Sometimes
by Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost, green thrives, the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Category: Lake Jackson
Veterans Day and a Thought about Vaccinations and Masks
I read today that only one in ten adult Americans alive today have spent any time in military service. The other ninety percent are quick to “thank you for your service.” Yet a good many of them insist on the right to remain unmasked and unvaccinated during a deadly pandemic.
I wasn’t told about any such rights in 1968 when they lined us up and marched us between two rows of medical technicians who administered multiple inoculations through pressure pumps that pierced the skin without needles. One med tech leaned on us from each side to administer two shots quickly so we could move on the the next two shots. I don’t even remember how many shots we got that day to prepare us for possible service in southeast Asia.
Mine turned out to be unnecessary since I never went to Vietnam. Still, I have been protected against some unknown list of exotic diseases all these years. I haven’t had the plague yet. Thank you, Uncle Sam.
I try to imagine anyone that day claiming a religious exemption. He probably would have been sent over to talk with the chaplain. It would have been a brief consultation. Mine would have gone about like this: “Methodist? Hmmm. No, private, Jesus didn’t have anything to say about vaccinations. In fact, he talked a lot about sacrificing for others. Go get back in line.”
Maybe Veterans Day would be a good time for Americans to take their minds off their rights for a brief while and spend a few minutes thinking about duty and responsibility. No uniform is required to be a responsible citizen.
So, get vaccinated. Do it for a veteran you love. Do it for your protection and theirs. He or she may thank you for your service.
Sehon Warneke, the Legend of Lake Hardware
When I was growing up in Houston’s industrial suburbs, “town” meant Houston and more specifically, the downtown district. You know – tall buildings. After relocating to Lake Jackson in 1982, I never lost that almost automatic reference to “town” as my way to refer to Houston. And it was easy to tell old friends that we had moved south of town to a place called Lake Jackson, hence this journal goes under the heading of South of Town, Lake Jackson.
Lake Jackson was a bit of a culture shock. After all, I was nearing forty and had never experienced life in a small-town on an extended basis. People were polite. They smiled as they took turns, even at the uncontrolled intersections in its curvy, crazy little downtown.
But the single most shocking thing I saw happened in a little store three short blocks from my house, the Lake Hardware store on Oyster Creek. (It’s no longer there. Fire took it a week ahead of 9/11, but they quickly re-located and re-built.) You need a lot of little things when you move into a new residence. There were all the little things that broke, new things that needed to be installed, and the tools and supplies to handle all the jobs of homeownership. I had quickly learned that Lake Hardware was the place to go.
Continue reading “Sehon Warneke, the Legend of Lake Hardware”Open Mic Night at the School Board: I Play the Gray Card
Inspired by Michael Morris’s September 8 column in The Facts, I called the school district office and got on the list to offer public comment at the start of the September board meeting. I am not an open mic kind of person, but Mr. Morris reminded me of the importance, in a democracy, of speaking up when you have a reasonable opinion about how things should go in your community’s life.
As the day approached I thought about the possibility that the Justice for J-6 crowd may well be preparing to flood the board room with bikers recruited from Sturgis, South Dakota to chain whip anyone daring to appear at the meeting masked against “the Chinese virus“. At a minimum I thought I ought to choose my words carefully and write them down to keep myself on script.
So I wrote about two and a half minutes of my thoughts in which I appealed to my status as an elder in the community. Maybe they would’t beat up an old man wearing glasses, leaning on a cane, and talking about the olden days.
Speaking Up and Speaking Out – For Children and Teachers
Michael Morris of The Facts gave excellent and important advice in his column this morning. I took the challenge and got on the public agenda for the September meeting of my local school board trustees’ meeting. I hope other of his readers will do the same.
As someone who came of age in another century, I can remember when public health was treated as a legitimate and very important medical specialty. Polio, smallpox, chicken pox, measles and many more have been controlled through the advancement of science and medical practice. We learned to trust the advice of the professionals. And maybe even more important, we had teachers in public schools who taught us how to recognize the difference between the advice offered by public health professionals and that of snake oil salesmen.
Just remember that the same people who are telling you that masks and vaccines are the work of the devil are the same ones telling you that ivermectin works and will keep you safe from Covid-19. Not all of the people who listened to them are still with us. May they rest in peace in the arms of their understanding, if not greatly disappointed, God.
Instead, believe the people who went to medical school and completed the really hard science courses and medical practice internships and residencies. They know what they are talking about and they don’t do satanic rituals when you aren’t looking.
G-Droppin’ with Greg
Politicians will do crazy things to try to connect with some part of the electorate whose votes they crave but whose life and culture may be foreign to them. The Democratic candidate on their first hunting trip is a favorite. Only Ann Richards was able to pull that one off persuasively. With her big hair, Texas drawl and a deer rifle in her hand, she let them know that she would probably hold her own in a bar fight with any of them two-steppin’ cowboys. And it probably wasn’t her first hunting trip, either.
My all-time favorite was when an incumbent Texas Secretary of Agriculture named Reagan Brown decided that he could connect with Texas’ farmers and ranchers by jamming his hand into a bed of fire ants while the photographers stood by drooling. Cowboy types were not impressed. His opponent wasn’t only a Democrat, he was about as progressive as they come. Thank you, Reagan V. Brown for giving us a few good years with Jim Hightower.
A bit less showy than the faux hunting trips and the fire ant challenge (too bad there were no social media in 1982), there is the practice of what I call G-droppin’. Candidates for statewide and national offices typically have been educated with bachelor’s and law degrees, often from Ivy League schools. They have learned how to speak proper English and they speak it with a precision that often makes their home folks think of them as “puttin’ on airs.” Put these folks in front of a judge in a courtroom and they speak the king’s English.
But a roomful of voters at the American Legion Hall in Clute will have them droppin’ Gs from their present participles. Even President Obama did it. He dropped Gs with the worst of them. But it never sold the way Ann Richards sold her NRA-appealing hunting trips. With Obama, the G-droppin’ seemed like the opposite of puttin’ on airs, at least to me. He was just too honest and too good for that kind of panderin’ to the willfully ignorant. It never seemed natural.
But Greg Abbot has handed me one that tops the Reagan Brown performance. But there is no way that I can wring any humor from it.
In order to establish kinship with folks in the Trump cult, he has endangered all our lives and put our children at the head of the line. By issuing an executive order forbidding local governments from mandating masks and vaccines, he no doubt hopes he will be able to pick up the support of the leftover dregs of the Trump “base” in Texas. And as the evidence builds that his edict is probably going to cost lives and create more drag on the economy, he does what DJT would do. He doubles down. How utterly stupid and mean.
Fortunately there are some leaders at the local level who aren’t having any of it. Call it civil disobedience. Call it leadership. They see their jobs as protecting their citizens. Lina Hidalgo’s doin’ it. Sylvester Turner’s doin’ it. Some school districts are doin’ it, too.
In your face, *re* Abbott.
South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast 