Statistics? We don’t need no stinking statistics! (My love affair with baseball)

Posted on September 27, 2015 by juanzqui7

YESTERDAY, I WATCHED the Astros from what is called the “Inspirity Club” of Minute Maid Park. Inspirity is a local bank, I think. Why any business would choose such an insipidly awful name is beyond me, but I do know there was nothing wishy-washy about the price for a single ticket: $175.

I know that, not because I shelled out that amount for the privilege of sitting in those seats with free food and a wide array of (not free) alcoholic beveragepanoramas and even a waiter to take care of your every need, but because that is the amount printed on the ticket. I got the ticket from my friend Mary, who knows the owner of those season tickets.

The Astros won, and that was obviously the highlight of the day. But there were other high points, among them the fact that when I got to the club, Mitch McConnell smiled warmly, welcomed me and opened the door for me. And Ol’ Mitch was there again to open the door for me at the end of the game. And again, he was smiling, hiding any concern he might have had about his future given what had just happened to John Boehner.

I will be at Minute Maid again this afternoon, though in much less sumptuous surroundings, for the last home game of the season. Win or lose, I will be a very happy man when the last out is called, for this has been an amazingly beautiful spring and summer of Astros baseball for me. I have attended more home games during this season than in any previous season, and I have watched on TV most of the games I could not attend. The Astros have given me much frustration, anger and sadness. But what I will remember most about the 2015 season will be the thrills and the joy and sheer elation that I felt as I witnessed some astonishing plays and hits.

I LOVE BASEBALL. I like football and have been known to enjoy basketball and futbol and other sports, but baseball to me is king. This is not to say that baseball is better than the other sports. I’ve been in way too many arguments with friends over which sport is superior, and I can tell you that every one of those arguments was stupid and pointless. There may be a scientific way to determine whether one game is better than all the others, but it really wouldn’t matter.

What matters is which of the sports tugs at the most heartstrings within us. And that most often has to do with which sport was most present and most emotionally satisfying early on in our lives, when our personalities were being formed.

For me that sport was baseball.

IT WAS BASEBALL – or rather, softball – that we, my cousins and neighbors and I, played on unpaved street of my South Texas hometown and in the dusty school playgrounds. It was baseball games featuring local teams against teams from neighboring towns (on both sides of the border) that my father would sometimes take us to watch at rundown city ballparks on Sunday afternoon. I remember little about the action on the field, but I have vivid memories of the drunk spectators who taunted and humiliated the players and the umpires.

It was pickup baseball games between teams from different migrant camps that we’d sometimes go watch in Minto or other small North Dakota towns on Sundays, the only day of the week when we weren’t out on the sugar beet fields.

It was the baseball World Series that we listened to on Tío Adrián’s car radio on cold autumn days, during lunch breaks around a wood fire at the edge of a North Dakota potato field. More often than not it was the Yankees playing – and beating – the Brooklyn Dodgers. I quickly became a Dodgers fan because my uncle and his children were huge Yankees fans. That was the beginning of my long love affair with underdogs.

It was to watch Sunday afternoon baseball on TV that Ernie Kwiatkowski, the Wisconsin cucumber grower on whose farm we lived a few summers, invited me to join him, and that is how I became a Milwaukee Braves fan.

It was high school baseball games featuring the Crystal City Javelins against teams from surrounding towns that my father would occasionally take us to on warm spring nights to watch players such as my cousin Mike and Tomás Rivera (who would later gain fame as a trendsetter in the Chicano literature world).

My father would park the car along the third-base line and allowed us to sit on the car’s hood or fenders, or on the grass, while he and my mother sat on the front seat. Hits and good defensive plays would generate not applause, but sustained honking from our car and other vehicles.

WHEN I GOT to junior high school, Crystal City started hosting an annual high school baseball tournament (Popeye Tournament, of course). If you bought tickets for all the games, you would be allowed to skip classes to attend the games. I always bought the tickets. Not because I wanted to skip classes (I happened to like school) but because I didn’t want to miss a single game. And I attended every home game that I could.

Most of those were night games that were held in the district’s sports complex at the other end of town from where I lived. I walked to every game, and I walked home after every game. The first half of the trip was OK because it was through the Anglo part of town and that meant paved streets, sidewalks and streetlights. Once I crossed the railroad tracks and entered our part of town, there was no pavement, there was no concrete and there were no lights. All that awaited me were darkness, rutted dirt streets, unwelcoming snarling unleashed dogs – and the possibility of a ghost or two to scare the living crap out of me. I never saw a ghost, but two of my sisters had seen bultos, and that was all the evidence I needed to know ghosts existed.

I did a lot of praying during those long walks down West Edwards Street. Some were anti-ghost prayers, others were anti-canine pleas. (My mother had taught us a doggie prayer when our grandfather started sending us to a neighbor’s house to pick up his daily Spanish-language from San Antonio. The neighbor had a mean dog and so we dutifully chanted: de tí. The devil is within you, God is in me; may the blood of Christ deliver me from you.) The prayers did the trick when it came to the dogs. Or maybe it was the rocks and sticks I always made sure I carried with me when I walked down that dark street.El diablo en tí, Dios en mí; la sangre de Cristo me libre de ti. The devil is within you, God is in me; may the blood of Christ deliver me from you.) The prayers did the trick when it came to the dogs. Or maybe it was the rocks and sticks I always made sure I carried with me when I walked down that dark street.

Those high school games were fun, lots of fun. I knew all the players because most were classmates of my older sisters. I didn’t know their batting averages or other statistics but I knew who was likely to hit and who was likely to strike out. I did a lot of pleading with them to do well and, when things got tough, with God set aside all the worlds’ problems to take a side, our side.

In those days Crystal City rarely had decent football teams, and its basketball teams were worse. But baseball? In baseball Crystal City often ruled. If it didn’t win district, it came close, and when the team went on to win bi-district and even regional (there weren’t any state playoff), the whole town went wild. Out-of-town games would be broadcast on KBEN, the local station, and the entire town paused to listen, and when the team arrived home, its bus would unload the players at the small park in front of city hall where the statue of Popeye used to stand, for a loud celebratory rally, one of the rare times when the town’s browns and whites (and its handful of blacks) would get together to celebrate anything.

“¡Ooooooorrra los Javalines!”Maxima Flores, wife of Jonas, a regular umpire at the games would yell when given the microphone. “¡Oooooooorrrrrra!”

We found that hilarious but we went along, and for days afterwards, we’d greet each other in the school hallways with, “!Oooooooorrra!”

I NEVER PLAYED baseball in school. I was a decent hitter but I never learned how to field a ball and I would panic every time a ball was hit my way. But my failure to master the game never dampened my love for watching the game.

When I went away to college, though, baseball and I parted ways for a long time. My junior college and Texas State (then Southwest Texas State) both had baseball teams but I was too busy attending classes and doing other things I enjoyed.

The first professional game I saw was at the Astrodome in the late 1960s, when I was working as a counselor for the summer Upward Bound program in San Marcos. One of the field trips we took the kids on was to a game between the Astros and the Padres. I don’t remember much about the game, probably because I spent most of the game staring in awe at the giant structure and its domed roof.

I DIDN’T BECOME an Astros fan until 1980, after I’d started working for The Houston Post and I became part of a group of city desk reporters who managed to get free tickets to the games. It was the years of Niekro, Ashby, Cruz, Cedeño, Puhl, J.R., Cabell and other great ones clad in silly orange outfits.

We went to a lot of games, our group did, and we drank a lot of beer. Too much. So much that we’d often roam out into the parking lots after the game, wander around and plead with strangers, “Have you seen our car?”

I have remained an Astros fan since then. When I was in Washington in the late 1980s, I would often drive to Philadelphia and Pittsburg at least once each summer to see the Astros play there. And I was again in DC when the Astros finally made it to the World Series. What I remember about that is walking the streets of the city after the final game, numb and emotionally drained, thinking that all hope was lost. Not just for the Astros or baseball, but for humanity.

AND NOW, HERE I am, nearing the end of another Astros season. Unless some miracle happens, it will go down as another disappointing season. Statistically. Only statistically. And that’s important, because statistics don’t measure joy and excitement. They don’t measure pleasure. They don’t measure thrills. And that, my friends, is what the Astros have given me all these past six months.

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Our morally indefensible minimum wage

Posted on September 12, 2015 by juanzqui7

[I came across this column I wrote for The Houston Post in February 1995. I post it here not because I think it’s that great, but rather because I was struck how little has changed over the last 20 years when it comes to this issue.]

SIXTY DOLLARS. Somehow, that was always the magic number.

If my mother worked enough hours to ensure that her weekly take-home pay from the Del Monte cannery would be at least $60 – which meant that she’d worked six 10-hour days at the $1.25 minimum wage – we’d issue a collective sigh of relief.

Sixty dollars meant that when we went to Tío Juan’s small grocery store, we’d be able to pay cash for the week’s supply of food and other necessities; the tab wouldn’t be entered in the credit ledger, to be repaid upon our return in October for our yearly trek to the sugar beet fields of North Dakota.

Sixty dollars meant we could pay the gas, water and electric bill. It meant that if one of us needed new shoes, we’d be able to go to JCPenney’s to buy them.

It meant that in my mother had taken out a loan from the local bank or credit union so that my sister could go to college one more semester, she’d be able to make the monthly installments on the note.

Sixty dollars meant we could make another payment to Dr. Poindexter, who owned the hospital and the pharmacy and allowed us to pay on credit.

In short, $60 meant peace of mind, if only for that week. The next, my mother’s check might be $50, or $40, or less – or there might not be a check at all.

One bad freeze would kill the spinach crop and that would mean the end of the weekly paychecks for an entire season. When that happened we’d have to survive on the $20 or $30 in unemployment benefits (if she had worked enough to qualify for benefits) and what little we could earn on weekends out in the field working at 75 cents an hour (the minimum wage excluded farm work).

ONCE, ONE OF my sisters talked my mother into taking a maid’s job because it would provide a steady paycheck. It did – $30 a week. When she returned to the cannery, she had lost her seniority and that meant less work. She never gave up, though. Every day, she’d hitch a ride to the cannery just in case somebody had failed to show up. If she didn’t get hired, which was usually the case, she’d do the same thing for the evening shift.

In case you think of this as a woe-is-me column, it isn’t. Those were relatively good time for us (although I can’t speak for my mother). We owned our house so we didn’t have to worry about rent. Gasoline often sold for a quarter a gallon. A candy bar was a nickel. A movie ticket 40 cents, a loaf of bread a quarter and milk 30 cents a quart.

It wasn’t paradise, but neither was it the oppressive misery of Appalachia or big-city slums. We never lost hope; we all believe that eventually, through education and/or hard work, we would escape that kind of life, and we did

No, this column is about the minimum wage debate. In the three decades since my mother was struggling to support us on $1. 25 an hour, the minimum wage has increased by 240 percent.

If the price of bread increased at that same amount, a loaf would cost you 69 cents today. So would a gallon of gas. A candy bar and a bag of Fritos would be 12 cents each. A movie ticket 96 cents, and popcorn would be a quarter.

THE POINT IS that there is no way anybody can justify opposing an increase in the minimum wage so that poor people can have close to the same buying power they used to have.

The usual argument against increasing the minimum wage is that we all suffer as a result of increased prices for consumer goods and services.

Why? Nowhere is it written that paying people a just, living wage means raising prices. Most companies can pay higher wages without raising prices if they’d be willing to sacrifice a bit on the profit in corporate executives sides.

But what if prices were to go up? Why should those at the bottom suffer just so the rest of us can continue to enjoy our pampered existence? Small businesses will be hurt, you say? Possibly, but no one has a right to exploit others’ labor to ensure his own survival.

The current wage disparity makes as a nation that engages in the form of economic slavery. It is both cruel and immoral, and no nation – especially one that prides itself on its religious foundation – can justify such a system

Sen. Phil Gramm – who’s been on the taxpayer’s payroll his entire adult life — says he wants those “riding the wagon” to get off “and help the rest of us pull.” The truth is that most poor people don’t have time to ride Phil Gramm’s wagon: they are too busy trying to survive on $4.25 an hour.

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Letter from Barbados

Posted on September 6, 2015 by juanzqui7

[Note: for an explanation on what I was doing in Barbados, please see the previous post.]

February 20, 1984

“WE’RE ALL thinking about you,” she told me. [Houston Post Publisher Doug] Creighton’s secretary, that is. Should I believe her?

Of course I shouldn’t.

She had just called to check on how I was doing, and to see whether I was satisfied with the arrangements worked out here with T.S. Int’l Services Ltd, my new employer.

I told her everything is mighty OK.

What a nice girl.

I talked to [Editor] Peter [O’Sullivan] today, for the first time since I filed my stories. I didn’t even know if they’d run any of them or whether he had decided to throw them all away. I filed four of them, and apparently the only one of the straight news stories they didn’t use was the one I thought was the best one. It was about the political situation in Grenada.

Peter was a baby: he lied and told me he thought the stories were great.

He wants me to do a travel piece on Barbados. I don’t want to do it. I don’t know how. If I do it, do you think I should mention Petite Monique? PM, as we who know her call her, is the belly dancer at the Rockley Resort Club. I saw her last night, the first time I’ve been to the club.

It was horrible. PM did only one piece, an unimpressive one at that, then the resort’s assistant manager took over the mike and went into a long monologue that reminded me of the Bill Murray night club acts on Saturday Night Live. Truly, truly bad.

So I came home and did some work on my second great (unfinished) short story. I’m so good at writing short stories, I amaze myself. As long as I don’t have to finish them. Maybe I can hire someone to do that.

I HAD ANOTHER run-in with Johnny B. today – the third one in two days. It’s getting aggravating. He insists on climbing through the window of my other bedroom and clinging to the mirror frame. He just sits there and glares at me with his green eyes and dares me to do something about it. I usually just get a broom and chase him back out the window, but today he slid into the air-conditioner and I could do nothing.

Finally, I left him alone – or at least he thought I had left him alone. I was behind the door, staring at him through the crack that I’d left between the door and the doorframe. After about ten minutes, he climbed out and back onto the wall. I then pounced on him and chased him out again. This time I closed the window behind him. I’ll be damned if I’ll have a goddamn lizard sitting on my mirror frame!

As you can tell, this house has no screens. None of the houses on the island do. As you can also tell, I’m going crazy here. I spend my days sitting on my patio, saying, “Hi, how ya’ll?” to the Canadian golfers who walk by on their way from one hole to the next. They are all middle-aged, and they all look like Doug Creighton, even the women.

I DON’T KNOW a soul on his island, and I’m not sure I want to know any. Sunday was particularly bad, until I finally called Houston and talked a while with Margaret and Roz. Then I went to the “Gaming Room” where I played the slot machines and the pinball machines. I’m so bored I’m tempted to take up golf, to join all those other fools tramping around all day chasing a little white ball.

It’s not that bad, though. I’d just come off three harrowing days where I was trying to file my stories using the Radio Shack computer and I couldn’t get the computer in Houston to acknowledge my computer’s existence. Worse, because I still don’t have my own phone, I’m using one that’s part of the resort’s phone system, and I have to go through the switchboard. At first they wouldn’t let me place any collect calls until I went down to the desk and paid a $5 fee each time. Even after I got that cleared, it took forever for the operator to answer, then another forever for them to place the call with the overseas operator.

Worse, nobody in Houston seemed to care. I’d tell them to call me if the story came through and they’d try once, get a busy signal and forget about it. Finally I got all of the stories in – but it pretty much ruined my nerves. I couldn’t even leave the apartment because I kept waiting for the calls from Houston that never came.

ON FRIDAY I walked almost all the way downtown – about four miles – and fooled around there for a while. I stopped in briefly at the USIS office to introduce myself to the folks there. They seemed nice enough and I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of them once I figure out my routine. [I never saw them again!]

I also joined a health club that’s about a mile and a half from here, and I walk/run there ever other day. I’ve also started running again, and swimming every day. [I never did go to the health club much after the first couple of weeks!]

SUNDAY I LEAVE on my first major trip – to El Salvador for a week, followed by four days in Costa Rica. I return on March 8, only to go back to El Salvador for another week on the 18th, to be there for the March 25 election.

I’m looking forward to that. I guess I’m too dumb to be scared – although that might change once I get there – and I have this strange feeling that I’m just a toy reporter, pretending to be a foreign correspondent, until I get into a place like El Salvador, where things are happening. I guess I am eager to justify my life of (lonely) luxury.

GRENADA WAS GREAT, but I was there was four months after the real action [the American invasion], so it doesn’t really count. I did have a blast, though. It is absolutely the most beautiful island I’ve ever seen. Truly glorious. I loved it and wanted to stay there forever.

[During the first two days there I stayed at a private house on a hill overlooking the bay. Sitting outside looking at the lights beneath me was beautiful. Until the power went out and there was total darkness. That happened several times each night. My housing was arranged by the company’s Barbados representative, who had told me to go to an address in St. Georges where somebody would take me to the house. When I got to the airport, though, I was faced with immigration forms that demanded to know where I would be staying. Since I had no idea and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of explaining everything, I wrote down, “Holiday Inn,” because I had read that there was a Holiday Inn on the island. When the official read that, he gave me a puzzled look but allowed me to proceed anyway. I later learned that the Holiday Inn had been taken over by the U.S. Army. After the first two nights, I got myself a room – a small cabin on the beach — in the best resort on the island.]

The people of Grenada were so friendly, and so eager to help. I was a little lonely there too, at first, until the last couple of days when I met a young couple from Sweden and an Italian guy who was with them. The Italian kept looking for women “for to fock.”

We had a great time together – when I wasn’t working, of course – and the last night I was there we went out to eat at an English Pub way up in the hills. Afterwards we ended up at a deserted bar where the owner was nice enough to keep serving us beer until we finally decided to leave – way past his bedtime, it was obvious. We talked about everything, from nuclear disarmament to sports. I, of course, got pretty excited about defending baseball while the Swedes kept insisting soccer was best and the horny Italian pushed basketball.

My hangover the next morning was horrendous, and it didn’t help that to get to the airport, I had to take a taxi over a treacherous, winding and bumpy mountain road.

[I made one more trip to Grenada later that year, to cover the first election since the U.S. election. By this time the new airport (built with the help of the Cuban government) had been completed and I didn’t have to fly into the old airport on the other side of the island, which required pilots to weave their way through surrounding mountains to make their approach. This time I wasn’t the only foreign reporter on the island, and by this time I was seen as a veteran by some of the others because I had been to the island before. That was a good feeling.]

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My life as a Bajan: Stranded in Barbados

Posted on September 5, 2015 by juanzqui7

LATE IN 1983, a few months after the Toronto Sun bought the Houston Post, the new owners decided to take advantage of a treaty that would allow them to funnel their U.S. profits through Barbados and back to Canada, to lower their tax obligations. In order to do that, they needed to establish a shell company in Barbados and that company needed to have at least one employee in that Caribbean nation.

This was not long after Reagan had invaded the tiny island of Grenada, about 90 miles from Barbados. There were also a lot of conflicts in Central America, with wars raging in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

My Canadian bosses thought about all this and came up with a plan. Instead of hiring a Bajan (a Barbados citizen) to sit in an office in downtown Bridgetown all day, doing nothing, why not send a reporter down there. That reporter could use Barbados as a base from which to fly to Grenada and other Caribbean nations, Central America, and South America to report on the conflicts, elections, etc. They apparently looked at a map of the Caribbean and decided it would be easy to fly from Barbados to all those hotspots.

So, now that they had this brilliant plan, they needed a reporter. They had three criteria: the reporter must be single, must have a passport and must speak Spanish. Of all the people in the Houston Post newsroom, only one person met these requirements: moi.

My initial instict was to say, “Hell no!” I have never been a very adventurous person. I liked living in the United States and I had never harbored any ambitions of being a foreign correspondent. Maybe, if they had asked me if I wanted to report out of Paris or Rome or Madrid or even Mexico City, I might have jumped at the suggestion.

But Barbados? (Or The Barbados, as the Canadians referred to it.) I am not sure I had even heard of Barbados before I was approached. A quick look at the map told me that it was the easternmost of all the Caribbean islands. Why would I want to go there?

Well, check it out, my editor said. Take a trip down there, talk to the guy who is managing our affairs down there, and see what you think. So I did. I flew to Barbados a bit before Christmas and spent a few days there. Barbados is not the most beautiful island in the Caribbean, but it is an island. In the Caribbean. With perfect weather. Aside from its being a million miles from home, what’s there not to like?

I returned to Houston and told the editor I would do it. It wasn’t that I was convinced by the beauty of the island or the possibilities of the assignment. Rather, it was that I decided that if I turned down this job, which many other reporters would kill for, it would ruin by chances of getting any other promotions or positions I would seek in the future. Like returning to Washington, where I had gone to graduate school, and where I had worked for USA TODAY briefly after it was launched. Or like becoming a columnist, an ambition I was harboring even back then.

SO I AGREED to go to Barbados, but I told my editor that I had one request: that I wanted him to promise me that I would be seriously considered for any possible future vacancy at the Post’s DC bureau. He agreed, and I prepared to start my career as a foreign correspondent.

I made a final trip to my hometown and, because I knew my mother had no idea where Barbados was, I bought a globe and took it to her. I pointed to the tiny dot in the Caribbean and told her that that was where I would be living. I don’t know why I thought that would make her feel better. It didn’t.

A few days after the New Year, I arrived in Barbados and a taxi took me to my new home, an apartment in resort about a mile and a half from the beach. I think it was called Barkley Resort, but I am not sure. One of the first things I did once I’d settled in was to go into Bridgetown to talk to a travel agent about my first trips. The first thing I learned was that, contrary to what my bosses had thought, there was no way I could fly from Barbados to Central or South America – or even some other Caribbean countries – without having to fly back to Miami to catch connecting flight.

This worked out great for me because I had joined Eastern Airlines’ frequent flier club and I ended up racking up a lot of miles (Eastern was bought out by Continental). In addition, most of the time I had to overnight in Miami before making the connecting flights, and that allowed me to eat American food and watch American TV and call my friends and family in this country. However, the extra cost of flying anywhere out of Barbados I’m sure ate up into the profits on which the Canadians were counting.

DESPITE MY MISGIVINGS, it turned out to be a great adventure, mostly. I traveled to and wrote stories out of Grenada, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. I covered the Pope’s visit to the DR and Puerto Rico and I covered a United Nations population conference in Mexico City.

I did not do any real war reporting (thank God!) but I did venture out one day on a helicopter to the mountains outside San Salvador with an army colonel who was seen as a rising star in the Salvadoran army. We trekked up and down mountainsides and only once did we hear gunfire in the distance, and that evening I returned to the comfort of my San Salvador hotel room. A few weeks later, that colonel’s helicopter exploded in mid-air and all aboard were killed.

I also drove up into the mountains north of Managua (which became my favorite  city) one day with a reporter for USA TODAY. He seemed like a decent fellow but once we got out among the people in the rural areas, he behaved like the classical ugly American. He was so bad that I kept praying for the Contras to come out of the woods to kidnap him!

I had been told by news people familiar with the area that reporters in the region would welcome me with open arms and be ready to help me as much as they could. That turned out to be pure fiction. Most reporters wanted nothing to do with me. Fortunately, there were a few reporters who took it upon themselves to reach out to me and take me under their wings. Without them I would have been lost.

Ricardo Chavira, who was then with TIME magazine (and later worked with the Dallas Morning News), was the first to reach out to me.

June Erlick, who was a TIME stringer, also was extremely helpful. June, who has written several books on Central America, became a good fr

Salvadoran soldiers

Salvadoran soldiers

iend and we still keep in touch. She is now is the editor-in-chief of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America.

ALL IN ALL, it was an experience I’ll never forget. And, if I say so myself, I wrote some damn good articles for The Post, and took some pretty decent photos that were used with those stories.

This great adventure ended, however, a year after it had begun, when my editor proved true to his word and asked me to fill a newly created position in the Washington bureau. It was a good thing, for many reasons. One of them was that by this time Houston’s economy had started to tank and soon there would be no profits to flow through Barbados and on to Canada, which meant that the reporter who followed me was not allowed to travel anywhere near as much as I had travelled and so he ended up spending most of his tenure there stranded in Barbados. Poor guy.

(I started writing this as an introduction to a letter I wrote from Barbados to a friend shortly after my arrival on that island. She recently found that letter and sent it to me. I was going to post it with a short introduction but the introduction turned out longer than the letter! It’s not a great letter, but I think you might find it interesting when I post it in a few days.)

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Of cats and heroes

Posted on August 26, 2015 by juanzqui7

juanzqui7's avatarjuanzqui

AMERICANS – AND many others around the world – are suffering an extreme case of the warm fuzzies in the wake of the news that three Americans, two of them service members, had joined others in subduing a terrorist as he prepared to kill as many people as he could on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris.

Rightly so.

A potentially deadly situation that ended up with the good guys doing the right thing at the right time to ensure that little blood would be shed is something to celebrate, and the three Americans and others greatly deserve to be seen as heroes.

The problem is that after decades of our hanging the “hero” tag on anybody and everybody we admire, that tribute seems to have lost a good deal of its value. Everybody is a hero these days.

Anyone who puts on a military uniform is a hero.

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Of cats and heroes

Posted on August 25, 2015 by juanzqui7

AMERICANS – AND many others around the world – are suffering an extreme case of the warm fuzzies in the wake of the news that three Americans, two of them service members, had joined others in subduing a terrorist as he prepared to kill as many people as he could on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris.

Rightly so.

A potentially deadly situation that ended up with the good guys doing the right thing at the right time to ensure that little blood would be shed is something to celebrate, and the three Americans and others greatly deserve to be seen as heroes.

The problem is that after decades of our hanging the “hero” tag on anybody and everybody we admire, that tribute seems to have lost a good deal of its value. Everybody is a hero these days.

Anyone who puts on a military uniform is a hero.

Ditto for anyone who puts on a law-enforcement or firefighter uniform.

Teachers are heroes.

Nurses are heroes. (For some reason, very few doctors are seen as heroes. Maybe it’s because we resent their high salaries?)

Mothers are heroes, unless they abandon their kids.

Some fathers are heroes, mostly those (of all races) who are heads of poor families and do not walk out on those families. Single fathers are all heroes, regardless of their economic status.

School crossing guards are heroes.

And the list goes on and on, almost to the point of including any person who does what he or she is supposed to do. In other words, any person who doesn’t screw up is seen as a hero these days.

Sometimes, however, we call people heroes because we feel more than a tinge of guilt over the fact that we don’t compensate them enough. Think teachers. Think nurses.

And then there are the other kinds of heroes, people who are good at what they do: athletes, singers, actors, dancers, Wall Street wizards, Silicon Valley geniuses.

We call them all heroes because we admire them, and respect them, as we should (most of them). Again, it is right that we recognize and honor these people.

But — as is the case with the cat in the Geico desert/quicksand commercial who ignores the guy sinking into quicksand because ignoring people is what cats do — they are simply doing what they signed up for.

And, in calling them heroes, do we not run the risk of diminishing the impact of the word when we apply it to people such as Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guard Specialist Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler, three of the people who thwarted the terrorist attack?

We could, of course, call them super heroes, but that term has been corrupted by Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ant Man and other fictional characters. It would be an insult to call them that.

WE SHOULD KEEP the word hero. It’s a beautiful word. But we should be more conservative in how we use it; we should use it sparingly so that when we apply it to men like Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler, it will be infused with real meaning.

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Two horses and a donkey

Posted on July 14, 2015 by juanzqui7

THIS TIME TOMORROW I should be somewhere in West Texas, on my way to Lubbock, or some place near there, where I’ll spend the night before heading on to Santa Fe. I plan to visit friends there for a day or two before driving up to Boulder, where I’ll spend the next two and a half weeks.

The good news is that for that length I time I will escape Houston’s heat and humidity. (It’s not really that bad, really: I just emerged from a Starbucks into the afternoon sun and it felt damn good.) The not-so-good news is that while there I will be responsible for the wellbeing of three beings while their owner and master goes away to play all over Europe like a rich lady.

Two horses.

One donkey.

Before my friend Diane — the owner of the house where I’ll be staying and owner of the three animals — gets the wrong idea, let me assure you, and her, that I’m looking forward to being with los animales and that, while I have no experience in taking care of four-hoofed animals, I do not shrink from the responsibility.

It’s just that I am a little apprehensive about being responsible for the wellbeing of any other living, breathing animal – human or otherwise. I’ve taken care of dogs and I’ve taken care of cats and I’ve survived. In fact, enjoyed it. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t worried that something bad would happen to them during the time I was responsible for them.

I’ve spent most of the day cleaning up my place because it must be spotless when my nephew and his family arrive in a couple of weeks to take in a couple of Astros games. I’ve also typed out a two-page list on how to do things in my apartment and where the nearest grocery stores and pizza place are. Which blinds to close on which side of the apartment at what time of day to keep out the sun’s rays. Where they can find HBO and the Astros network and other channels on the TV.

I even drew a picture of my (very different and no-longer-in-production) coffee maker to make sure they operate it correctly.coffeepot

In a while I will start packing because I want to get an early start tomorrow, as soon as I finish eating breakfast, drinking my coffee and reading my paper.

I’ve got my cameras and lenses and other photo equipment, my binoculars and bird guide books, all in one place, ready to be packed. I’ve got my sketchpads together and I just got back from the art supply store where I bought a bunch of neat pens. I doubt I’ll use them much, but a man must have pens.

I’ve cleaned out my fridge, eaten what I could and discarded the rest.

ONE OF THE joys of road trips for me is taking a road never before taken, and I’m going to do that this time. On the advice of my friend Laura, I’m going to get to New Mexico without driving much in interstate highways. I am driving west on I–10 but only to Sealy, where I’ll get in State Highway 36 to Abilene, I believe. From there I’ll take another state highway to Lubbock and another into Clovis.

From Sealy to Clovis will all be new territory for me. (Laura actually recommended I take 290 to Brenham and 36 from there, but I refuse to drive on 290 because it has been designated the Ronald Reagan Highway.) My New Mexico and Colorado routes (also non-interstates) will be familiar, but they are beautiful roads and I am eager to drive over them again.

I still haven’t decided my return route, but it will probably involve going driving through parts of western Oklahoma, an area of the country I’ve never seen.

SO, WHAT DO I plan to do while in Boulder? I don’t really know. I now this much: I won’t be riding the horses. Never ridden one in my life and I don’t intend to start now.

My friend lives outside of Boulder, in the mountains (or foothills – I haven’t figure it out yet), and the area has numerous state and national parks and forests, so I will probably do a little hiking. I will explore Boulder and drive into Denver to visit its museums and other attractions.

I’ll take pictures and maybe do some sketching. And I have friends nearby that I plan to visit. But I also hope to just take it easy, catch up on my reading (yes, I just started reading “Go Set A Watchman”) and maybe a bit of writing.
And, oh yes, take care of the horses. And the donkey.

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And my favorite Willie Nelson song is …

Posted on July 8, 2015 by juanzqui7

THANKS TO EVERYONE who took the time to post a Willie Nelson song on my timeline yesterday. Thanks for humoring me and thanks for sharing your love for the talent of this great artist.
I spent much of yesterday watching and listening to those YouTube videos that you all posted. Most I’d heard before and have enjoyed immensely over the years, but there were a few that I had never heard – or heard of – before.
The rules of the game were simple: post a video of your favorite Willie song and at the end of the day, if any of your favorites matched my favorite Willie song, you would be designated the winner to receive a piece of original art from me. If there was more than one match, I would place the names in a hat and pick a winner.
However, in trying to decide which is my favorite, I hit a big stumbling block because I couldn’t choose from the top three, so I went with all three. And it turned out that three people posted one of my favorites, and rather than having to pick a winner, I’ve decided that all three will get some artwork.
Interestingly, although Willie has written many, many beautiful songs, my three favorite Willie songs are songs somebody else wrote. Here they are, my favorite Willie songs, not necessarily in this order:
Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain
Written by Frank Rose and first recorded by Roy Acuff, in 1945, “Blue Eyes” had been recorded by numerous artists, including Hank Williams, Ferlin Husky, Conway Tweety and Loretta Lynn, Slim Whitman before Willie included it in his concept album, “Red-Headed Stranger.” It was “Blue Eyes” that re-launched Willie’s career in 1975. Before this, his success had been primarily in writing songs for others. Others recorded this song since (including Elvis) but no one has had the success that Willie enjoyed.
He Was a Friend of Mine
Willie’s beautiful interpretation (used in the film, “Brokeback Mountain,”) is as soulful and haunting as the original — called “Shorty George” and recorded by an inmate named Smith Casey at the Clemens State Farm in Brazoria County, TX, in 1939 — and Bob Dylan’s version. An elegy to a dead friend (presumably a fellow inmate), it evokes sadness, longing and helplessness. The Byrds recorded a version of this after JFK’s assassination. For a more thorough exploration of this song and its many versions, go to Joop’s Musical Flowers.
Can I Sleep in Your Arms
This is also from his “Red-Headed Stranger” album. It was written by Hank Cochran for his then-wife, Jeannie Seely. Titled, “Can I Sleep in Your Arms Tonight, Mister,” it was released in 1973 and was her first major hit. The song shares a melody with the traditional cowboy song, “Red River Valley.” I’m not sure if Cochran adapted his version from another version, called, “May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister.” Both versions are about abandonment and loneliness and the need for human contact. Seely’s version is simple and beautiful, and so is Willie’s, but his inclusion of soulful piano, guitar and harmonica solos give it a depth that really pulls at your heartstrings.

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Happy hour and anarchy: good for the soul

Posted on May 29, 2015 by juanzqui7

I SPENT much of my day feeling depressed and frustrated over a letter from the IRS that was waiting for me when I got home yesterday following my South Texas trip. Not a big deal: not an audit or anything like that; the IRS just needs more information on my 2013 return. Unfortunately, I thought it was talking about 2014 so I wasted most of the day trying to figure out what its questions were.

So, when I got I got the email from a friend about a happy-hour gathering, I was more than elated to accept the invitation. The happy hour turned into three happy hours and they were just what I needed.

Great friends, decent margaritas, good conversation.

I was feeling good and mellow on my way home, so when I got to the intersection of Montrose and Richmond and saw the first few bicyclists of the weekly Critical Mass ride cross the intersection, I was not bothered, even though I knew that it would mean that I would have to sit at that intersection for some time, until all the cyclists went by.

Why the hell not, I kept repeating to myself. Why the hell not?

IN A CITY that treats cars and pickups as if they were gods, it felt good to see the bike people take over a major street. After my IRS afternoon, street anarchy sounded pretty damn good, and I ignored the honks and screams from the cars behind me. I just sat there and smiled as the light changed from red to green to red to green.

But when I heard an ambulance’s siren approaching from behind me, I saw an opportunity to engage in my own bit of anarchy. I knew that the bicyclists would stop for the ambulance and so I decided to follow it as it crossed the street, forcing the bicycle folks to continue waiting until I crossed the intersection.

They didn’t like it. Not one bit. They cussed at me and they shook their fists at me, as if I were breaking the most sacred of bicycling commandments.

But I didn’t care. Not one bit. I was engaging in my own bit of anarchy and it felt damn good.

I KNOW THOSE riders saw me as an evil representative of everything they hate about our car-based society, and I don’t blame them. But what kind of anarchist – a breaker of rules – are you if you complain that other people won’t obey your rules?

You’re either an anarchist or you’re not.

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50 years and counting: Looking back at an unremarkable high school experience

Posted on May 21, 2015 by juanzqui7

FIFTY YEARS AGO tonight I walked across a makeshift stage in the center of the dilapidated gym of my high school to receive my diploma.

When I walked out of that gymnasium, I never looked back. I never went back to visit my teachers and I never went back for a reunion. Our class never had a reunion – or maybe it did and I just wasn’t invited!

The reason I never returned had nothing to do with how I viewed my time at Crystal City High School (Hail to thee, our Alma Mater. Praise we offer thee. Something something something la-la, for ole Crystal High.) While those four years were not exactly the best of my life, neither were they the worst.

No, I stayed away simply because I believed that a high school belongs to high school students — and that there’s nothing to be gained by going back.

hsgradFollowing are some thoughts on this momentous anniversary:

RECENTLY, I CAME across in my old files a copy of the mimeographed program of that ceremony from 50 years ago. Among other things, such as class officers and faculty sponsors, it also listed the class colors (blue and white), the class song (“Maria Elena”) and the highly original and provocative class motto, “Every day gives you another chance.”

We also had a class flower, and it was the ranunculus. Really. Why would we pick the ranunculus? It’s a big mystery. I guarantee you that 99 percent of my classmates had never heard of such a flower, much less seen one.

I’VE THOUGHT a lot about my classmates over the last few weeks. There were 78 of us who got diplomas that rainy night, but there were many more who dropped out before graduating, mostly girls who married young and quit school. I know where a few of them are, but I have completely lost track of the majority of them.

Only one of my classmates is a Facebook friend. I’ve tried to do Internet searches on a few of them but I quit that after I hit a scam site that was trying to convince me my computer had been infected by a virus.

At least 13 of those of us who graduated are now dead. Three of them died in Vietnam. One of them, Juan García, was the first Crystal Citian to lose his life in that conflict and they named the town’s main park after him. He was a good, decent and intelligent person. We were not close friends, but we had a good relationship. Because he too came from a migrant worker family, he went to same elementary school for migrant kids that I attended. I think he and I were in the same class from the third grade to the eighth grade.

Another classmate died when the Air Force jet he was flying on a training mission crashed in Europe. Yet another became a deputy sheriff and was killed while on the job.

Fourteen of my classmates were Anglo. One was African American, one was Japanese American (how an Asian American ended up in Crystal City is a mystery but I would imagine that his father worked at the Del Monte cannery) — and one was half Mexican and half Anglo. The rest of us were Mexican.

The Mexican group was about evenly divided between those of us who came from migrant families – and who often entered school in late September or October, or whenever we came back from up north — and those from families who stayed in Crystal City all year and were able to start school on the first day of classes.

Almost all of us migrant kids went to two elementary schools that were called Airport 1 and Airport 2, because they were close to the town’s airport. They occupied school buildings that were part of the World War II internment camp. The others went to Grammar Elementary, with the Anglo students. Although I got along with students in both groups, and liked most of them, my heart was always with the kids I had gone to elementary school with.

There was not much socializing between members of the different ethnic groups, either on or off campus. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were some romantic/sexual trysts between Mexicans and Anglos, but they certainly did not take place in the open and they were never talked about widely.

LOOKING BACK, I have to say that ours was an unremarkable class. None of us went on to become famous or (as far as I know) super rich. Probably the most successful classmate is Frances Acosta, who became a medical doctor and practices somewhere in Nebraska. She was one of the migrant kids.

ALTHOUGH THE POPULATIONS of the schools and the town were predominantly Mexican American, the Anglo establishment controlled the school district and other local governments, and the overwhelming majority of teachers and administrators were also Anglo.

There was unabashed racism and discrimination. For instance, the faculty, not the students chosen the cheerleaders and band majorettes, and every year they selected only one Mexican cheerleader and one Mexican baton twirler. While they let us select our class and student body officers, they drew the line when it came to the selection of certain school and class “favorites.” They changed the rules so that only Anglos were selected as “most beautiful” or “most handsome” or homecoming queen.

We put up with it because we didn’t know it was possible to change things. All that was to change a few years after I graduated as a result of the Raza Unida revolution that led to the Latino takeover of the schools, the city and the county.

But at the time, most of us felt helpless. We grumbled about it but none of us was sophisticated enough politically to try to lead a drive for change. One time, during either my junior or senior year, I wrote a petition demanding changes in the system and I secretly circulated it. I managed to get a good number of signatures on it until one day my history teacher, Mr. Martínez, saw me with the petition. He immediately told the principal and before the day was over I was in the principal’s office, turning over my petition.

WHAT KIND OF student was I? I was a decent student (graduated 6th in my class). I enjoyed learning, but only about things that I found interesting. That did not include biology, chemistry or physics. I enjoyed history but I was turned off by having to memorize dates and battles and names of generals, and I was even more turned off by teachers who didn’t appear to give a damn about what they were teaching. I became a political junkie very early in my life so I thoroughly enjoyed civics, as they called government classes.

I liked math and was intrigued by the challenges of algebra and the pure joy of solving a plane geometry problem. I had a great teacher for both of those subjects. Unfortunately, those challenges became overwhelming when I got into advanced math and those joys became infrequent when I moved up to solid geometry. Unlike many people who swear they cannot find any practical applications to what they learned in algebra, I still use the algebra rules taught by Mr. Ray to solve some everyday problems.

But I think my favorite classes were English, both the grammar parts and the literature segments. There too I had good and challenging teachers. Learning and applying the rules of grammar and how to spell words were tasks that never proved difficult for me.

What I liked the most about English was writing “themes,” which is what our short essays were called. I often found a way to sneak in my political views into my essays, which did not please Mrs. Lunz, especially when I criticized the Anglo power structure that ruled the school system. She could not criticize my writing skills so she often resorted to put-downs intended to let me know that I was getting too big for my britches. Her favorite was “a little learning is a dangerous thing.”

As for my relationship with my fellow students, I was neither a leader nor a follower. I was never part of a clique and I never sought to be; I was comfortable in my independence.

The only time I became part of a group was my junior year, when I hung out with Tavo and Joe, whom I’d gotten to know over the summer in a migrant camp in Wisconsin. Tavo was a mechanic, like his father, and he loved cars. I spent many an afternoon in his back yard watching as he tinkered with his ’56 Ford, or other cars. In the evenings, I would join Tavo, Joe and others as we rode around town in that Ford, or park at the Dairy Kreme while shooting the breeze. Sometimes other drivers would challenge Tavo to a drag race (or he would challenge them) and we would all go out to the countryside to watch the two cars zoom down the narrow roads. That was probably the most scandalous thing we did, for we didn’t drink and we definitely didn’t do drugs.

By the next year, however, Tavo, Joe and the others had started dating girls and the group broke up and I again retreated to the comfort of my books. I loved books, and had since I discovered that there was such a thing as a library, in junior high.

In addition to being a loner, I was also an individualist (which caused me to have a brief flirtation with Ayn Rand and Goldwaterism, but that’s another story for another time). I sought desperately to be different from all the others, but not so different that I would open myself up to ridicule or abuse.

While I was not a “cool” kid, I was not a nerd. I didn’t go around with pencil holder in my front shirt pocket or a key chain or slide rule hanging from my belt. While most of my classmates saw me as one of the smarter students and often asked me for help, I generally tried to maintain a modest attitude towards grades and intelligence. I don’t believe I ever tried to show off, but I may be exercising selective memory here.

This is not to say that I was a silent presence in my school. My classmates could always depend on me to get our civics or history teachers to set aside lesson plans to talk about current events. I liked playing that role and I thrived in the attention it got me. I have always craved people’s notice and approval, and my classmates would probably tell you that I also took pleasure in drawing attention to myself by being a smart-ass to my teachers, especially those for whom I had no respect. Like Mr. Martínez.

While I was not a popular student, I don’t believe I had any enemies, and I don’t think any of my classmates disliked me intensely.

I think that if I played a “role” of any kind in high school, it was that of “the judge,” or “the wise one.” People mistook my relative silence for wisdom. And they mistook for impartiality my reluctance to get involved in matters that did not directly affect me. Constantly, I was asked to be a mediator in schoolyard arguments or debates. “Let’s ask Juan,” they would say, and it would be up to me to decide who was right. (Actually, they would say, “Let’s ask John,” because that’s how I was known in high school.) My decisions or responses were not always correct, but my classmates seemed to trust me.

I NEVER DATED in high school. While I knew early on in my life that I was different, I didn’t really know what it all really meant. I didn’t know whether my sexual attractions would stay with me all my life or whether I would outgrow them – or suppress them. I did have feelings for several girls, although in retrospect I realize they were more emotional than sexual.

The closest I came to having a “girlfriend” was my relationship, during my junior year, with a girl several years younger. Her name was Alma. She was the younger sister of a classmate who had run off and got married the year before Alma entered high school. Their parents were so upset by the older sister’s marriage that they forbade Alma to date or to go out at all without a chaperone.

We were both in band and I guess that’s how I got to know her and became attracted to her. We saw each other during lunch break. After we ate, we’d go to the auditorium or to the library where we would sit next to each other and talk quietly. We also sat next to each other on the bus during out-of-town band trips. What we talked about, I don’t remember. All I know is that I enjoyed being with her and that she seemed to enjoy being with me.

But the next year, when school started, Alma was not there. Her family had decided to stay in Washington state, where they had been going to work in the summers. I never saw her again.

I DID NOT play sports but I was an avid fan of all high school sports, baseball in particular. I loved baseball and I went to every single home game. The highlight of every spring was the annual baseball tournament. I would always buy a ticket for the entire tournament, which entitled me to skip classes to catch the afternoon games.

I was in band. I played clarinet, then oboe and finally the tuba. The tuba was the only instrument I could play relatively well. Why the director allowed me to play the oboe, one of the band’s most important instruments, for three years, I will never be able to figure out. I got all A’s in band (everyone did). Had it not been for band, my GPA would not have been as high and I’m sure I would not have graduated sixth in my class. It took me 50 years to realize that. Wow!

IF I HAD to pick a most memorable moment of my high school years, it would have to be that early Friday afternoon in November — during my sophomore year — when I was walking down the hallway that connected the auditorium and the main hallway. Our lunch hour had ended and we were all heading back to our classes. In the middle of that hallway I saw Kathye Briscoe heading in the opposite direction, with tears in her eyes.

“They shot him,” she said.

They cancelled classes a few minutes after that.

I STILL HAVE my high school diploma, somewhere in my files. It’s never been up on a wall. Along with it is an autographed photo of Lyndon Baines Johnson. When he was a senator, he would send a letter of congratulations and a picture to every graduating senior in the state, and I guess he never could bring himself to quit once he became vice president and president. I’m surprised I didn’t throw away that photo. Although I now believe he was one of our nation’s best presidents, I back then was not a fan of LBJ. He represented the Texas Anglo establishment and everything that was wrong with the state.

I DID NOT leave Crystal City right after I finished high school. Like most of my classmates who went on to college, I enrolled in the junior college in Uvalde and commuted to school every day from my home. It wasn’t until two years later, when I entered in Southwest Texas State College (Texas State University now) that I left my hometown.

I’ve never been back for more than a few weeks at a time. And, as I said, I never returned to good ole Crystal High. Why? Because every day has given me another chance, that’s why!

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