Ruth Calvo

Do you have a fond memory of something a teacher did for you? I will never find a better teacher than my first grade one, Ms. Scott, who reassured me in a clannish atmosphere that I was new to. Yes, I may have had more gifted or harder working or more impressive ones. But the nice way she tried to help me wedge into an already bonded society is among my best memories of teachers.

It’s kind of hard to determine what a background is for me, and this week I was really confused. I am from the south. I have cajun and Jewish and native ancestors. I can’t actually tell what makes me what I am.

There is a special feeling about Fall, for me. If you grew up in the southwest, you know it doesn’t happen all that often. Too much dry weather means the leaves fall early, turning all brown and withered during the heat of summer. That happened this year.

There are simply attitudes toward manual labor that we can’t and shouldn’t accept, but encounter every day in subtle and not so subtle ways. They go back to the royal traditions, that set the rulers up as being part of the gods’ social set, I believe. In ancient China, the rulers did not lift a hand, and grew fingernails to ghastly lengths to show that they literally never lifted a finger. In ancient Rome, the gentry were carted about in litters by their slaves, while in India and surrounding nations, rulers’ howdahs were borne on elephants.

Living in tornado alley, we out here in Heat Dome Spectacular are always a bit ahead of what we can have thrown at us. While I’m sure hopeful you have some of the necessaries like a few days’ stocks of water and non-perishable food, when all of the emergency services start suggesting we get a fresh battery for the flashlight, it’s time to check on the kit and on the gas in the car. Incidentally, it’s not all about bottled water, you can fill the bathtub and/or a many gallon container for all purposes. Sanitation is a very nice thing.

While the grindingly slow process of working an initiative through the congress, funding it and getting the agencies at state and local levels into action seems like stasis, eventually the program the administration has worked long and hard for does arrive.

That big government can take so long that it seems impossible, but what it can accomplish with public service from those elected by the taxpayers is a very good use of the taxes we pay.

You probably are aware of it, but this year has been boom times for xeriscaping. The landscaping that cuts back to minimal use of water is a longtime feature of desert areas. Right now I’m looking out the front windows at it, as well. When towns’ water sources are drying up in the west, and drowning in the east, the lawn just isn’t worth a fortune in landscaping.

Did you ever think you’d be nostalgic for the Poppy Bush era, when candidates had acknowledged handlers, and were obvious puppets of their own hired hands? Watching Christine O’Donnell and Goodhair Perry get crazee for the fun of it does that for me. The world of videos going viral has taken over in our political sphere.

When the leaders of France and Britain got together yesterday, they were facing realities that are not kind to the European community’s economic future. That they suggested what is bound to stir a lot of bad feelings among the banksters, a tax on financial transactions, shows vision that we desperately need. The U.S. would be in much better shape for the future if there were even the slimmest prospect that such a concept could be floated here.

Sadly, there is one good aspect I can see coming out of this year’s ‘exceptional’ drought level throughout the state of Texas, and neighboring Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. It may finally teach farmers that high irrigation crops such as corn are not a good thing to plant here.