A Lesson in Fairness?

A father called me about his dispute with the Youth Baseball folks. His kid is seven. His kid had been on a T-ball baseball team. At seven, the teams transition to coach-pitched games. The coach told this father it might be better if his kid moved on to softball, not baseball. 

The kid was an average player, hitting the ball off the tee, throwing, running bases; and an excellent listener --- but sub par fielding pop flies. 

So it seemed unfair, when teammates were moving on from T-ball to coach-pitched.

This kid is a girl.

“We don't want her to get hurt,” they said. Her father said that the family didn't either, and could factor that in to a decision. They said, “Things move much faster” at the next level. That'd be true for all the kids, wouldn't it?

I asked the father how his new boss was working out. He was positive. He said, “So far, so good.” His new boss had taken care to meet with everyone, and seemed determined to root out discrimination, retaliation, and favoritism. 

I asked because his boss is the first female sheriff of Doña Ana County, Kim Stewart. Seemed ironic. One might figure if a woman can tote a gun, wearing Pat Garrett's old badge, maybe Sergeant Sam Ramos's seven-year-old girl could try hitting a coach-pitched baseball. I mean, this ain't the World Serious. 

It's hard to criticize folks who volunteer their time to coach. They're doing a lot of good and deserve support. I'd not be as rough on them as I might on some paid official.

But the volunteer coach who relegated the girl to softball has a day job as coach of the NMSU women's volleyball team. I immediately wondered about his point of view on all this, but haven't yet heard back from him. 

I get it that a batted ball could split a lip or break a tooth. And that minor disfigurements might matter more to girls than to boys; but they're rare. So it's kind of up to the kid and the parents. Life has risks; but shying away from things you want to try has risks too. Risks like developing a habit of shying away from challenges or minor dangers; and risks like internalizing the idea that you're a second-class citizen because of your gender. 

I won't detail the league's response to Sergeant Ramos's inquires and complaint. Suffice it to say that a long series of delays and missed connections meant the kid missed one season; and it wasn't real easy for her parents to get a clear and timely response, although eventually an alternative team was found, and apologies from the coaches were promised. 

The situation didn't seem representative of our rather tolerant and progressive city. 

Once the matter reached city officials, they initiated systemic improvements. City Parks and Rec Director Sonia Delgado, said there'd been “a huge conversation gap” and that in the future it'll be clearer to an aggrieved parent whom to talk to, when, and how. Officials are setting up procedures for Youth Baseball, and will do so for other leagues. When I spoke to Ms. Delgado, she was waiting for a call regarding the promised apology letters. 

Unfortunate things happen; but they can be used to accomplish positive change. So that seems a win. And though Ms. Ramos missed the fall transition season, her new coach has her starting at shortstop.

                                                  -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 31 March 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on both KRWG Radio and KTAL-LP, 101.5 FM (streamable at www.lccommunityradio.org .)]

Thanks and Good-bye

Gotta thank and respect U.S. Sen. Tom Udall both for his twelve years of service to New Mexico in the U.S. Senate and for not seeking to turn 12 years into 18 or 24.  I'd have supported him in 2020; but it'll also be interesting to see how he goes forward serving certain causes -- notably, preserving the environment and minimizing the dmage we suffer from climate-change, as well as helping New Mexico, with its unique mix of sun, drought, oil and gas, and population sparseness, do the best it can under changing circumstances.  

As a Democrat and a New Mexican, I'd probably have preferred Udall run for re-election, because we'll need all the resistance we can get to the environmental carelessness and general incompetence of the Trump Administration and a Republican Senate, each of which could survive the 2020 election.  But I respect his decision.  He served 12 years longer than I'd want to.

The "who will run" speculation so far is both predictable and amusing.   So far, most of the Democrats (including "Democrat" Jeff Apodaca) underwhelm me, either because I have objections to them or because they are somewhat inexperienced.  But the Republicans are worse:  Steve Pearce would be good for Democrats, given his track record in statewide races so far, but would be a disaster as U.S. Senator; Gavin Clarkson would be fun, and would make for a clear choice between a diehard Trumpist and whomever the Democrats nominated; the serious journalists aren't even mentioning our recent former governor, although Facebook acquaintances from her party think she'd be a great idea.  (I think she would too: Democrats and independents were pretty appalled, and the Republican Party seemed bitterly split over and by her, so where would her votes come from.)  And the opening quote attributed to Mark Rich, that he's "done with politicians who think their wealth or family name entirle them to elected office" struck me as comical.  I thought he was the wealthy businessman without much of a background in government who ran solely based on his wealth, without any legislative or public-interest credentials at all.

Here's hoping the Libertarian Party will feel the need to put up a candidate too, just to help spit the conservative vote. 

A Holocaust Survivor Speaks -- in Las Cruces

Eva Schloss visited Las Cruces recently. She left wisdom and hope, and took with her hundreds of hearts.

When Eva's eleven, her family escapes Nazi-controlled Vienna and arrives in Amsterdam. A neighbor girl, Anne Frank, befriends her. Eva has just arrived. She's shy. Anne isn't. They become friends. Anne, already interested in boys, is curious about Eva's older brother, a talented musician.

They are safe. Holland did not participate in World War I, and was not invaded. 

But now, suddenly, the Nazis come. At first, this makes little difference. Soon there are annoying restraints, but nothing life-threatening. Then that changes. In 1942, they all go into hiding. Anne keeps a diary. Eva's brother cannot play music. He takes up painting. His paintings survive, hidden under floorboards.

In 1944, they are betrayed. Both families are arrested and transported East. That means death camps in Germany and Poland. They know this from listening to BBC reports, each starting with the famous first chords of Beethoven's Fifth. For once, the situation warrants those dramatic chords.

Auschwitz. Bergen-Belsen. They line up five-by-five. Dr. Mengele glances at each person and makes a sign. Healthy enough to live, to the left. Otherwise, right, to the showers that are not showers. 

Guards joke about the showers. Eva's mother has given her a coat and hat. The hat's wide brim keeps Mengele from noticing Eva is but fifteen. She lives. For now.

Separation by sexes. Men part from wives and daughters, mothers from sons. 

Heads shaved. Piles of clothing. Take a dress, or an overcoat, something. No underwear. Grab two shoes from a pile. They are not in pairs. No time to try 'em on. 

Wooden bunks. No pads or pillows. Each morning, foul-tasting water. All day, work. At night, bread. Some try saving bread for morning. But there's nowhere to hide it. Sleep on it, someone steals it and eats it.

They are skeletons. If you run, your shoes fall off. Eva goes barefoot for weeks, even in snow.

Her mother is taken away, does not return; she must be dead. 

Then the Nazis are gone, fleeing the Russians. Eva finds her mother! Anne's father, Otto, is alive! But not Eva's father or brother – or Otto's family. They do not leave the camp. Her mother can barely walk.

The Russians come. There is soup. Eva gorges herself – and “never had a worse night on a bucket.” Many die. There's still fighting. The Russians remove them to Odessa, on the Black Sea. 

They return to Amsterdam. Otto Frank, alone, visits often. Eva is “full of hatred.” Otto, who had lost everyone, says, “If you hate people, they won't know, but you will feel it.”

A German Jewish refugee asks Eva to marry him and move to Israel. She says no; she cannot leave her mother. Then Otto and her mother decide to marry. Eva says yes. They move to London. They're happily married until his death in 2016.

Eva cannot have children. That foul water contained bromide, and “our female things didn't work properly.” But treatment succeeds. Eva says her three daughters saved her.

Eva speaks not only for Jews. She speaks for blacks, for brown refugees, even for Muslims. She speaks against hatred. Because we haven't learned, and ethnic prejudices are on the rise again. She has seen the worst of life – and would spare everyone that. 

She is hopeful. The flowers are blooming. 

                                    -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 24 March, 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper';s website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air Wednesday and Saturday on KRWG Radio, and Thursday on KTAL-LP, 101.5 FM (streamable at www.lccommunityradio.org).]

[The cat, Bear, insists on jumping into my lap. He sits watching me type. I hug him. He knows nothing of all this, of course. He will discourage visiting cats from venturing into his garden, but otherwise sees no need to molest others of his kind. Even if we shared a language, I doubt I could explain logically to Bear the reasons we kill and mistreat each other, all over the world – and why comfortable citizens in Germany or the U.S. or so many other nations can be convinced in the name of fear to approve all kinds of inhumanity?

“Why,” I imagine Bear asking, “do you call it 'inhumanity,' as if kindness and tolerance and caring were particularly human, when these absurd stories you are telling me show clearly that things are otherwise?” He crawls up on the back of the chair, behind my right shoulder, and naps. I do not tell him that when Eva and her mother and Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam, there were no dogs or cats. All had been eaten.”]

[Ms. Schloss's books are Eva's Story: a Survivor's Tale, The Promise: the Story of a Family in the Holocaust, and After Auschwitz (2013).  (They sold out before we could buy one when she was here, but I'll remedy that this week.)  Interviews with her also formed the basis for James Still's play, They Came for Me.]

[A Guardian review (by Peter Bradshaw) of After Auschwitz called it "extraordinary"  and continued:
"The postwar story of Schloss’s educational work with the Anne Frank Trust since the 1980s is deeply, quietly moving. It is a gripping piece of 20th-century history, written with journalist Karen Bartlett. Schloss pulls no punches in her descriptions of the ordeal in Auschwitz-Birkenau: something like this is what happened to Anne and everyone else. Unlike the mystery of who betrayed the Frank family, Schloss knew who betrayed her own family and gives a crisp, sharp, unillusioned description of the lenient way these people were tried and given soft sentences in Holland after the war. And the strangest question of all: what might have happened if Anne Frank had stayed in hiding and got away with it? Here again, Eva describes a family friend in Amsterdam who achieved precisely this – but was permanently scarred psychologically by an unresolved fear that could never go away."]

[Part of that work, by chance, included a meeting earlier this month with the Newport High School (Orange County, CA) kids who had been photographed giving Nazi salutes with cups arranged as a swastika.  Per The Los Angeles Times, she commented: "I was their age when I realized my life was completely shattered and I would never have a family again.  She said the students apologized and said they hadn't meant any harm.  She expressed surprise that they could have been unaware of the pain the use of Nazi symbolism could cause, adding, "I hope the school and students have got the message and things will be different."]

[It was, actually, a remarkable weekend for provoking thought on ethnic prejudice and its consequences: Friday evening we met Ron Stallworth, author of the memoir The Black K Klansman; Saturday afternoon when Carolyn Brown spoke, racism wasn't her basic subject, but her biographies of Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker (contemporary writers from Jackson, Mississippi, one of whom was white and the other black) sure teach a lesson on the subject, on which she'd done an interesting discussion a few years ago; then, Sunday, Eva Schloss.]

Dear Donald Trump: re John McCain

Dear Donald:
    You might want to button your lip regarding John McCain.
    Not merely because he's dead.  That would mute a normal person's comments on him, maybe make then milder or less personal; and a particularly kind person might forgive him, out of consideration for his family or because he can't fight back; but you've never been normal or particularly kind.  It's not your style.
    Not merely because he was a war hero while you were evading the draft.  He felt compelled to fight, he fought, he survived a P.O.W. camp, and when his father's eminence got John a free passage home from that camp, he refused to go unless his men were going to.  I thought the war was stupid and morally wrong.  But I can sure see guts and heroism.  You used your family's wealth and a convenient to stay out of the thing.  Not because you thought war was wrong.  You'd been to military school.  But war was a little scary -- or it was inconvenient for an important kid like you.
    Not even because you're wrong, and he was right, in his vote not to kill medical care for many U.S. citizens.  Well, I think so, anyway.  Even if I didn't, even if McCain had risen from his deathbed to give a last passionate speech about how we should kill Obamacare, I'd respect his passionate (though wrong-headed) belief.  And his strength of character, though I know character isn't your best side.
    It's bad optics.  It won't build you up the way you suppose it will, even among your so-called "base."  Many of them are decent people.  Many of the older ones didn't have the bucks to get them out of the Viet Nam War, or shared John McCain's idea of where their duty lay.  There's no evidence you thought your duty was to avoid the war.  You just wanted to, and could, so screw everyone.  Some of those everyones fought in that war or have fought in wars since, and might notice what's wrong with your picture this time.  Even your toady Mitch McConnell defended McCain, although he didn't dare include your name in his comments.
    I have military / law enforcement friends who believe in duty; and do it, even when it entails risks; and some of them might see a brother in Senator McCain.  For most of them, fighting for the U.S. was as dangerous as it was for McCain, and as personally inconvenient as it was for you. But guess what they did, a lot of them.
    I guess I'd also be irritated if I'd been at the event to highlight manufacturing in Ohio, when you ignored the ostensible subject to vent your resentment of the late Senator McCain.  For the fourth time in five days! Apparently you weren't even straying spontaneously from the subject, but read some of your insults from a teleprompter.
    I'd be particularly irritated if I were family.  His, not yours. I like his daughter Meghan's remark that John McCain would "think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle even in death."
                                -30-

Greed, Hatred, Karma, Trump

Have we reached a fork in the road?

We've used and abused other humans and our environment, living extremely comfortably. For decades it's been clear that our luck was running out – and should. 

Less clear is the nature of the reckoning. Materially, would the pie (world economy) grow, allowing our extreme economic advantage (being 6% of the population, controlling 60% of the resources) to decline in relative terms, nonviolently, and without causing us real suffering? Would technology, ingenuity, and some self-discipline mute environmental disruption?

One way forward starts with facing the situation realistically and trying to deal with it: protect ourselves from violence, retain what we can of our lifestyle, but recognize that we cannot rule like lords forever. Face the urgent climate-change danger and try to take the lead in mitigating it. This path would dent our pride and necessitate sacrifices, but hopefully not unbearable ones.

The other is doubling down. Telling the world to bug off, that we'll hold on tight, usurp what we can of the world's growing wealth, and leave others to clean up our environmental and political messes. 

Be not some shining example of democracy, but a pariah among nations.

We seem to be stumbling down that second path, mapless. Planless. 

Take our border. It's not the “emergency” Mr. Trump claims, but a humanitarian crisis. Certain Central American nations are almost uninhabitable, which is partly our fault. Traffickers mislead folks about their chances for asylum here, while Trump's huffing and puffing draws greater attention to the border. As people reach New Mexico's remote Bootheel, we're asking too much of Border Patrol folks. People have died. We must add personnel and infrastructure there, try to help repair the damage in Central America, and warn people they have little chance of gaining asylum.

The border patrol agent on Wednesday's Sunshine Week panel at Zuhl Library noted that, whereas bringing undocumented people into the U.S. used to be a “mom-and-pop operation” costing $300 a head, traffickers (cooperating with drug cartels) now charge Central Americans $7,000 to $9,000 and get them to the U.S. border in five days. They also mislead their passengers, leave folks in unreasonably dangerous places, rape women, and otherwise act inhumanely. 

Trump's proposal to wreck our economy further and screw up the southwestern environment to build a huge wall is absurd.

But following Trump and his enablers could increase the need for a wall!

Our country is a bastion of privilege. 

In South Africa, decades after apartheid ended, millions of blacks live in abject poverty in shacks without water or power, while whites, 8% of the population, still own 73% of the land, including vast, beautiful farms. Occasionally, a white farm family gets murdered, perhaps with extra brutality. Some well-armed whites are preparing seriously for civil war. 

U.S. citizens could become those folks, following Trump. Climate-change is harming many nations' ability to grow food. (Our Southwest may become too arid to support agriculture or humans.) As hunger increases the rage and violence of people in “shithole countries” we've helped keep back, desperation could cause much greater illegal immigration. If we remain arrogant, will some armed border-crossers start killing seemingly rich ranching families for the fun of it – and for revenge?

Sorry if that's bleak. Fortunately, we can correct our course. We will get past Trump, but must realize he's more symptom than cause. We must watch all our political and business “leaders” closely.

                                         -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 17 March 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG (Wednesday morning and afternoon and late Saturday afternoon) and KTAL 101.5 FM (Thursday late afternoon).  KTAL can be streamed at www.lccommunityradio.org .] 

[It felt weird to finish the column, send it in, and start reading about the Christchurch massacre, which sounded like something out of the world the column envisions.  Tragic.  Seems unsurprising that the murderous white supremacist idiot cited with approval fellow racist Trump as "a symbol of white identity."  That's what Trump has tried to portray himself as.  His spokewoman's evasion was amusing, when she was asked if Trump was disturbed by the killer's favorable mention of Trump; and she sounded a little like Louie in Casablanca shouting "I'm SHOCKED to find that there is gambling going on in here! as he pockets his winnings.  Trump himself kind of undermined that line by stating that the white supremacy movement wasn't a problem.]

[I am sorry if the column's bleakness depresses readers.  There are some pretty bleak aspects to our world right now.  I am guardedly optimistic that we'll steer clear of the worst responses-- although those seem the responses Mr. Trump favors.  His responses tend to remind me of an infant pushing over its milk cup in frustration, or a baseball pitcher who's just given up six earned runs in an inning and breaks two fingers punching a water cooler or the dugout wall.  Understandable, of course, but generally not real helpful.]

[Meanwhile, Las Cruces had a couple of interesting visitors this weekend and will have another this afternoon.  Friday evening, Ron Stallworth spoke on campus, in a great writers' series Russ Bradburd and Connie Voisine run.  Neat guy.  You know him as the Black K Klansman -- the police officer who infiltrated the KKK, by letter and phone and through a white officer when a personal appearance was required.  Saturday afternoon, a lady named Carolyn Brown spoke.  Dr. Carolyn J. Brown, as distinguished from the one who writes romantic cowboy stories or something.  This one lives in Jackson, Mississippi, where she wrote biographies of two interesting writers there, Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker.  They were roughly contemporaries, two very fine writers, one white and one black; and what kept spinning in my head was their combined story (which Carolyn had discussed in a presentation a few years ago), black and white, two lives so similar and dissimilar, both largely lived in Mississippi.  To learn more on Ms. Brown's three books (the third the interesting story of an early 20th Century woman painter from Mississippi), Google her by her subject's names, to avoid the other Carolyn Brown or start at her website, http://www.carolynjbrown.net.  (I hope to interview Ron and his wonderful wife Patsy on KTAL some Wednrsday morning soon; and Ms. Brown and I recorded an interview later Sunday afternoon, which we'll play on the show in a few weeks.

Third -- and related only in that all three speakers have stories to tell us that illustrate hate and prejudice, in one way or another -- will be Eva Schloss, speaking this afternoon at the Performing Arts Center on campus.  She was Anne Frank's neighbor, playmate, and posthumous stepsister.  (She and her mother lost family in Auschwitz, as Otto Frank lost his in Bergen-Belsen, and when they returned to the Netherlands Eva's mother and Anne Frank's father married.)  She is one of the few around who can speak firsthand about certain matters, having barely survived Auschwitz -- though her father and brother did not.

Just ten days ago Ms. Schloss met with 55 teenagers from Newport High (in Orange County, California), some of whom had been photographed giving Nazi salutes with cups arranged as a swastika.  Per The Los Angeles Times, she commented: "I was their age when I realized my life was completely shattered and I would never have a family again.  She said the students apologized and said they hadn't meant any harm.  She expressed surprise that they could have been unaware of the pain the use of Nazi symbolism could cause, adding, "I hope the school and students have got the message and things will be different."

Ms. Schloss also said she believes anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States and Europe and that the conflict between Israel and Muslims might be contributing to it, adding, "This causes a lot of difficulties. “It’s perhaps understandable why they support the Palestinian people’s cause."
We're looking forward to hearing her talk.  (Tickets are not cheap, however; and I've heard they may have sold out; but particularly NMSU students might want to give it a try.)]

. 

 

The State of the City -- need more bike lanes / fewer leafblowers

Reading Mayor Miyagashima's “State of the City” speech prompted this citizen to reflect on the subject.

Generally, the state of the city seems good. The mayor, council, and city manager have done much. I particularly applaud the city's commitment to environmental/sustainability issues; and I agree that passage last year of four bond issues illustrated a healthy willingness of citizens to invest in improving Las Cruces – and our quality-of-life. 

I experience the city driving, walking, or bicycling around, playing pickleball, attending meetings, and the usual other ways. 

The pickleball courts are way overcrowded; we need a new gym to supplement Meerscheidt (where I started playing basketball in 1974); and I understand from youth soccer folks and others that we're not alone in needing more and better facilities. I hope the planned improvements will make a real difference. Physical fitness, for kids aged 7 or 72, is critical. 

Bicycling through Las Cruces is a mixed bag. Most motorists are courteous and thoughtful; but we need more bike lanes (and wider ones in some places), and at certain intersections along Solano and El Paseo, and Alameda, it's a challenge to get across while the light is green. I hope planned improvements are meaningful.

Two random suggestions: city council meetings at 1 pm. are tough for working folks to attend. With two meetings a month, has anyone thought of holding one at 1 pm. and the other at 6 pm.? Just sayin'.

Second: every time I see a gas-powered leaf-blower I mutter things about our city administration that I can't write here. 

The damned things are zillions of times more polluting than four-wheel-drive trucks. Ken and councilors: read up on this (and I will be the cranky old guy shouting about this at a council meeting soon), but, yo! You guys bill yourselves as sustainable; and you do some great stuff; but here's an easy one you're fumbling. 

I keep seeing city-owned leaf-blowers operated by city employees. Under the best of circumstances, leaf-blowers make little sense. Blow leaves (which are healthy for lawns and gardens) from your yard to mine, while making a godawful noise and using enough gas to drive a tank to Albuquerque. In mid-winter, frankly, there ain't a whole lot of leaves on the plaza or on the ground outside Meerscheidt. The city should stop using these things, stop using even battery-operated blowers except where there's a specific (cogent) reason, and consider an ordinance banning the things (with an appropriate “grandfathering” provision). 

I have mixed feelings about all the stuff about revitalizing downtown and attracting new businesses. I'm guardedly optimistic; but I'm underwhelmed by what Virgin Galactic has done for our area so far. And city leaders have engaged in some other weird flirtations with some other weird folks, e.g. ARCA Space Corporation, which got $57,000 from the city, and Pegasus.

Better mental health services are a critical need. Recently a visiting mental-health professional commented that mental-health services here used to be quite good – but no longer are.

I understand that Governor Martinez savaged a functioning southern New Mexico mental- health system to help a campaign contributor. Not the city's fault. But the city needs to take an active and intelligent role in rebuilding what we lost. 

The municipal court is the city's responsibility, and needs to be instructed that poor folks, the mentally ill, and the homeless are people too – and deserve fair and lawful treatment.

                                          -30-

[The column above appeared this morning, Sunday, 10 March 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG, as well as on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM), Las Cruces Community Radio.]

[Las Cruces will hold its mayoral election this year.  City Councilor Greg Smith has announced his candidacy.  A lady named Gina Ortega has also indicated that she intends to run.  Three (?) -term incumbent Miyagashima hasn't announced his plans yet, but someone pointed out that the staging and content of the state of the city address didn't seem the work of a man looking forward to retiring from public life.

In any case, the election has not commenced.  As it happens, Walt and I will host Mayor Miyagashima this Wednesday (13 March) at 8 a.m. on "Speak Up, Las Cruces!" -- our regular show on 101.5.  Councillor Smith will join us on Wednesday, 3 April, also from 8 to 9.  (The show runs until 10 a.m.)  (KTAL can be streamed live at www.lccommunityradio.org and also repeats at midnight.)

As there's no election in progress yet, these are non-political interviews regarding the city and its government.  However, we are seeking to reach Ms. Ortega as well, to schedule an hour with her discussing her views on the subject.]

[On the leaf-blower issue, just google "leaf blower" and require also either "pollution" or "environment."  I just did that, and the top entry was a Wall Street Journal story Wall Street Journal entry that told me I'd understated the level of pollution: "The California Environmental Protection Agency estimated that operating a commercial leaf blower for one hour would emit more pollution than driving a 2016 Toyota Camry for about 1,100 miles. ... The reason leaf blowers and related devices are so dirty is because many use two-stroke engines."    It cites a California EPA study of which I read part, a while ago.  This is a good basic site covering the issue  if you've used up your free reads of WSJ, WaPo, and New York Times articles.  Here's the US EPA paper on this. ] 

[So I will show up at a council meeting soon and rant about this like the cranky old fart I am.]

Celebrating Lives, and Life

A week ago Friday, we signed our old friend, Orville “Bud” Wanzer, into hospice. Then on Saturday we attended a memorial for Edna Lucero, who'd died recently and peacefully at 96, making soup in the family farmhouse. Early Sunday morning, Bud died. (His obit is in today's Sun-News. Edna's appeared February 10.)

I knew Bud extremely well for half a century. I met Edna once, immediately wanted to visit her, and her husband of 73 years, Enrique, for a column, but never did.

Though very different, these were special people who prized education, exceeded what might have been expected of them, and affected many lives for the better. Bud and Edna were each widely and deeply loved. They continued to learn all their lives. Each greeted strangers with warm curiosity, not intolerance.

Born in Chihuahua, Edna urged her five children to go to college. Enrique was a shy kid at the small schoolhouse in Hill. He joined the Navy, and he and Edna saw the world. In Europe, they hungered so much to see and learn more that they traveled the continent, from Spain to Denmark, camping out with the kids. Enrique, after retiring from the Navy, joined the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and when he realized he needed a college degree to advance, he got one, at 50 – with Edna's support. He then became the system's first Mexican-American prison warden.

Bud grew up lower-middle class in Queens. His father and mother had never gone near a college. His father was a cop. Bud joined the Navy, then used the GI bill to get a B.A. and a Masters, and became a writer, film-maker and much-loved college professor. Even in his last year he was rereading Herodotus. 

 

Deaths bring the pain of loss, a sense of vulnerability, and an enhanced awareness of life's fragility. Life and death are two faces of one coin. If we can't face death, likely we don't face life too well either. The deaths of close friends or family are a powerful reminder to be grateful for – and savor – each moment. 

 

Midweek brought another vivid reminder of life's fragility: I spoke with former NMSU basketball star Shawn Harrington. His mother sent him to our desert to escape Chicago's street violence. Then she got shot dead when she walked in on two neighbors being robbed. In 2013, Shawn was shot by gang members who thought he was someone else, and paralyzed from the waist down. His warmth and resilience impressed the Hell out of me. So did the good he does, coaching and counseling kids in Chicago. 

 

The Buddha compared lifetimes to lightning flashes. Dogen wrote that in each moment we should think only of that moment, because no future is guaranteed. Keifer Sykes, a player Shawn coached, said, “fast as you snap your fingers, my life could go down the drain.”

We know we should value each moment. Not merely savor it, but make an impact. Life's too short for unnecessary friction. We can do surprising things if we dare try. 

 

The challenge is to remember and feel those truths in the moment. Recalling Bud's unique attitude toward life, how funny he was, and how loved, as Edna's kids recall how her love of learning and her caring inspired them, helps. 

We mourn people best by emulating the best in them – and supporting others, as Edna supported Enrique and Bud his students.

                                      -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 3 March 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air on KRWG and KTAL 101.5 FM (Las Cruces Community Radio -- streamable at www.lccommunityradio.org.)  I should note also that the column is accurate in stating that Bud's obituary is in this morning's Sun-News, and provides a link to Ms. Lucero's on-line obituary, this morning Bud's obit was not in the on-line obituaries, because the newspaper apparently hasn't yet figured out its new system.  By the way, Bud was also mentioned in an earlier column: September 2012 post "Teachers, Actors, Time"] 

[Not sure this column was a good idea, combining as it does at least three situations, each of which warrants a column and more, which means I do justice to none of them here.  But . . . it was a challenging week.]

[Bud's kids called yesterday and said that the Sun-News was struggling with its new system or site or something and that the obituary on Bud would not be in the paper.  Sad.  There's a lot more to say about him.  (Bud also did two of the first live local TV shows on KRWG, for example.)  I'll insert what I guess was the nearly final version below, and the obit also appears on KRWG's website.  One thing we didn't mention in it was that although Bud had expressed progressive political views decades ago, he had not voted since the 1970's, and insisted politics was all bullshit; in prior years, he mockingly rejected pleas to re-register and vote; but in 2018, after nearly two full years of Donald Trump, Bud repeatedly requested registration forms and an absentee ballot.  And voted.]

Orville Joseph “Bud” Wanzer left us early Sunday February 24^th, after stating that he was quite ready to do. He remained funny and fiesty to the end of his life. A former NMSU professor, he was best-known in Las Cruces for making a feature film, The Devils Mistress, in 1965, and for starting and running, with John Hadsell, the NMSU Film Society. He also wrote a fantasy novel called The Elfin Brood and made award-winning photographs.

Professor Wanzer was born in Queens, NY December 5^th, 1930 to Sophie and Orville J. Wanzer. Wanzer, Sr. was a New York City policeman and an Olympic-class shot-putter. Bud was a mischievous city kid. As he described it, in his gang “college was for [unprintable]s.” He served in the U.S. Navy from 19__ to 19__. Highlights were being a movie projectionist aboard ship and exploring places and people in Italy that came unrecommended by the Navy.

Having come to love literature, movies, and photography, Bud used the GI Bill to attend the University of Miami, gaining a B.A. and an M.A. He also met and married Joan Stapleton (year). He received teaching offers from the University of Hawaii and from a place in the New Mexico desert. A veteran who'd been stationed in Hawaii warned him that he might get island fever there, and the NMSU English Department sent him photos of Organ Mountains, so he and Joan arrived here in 1959.

A daughter, Katya, arrived in 1966 , and a son, Kip, in 197 (1 or 2?). He loved both deeply. Although his marriage to Joan ended in divorce in 197x, they remained fast friends.

After teaching English literature for several years, he received an invitation from Professor Harvey Jacobs to join in starting the NMSU Journalism Department. Bud was to teach photography, film history, and eventually film-making. Because he had such a range of interests that he could discuss Bergman and Fellini and also repair camera, he was able to turn the Film Department into a wonderful institution, way ahead of its time. When few universities offered film-making courses, the more famous ones didn't let students touch actual cameras the first year or two, and CMI was undreamed-of, his students used military-surplus 16 mm. Cameras to make films right from the start – and Bud used a surplus processing system to process footage free.

Meanwhile, Bud wrote a screenplay called The Devil's Mistress. Four escaping bank-robbers happen on a stone shack in the Organs occupied by a long-bearded and suspicious older man and his beautiful young wife (played by Joan). (The cabin is still there, more or less, if you know where to look.) They kill him and kidnap her, but unexpected events soon kill all four robbers, and the murdered man reappears to rejoin his wife.

A professor presuming to make a feature film, which only Hollywood did in those days, was such a novelty that the AP story on it, with a photo of Bud examining frames of movie film, appeared in many newspapers around the country. Bud and others invested in finishing the film, with high hopes of making profits that would allow them to continue making films here.

The film premiered in Las Cruces, to great local acclaim. Unfortunately, the would-be distributors defrauded the locals, who made no profit on the film.

Bud came to love the desert. Camping in the Gila. Wilderness and macrophotography became almost a religion with him.

Wanzer was a much-beloved professor to generations who enjoyed his film classes. Among his grateful students were Bernie Digman (Milagro), Denise Chavez (eminent Southwestern writer), consultant Nancy Barnes-Smith, and former Mayor Tommy Tomlin. Another Sterling Trantham, emulated Bud by teaching film and photography at UTEP. Among Bud's less grateful students was an LCPD cop who stopped him one day as Bud was driving. The cop said, “You probably don't remember me, but I was one of your students in Film History.” “How did you do?” Bud asked. “You gave me a D,” the cop replied, handing Bud a ticket.

Two Kuwaiti students ultimately started a movie business in Kuwait, and hired Bud to run a processor and otherwise help them, and he took a sabbatical in 1977-78 to spend a year in Kuwait.

When Bud retired from NMSU in 1985, he wanted to live in nature. On land he co-owned on the river west of Derry, he built a small house, doing all the work himself. He lived there for the next 28 years, off the grid, as somewhat of a hermit about whom rumors swirled in the rural northern part of the county. While there he finished and published The Elfin Brood, and later taught himself stained-glass and created unique and beautiful pieces, some of which he sold to customers as far away as New Hampshire. With few windows, he built perhaps the world's first stained-glass carport; and when he'd completed that, he just constructed stands with 2 x 4's around his portion of the desert and placed stained-glass in them – although kids with BB-guns could easily have destroyed them.

Eventually health issues forced him to move back into town, where he reconnected with old friends, but remained somewhat of a hermit because of his increasing deafness. Recently he became less and less mobile, and was grateful for the help and friendship extended by folks at Memorial Medical Center, Good Sam's, Home Instead, and Village at Northrise.

On Friday, February 22, he went into Hospice, and on Sunday, February 24, he died. He is survived by Katya and and Kip, as well as by his daughter-in-law, Anna, and granddaughter, Claire.

At Bud's request, his remains received a natural burial -- no chemicals, no box, no sheets, just into the ground to be processed as nature processes its own -- at La Puerta Natural Burial Ground in Valencia Counry, New Mexico. 

The kids say the place is beautiful.