The interviewer well knew he couldn’t say anything, but admittedly, he fumbled his words as he began to question the perspective job candidate. He thought, “I would have never invited her to interview had a known she was a girl. Really? No female has ever held this position–this is a man’s job. Hell, it’s been a man’s job since its inception. Fortunately, his inner voice reminded him to look at her credentials, talk to her like he would to his own daughters, and then decide.

Sadly, this is a true story, but my kid got the job in spite of her sex. “Mom, I only got the job because of my first name. The news station folk assumed I was a guy, but I did smoke the interview!”

While this event occurred several years ago, I find myself replaying it over in my head. Women make up over 50% of America’s population. Developing countries suffer for their lack of commitment to educating women. In my high school years, there were no girls’ competitive sports; our career choices were few. Be a nurse, a secretary, a teacher. “But I want to be a….” Sorry, that door is closed.

Granted, with Title IX and forward thinking, the status of women has improved. However, stereotypes remain, i.e. OMG, a woman can NOT be President of the United States. The glass ceiling remains.

I humbly offer a word of advice to soon-to-be mothers of daughters: do your kid a favor. Name her Alex, Clancy, Bailey, Remington, Cameron, Riley or Kyle. If you want your daughter to at least get an interview for her dream job, don’t burden her with a name like Sue, Shirley, or Nancy. Don’t get creative and feminize it by changing the spelling, as Rylee, Alexandria, or Remylou.

No, I doubt in the foreseeable future we’ll not experience equal pay for equal work. I doubt we’ll experience equal access into executive positions nor board rooms. In politics, rhetoric continues to demean women as stupid, “suburban housewives,” who are incapable of thought, let alone success. I urge you to consider giving your daughter her OWN opportunity to prove herself worthy of scoring a seat on the Supreme Court, leading a major corporation, or finding a cure for cancer. Forget sex-identifying names. Choose Cameron, Blake, or Scout.

I have heard all the adages about old age–more politely dubbed “twilight years.”

“Old age isn’t for sissies.”

“Just think how many new people you’ll meet every day when you lose your mind.”

Though some will beg to differ, I’ve not totally lost my mind yet. Except when I can’t find something or remember why I walked down a hallway. Sometimes, I fail to remember a name, an experience, or the author of a book. I save that recall for 3:00 AM, when I suddenly awake and have an “ah ha” moment.

My greatest challenges are creaking and rattling. Going upstairs is less noisy than coming down. I sound like a Halloween skeleton clanging and shaking my bones. Think Jacob Marley when he visits Scrooge dragging and rattling his chains. That’s me! I’m capable of waking a bear in hibernation.

Further, I have the usual aches and pains. I think they’re courtesy of the Lord to remind me I’m still alive. Certainly both my strength and agility ain’t what they used to be, which is why my cabana boy changes the ceiling light bulbs.

My days of bicycle riding have been reduced to a stationary machine. If you see me running, kill whatever is chasing me. My wheels now are simple driving cars, and yes, I can still see at night thanks to glasses. I fully understand there will come a time when I enter the progression: cane, to walker, to wheel chair, to gurney.

Today, I spread 30 cubic feet of garden soil and rototilled my garden. Tomorrow, I’ll rototill again and plant it. After I’ll do the Sunday NYT crossword, the laundry, and mop the kitchen floor. Maybe, I’ll even bake some cookies, and write the next chapter of my new novel. If and only if “dem bones rise again.”

I began my blog earlier this week; however in my attempt to be empathetic, I changed it. Robert Fulghum first published his book with the same title of the poem in 1988, which sold over 7 million copies and was two years on the New York Times best sellers’ list. As I reread this minister’s wise words, I thought about this week and wondered.

I wondered how America has grown so angry. I wondered is it COVID? Have we always a smoldering hate for those of a different race, for the disabled, for the sick, for the elderly?

Granted, there were times I refused to share my new box of 64 Crayolas with my baby sister. I hit my younger brother in the back seat of the car, until he grew a lot stronger than me. And if my mom was alive, she’d say my room was always a mess; but she’d also say I knew how to apologize. Lord knows, I say I’m sorry at least once a day. Certainly in our COVID world I wash my hands incessantly, and I flush!

Finally, I’ve strived to play fair with my income tax filings, my pack of dogs, and with my children. In my volunteer work, I listened to both sides of a debate and sought consensus. In my 50-year career in education, on occasion, I’ve been vilified by the media, but English teachers, like me, take criticism–goes with the proverbial territory. I don’t lash out and spew vile retorts.

Given the turn of events with COVID, with anger and hate, with mocking, with defying mask requirements, and with devastating violence, my empathy rests with those who learned nothing in kindergarten.

Before you get your knickers in a knot, my blog is about dogs. As many of you know, I have six dogs. Four are mine; two I inherited. I strive to treat them equally; they all sleep on my king-size bed at night. Yes, one of them may bolt midway through our rest to keep watch, but for the most part, none of them leave for the entire night.

I’ve always had puppies; I’m not a fan of introducing adult dogs into my pack. I don’t want an adult challenging my Alpha leadership in our pack. Though I preferred girls, I found a boy puppy online. He was billed as a mini labradoodle. I drove fifty miles to look, and while his dad was a poodle, his mom was a mutt. Given the conditions of the seller’s house, I needed to rescue him. My kid and I spent hours and dollars to rid him of ticks!

My cabana boy’s dog after a year in my guest house also decided to move in with me. Another boy. Four girls, who taught neither the boys to lift their leg nor mark their territory. Thank God!

Curiously, over time, I noticed a dramatic differences between the sexes. My girls are delighted I feed and cater to them, but my boys must sleep right next to me. They’ve chosen to defend me against all the evils in the world. They proudly bring me bugs and varmints they’ve executed in my behalf. Boy dogs are loyal, unlike their diva opposites. Makes me wonder if the dame is true of humans. As a mother of daughters, I’m clueless.

I’ve purposely avoided political commentary from my blogs, which began in 2013 as humorous posts. But today, I must stand up for my family: Major Hugh Henry, who led a regiment during the revolutionary war. I must stand with my grandfather, a WWI doughboy; my father-in-law who served on a Navy battleship in WWII; my father, a US Navy captain; my uncle, a US Army colonel; my brother, a US Navy lieutenant; and my great nephew, a current Army Ranger.

Further, I must stand up for all my own friends, who served in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and the Gulf. Thankfully, none of my friends are etched on the Viet Nam Memorial Wall. But I was an avid ASU football fan, who wept for Pat Tillman, and his personalized gift to me is priceless.

Yes, I had met Senator John McCain on several occasions. And though, I didn’t always agree with him, I respected him. When McCain was captured, tortured, and incarcerated in the Hanoi Hilton for five years, he was offered freedom. He refused–he didn’t want to desert his fellow soldiers.

Yet, on July 18, 2015, candidate for US President DT said of McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Further, he referred to former President George H.W. Bush, a Navy pilot as a “loser’ for being shot down by the Japanese in WWII.

Throughout his presidency he’s continued to mock revered members of the military. Numerous examples can be researched and verified as fact. And this week, he enraged me by calling those who died in combat as losers and suckers. All this from a little boy, who with the help of his daddy, managed to avoid being drafted because of bone spurs. Curious, he can’t remember the location of said spurs. Instead of “Hail to the Chief,” when he tours a military installation, the band should strike the Beatles’ song: “I’m a Loser.”

In 1970, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) posed that question.  Tonight, I ask who’ll turn on the rain to a very parched desert?  Certainly, I’ve tried as best I can to water my mature, citrus trees, and much of my landscape is xeroscaped.  Even my hardy saguaro, my yuccas, and my mesquites are stressed.  Most of my smaller plants have died and will need replaced in late fall when the 110+ temperatures end.

In direct contrast, my youngest, both a cancer and COVID survivor, may be headed to Louisiana next week as a camera woman for a NC news station to capture the devastation of Hurricane Laura.  Of course, I’m concerned about both her health and safety, but this is not her first rodeo.  She and her reporter spent 8 days filming Florence, where their beds were the floor of a fire department.  She is driven by the desire to film the abject ruin of peoples’ lives and property.  She is driven to expose the charlatan reconstructionists who prey on those whose houses are in shambles.  And she is driven by the proverbial “Kodak moments,” of the empty rhetoric of politicians who promise help, board their cars or planes, and immediately forget:  these people have lost everything!

Again, tonight, the cloudy skies and the strong winds left me with a dirty pool and 100 drops of rain with a forecast of 113 degrees tomorrow.  If you can turn on the Arizona rain, please do so.  Thank you.

Fifty years ago this week, I signed my first contract to teach in an Ohio public school; 11th grade English.  I was twenty-two years old and naively assumed my students would love English as much as I did.  The second day of school I was proved wrong.  I passed out the textbooks and told the class to turn to page 25.  Then I noticed the Caucasian, young man with curly red hair, holding his text upside down.  “Mr. Simmons,  please turn your book upright so you can read.”

Much to my horror, his face turned bright red.  He stammered, “Sorry.”  And thus began my relationship with 16-year-old Stanley Simmons who was almost illiterate–he couldn’t spell his last name. Stan was the best he could do.  I met with Stan every day in the library during our lunch period trying to teach him to read and write.  In early October he asked, “Do you know what it’s like to die?”

“No, Stan, I don’t.  Why are you asking?”

“I’m just wondering.”  I was so shaken by his question, I went to the guidance counselor and asked him to meet with Stan.  The counselor supposedly did and had no cause for concern, nor intervention.  Yet, Stan continued to talk to me about death.  In early November it got worse.  Stan announced: ” Don’t make me write today. I can’t.”

“And why would that be?”  With that, he flopped his very bruised, swollen right arm across the library table.  “Stan, what happened?  Please talk to me.”

“I wanted to find out what a car felt like.  I put my arm on the driveway and had my brother drive over it with a car.”  I fought for words.

“Let’s go to the school nurse and have your arm checked.”

Stan’s reply, “No, I’m ok; I just can’t write.”

Fifty years ago, teachers had to follow the rigid line and staff, which thankfully changed over time.  I begged the counselor to see Stan.

Holiday break, and I went to my parents’ house for two-week hiatus.  My mom found me outside shoveling snow from the sidewalk, ‘Sue, Dr. Jackson wants to speak with you.”  My direct supervisor?  Dr. Jackson, a formidable, no-nonsense, superlative educator?  Whoa, why?  I knew I turned in my grades.

We exchanged greetings of the season, “Sue, Stan Simmons committed suicide last night.  He hung himself by an electric cord in the closet.” I was devastated!  I was twenty-two- years old; teenagers didn’t do that.  I grieved.  After school resumed in January, I was sitting in the teachers’ room grading papers, and the counselor walked in.

“Hey, Sue, did you hear about Stan?” I nodded.  “You know he was one student I couldn’t get interested in.”  His statement became my life-changing moment.  I earned both a Master’s degree and doctorate in educational leadership.  I have been a high school principal, school superintendent, associate superintendent at the Arizona Department of Education, and an adjunct university professor.  I volunteered, I was co-president of United Parent Council, and in 2000 was elected to a school board.

Many folk assume I’ve received compensation for my twenty-year service–not.  School board members in Arizona receive no monetary benefit, just the joy of watching a play, touring an art exhibit, attending numerous sporting events, handing a diploma to a first-generation high graduate, and reading to a class.  Priceless. Further, as a public education advocate, I’ve also put my money where my mouth is.  And no, you’ll not find my name among the gifts and donations section of a board meeting.  Anonymous is fine with me.

In closing, Stan Simmons is NOT a figment of my imagination.  It is a true story, which about I rarely talk–too painful.  I’ve been a blogger since June 2013, under a private domain name which I own and with a service (Word Press), which I pay.  I’ve published two novels, three English reference books, and the story of my daughter’s cancer nightmare.  I’m an English major; I’ve never taken anyone’s words as my own without citation.

But most importantly, I do for our public school children what I could not do for Stan.

Throw mud on the wall to see if it sticks. An idiom defined as: offer an idea or strategy to see if 51% of Americans agree.

The US Postal Service is over 240 years old. It employees more than 600,000 folk–third highest employer behind the federal government and Walmart.  Its fleet size is in excess of 250,000 vehicles. Further during the holiday season, it delivers almost 1 BILLION packages.  Yet, petty politics has blocked its funding to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in election ballots.  In Arizona, mail-in ballots have worked successfully for years; I should know I’ve been on the ballot five times.

I choose not to debate the mail-in ballot issue.  I’ve far greater concerns, such as the economic impact on the automotive industry, the postal work force, and the greeting card industry.  Admittedly I pay several monthly expense bills on-line, but NOT utilities.  I have learned the hard way that internet/cable service, electricity, and water bills surreptitiously increase if I don’t pay attention.

As a quasi-historian, without documentation, most family history is lost.  As any competent researcher knows the value of primary sources vs. secondary sources,  Primary sources are those eyewitness accounts and/or photos, original literary works, speeches, and historical documents.  People don’t write letters anymore, for the internet has rendered it obsolete.  Much of our understanding of US history is from letters delivered by the postal service:  the Civil War, WWI and WWII, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam war.

Many of us waited for the postman to bring the Sears and other Christmas catalogs, by mid-December our dog-eared catalog was falling apart. Call me old-fashioned, but I love Christmas and birthday cards.  I delight in handwritten thank-you notes.  I cherish my grandmother’s diaries and my father’s letters to his parents during his freshman year.  (A poor country boy dropped into Ohio State University in 1940.) Being a pack rat, I reminisce not only over picture albums, but of every card, picture, and note my kids gave to me.

To this day, the post office continues delivery home-made, care packages to our college students and to our men and women serving overseas.  But yet, mud-slinging has threatened the destruction of one of America’s oldest institutions.

Believe me, on November 3rd, I’ll shred my mail-in ballot and vote in person.  (No one can challenge my birther-right; my family moved to here prior to the American Revolution.) I will not be disenfranchised by cheap muddy rhetoric, nor petty politics.

Pile of Vote Badges – US Elections Concept Image

Most of us agree COVID is not hoax that will miraculously disappear by the time you read my blog,  I’ve 4 months left in my twenty-year service as a school board member in a large suburban school district and truly believe ideal education occurs in face-to-face instruction.  I believe schools should act in the best interest of children, not what’s convenient for adults, and remember our classrooms were not built on social distancing.

On Thursday, the Arizona Health Department issued benchmark metrics for the safe reopening of classroom teaching–positivity rate of 5% or less.  (Arizona is currently at 10%, while NYC has gone from a 70% positivity rate in March to less than 1% now. It is doable.). Thus, our school board voted to postpone opening until our county reaches the 5% benchmark.  Of course, we began virtual, interactive learning on August 5 via technology; we have a “soft-opening” plan when the magic 5% is sustained for 14 days.  Is this good for kids?  Hell, no!  But what I know about medicine and virus could fit under my fingernail with ample space for other things I don’t know.  Since I’m one of five board members responsible for the safety and well being of over 33,000 students and staff, I heed the advice of experts.

Now, I find myself deluged with emails urging the start of fall high school sports.  Based on my fingernail knowledge, I’ve no problem with Cross Country, Swim and Dive, Golf, and even badminton, but football?  Really?  Full contact, sweat, and spit.  Traveling on school buses around the Valley.  My head aches, when I read: Dr. Skidmore, my son may lose his football scholarship to Ball State University, where he’s slated as the number 2 quarterback. Sorry, the MAC has already cancelled its season; I suspect they will understand.

My son has been so depressed he can’t work out in the gym this summer.  He’s already been offered a full-ride at OSU and is destined for the NFL.  Really?  Your son, a senior, is unable to devise his own workout program?  He’s welcomed to hoist my sofa over his head innumerable times while I vacuum dog hair.  He can dig up my dead bushes, move several tons of granite, and climb up and down my stairs to move heavy junk anytime.  The upside is I’ll pay him.

Jack’s 92-year-old grandmother, who tested positive for COVID was only ill for three days, and she wants nothing more than to see her grandson kick the winning field goal. And by the way, you made us sign a waiver to hold the school district harmless. Delighted to learn his grandma is well, but if football happens, I suspect there will not be the usual 6,000 spectators. As to the waiver, which has been done for over 20 years, please know we’ve spent far too much money in court. The waiver does not prevent the district from copious lawsuits. Thank you, but the district could livestream the game on You Tube.  PS. We won’t sue you!

Forgive my rant.  All I want is to get students and staff safely back together in the classroom. I want kids to experience the camaraderie of collaboration and the joy of learning under the guidance of an A+ teacher.  Is that too much for me to ask?

My sister phoned me several weeks ago and at one point in our conversation shared:  “I was talking with Grayce the other day, and she almost broke my heart when she said, ‘Grammy, I miss the zoo so much; I worry about the animals!’  Then Grayce cried.”

Grayce (5) and her little brother, Dax, (almost 2) live in Pittsburgh.  My niece and nephew-in-law frequented the zoo with them, until…. COVID closed the zoo to visitors.  COVID closed the schools.  And COVID imposed travel restrictions of those outside of Pennsylvania.  Truly, COVID has reeked havoc on the emotional and social well-being of children–far too young to understand why their grandparents don’t visit, why their parents work from home, why they can’t go to the public pool or playground, nor the zoo.

One night I entertained myself by looking at children’s toys on Amazon.  Wow, interactive this, mini kindles, owls that can be taught to fly.  Complex building systems, science kits, and robots.  Not a yoyo, color book, nor a non-remote kite.  Then I searched zoo and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a plastic bag filled with larger zoo animals and a play mat on which to construct a zoo.  Simple, creative, and imaginative.  No glitz, no whistles and bells–just lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

On a rainy Pittsburgh day, Grayce and Dax opened my box and entertained themselves for several hours.    My phone rang; my sister.  “Sue, I can’t begin to tell you how much fun the kids have had today with the zoo.  Grayce is rather annoyed Dax says the moose is a deer, but they’ve had a blast today.  They even face-timed us to show us their menagerie.”

Hmm.  No batteries, no flashing lights, no sound.  Simple imaginative play.  Perhaps, all of us might benefit from a new box of crayons and coloring book, a jig saw puzzle, a deck of cards, or a paper airplane.  Perhaps a hardback book, a basketball, or a box of chalk.

Sorry, I’ve got to go. Alexa is ordering my Roomba around, my phone is tweeting, and I’ve got to track my likes on Facebook.  Later.