Monday Morning Musings

Or maybe I should say Monday Afternoon Musings. I took pain pills and a nap this morning, so I got to my office a bit late today, which threw everything off schedule. I snagged some cookies from The Pastry Chef's Baking website since I didn't have time to make anything to share with readers. Grab one if you'd like.

First off I've got to say that the closing ceremonies of the 2014 Olympic Games was a spectacular show. I especially liked the way the dancers formed the Olympic Rings with the fifth one forming a few moments later than the others. To some viewers it might have seemed like the dancers had missed a sound cue like they did in the opening ceremonies, but it was just a little whimsey that fit so well with other bits of whimsey throughout the show. The bear was also another highlight for me. What a sweet expression he had on his face.

Last week I read an article that Jacquielynn Floyd wrote about a man in Dallas who volunteers in the cardiac unit at Baylor University Medical Center. Even though women are more likely to be hospital volunteers, there are more and more men who are responding to that need. What sets Clarence Griffith apart from those other men is that he is the oldest one to regularly spend time with patient families who are in the cardiac waiting room, anxiously awaiting the outcome of tests or surgeries.

Griffith is 101, and he became a volunteer at the request of his cardiac surgeon following a triple by-pass surgery at age 94. That in itself is amazing as most people of that age could not tolerate such a physically and emotionally traumatic surgery, but that is just another indication that Griffith is not like most people.

So today I am celebrating a strong man instead of a strong woman, but I think everyone can agree that Griffith deserves the recognition. From my years of working as a hospital chaplain, I know what the kindness and attentiveness of this kind of volunteer can mean to families during these frightening and stressful times of life and death situations.

Griffith does this because that's what people are supposed to do. In her column, Floyd pointed out that Griffith has a very concise interpretation of Christian theology: "The Bible says we are supposed to help people."

She compared that simple approach to the "...sour political season of candidates using religion to justify extremist rhetoric.

"It's a wonder that they're talking about the same book. In Clarence Griffith's Bible, providing comfort and care and practical assistance to other human beings is the prime directive."

So let's raise a glass, or a cup, of whatever you have handy and toast a truly remarkable man. Kudos to you Mr. Clarence Griffith.

Did you watch the closing ceremonies? What part resonated the most with you? Did you watch the Kerrigan/Harding documentary prior to the closing ceremonies?

Friday's Odds and Ends

Tomorrow is the day. The Nite of Comedy plays on the stage at the Winnsboro Center for the arts in Winnsboro, Texas. If you are nearby, consider coming by and supporting the talented Young Players. 

200 Market Street - Downtown across from the Depot

I noted this past week that one of my favorite Dallas Morning News columnists, Jacquielynn Floyd, had issues with the spelling of her name on documents when she was going through airport security. Apparently the spelling on her driver's license did not match the spelling on her boarding pass. Long before this, I could have told her there would be problems. I never can spell her first name correctly when I mention her in a post and have often wished she could just be Jackie, or Jack, or maybe even Mary. All simple names to spell, right?

I'm rather fond of the simple spelling of my name. What about you? Is your name difficult to spell?

"Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us." FDR.

That quote caught my eye when I saw it at the top of a recent column by Alex Rose in the Dallas Morning News. She has spent several years in the Texas Legislature and wrote about how we can have our voices heard over those of lobbyists. Her message was that special interests groups do have significant influence in federal and state governments, but that does not mean that voters cannot have influence if they band together and speak up.

I won't argue the second part of that message. We do have to keep speaking up, even when it seems like our words are blown back in our faces by the wind of big businesses that have the biggest lobby groups. And one of the major things we need to speak up about is a drastic change in the political system, so businesses don't have the kind of power they do now.
 
Now for some fun from the comics.

This first one is from B.C. and Wiley's Dictionary: The definition of "Lip Service."

"Regular botox injections."

This one is from Baby Blues. The family is in a pet shop and Darryl says, "A puppy wouldn't be that hard to train Wanda."

She says, "O, really?

To which he responds, "It just takes patience. Look how well-behaved our kids are."

Then there is a loud crash and Darryl says, "Okay bad example."

Hammie runs up and says, "We just bought a tank of guppies." 

 I had to include that one as it reminded me of taking my kids to the grocery store - not something I did often, especially after one of them knocked down one of those towers of canned goods that stores used to have.

Do you have a favorite story of taking your kids to the store? Feel free to share it. And don't forget to leave your e-mail addy if you would like to be in the drawing for my Birthday Gift that I mentioned in Wednesday's post.

Monday Morning Musings

So, Governor Good-Hair as we sometimes refer to our esteemed Texas governor, has done it again. Rick Perry recently vetoed two bipartisan ethics bills and rescinded state funding for the prosecutors unit that is investigating his cancer research fund. 

In an article in The Dallas Morning News written by Christy Hoppe and Robert T Garrett of the Austin Bureau, Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice was quoted as saying, "Perry's office is an ethical black hole. Ethics reform goes in. Nothing comes out."

That is one black hole that needs to be closed up.
 

Perry also vetoed a bill that dealt with equal pay for women, saying that women have enough recourse in the Federal government for equal pay issues.

Umm, right. Like that is really working.

I think Perry's hair interfered with his brain when he vetored those bills, as well as one that dealt with truancy. A bill to put the responsibility on school districts to find ways to improve attendance among truant students before pursuing criminal charges was passed by the House, but Perry shot it down. Under the current program school districts can refer a student to court after three unexcused absences, and Texas is one of only two states in the country that prosecute truancy cases in adult court.

Really? What about family court? As any teacher and he or she can tell you that the number one problem with truancy starts on the home front. 

On the topic of NSA secret-leaker Edward Snowden, Dallas Morning News columnist, Jacquielynn Floyd, says that we do need to be concerned about what Snowden is possibly doing in China and how that affects our national security. However, she also says we need a serious discussion about "...balancing personal privacy and national security. And in that discussion we should all get to participate."

All in favor, raise your hands.

Yesterday I received one of those messages that authors just love to stumble across in their e-mail inbox. A reader contacted me to say how much she loved Boxes For Beds, my new historical mystery. In fact, she said she readthe book twice, and at first I thought she was the same person who had said that in a recent review on Amazon, but turns out she is not. To get that kind of affirmation for my work is such a thrill, but it is also very humbling because I know there are few books that I like well enough to read more than once. I am always so eager to get on to the next fictional adventure, I don't often go back to previous ones. I imagine that most readers are like that, too, so it means a lot to know that at least two people have liked the story well enough to give it a second read.

That's it for me for today. Leave a comment if you are so inclined and let me know what you are musing about on this Monday.

Monday Morning Musings

Well, I missed posting a book review yesterday. I decided to take most of the day off from anything online, and that felt good. I think we do need to disconnect sometimes. I went out to lunch with my hubby, and then we watched TV shows we'd taped, and I finished the jigsaw puzzle I'd been working on.

I've seen two of the birds, cardinal and bluebird, already this spring.

Last week, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd wrote about the recent decision by the  Transportation Security Administration to allow small knives and other sharp implements on airplanes. There has been quite a backlash since the decision was announced a few weeks ago, with many people saying it is a dangerous move.

Floyd asks us to look at the decision with reason instead of emotion. We all still have strong emotional reactions to what happened on 9/11, and many people are anxious and fearful when they are flying, worried that their plane could be hijacked the way the terrorists took over the planes that fateful day. Floyd quotes James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic, who has written extensively about flight safety. He contends that "reinforced coskpits and alert passengers make it impossible for a handful of terrorists with small weapons to hijack or crash a plane."

Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot agrees. He has written in his column for the Boston Globe that the 9/11 terrorists plan "relied almost entirely on the element of surprise, not weapons," and that surprise was a one time event." He believes that hijackers will never be able to take over an airplane with small knives again.

Whether or not we agree with those opinions, I think we should agree that we should bring more reason to the discussion, or any discussion, and not always act on an emotional knee-jerk reaction.

And now for a bit of fun. In the comic strip One Big Happy, Ellen, Ruthie's mother, is helping her with homework.

Ellen: "What type of sentence is each of the following - telling or question? Is that a banana?"

Ruthie: "That's easy. It's a question! And a dumb one! What else could it be? An Avacado?"

So what did you do this weekend? Anything more interesting than a jigsaw puzzle?

Friday's Odds and Ends

Initially my plan for today's blog was to write about Robin Roberts and all the attention she is getting regarding her illness and treatment. My husband commented yesterday that he found all that media attention a bit disheartening since there are so many other everyday people who are fighting terrible diseases, and they do not get any attention. He wondered what makes her a hero and not those others.

However, after reading the news about Robin's mother's death. I will leave her alone. My heart goes out to her as I know how close she and her mother were. I'm sure that Robin was hoping to have her mother's support during her treatment.

If you like YA novels, you might want to head over to The Blood Red Pencil and meet Michelle Gagnon, who has written a new thriller. She says that while the book is for teens, she thinks adults will enjoy it as well.

Cleaning up my desk the other day I ran across an article by Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News that I had been saving. I tend to stack papers on one corner of my desk with the thought that I might comment on a story. This one is still relevant because it is about the huge salaries that DISD administrators are getting, including the $185,000 to a young chief of communications. I'd do the PR work for a mere $100,000, but I digress.

The point of Jacquielynn's column was to express a hope that the administrators actually do some good for the school district to earn those exorbitant salaries.

Isn't it a shame that the bulk of education money goes to the top?

A recent Non Sequitur cartoon made me laugh out loud. Danae and her father are standing near the edge of a cliff where a group of men carrying American flags are walking off the edge. Dad says, "That whole thing about lemmings is just a myth. Political parties on the other hand..." Check the link for today's strip. Another good one.

Today's writing tip from the comics comes from One Big Happy

Ruthie and Joe and James are trying to write a story. Ruthie throws up her hands and declares, "There's no story to this story, people. What can you say about a character named Ricky Roadkill?"

With great delight, James says, "You could tell how he got squished."

Ruthie says, "Hmmm... Yeah..."

Then Joe says, "But forget about a sequel."

For the next three days my suspense novel, One Small Victory will be free for Kindle. This will be the last time that book will be free, but I will occasionally have other work free. With so many other reading devices out there now, I just don't see the wisdom in keeping the novel limited to Amazon. Grab your free copy while you can, and if you like it, please do let me know by leaving a short review. You would be amazed how those reviews help an author.

School Bullies - And They are Not Students

I read a distressing column in The Dallas Morning News the other day about reports of abuse at an elementary school in the eastern part of the city. Apparently the incidents of abuse were frequent enough that the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) prepared a 269 page report that was supposed to shed some light on what really happened.

According to columnist, Jacquielynn Floyd, the report was "a droll exercise in obfuscation, misdirection, and delay." The main body of the document, which totals 75 pages, had 61 pages either partially or totally blacked out.

The mess all started with claims that students at the elementary school were bullied and humiliated by the teachers. Apparently most of the kids who suffered the bullying were Hispanic students, and there were 22 official allegations, of which half were verified by the investigation. Some of the humiliating incidents included being forced to eat without their hands, being told their parents smelled like dirty socks, and there were allegedly threats to have parents deported.

According to the column in the newspaper, the DISD investigation of wrongdoing by teaching staff focused on an outing the teachers took instead of attending a training session on abuse in the classroom. I agree with Jacquielynn who asked why teachers would have to attend a training session to know it is wrong to humiliate and abuse the students.

On the other hand, there are some teacher who obviously need that kind of reminder. This brings to mind an incident that happened to my oldest son when he was in third grade. He had long hair, and it was always falling across his face. The teacher did not like that, so she called him up in front of the class, took a barrette and pinned his hair back in a "girlie" do.

That was wrong on so many levels, and I probably don't even need to detail them here. People of good conscience know.

I went to the school to talk to the principal, countering his initial defense that the teacher was only exercising her right to create a proper atmosphere for learning. My son was getting excellent grades in his classes, so obviously his long hair was not inhibiting his ability to learn.

Luckily my son did not have another teacher like this, but I know his feelings about school, teachers and learning was skewed by this incident. He never went back with the same enthusiasm or did as well academically after that.

Just think of how much worse the long-term effects will be for those students at that East Dallas school who suffered much more traumatic and sustained emotional abuse.

That shouldn't happen. Not to any student at any school. And shame on the teachers, principals, and administrators who cover it up. That casts such a negative spotlight on a profession filled with wonderful people who are dedicated educators; the kind of people who would never humiliate a child like that.

On a lighter note, I saw a great editorial cartoon by Jeff Koterba who is on staff at the Omaha World-Herald. The cartoon was picked up by The Dallas Morning News and features a couple seated at a table in an Internet cafe, sipping coffee. She is reading on an e-reading device, and he has his laptop open to a site about the payroll tax cut debate. He is wearing a button that reads, "I tweeted today." She says, You do realize that is not this same as voting, right?"

Friday's Odds and Ends

Getting a late start in my office this morning. The burn bans that have been in effect all summer and into fall here in East Texas have been lifted, and I had piles of dead brush and other things that needed to be burned, so I played with fire this morning. Felt good to get at least one big brush pile burned. Didn't roast marshmallows or hot dogs, though. Too early for that. Maybe next time I'll burn closer to evening and have supper, while I'm out there enjoying the beautiful fall weather.

According to a column I read about three weeks ago by Joe Nocera of the New York Times, Jon Corzine, CEO of MF Global Holdings, is primarily responsible for "running the firm into the ground." Yet Corzine stood to get  up to $12 million in severance if he managed to sell the firm before it went bankrupt. The sale never happened, and MF did go under on October 31, laying off nearly half its staff, including more than 1,000 employees of the company's broker-dealer unit.

For a while it looked like Corzine and J. Randy MacDonald, head of global retail for MF Global Holdings, might still get nice severance packages, but the latest report from Nick Brown and Jonathan Stempel states that the two have left the company without severance in hand. That is one bright spot in this mess that seems to be repeated endlessly in big business. 

In another bright spot, yesterday, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of assests for MF Global won court permission to distribute $520 million of cash to customers.  Customers won, top executives lost. Finally someone is getting it right. 

I'm all for safety, and I know we have had this discussion about airport screening before, but the process of protecting us from possible terrorist threats can get absurd at times. In a recent trip from New Orleans to Dallas, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd set off alarms at the screening. She was wearing a skirt that had a series of snaps down the front and around the waistband that trigered the alarm. "The screener said, "I can't clear this. You'll need a full body search."

When Floyd tried to show the snaps, which could hardly be large enough to contain explosives, the lady  simply repeated her statement. That's when Floyd admittedly "lost it." Rather than go through the indignity of a body search, and in a moment of pique, she decided to drop her skirt and send it through the conveyor belt to be X-rayed. She figured standing there in her tights and long shirt was less humiliating than having a full body pat down that includes someone touching her breasts to check around her bra.

That was a good plan until something went wrong with the conveyer belt, and Floyd ended up having to stand in the screening area without her skirt for much too long until the problem got solved and her skirt came through.

This is a good example of why I have not been on a plane in almost ten years, and may never get on one again. That, and the absurd fees for everything that used to be part of the ticket price..

Redemption or Just Good PR?

The other day my son and I were talking about Michael Vick and his comeback with the Eagles. I said I thought he should have been banned from pro football after the whole dog-fighting fiasco. My son countered that Vick had "paid the price. He got a lot more than just a slap on the writst. He went to prison for two years and lost most of his endorsement deals. Isn't that enough?"

That was a reasonable argument -  I really do respect my son's opinions - and I was almost ready to change my mind. Maybe the spin that Vick has been fully rehabilitated really was true, and I was being unfair in hanging on to my belief that the consequences should have been greater.

Then I read a piece from Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News on Jan 2nd. She reminded readers that Vick did a lot more than "engage in illegal dog fighting", which was the final charge of his conviction. He participated in the killing of dogs who would not fight, or who lost fights. Some of the dogs were hung like carcasses on a line, except they weren't dead yet. Others were drowned by forcefully holding their heads in buckets of water. And at least one dog was killed when Vick and another man held it by the legs and repeatedly slammed it into the ground.

When the story first broke about the Bad Newz Kennels and the charges against Vick, it was also reported that he threw family pets into the pits with the pit bulls. Apparently he "thought it was funny to watch the pit bull dogs injure or kill the other dogs."

People who take delight in torturing and killing animals are usually labeled a sociopath. They are not simply someone who made a mistake, paid for that mistake, and is no longer a threat to society. A sociopath is defined as:  someone who behaves in a dangerous or violent way towards other people and does not feel guilty about such behavior.

And the behavior usually starts with killing animals in horrible, cruel ways.

Sure, Vick has expressed remorse and guilt over what he has done, but how much of that is genuine and how much is just enough to get back into the game? What do you think?