Monthly Archives: May 2018

national news

Longing for a return of this kind of collegiality

I believe I have shared this video already, but I want you to look at it again.

It speaks to a “kinder, gentler” time in Washington, D.C. A president of one political party welcomed back his immediate predecessor, a president of another party.

They unveiled official White House portraits of President Bush and first lady Laura Bush. President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama spoke of the “seamless transition” from one administration to another. They spoke of warmth and hospitality, of cooperation and collegiality.

That kind of mood is missing these days. I want it to return. Perhaps one day it will.

Enjoy this video. It tells me that political opponents need not be enemies. That love of country transcends the partisan divide.

Honest. It does.

national news

Another NASA celebrity astronaut leaves us

There once was a time when astronauts were celebrities. We knew their names. We followed their careers. We got up early to watch them blast off from the Cape Canaveral, Fla., launch pad.

Another such astronaut — and please pardon this intended pun — has left this Earth for keeps. Alan Bean died today at age 86.

He was the fourth man to walk on the moon, aboard Apollo 12 in November 1969. He made the flight to the lunar surface with the late Charles “Pete” Conrad.

Alan Bean didn’t achieve the kind of celebrity status of, say, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, the seven men selected to fly in the initial Mercury missions, or most of the Gemini astronauts who came along later.

Bean was among those picked for the third group of space pioneers, the Apollo program. He joined NASA in 1963 after serving as a Navy test pilot.

My years in the Texas Panhandle makes me remind you that Bean hailed from that part of the world. He was a native of Wheeler, a tiny town east of Amarillo.

My most glaring memory of Bean’s time on the moon stems from some innovative measures he took to deploy a camera on the lunar surface. The camera wouldn’t start taking images. What did Bean do? He grabbed a hammer and beat on the device! Then it worked.

NASA doesn’t have a manned space program of its own these days. We’re sending our astronauts into space aboard Russian rockets. I’m trying to imagine how Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would react to that bit of aerospace irony.

Back in the day, though, Alan Bean was among those individuals we prayed for when they rocketed into space. As President Kennedy said about the goal of sending astronauts to the moon and returning them safely, “We don’t do these things because they are easy. We do them because they are hard.”

Alan Bean and his colleagues just made it look easy. It wasn’t. He needed to beat on a state-of-the-art camera with a hammer to enable the device to record his history-making adventure for the rest of time.

May he now rest eternally.

national news

This is a seriously ICE-y policy

There’s heartlessness and then there is a new policy announced by the Trump administration.

Unauthorized immigrants seeking entry into the United States will be arrested and prosecuted, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Fine. I get that.

But their small children will be taken from them on the spot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. They will be separated from their parents — from their mother and father — and sent … somewhere.

Sessions said, “… we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

Infants? Toddlers? Adolescents? Doesn’t matter. They’re going to snatched from their parents under the new ICE policy.

Critics of this policy are calling it “torture” as defined by the United Nations. According to a Washington Post essay by Jaana Juvonen and Jennifer Silvers: Under federal law, which adopts the United Nations definition, torture is: “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as … punishing him or her for an act he or she or a third person … has committed or is suspected of having committed.” And though in theory any action inflicting such suffering is banned, that is what is inflicted by separating parents and children in border detention.

Read the entire essay here.

Is this how Donald Trump defines the “love” he once said he wanted to use in determining the fate of the so-called Dreamers, the U.S. residents brought here when they were children by their undocumented immigrant parents?

I can answer that one: It lacks any pretense of love when it comes to the treatment of the children of those who are trying to enter the United States. Asylum seekers? Refugees? Forget it, man! They’re going to be rounded up and sent to places where their children cannot join them.

Shameful.

national news

Happy 97th birthday, Dad

I play mind games with myself on occasion. One of them involves the man in this picture. He is my father. This weekend would be his 97th birthday. He didn’t live much beyond the date of this picture.

He was 59 years of age when fate intervened. Dad was fooling around with some friends and business associates in British Columbia when their speedboat crashed. Dad died on the spot. That was in September 1980.

The mind game involves asking myself what kind of old man Dad would have become. Pete Kanelis could be a complicated man. He was well-educated and well-spoken; he often was the life of any gathering he attended; he came from a large family with many siblings, to whom he was devoted beyond measure; he was the eldest of seven children born to my grandparents and on occasion had to assume the role of family “leader.”

Dad also had some heartache in his life. He sought to run a business, but it didn’t work out. He and my mother faced financial ruin in the early 1950s.

How would he have aged? I cannot know this, but my sense is that he would have traveled a difficult journey into his so-called “golden years.” Dad didn’t take good care of his body. He was an “old” 59 when he and his pals crashed that boat.

I am left, thus, to merely speculate.

Today, though, I want to call attention briefly to another key aspect of Dad’s life. He was part of the Greatest Generation. I salute his service in the U.S. Navy today — and always. He went to war just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor.

He joined roughly 16 million other Americans to fight the tyrants in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo who sought to conquer the world. Dad would have none of it. He saw the bulk of his combat in the Mediterranean Sea theater of operations. He fought the Germans and the Italians from the deck of a ship, firing his anti-aircraft weapon at fighters and bombers flown by men intent on killing him and his buddies.

We’re going to honor those who didn’t come from various battlefields over the course of our nation’s history. Dad, of course, did return home after World War II. So this Memorial Day holiday doesn’t honor his sacrifice precisely. I choose to honor it here and, yes, I am likely to say something again on Veterans Day.

Fate dealt Dad a mortal blow 38 years ago when left this world without warning. I am proud of and grateful for the role he played in keeping us safe from the monstrous tyrants who sought to enslave an entire planet.

Thank you, Dad, for saving the world. And happy birthday.

Sports news

NFL has enough on its plate

As if the National Football League didn’t have enough on its plate with which to contend.

The NFL has just issued an edict ordering its players to stand for the national anthem when it’s played prior to football games.

There is another issue on the NFL’s plate. It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

I got to write about it while working part time for Panhandle PBS. My task in those days was to write blogs pertaining to public service programming. “Frontline” did a landmark special on CTE in 2015 and I was privileged to offer some perspective on it.

Here is what I wrote in September 2015 for Panhandle PBS.

I mention this now because the NFL is back in the news. The topic this time — players who “take a knee” to protest police brutality against African-Americans — is unpleasant. It’s not nearly as grim and grievous as the “other big issue” that plagues the NFL to this day.

CTE is taking lives. The league is trying to do better at protecting these highly paid athletes/entertainers. It’s a full-time job for the NFL. I am wondering how in the world the league is going to focus on players who launch their protests by “taking a knee.”

local news

Patience will be stressed

I guess I am somewhat liberated these days. I can speak about all the road work ongoing in Amarillo, Texas, even though I spend most of my time in our new home in Fairview, just north of Dallas.

I happen to agree with a letter to the editor published in the Amarillo Globe-News about the need for patience as the city and the state repair roads, bridges and highways seemingly in every corner of the city.

“Let us all relax, be patient, and this too shall pass – just not in the construction no-passing zone, please,” writes Alan Tinsley, an Amarillo resident.

Check out Tinsley’s letter here.

I’ve sought to counsel the same thing for years. I will admit that my own patience has been tested at times as I drive through Amarillo.

But I do try to keep some things in perspective. After all, it could be a whole lot worse than waiting to get through an intersection that’s being rebuilt. We could be recovering from devastating floods or heavy wind; our health could go south on us in a flash.

As my wife and I return to Amarillo on occasion, we’ll get to experience the progress as it develops without experiencing some of the hassles of navigating through the work in progress.

To my friends and neighbors in the Panhandle, just keep in mind: There’s an end to it. You will like the finished product.

national news, political news, Sports news

NFL tells players to stand … or else

Freedom of speech and political expression has just been dealt an improper blow to the gut by the National Football League.

To be candid, this story makes my gut churn. The NFL, though, has made the wrong decision to restrict the manner in which its players can express themselves politically.

It began a couple of seasons ago when a player decided to kneel during the national anthem prior to the start of a game. Former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick wanted to protest the treatment of African-Americans by police.

At one level, I wish the young man had decided to stand during the anthem. His decision to “take a knee,” though, didn’t bother me greatly. I understand why he decided to do that.

But a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, decided to make a major issue out of it. Then the candidate was elected president in 2016 and he kept up the drumbeat. He called protesting NFL players “sons of bit****” who should be “fired.”

This week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said players henceforth will stand when they play the anthem. They are free to stay in the locker room, but while they are on the field, they will stand.

Trump won one, yes? I guess so.

I want to stipulate something here. The nation’s founding was based on its honoring of peaceful dissent. Its very governing document, the Constitution, guarantees citizens the right to protest.

NFL players who “take a knee” are exercising their right to protest. I have heard the argument that as employees of professional football team owners, they are obligated to behave the way their bosses dictate.

Yes, but they are performing on a public stage, subsidized by the public that pays top dollar to watch them play a game. As a social media acquaintance of mine noted recently, these men aren’t “indentured servants.” They are highly paid professional athletes, some of whom choose to make a political statement.

They do so peacefully. And to my way of thinking, their kneeling doesn’t disrespect the nation in the least. It honors the basis for the nation’s very founding.

national news

‘Probably’ shouldn’t say Spygate? C’mon, Sen. Graham

Lindsey Graham can do better than this.

The South Carolina Republican U.S. senator says that Donald Trump “probably shouldn’t” use the term “Spygate” to level an accusation that the FBI planted someone inside his presidential campaign for political purposes.

Actually, Trump is defaming the FBI yet again by making an assertion without the hint of evidence that what he is saying is true.

Trump most clearly shouldn’t use such language to describe what the FBI might have done, which is to probe questions that arose during the 2016 campaign that Russians were meddling in our election and trying to turn the tables in Trump’s favor.

Rather than welcome an FBI investigation into that allegation, Trump has decided to declare political war against the law enforcement agency and leaders at the top of the Department of Justice.

He is seeking to discredit the special counsel’s probe. He has launched a scorched-Earth campaign against the FBI. He has introduced the term “spy” to describe the FBI’s effort to get to the bottom of the Russia meddling caper.

Graham offered radio host Hugh Hewitt a milquetoast response to the question about the Trump’s reckless language: “I don’t know. Probably not, but I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t go to the meeting. I don’t think it’s — I don’t think he’s a spy. And I don’t know who this person was.”

Trump’s continuing campaign against the FBI is a disgrace.

International news

Putin to abide by the law? Imagine that!

Vladimir Putin, the man so admired by Donald John Trump Sr., says he’s going to step down as Russian president by 2024 — in accordance with the Russian constitution.

Well, shut my mouth and send me to Siberia!

It reminds me of American politicians who boast from campaign lecturns about how they are faithful to their wives. So many of them, though, turn out to be quite unfaithful.

I’ll have to wait for Vladimir Putin to actually deliver on his pledge to, um, obey the laws of his land. “In the constitution it’s clearly written that nobody can serve more than two terms in a row. … I intend to abide by this rule,” he said.

That’s big of him, don’t you think?

environmental news

Happy Trails, Part 105: Bring on the thunder!

Years ago, when my wife and I committed to moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, we expressed the hope we might get to revive one of the memories we had when we lived on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Today, it happened.

My wife and I are huge fans of thunderstorms. We love the sound of thunder. We just heard a huge clap of it right overhead. Directly!

Our conclusion is that the relative humidity of the Metroplex atmosphere — compared to the dryness of the Texas Panhandle air — is going to produce the kind of explosive weather we enjoyed/endured while we lived in Beaumont.

There was one storm in particular in Beaumont that I recall. It was a doozy. What did my wife and I do? We hauled our lawn chairs to spots under our carport and sat there, just listening to the thunder and watching the lightning streak across the sky.

I know what you’re thinking: Are those people nuts?

Actually, we’re quite sane. It doesn’t take much to please either of us. Mother Nature’s tempestuous is one of the joys of life we enjoy.

Sure, we had some beauts blown in over us in Amarillo. We had to replace the roof on our house just three years after we built it because of baseball-size hail that pummeled us. And, yep, the lightning was damn loud that day, too!

We are hoping for more of that kind of thrill — perverse though it sounds — as we settle into our new digs just north of Dallas … although the hail can stay away!