So Much Noise

Daily in this election year the personal and political portions of life have become difficult to separate. President Trump dominates the airwaves and the dialogue, as his Tweets are disseminated further on every newscast.

Political news is everywhere we look—in restaurants, doctors’ offices, my phone’s notification stream. A conversation with friends too quickly slips into one that betrays what one thinks about the man, negative or positive. Friends are lost.

We are being slowly herded into personal silence.

Historically, silence has been a tool of dictators and autocrats. In other countries we have seen repressions, arrests of political opponents, executions—literal silencings.

Now that social media can be manipulated toward political ends, however, we have an alternative, the silencing that results from overkill. From political noise.

We Americans are not used to a constant political bleat, at least not in between election campaigns.

This orchestrated noise affects our health as well as our sense of well-being. We react to the shock of daily news—melting ice caps, the novel coronavirus, Australia burning, earthquakes, floods, as well as the usual death and destruction in the Middle East. Politicians threaten Medicare, a literal lifeline for older citizens, and the news is hidden in the noise, if not twisted.

Small wonder that studies along with anecdote confirm a rise in popular anxiety following the election of 2016. Blood pressures—easy to measure—rose. Medical complaints referring to anxiety increased, as did prescriptions for anti-depressants.

Opting out of Facebook and Twitter is one way people cope, but that complies with the goal of political noise—to silence coherent discussion and the ability to communicate freely.

The excuse for leaving social media is the stridency of argument and personal attack it allows. Both sides—Left and Right—engage in this.

Republicans, however, have displayed greater skill at the strategic use of new technology. Their supporters are better at amplifying a targeted message from the coordinated set of megaphones they have positioned throughout the public sphere.

It has required many years—decades—of Movement Conservatism, lavishly funded, to create this network, the right-wing messaging universe: Talk radio, FOX News, numerous internet-linked interest groups, message boards, along with bot banks that spread false information. (“Political Bots and the Right-Wing Hijacking Of Social Media,” WBUR, May 18, 2017)

The manipulation of text and videos by technology has made it even harder to isolate even a manifest truth. This is another aspect of the engineered political noise intended to silence us.

We hear a lot of commentary on underrepresented voices, silenced voices. Often this refers to segments of society overlooked by the nattering cohort of coastal pundits, mainstream and right-wing.

But what about self-silencing?

That’s what we do when we pull out of social media. Or when we avoid discussion and the opportunity of listening to our neighbors.

It’s also what we do by slicing the views of candidates and issues too finely, then defending our slice as though it were home territory.

We see the result of that reaction in the Democratic debates where, except for longtime socialist independent Bernie Sanders, so many presidential candidates vary so little in basic convictions. Democratic heads don’t wear white or black hats. They wear hues of gray, pink, purple—well, a rainbow of nuanced positions.

The election to date, however, shows how those nuances can add up to fragmentation. The Democratic Party is divided into rough-edged parts. Although those parts interpenetrate, they do not blend into one mass, moving in unison behind one candidate. At least, not yet.

And it becomes harder for them to find that unifying catalyst in the presence of so much noise.

Is it...Cedar Fever?

Every year about this time we start to sneeze and cough. We probably includes you. 

This year in our household I went first, two days after book club met. I had the classic symptoms of a flu-like illness. Raw throat, headache, mild body aches, fever--101, 102, unusual for me, but not truly high. We did have our flu shots, of course, for whatever benefit that provides. 

This process is not unfamiliar to us. Year before last, I spent four months with bronchitis, passing it back and forth to my husband, at that time 96 years old. 

This year, too, he caught my bug. After one good week of blowing, hawking, mild fatigue--all the delightful attributes of cold season--he was well. 

I, however, still had it, phase 2. Deep bronchial cough, fatigue. Ick. Four weeks of it, now, at this writing.

Is that what’s going on? Or…I can hear what you’re thinking.

Cedar fever. 

A popular term this year, which has apparently been a humdinger for such allergies. 

Maybe that would be preferable in some ways, despite the weeks of misery. 

If I had cedar fever and not a nasty bronchitis or RSV or rhinovirus, then I could go out in public and sneeze and cough to my heart’s content without the fear that I would be exposing the universe to these weeks of discomfort. 

That’s what most of us do, isn’t it? Most of us whomp down a decongestant or antihistamine and carry on with our business. We’re all so busy, now.

If we’re wrong, though--if it isn’t an allergy--we are shedding virus for days at a time. Infecting everyone we come near, especially older people or children. 

At least, in the grip of flu, most of us feel rotten enough to stay home.  

But in the early days of a cold or other respiratory bug, we can’t tell what we have. We work off probabilities. 

Allergy-prone folks assume it’s an allergy until it proves otherwise. Non-allergy-prone people assume it’s a virus. 

Then what? 

Some of us cannot take decongestants or antihistamines because of medical conditions, including high blood pressure. My husband is one of these. 

Also, he is a cancer survivor twice and 98 years old. When you cough on him in public, or onto his food, you may be signing a death warrant. 

I do think about things like that. It’s one reason I am an obsessive hand-washer. 

Like him, I’m unable to use those symptom relievers, not even codeine to help the cough. For me, public exposure means the loss of at least a month of healthy, productive life, if not more. It is a cost I’d like to avoid. 

But how? What can I do to avoid it? What can you do?  

Wash your hands; use alcohol-based hand sanitizers; cough into your elbow; be mindful of symptoms and stay home through the shedding period when you have a virus. Use video or conference call technology to attend that important meeting.

 (Suggest to your boss that his bottom line will improve if one sick employee is not obliged to spread her virus to all the other employees. A sick person isn’t doing high quality work, anyway.) 

No solution is perfect, though. In the case of a cold-type illness, we shed virus for two days before symptoms begin. And the early symptoms are so confusing we can’t really be sure, can we? 

So the best we can do is to care. Pay attention. Check symptoms with your doctor or on the internet (WebMD, Mayo Clinic are good sites). Check for fever. (Usually cedar fever doesn’t elevate temperature, at least at first.) 

And be mindful in public. All over the world we see people wearing masks to protect themselves and others from airborne toxins. It isn't such a bad idea, is it?

(Note: A version of this appeared in the Fayette County Record in late January, 2020.)

The Great Holiday Migration

They’re coming. You’re going.

Doors locked. House plants watered. Schemes in place for avoiding the worst of it.

America on wheels, in the air.

A week of normal life grinding down. And labor increasing.

Travelling with little kids, stuffing them into snowsuits, packing shorts and sandals.

Or you, the oldsters, dragging creaking bones and rolling suitcases down airport corridors, dodging counterparts.

They’re all coming to your house. Old and young. Red and Blue. Strangers in some sense, now, because they’re living so far away. New York. Thailand. Dallas.

What will you talk about?

Or maybe it’s not your house. Maybe it’s your apartment. Or your condo in a retirement facility.

Maybe it’s their house, say your son’s. We have learned by now that sons are different from daughters.

If it’s your house, you will control the food. That is, your expectations will control it. No?

Maybe it’s your vision of their expectations—the pumpkin pie, the cornbread dressing, the green bean casserole and candied “yams.” The inevitable turkey, gravy and canned cranberry sauce.

They rely on this, the scent of home, the memories.

Well, they must be relying on something, wanting something, hoping, or they wouldn’t make this Herculean effort. Enduring this stressful, maddening travel week, or part of it. Hazarded by weather and crowds.

This is the price we pay for breaking the bonds of family by living half a continent apart. Half a world.

And so much time unspooling between us.

Even if we’re just driving from Houston or Austin to LaGrange, or from Katy to Round Top, the holidays are the closest we have to time travel. With each mile we slip on the skin of an earlier self, with all the insecurities we thought we were finished with.

You present to your parents their grandchildren, eight inches or a foot taller than the last time they saw them, talking of characters from Pokemon Go. Chatting in newly acquired Spanish vocabulary, ages 4 and 7. Wow. That’s some school they go to!

We used to drive less than five minutes to Grand’mere’s house. We used to see each other for Sunday dinner. We used to know each other, didn’t we—even though we might argue, or think one cousin was a bit stuck on himself?

Now we go back home from wherever we live, and it’s no wonder that people fall into their old roles. Their present selves don’t have any other way to communicate. No one can see their present selves, anyway, for the sluffed off skins they’ve reattached.

It’s tragic that Granny and Opa aren’t a larger part of their lives. Continuity is lost, connection is lost. Identity is blurred. They may not understand this, yet. They’re not old enough.

Sure, divorce caused some of this division, but the urgency of contemporary life bears a lot of blame. Corporations move families without a second thought. Jobs in reliable industries disappear abroad, leaving the formerly secure family scrambling. Both parents work. Some want to. Most have to.

Technology keeps them connected to one boss or another 24/7. No time for leisure. No time for reflection, thought, creativity.

Even so, they’re scurrying down holiday highways, across time zones, so everyone can gather around what still pretends to be the family table for a meal no one really loves—except for the bits that were their favorites. And—whatever kind of pie is on your plate—dessert carries the flavor of our bittersweet mortality.

Those Pesky Norms

In school I hated the concept of “norms.” They were wishy-washy, hard to pin down, hard to define clearly. We were studying civics and the teacher was explaining that our country was governed by norms as well as laws. I wanted nice, clear laws to memorize. Norms required me to think, I suppose, and like many teenagers I felt that was a lot of unnecessary work.

Lately I find myself revisiting the concept. My dictionary says a norm is “an authoritative standard; a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control or regulate proper and acceptable behavior.”

For example, honor your parents. Keep your word. Don’t hurt pets. Respect your neighbor. Don’t commit adultery. The Ten Commandments reflect normative belief.

Norms are even more numerous than that, though. They’re everywhere. They’re all the things I’d been taught from toddlerhood. Things I should and shouldn’t do to be a responsible adult. They rise out of a common understanding among the people of a community. They allow us to get along with each other.

And, unless formalized into laws, they have no “teeth.” They’re enforced only by the reaction of the affected community to behavior that shatters the values its members hold in common.

Far from being less important than laws, they’re the actual fabric of civilization.

Our representative system of government reflects this fact. It is organized from small community to large in the way that allows the best reflection of the norms of each voting pool.

It’s a very cool system.

The president represents everybody, the largest voting pool, and the place where many nuances of belief are distilled, because of variety, into the clearest norms—basic norms of behavior with which nearly everybody agrees, regardless of religion or heritage.

Such as, stand by your word. Abide by the law. Don’t lie. Do not steal from the public purse. Act honorably in all transactions. These are only a few of them, and they seem simple. It’s the society that has become complex.

I’ve been shocked to realize how much of our daily governance depends on norms instead of laws. Even the balance of power between our three branches of government relies on normative agreement as well as legal.

They provide a necessary stability.

This matters to me personally because my retirement nest egg is dependent upon the reputation and stability of the United States.

So is yours, most likely.

Our economy depends on agreements where our word as a nation must be trusted. Spoken word and written word. The higher up you go in the government, the more every syllable is weighed and judged by the business people at home and abroad. Decisions are made accordingly.

Once trust is lost, it can be re-established only with the greatest difficulty. If ever.

To say that norms can be swept away without negative consequence when they complicate an elected official’s exercise of power is to invite economic and social chaos. Look at Crimea, Venezuela, Syria, Yemen.

Our system, which has been the best in the world, works well only if both officials and voters understand the basic values supporting our civilization and refuse to compromise when they are ignored.

This post first appeared as my column in the Fayette County Record, Nov. 2019

What's the Rush?

The calendar says September, but the thermometer still says August loud and clear.

The fields that aren’t torn up with pipeline excavation or well pads are filled with the wildflower known as “snow on the prairie.” Look for it at dusk when the cooling illusion is most beautiful.

Beauty is a necessary thing, I’ve decided. And for us—human beings—it is a potent medicine. Even more than that, its absence creates a slow growing dis-ease. 

Don’t you feel it, this pervasive uneasiness?

Everywhere we drive now in Fayette County, we feel the land hurting. Cows huddle under shade trees at 8AM. The sere pasture next door wears a painful slash, fifteen feet deep, and beside it piles of spoil. At the bottom of the trench, there are lengths of pipe, newly set. The men nearby are working in 100 degree weather and relentless sun. Who will do that work if the temperature keeps rising?

The junkiness that gas exploration, industrial development and transient retail bring to our peaceful landscape isn’t given a price tag. But it exacts a cost. 

Recent reports confirm a large increase in anxiety-related illness since 2016. But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Abruptly, it seems, we find so little to rely on. The people and routines we thought worked well have vanished.

Business rushes to replace them with the latest technology. My favorite is the portable card reader that malfunctions half the time.

We get pressure from our banks—the big ones, that is—to pay bills online, in interfaces that buck and pitch on a good day. Or, if that’s too complicated, you can just scan your check. Hmm. And wait for the massive data breach that’s sure to come?

Does that help us feel secure and comfy?

The Baby Boomers are aging in a large indigestible lump throughout the economy. Precisely at the time when reflexes are slowing and eyes are developing “issues,” business decides to speed things up. Put half their operations and all their communications on a screen in 8 point type.

My car dealership outside Houston just fired (or reassigned) the service manager with whom I’ve worked for fifteen years. “All the old guys are gone,” I said to the very young man who took his place. “Yeah,” he said cheerfully. “Too slow.”

What’s the hurry, folks? What’s this finish line we’re so eager to reach?

The other evening I came out of a meeting into an extraordinary sky. The meeting room sits on a hill. When I stepped out of the door, I felt space open in front of me and above it sky, framed in tall trees.
Shades of soft blue and pink rose beside a dappled gray thunderhead, and at the top, just off center, the slice of new moon. What my son used to call a “fingernail moon.”

I was alone for a few moments while Beauty flowed into me. Time slowed.

We are so starved for Beauty. Our souls are pinched by its absence. With every desecration of our landscape, of the scenic charm that brings visitors to patronize our businesses, our souls shrivel a little.

You may not like that I use the word, “soul,” but what else is it that blooms inside me when I allow a field of flowering snow in September or a sunset sky to fill me up? What else can it be?

I can tell you this: it is the same part of us that dies a little in the presence of grief. 

There’s so much cause for grief around us, now. Horrific wrecks on the roadways, mass shootings, children and parents damaged by hurricanes and border policies, landowners losing the peaceful enjoyment of their land for the rest of their lives. 

In a broader view, artic ice melts, the Amazon rainforest burns. The globe warms, bringing with it the prospect of mass extinctions.

Grief is a logical response.

We are bequeathing the Age of Loneliness to our children.

Why are we in such a hurry to get there?

Visiting the Valley

Mike Pence and I spent my birthday a few weeks ago in McAllen visiting migrant centers.

He went to the Border Patrol Detention Center with its overcrowded cages. I went to the Humanitarian Respite Center a few blocks away where there were no cages, no overcrowding. He went with an entourage; I went alone.

The Respite Center is run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. Its executive director is Sister Norma Pimentel who has been the recipient of praise and awards from many sources, including from Pope Francis.

Sister Norma is an impressive person, about my height with smooth silver hair and a serene face. She moves in a clear bubble of calm that reminds me of the poem “Desiderata:” “Go placidly among the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

She does, however, have plenty to say.

The Humanitarian Respite Center that she opened in June, 2014 has moved to a former nightclub building on South Main St. in McAllen, cattycorner from the bus station.

After being processed by ICE, migrants arrive at the spacious center where they receive whatever help they need to get to their destinations. Food, a free phone, clothing, shoes, toiletries, assistance with tickets and contacting relatives. Before anything, Sister Norma emphasizes, they receive smiles of welcome.

“They are so scared when they arrive,” she says. “They have come from so far away, on foot, carrying children. When they see the smiles of the volunteers, you can see the change. They are transformed.”

The problem, Sister Norma says, is “humanitarian, first of all. We must not forget that.”

To continue the work, the Center needs donations “of everything,” she says. “And we encourage volunteers from all over. It has been a difficult time for children and we are moved by sadness. But we can make a difference by welcoming them wherever they go. The act of welcome can be very important in beginning the healing process.”

The Center is, also, working with agencies in Mexico who are providing services to families who are held back.

Other people I spoke with in the McAllen area have plenty to say, too.

The past year has been hard. The influx of migrants, the threat of the wall, the flood of negative media attention. Tourism is vital to the area, home to some of the world’s best birdwatching. Lovers of wildlife across the U.S. worry about the effect of President Trump’s wall on the parks set aside as way stations and refueling oases for migrating flocks of birds and butterflies, including the threatened Monarch.

All that attention has curtailed travel to the border. When I mentioned to friends that LH and I were going to make our visit, they warned me to be careful, although in 2018 McAllen had the lowest crime rate in 34 years. And no homicides.

Still, I wondered what I might encounter. Armed officers patrolling the streets? Roadblocks? Hungry people crowding the sidewalks?

Nope. None of that.

But the life of local residents has been disrupted. “For as long as I can remember,” one woman told me, “we moved freely across the border. It was almost as though the border wasn’t there, except for the fact of the river itself. Now we rarely cross.”

I saw one physical reason why.

We’d driven out toward Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, avoiding the freeway. The route gave us a clear view of traffic on the nearby international bridge. It had come to a dead stop in 100 degree heat and was backed up into Mexico for as far as we could see. Few people would endure that discomfort for any reason that wasn’t urgent.

I spoke to a staff member at the Butterfly Center that is part of the World Birding installation nearby. He said that the wall’s intrusion has been put on hold for the moment. Access remains normal and visitors may come without concern.

That was the word I got the other wildlife sites, as well. Summer isn’t the best time for birds, but the fall season approaches. We plan to return then to enjoy the richness of the wildlife.

And also to support with our presence these small, vital pockets of respite for wild birds and butterflies whose value to the human soul is not quantifiable by the next quarter’s balance sheet.

The entwined fates of migrating birds and migrating people seems no more at first glance than an interesting coincidence. But they both relate to the oddity of national borders, drawn in dirt and on paper by human beings and quite invisible, as we learned, from space. We spend so much energy on their location and enforcement, but they are at heart a problem that we human beings create.

Donations:

For monetary donations: Humanitarian Respite Center of the RGV, 111 S. Main St.in McAllen, Tx 78501. For donations of clothing, shoes and other goods: 700 N. Virgen de San Juan Blvd., San Juan, TX 78589. To volunteer, please contact the volunteercoordinator@cdob.org

https://www.catholiccharitiesrgv.org

This appeared in August as a column in the Fayette County Record.

Here, Here

There’s no there, there, Gertrude Stein once said of her hometown, long after she left it. Returning to Houston gives me a similar feeling.

The neighborhoods remain where they have always been. The trees may be larger, the streets more potholed or newly iced with asphalt. But so much is missing. People we knew. Homes we knew.

Especially disorienting are thoroughfares we once traveled every day, now transformed by the disappearance of strip centers, the upheavals of new multi-story apartment buildings. We didn’t even know that nearby convenience store was a landmark until it disappeared.

Sometimes the only assurance we’ve not been transported to a completely different city comes from the street signs, a familiar intersection of names, if nothing else.

It’s then that I am especially grateful to return to Fayette and Washington Counties.

We still have a here, here. Our historical societies and museums show we even cherish it, to a degree, against the ravages of homogenizing progress.

I live quite close to one such place: Winedale, the complex of buildings and collections left to the University of Texas by philanthropist Miss Ima Hogg back in the 1960’s.

An influx of energy, attention and money is returning this celebration of our area’s culture to the place it once enjoyed in our community.

The Friends of Winedale, a nonprofit group of volunteers and donors, has spearheaded the effort in cooperation with UT’s Briscoe Center of American History, which provides the scholarly expertise, oversight and continuity required.

FOW’s fundraising events over the past four years, together with an exceedingly generous donation from an interested individual, combined to contribute around $600,000 to the repair and rehabilitation of the historic buildings and grounds.

The University has responded with an expanded staff, including a site manager with expertise in historic preservation and an enthusiastic educational and docent coordinator with many ideas for the coming year.

Several are already underway.

“Lunch and Learn” brings fascinating talks of local interest to the Meadows Center at Winedale the third Tuesday of every month, from noon to 1PM, free. Attendees bring their own lunch, and Winedale provides refreshments and dessert.

The Visitor Center is currently hosting “The Music of Winedale,” showcasing artifacts from the collection, including the 19^th century flute belonging to Rudolph Melchior, whose interior painted decoration first caught Miss Hogg’s attention.

On June 1, Winedale hosted “Kids Fish!” with Brenham’s High School Anglers providing guidance for the young fishermen.

Of course, this summer means Shakespeare at Winedale, the world famous University of Texas program that brings Shakespeare’s plays to life in a 19^th century barn.

Do you like to make music unplugged? On August 31, performers will celebrate International Music on the Front Porch Day. To sign up, call the office at 979-278-3530. Come listen from 10 to noon that day, at Hazel’s Lone Oak Cottage. Free. Winedale will supply refreshments.

Free tours of the buildings will begin on the second Saturday, September through December, on a rotating basis.

Rehabilitation of the two log cabins is expected to be complete by December, joining the other freshly refurbished historic buildings in time for Christmas at Winedale. The proposed widening of Winedale Road (FM 2714) should be complete by then, as well.

If you’re interested in learning about the history and culture of our area, call Tricia Blakistone at the office to volunteer. A new class begins on Thursday, September 5 at 9:30 a.m. Be a docent, or volunteer in another capacity. All are welcome!

At this point you may be asking why this collection of old buildings and artifacts matters.

I think of it as a reality check. For us and for our children riveted to screens.

Wherever our people originated, they knew houses like these, built before electricity. They carried water from wells. They did their wash on washboards, grew corn and beans and sweet potatoes, raised poultry. And they made by hand the beauty they needed in their homes. They carved it, painted it.

And, amazingly, it survives them. Some of it does, anyway.

“The Winedale Story,” a permanent exhibit in Hazel’s Lone Oak Cottage, is open to the public Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sundays, noon to 4. It’s free. Come see for yourself what it’s all about.

Winedale Historical Complex, 3738 FM 2714, Round Top. 979-278-3530. Babette Fraser Hale serves on the FOW board.