Everything Is Bigger in Texas

Southwest Airlines

Remember my History Vacation blogs?

The last day of our History Vacation when I flew home, I met Marcia Olson and the plane hit a truck. Two most fortuitous events.

I always meet the nicest and most interesting people while flying. Marcia was one of my seat mates on my flight home. She's in education. And music.  And she lives in the Denver Metropolitan area, as do I, so we visited all the way from D.C. to Denver by way of Atlanta.

We had to change planes in Atlanta. I was planning to lunch in Atlanta but ....

When the plane landed there, it hit a truck. I know, how does a plane hit a truck? It happened in the Gate area. The truck was parked where it shouldn't have been and the visibility from the pilot's seat is quite limited. It wasn't a big collision or anything. Just knocked off the tippy-end of one of the wings, the part that has that little flashy light.

It delayed our deplaning but not so much that we missed our flight to Denver. Just missed my lunch. Now the folks who were supposed to stay on the plane and fly to Philadelphia, they were inconvenienced. Like my son John said regarding repair of the plane so they could continue their flight, "It might take a while for the glue to dry."

Long story short: Marcia and I became Facebook friends and she messaged me to check my emails because she got a voucher from Southwest for another flight. Me, too!



Wednesday I used said voucher and flew to Dallas for my grandchildren's birthdays. I boarded the light rail into Denver, transferred to the train-to-the-plane, and was through security at the airport, all before sunup. I haven't seen the sun except for that time period we were flying above the clouds until today.

(We didn't hit anything when we landed.)

Gotta say -- all that stuff you hear about things being "bigger" in Texas is true. This is an agave plant outside the Half Price Books flagship store in Dallas. It's huge.

And that nonspecific pronoun "it" is perfect here because it can refer to the huge agave plant or the huge bookstore.









The day after I arrived I further confirmed the truism of Texas being the home of "bigger." This is the welcoming entrance to a home I passed on my Thursday walk.

That sorta piled-up plant in the background is prickly pear and it's taller than I am. Of course, Central Texas has had rain of Biblical proportions and prickly pear is a cactus so given enough water, it will enthusiastically achieve its genetic potential, .

And this, folks, is a high school football stadium. Yes, that's right high school.
The two pedestrians are my 6 foot-two-inch tall son
 and my normal adult size daughter-in-law.

If you haven't noticed, I gotta tellya, I'm not much of a traveler and even less of a travel blogger. If you want to read some good travel blogs, check out my friend Anabel's blog glasgowgallivanter.com. She and her husband live in Scotland (hence the title) and they travel often and widely.

The Ride -- Flash Fiction

image from Dependable Auto Transport

He first saw her at the service desk in the Oklahoma City Lexus dealership. Tall, older woman with I-Love-Lucy red hair. Not bad looking in that rich-old-lady sort of way. Well-dressed, expensive hand bag and shoes -- flats. Without a doubt, his grandmother would have recognized the brands.

Probably drove a black GS, he thought. Or maybe one of the hybrids. He was wrong. Completely wrong. There she stood. Beside his truck, her Atomic Silver LX on his truck.

"I heard you're going to Houston," she said.

"Yes, ma'am." He wondered how that SUV got on his trailer.

"I want you to take me and my car with you."

"Excuse me."

"I need to be in Houston for Thanksgiving. At my granddaughter's. Always wanted to ride on a long-haul."

"How'd that car get on my truck?" he asked, knowing already that he didn't want to know.

"The tracks, or whatever you call 'em, were down, so I just drove it up there."

"Lady, you can't do that. Just drive it up there. It's got to be loaded right. Tied down."

"Okay," she said. "I put it in park and set the brake. You do whatever it is you need to so it'll travel safely. I'll ride up front with you. I-35 to Dallas then I-45 into Houston, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." He shoved his Minnesota Vikings cap to the back of his head and considered the situation.

"Is this your truck, or do you just drive for some company?"

"It is my truck," he said. "And my company. Small, but my company."

"How small?" she asked.

"Four trucks counting this one." He didn't see what this had to do with anything.

"Then that's settled."

"Actually, Lady. It's not settled at all. I don't take riders, and I don't haul cars without a contract."

"No law against taking riders. You set the price, I'll agree to it. We'll shake hands and you'll have your contract. An oral contract. All perfectly legal. Do you take plastic?"

"Plastic? Lady, its ...."

"Mary."

"What?"

"My name's Mary. Mary Schroeder. What's yours?"

"Paul Larsen."

"Well, Paul Larsen, you take care of the car and I'll go ahead and get in the truck. Is the rider-side door unlocked?"

"Yes, ma'am, but ...."

She was gone around the front of the truck on her way to the rider-side door. He pulled his cap down to his eyebrows. He could tell she was used to getting her way. An awful lot like his Grandma. He dug a couple of tie downs out of the tool box and climbed up on the trailer.

As they crossed the North Canadian River headed south, she asked "Are you married?"

"No ma'am," he said taking a sip of coffee. "I've got some cokes in the box behind the seat if you want one."

"Not now, thank you. Originally from Minnesota, are you?" She asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Been in Texas long enough to pick up some manners though," she said.

He laughed.

"Katy's not married either."

"Katy?" he asked.

"My granddaughter."

Her granddaughter. This might be a long drive. Maybe she'd buy his meals.

Namaste

When I went to bed last night, I hadn't the slightest idea what I'd write about for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Today is N. "No." Maybe "Never." Definitely something "Negative."

I was tired. I'd spent the day in a hospital ER with my aged father. We were under a Winter Storm Warning with the promise of a two- or three-day snow event. Seven to fourteen inches of the white stuff for our Denver suburb. April is the Second Snowiest Month in Colorado.

A good sleep and waking wrapped "in my sweet baby's arms" with that tell-tale white, early morning snow-light seeping through closed blinds and I had a smile and today's N-word.

Namaste. (NAH-məs-tay)  According to Wikipedia, it's a respectful Hindi greeting meaning "I bow to the divine in you."

Yesterday, as my husband and I were heading home, by way of our favorite Mexican restaurant. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. Anyway, there was a Jeepish vehicle ahead of us with all kinds of stickers on its backside. One touting pet adoption, another outdoor recreation, a "native" bumper sticker, one of those ecumenical bumper stickers like so:

              

By using the standard background for a              I've seen this one in several states
       Colorado license plate, the bearer proclaims       and I like it.                                            

their having been born in Colorado, a rarity.                                                               

And there in the middle of the spare-tire was the biggest. It said Namaste. Even without those magnificent Rocky Mountains rising in the near distance ahead of us, I knew I was in Colorado.

Words are my life! The language we speak, where we learned to speak it, and where we speak it now.

I'm from Oklahoma where license plates say "Native America." Native there refers to Native Americans -- Cherokee, Comanche, Cheyenne, Choctaw, and those are just the C-tribes. According to the the U.S. Census Bureau, Oklahoma has the second highest population of Native Americans of any State in the Union. (Behind California, because I know you wondered.)

Namaste is from those other Indians. I don't think I've ever seen "Namaste" stuck on the side of a vehicle in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma's not exactly The South. It's really more the Southwest. But it's definitely South of Colorado. So I say "y'all." I call my father "Daddy." I drink "pop." I jam words together --  at meal time I might ask "Jeet yet?" and a fellow Oklahoman might answer "No. Joo?" And we might have fried chicken or chicken fried steak. Or a burger. (McDonald's and its golden arches are the same everywhere.)

In Colorado, I've discovered green chili. That's a spicy stew of tomatillos, chili peppers, and pork.

When we lived in southeast Arkansas, they greeted everyone with "Hey," and ate the best fried catfish in the world.

I knew that one of our local police officers there in Crossett, Arkansas was originally from central Texas as soon as he talked about a "tank." He meant a body of water that Oklahoman's call a "pond." Here on the Front Range, Coloradans would call it a "lake."

Just thinking about the intricacies of languages and all the cultures across the world makes me happy.

Let it snow! Namaste, y'all.

We're in Trouble, BUT -- essay

image from usnews.com

We’re in trouble. As a nation. As a society. As a culture. 

We are undereducated which makes us susceptible to the worst of the charlatans selling snake oil to make us thin, beautiful, and long-lived. Susceptible to the worst of the schemers promising fool-proof investment strategies that will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. To the worst of the politicians offering lowest-common-denominator solutions to poverty, crime, and terrorism. And to the worst of the promulgators of conspiracy theories. The Moon-landing hoax. Who killed JFK? Anti-Vaxxers. You name it. A group of shady someones somewhere are threatening our “good life.”

This blog post is not a conspiracy theory about how we got undereducated. And how our children are continuing to be undereducated. Ignorance has been with us since the beginning of time. You could argue that it’s human nature. BUT, to quote one of my favorite movie lines, "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” (Kathryn Hepburn as Miss Rose Sayer to Humphrey Bogart’s Charlie Allnut in The African Queen.)

Our various news services have announced the 2013 rankings, state by state, of our high school graduation rates, touting the overall average of 81%. BUT those various news services go on to say why that 81% may be misleading.

Each state has its own requirements for graduation. Each state has its own method of counting those students who do not graduate. And not all states were required to report. My natal state Oklahoma was one of the states given an extension. No numbers from there were figured in the 81% average.

One way we can compare the success of the education of these graduates is the ACT exam. It is the same for all who take it regardless of where they received their high school diploma or what kind of diploma they received. Some states have more than one kind of diploma

Iowa came in at Number 1 with a graduation rate of 90%. Iowa offers one type of diploma and does not require any exit exam to graduate. In 2014, 68% of Iowa’s graduating students took the ACT exam.

Of that 68%:  75% met the ACT benchmark for English, 52% met it for Reading, 48% met it for Math, and 47% met the ACT benchmark for Science. 

ACT benchmarks are “scores on subject-area tests that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing first-year college courses.” (ACT) 

The State of Texas came in 2nd with a graduation rate of 88%. Texas offers eleven kinds of diplomas and requires graduates to pass exit exams in algebra and English. 40% of Texas’s graduating students took the ACT exam in 2014. (62% of Texas’s graduating students took the SAT exam, 33.9% of whom met the SAT benchmark score.)

Of that 40%: 60% met the ACT benchmark for English, 42% met it for Reading, 47% met it for Math, and 36% met the ACT benchmark for Science.

My home state of Colorado came in 36th with a 2013 graduation rate of 77%. Colorado offers two types of diplomas and requires no exit exams. 100% of the graduating students took the ACT exam in 2014.

63% of all graduating Colorado students met the ACT benchmark for English. 43% met it for Reading. 39% for Math and 36% for Science.

For me the most damning of these statistics is the very low percent of graduates who meet the ACT benchmark for Reading. Remember, those percentages are of percentages of percentages so the ACT exams can confirm only that slightly more than 29% of the Number 1 state’s graduating students meet the benchmark for READING. We’ve no way to tell what percentage of the 32% who didn’t take the test would have done. Not to mention the 10% who did not graduate.

Okay. So a person graduates from a less than admirable secondary school without an acceptable level of Math and Science education. If that person can and will READ, he can fill in the holes. Self-taught doesn’t have to mean substandard.

I could indict our national education system. But we don’t have one. Or our abysmal failure to support the fractured education system that we do have. We don’t support it by setting high standards. We don’t support it by firing subpar educators or respecting competent educators or rewarding the exceptional educators. We don’t support it financially.

BUT these failures can be corrected. We can work on correcting them at the local, state, and national levels. Expect quality and be willing to pay for it.

In the meantime, we can do what we can at home

I know if you’re reading my blog, you are a reader so I’m preaching to the choir. BUT us choir members can do something. We can read to the children in our lives. We can read around the children in our lives so they see reading as a good and desirable activity.

We can donate our books and magazines to places where they’ll be read again – schools, churches, libraries, medical clinics, rec centers, day care centers, nursing homes. And a whole bunch of places you can think of.

Give kids books – for their birthdays and Christmas. (Try to avoid giving that special nephew the same book two Christmases running like I did.) Drop a book in their Trick or Treat bag. How about giving them a book just because it’s Tuesday? Take them with you to the local public library so they learn that it’s their library.

And, while you’re at it, do these things for the adults in your life, too.