Hell is empty and all the devils are here--William Shakespeare

World religions make reference to the way the world will end. Some call it final days, others end times. 

My experience on this chance planet tells me to avoid the useless distractions of despair and fear during these unprecedented times of global pandemic.  End times are upon us, but not in the fatalistic way some people believe. 

There are many parables of what looked like end times but were important new beginnings—think David and Goliath, the crowds feeding on fishes and loaves of bread. In my own million hours spent with media—including werewolves and science fiction, the good guys are challenged to within an inch of the top of their white Stetsons, but they usually win. 

End time values are those that walk with us through every important crossroad. End times are those decisive moments in battles whether patriotic, personal or on the playing field, when the slingshot is swung, and the rock flies forward to a new future.  

Dan Cook, the craggy-faced San Antonio sports writer and TV announcer, originated the modern proverb "It ain’t over until the fat lady sings" to direct our minds to stay open for any outcome. End times are those moments at a championship game when thousands of hours of shooting practice baskets propels a player above an impossible throng of shoulders to send the ball sailing into the hoop before the buzzer sounds and the crowds rush onto the court. 

End times are unpredictable of course.  That’s what Dan Cook meant.  In battles of any kind there are winners and losers.  Dan Cook was saying with poetic playfulness that no one can know the outcome of a contest of any kind.   

Winning for me means more David, less reckless pessimism.  More time throwing baskets in my writing practice,  and in my daily interactions, whether digital or in the few face-to-face ones that I have at safe distances. Use up the stored courage and courtesy, no time to hoard helping hands, hellos or happiness.

Trying really matters. Fear, worry and pessimism may always be present on the battlefield or the playing field. Ask David the soldier or David, the Admiral of San Antonio. I, too, have fear in these end times, but any wisdom I have won tells me that fear only serves me as a signal. Butterflies in my tummy, shaky knees? Time to gird my core. Time to remember the thousands of times I have hit the target.  Leap above the massive shoulders with my best aim. 

End times are when decisions are made, tables are turned, when we humans reach deep to jump high and toss forward into destiny our human race’s next ambition.  

Drill down to what enters into decision points during end times. Our battle against the Goliath pandemic reminds me that now is when to use the force of my faith, to put into practice what I’ve perfected in my life of drills. That doing not doubting determines what I alone control, that I play with all I've got.  

We have to dare to be ourselves however frightening or strange that self may prove to be--May Sarton

This pandemic, however it plays out, has its purposes. For one, it is a perfect PAUSE button. 

The rhythms of my day-to-day are different now and allow for more introspection and wonder. I’m grateful to be here, even in this temporarily off-its-kilter time for our planet. 

I took a dive into a closet full of old photo albums yesterday looking for images of me as a journalist in the 1970's and 80's. That was an era in communication when a bulletin board and a typewriter were what passed for the internet. 

I sped through maybe a thousand photos of me in my teens, college years and early career. When I returned the albums to the closet I felt like an astronaut getting used to walking on land again. I had been further than to the moon and back in my time travel. 

I remembered the tender blooming of my life and the many loves and adventures. I also remembered the painful awkwardness I needlessly carried like an Egyptian mummy grafted on my shoulder.

Seeing all those photos of me shook me to the core because they reminded me of how hard I used to be on me. I spent a large portion of my life being de pelea con el mundo --always in a boxing ring, at odds with everyone and myself.  

I didn't fit in being who I was, how I looked, who I loved, where I came from, and the fact that I have a non-standard issue last name. Of course, I wasn't in this battle alone. The less-diverse white/hetero mainstream media played an uninvited speaking role inside my head. 

I certainly will not multiply the meanness by being mad at myself in the present for being mean to myself in the past.  I know that is not a good course to follow. So, I have learned a few things! 

I was in fact kind of cute! Intense and bubbling over with anxiety and angst of all varieties, but cute nonetheless. 

More importantly, I see with the compassion acquired with age that I was doing the best that I could, given what I knew and the tools that I had at the time. 

I’m proud to say I pushed through most fears and moved forward. Like everyone I made some mistakes and moved backwards at times, but overall I feel it’s been a great ride and I hope I can still keep writing, growing, creating, sharing for many years to come. 

Seeing all those pictures I think of all the cups of coffee, glasses of iced tea, and margaritas I’ve shared and all the lives that I crossed paths with on the dance floor, on the therapy couch, in the hallways at the college. I’m thankful for it all. 

I pray, for all the positives I'm capable of pulling from this pinche pandemic, that it peters out pronto. I want to hit the PLAY button again, and have our lives return back to school, work, worship the way we lived before, taking all the lessons and wisdom from these off-kilter times with us.   

Texans vs. Covid 19

Now that we have been told shelter in place orders are expected in San Antonio, let’s remember this period of semi-enforced isolation has a purpose. It is to flatten a curve that aims to crush us if it’s not flattened. It ‘s time to talk this over Texas style. 

Scientists make statistical predictions using known data. They crunch our US numbers against what is known about Covid 19 and how quickly it spreads. In numbers, the rise and fall of infections is called a curve. The higher the number, the higher the curve. Flatter curves mean fewer people infected. 

I’ve never before seen a statistical tool come to mean so much to my existence, never mind life as I used to know it.

My future and yours depends on this curve getting flat now, not later in order to slow down the killer bug’s contagious disease.

I know what we’re up against in an enforced isolation. We’re up against some deeply ingrained habits because for a great many of us isolation runs counter to our beautiful brassy bodacious big as Texas culture. 

We Tejanos of all stripes and wherever on the planet we hail from—need to —and love to —mingle, shop, work in groups, pray together, drink and eat together, dance, entertain and learn in social settings of all sizes. 

So we’re supposed to scale back socializing to flatten Covid’s curve. That’s a tough order. Socialization for a four-year-old means learning to get along with others, for an elder it may mean a lifeline as important as medicine is to someone sick.

Asking for the voluntary cooperation of Texans to stay home seems unrealistic. Some of us won’t let loose of our guns much less the cowboy bootstrap individualism “don’t tell me what to do” mentality. And this is what flattening our curve against the Corona virus depends on? 

Yeah right. I’ll see flattening of curves when Lukenbach stops selling beer (oh, that’s happening?) When Texas fracking in the Permian Basin hits the pause button (oh, that’s happening ?) When you can’t find a breakfast burrito for sale in San Antonio? (oh, that’s happening?) 

Well, maybe it is possible this flattening will flatten, but I’m not betting on it yet. Everything we’re asked to do to flatten this curve—stay home, homeschool your kids and generally stop running around —runs against the grain of the wood of who we are as Texans.

Texans are not known for following others or following rules. Ask any resident of New Mexico or Colorado what they think of us. 

If this flattening means staying home and we know that isolation is against our nature and our instincts, it helps to keep in mind no one likes it but it may be the only way to save our skins.  All the shapes, shades and sizes of skin we usually show off so well on a spring day like this.

I know! It’s hard! How do we Suddenly become homebodies from being the world’s consummate consumers? Heck, we invented Neiman Marcus.  

We love going to a-go-go. We Texans are on the cutting edge of evolution! We’re the segment of the species pioneering no-legs-needed-as-long-as-I-have-my -pick-up-truck human DNA. 

We don’t even blink at putting on a two-legs-of-lamb-backyard barbecue for half the neighborhood, all the siblings and their kids and dogs too. That’s called a little partysito in South Texas (oh, my brother just phoned to say the carne asada at his house this Sunday’s been called off.  That’s happening too. )

Flattening this scary-ass statistical curve that’s looming like a hurricane over Houston is something we need to do. Flattening it as soon as we can saves lives. The sooner we do the sooner we can return to the wonderfully predictable lives we might’ve kicked around for being boring just a month ago. 

I have tasted interesting times now and I am sending that plate back to the kitchen. Curses to the chef.

Here’s the deal, chamacos. Flattening the curve means a month-long hand of Texas Hold ‘Em.  Keep your cards close to your chest, tuck yourself indoors and wait out the storm. 

If staying solo in stultifying isolation is what we have got to do to slice this bad bug down to size, then let’s get on with it and vamonos muchachos.

Our future shopping, education, entertaining, working, going to church and going to Church’ fried chicken too— Everything and all the Big Tex size habits we hold dear —depend on on all of us putting our backs into it and flattening down this curve now. Con Ganas. Like we mean it. Not later, hard not gentle, big not little— al estilo Texas.

Questions From a Tragedy

You can’t overstate the importance of an apology. Even when one is not yet or ever offered, the grace of its promise waits in the wings, only a few steps away. Painfully and also ever present beside it stands shame. 

This month’s Texas Monthly cover story, written by contributing editor Robert Draper, studies the aftermath of a junior high school shooting in 1978 in Austin.

The school shooting was not the first in Texas, but it predates the current wave of mass shootings and the mother of all modern mass shootings, Columbine. The zeitgeist for that brand of public armed terror was building. The Austin 1978 school shooting happened one year before the San Antonio Fiesta parade tragedy.  In many newsrooms it may or may not have been called a school shooting, since school-based gun violence was not yet common. 

The article is rich in detail and insightful in unraveling the long tail of trauma and survivor’s efforts to live normal lives after horror is visited on them. The random, unknowable nature of madness doesn’t keep survivors from searching for answers to unanswerable questions.  

The tragedy’s true genesis, because it was marked by mental illness, will be impossible to know. It seems to have been sparked by a bad grade and a boy’s fear of disappointing  his parents. Perhaps it was an accumulation of worry that broke the bright boy’s otherwise admired brain. The eighth grader was told by his math teacher that he would be failing his algebra class. He may have become terrified at the prospect of an F in Algebra. No one knows for sure, not even the shooter. 

Here is what is known: 
One morning close to the end of the school year, before leaving home for school, the 13 year old had devised in his fright a calculation that seemed to him a plan to end his pain. In the next hour the boy’s plan would end a life and alter the course of the lives of many. He waited for his family to leave the house for work. He then took his father’s loaded rifle and walked several blocks looking like a latter day underage confederate recruit. He was never stopped or questioned. Once he arrived at the school he was uninterrupted as he marched into his first period Advanced Placement English class where he opened fire on his teacher in front of a class filled with students. At first the students thought it was a well planned stunt or joke. They soon realized what happened. The shooter walked out the classroom and was later apprehended on the school grounds.  

I was working at the time at an Austin TV station then owned by the Lyndon Baines Johnson family. My boss, News Director Joe Roddy, was a pioneer news broadcaster who had earlier worked in the LBJ White House along with several Texans including George Christiansen,  who had also returned to Austin after working in the LBJ White House, to head a public relations firm that catered to political candidates. It was now 1978 and on the day of the junior high shooting, George Christianson had a PR problem of a lifetime. His son was the 13-year-old eighth grader who killed his teacher.

We cannot know what was in the mind of the boy who killed his teacher. The grown professional man who he is today refused to be interviewed for the article.  We do know that his classmates continue to struggle with the trauma they experienced. Nothing can bring back their beloved teacher, yet many of them keep asking what their lives would be like if the shooter, a classmate they admired, had tried to explain or at least apologize for his actions. They don’t hope for a new or revised past but they do hope for a revised future, one with less unplanned instances of reliving the terror they witnessed as eighth graders.

I will always wonder if or how closely our station covered the tragedy given our news director’s close association with the father of the shooter. Mr. Roddy was not known for censoring his reporters or playing favorites. There is no way I’ll know for sure since no recording was made of newscasts in pre-digital 1978. 

The article chronicles the impact and trauma that the bystanders suffered over the four decades since the shooting.  The shooting of the popular teacher is an endlessly painful unsolvable mystery for the victim’s survivors: his wife and son, and the classroom full of boys and girls who watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded.

The shooter spent 20 months in inpatient psychiatric treatment and returned to finish high school in Austin. He enrolled at the University of Texas and graduated from the UT law school. He is currently an Austin attorney.

The article points out the underlying bias in the judicial system that allowed the shooter to serve a mere 20 month treatment sentence while other offenders of color who were his age received harsher sentences for lesser crimes.  Besides race and class, what was the role of the possible political influence of the shooter’s well-known father?

My reading of the article became a deep dive into what an eighth grader lives in the rush of growing up and the zig zag of one minute being and the next not being a little kid. I could relate to the shooter when I was an eighth grader. Like the boy, I too had an antipathy to numbers. But I was lucky that I never questioned whether my mother’s acceptance of me was at issue because of my usually scraping-by-with-a-C every grading period in math. I am lucky that I never felt that my parent’s love and acceptance depended on my ability to memorize theorems or solve equations. I am so grateful for having the privilege of my mother’s unqualified acceptance.

I am also grateful for the ways Draper’s investigative article examines the role of power and privilege in the tragedy. 

Growing up in South Texas, my familiarity with those long-resident evil twins power and privilege spans across two countries, two languages and two cultures. On either side of the Rio Grande power and privilege go together like a combination dinner and cold beer. Here are a few examples from my personal collection.  In a nearby Texas village, a young man was murdered behind an icehouse where the highway connects to the village. The accused murderer was the son of a wealthy, land grant ranching family. The judge in the case found the accused man innocent and with that sentence many observers speculated that the judge repaid many years of political favors owed to the family of the accused.  

The abuse of privilege and power struck close to home when my cousin who lived in Nuevo Laredo in the ‘80’s escaped punishment for the rape of a young woman he and his friends picked up from the highway. His father paid off the local police and newspapers and thus the matter was handled. Later his sister was murdered by her policeman lover who she was trying to break up with. 

An apology can never change what has already happened, but an apology can change things moving forward. Many of the classmates who witnessed the 1978 tragedy wonder even today if their lives might have been different if they had ever received an apology from their former classmate for his actions. 

It is possible that an apology would not have changed anything. Is is possible that the shooter was or is incapable of giving one. Neither changes the fact that an apology is what many of the tragedy’s survivors feel is needed for them to move forward. 

Knowing this helps to understand the importance of an apology.  Maybe it also helps us to decide to offer one when it is needed.



 

Do You Know A Drag Queen With a Story to Share? Contact Me Please

Here is a link to a short film I produced that was used during the exhibit "Jessica St. John: Memories of a Drag Queen at JumpStart Performance Company as part of the Fredericksburg Road Studio Tour. Queen of San Antonio

John McBurney is a San Antonio treasure. He's been helping make pretty many faces in San Antonio for decades. He's a professional make-up artist who has worked in theater productions and movies. John is a performing artist whose characters are camp, sharp and are full of San Antonio flavor as they are curvaceous. 

John, Chuck Squier and I are partnering this year to produce a documentary video that celebrates the fabulous and kick-ass courage of drag culture during the past 40 years in our community.  

What we hope to find: 

Stories about people, who, with their courage to dress up as they wished and to lip synch songs from their favorite singers, used their bright spirits and humor, to fight the often violent homophobia and machismo of the era. 

Photos and film (including video) of local performers
Stories about performing drag
Stories about the changes in drag culture's acceptance
Stories about the courage and persistence performers showed in just being who they are. 

We need your help as a supporter of the project. Send me an email so we can discuss the project and how you might be involved. Perhaps you attended 1960's-2000's drag shows, or you performed in them or like many others, played a backstage role with the artists. Tell us your story and share your photos and movies. Contact Linda at lindaacuellar@gmail.com 

View from the Borderlands: Finally! Mi Gente!

View from the Borderlands: Finally! Mi Gente!: I am shining all my shoes. And my boots and sandals, too. St.Peter might call me and I want to look presentable. Why, you might ask, a...

Finally! Mi Gente!

I am shining all my shoes. And my boots and sandals, too. St.Peter might call me and I want to look presentable.

Why, you might ask, am I preparing for looking my best for the next chapter?  I have spent the past week holed up in front of my TV avoiding the coronavirus like the rest of the planet.  And a miracle happened. In 65 years of watching more television than I care to calculate, I have finally seen Mi Gente!

My people! People of the Americas. Indigenous, mestizo, mighty and in all our multiplicities. On two --count 'em-- not one, Netflix series. This qualifies as a miracle of the media kind in this retired Communications and Journalism teacher’s eyes.

Gentefied is set in Los Angeles and Undone is set here in Texas. Both are so worthy of praise and being cited as a media miracle.

My shoes are shined Saint Peter you can take me now, but I hope you take your time.  I want to see more of this miracle of finally seeing Raza portrayed in complex storylines with fully rendered push and pull of young and old, traditional and modern, and chingos of diversity.

The miracle of 2020 is that I have lived long enough to finally see television that portrays people that look like me: Not white, not black,  not brown, not yellow, but everything all at once. Throw into this mix the beauty of our armful of languages, music, art, and spirituality and you have a glimpse of the true Raza Cosmica whatever that might be shaping into.

I know portraying raza was a lot for Madison Avenue and Hollywood to take in with their tendency to flatten and simplify. Then, bam! Like the Big Bang only with a great soundtrack. Now that it's here, I'm still picking myself off the couch in disbelief. And boy, have I been waiting.

Besides being ecstatic, maybe, as Anne Lamott might say, some of us might be a little pissed with TV for only showing us as anything but hookers and gangsters. But it seems that if you wait long enough miracles sometimes do happen.

Now when and if I ever do make it past St. Peter’s gate, I plan walk in muy dueña wearing my shiny shoes and I'm going to ask what the hell took so dang long for TV to finally show our cultura’s beautiful diversity and dignity!??

I hope St. Peter understands I’m not ungrateful, just a little moody about the long-ass wait.