V.A.'s 'social minimalism' problems need doctors who’ll ‘stay aboard’

EL PASO--Trendy critics have the U.S. Veterans Administration health care system on the ropes again because of long wait times in getting mental health services to returning war veterans from Afghanistan. My suggestion? Talk to the MH director at the local V.A. here. Give her more “doctors who stay aboard ship” rather than fly off at the first peek of a pay increase.

Should Caring come before Sharing?

“Stick with me on this treatment program,” a strained but firmly positive Dr. Eliza San Roman, D.O., told me back in March when I complained about the long waiting period in just getting a medication review. “Remember, I’m the one who stayed aboard ship. Trust me!”

Within a six-month period, mas or meno, most if not all of Dr. San Roman’s staff psychologists had abandoned ship, so to speak, left for fame and fortune in the private health care world or beyond. It’s the way we are today, aren’t we? Fixed to anything is a rat hole in a dead-end alley!

“They don’t make any money here, not when compared to outside [the system]” she’d admitted. A quick internet check showed average V.A. annual salary in Detroit at $176,000, for instance. And that’s not El Paso.

Too, the bigger issue for society is where do we want to cap these spiraling costs? Are we near entering serious political maximum/minimum wage debates yet?

The V.A. assigns all patients to primary team physicians, M.D.s. Since I was a recent transplant to El Paso from Presidio (where for 15-16 years I’d taken V.A. medications for anxiety and depression), last summer my primary physician had asked me to get my mh dosages reevaluated. Maybe they needed to be changed.

But mental health at the El Paso V.A. has problems keeping doctors now, yes. With no more salary than Congress allows it to offer, recent medical grads sorely needing to repay school loans, for instance, (the young bunch) just about fills the recruiting crop. (Hee, hee. Reminded me of 40 years ago in newspaper reporting, only even then newspapers already were showing signs of being true dead-end jobs! Who’d go into ‘em?!)

And since, too, these new staff psychologists are scouting for a better paying position almost from the first moment they arrive, if they come, they’re not the keenest on individual case details either, you could argue.

The one who’d seen me on three different interviews, for instance, twice had mistaken bad days with my chronic breathing problems for a sky was falling overall health condition; and worriedly escorted me personally to an ER visit. And hence was able to skip out on the MH evaluation. Delay tactic? Whatever, it worked. Until he was out of here!

Dr. San Roman, left in a lurch by it all, quickly leaned on Texas Tech University, and developed a plan. Give me psychology post-graduate students willing to do an emergency temporary residency program, as fill-in’s. It’ll give me time to find good veteran psychologists who want to be in El Paso – not just because it’s a nice place to live but it’s El Paso and full of meaningful challenges.

She personally saw me in March--going thru her long waiting list, I guess—to explain her temporary situation. But as busy as she was, she’d spent time in my files, too. It helped. She was aware that, as a Vietnam era veteran, for instance, I’d once spent two years as a radar IFF technician aboard a “bird farm”-- the 5,000-crew aircraft carrier U.S. Independence.

So, first, she could talk my lingo – ships company personnel are those permanently attached to a ship; airedales are aviation crew members who fly aboard once the ship sets sail on a mission; stays with it until the assignment is finished; and then just as mysteriously fly off somewhere else a day or so before the ship returns to her home port.

There’s not much time in frequent moving for developing friendships with many ships company personnel. If, like me, you make friends only after some observation, the rapport between these two work classes—although professionally cooperative at sea, of course – can be dicey.

Dr. San Roman, with determination and by repeatedly emphasizing she stayed aboard in the staff crisis when other doctors left for money and fame, left me feeling both welcome and confident of future treatment. A good V.A. health ambassador, she is.

Treating this country’s social minimalism disease (disease is my word) then, in my opinion, begins similarly with people spending less time obsessively chasing both flashy insignias and large amounts of wealth in the high skies of their profession or avocation, and more time on the home front in what’s typically referred to as basic relationship housekeeping chores.

Getting to know each other as fellow shipmates, from laconic behavior patterns to a person’s special interests or problems (regardless of wealth, job or social connection gained/lost in the process), metabolizes stronger social bonding--whether you’re building a family and a home, or a community of dedicated, selfless workers.

Such bonding is excellent medicine to ward off icy, contemptuous stares of a social minimalist, too, in order to personally keep your own life’s fishing buoy afloat; and to be able to adapt in choppy economic waters.

The V.A.’s most recent criticism (a report citing an average evaluation ‘waiting period’ for new mental health applicants of more than 50 days), comes amidst proposals by the V.A. to increase staff sizes -- to not only reduce waiting periods but also to help increase programs for homeless veterans. The New York Times, citing the obstinacy of Republican ‘House budget-cutters’ in Congress, didn’t want to take that bait as a simple answer.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs says it plans to hire 1,900 psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, clinicians and clerical employees, a 10 percent increase in its mental health staff,” it reported. (Again, the story link's here.) “…But a lot more needs to be done.”

Ok, you’ve got a cyclical windstorm spiraling into eternity. The problem clearly is social minimalism, e.g., being rejected by status seekers--an economic condition with which the GOP has blood all over its hands in the past 40 years for helping to create. What do you do?

For starters, talk to Dr. San Roman. First, admit what got us into this. Too much emphasis on wealth at the cost of service.

Then, reduce the obsessive wealth-and-glory-seeking values with ones where people get greater inner peace and contentment rewards from simply doing their job well. (Hell, award ‘em fishing trips to The Keys on dead weekends!) Competently helping people, if we're a true Christian nation, is one’s Gold Star. (Figuring exactly how to do this could bring holy hell, yes. Don’t look for it soon. Hee, hee.)

I don’t know what Dr. San Roman did. Is it critically important that we know? When I went in to MH last week for a scheduled appointment at the V.A., she had a new staff person though — a Ph.D. psychologist, an older woman with a daughter here – that somehow she’d recruited (along with the Texas Tech residency students, of course) to assist her in treating the backlog of veterans.

My evaluation interview with this woman was friendly and professional. She assured me same dosages of the medication I’d been taking all these years should continue. She also was attentive enough though to notice I wasn’t being treated for memory loss nor low energy levels caused by my lung disease problems, e.g., insufficient oxygen. Imagine? I get this out of left field!

Prescriptions Dr. San Roman then signed which have added thiamin, folic acid and modafinil to my daily medications have made me feel simply wonderful—compared to the way I was dragging myself around for months before last week.

How’d that happen? Finding a professional who cared?

Could our problem as a nation in arresting runaway social minimalism be that simple?

Duh…An aspirin, dammit! I need an aspirin, Jethro!

“Rol-l-l out the barrels, and we’ll have a barrel of …”

--- 30 ---

Holy Moses, why'd you bring up he was a stutterer?



Painting, Moses and the Burning Bush,
by William Blake. (from freechristimages.org)

 By Dan Bodine




EL PASO, TX--Maybe I’m just too sensitive! As a stutterer (even in my old age now, yes, I can still stammer with the best of ‘em, partnuh!) why am I finding there’s a bit more of an embarrassing ping (a needless ping, I think) when I hear these repeated stories of mighty success by someone who stuttered? Are we being driven by trendy social media?

In a recent Jewish article on Moses of the Bible, for instance, it linked the leader of the Exile as being a stutterer, too. The tone and reason for running the story seemed shallow—The King’s Speech, for instance, the film sensation with many awards this year. The king had to conquer stuttering, too. The news hook was there; the writer used it by adding, Oh, yeah, here’s Moses, too.

But maybe it’s just the cynical times we’re living in, also, that pinged me into reacting. Not only mixing religion with politics but mixing it with anything, it seems, to help bolster a political position, is trendy now. And that’s what this story smells like.

The New Right started this latest wrinkle in the late ‘70s under the wraps of divine corpocracy, the religious right’s Moral Majority. As moneyed success they burned the radical capitalism brand into the Sunbelt movement. Synthesizing creative energy to success became holy again. And now the world is a convoluted burning bush of wealth and greed gone awry, yes. So we’re now unholy?

Reminds me of a local church bunch here, organized as a tax-exempt corporation and using selected biblical texts to denounce the El Paso City Council’s decision to grant employee health care benefits to spouses of straights and gays alike. They’ve not only been thwarted by a higher court in their council recall efforts but a prominent national civil rights group has listed them as a hate organization also.

Gawd. (An El Paso Times story with related links is here.) Hate in church! All in the name of God! And these people ain’t even Baptists!

So, yeah, leaning on divine intervention to explain things may be common as fleas now, but that doesn’t make it always the straight and narrow. Even for a Jewish group. Not to me, anyway.

What set all this jibberish off? Story entitled “The Stuttering Servant” in yesterday’s Jewish Ideas Daily. (Link here) It’s a well researched story on the possible origins of stuttering, by the way, and the links it presents to relevant current studies and stories on stuttering I found both helpful and entertaining. Thank you.

But the question remains, what was the motive in linking the most well-known exodus in history to a reluctant leader’s speech problem, if it wasn’t to show specific proof of God smiling on the Israelites? In my thick-headed thinking, am I missing something that’s as clear as a bell to everyone else?

For writers--perhaps unconsciously at times, yes—using this ploy to squeeze out extra mileage for their religion is nothing new. It seems FOREVER , in fact, in whatever the culture, religious thinking has been to put one slow of mouth and tongue as a 'chosen' person. Moses and the Bible have given us our tradition, yes.

Remember well, for instance, my own late deeply religious Mother, bless her heart, using the same thinking to answer my questions of “why do I talk different?” Especially when I’d come home from school with my face and fists bloodied from a fist fight--over someone teasing me.

“It’s God’s will, son. He’s got a special purpose for you, a job much more difficult than most people will ever have to face. But He also created you with stronger shoulders, to carry this extra burden. So don’t question it. Just be thankful. One of these days God will show you.”

Divine intervention, regardless of the feel-good factor, is pretty heavy stuff for a kid. With Mom and dad both “from the soil” with little formal education, the Good Book was all they had to explain abnormalities such as speech impediments. And they leaned heavily on it; that was the script.

It wasn’t until many years later in Dallas, in my early 30’s, in fact, after going thru two years of group speech therapy in transactional analysis (still my quest to “get to the bottom of it”), did I find an answer. Divine intervention has many faces, yes. Moses had a bush; I had Jane.

The therapy hadn’t helped my speech, so I stopped it. Then a Dallas school teacher and fellow First Unitarian Universalist Church member, Jane Hepner, phoned one summer morning. She’d just watched a TV Today show. A noted psychologist announced the results of a long study: 85 % of the studied stutterers had a physical reason. As primary cause.

“Dan, have you ever had anyone, a true professional, examine your mouth?” Jane asked.

“No, I’ve always been told it’s in my head,” I answered.

“You need to go back to Callier and ask they examine your mouth and throat.”

Callier Speech and Hearing Center in Dallas, after taping an initial interview with me, is the one who’d recommended the group therapy I’d just finished. Gathering courage to go back with a special request was all made possible by a godsend friend named Jane.

“Oh my gosh, what a high roof in your mouth you have!”

I get teary-eyed still when I recall it, leaning back in the examining chair and opening my mouth wide like I was. The holy grail of my search was a very minor birth defect -- high roof in my mouth, upper gum lines pulled in at birth because of it, and subsequently a pressed tongue when I try to speak. Ain’t got the space to move it around most folks have; it’s cramped. That simple.

“It’s not in your head,” she assured me.

Never, never, in my life, have I been so happy. “I’m normal!” I shouted to Dallas motorists passing me on the freeway on the way home.

I’d pulled off on the right-side emergency lane because I was crying so hard it’d become dangerous to drive. I rolled down the window instead, and waved to motorists as they passed--crying and laughing, waving wildly, and pointing at my mouth.

“I’m normal!!”

Finding a purpose for one's Life is one thing; the old fundamentalist view of being singled out by God for a special, unknown rescue mission is pretty heavy stuff though for a kid, yes. Oftentimes since, I’ve thought about such physical conditions as blindness, deafness, deformities such as legs or arms. Why aren’t those people special, too?

Why do writers—beginning, in this case, with early biblical writers—try to reinvent the wheel of logic on something so simple as a birth defect?

So to hang religious glory to it? The proverbial underdog winning again? For my team?

Do you think that stinks some?



--- 30 ---

In New Age what IS IT that keeps some people from getting bribes?

By Dan Bodine
Center on Social Minimalism




“Everybody has their price,” the old saying goes. “Never say you’ll never do it.” Now the pharmaceutical industry is putting journalists in its cross-hairs of people to “buy.” Along with the prescribing doctors, the story goes. Dr. Mercola has the news in a recent article entitled “Are journalists the drug industry’s newest lackeys?” Link to it is here.

Hee, hee. “Favor fees” they call them in Mexico. Aka, el mordido. How does someone wanting a “favor” of some sort instinctively know who will and who absolutely won’t take a bribe? Huh?

All the world’s relative, right? Well, I wanna protest. Nobody’s ever offered me a bribe. That I was aware of or can remember. Honest Injun! To get one, I sure would’ve changed my body language, dour expression, whatever, I‘d sworn at times. Dire, I was.

Nobody needs extra income as much as journalists and poor border j.p’s, were my thoughts often. Where’s the people with the mulah? The dinero? The mordidas? Maybe we can work sumpthin’ out. I‘m hurting here, damn it!

Remember in Cleburne, TX, once a prominent realtor having a hard time with the City of Cleburne’s public works department on some project. I was city editor at the Times-Review then.

One day he took me to one of his houses to photograph a wall urinal he claimed the city had made him install in a bathroom (at his added expense, natch!), instead of a normal commode.

Good photo I made. Ol’ Theo a sitting on the bathtub with his left arm extended to the wall urinal, hugging it like you’d embrace an unruly stepchild--ugly repulsion all over his face at how he was being mistreated, is how I remember it. Good story, it would’ve been.

Only problem was that I managed to find Andy Anderson, the city’s public works director, by phone in Denver, CO, shortly before deadline; and thus rewrote the story and pulled the photo. Andy was there interviewing for a job I think. I knew Andy and trusted him; he was part of our darts night boys.

“Andy, what’s this about you making Theo put a pisser on the wall?”

“Ain’t so! He’s just mad over something.”

Can’t remember the why or what it was part; it’d made a good follow-up story though all by itself. But as badly as I needed money then, I think the only nudge I’d needed to’ve gone with the story as I had it written (a hatchet job, it was) was if I’d been given a “favor fee” of only a few hundred dollars or so.

As an alcoholic--in those days, too, I’d later explain to AA groups, when I’d find myself driving from one bank to another to kite a check just to buy more whiskey--the only excuse I’d need was someone crossing my palm with some free currency.

Were they crazy for not doing it? It’s supposed to be common practice, right? To grease Life’s wheels in your direction? Well, all my life it’s been like that! Left out! Where do I go to protest being excluded? Some of these folks clearly have violated my civil rights! Hee, hee.

Same thing later in Presidio. As the only judge in town--in a border town, no less--with wrecks, civil suits, evictions, etc., to all divvy up, you’d think a person should really have ample opportunities for making some serious money. Not me! Why? Because I was a gringo? Smelled bad? No habla Espanol? (Pay a translator, damn it! Double your benefits!) Or just too stupid to put out the signals?

Signing up new babies, for instance. Role as a state registrar. Granting immediate citizenship, this job was. No doctor in town. Not on this side, anyway! And with the only hospital in the whole Big Bend area 90 miles away, surely you’re going to have someone acting as a midwife in town to help out those few unable or unwilling to make that long trip. Surely. Was there a chance for me to make some money in it? Never came!

But the babies did. Bunches of them! Every few days sometimes it seemed! No local or county official in any way wanted to get involved advising me on it. Only the county judge, a friend, once advised, Personally, Dan, I wouldn’t do it.

But the alternative? I asked back. What do you do? A baby’s a baby!

Finally, What do I do with all these? I remember asking a bewildered attorney by phone once in the justice court training center in Austin. A Far West Texas border community deep in the Chihuahuan Desert is a little difficult to explain to someone wet behind the ears.

Well, if they were born there in Presidio you’ve got to register them, I was told simply. Don’t you violate anyone’s rights!

Jeesh! I swore at times that staff at that center was in cahoots with the state’s trial lawyers. Or way, way too cautious! What about my rights? And what about common sense? These calls I got, to come to a house to observe a new baby, almost always were on weekends, or at nights.

Didn’t take long, of course, even for someone as slow as I am to smell a fish. A look back thru previous registration files showed something like 60-70 births a year sometimes in this one small community. Most of the moms were from Ojinaga I suspected, across the river, over here visiting relatives or friends.

Once I remember the court clerk and I following a trail of blood from a home’s driveway on the outskirts of town, into the house and down a long hallway, and finally to the mother, still on the floor. From upriver somewhere. Probably from across. Smiling nervously. But her baby had been born in the United States, and here was the ol’ judge, ready to make the infant legal.

But where’s my fair share? I often thought. Aren’t you suppose to pay for these kind of favors? The county sure isn’t paying me extra for it. I want my mordita! I probably felt.

So this had to stop, yes. Started making them sign Declarations or Affidavits of Facts, under oath, describing the background some. And I made photos. Parents, baby, and midwife all. If I was going to be investigated, I wanted something to take into court with me.

Then I started making the mothers get an examination slip from the local office of the state department of public health. Make sure something had happened first, I wanted to. Hee, hee. Most were honest births, of course; some the clinic would call and say no way no how.

And eventually it stopped. Stricter inspection procedures and longer lines at the port of entry from Mexico kicked in, too. Generally I started to see area newspapers carrying more birth announcements from the hospitals from families in Presidio. And my annual registrations dropped down to 2-3, or sometimes zero.

A big worry--of granting an illegal a citizenship (with all the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer benefits associated with it)--was lifted from me.

But I was being watched, too. I always sensed that. A regional federal enforcement officer from Alpine made the comment once in the office, Judge, you’re the only Presidio JP our office hasn’t had to investigate in the past 20 years or so for bribery.

Well, that’s only because I’m a gringo, I laughed. Or too stupid. Maybe both! Or sumpthin’!

He smiled. The common practice was for pre-arrangements to be made with the midwife for say $1,000. She’d take $500. And give $500 to the judge. Zip, zip, and zap. A nice secondary income.

Mexico and other Third World countries are awash with such practices, of course. Use to be. The main reason is the abysmal low wages paid to government employees. That and the people are not stupid! They know how to survive.

Journalists weren’t exactly born falling off turnip wagons either. Most of 'em. Many though have fallen from other wagons. Many times. And the fact their salaries have dropped even lower now vis a vis a continued decline in traditional newspaper circulation and revenue doesn’t bode well for them either, of course. They're ripe for pluckin'.

The fact that Big Pharma is now going after them speaks loudly also how desperate drug companies are, too, to keep their high profits. We have a classic morality play in the making, folks. Again, here’s the link to the well respected Dr. Mercola’s story.

So it’s going to be interesting to watch how this one plays out, yes. Uh...Maybe…

“Yo, Jethro! ‘Ya still got a reporter’s notepad or two laying around. Huh? Got this here little idea. Want to earn a little extra SPENDING money?

"...JETHRO! Where 'ya goin'??!"

Hee, hee. Must of heard my wife coming after me.

"Yo!"




                                                --- 30 ---

‘Waiting on Sam’ at Cleburne Times-Review a Kodak moment in an American diaspora

San and Kodak not only thing jettisoned: Many of the once-proud family newspapers gobbled up by corporate chains in the Sunbelt's rush-to-riches frenzy, newspapers which solidly reflected the American Way of Life for generations, no longer have their printing presses either. Rising costs along with electronic media cutting into advertising revenues have led them to contract their printing to other sources. (SuperStock image)

By Dan Bodine
Center on Social Minimalism





CLEBURNE, TX--How many friends from Cleburne, TX, remember the laconic photographer Sam Gatewood at the old Times-Review newspaper? Wife the longtime typing teacher at the high school.

Not tall, but above medium built he was, wide head and brow, thinning, receding brown hair; wore glasses. Big eyes would stare at you from way off yonder 10 seconds or so before replying to a question.

Hee, hee. Kodak filing Chapter 11 earlier this month (CNN story here) sure brought back memories from that explosive Sunbelt period. Struggling to fit a new with an old has been difficult for a lot of us.

Sam’s peculiar old ways drew social minimalism scorn. He stood in the way of a product. If he’d been a rusty nail, composing room employees alone waiting for a photo and the info on it would‘ve bit him in two 2-3 times each week. The contempt was that strong.

Not to even mention the printing or circulation department folks all waiting in line, too. Or further, readers and advertisers waiting on deliveries. Slow, Sam was. The Sunbelt’s increasing the stakes in newspapers minimalized him. Cut him out of the deck.

Even slower at times I was, a year or so later, in taking my turn as managing editor there, in providing a smooth and orderly content flow for those composition employees to work with. Often I wanted to write more as a reporter, and tended to forget the more important m.e. duties. That and just being a slow writer, too, I was.

But the two back-to-back slams made some memorable times at the old newspaper. Years of the late 70s and early to mid-80s, it was, in the first half of the Sunbelt’s glitzy reign. Blame some of it on that, you can. Kodak certainly will.

Explosive growth transformed almost overnight larger cities of the South, Southwest and West, headquarters already for many major industries. It brought in newer or expanded industries, and many thousands of new jobs with them.

Not expecting ground-swell waves of change in people’s lifestyles in the surrounding areas was akin to placing a bucket beneath a water faucet and forgetting to turn it off later. Where else was all that going? Or what else was it to do?

Blame the New Right and a rush to make tons of money for the Sunbelt’s excessiveness. Truly an American diaspora, the fallout has been. When history sets it all right, I think you’ll see it was the end of the old Industrial Age for us too.

Seemingly overnight, the landscape was transformed. Newer branded industries, houses and stores cropped up. And new people. Thousands upon thousands of them. The emotional stress from two eras colliding was gut-wrenching, yes.

And it seemed to be felt more in these rural, surrounding counties, like Johnson County. What…from 60k-65k…to 110k or so population? In just a couple of decades or less? Whoo! They were like the outer ridges of some rapidly moving, low-pressure storm system--the winds are always higher over there, aren‘t they?

And always news aplenty, too, it was! Much, much more than what advertising could carry. Meaning, the number of pages the paper could afford to print daily, weighing both material and employee costs. A supporting commerce always trails needed people numbers in media, it seems.

But chains were lured by the Sunbelt’s advertising potential early on, and began picking up newspapers like Confederate confetti at county fairs, it appeared at times. Indebting themselves seemingly forever with note payoff obligations. Radical capitalism had added a new wrinkle on its face. Betting on inflation against middle-class wage earners. Both shrunk.

But Gold in them thar hills! in newspapers had an innate drag time few discussed. Not only did new owners in the Sunbelt realize it’d be a spell longer before they could cash in their chips but they learned also that all family newspapers were not created equal. The Times-Review was one. Donrey Media bought it in the early to mid-70s.

Was Sam even drawing a salary then? He got use of the dark room and the supplies and that’s it, I think. Under an arrangement from the paper’s former owner, the photographer’s earnings were from subsequent private sales of photos he’d shot for the newsroom.

Naturally most of those pictures were lifestyle or society department in nature. Or kids at school. Lot of those. Others, Sam wasn’t too keen on.

Nor did he appreciate outsiders hired by some new-fangled newspaper company coming in and telling him he needed to do so-and-so by such-and-such time either. Hee, hee.

How long was it, that that awkward relationship continued? Two-three years at least? Dan Smith, new general manager, finally brought in the talented Jim West in the early 80s to bail us out. And allowed us to kick it up a notch.

We were spending our days on news and our nights in the darkroom developing film and printing photos for features running the next day. Today--part , too, of Kodak’s e-age laments--reporters and photographers click or press on a mobile somewhere and the news desk editor miles away gets it. Or the video clip is brought in from last night’s meeting or game. Wow! What a milestone. No film to develop and worry over.

A newspaper’s final pages in the composition room is the front page and a “hop” page, for the latest “spot” news and photos for that edition. Before the computers and e-stuff, in the days of Kodak film and paper, this was a stage of production that routinely snagged Sam, it seemed. Didn’t have time; always busy on something else; whatever!

Too, he seldom communicated. Just being Sam. You never knew if he was working in his darkroom at home, or the one at the T-R. Or espousing the Fourth Estate at Chaf-In over a brew of coffee. Whatever happened to times when good folks had more time to enjoy life?

But I’ve got these dear images in my mind of John Moody, at first the city and then the managing editor for a few years, coming into the newsroom from the backshop with this despicableness on his face, staring at the floor after not seeing Sam. Mumbling to himself.

John often talked to himself. Interesting conversations. But he’d stalk first over to the window to see if Sam was coming from outside, then he’d trek out into the lobby area to look down the long hallway, to see if the rascal was coming in from the back.

Coming up empty, he‘d stumble back into the newsroom frantically like someone had dropped him from a 40-floor building (long before a safety net had been put in place at the bottom); and then would dive back into the backshop, mumbling to himself still, before relaying the unsurprising news.

Have no idea where Sam is! was all you could make out from the words.

Oh, what memorable times! Had Sam been minimalized lower, he’d been a flea crawling on the carpet. Twenty, sometimes 40 or more minutes past deadline, he’d then saunter into the newsroom from somewhere--bewilderment on his face, photo in hand, his prize for us.

Seen John?

And then it’d be fingers typing, shoulders and elbows moving, legs running, all to get the identifying photo information thru the backshop production process. Sheesh!

I remember also, during this wild couple of years or so, an angry publicity person for CISD coming up to my desk in one of these tense moments, wanting even more coverage for the school district. Befuddled she was, and a bit resentful, too, with all that was happening at her newspaper.

We set ya’ll up with all these wonderful stories, something you can use to stick in your paper for the readers to see; doing you a favor, we are; and then you don’t seem to be too excited about it! Why?

She didn’t know Sam. Nor any of the other myriads of minimalism complications the Sunbelt brought. Totally a failed exposure moment, she was.

Kodak struggled with these new stepped up developments, too, especially in the latter half of the Sunbelt when the rapid, almost total change to electronic photos stripped it of its one principle product, film.

The Chap. 11 filing will buy it some time, yes. But don’t look for a miracle. In ‘The Last Kodak Moment’ The Economists looks at how swift technological change and dragging its heels in adapting to it now threaten to shutter the company.

It’s sad, too, yes. Once a reining king, now like so many other companies and people minimalized in the Sunbelt’s aftermath, it now faces being a has-been--worthless to the new finance kings on Wall Street.

But hold onto your old photo books and the memories though. Radical capitalism will never be able to wipe them off the shelf. Those Kodak moments will last.

Too, with this new ePublishing awash now you might even turn them into gold someday. One change deserves another apparently. New opportunities of a different sort are showing up, they are. Hee, hee.

Life goes on.



                                               --- 30 ---

In peddling doughnuts in Cleburne, do it the old-fashioned way--the product, not the image, is what sells!

                         Yummy, yummy. Good for tummy.


By Dan Bodine
Center against Social Minimalism





CLEBURNE, TX--Dunkin’ Donuts said this week it’ll add almost 7,000 new stores to its nationwide chain in the next 20 years, CNN reported. Don’t know for sure any of those will be in Cleburne or not, but knowing the community the way I do I’d be willing to bet a dozen doughnuts on it. Good doughnuts are sumpthin’ sweet in Cleburne.

I’m not kosher on those plans yet either, a spokesman for the Cleburne store on South Main told CSM’s rovin’-eye reporter Jethro by phone late yesterday afternoon. But you can bet one store will be added here at least. Hell, the way people eat doughnuts in Cleburne, the company may even add two or three more.

Hee, hee. The way folks eat good doughnuts here is they eat a lot of them! If they’re indeed good ones, that is. Before image came along, doughnut businesses floated or sank on quality alone.

And eating good ones is in this community’s bloodlines. Growing up there in the 50’s and 60’s you just had to follow your nose to find doughnuts being made somewhere.

My very first paid job was selling doughnuts door-to-door in Cleburne. Fourth grade, I think it was. Maybe some of the third, too. Place was on the west side of North Main just north of Marshall Edward’s Texaco Service Station. Year or so after Ike’s election, which would‘ve put it ‘53 or ‘54.

The building was one of those that stuck back out over Buffalo Creek. The rear part sat on what I always called “stilts.” You could walk down the side of the building, down underneath it, and then on down further to the creek

Some uppity 8th grader co-worker once, after I’d accused him of stealing a watch he wanted to sell to me, drug me off down there to pound the you-know-what out of me, I remember. Mad at being called a thief by some little red-headed, freckled-faced, 4th grade punk, he was.

My body wasn’t exactly petrified. I was actually shaking so bad he never could commence the fisticuffs. It startled him, it did.

How come you shaking so much, boy!? You scared?

N-N-Naw, I’ve got this here d-d-doctor’s disease. W-W-Whenever I g-g-git ready to kill somebody I s-s-start s-s-shaking.

I really don’t think it worried him any, my killing him. The wife of the owner came down and broke it up, and the owner fired the boy the next day. He wasn’t that much of a salesboy anyway. Never could outsell me. I was among the tops in the sales fleet. Red-headed, freckles, speech and all.

Selling doughnuts was easy in Cleburne. Especially if you stuttered. Folks were anxious to get to those doughnuts and didn’t want to wait a couple of minutes on some stammering idiot on the porch to finish his sales pitch.

They’d just slip their change out the door to me and take a sack from my basket. Here, kid, they’d say. Those things are getting cold.

Door-to-door, it was--afternoons after school, and 4-5 hours on Saturdays. We doughnut salesboys fanned out on our bicycles all over town--each with six dozen, freshly sacked doughnuts on weekdays, and eight on the weekend.

Sold them for sixty cents a dozen; 30 a half dozen. Kept a dime for every 60 cents we sold. On weekdays we were given four dozen sacks and four half-dozen sacks; Saturdays it was six dozen sacks and four half-dozen sacks.

And we sold until we sold ‘em all, it was. Regardless how late at night it was you had to be peddling. Company policy. Don’t bring me any old doughnuts in here tomorrow, the manager would flat out tell us. We won’t money. You sell until you ain’t got no more to sell, you hear? If you want to keep your job that is. Excellent sales incentive, it was. Really got to believe in your product that way.

I don’t know where the child labor laws were in those days. Didn’t exist, I guess. I was happy with it. ‘Cause I had a job. Built respect for myself and an image as well. Selling good doughnuts. Something people wanted because it was wired into their brains that if it’s both sweet and gummy it’s good for the tummy. And it made me some spending money.

Plus we always got a bonus of two doughnuts first thing the next day when we went in for selling out the previous day. Damn good job, it was! I learned to eat a ton of doughnuts! And I learned to respect myself for being an income earner around the house despite having to always untangle myself emotionally with my speech. Excellent therapy it was, too.

The welfare state wasn’t planted yet. And its opposite reactionary force, radical capitalism (with its uppity gotta-have images and niggardly way of treating the poor and less fortunate--aka, those who ain’t with us the stiff-nosed cultural or business elites), thus wasn’t an issue either. Simple things like eating and selling good doughnuts took on values all by themselves.

But the Sunbelt’s explosiveness swamped us all in later years with a frenzied drive to make money, at the expense of these old simple values, I’ve longed claimed. Complicated our lives with additional driving instincts.

Our stomachs and taste buds alike became convoluted by a New Right selling machine that pre-empted basic moral values. The sake of the greater community good became linked to collective individual divine riches instead. Progress, at all costs, it was. With the caveat the greater good was good only if it made you individually rich first.

The more money you acquired, more proof it was God had a particular smile for you, you rascal! So we went about the business of making money not for the sake of God‘s kingdom but to show people we were a king or queen in that kingdom.

Becoming a corpocracy, once we understood the new rules, wasn’t that complicated. As an old friend still in Cleburne is prone to point out occasionally about this new golden rule business, he/she who has the money, rules.

Which meant you ate up unmercifully all the competition in sight, all you could afford to get your hands on. Creative financing to the max! And paid Congress for special laws to both favor and protect you, while on the other hand streamlining services along with employee salaries and compensations. Our humanity shunted in a competitive fixation to squeeze the most with the least.

When the stock market crashed in late 2008 many of these radical capitalist ideas on steroids began surfacing. And a period of corrections set in.

But have we seen the light? To the point we’ve changed our wicked ways? (Sometimes, swear, I can still hear Bro. J. C. Lott at Chase Av. Baptist screaming those word to the rafters overhead! I need to write the story of saving Baldy ‘neath the hedge bushes one day. Hee, hee.) But in a bit of irony over all this, look no further than the doughnut maybe.

In the Wednesday CNN story about Dunkin’ Donuts, it was reported the coffee and doughnut chain also had finished streamlining its supply chain, putting four regional suppliers under one group named National DCP to further cut costs in its nearly 7,000 stores.

But it will not go after its quality--in either coffee or doughnuts. A simple one-two strategy they’ve stuck with thru thick and thin throughout the spiffy decades of the Sunbelt.

That’s bad news for Starbucks, its chief rival. Dunkin’ Donuts controls roughly 23 % of the country’s coffee and snack shop market, the Los Angeles-based IBIS World reported in the CNN story; Starbucks, with 11,000 stores just in the U.S. alone, controls a whopping 32.6 %. But the clash of the titans is gearing up.

Starbucks (clinging to its elitist image as above the crowd, has hedged on actually making doughnuts in its fine stores. Instead it’s partnered with fellow Seattle company Top Pot, a boutique doughnut maker, to market a “hand-forged" variety. (Hee, hee. Gimme a break! Is that an ad blitz or what?) One of the stories on this initial 2005 launch into doughnuts can be found here on Starbucks Gossip.

Initially planned for just the Seattle market, the old idea that was put into a new trendy package quickly blossomed into other states as well; and now Starbucks is busy expanding Top Pot marketing into all of its 50-state stores, seattlepi reports.

But how is that going to take a bite out of Dunkin’s “fresh-made daily” doughnuts? The logic won’t wash in Johnson County, I don’t think. Not from someone who use to stand stuttering late into the evenings on darkened front porches trying to sell his last sack of “f-f-fresh-made” doughnuts.

Dunkin’ Donuts has three stores just in Cleburne alone. In the surrounding Johnson County communities there are at least nine more--one each in Keene, Alvarado, Grandview, Rio Vista, Joshua, Godley (of all places); and three more in Burleson.

Hee, hee. Johnson County may be one of the very few suburban counties in Texas with more doughnut shops than strip joints. In the decades following my growing-up years there, developing my ol’ philosophy as a radical capitalist critic, I’ve often thought of that. And how it affected me. Instead of reading tea leaves, can we read doughnuts?

There’s some vacant land a couple of blocks from my house on a major artery here in El Paso. I’m writing the company to get on with it; put a store there. I’ll help with a publicity campaign startup. Hell, I ain’t got but 3-4 teeth left from eating doughnuts all my life anyway; might as well let ‘em go out with a splurge!

I’ll eat doughnuts daily to this new venture! On my walks to lose weight. Hee, hee. We having fun yet?!





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