We need a sing-a-long break from Changing Times

Welcome home!

By Dan Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism

The photo that greeted me (gasp!) when I opened the Austin American Statesman today on the arrival of troops back home to the United States threw me overboard. Mentally. What happened? I asked. Life’s toner control seemed to be out of control.

It led to reflections that part of the problem we as a people have in worshipping society change today is that we have lost respect for each other’s private feelings. Indeed, bold, public statements have come to validate signature lifestyles. Gender freedom included, in this instance. But at what cost to public decency? Or what’s left of it?

This situation, admittedly, was compounded by circumstanc. One of the crewmembers, in this case a woman, happened to be selected to symbolize a Navy ship’s formal return home to port, and to their families--with a ritual kiss. She was a lesbian, it turned out. The ol’ captain may have felt awkward, but, hey, it’s now national policy, mates, was probably his thought.

But these Gotta make it expressions, such as  the two women kissing, we’re so driven to make now, so fervently, they have become our national sop. (Has there even been a period in history where so damn many body tattoos are permitted, another example?)

And consequently we’re going from literature’s proverbial stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud (All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren) in a constant state of hyper active flux and anxiety, consciously worrying often only about when “the next shoe…”

This is not a matter of being old-fogy, backward, stupid, politically incorrect, provincial in thought, etc., mates. No!

It’s a matter we’re not being considerate enough of each other’s feelings--considerate enough not to shock without a warning, if you will--that we’re in effect labeling each other as irrelevant, minimalizing each other in the pursuit of individual self-expression.

(And, no, I have no idea as to how the Navy could‘ve done this occasion better, once it realized whose name had been selected for the ritual Homecoming Kiss. Maybe filmed it privately for the couple‘s adoptive grandkids later? Sold private proceeds for a new ship--USS Bustout!)

Problems with rapid changes on psyches, as played upon by shocking emotions like this, are legendary throughout history, of course.

Maybe we’re even in the throes now of another planetary Uranus-Pluto cyclical alignment, who knows! A conjunction change, perhaps, as happened from ‘60 to ‘72 in our nation’s great civil rights period for African Americans.

Whatever, we’ve been in a relentless drive since our founding, it seems--like a lake enduring its annual thermal stratification process called turning over--to have ourselves judged solely on “the content of our character,” as in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We’ve essentially minimalized or reduced our individual personality traits to the point we’ve forced out yet a new second-class citizen, the radical non-conformist, to pummel.

Which is fine with me normally, for as a retired, small-town judge forced to deal with these idiots for 18 years I know I’m prejudiced against them anyway.

But somehow I think that’s missing the boat on what we as a nation want to be--One Nation Under God. The farther we push along the string it seems, the more class warfare we end up having to overcome. There’s not a Point Unity somewhere?

Really, those in your 60s now, think back at what you’ve witnessed over your lifetime as this so-called agent of cultural change has transformed us as a society.

I still remember, for instance, the first year of our high school’s integration in Cleburne, TX, when I returned home from my first year at college at Christmas break, shocked at seeing blacks attending the downtown Esquire Theatre, of all places.

That would be followed by yeas of huge civil rights marches and the assassination of our president; the cruelties of the Vietnam War flushed up onto our living room televisions; drugs and the topless craze of the 70s and 80s pushing freedoms of sex and nudity a la mode throughout America; women entering politics in droves and even dominating in many instances; and then of course here we are back to civil rights again.

The five and dime stores of our youth, the mom and pop‘s and traditional family farms all have been replaced by a descending oligarchic layer of insensitive corporate greed smothering our lives. And it's left us with sheer boredom and dullness mostly, and with all kinds of conflicting emotions of how we do this or that; or remember not to do this or that.

We’re to the point we’re not suppose to feel Life at all but merely genuflect to it as corpocracy passes it by us.

Ya’ll just passing through? Don’t pay no attention to us any, ‘ya hear?! we’ve become quite adept at saying to strangers. Nothing attaches.

And now we’re allowing the photographing of men-to-men and women-to-women kissing to be pasted in our very public newspapers, and are not supposed to utter any consternation other than, Oh, my.

In our rush for level playing fields--our drive to excel at every facet of life--we’ve minimalized ourselves as human beings, I continue to argue.

To the point it makes you want to say, Lord, please…Somebody, damn it!…Give me a break!

Forget about what’s right or wrong! Just for a little while? Ok? I need to scream. One little moment, please? A scream moment?

Everybody rise, please. Get up, get up. Ok, now. On three. …a One, and a Two, and a T-T-Three…

“Silver bells, ghostly tales, it’s Christmas time in the city…”

--- 30 ---

Occupy El Paso arrests should prompt pause for a 2012 American Spring

 CITY'S IDEA ON PARK: El Paso police and a cleanup crew remove items Monday which were left after most of Occupy El Paso participants departed San Jacinto Plaza over the weekend. Those who didn't were arrested early Tuesday for sleeping overnight without a permit. (Photo by Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)



By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism




EL PASO--With police arrests early Tuesday of remaining Occupy El Paso protestors (suspiciously timed with similar arrests in other cities) and the members’ subsequent unsuccessful pleas later in the day before the City Council for an extension of their permit, perhaps it’s time for a timeout skull session before the next pitch.

Three strikes and you’re usually out in this game. But it’s not the ninth inning. And with winter’s biting cold and holiday commercial sales both threatening to crash down on them, it not a bad idea to take one here to clear a conundrum about basic issues involved. Irreparable damage looms in the important 2012 upcoming elections, for one.

Accompanied by (and to their credit possibly allowing themselves to be quietly restrained by) a befriended clergyman, members of the protest group clearly expressed both exasperation and bitterness at their plight Tuesday before the Council.

Since late-summer they’ve had permission to camp downtown at the San Jacinto Plaza park as part of a national protest aimed at excessive Wall Street greed--profiteering that‘s helped exacerbate the nation’s prolonged and increasingly painful economic recession. And last month the council granted a month extension for them. The stars in the heavens were clustered in an obvious show of support.

So if you were favorable to our cause last month, what conditions have changed to suddenly make the sky fall? they essentially wanted to know. Seven of their members had been hauled off in a paddy wagon, of all things!

Mayor John F. Cook didn’t hesitate replying. “They were arrested this morning for sleeping in public places (against the city’s ordinance),” he told them. “…The permit expired the 13th.”

You could almost feel the waves of exasperation roil thru the young protest members. One in particular, a young disabled man in a wheelchair, seemed perplexed as to why he couldn’t sit down one-to-one with “the person” he’d voted for and discuss it.

Councilwoman Susie Byrd was more diplomatic. Hinting that much of the nation was supportive of the demonstrations when they started in the summer, the mood has shifted now, she said, because time has wearied supporters and protests now threaten third party economic interests that are far detached to the activities being protested on Wall Street.

In short, In your war, your’re threatening to take down too many innocent civilian collateral casualties, guys; give us a break! she might just as well have told them. We’ve got the holidays ahead of us!

And the same scene, or variations of it presumably, rifled throughout the country Monday and Tuesday. What made the activities touch on torching were remarks by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to the British Broadcasting Corporation aired Tuesday.

"I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation," Quan had said, "where what had started as political [movements] and political [encampments, were] no longer in control of the people who started them."

The remark even led to blogosphere speculation this week's police raids on Occupy encampments across the country were all part of a larger, concerted government plan to totally shut down the movement. The blog FireDogLake, for example, even suggested crackdowns were set to coincide with President Obama's trip to the Pacific Rim. Way-y-y out! Thus it’s obvious initial good-hearted thinking is fanning wrong-headed logic, no?

The ultimate reason why Occupy protestors need to rethink their strategy is next year’s elections, of course. Right-wing Republicans would thoroughly love to see the Democrats’ traditional pluralist base carved up into generic infighting over Occupy protests. Divide and conquer all over again. It would definitely slam the door on any Democratic hopes of retaking Congress next fall.

Beyond bell-ringing political rhetoric, however, there’s a real world of economic hurt “out there” protestors irrelevantly just aren’t seeing on local levels--which no doubt prompted the “simultaneous“ police raids this week.

The point is underscored in an Open Letter Harvard students published about why they recently walked out of a noted professor’s economic class to join Occupy protestors. After reading it one surmises they’re letting micro/macro economic theorizing cloud the basic fact of immediacy--the holiday season is upon cities and they’re jeopardizing real economic livelihoods with their continued occupying.

Indeed, it’s November; and there’s an almost quid pro quo, return-to-normalcy urgency in the air among cities now, very similar to what Herman Melville wrote of in his great classic, Moby Dick:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet .. then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

In short, pack up the tents and get out of the park, kids. An American Spring 2012 offers you plenty more opportunities to continue the protests.

And with heated election campaigns involved, it’s guaranteed to win you a lot more respect, too. Hee, hee.



-- 30 --



Drowning Cat with a Dumbbell Is 'Awful'!

Destiny Calling?
Environmentalist and cat lovers have locked horns over a study that shows roaming cats are the second biggest threat to dwindling bird populations. Swelling numbers of stray, abandoned kittens, such as above, don't have much choice in Life but to aggressively become a hunter.
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By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism




Drowning a cat by throwing it in water with a dumbbell tied to its poor neck has to be one of those creative low-balls only folks in California could come up with. In Texas, where we’re more humane, our creativeness is a bit higher than that. Say rooftop-high at least. Hee, hee. Don’t we all just love cats!??!

In California, no foolin’, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a story last Thursday about a cat having been found in a Redwood Shores lagoon tagged with a 5-pound dumbbell tied to its neck. Investigators were on it right away.

A preliminary examination found no obvious signs of broken bones or trauma, the story’s author wrote, “proving that five pounds [once again] trumps nine lives.” He then quoted a local humane department spokesman as saying “The cat must have drowned” as a cause of death.

Perhaps surprisingly, rewards totaling $2,250 have been put up in the cat’s demise, whether by some in jest or not, who knows. One was by a pub owner though. Sounds like a cat eating a canary type of a situation to me. Get more women into his bar, maybe?

But killing cats by itself ain’t something that’s just in West Coast waters, folks. Nor is it just a bad week for them. (Poisoning case, below) No, cats are mysteriously aloof and independent animals (whichever side of the coin you‘re on, on this); and have always stirred the whole nine yards of emotions, from hate and anger [mostly in men?], to uppity pretentiousness in dainty young girls and women--those I got mine; you ain’t got yours so ha, ha airs.

As a boy, girls squealing delights about their “beautiful, super-intelligent” cats use to drive me batty. I couldn’t figure out what it was about the dumb-looking, impassive animals that struck such a chord. Especially among young girls or women who looked so beautiful and rich you’d thought God had used up all his favorite recipes in making ‘em.

I started conducting researches on the cat mystery once, I remember. It’s when we were living out on the Godley Highway there just a few miles outside of Cleburne, TX. The roof to our one-story frame farmhouse had a very steep gable in the front. Don’t know how high it was but it was high enough for experimenting with cats. Why do they always land on their feet? Nine lives?

Yup, I’d haul ‘em up there and flip ‘em out into the wild blue yonder. Head over heels; sideways. Just to see what would happen. Damn things would ALWAYS land on their feet. No way no how could I get another outcome with my experiments. I was 7 or 8. Finally Mom caught on and busted my bottom good. The cat, a stray, scatted finally for a better mouse pad.

And it’s been that way for cats over the years--you love ‘em, you despise ‘em, or you‘re clearly clueless about ‘em. Now there’s a 3rd voice getting involved--environmentalist. (Hip, hip, hooray, I say!)

You’re hearing complaints about not just feral cats--the stray cats who build colonies and make all these hideous noises at night making more cats!--but also domestic cats, the ones who stay out all night and then show up on your doorstep the next morning with the remains of a dead mouse it’s been playing with, or the smelly remains of a half-eaten bird. The rats it can have, but environmentalists have drawn a line on birds finally.

A March 22 story this year entitled “Roaming Cats Pose Big Threat to Bird Population…” posted on ABC-TV’s website, for instance, cites a lengthy study recently published in the Journal of Ornithology. Electronic tracking of birds was conducted; the statistics are grim.

In many locales it’s domestic cats themselves doing most of the carnage; but overall up to an estimated one billion birds each year are being killed, the American Bird Conservancy says--most notably some of the “finer” species. Ouch! And cats don’t have good tastes, Jethro!?

Habitat loss remains the number one factor in dwindling bird populations, but with the cats the huge number two now is predator. And ill-will is soaring, needless to say. The website Mother Jones Nov. 3 in “Court Finds Biologist Guilty of Poisoning Cat” describes a growing confrontation now between bird people and cat people.

A wildlife biologist, apparently stoked by these crazy cat advocates who hiss! at every criticism that says roaming cats are bad for the environment, went after his neighbor’s cat by repeatedly leaving drops of poison outside his back door. Until…Bingo! Dead cat.

Uh, doesn’t speak well for conservation efforts, dude, but point well taken. Start feeding your damn cat. And find it a playmate at night. In your own confined pad.

Poisoning more cats, or even drowning ‘em with a dumbbell tied to the neck, is an awful way to send a critter off to the happy hunting grounds. But what kind of more creative ways do you want ‘til people get the message? Huh?

Or, in another vein, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?

Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far, away…dooly-do-do-dodah…

Ya’ll hum along here…


                                   -- 30 --

 

Iceland survived Cleburne’s Chilicahcah Twot long before bank failures and today’s social media

Scene from Reykjvik, Iceland.

By Dan Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism


Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson told CNN last week that not only did social media wizardry allow his country to survive potentially catastrophic bank failures a few years back now facing Europe and the United States, but also that same social media is the model for the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the world now.

Hee, hee. I always loved Iceland. Sitting in the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, the worst thing about the island nation always has been its name. Some corrupt form of Iss-land pronunciation. But even the Prez apparently doesn’t know the real story about the nefarious red-faced scribe from the U.S. Navy who first planted seeds of modern-day social media protest in that country in the late ‘60s.

A little history lesson thus is in order. This guy did it while stationed at Site H-2, a remote site in the north, located atop a mountain less than 10 miles from the Arctic Circle, and all its magical Northern Lights. A critical communications site it was. Radar snooping. Big stir, he caused once. Yes sirreee!

A third-class electronics technician petty officer from Cleburne, TX,  he touched off a firestorm manhunt once by writing letters of protest in the local base newsletter publication condemning the commanding officer for his loosey-goosey attitudes about religion.

The writer chose anonymity; I won’t mention the name here either. But each letter was signed, The Chilicahcah Twot. And he got the name from me. I often talked fondly about a secret boys club we had in my hometown--whose members wore white shirts to school stitched boldly with the large red letters CCC Club on the back. Hot, baby! Obviously it impressed him.

Any of you readers who grew up in Cleburne in the late 50s remember the old, secretive CCC Club? Hee, hee. Yeah, I’m spilling the beans on that, too; time somebody did. Letters stood for the three Cs in Chilicahcah.

We didn’t know what the word meant; thought we did. Jon Whites--who later became a minister, I understand [boy, did he do some backsliding!] is the one who suggested the name. (My smart-aleck Littl’ Sis, Kay Laboda, a Republican no less in San Diego, told me years later we had a whacko concoction of something that wadn’t very nice! Whoo!)

But anyone who was at the ol’ H-2 Site at the time will remember the Triple C-T (his fond nickname) as the biggest “social media“ event of the year then. Long before Facebook or Tweetie-Pie

Dared to pose as a collective cosmic conscience, he did, lambasting the commanding officer, a Lt. Jones--beginning with the way he first announced the visit of a Navy chaplain to the site to minister to some of our spiritual needs. (The word 'Twot' is a further abortive slang--this one of celestial spiritual origin. Natch! In truth the guy just didn‘t know how to spell.)

“Get Your Religion from the Man in the Know,” or something like that, the headline screamed in The Word. That was Jones’ newspaper. He put out his word in The Word. Get it!? (doo-dah, doo-dah!) Installed a “Letters to the Editor” wooden box in the galley, and encouraged letter writing. (Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Never open a Letters box up to a hotdog!)

Thus when the ol’ Twot responded with a sneaky twot-letter, the whole base knew that Commanding Officer Jones had been waylaid by the cosmic spirit in retaliation for his offensive religious jest. The Twot had twotted him.

Angered him, yes. The commanding officer. He even put up a reward one time. “Free Weekend in Akureyri,” shouted the headline in The Word, “to the person who can identify the Triple C-T!”

You know where Akureyri was? Nearest town to us of any size amongst all those rocks up there, southwest of our mountain, I think. Maybe 90 miles; I’ve forgotten. But had girls there. Lots of ‘em. And you bet, I was in the pack, too. Looking for the ‘ol Twot. Wow! Whole weekend. Free. In Akureyri!

But he was somewhat clever, this Triple C-T guy was. Must’ve gotten up all hours of the night to type his letters. By flashlight! Drew on the spiritual wisdom of Nikos Kazantzakis in his weird ’63 classic, The Rock Garden

“Your skull is a pit of blood around which your ancestors gather to drink and be revived. Do no die so they do not die,” one of the passages more or less said. Hee, hee. Everyone had it more or less figured the ol’ Twot was from the Southwest somewhere, probably from down near Mexico way.

Never was spotted though; nor were any of the letters ever traced. Apparently he sneaked in different offices to use different brand typewriters, for the letters had different key marks on ‘em. Some investigation, it turned out to be. Ejoli! Jones and his cadres were turning over everything in everyone’s rooms and offices over it!

Never caught the guy. Hee, hee. In fact, Lt. Jones’ self-importance drivel he put into The Word had become a sideshow all in itself. Just as Grimsson now says what social media has more or less made his government and all of its many functions and activities--a sideshow.

“I know it’s a strong statement…” he told CNN, interviewed at the PopTech conference he was attending in Camden, MA. “But the power of the social media is, in my opinion, transforming the political process in such a way that I can’t see any chance for the traditional, formal institutions of our democratic systems to keep up.”

People in Iceland--due to the ancient boat invasions that established the country--are roughly a mixture of 70 percent Scandinavian and 30 percent Irish. It’s no secret some of the most beautiful women in the world live there. They were wearing the micromini’s long before they became faddish in the 60s in the United States. And the people read there probably more so than anywhere else on earth. It’s a great mixture.

Life in Iceland has always been a sideshow. And the people love it that way.



                                                      -- 30 --

Harsh Immigration laws both immoral and harshly counterproductive

Typical scene in Presidio, TX--Deportations of immigrants across the International Bridge at Presidio are pretty routine for the U.S. Border Patrol. What's causing controversy, however, are the large numbers being sent back in ports all along the U. S. borders coupled with harsh anti-immigration measures passed by some states. (Texas Tribune photo)

By Dan Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism

EL PASO--One of the major news coming out this week was a report Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported almost 400,000 people from the country last year, including 216,700 people convicted of felonies and misdemeanors. The Texas Tribune has one of the many stories on it here.

Illegal immigration is a hot political issue and the Obama administration isn’t ducking any responsibilities toward it, to be sure. But up and down the border here most folks, reacting to the news I dare say, said, Entonces. (…And so. Then?) You wanna medal? What!?

Which is to say, the immorality of harsh immigration laws isn’t debated too much here. It’s more like, the laws and the radical-right attitudes that spun them out are all part of those sad, acceptable facts most people know about that are wrong with the country now. Ejoli! And like drought and a bad economy, they’re hoping like the dickens it’ll end soon.

The figure is nothing to sneeze at, don’t get me wrong. Especially since 55 percent of those deported had criminal records. And even if most of that was for multiple deportation violations, which it probably was, it’s past time to get a message across that even free rides can’t go on forever: Start looking at getting a sponsor, whoever you are. Clean up your act, apply for an immigrant visa, and await your turn. Like millions and millions of others. As painful and time-consuming as it is. Or at least make some efforts! But let’s stop chewing on this rag so much!

“The (deportation) figures are in line with the Obama administration’s increased enforcement since 2009, which has resulted in more deportations and prosecutions in three years than President George W. Bush's administration accomplished in two terms,” the Tribune reported.

And amidst all the political clamor nationally against illegal immigration, especially by Republicans and the Tea Party (and 2012 being a presidential election year, too), I’m sure the timing of the news release was politically expedient. So we can pass over that. They’re grumblings on both sides, yes, but not here.

So give me a break, some of you hardwingers. You want to salivate? Foam up around the mouth in anger over it? Even over there not being more deported? Why? If America is a land of immigrants, who are we to suddenly get ugly with them? Which is what we’re doing with some of these states’ harsh immigration laws. Too, you have any idea how much this is hurting us already economically? Huh? Not only is that cruel but a little dumb, too, it seems, Jethro. No?

The high figures are politically driven, yes. Stepped-up enforcement and prosecution, it is. Of the 396,906 deported in 2010, 55 percent had felony or misdemeanor convictions, we‘re told. So? I imagine most folks of moral, upright standards want to ask then. What does that mean? Hee, hee. Not much, according to at least one professor who could easily be described as a political analyst.

Mike Alllison, an associate political science professor at Pennsylvania’s University of Scranton and a member of the university’s Latin American and Women’s Studies Dept., writing Wednesday in the Christian Science Monitor, argued for the most part the figures show non-violent offenders whose crime was merely wanting a job bad enough to risk entry even at the peril of being classified as a multiple offender.

Is that shocking to you, Jethro? Life could be so bad for you somewhere else--seeing everybody either dead or dying it seems and you’re next?--that you’d risk the plague of being declared a multiple deportation offender, if it meant there was even the slightest chance you could find work and thus “a living” somewhere? Huh?

Wanna read something about alleged immigrant treatment in a South Texas prison that’s sickening, Jethro? So bad at Raymondville, immigrants willing to admit anything--Yeah, I did it! Whatever it is! Hell, just go ahead and deport me!--if it means they get another crack at “coming across” somewhere.

Ain’t saying it’s the gospel truth; simply there’s enough in it to make it sound believable; and that it’s sickening to think we would ever even dare think about doing this to other human beings. Because that puts us on the cusp of losing our humanity, it does

Wanna read it? To glimpse at one reason why the bogus deportation figures may be so high? It’s a website Democracy Now: The War and Peace Report’s story entitled Lost in Detention.

Read down halfway or so to comments on maggots in the food by a respectable reporter, Maria Hinojosa; about other reported conditions there; and then tell me you’re not bothered some even though “they’ve got it coming to them!” Huh, Jethro? You want to meet God someday with that attitude? Jeesh!

Alright, alright! I’ll slack off that tack. What about cold economic facts then? Effects of harsh, new anti-immigration laws? Understand that better? Gotta carry this paper; gotta carry that paper. Or git arrested!

About how towns, schools and farms in the South already are shriveling--and crops left to ruin (billions in economic losses)--simply because the Latino farm workers (legal or illegal) don’t want to risk arrest, imprisonment and deportation.

Here’s one first-hand account published by the prestigious The Nation entitled The High Cost of Anti-Immigrant Laws, which describes millions of pounds of watermelons left rotting in fields in Georgia this past summer--along with peaches, blackberries and cucumbers--as usually reliable farm harvesters steered clear for other, more friendlier states.

The El Paso Times today, in an Associated Press front-page story entitled Few Americans willing to work immigrants’ jobs, reported that even though barring immigrants was supposed to open up more jobs for Americans, it’s not working out that way, no, indeed.

“I’ve had people calling me wanting to work (and) I haven’t turned any of them down,” said one Alabama potato farmer, “but they’re not any good. It’s hard work; they just don’t work like the Hispanics with experience.”

An estimated $300 million loss in watermelon crops in Georgia alone, adding to a hit on that state’s total ag sector for the season of possibly $1 billion. Just in one state. With few workers in sight for future crops?  Everywhere.

Ooops! Didn’t mean to shoot yourself in the foot with all that harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric you’ve been mouthing off for the past few years or so, did ‘ya, Jethro?! Huh?

Nothing personal; I ain’t picking on your ilk, want ‘ya to understand. Just explaining why along the border here we’re not too impressed with those deportation figures you’ve been crowing about this week.

They’re a lot of bad stories in ‘em. Don’t stir the embers.

-- 30 --

This is Presidio, TX, not New York! It’s damn hot!

By Dan Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism

PRESIDIO, TX–Not exactly sure when this rental property case came up, 7-8 years ago at least. Long before I retired as JP down in Presidio, a small Far West Texas border town downriver from El Paso several hours, nestled deep in the Big Bend area’s Chihuahuan Desert mountains.


The head of the University of Texas Energy Institute coming out in news this week against the Republican Texas governor, Rick Perry, for his opposition to climate change, is what reminded me of it.


Real strange what protecting economic self-interest–which is what this climate change debate to Republicans mostly is, I believe–can do to one’s senses. Can change daylight to darkness; burning hot to just piddling warm. Indeed, with heated theatrics a new political reality–both climate deniers and protestors–one often wonders just where as a collective body did we lose our common sense?


Perry repeatedly cast doubts on what almost anyone with a wet finger in the air can tell you about our climate. That we’re getting hotter and dryer. Hell, even the polar bears in the northern Arctic and the carpenter ants beefing up on lawn water in my backyard can sense that! But maybe it’s time to cool the rhetoric and face the economic realities, too.


Wednesday’s Texas Tribune quotes UT’s Raymond Orbach, in a research paper in the forthcoming issue of the British journal, Reports on Progress in Physics, as having mounted scientific evidence that not only has man caused climate change but also argues an 80 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions is needed by 2050 to stabilize global temperatures, and cut damages currently being done. (Readers who want to see results of climate change can look here at either these National Geographic shots or these lovely livescience.com photos.)


Anyway, it all reminded me of Carolina, a good friend in Presidio, who because of her family background, its stubbornness, and its strong economic interest there, too, I’d always suspected was a closet Republican, like some of her more “open” cousins. (Business and politics both make it difficult to be openly Republican in Presidio. Call the town old-fashion! Hee, hee.)


Carolina (The Spanish-pronounced i like an ee) was willing to sidestep the issue of it being hotter than blazes one summer when she came into our little justice court with an ex-renter, seeking an informal injunction against the person from “taking away my property.” It being hot didn’t have anything to do with the facts in the case, she felt.


The former tenant was attempting to remove her evaporative air-conditioner–and 15-20 ft. of metal, overhead ductwork she’d constructed–all from where it was attached to a small, backroom window in a small building she’d leased from Carolina for a novelty store business of some kind.


On the main drag in downtown Presidio, it was. Within walking distance for hundreds of weekly shoppers from over the international bridge in Ojinaga, MX. You got rental property in a location like that, you fight to protect it, right? Well, sometimes you just need to step aside from the personal insult of the moment and think rationally.


Physical improvements done by a tenant to improve property–yes, as Carolina had argued– generally “stay with the property,” property codes of most states say. Especially in New York City, for instance, which is notorious for entrenched family landlords of sizable estate holdings, who year after year, generation after generation, do little to make their living but squeeze more rent income out of tenants and their enhancement projects.


But this was Presidio, the former tenant had argued. The nation’s hot spot. The rent amount certainly wasn’t at a discount rate for it. And an air-conditioning system, which by decency should’ve been standard equipment for any business rental building in Presidio, wasn’t there either.


What was she to do? You can’t ask customers to come into your store and stand around in the sweltering heat! Not in Presidio! So she installed her own air-conditioning system. And she felt it was hers to keep!


After making sure she wasn’t damaging any property to remove it, I agreed with her, too. Against the injunction request. Call it bad logic or a bad hair day. Whatever you will. That’s the way I felt. Carolina wasn’t happy.


“This is Presidio,” I reminded her, feeling a little embarrassed for even having to do so in the first place. What actually is a pleasant climate 7-8 months out of the year, here it’ll soar up 115-120 in late spring-summer heat. Folks bonding together socially against not only the heat but the region’s isolated location long has been the established norm for treating each other in places like this. Talk before you fight. Generations have done it.


Which brings us back to the overall climate picture. Lord knows I’m not smart enough to figure out any solutions to climate change. But it’s obvious, to me, that “in a pinch” one must do what it takes to survive. Our planet’s air conditioning system is badly out of kilter. So we wait ‘til it’s too late to fix, to do anything? And risk the unspeakable? What are we to do?


For one, it’s refreshing to see some Texas honesty coming forward, at least. UT’s Professor Orbach, too, believes the stakes of Perry’s and Republican highroller’s economic self-interest (what they stand to lose in the debate) are the largest obstacle to getting an agreement on the problem.


And he's unashamedly simple about it. Stop using politics as a whipping post and recognize the obvious: It’s the economy, stupid! is his message to blood-sniffin’ critics. Find a political solution!


Orbach said that a major issue, indeed, is that it seems simply too expensive to fix. The current remedies, he said, “are economically not viable, and as a consequence I think people are reluctant to try to go through the processes that are so expensive and so deleterious to the economy in order to respond to climate change. …


“Countries are not going to destroy their economy” to prevent climate change, in short, he said.


He laid out an example of what he argues is a potential solution, involving carbon sequestration in saline aquifers under the Gulf and geothermal technologies — though he acknowledges more studies must be done to prove its feasibility. But on such paths we must press on, too. That also is a reality. A must reality.


Right now, Orbach says, “People are not going to spend 30 percent more on their energy just to capture the carbon dioxide” from a coal plant, so they can store it underground and out of the atmosphere. Maybe framing the economic debate like this amidst economic challenges is what our New Realism needs to be defined as.


Asked about the climate consequences particularly to Texas, Orbach said: “It’s not Texas. It’s the globe. We are part of, as [Buckminster] Fuller said, Spaceship Earth. … If the sea level rises, the people in Corpus Christi are going to get awfully wet. There are consequences everywhere.”


Wall Street protestors, it might be a good time before ratcheting up heat on this topic further, to back off and make sure we’re not asking someone to “cut off their (economic) nose to spite their (public) face.” See a spade as a spade.


Is it possible to have a national conversation about something like this without going into screaming hysterics? Is there an idea person amongst us? If so, please stand up.


The clock is ticking.

                                               -- 30 --

El Paso’s city recall election a tad strange for morality play

Fr. Michael Rodriguez, formerly of El Paso, is seen outside the door to Sta. Teresa Catholic Church in Presidio where he recently has been transferred. The controversial priest got involved in a local political contest publically criticizing gay and homosexual lifestyles in El Paso. (Photo courtesy of The International Presidio Paper)

By A. Daniel Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism

EL PASO, TX--Calling it a bit queer as a standup for morality is no play on words, folks. For the events in a religious group’s recall election petition drive here (involving an extension of city employee health benefits to “domestic spouses,” a drive hell-bent to oust this city’s popular mayor and two other representatives from office for their support of it), indeed, is more than a little strange.

Mayor John Cook has tangled the web with a suit seeking an injunction against the group, claiming the corporate-owned church’s leader who organized the drive both bullied from his pulpit and used his ministry’s website to help gather petition signatures. That’s a state felony crime in violation of a tax-exempt separation status.

                                                            

Cook, losing both in  lower and in appellant courts, wants to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to challenge corporate-church political financing exemptions. Whoo! Hello, Personhood Revisited maybe?

Too, already as early fallout, a Catholic priest who got involved supporting the drive with a series of ¼ -page newspaper ads, has been transferred to the remotest parish in the diocese, reportedly as the bishop’s way of advising him to keep his mouth shut in contentious political issues. How much plainer can that message be?

So, is this a morality play of biblical proportions? Or a simple turning of the ol’ political progress screw against the concept of old, entrenched sinning in the South, a concept noted historically for its backwardness? My guess is, it’s both. So let’s strike up the band and celebrate our differences! Maybe in good cheer we can find cause to merge a few thoughts along with a few beers together, per the way of President Obama our civil leader.

The conservative religious group El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values--led by members of the Word of Life Church and organized by feisty Pastor Tom Brown, who even performs exocists--brought a ballot initiative in 2010 against a city council decision effective at the start of that year granting health benefits to unwed but legal “domestic spouses.” Only 19 of 6,200 employees chose to claim the benefit. (Here’s link to the El Paso Times’ excellent coverage.)

Voters generally yawned at the special election measure when it appeared on last November’s ballots (only 15 percent of the eligible voters voted in it), and sure enough with strong church participation supporters against the benefits won by a 55-45 percent margin. Case closed, supposedly.

A ballot initiative, to be clear, is a process allowing local registered voters to propose legislation for a binding election of the general populace, targeting specific local laws or a law of a political entity; and to enact or reject the law(s) at the polls, independent of the lawmaking power of that duly elected governing body. Some call it populism squared, as of the exponent two. It’s a core Constitutional part of democracy’s checks and balances system, however.

But then Cook played another card in the Spring of this year. Claiming that voters would be more supportive once they were more cognizant of the background, he ordered a reworded version of the benefits law be presented to the council again for approval.

The church group’s ballot initiative, unintentionally, it turned out, also cut off health benefits to some of the city’s retired families, too. There’d been anger expressed.

Too, although I can’t find any background research to clarify it, I remember distinctly at this controversial June meeting one of the speakers identified himself as “the one who brought you into court” earlier, while urging council to pass the new revision. (Perhaps one of the readers can help with background on this.) He made the remark in the tone implying “and I’ll do it again, too,” if this new law reinstating the “domestic spouses” benefits wasn’t approved. Thus, the meeting was tense with inglorious diatribes, yes.

At one point Brown even led a hallway prayer group just outside the council chambers beseeching God in his infinite wisdom to intervene against a permissive vote. But that wouldn’t be the case. Council members split 4-4 and Cook cast the decisive vote to approve it. Brown said I’ll be back, and sure enough his group was--this time with the recall petition. And over 9,500 signatures.

Meanwhile, Father Michael Rodriguez has settled comfortably into the old parish in Presidio, and commented to the media in a press release about his reassignment thusly: “Obedience to my bishop is essential to the priesthood,” according to the website Big Bend Now. “My bishop has transferred me to another assignment, and I intend to be obedient. The priesthood is my greatest joy. In the present circumstances, I intend to try even harder to be a good, holy priest.”

Presidio is a couple hundred miles downstream from El Paso on the Rio Grande, at the confluence of the Rio Conchos flowing northward from the eastern slopes of Mexico’s Sierra Madres--La Junta de los Rios, the historic crossing called by Indians thousands of years ago. Tucked deep in the Big Bend, its remoteness has been both a blessing and a curse over the years. But Fr. Rodriguez says he comfortable in his profession. And his new location.

The unspoken message in all the stories arising from the recall issue, however, may be the greatest--the historical one. One of the most noteworthy researchers on the South’s religious belligerence arising in the aftermath of the Civil War, toward anything smacking of sin, is Charles Reagan Wilson, history professor at ’Ol Miss and director of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. He is the author of Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause.

One reviewer of the book--noting how all things sinful along with such institutions as the Klu Klux Klan, etc.--could become such symbols for the southern states, said Wilson sought “to explain historically (in the book) why ideas such as these came to be in the first place.

“His answer is that the ‘Religion of the Lost Cause‘--all of the myths, rituals, holy days and the homogeneous conservative Civil Religion of the American South after the Civil War--was an attempt by the defeated southerners to deal with their loss and to assert their distinctive religious identity against the looming North.”-- E.g., to cope, when swamped with seemingly overwhelming uncertainty, one leans hard on a crutch, real or imagined.

So, is this moral outrage in El Paso against extending employee health benefits to “domestic (gay or homosexual) spouses” all a lot to do about nothing? Just El Paso folks eking out progress “as the world turns?” Or is it out with the current regime in favor of a more strident drum beat?

The voters will decide, possibly in an election as early as May 2012.

Expect a larger than 15 percent turnout.

-- 30 --

‘Well, shut my mouth, Jethro! American people still have kick left?’ Wall Street protestors to steal Teapartiers’ Christmas!

Protestors masked as economic zombies participate in the 'Occupy Wall Street' protest in New York. (AFP/Getty Images)

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…’

     -- Kriss Kristoffenson, ‘Me and Bobby Mcgee’

By Dan Bodine

Center against Social Minimalism

Unusual, it is. The turn of events. All during the Arab Spring uprisings, beat-up friends kept nudging me, Think something could happen here in the U.S. like that? / Naw, I said. The Republicans and Corporate Right have got us locked down, screwed and tattooed; no way!

Hee, hee. But maybe not. Sunday I was shocked to read on CNN that over 700 “Occupy Wall Street” protestors had been arrested for blocking the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Who are these yaahoos? was my first thought? Tweeters, I soon learned.

Inspired by the Arab Spring protests, CNN reported, “Crowds have taken up residence in the park in New York’s financial district (too), calling for 20,000 people to flood the area for a ‘few months.’” And nationwide protests are spreading to other cities.

A ‘few months?!!’ I thought. Hell’s bells, that’ll strip the hollies from tea partiers’ Christmas cash registers!

Indeed, Santa Claus could’ve done come and gone by then and nary a gift left for any of ‘em! And maybe millions more good folks cheated of Christmas, too, if this thing really spreads. Including collateral-damaged Tea Party minions! Maybe even kick the Dallas Cowboys off holiday-season TV! Sheesh!! These idiots know what they’re doing!?!

Hee, hee. Maybe so. Could social minimalism, radical capitalism‘s fiendish bastard brat, possibly choke on its own tainted Christmas eggnog this year?

“The protest campaign…began in July with the launch of a simple campaign website calling for a march and a sit-in at the New York Stock Exchange,” CNN reported. “Over the past two weeks, demonstrations have addressed various issues, including police brutality, union busting and the economy.”

Further headlines and statistics further point to the cause of the unrest:

** The economiccollapse.com blog reports another huge wave of store closings and layoffs s coming. The parent company of Payless stores has announced that it will be permanently closing 475 stores. Borders is in the process of closing every single one of its 399 stores. Also, Bank of America has just announced that it will be closing about 600 branches, and that could result in the loss of about 30,000 good jobs.

** With Wall Street CEOs tipsy with earnings and the nation’s banks sorely linked to what appears to be an oncoming domino default in the European market, is there any big-time reason to fear another 2008 collapse? Yes!

** Barring a Christmas Miracle and a large percentage of the current unemployed finding meaningful work before the end of the year, come January another 6.2 million Americans will come to the end of their unemployment rope benefits. Big-time cutoffs already coming!

Following this string further, this morning comes news via Saving the Dream--OurFuture.org, that over a thousand activists will gather in Washington this week as part of a skull session to plans the protest’s next stage: A national day of action on November 17 calling for jobs, not budget cuts (especially Social Security), from Congress.

And if that doesn’t work, there ain’t logically but one thing left, Jethro: Shut down Christmas! Let’s all have a merry, merry…

“The American dream was built on a broad middle class, grounded on the promise that with hard work, you could build a family, have a good job that would afford health care, retirement security, a home, a better education for your kids,” wrote Robert Borosage in OurFuture.org. “The great challenge was to open the door to that dream to those who had been locked out – minorities under segregation, women suffering from discrimination, new immigrants.

“Now that dream is disappearing (along) with the middle class. Americans have been demanding change. In 2008, as the economy cratered, we elected a president with a mandate for change, Democratic majorities in both houses, and the most progressive Speaker of the House in our history. Yet the president’s reforms – pre-compromised for the most part – were diluted, delayed, and disemboweled. The entrenched corporate interests, spending billions to array legions of lobbyists, protected their privileges and subsidies.

“Voters responded by punishing Democrats. Yet the Tea Party Republicans who were defenders of Medicare and scourges of Wall Street on the campaign trail sought to gut Medicare and reopen Wall Street’s casino once in office.”

And this, then, is the result. A mean, yaahoo dog with its back to the wall. No where else to go for help; nothing else to lose. Who’s to say, sic ‘em, Fido?!

Oh, Lord, Jethro! Tell me it ain’t so! Po-Leeze tell me it ain’t so!

Hum along, ya’ll…Christmas bells, fairy tales…

-- 30 --



El Paso’s Los Banditos immigration fence upgrade more prominent due to its link to Mexico’s rich cultural history

National Guard members along with private contractors erect this 18-ft. steel mesh, immigration border security fence in 2007 near the San Isidro/Tijuana crossing in California. A similar fence is to be constructed at the historic 6/10 mi.-Los Bandidos stretch in El Paso where famed conquistador Dn Juan de Onate once forded the Rio Grande and claimed North America from that point north part of the Spanish empire. (photo from time.com We Will Build a Wall gallery)

By A. Daniel Bodine

EL PASO--This is another no-brainer as for as being a worthwhile project, politically, for it’s coming at a sensitive time in immigration policy. Keep those boogers out! tea partiers scream on every corner of the land to U.S. Immigration policy makers.

But there’s more than a tad bit of history, too, involved in where this section of border fence due for an upgrade is located--one that even connects an original, large slice of North American ownership.

Strangely, the silence on the topic is deafening. Should supporters be surprised if they hear a few resurrected words of a stolen Mexican history before this project is crowned? Maybe a request for at least one last toast?

A short stretch of the old border road fence along the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico--located west of downtown somewhere off the old Paisano Road; near the old Fort Bliss--is due for an upgrade, folks, U.S. Border Patrol officials said last Thursday, Sept. 22, at a public meeting at a downtown Holiday Inn Express.

The meeting was called to discuss the upgrade’s environmental impact, a small measure needed for funding requirements.

Congresses in both President Obama’s administration and in that of former President Bush have authorized billions of dollars in border security improvements. This is one of them.

The short, 3,326-ft. stretch--which now has a simple 7-ft. chain-link fence covering it--is the only such gap in El Paso’s complete immigration security fence line that isn’t 18-ft. steel mesh. How the best became the last (to be addressed) no doubt will be the topic of discussion for years to come. Call it defense-spending bureaucratic lotto, perhaps.


Most recently, this was a formerly darkened stretch along old Paisano where los banditos from Mexico for years would sneak across the shallow river at night; and, using “boulders, boards with protruding nails and even (once) an old sofa,” stop traffic and rob passing motorists, according to a 9-23-11 El Paso Times story.

In 1995 it happened 30 times. Before the 7-ft fence was put up police even used decoy stings and masked undercover operations to combat the problems.

More specifically, the stretch lies behind the old fort in the vicinity of the former La Hacienda restaurant.

But the real sore point, no doubt, to many Mexicans, is one about their heritage, and how with the quiet publicity essentially their past has been minimalized in this project.

We don’t even get a statue, or an historical plaque, in this project? Just covered up as a people, covered up? Jeesh!

Readers, this is where the famous Conquistador Don Juan de Onate (having been ordered by King Philip II to colonize the northern frontier of New Spain to spread Roman Catholicism and establish new missions) crossed the Rio Grande in late April, 1598, to begin his journey--and once on dry land officially claimed all the new territory northward beyond the river as new acquisitions for Spain.

Onate’s expedition then followed the river northward and eventually founded the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico; he became, in fact, the Santa Fe province’s first governor.

And the land was Spain’s. Which, with the Mexican Revolution later--were it not for a few “minor technicalities” [hee, hee]--would be Mexico’s now.

Whooeee! You wanna dogfight!!? Locally, indeed, it’s a touchy subject. Caught in the crosshairs of escalating drug violence in Juarez now and the dire need for continual economic development in the Upper Rio Grande Borderplex as a whole (which Juarez with its slue of maquilas represents a core part), officials in both Juarez and El Paso are holding their breath, biding their time no doubt, until this is up and over with.

Get it built without ruffling any feathers anywhere! is the tense, unspoken message.

And against this escalated background of tension, expect, too, more PR rhetoric from both chambers of commerce painting the area as an ideal business climate--just full of neighborly love.

Fence construction starts next Spring.

Buena suerte, amigos!

-- 30 --

Debating whether “men are finished” is a dying era's passing fancy

By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

Pardon me for not being so excited, but I just have the feeling this ol' debate topic has been around for awhile, distinguished in many different versions of financial greenery always. That this one was billed as “Oxford-style live” doesn't win any extra points either.

So don't expect me to check today's headlines to see who won last night's skirmish at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on whether men are finished in the face of the new economy exploding across the world now—an economy that does, indeed, appear to favor women. For whatever the reasons.

“Men Are Finished,” shouted a headline in a Sept. 9 edition of the online magazine, Slate, announcing the debate. “Women now earn the majority of college degrees. Men play video games. Women thrive in information-age jobs. Men go to prison. Women hold families together. Men watch football.”

As a people, no to this one-upmanship, should be our message. For we've been there and done that gig before, with pain often; and shame on the promoters for this.

With the nation staring at unemployment rates and housing woes portending another Great Depression, this is no time for either side of this perennial, old debate topic to be rubbing salt into sore wounds.

The debate was to've been between ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams and Hanna Rosin, award-winning journalist for Slate and the Atlantic Magazine, arguing for the motion, that yes, “Men are finished”; and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers and Men's Health Magazine editor-in-chief David Zinezenko, arguing against it.

Why the topic was recycled at this time is a wild guess. The debate was one of a series called Intelligence 2 (as in the index, Squared) sponsored by a New York City group, which earlier in Slate said beginning in 2006 they'd hoped “to provide a new forum for intelligent discussion” by promoting dialogues on contentious subjects. Supposedly they've put on 50 such debates now on various topics.

Thus an intelligent discussion last night, given the subject, I'm sure it was. But the sincerity in advance of it sure seemed hallow, however.

“Ladies, give yourself a night off from your second job as an astronaut or neurosurgeon,” the ticket-selling promo stated. “Men, take a break from your fantasy football league to see if you can save yourself.”

I can see corpocracy's minions laughing with their champagne glasses while sampling onion-dip finger foods at the affair, but friends, 'tis not the time for those kind of words, not to most of us.

Working people are working people, whether it's those left behind on jobs to do the extra work for those whose positions have been eliminated in these difficult times; or those in the growing ranks of the unemployed frustrated and beaten down because they've unsuccessfully sought employment for a year or more now.

“Men are finished” now, they're told? Go crawl off somewhere and die, you slimebag is the new message to propel us as a human race into this new age?

Opposite this, indeed, there's little on the horizon to indicate the economic picture will get brighter in the next year or so, especially with a lock-jawed Congress, apparently.

I've followed, sometimes humorously, a website called “Economic Collapse” for two years or so now. But as this economy worsens, readers of such doomsayers naturally start wondering: These guys are economic experts. Maybe things are this bad?

How are such messages going to help? Here's from the site's today's post:

“The number of good jobs continues to decline, more stores are closing, incomes continue to go down, credit card debt and student loan debt are soaring, the housing market resembles a corpse, the number of Americans living in poverty continues to rise and government debt is at unprecedented levels. We are losing blood fast, and almost all of our leaders are either too corrupt or too incompetent to be able to do anything about it.”

Is this really the time then to giggle that men are finished?

I remember a similar time in this men vs. women debate. When Vietnam looked as though it would be the loss it would turn out to be. Fresh out of the Navy, I was a student at the old North Texas State University in Denton in '72, I think; and a paper came out with a story about men in panty hose and high heels in a cocktail bar serving the new, dominant clientele—high-finance, professional businesswomen. And I remember how squeamish I felt about the story. The future, supposedly.

But decades later millions of men and women around the globe still find happiness and contentment in family relationships with each other. Billie Jean King in tennis and Ed “Too Tall” Jones for the Dallas Cowboys both have come and gone, and in their wake there's slowly been a growing acceptance of people “of difference” in society; and, too, most admirably, a swelling, vertical integration of women in virtually every profession from banking and finance to health.

What's with all this stuff today? Corporate bigwigs and such (who yes, naturally have good financial reasons to smile) creating “intelligent discussions” by arguing that because the economy is changing (perhaps to reflect the introduction of so many different new factors into it), “men are finished?”

And that's not dumb? Whose mea culpa is that? And whose responsibility is it to rise above it?

One thing's obvious to this ol' country boy. You don't kick people when they're down. Kick 'em when they're up yelling at you; kick 'em when they're taking something from you. But not when they're flat on their back. That'll follow 'ya to the bowels of hell itself.

Excluding the fact the issue itself is rather passe to start with. So, just entertainment?

This was a stupid debate.

– 30 --

PEACE, YA'LL: This Aztec calendar mounted in El Paso's Myrtle Stret park perhaps is sending out a message to visitors burdened with today's hectic lifestyles. Slow down; follow the sun. And take Life a little easier.



By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO—Not often one has the opportunity these days to praise a local environment and the people who've made it that way, so you sure want to take advantage of it when you see it. And for the City of El Paso, this is one of those times indeed.

Last year most know the city was ranked the Safest City in America, despite what's happening across the river in Juarez, MX. A statistical anomaly perhaps? If you live here, you know it's not. But now, try on Newsweek/Daily Beast ranking it the Can-Do capital of the nation. Care to say, Well, shut my mouth! in Spanish?!

I caught on to the fact something, indeed, out of the ordinary was happening in El Paso over the years while living downstream in Presidio, and attending the annual municipal court schools held here needed for a city's re-certification of its court system. Just a certain upbeat spirit in the air, you know? These folks are getting city planning down to an exact science.

One of the things that piqued my interest particularly was stories I kept hearing about a desalinization plant. Now most folks know in Texas whiskey is for drankin' and water is for fighting over. Plain and simple. Eons ago this ol' land was covered in oceans; millions of acreage feet of salt water below the crust today is living testimony to it. But now this is desert, man! You can't drink that brackish stuff! Git real!

But here they're doing it. When we moved over here last year Noemi and I saw the rather large desalinization water plant located on federal property off of Montana Avenue, part of Fort Bliss land. Whoo!

Then this week, with Texas in the grips of perhaps its worst drought ever and the Statesman reporting neighbors in Austin actually tellin' on each other if someone violates the no-watering ban (Who'd ever thunk of that!), lo and behold the Texas Tribune runs a story about soon-to-be bone-dry Odessa folks getting with El Paso officials this past summer to copy its desalinization work. That's worthy of drinking a toast to, yes!

And to top that then today, yep, here comes the story in the El Paso Times about Newsweek putting the city on top of its ranking of “Can-Do Capitals” in the U.S., based on such factors as sustainability, livability, transportation and infrastructure, and business development.

Did those judges have to consider yaahoos behind the wheel darting and wheeling in and out of nightmarish traffic at 4 p.m. each day on I-10? Huh?

Never mind, we got a loop thru the mountains that fixin' to take care of that, Jethro! Hush your mouth!

And there's sure nothing in the cards that says El Paso someday could become the culturally sophisticated, philosophical idea capital of the universe that Dallas has always meant to me, of course.

But hey, you can't have your cake and eat it, too, right? El Paso is trendy hot now! Get over it! Chase that dog back across the street and toot some about this. Whoop, whoop!

We always enjoy hearing from readers. Leave some comments beneath the story or write Dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.

– 30 --

Dime's worth of gas won't take you home no more

  These two sentinels of a bygone era were seen in a quaint New England town. (Wikimedia photo)

                                                             By A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

While on the way to drop off the daughter's laptop at the computer store for repair Tuesday I stopped at a neighborhood convenience store for gasoline. With the new pumps now you just activate them with a debit card, pump your gas, then wait on the receipt. In Life's fast lane, it's called minimum human contact. El Jif.fy-o! But to us as a people, gaining it has been costly. We've lost something dearly in social glue along the way, I'd dare venture.

Now this particular pump must've been fresh out of paper; it didn't spit out a receipt. So I had to go inside and actually make face-to-face contact with a cashier to get one. No. 12, I told her. Forty dollars worth is what I usually get when running low. It's somewhat of a habit. (Another story) Took the receipt and left without saying anything else to anyone. Not even an eye contact.

When I got back into the pickup and turned the key on, naturally I wanted to see how far I'd moved the needle. Pumping gasoline and playing football in Life use to be a lot alike--the point was not necessarily to hit pay dirt on the next play but to “move the chains”; advance the 1^st and 10 marker. Breath easier with a new set of downs. Stopping for gas meant first and 10 and Yippee-aye yaye. Yippee-i-ooo... And maybe in that regard it still does.

Bu soon as I saw the needle stop just short of three-fourths of a tank mark though I quickly did a little double-take, and grabbed the receipt I'd tossed on the dashboard to read the number of gallons on it. Like most of us retired baby boomers now, indeed I live with one leg stuck in the past and another one squishing in the present. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't get easier.

Holy shit! I muttered. Only 11 ½ gallons!

And that, of course, brought back childhood memories of growing up in Cleburne, TX, in the 1950s during “gas wars” and listening to Marshall Edwards at Edwards' Texaco on North Main Street tell some of his wonderful stories.

Gosh I miss those ol' original convenience stores sometimes. Go in to a neighborhood store for a howdee-you-do, to catch up on the gossip, and to buy staples for the pantry. Gas was optional. And all of it only cost a signature on a ticket. Dad would be in in a week or so later to settle the difference.

In the mid-50s at one time I remember gasoline was 14.9 cents at Marshall's Texaco store in Cleburne. Clearly, clearly, not the stress we live under today.

One of the stories he told my parents once was something that happened not at his store but at a fellow dealer's service station over on East Henderson. I want to say the one that use to be on the corner of Brazos there that always stayed open 'til 11or so. That's where the high school boys would often get their gas after coming out from the Esquire Theater, and before going parking.

This particular older man guided his car in “on fumes,” of course, Marshall relayed, and asked for a dime's worth of gasoline. The attendant had never sold 10 cents of gasoline to anyone before. But he quickly hit the pump trigger a couple-three times to get 10 cents, replaced the gas cap and went to the driver's window to get the money.

“Dime's worth of gas ain't going to get you very far, you know that mister!” he said, paraphrasing of course.

The old man in the car smiled up at him with the prettiest row of white teeth and said, “No, but it'll get me home, son. That's all I want.”

As always we enjoy comments from readers. Log in at right or contact Dan directly at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.

– 30 --

Hee, hee. Happy Labor Day, America!!!

--from my good friends at OtherWords.org:

Jack Black 'Honey' a honey of a deal!

Me? What makes you think I could be an alcoholic?

A. Daniel Bodine

desertmountaintimes.com

EL PASO—Hee, hee. I couldn't help but laugh Thursday when the Times here carried a business story about how everybody's favorite whiskey, Jack Daniels, is clanking the cash registers with sales of its new honey-flavored brew. My brain simply exploded. Oh, honey, po-leeze let me have some Jack Black Sweet!

“Jack Black”-and-water (or cola) is to alcoholics what the finest snorting cocaine on the market is to Oscar de la Hoya—a terrible bout to be reckoned with! “Pobre sito!” And now they're putting honey in it!?

The famed boxer's “Coming Out” this week especially about all his drug problems over the years (all the Spanish TV stations) had my wife with her crying towel. You don't understand the 12-step program, I told her. He's getting it out; doing what he's gotta do. To stay alive!

That alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease beyond medical technocrats' finest spins is still incomprehensible to many. De la Hoya was straight up though; he'd been to the other side of the mountain and scraped with the demons. He knew the tenacity of it.

Next week, Tuesday, will mark 19 years of sobriety for this ol' yaahoo here. Like all of us other AAers there was a time when I easily would've laughed at you--Told you it's impossible!—to think someone could go that long without getting drunk. But thanks to the program and those who work it, however, I can now go down the road a ways and come back. Safely. And proudly.

A friend in Presidio invaluable to me my first few years or so was someone I'll call Domingo. Invaluable to me my first year particularly. When I often was having to play a straight-faced role as judge to some wild-faced, angry drunkard on one hand; knowing in ways I was just another drunk like him on the other.

I was maybe 8-9 months into sobriety at one point once I remember, struggling, and facing my first out-of-town trip for the weekend. After a Thursday evening meeting Domingo spoke to me aside. And reminded me just what the program was all about. In doing so he possibly saved my life. Or at the very least, saved me from many more years of agonizing drinking.

“You're going to want to drink when you get to El Paso,” he said. “It's probably going to hit you Big Time. Whenever it does, wherever you are, just remember this: Tell yourself, OK, I'll drink.

“It's that simple. Give yourself permission to drink...But make it later. Has to be later. FIRST, tell yourself, We've got to make an A.A. contact first. That's all there is to say: After we make an A.A. contact!

“Then, after you say that, get to a phone. Call somebody! Me, someone else here, an AA chapter there in El Paso (there are many of them), just make that call!”

It's a four-hour drive from Presidio to El Paso, and another four hours back. As people get older, those drives wear you out. I had a doctor's appointment sometime midday Friday at the Veterans' Hospital. Dreading the long drive back, I checked into a motel room. Had decided I'd stay and relax thru Saturday, and go back to Presidio Sunday sometimes early after noon, say. That was checkout time.

Had plenty of reading material with me, besides the daily newspapers; a good TV in the room; nice restaurant next door. What more could you ask for to unwind a bit, huh? Would be quiet. Away from the phone ringing and the deputies asking me to come to the office.

Aw...But there was one thing more I needed. After coming back from the V.A., I noticed it. I'd forgotten to bring enough cigars in my shirt pocket for the extra two days. Holy cow! How could I have forgotten something that important, huh?

I wasn't about to get comfortable in the room before I solved the smoke problem, so I went out for a few minutes. This was along five or 5:15 in the afternoon. About a block from the motel there on Montana Avenue was a convenience store. I'd noticed it earlier. It would have cigars. I walked to it.

When I entered, the counter was immediately on my left, maybe running half of the west wall. Some soda fountains and such picked up after that and took up the space back on to the corner, the northwest corner, where the floor-to-ceiling glass freezers on the back began.

With vertical, glass doors on them, the freezers (full of mostly drinks) then swept all the way eastward across the back wall to the northeast corner; and then back up the east wall to the front. I'd noticed it all with a quick glance while entering. All of that was just periphery stuff, on my right. I hardly even paid any attention to it.

I saw the cigars behind the counter. Had a box of my old standby's, El Producto, and I bought a handful. As I was taking my change, putting my wallet back into my pocket, I'd ever-so-slightly turned my body in a clockwise motion, toward the right; and the person behind thus eased up to the counter beside me on the left, to be waited on next.

But as I continued moving slightly in this partial, clockwise pattern, I suddenly froze. My first step out of it had placed me directly in the line of fire of a gillion cases of the most sparkling, inviting beer only God himself could ever have created; and placed them there especially for me, He did. Sweet it was, of him. And yep; that was my moment. Big Time.

Never could I recall later how long I actually stood staring at that wall of beer in the glass cases, but I doubt it was more than 2-3 seconds. I must have lunged after that. Toward the beer garden.

My next consciousness, or awareness, was this thumping movement on my right shoulder. It'd been feint for the longest time, it seemed, in whatever deep hole of thought I'd stepped off into; and gradually had grown harder; and I was becoming more aware of it.

Until it wasn't a thumping movement at all but a tap, an increasingly sharp tapping movement. Someone behind me was tapping me hard on the shoulder!

All of my energy—ALL of my energy, my focus—was being spent attempting to pull one of those damn glass doors with the big icebox handles on them from the wall, off its hinges!

That was the scene as I slowly slipped back into awareness: My standing there confronting that wretched door, with my hands gripped hard and fast on each side, actually attempting to pull the hinges out. I wanted (no, needed) that door removed from my path that bad! It was blocking me from the beer!

And the guy behind me was angry. Whack, whack, whack on my right shoulder. Whatever brand of beer that was behind that door he was wanting it, too! Get out of the way, you idiot! he must have thought.

As soon as I stepped back, of course, he opened the door and reached for his beer. But not before glaring sideways hard at me—a “What's with you?” angry look.

There was a crowd of people who'd gathered in a semicircle around us, too, wondering if they were witnessing some stupid jerk attempting a daylight heist. And staring, of course.

I wasn't embarrassed or anything; alcoholics usually aren't. I was only aware this bad scene was happening. And that I wanted that beer behind the door.

Then in my lapsed thinking, sure enough, Domingo's words came at me: You can get it later. First, make a contact. And I thought instantly of a telephone.Why I didn't go back to the motel room I don't know. Other than I felt it was an emergency, I guess.

But the store had a phone and a phone book in front of it; I quickly found an A.A. number to call; and was given directions to where I could find a north-central El Paso group—about a mile away; meeting in 15 minutes, it turned out. Thank you, Domingo.

I soon found the meeting and walked in; introduced myself (Hi, I'm Dan; I'm an alcoholic.), and commenced to tell the story of the glass freezer door with the stubborn hinges. And that I was away from home for a couple of days and sure was thankful all you guys and girls showed up here today.

When I finished there was a polite applause. And I sat down, feeling a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. And then I listened to some real problems.

It's a scenario not unlike that one that's been played out every day in many thousand different places around the globe every since the Great Scorekeeper started tallying, “where two or three (of you) gather in my name...”

Why drugs aren't legalized to curb a swelling inferno of violence and lawlessness I don't understand. Just another way American exceptionalism must run its course, maybe.

But I do understand how corpocracy and radical capitalism minimalizes folks; and how Jack Black is permitted and even cheered to make it even sweeter. Haah!

Now we're cooking, baby! Now we're cooking!

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