the boat but history has demonstrated that supporting those who would “kill” with their words only leads to greater and greater problems. It’s time that we insist that racist, sexist, or any other kind of hurtful speech be instantly condemned for the harm it inflicts. Looking away should never be an option.