The All American-Super-Championship-Series.

             I’m not much of a sports fan and I don’t have any teams that I regularly follow or root for. I know this is in part because my father was an immigrant who wasn’t into American sports and he also wasn’t very athletic. I remember once as a kid seeing him kick around a soccer ball and yes I mean once, that was it.

            In school I was never encouraged (or discouraged) to play sports. I went to a very small Junior & High School where there were hardly enough willing students to even make up a team. Our basket ball teams were a joke and our soccer team was co-ed. I did play for a couple of years but like my father I also wasn’t very athletic and didn’t see the fun in loosing or practicing or being yelled at by the coach.

            Eventually in High School my friends and I took up smoking, both cigarettes and pot so any thoughts of physically running around literally went up in smoke. About the most athletic thing we did was pass a joint, oh and occasionally toss around a Frisbee.

            In my early 20’s I started working for a friend’s family business and most of his family were University of Michigan alumni. The sales manager had been a kicker on the U of M football team and they were all huge fans. The company had season tickets on the 50 yard line and access to a parking lot a half block from the stadium so I got to go to a few games a year. It was fun, on crisp fall Saturday afternoons we would wear our Maze & Blue hats and jackets, bring food & drinks for tailgating and then join over 100 thousand people in the stadium to watch Michigan Football.

            When you’re surrounded by 100,000 excited fans it hard not to get caught up in the excitement as well. So yes, I cheered, yelled, booed, sang “Hail to the Victors” and even did the wave. It was fun and I was happy when “our team” won and disappointed, even a little sad when they lost. But unlike the diehard fans around me, winning or losing didn’t make or break my day, week, year, or life. It was just a game of which I had absolutely no control over no matter how much I yelled and cheered. It was a few hours of emotion filled entertainment, then on with real life.

            Other than the fact that Michigan just lost to “our” arch rivals Ohio State in an exciting double overtime game, why am I writing about sports? Because watching that game and thinking about the competition between teams from different schools, cities, and states that is such a part of American life made me realize that we just witnessed one of the greatest spectacles of our lives.

            Let’s call it “The All American-Super-Championship-Series”, that event so big we can only handle it every 4 years, the event that should be called “The Running of the Bullshit”, that national competition for the presidency of these here United States of America. Oh, and don’t forget the winner also get to be the “unelected” symbolic Leader of the Free World.

            That’s right, the election we just had was just a big friggin game. First we had all the players jockeying for position, then we had a year of playoffs where we picked the champions of the red team and blue team. The champs picked their co-captains and then we were off and running. They faced off in debates, gave speeches and rallied the faithful around the country. The pundits, commentators, and pollsters (as well as our friends on Facebook) told us who was winning or losing and why.

            Then on the final day of play, we the fans got to vote for our favorite team or maybe just vote against the other team. I say team because the reality is that many of us would rather have had someone else leading our team but we lost those preliminary games months ago. We watched the results come in and it was a nail biter. In the end, for one side it felt like an upset loose, for the other it felt like justice and vindication. For me it was just relief that the game was finally over.

So just like after one of those big emotional games in Ann Arbor, the next morning I got up made my coffee and went about life as usual, comforted in the thought that no matter win or lose there was a new season and a whole new ball game just around the corner, oh joy.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 17 of the following link. Winters Express 12/29/16

On Death, Driving, & the Digital Age.

             Today (as I write this) is the 14^th anniversary of my father’s death and it gives me one more reason to think about death. I don’t know what it is about me but I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t for one reason or another reflect on my own mortality. Sometimes I wonder if it has to do with my lack of religious belief. I don’t believe in heaven, hell, or an afterlife so I know that this is it, my one shot, my only life. I also know firsthand that life can be cut short with one sister dying at one month of age and another at 15 years old.

            You would think that with that attitude and experience I would be one to live life to the fullest. Unfortunately you would be wrong because I just live life on cruise control and at this point I’m closer to the end of the road than the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t and hasn’t been a bad or too bumpy of a ride but on the other hand it hasn’t been all that great either. Sometimes it feels like I’m spinning my wheels, driving in circles, stuck in a rut, or just plain not getting very far. Other times I wonder how did I get here so fast and who the hell was driving?

            To continue with the driving metaphor, my life’s always been like bumper cars, go until you hit an obstacle then just head off in another direction until you bump again. That’s been the dance of my life, cruise – bump – turn –cruise – bump – turn, over and over. What I never thought about while cruising down the road was that some cars come equipped with GPS. All you have to do is enter a destination and follow it until you get there, yea right, life is that simple.

            My problem is that I’ve always known that the final destination is just that, and I’m in no hurry to get there so I’ve just been taking a leisurely drive, sometimes taking the high road other times the low road. Nowadays that drive also includes the “Digital Highway” so let’s explore that road a little as well.

 Recently a good friend of mine’s older sister whom I’d known since I was a teenager died of cancer. She was a wonderful person and even though I hadn’t seen her in years I kept up on her with Facebook. Last year when she was diagnosed with cancer she posted it on Facebook and continued to post about her treatments and how she was feeling. This spring she posted that she had decided to stop treatments and just wanted to enjoy her family and friends in the time she had left. On August 20^th her brothers posted on Facebook that Mary had peacefully passed away and that’s how I learned about it.

That whole experience seemed kind of weird to me because traditionally death and dying has been mostly a private thing for the family and close friends. Now with the advent of social media it has become much more public. I’m not just talking about a natural death like Mary’s but also all the crazy police shootings posted from cell phones, the child refugee drowning, the collateral damage from bombings in war zones, and even the terrorist beheading videos. It feels like its nonstop death 24/7, no wonder I’m always thinking about it.

Another weird thing about death and social media is what does or doesn’t happen after you die. Since I started on Facebook in 2009 I’ve had four of my facebook friends die. Two of them still have profiles up, one of which reminded me to wish her a happy birthday this year even though she died 2 years ago. The other 2 have disappeared as if they never existed which is also kind of strange, in the conversations archives they are just labeled as a faceless “facebook user”.

          One of the things I wonder about when I’m pondering my mortality is my legacy or maybe lack thereof.  I never had any children so there won’t be any kind of genetic line carried on but what I do have is all these columns I’ve written for the Winters Express. Since I’ve posted all of them to the internet they should “live on” forever or at least until someone or something pulls the plug.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 17 of the following link. Winters Express 11/17/16

The man who thinks he would be king

             Recently the King of Thailand died after a reign of over 70 years. If you’re like me you probably didn’t even know that Thailand had a monarchy. I kind of thought that the whole royalty stuff was just an antiquated European thing but in doing a little Wiki research I see that it’s not.

            There are over 40 sovereign countries that still have a monarch with about a third of those being former British colonies that still consider Queen Elizabeth as royalty. The rest can be found on every continent except Antarctica unless you want to count Emperor Penguins as royalty. There are lots of different titles, king, queen, emperor, sultan, sovereign prince, emir, even pope and they’re all considered royalty.

            I’ve always wondered about people’s fascination with royalty in particular the British royal family. I remember how crazy Americans were about the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. It was shown live on TV and you could buy all sorts of commemorative plates and crap.

I also vividly remember when Princes Diana died because I was in Paris that night celebrating our wedding anniversary with my own “Lady Di”. We were staying with my father and I remember him being fixated on the news, I couldn’t understand why this was any bigger deal than anyone else being killed in an auto accident. But that’s one of the things about royalty; we the people are the ones that put them on the pedestal, we are the ones that give them super powers or should I say super status.

What we tend to forget is how these mere mortals came to be royalty. At some point in their family history an ancestor conquered someone else’s ancestor. They took the land and everything on it and said “it now belongs to me and my decedents but if you work for me and/or pay me I will let you live here and I will protect you.”

In essence the modern day royals are kind of like parents of adult children. Their subjects love and respect them, they let them sit at the head of the table and give advice but they don’t have to listen to them if they don’t want too.

Here in the United States we don’t have royalty anymore because way back in the beginning we fought a war to break free from the crown. I’m not sure if the founding fathers actually had a problem with the concept of being under a monarchy but they sure had a problem with the bureaucratic tax system that was built around it.

Even though we don’t have actual monarchs we still try and create royalty from our entertainers, politicians, business leaders, and wealthy families. In my lifetime I’ve seen the Kennedy White House called Camelot, Elvis the King of rock & roll, Steve McQueen the King of Cool, Michael Jackson the King of Pop, Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul, and Prince being Prince. In politics we may not have too many royals but we do have dynasties. The Bush’s, the Romney’s, the Kennedy’s, the Rockefeller’s, the Brown’s here in California, and maybe the Clinton’s.

So all this royalty stuff brings me to our current situation on the election front. I think that one of the things that make Donald Trump popular with millions of American people is (for lack of a better phrase) that he’s a “royal wannabe”. It really feels like in his eyes being President is the same as being King of America. Because he’s an entertainer, politician, and wealthy businessman many voters do consider him “American Royalty”.

Since we already equated royalty with parents maybe that’s why so many people will still vote for Trump. He’s not afraid to tell them what he thinks or what they should do and he’s promising to keep them safe, just like daddy.

On Election Day the choice for many will come down to King-Daddy Donald or Dynasty-Mommy Hilary. I know this worries a lot of you because neither one is the greatest of choices but I’m here to say, don’t worry because it really doesn’t matter. I believe that the current American presidency is like a modern monarchy, there is much pomp and circumstance but you can’t get anything done because just like in 1776 the bureaucracy is broken.

            Short of another revolution I’m not sure if the system will ever get fixed but since I already voted by mail I’m just going to sit back, watch a little reality TV until I get bored, then I’m going to turn it off and go on with my life.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 10/20/16

Marriage of ag,tourism makes Winters great place

            I’ve been reading with great interest the articles about the land use argument going on north of town and it got me thinking about what it means to be a “city slicker” living in a farm town.

I guess I’ll start with a little background on myself and what little I really know about farming. Until moving to Winters 15 years ago I had never lived anywhere that didn’t have a population of at least a couple hundred thousand people. Anytime I went to the grocery store there was food available, fresh, frozen, and processed.

            In the early 90’s Diane and I had a café at the Flint Farmers Market in Michigan. We got to know and see how hard the farmers worked just to make a few bucks. They would spend all week tending the fields’ then before dawn load up their trucks and head into town, some of them driving from a few hours away. If their produce didn’t sell then back in the truck it went along with any chance of a profit.

            When we moved to Winters we didn’t realize how much of an agricultural community this was. We thought it was just a small town, kind of a suburb of Vacaville. We moved here in June and that first September my sister in-law who lived in Vacaville got tickets for a fund raising event called “A day in the country” put on by the Yolo Land Trust. If I remember correctly it was out at the Hamilton’s property off of Moody Slough Rd. and we had to drive out these little country roads to get there.

            When we got there I was awe struck by the abundance of fruits and produce that were being showcased. They were grilling meat and there were wineries pouring wine, I remember Heringer Vineyards was sampling their first vintage of Petite Sirah out of a small barrel because it hadn’t been bottled yet and it was so good. I couldn’t believe that all this came from right around where we now lived. That’s when I truly realized that we did indeed live in a farming town even though all the orchards I’d been driving past should have been a clue.

            After that I started to appreciate the guys driving past my house with their farm equipment heading down to the orchards at the end of Russell Street. The ones wearing the white hazmat suits and towing the big blower tubes are kind of scary but hey, they were here first.

            One of the funniest stories I have about my ignorance happened shortly after we opened the coffee house. Early one morning around 6:30 we started hearing and seeing a helicopter flying low over the creek. My first inclination was to assume it was the police looking for a criminal. I started asking the few customers coming in if they knew what was going on and everyone was as bewildered as I was. Then Tom Duncan comes in and looks at me like I’m an idiot (his usual look) and tells me that they’re just spraying the walnuts across the creek.

            Having the coffee house gave me the opportunity to get to know some of the local farmers and ranchers, primarily the younger generation since the old timers didn’t want to leave the round table at the café.

Now I work for a farming family and that’s given me more insight into their business and yes, it is a business. The days of subsistence farming here in America is long past even though we love our gardens and our chickens too.

My point is that even though I’m an outsider living in a farming community, I accept the commercial agriculture going on around me and everything (good & bad) that goes with it. I also see the other side of the coin where the farmers have to put up with the additional traffic to get their equipment through town or no parking at the hardware store. The cost of housing for laborers keeps going up because more of us want to live here and I’m sure so many other things I haven’t a clue about have changed for them as well.

But living in a community is all about trying to get along and making compromises even though sometimes we are on opposite sides of the debate. For me what makes Winters a wonderful place to live is that marriage of agriculture and tourism. The history, work ethic, and delicious bounty that comes from our farmers and the restaurants, wineries, and places of beauty that draws the tourists.

           Sounds like a marriage made in heaven, so really, what are we arguing about?

To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 9/29/16

On urban redwood and smalltown changes

            Hard to believe that this is the 50^th column I’ve written for the Winters Express. I thought I would take this milestone as an opportunity to reflect on my perspective of living in Winters.

            When Diane and I bought our house here in 2001 it was really more about pricing than location. We had been renting in Vacaville since moving to California in 1999 but the problem was that we were already priced out of that market so we started looking in surrounding communities.

            I saw an ad in the paper “for sale by owner” in Winters. The moment I set foot in the house I got chills and an overwhelming feeling that I was home. We had to get it, but of course it wasn’t that simple. Long story short, with a lot of hook and a little crook we got ourselves a house.

            It was damn near perfect, a big Redwood out front and a palm tree out back. Half a block in either direction we had a funky little Irish Pub or the public library. Around the corner there was everything we needed, restaurants, bank, drug store, art gallery, antique shop, hardware store, and 2 video stores. We felt safe because the police and fire stations were barely a block away and the neighbors looked out for each other. There was an instant feeling of comfort and community.

            On Sundays I would walk up to Lester’s for pastries then come home and sit on the porch with my coffee and read the paper. On that short, quiet walk I would stop in the middle of Main Street and look west towards the gap with the sun shining on it and I would think to myself, “this is paradise”.

            But that was a quarter of my lifetime ago and my perspective, as well as Winters has changed. Let’s start with that majestic Redwood just 6 feet from my bedroom window. What I once thought was great, now I wonder who the hell planted that monster so close to the house, oh and don’t get me started on that nasty, seed spewing, frond dropping, palm tree out back.

            That funky Irish Pub is now a loud, obnoxious, busy bar/restaurant with an outdoor patio less than 100 feet from my porch, no more sitting and relaxing on a quiet Sunday or evening. Even the walk to the bakery can be a pain trying to dodge the people waiting for tables at the café.

            15 years ago when I drove over the freeway I barely noticed the gas station because I was so mesmerized by the view of the water tower, the Berryessa gap, and the town spread below. Now all I notice is fast food and what will soon be a massive training facility.

            The retail mix in downtown has also changed and I own up to my part in that change. When we decided to open Steady Eddy’s 12 years ago it was partly because I couldn’t get a good Cappuccino in town. The original idea was for a small coffee bar that just Diane and I would run and would fit into our quiet downtown lifestyle. But no, I let the landlord talk me into a bigger space that then meant everything had to be more.

            Around the same time, music and wine venues opened and thrived downtown. Tourists drawn by the new vibe started coming on the weekends, we started getting good press and a visit to the café by Triple D didn’t hurt.

            Now we have hotels and a Starbucks coming, more retail and construction on Grant and more new houses in the pipeline. With all the growth we’ve had and everything that’s coming in the near future I can’t help but wonder what Winters will look like, or more importantly, feel like in the next few years.

            For me it’s an emotional conundrum. On the one hand, I know that my living situation’s not getting better and there’s not much quiet in my future. I don’t recognize most faces around town on any given evening which takes away from that small town feel, and on the few occasions that I get in my car I’m surprised by how much traffic there is up on Grant or even downtown.

On the other hand, the value of my house is increasing, the business where I work keeps growing so some job security, and when I want to go out to eat or drink I have some wonderful choices.

So I guess from my perspective I can’t really say if Winters is better or worse, what I can say is that it’s different and it really just depends on if my glass of wine is half full or half empty.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 10 of the following link. Winters Express 9/1/16

Time for All American Road Trip

            My last few columns have been a bit on the heavy side dealing with race, politics, and the American flag. Based on their tone I’m sure a few of you might even think I’m Un-American, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s why in this column I’m writing about that quintessential All-American experience, the family road-trip.

            My family emigrated from South America to the U.S. for the second time in 1963 and we settled in Topeka, KA. My parents bought a small house in a new sub-division and my dad worked at a Psychiatric Hospital. Even though my parents didn’t speak “good English”, us kids had no problems fitting in. We walked to school, road our bikes around the neighborhood, went to the drug store for soda’s and comics, went out for pizza, all that good stuff. We were living the American dream so why not take it to the next level.

            We started off small, taking a drive to Missouri for a two week vacation in at an old lake resort somewhere in the Ozarks. I was 7 or 8 years old and of what I can remember, it was the best time of my life to that point. I got to go fishing, swimming, water skiing, playing in the sand and out in the woods. I did all those great American kid things but what I remember the most and what is actually bringing tears of joy to me as I think back is DANCING.

I remember that in the evening after it got dark the teenagers and young adults brought out their musical instruments, lit bonfires, (probably drank booze) and had a dance party. This was the mid-sixties and I vividly remember dancing the jerk to Louie Louie as carefree as a kid can be. That was before I became self-conscious of my weight and looks, I was dancing like a little crazy man, laughing, sweating, jumping around and having the time of my young life.

With that trip being a success my parents started planning the real road-trip. Doing research on the trip we took back then I truly believe that my parents and my father in particular must have been insane optimists. I’m not sure at what point my father turned into the dark pessimist I knew most of my life, but back then, wow.

The trip they planned was five kids’ ages 5 ½ to 12 and 2 adults in a 1966 Dodge Dart going from Topeka to Manzanillo, Mexico, a little over 1700 miles one way, was that crazy or what?

I don’t remember any of the details of the drive itself other than really having to pee a couple of times and my dad not wanting to stop. My mom says that my little sister spent most of the trip on the floor under her feet and that the rest of us took turns riding in the middle up front. Since we didn’t wear seatbelts back then we could easily move around and climb over each other whenever we wanted.

At the small hotel on the coast, I remember having tropical fruit in the mornings for breakfast as the Iguanas sunned themselves on the rocks next to us. I also remember not going in the ocean because right next to the hotel the locals were fishing for small tiger sharks. What I remember most about that part of the trip was tasting a bean tostada for the first time in my life, it was so good.

Also staying at our hotel were some Archaeology students who were collecting artifacts from where a new road was being built. We went out with them one day but didn’t find much and on the way back to the car my parents were approached by some of the construction workers who sold them a bag of artifacts off the back of their truck for $10, score it was like winning the lottery. After that we headed back to Kansas stopping in Mexico City to see the Aztec Sun Stone at a museum and to visit the pyramids.

So that was our last big family road trip if you don’t count driving from Kansas to Michigan when we moved there in 68. When my parents divorced in 1974 they split up the Mexican artifacts and my mom kept hers in a display case for when she was ready to sell them and retire.

A few years ago she got her chance and sent pictures of them to a museum that was looking for Pre-Colombian art; they came back with a whopping value of $25. So kind of like Humphrey Bogart said in the Maltese Falcon, road-trips “the stuff that dreams are made of”.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 17 of the following link. Winters Express 8/4/16

A pledge to nothing but the Human Race.

            I pledge allegiance to NO thing or place, for my allegiance lies with the Human Race, a world with no borders, no prophets, no reasons for war, that’s what I pledge, of this I am sure.

            I thought I should start this column with an alternative pledge because if I started it by stating that I don’t like reciting the pledge to the American flag some of you might not give me a chance to explain.

            I’ve been reciting the pledge of allegiance since the first grade and it’s always made me feel uncomfortable. For me the most uncomfortable part has been the “one nation under God” section. Like many of my fellow Americans, I’ve never believed in God so to me that line is divisive and it nullifies the concept of an “indivisible nation”.

            What I see as the larger issue is the whole concept of “Pledging Allegiance”. Isn’t that kind of antiquated? If we look at the origin of the word, “the fidelity owed by a subject to a sovereign”, so when was the last time you owed a Liege or feudal lord? And for that matter when was the last time you felt like a “subject”, isn’t that why we fought for independence from the crown?

            A more modern and useful definition of allegiance is “loyalty or commitment to a group or cause”. As social humans it’s natural for us to want to feel we are part of a group. Whether it’s family, friends, work, school, sports team, ethnic group, common religion, ancestral origin, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc, etc, etc… The list could go on forever and it’s not just one group that we feel a part of. There is a hierarchy to our group loyalties and in reality where does the flag and country stand? Would you betray your family and friends if “big government” came a calling?

            To me reciting the American pledge has always felt like indoctrination or brain washing. We are being told or are telling ourselves that the United States is the best and yes that does makes us feel good, but is that reality? Look around, are we an undivided electorate? Is there equal justice for all? Do all our citizens have the liberty to live safe, healthy, and productive lives?

            Why does a mentally disturbed Black Army War Veteran feel our country is so unjust that his only recourse is to kill White Police Officers?  And then as if to reinforce that injustice he is summarily executed using explosives when he was trapped and they probably could have waited him out or used less lethal means to subdue him.

            But I digress, the whole Dallas incident has me very concerned on so many levels, but we will leave that to another column.

            Back to the pledge of allegiance and why I’ve been reluctant to write about my feelings. The pledge is one of those hot button issues because so many Americans recite it regularly without giving it a second thought. I’ve always wondered why our local City Council meetings are started with the pledge.

If you openly question the validity of the pledge the response is commonly like back in the 60’s when if you protested the Viet Nam War you got “America, love it or leave it” or if you questioned the government after 911 you got “you’re either with us or against us”. To me there is nothing more acutely American than questioning or challenging the status quo. How else do we grow as a nation or more importantly as a society?

And that kind of brings me to my point. Isn’t it time to stop thinking and acting so regionally? For most of us in one way or another we are more and more becoming part of a global community. Whether we make, sell, buy, or provide services, often we are doing business with people in other countries. Many of us have family outside the states that we care about and communicate with. And as Brexit just showed us what happens around the globe indeed does affect us.

With instant global news and communications, multi-national corporations, multi-nation trading blocs and the likes of the European Union, we can try and deny it or fight it kicking and screaming but the truth is that we are already living in George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” (not the conspiracy one, yet).

         A one world government may never be in the cards but pledging allegiance to just one country probably won’t cut it much longer either.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 12 of the following link. Winters Express 7/21/16

How can Trump make America great again?

            I’ve been thinking about some of the things that Donald Trump has been saying, even though it seems like he says a lot of things without thinking. The one thing in particular is his tag line of “Make America great again”. Let’s skip over the fact that Ronald Reagan used “Let’s Make America Great Again!” during his presidential campaign in 1980.

            My question is: When exactly was America great?

Was it at the founding 240 years ago when a group of land and “chattel” owners got fed up with paying too much in taxes to the Royals across the ocean for what in essence was conquered and “stolen property”.

            Or was it 50 some years later when we reneged on our deal with the “Civilized Indian Nations” and “legally” took the rest of their ancestral lands?

            Maybe it was when a bunch of states seceded and formed the Confederacy that then lead to the Civil War and the greatest loss of American lives in our history.

            Could it be a few years later when Lincoln became the first of four presidents assassinated while in office. 4 out of 43 that’s almost 10 percent, sounds kind of crazy.

            I’m sure that Trump would think that the “Gilded Age” of the late 1800’s was great. The Rich got richer and the poor stayed poor as millions more immigrated and kept the cheap labor pool full.

            Or how about the dichotomy of the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition, we had this tremendous growth in the economy, the arts, technology and innovation coupled with the ill-conceived restrictions on alcohol consumption and all leading up to the Great Depression.

            We had to be attacked by the Japanese before we would do the right thing and join the fight against Hitler’s extermination of the Jews in WWII.

            Up to this point my questions on greatness has been historical and before Trumps birth. Like most of us he was taught in school that the founding fathers and most figures from American history could do no wrong, but what about in his personal experience?

            Were the 50’s great with McCarthyism, Jim Crow, and the start of military involvement in Viet Nam?

            It couldn’t be the 60’s with the all out war in Viet Nam, race riots, and the assassination of two Kennedy’s and a King.

             I know. He must be talking about the 70’s when I’m sure Donald was loving the Disco’s, hanging out at Studio 54, dancing The Hustle, and maybe doing a line or two?

            What can we say about the 80’s other than Iran helped get Ronald Reagan elected then we had trickle down, tear down this wall (and the unions), the invasion of Granada, and the Iran-Contra affair. We also can’t forget the death of John Lennon or the birth of both MTV and FOX News.

            The 90’s were great if you loved Bill Clinton or just wanted to party like it’s 1999. Oh, but there was also Desert Storm, the Rodney King riots, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, OJ, Columbine, and last but not least a little thing that we thought would end the world as we know it, the Y2K bug.

            Finally, the new Millennium, also not so great. 9-11, conspiracy or not it changed our lives forever. 15 plus years of war in the Middle East, the never ending War on Terror and the housing bubble bursts taking most of us down with it. But worst of all smart phones and social media have taken over our lives, Tweet about that @realDonaldTrump.

            OK, now before you start getting on me about hating America or how this just looks like an American history timeline pulled from Wikipedia (which it is). The point I’m trying to make is that this thing, this inanimate object, this piece of Earth, this Country we call America has never been or can never be great.

What is great, always has been, and I’m hopeful always will be are the people, the individuals, the families, the groups, the ones who make up this social concept we call a country. If you go back and look at our American history timeline you will see that every step of the way there were individuals trying to do the right thing. Sometimes they were knocked down by a self serving majority, other times they were successful in changing the status quo.

           That’s why I disagree with Donald Trump because the greatness he is talking about is in material wealth. That’s all he knows because he is “rich” as he so likes to brag. The greatness I’m talking about is that of spirit, so to paraphrase a much beloved and admired American Muslim, We are the Greatest.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 16 of the following link.Winters Express 6/23/16

The black experience and my lack thereof.

Continuing from my last 2 columns: I’ve been writing about my personal take and experiences with race here in America. I’ve been trying to figure out why this topic has been weighing on my mind so much lately. Is it the classic “Liberal White Guilt”, or is it something else?

The conclusion I’m coming too is that it’s more about my ignorance than guilt. I wrote in my earlier columns about my friend Al who is black and how we never actually talked about our racial differences. That’s what’s been bothering me so much; the fact that I assumed his life was just like mine.

Growing up and especially in high school I always felt like an outsider. I never even gave it a thought that Al might also feel like an outsider considering that he was so much cooler and more popular than I was. He seemed to fit in just fine to my world but as I think back it didn’t work the other way around.

Al had black friends that still went to the public schools and when he was hanging out with them I wasn’t invited. I have a strong memory of one time when pot was very scarce (it did happen) and Al took me up to a dope house in the “hood” where we bought a nickel bag through a small opening in the front door. I was scared to death because I knew I was most definitely out of place.

I never really thought about why Flint was segregated, most blacks lived in the north end and that’s just the way it was. My wife’s family was one of the many that abandoned the north end as part of the “white flight” in the late 60’s because they didn’t feel “safe” anymore. I wonder how different Flint would be if those families had stayed and actually gotten to know their black neighbors.

I won’t dwell on Flint too much, but since it’s been all over the news because of their water crisis I will give you my two cents worth. The reasons for the water problem is in this order: economics (Flint is poor), bureaucratic (appointed leadership), racial (primarily black population), and political (Republican Governor – Democratic voters).

Anyway, let’s get back to my ignorance (the last paragraph not withstanding). The ignorance I’m talking about is that of a middle aged white guy who doesn’t have a clue about living the “black experience” here in America. Like I said, most of my life I just didn’t think about how different life is for a person of color. I believed the Declaration of Independence when it stated that “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”.

The problem I see is not in that we are created or born as equal humans it’s that we are born into unequal circumstances. Throughout human history it’s always been about the luck of the draw. What situation you’re born into will 99% of the time dictate how your life turns out. With over 300 million people living in the United States that means that a few million will overcome the hardship and succeed as well as a few of us will squander the good fortune we were given.

But back to the black experience and my lack thereof. I know some of the reasons I’ve been thinking about all this is because of the media, in particular Larry Wilmore and the Nightly Show. I know the show is just a not to serious, left leaning, political and social commentary but there is enough in it about being black in America to really make you think.

What it makes me think; is how ridicules it is in this modern day and age to still be judging people as inferior or superior because of the color of their skin. There are so many better ways to judge people; intelligence, physical prowess, artistic ability, compassion, courage, the list goes on and on because everyone is superior or inferior at something than somebody else. The whole point is that we are all individuals regardless of the similarities we may share with other people.

            Blaming the problems and social unrest here in America on race is just a diversion from the true culprits of economics and income inequality. Throughout human history the ruling elites have pitted one or more groups against each other as a way of keeping control of the economy and the power it affords. Skin color is such an obvious difference that it makes it easily exploitable and I for one am tired of seeing so many good people exploited simply because of greed.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 14 of the following link. Winters Express 5/19/16

It's not as simple as black or white.

            Continuing from my last column: Does acknowledging that there’s a difference between being black or white make me a racist or prejudice? I don’t think so, but then again why would I since I’m part of the historically dominant white establishment.

            Let’s start by talking about how humans are different and how we recognize those differences. Think of our brains as using evolutionary software so when we see another person our brain goes through an instant check list, kind of in this order. Big or small, male or female, skin color, facial features, smiling or threatening. After that instant recognition we then start our social responses and or judgments. This is where it becomes about nature verses nurture. It’s natural for us to see a difference but we are taught how to react to it.

            Even though science has proven that a human’s physical appearance has no relevance on their intelligence or for that matter anything else, too many people still believe it does. Those same (for lack of a better word) ignorant people are also passing on those stereotypes and prejudices to their families and communities.

            We’ve seen the results of that ignorance way too much on the news of late. From the obviously racial dislike of President Obama and the reactions towards the Black Lives Matter movement to the rise of the angry crowds rallying around Donald Trump.

            So where does my personal perspective on race come from? Why do I even have one, why aren’t I color blind?

Being a first generation American I don’t have any of that historic slavery baggage or bigotry. Growing up I don’t remember my parents ever talking about race, pro or con. From 5 to 11 years old I lived in Topeka, KS where there was only one black kid in my school. In the summer of 1968 we moved to Flint, MI (1 year after the Detroit riots) and I had my first real experience being around kids of color.

I started going to a school that was at least 50% black and I won’t lie about being scared but then again I was afraid of anything new. I felt tension and some of the black guys were mean, they would “thump” me as I walked to class. I hated those guys, not because they were black but because they were bullies. I was naive to American racial history and why they didn’t like me.

If I’m being honest, I have to admit that those first couple of years in Flint did make me fearful (at that time) of blacks in general and a few black kids in particular.

            In 8^th grade I started at a new private school that unbeknownst to me had been created to get us affluent kids out of the predominantly black public schools. There were only 80 students in the whole school (7^th – 12^th grades) and just a few of them were black. One of those was Al; his family like mine were upper middle class. I’m not sure why we hit it off because we were really different. Not just the obvious black and white thing but as I wrote in my last column, almost everything else.

            The first couple of years (before we got into drugs) that Al and I were friends seemed to me like a normal kid’s friendship. We would ride our bikes out to the mall or across town to other school mates’ homes. We played basketball, watched TV, read comics, listened to music, and talked about girls. I don’t think we ever discussed our racial difference but we knew we were different. To me anyway, it was kind of like the difference between a girl and a boy, very obvious but not very important.

            As we got older, I remember us messing with people out in public by calling each other by racial epitaphs; it was a joke to us. At that time the N-word didn’t mean anything to me since I didn’t know it’s history and I wasn’t around people that used it as a racial slur.

Sure, in hindsight it was insensitive but half of what we said and did back then would be considered insensitive today. My close group of high school friends consisted of a black guy, an Italian/Arab, a Macedonian (don’t call him Greek), an Irish Catholic, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and me, an Atheist Jew. You don’t think we didn’t call each other a few insensitive names?

We were just kids being kids; sometimes we were good and sometimes we were dicks. What can I say? But I’ve run out of space so I will continue this next column.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 16 of the following link. Winters Express 5/12/19 

Really missing my best friend Al these days.

            I’ve been thinking recently about an old friend of mine, Al. I haven’t seen or talked to him for about 15 years. It’s not that we lost touch; it’s that Al felt he needed to cut me out of his life. What did I do that was so bad? Nothing, I’m just a “trigger” from his past and our years of substance abuse together.

            Al was the first person I ever got high and drunk with and he was my best friend through High School. I started smoking pot when I was 15 and pretty much didn’t stop until quitting cold turkey when I was 28. Al on the other hand kept going and not just pot, he loved alcohol.

            When I first meet Al in 1970 at the start of 8^th grade he was on crutches because of hip surgery to fix problems from a 6 inch growing spurt the previous year. Even on crutches he was a better basketball player then I could ever be. We were different in most ways, he was tall and thin, I was squat and husky, he was outgoing and I was introverted, he was athletic, I was not. We had different tastes in music, I was still into the Beatles and he loved Motown.

            Our upbringing and family lives were also very different. Al was born and raised in Flint; I had lived in 5 different states and 2 different countries. His family went to Church regularly, my parents didn’t believe in God. He had a close extended family with his grandparents living just 2 houses down from his. My closest relatives were 3000 miles away and in the previous 10 years my grandparents had only visited from Argentina twice.

            I guess the biggest difference was that Al was fearless and I was afraid of just about everything. I still remember the first time I saw him get drunk. We were at a schoolmates Bar Mitzvah reception and there was a table filled with glasses of sweet Kosher Wine. When no adults were looking Al just started pounding them, probably 4 glasses in a couple of minutes.

            Within a couple of years we started smoking cigarettes and pot. When I got my drivers permit at 15, Al who already had his license and a car would let me drive around the neighborhood while we smoked joints and listened to music on the radio.

            That kind of sums up our life in “high” school, just spinning our wheels looking for the next buzz. We experimented with lots of different drugs but still managed to survive and graduate. Because we didn’t enjoy school or studying, neither Al nor I really thought too much about going to college. Al got a “summer” job at a General Motors factory and I already had a job (driving around smoking pot) as a currier for a medical laboratory.

            A year after graduation I decided to go off and try my hand at selling meat (see my column archives for that story) and Al just stayed a “shop rat”.

            After a couple of years on the road I returned to Flint where I bummed around for a while but eventually I got a real job where I stayed for the next eleven years. I also settled down, got in a relationship then married, bought a house, and quit smoking pot for good.

            Al and I still hung out but not as much since we did have “adult” lives now. Al had a few relationships but never got too serious, in part because his substance abuse got in the way.

When I last saw Al he was still trying to kick his habits. He had been on and off again with counseling and AA. He was also talking about getting married but I don’t know if he did.

So that’s a little of the story about me and my best friend. Obviously there is so much more to the story of our 30 year friendship. What I didn’t mention until now because I didn’t want to prejudice your feelings about us, is that Al is black.

Now my question to all of you is honestly, what was the mental image you had while you were reading the column? I’m sure it wasn’t of a younger me smoking a joint with a black dude. Does knowing the color of his skin now change your image, attitude, or empathy for Al? Should it make a difference?

           Of course it shouldn’t make a difference, unfortunately for too many people the reality is that it does. That reality is what I will explore in my next column.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 17 of the following link. Winters Express 4/21/16