20181230.0430

On 26 December 2018, Albert Baca's "Remove Marijuana from Schedule I Drug List" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article responds to an earlier opinion piece on the subject of marijuana's legal status. After noting a bit of the history of marijuana's criminalization, Baca focuses on the promise of medical marijuana and notes that some relaxation of overly strict criminal codes must occur if useful research into that promise is to be conducted. Given the recent passage of the First Step Act, Baca notes, now would be a good time to take such a measure.
I have written about such things before (here, for example), and the comments I have made in other places remain relevant. In general, I favor legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana, though I am not likely to use either. (Being among the many who bought health insurance that could not be used and so since opted out of having it, I am not in a position to visit a physician to get a prescription, and my experiences in graduate school tell me that cannabis is not my substance of choice. Caffeine takes that role.) Baca's position is therefore somewhat short of what I would see, though I think his is likely to come about before mine--even if mine is almost inevitable. (I say almost because, well, humanity might manage to get itself dead by then, which would render the issue moot.) And it is not as if I think Baca is wrong; I am generally in favor of more study, deeper investigation, though I am also aware that calls for more study are often used as catspaws for delaying actions that need to be taken.
I know, too, that there will be many who oppose relaxing restrictions on marijuana--or any substance. Many of them will view such measures as reflecting a decline in prevailing standards of decency. And they will be wrong; a loosening of restrictions does not mean a loosening of decency when standards that have been in place are themselves, in many cases, indecent. And standards that have been used to curtail human understanding and to enact systemic racism across decades are decidedly indecent. Disproportionate and unbalanced enforcement is indecent. The wholesale warehousing of populations already traumatized by the experience and legacy of trafficking is indecent. Rarely do such things get decried by the people who otherwise bemoan a lack of decency among the general public, such that I have to wonder if they even know what the word means, unless they think it is "what I want to see everybody else do."
There are enough people who seem to think it does, certainly, and more than enough. (Even one is too many.) Many of the problems of the world can be ascribed to their words and deeds, yet they still say and do much and are heard and followed all too gladly. As the year comes to a close and another promises to open, it does not look like that will change--though perhaps the change for which Baca calls may happen.

20181229.0430

On 21 December 2018, John Eubanks's "That Time of the Year for 'Word of the Year'" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article relates its author's musings on competing word of the year contenders from various dictionaries of more and less repute. Dictionary.com, the OED, Collins, and Merriam-Webster are reported upon, with Eubanks's own contention following. An exhortation to align to prescriptive grammar standards ends the piece, deviating from the thrust of the rest of the piece and annoying in its reiteration of resistance to changes in language that are as being bad. (It should be no secret at this point that I chafe at seeing such things.)
Eubanks is correct that it is the time of year for such reflection. The ends of things prompt backward looks, and I am not immune to the impulse to do so. Indeed, in my private journals, I do so, though rarely in the kind of formal fashion to which I am trained. ("Rarely," though, means it has happened, and there are scrawled citations even in my personal journals, referring a putative reader back to earlier volumes in them. Because I am a nerd, and of one of the higher orders of nerdiness.) But whether I will be doing so in this webspace is still an open question. I do not know that it would be welcome here, or that I have enough on which to look back with analysis that would matter in any way. Not that a non-monetized blog with a dedicated but small readership matters in any major way.
Then again, given what else is in Eubanks's article, not mattering doesn't much matter. (I'm not necessarily pleased with the piece, if it's not obvious.) Eubanks's own contribution to the discussion reads to me as pallid, a brief note that ought to have received more attention than it does; the OED speaks for itself, but Eubanks's comments could only be had from him. And I am somewhat struck by the choices of dictionaries used and the relative eminence accorded to each; the OED is a better piece of work than Merriam-Webster or Collins, and Dictionary.com is a feeble competitor against them, despite it being given pride of place. (It is not an issue of online access so much as thinness and lack of interest in its materials; I'd love to have seen Urban Dictionary represented.)
What do I know, though? I've not done what I've needed to do to be able to weigh in on a word of the year, though I imagine I could go back over the work I've done in this webspace and look for the significant word I've used most in it. (I make the comment knowing that "a" or "the" will be the overall winner.) I've not done it yet, though I think that stupid might be a contender, given some of my other work. Others, less fortunate, likely are, as well. But I'll not plumb that particular depth; I worry about what I would dredge up. Others can sift through that silt, if they wish, and find what there is of value in it.

20181228.0430

On 25 December 2018, Fareed Zakaria's "Everywhere, A Growing Backlash to Populism" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article opens with a focus on French president Emmanuel Macron's political trajectory, initially a symbol of hope but currently (as of this writing) facing falling poll numbers and the Yellow Vest protests decrying some of the reforms he has sought to push through. Macron is used as a case study for a first-blush pessimism Zakaria proceeds to explicate and undermine. Despite the ongoing populist, nationalist fervor that has hold on much of the West, broadly defined, there is quite a bit of pushback against reactionary ideas and measures; political developments across Europe and in the United States are referenced as examples. Zakaria ends with a call against despair, noting that work is yet to be done but that it can be done to effect.
As I read the article, I have to consider where Zakaria writes from. He is not here, so far as I know; I somehow doubt that the Texas Hill Country is much on his itinerary, unless perhaps it is Austin--but Austin is barely geographically in the Hill Country and even less so, culturally. From here, at least, things do not look like Zakaria describes; if anything, the reactionary rhetoric is more emphatic here now than earlier in the year, the attitudes it reflects more deeply entrenched despite the provision of data. It matters less that a thing is true than that the right person says it, and the right person looks more like me than I am comfortable with. But my discomfort is nothing against the danger others face, here and elsewhere, because those who spout such stupidity as they do are increasingly emboldened.
And why would they not be? This place is something of a stronghold for them, though the foundations for such things are not so solid as they might be pretended to be; there is only so much limestone will support, after all, and it is not for nothing that so many come to the Hill Country to find healing. But if they do, it is because they need it, and an injury once incurred can be renewed far more easily than might be hoped. Perhaps it is the fear of that that spurs so much retrenchment here, so much clinging to thoughts of guns and glory, even or especially by those who ought to know better than they give evidence of doing.
Such an implication, if voiced more plainly to particular people, would prompt more pushback than is currently in place, and if those hands are so few as Zakaria would have us hope, still do they feel heavy for those upon whom they are laid. I may not be among them, and I hope not to be, but I know that too many others are who ought not to be--and that there will likely be more as phantom fears intensify. There always are, and then things come that are rightly feared, to the loss of us all.

20181227.0430

On 22 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News placed "Fight against Substance Abuse Can't Wait" in the online version of the newspaper. The piece identifies one of the difficulties facing the Texas Legislature in its upcoming session: funding substance abuse treatment. It also makes the case that the challenge must be met and defeated, laying out what is reported as necessary to address mounting substance abuse issues in Texas. Figures regarding the impacts of drug abuse on the state follow, and the article closes with a call to action that it is hoped will be heard and answered by those able to do so.
The issue is one in which I am interested, to be sure. As I've noted before, my day-job is at a substance abuse treatment facility; soon enough, I will be moving into administering it. The facility receives no small amount of its funding from the state; it contracts with the Department of State Health Services and the Department of Family Protective Services to provide outpatient substance abuse treatment for people who are identified as having such problems. Changes to funding levels therefore directly affect what my facility can do and whether or not I can make a living in a line of work for which I did not train but in which I find myself. Of course I am interested in them.
And it is not only for such selfish reasons that I attend to such matters. In the job I have now, I work the front desk at the substance abuse treatment facility. When people call in looking for answers and help, I am the one who talks to them first; I am the one who hears their stories. When they come in to register for treatment, I am the one who works with them to get them through the forms. When they sit for appointments, I am the one who sees them on their ways, the one who listens to them while they wait for their counselors to help those in front of them. I am not a counselor, to be sure, but I still see and hear much of what they do; I see and hear what the illness of addiction does to people. I see them when they need help and have not yet gotten it. It is no easy thing to see, and additional support for getting people the help they need--and that others need them to get, because there are always others affected than the ones who are addicted--is therefore welcome.
I know that many will rail against such things, claiming that the people who are in such trouble got themselves into it and should get themselves out of it--or suffer and die. But they are wrong to do so. While it is true that some get themselves into trouble, they pay for it in ways I cannot describe here. And there are many who had no idea they had a problem until the moment that they began to have the problem. We see a fair number of people who didn't drink until they could by law, and when they tried, they found suddenly that they could not stop; we see many others who are offered things that they accept because their doctors tell them to, or because they are told that it will let them work just that much harder, that much longer, and then they are caught. Society as a whole suffers when people leave it in such ways, when they are barred from returning to it; it benefits from reclaiming such people as have erred and seek to atone. And it is for such reasons that the editors are once again correct; more needs to be done to ease the burden of substance abuse, and what the Legislature can do to that end, it damned well should.

20181226.0430

On 20 December 2018, SM Chavey's "70-Year-Old Kerrville Business to Close Its Doors Next Week" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports on the impending closure of Melody Corner, a music store in Kerrville. The store's history is glossed, including its strangely eminent current and former customer list, which has ranged to Bob Dylan and David Robinson. Owner-operator Stan Morris's lament over the slow death of small-town music stores receives attention, as well, and while the article closes on a laudatory note, quoting approving patrons of the store, the impression cannot be escaped that such praise is too little, too late.
I make such comments from a sense of guilt about the matter. For I have known Stan since I was some four years old, when my late great uncle was playing with him (Stan is a guitarist and sound-man in addition to having run Melody Corner these decades). When I was an adolescent band-nerd, Stan was my go-to source for saxophone and clarinet reeds, and when I returned to the Texas Hill Country and to playing my grandfather's bari this summer, I returned to his shop to buy the reeds I needed to make it start to sing again. But I do not play my horn as much as I should, so I do not go through reeds as quickly as might be expected, and so I did not often find my way back to Melody Corner to trade funds for goods and help Stan stay in business just a little longer.
It is a shame, too, for good things happened at the store that I've rarely seen in other places. For but one example, the last time I went in to get reeds--the Saturday following Thanksgiving--I had my wife and daughter with me. They elected to pop into the store with me, since they'd never done so, and my Mrs. had heard me talk about Stan and his shop any number of times, almost always glowingly. When we went in, we found something of a jam session in progress; Stan and a couple of other people whom I probably ought to have recognized and didn't were sitting on stools in a circle, strumming and singing along. As Ms. 8 looked on, a smile on her face and wonder in her eyes, they sang to her--no clarion call, perhaps, but not the less sweet for being as it was.
Such things were not uncommon at Melody Corner, perhaps not a daily occurrence, but not so infrequent as to be rare. The store and the man who runs--ran--it were very much parts of the musical community of Kerrville and its surrounding area, a musical community that perhaps does not attract much attention to itself as itself, but still boasts some surprising talent. (The keyboard player for the Juantanamos hails from Kerrville, for example, and Robert Earl Keen lives there, among others.) While it may seem a small thing for a small music store in a small town to close after seventy years, to those of us who have been there, who have gone back time and again (though not so much as we ought to have done), it is not of small moment--and its like will likely not come again.

20181225.0430

On 20 December 2018, Madison Iszler's "Dodging Dogs, San Antonio Mail Carriers Deliver the Holiday Goods" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article portrays the labors of postal workers during the winter holidays, focusing on the experience of a long-time worker in San Antonio's North Side. The joys and challenges of the work receive attention, with engagement in communities being the key example of the former and dogs the latter; San Antonio is evidently among the worst cities in the United States for dogs attacking postal carriers. In all, however, the work of the US Postal Service is presented favorably, both as a rewarding endeavor and as done by good people.
Iszler's article is another I hope to remember when I teach profile-writing again, because it is a useful example of such work. There is a clear central idea carried forward in the piece, as well as testimonial and other information to support that idea. Too, while that information is clearly made to connect to the central idea, motions to do so are not heavy-handed; they are clear without being obtrusive. It is something a great many writers would do well to emulate, including a great many who are praised for their ostensible subtlety. (I am not unaware of the irony of my criticism of others' work. I'd be in a better position had I more of my own work, and done well, in publication where it might have been rejected.)
The article is also good in that it looks at working folks with no small esteem. The emphasis on the workers' integration with the communities they serve, their constancy and connectedness, serves as a useful reminder that it is through the labors of such people that society functions. If there is to be a good civil society, it is because of such people and the institutions they collectively constitute. This is not to say that there are not bad postal workers--there are, just as there are bad people of all professions (and some might say more in some than others)--or that the US Postal Service does not have its problems--it does, as do all institutions (and some might say more than others). It is, however, to say that it seems to be more to the good than the ill, at least as it is now (I am not enough up on its history to speak to more of that), and an article that highlights its good qualities is a welcome thing.
And I suppose I would be remiss if I did not make any mention of the holiday being celebrated today across much of the world. Though this little piece is written into a buffer, drafted in advance of its publication, I know that the today of its release is one that finds a great many people occupied with other things, some of which I will share. I do not share all of them, to be sure; it has not been as a narrative persona wholly distinct from my actual self that I have written my hymns against the stupid god. But for those who find joy in this day, I hope they find it in abundance.

20181224.0430

On 19 December 2018, Terrance L. Green's "Districts Should Rethink Closing Schools" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports, in summary, Green's findings about the effects of closing schools. Highlighted are the negative effects school closures have on students' academic outcomes (when the opposite is intended), the community-destabilizing effects of school closures (particularly for majority-minority neighborhoods), and the long-term cost overruns that occur as schools close (despite short-term gains). In the end, Green calls on administrators to keep the welfare of students, particularly those coming from traditionally underserved communities, in mind as they make school closure decisions--and not just the immediate monetary goals.
Some of the same comments I made about Christopher Brown's kindergarten piece apply to Green's piece, as well. While the topic Green treats, or the approach taken to that topic, seems to work better than Brown's in terms of functioning as a survey, I still find myself wanting more detail. (Where Green makes comments about research showing things, I want to see at least a link to that research, for example.) And I understand that decisions are ultimately made by others than have to endure their consequences, especially over longer periods of time; it is not administrators in school district central offices who suffer from others' children being further away from their homes, after all, nor yet is it legislators whose systems of funding and "oversight" contribute to the circumstances in which schools might find themselves facing closure and the communities connected to those schools displacement.
As with the Brown piece, however, Green's piece is spot on. There are times when schools need to be closed, certainly; most of them have to do with the physical facilities being unusable. And, particularly at the elementary level, schools should be where the students are, so relocating campuses based on shifting enrollment makes some sense--but there's a difference between relocation and closure. Shuttering them, consolidating operations and taking away community focal points, does serve to de-identify people and to re-divide communities that have developed more or less organically and are more authentic, potentially more supportive than otherwise would be the case. Doing so for money says to the families that the schools had served that they are less important than lucre--which is not a message most enjoy hearing. In effect, it says to people that the schools do not care about them; is it any wonder that the people will retort that they do not care for the schools? How could they not do so? Yet even that reaction--sensible and natural as it has every indication of being--is one that is decried.
I begin to understand why so many of the students I have had, and at every school where I have taught, have subscribed to conspiracy theories. There are no few instances when it seems that certain groups are, in fact, out to get others, that shadowy cabals orchestrate events to their advantage--and it seems more so for those who more often serve as the sacrificial pawns in the obscure chess game being played...

20181223.0430

On 18 December 2018, Liz Teitz's "Closed College's Stranded Students Have Plenty of San Antonio Company" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. Opening with one affected student's story, the article reports on the recent deaccreditation and closure of Education Corporation of America schools, as well as other for-profit school closures and the difficulties students affected by those closures face as they try to balance discharging debts incurred and transfer of credits to other, hopefully more stable institutions. Other affected students' stories and comments illuminate the situation that many others face, and the article closes on a comment about the relative value of a potentially thwarted education.
The piece follows up on earlier comments Teitz made and which I discuss here. As I look back at the earlier piece and the current, I notice that the students quoted are all identified as female, and while it is likely as a function of the curricula taught at the now-lapsed Brightwood College, which seemed to focus on the feminized field of nursing, it is at odds with my experience teaching at for-profit schools. Those I've taught at have been more populated by male students than female, at least so far as I can tell, and I've taught in the putative service courses of the English composition sequence for the most part; those courses, per Timothy Carens's "Serpents in the Garden," serve as a microcosm for the schools as a whole, since they are among the few universally required courses (and the students at for-profit colleges are not typically those who have AP, CLEP, or dual-credit work to exempt them from sitting for them), so if I have perhaps one or two female students in a class of ten, then I have to expect that the enrollment in the school at large is similar.
But whether or not the reporting matches my experience, there is an implication in it, namely that it is largely women who are affected by the closures of for-profit colleges. And that has implications in turn. For for-profit colleges are typically attended by those who are obliged to defer their education--people like my mother, who is a graduate of such a school (long) after having attempted a degree while in the US Navy. She was, for several reasons that I'll not go into, obliged to set aside her education on her initial attempt and to defer a second attempt for what ended up being decades until she finally did find her way to a for-profit school, where she thrived. Conversations with my students suggest that the same is true for them; they had had to set aside their educations for some time, their reasons varying but their own. They have been and are members of less privileged populations, obliged to make choices that conduce to their further and ongoing de-privileging, and the malfeasance of the schools of last resort to which they turn serves only to keep them where they have been and where they are trying to leave.
When "the way you're supposed to do it" doesn't work, and through no fault of your own, you ought not to be blamed for looking for other ways. We are fortunate that more do not think to take more drastic measures than they have.

20181222.0430

On 11 December 2018, Maria Anglin's "Time for 'Tomboy' to Go Away" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article offers a rumination on the term "tomboy," situating it in the context of the events that gave rise to the rumination. A working meaning for the term is advanced, and history and context of the term are discussed. So are the problems with the term "tomboy," including the discriminatory underpinnings of the term itself. Anglin adds a note about the relevance of labels and their ability to influence--strongly--self- and others' conceptions before ending on a call to move away from the term "tomboy" entirely.
I know there will be some who will lock onto Anglin's comment that "It's not meant as an insult, of course. Tomboy is a well-meaning holdover word from generations ago" and decry the rest of her article--which evokes a wonderful sense of family, a seeming South Texas aunt talking in the living room or out on the front porch--as being "social justice whining." "Even she admits it's not meant as an insult," they'll say, "so why is she complaining?" But these are often the same people who, while bemoaning the "overly sensitive" behavior increasingly prevalent 1) neglect to remember that people fought duels over perceived insults not too long ago, sometimes fatally, 2) neglect to remember the many times that they complain about being shut out through something "not meant as an insult", and 3) get themselves into a tizzy based on people who act differently from them being in the same area of the world. Because even they, when wounded by a thing not meant as an insult, realize that intent and effect are not at all the same thing.
If we set up a thing as being different--and according it a distinct label does so by its very nature; the "normal" is unmarked, and the unmarked gets the privilege of being "normal"--then we set it up for censure. Any difference attracts attention, and attracted attention is never all to the good; there are always detractors, there are always jealousies, and there are always those who, because they are asshats, will look for targets. Such labels as that Anglin discusses help illumine potential targets. And if people deviate from the "norm" in ways that do not harm others--because a little girl liking to run and climb and jump and play outside does not harm others, any more than does a boy who likes to play with dolls or have painted nails--why should they be made targets?
And there is another issue. "Tomboy" is not the norm, but it is not especially censured. Boys who tend towards what are commonly called feminine activities are called other words that are censuring--and worse. Among the many resonances of that different regard is the oft-repeated bit that masculinized activities are perceived as better; a girl suffers less to be boy-like than does a boy to be girl-like. So it is not only those called "tomboy" who find themselves under an onus; those who are not, those who are more girl-like, are shown that their normalcy is a weakness. And it may be true that such machinations are subtle, requiring attention from a particular vantage to emerge. But we do not decry a number of other problems that can only be seen and addressed from one angle; it makes little sense to decry yet others for such cause, when instead people ought to do more to adopt the perspectives that fixing such problems need.

20181221.0430

On 15 December 2018, Maria Anglin's "A Remark that Went Viral and Wouldn't Have Been Asked of Male Stars" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports on an impertinent question posed to footballer Ada Hegerberg and her terse response to it before laying out what makes Hegerberg stand out in her field. The broader context of women pushing for parity in soccer, generally, receives attention, with the difficulties faced by professional female--but not male--footballers articulated before a closing comment connecting back to the school-age leagues and their players who recognize Heberberg's achievement for the marker that it is.
The headline is somewhat deceptive; the remark mentioned in it receives relatively little attention in the article. But that lack of attention seems fitting; it is a thing that happened, it was addressed, and more important things are receiving treatment. Giving it more attention (and I am not unaware of the irony) only serves to do more to normalize what is unfortunately all too common as it is, while passing over it in favor of other, more interesting things diminishes it--and such things should be diminished, both in terms of frequency and in terms of the regard given them. Perhaps, at some point, they will be diminished enough that they no longer rise to attention, no longer rise into the levels of the mind whence they can proceed to mouth.
I say so knowing that I have said such things at inopportune moments--not so inopportune as the remark reported upon, admittedly, but still far from politic. There are moments to say them, certainly, but not at an award ceremony. Even were the award being given for twerking, the receipt of it should be enough of an indication that the person so distinguished could do so; it would not support the question. Even less so does a situation like that in the report.
The thing is, while I and many others know that the fact of such a question in such a place and time is but one more iteration of systemic issues that have been too long indulged, others will look at the iteration and decry it as but a single utterance of a single person. They look at men--and it is somehow always only men, and almost always white men--as being Donne's islands to the continents of women and people of color. They will not hear that the bell tolls for them--nor that it does not toll for such behavior and such thought nearly as soon as it ought to do. But I will look forward to hearing its tintinnabulation sound long and echo longer, even if I have too often been deaf to its tones in the past and still do not hear as well as I should what notes it plays.