Bias in Reporting

Honest Writing, not Biased

I’m constantly amazed at how columnists of different cultures can get away with accusing those who disagree with them of bias, a reprehensible behavior many of them are pulling off with every word they write.

I don’t know if they perceive their slant, their view, to be biased or not. To
compound the problem, many of them do not understand some of the subjects of which they write.

One, a national columnist who is Hispanic, took on President Obama’s speech to school kids, but in doing so, he revealed his own lack of expertise in the realm of education, a lack of expertise shared not only many columnists, but most legislators.

As in many of his columns, he displayed Hispanic bias. Now, you can call it ‘cultural pride’, ‘Latino experience’ or ‘Hispanic histronics’, or whatever, but bias is bias is bias.

I read the speech. While I disagree with much of the president’s agenda, I saw nothing wrong with his speech.

I did agree with the columnist when he suggested throwing money at education did not automatically improve it. He continued by remarking that some of the highest funded schools in the country are the worst while some charter schools are accomplishing much more with less funding. Why? Greater autonomy and flexibility.

He’s right. Throwing money at education doesn’t make kids smarter.

I could only shake my head when the writer put the blame for black student failure on teachers by claiming that many teachers have a lot of trouble imagining black American students as being high achievers. I don’t know what he meant by ‘many’. I do know of all the hundreds of teachers with whom I taught over a lifetime, I could count on one hand the type of whom he spoke. But, however you cut the deck, so few could not have created the dreadful problems so many black communities today face as he stated.

The suggestion is made that parents ask the schools why their low-achieving kids (of all races) are being short-changed. I think that’s a great idea, although not in the way he intended. I like it because in order to ask the question, those parents will have to get off their lazy tails and up to school. (fat chance)

Perhaps if the columnist had more experience in pedagogy, he would not have permitted the current federal administration to lead him by the nose when it suggested education reform by ‘charter schools, merit pay, greater accountability, etc.’

First time I heard that nonsense was in the days of Mark White—Jeez, how long ago was that, a century?

To begin, merit pay is simply a shaggy dog story!

What unbiased instrument will be used to determine which schools or teachers receive extra pay? Who will evaluate? A robot?

Years back, Texas tried such a plan. Many of us remember it as a joke, a senseless effort by state legislators to justify teacher raises.

The plan had supervisors evaluating teachers under them, teachers with whom they had worked for years. So, take a wild guess at the results.

There is no fair and impartial means to determine merit pay just as there is no way to establish fair and impartial guidelines for accountability. Testing can’t measure school quality. All it simply measures is which districts spent more time teaching the test.

Perhaps the closest thing to it is coaching. Win or die. And that’s pretty harsh, gambling a career on sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds.

How would you pull off that little miracle in an English classroom? When the columnist, or President Obama, or Education Secretary Arne Duncan find out, I wish they’d let me know.

I’ve seen thousands of kids go through school, and ninety-nine percent of them who do well have support at home. And yes, many of the homes were one-parent, but that one parent supported, disciplined, and loved the kid.

I have no idea how to solve so many of the problems that plague youngsters in deteriorating communities, but whatever the answers might be, parental love, discipline, and involvement has to be at the very top.

rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

Great American Novel

The Great American Novel
Have you ever dreamed of writing the ‘Great American Novel’? No? How about an Academy Award for a screenplay?

I once heard that there is a best selling novel in every person. The secret is to get it into print. We all dream, but you have to work to make the dream a reality.
And it is much simpler to do than you might imagine. You just go out and do it. That’s what I mean by simple. Now, I didn’t say easier. I said simpler. In some uses, simple and easy might be synonymous, but not in this case.

Over the years, I’ve had aspiring writers call and ask how to go about it. That’s the big problem, that first step.

Well, if you’re interested in any kind of writing, the next few months should give
you the jump-start you need.

Twenty-five years ago, I read a news release about a Romance Writers’ Group meeting at the old Hilton on I-10.

The speaker was Robert Vaughn. I had no idea who he was, and I wasn’t particularly interested in getting hooked up with a bunch of flighty romance writers.

My wife and I talked it over. I think it only cost ten bucks or so for all day, so I went. Simple as that.

Robert Vaughn was remarkable. The romance writers were extraordinary.
I wrote my first women’s thriller from the information I garnered that day. Now, it’s never been published, but that few hours provided me the impetus to get off my keister and do what I had been prattling about for the last twelve or thirteen years.

That organization is now the Golden Triangle Writers’ Guild. And if you’re interested, it meets the second Tuesday at 7:30 pm at Barnes & Noble out at Parkdale.

And what’s really nice is that once a year in October, the Guild hosts a writer’s conference, bringing in writers, agents, and editors from around the country.
This year the conference is at the MGM Elegante from October 22-24. For more information, go to the web site, gtwg.org or contact D.J. Resnick at kdwriters@yahoo.com.

There’s something there for everyone. Song-writing, mystery, suspense, romance, thrillers, action-adventure, poetry, forensics--over thirty presenters will be here for those three days.

In addition, Lamar University Continuing Education is offering a series of non-credit writing courses both online and on campus. They offer them each spring and fall.

There are several from which to choose: article writing; teen writing; how to write fiction; novel writing, and several others. Go the ‘The Write Site’ at Lamar Continuing Education. Instructors are experienced writers such as D.J. Resnick, Jessica Ferguson, Carol A. Thomas, Jessica Burkhart, and yours truly.

Yes, I shamelessly admit that I teach a short six-week course in the spring and fall titled ‘Writing the Novel.’ It is a hand’s on course where students actually write parts of the novel so we can critique in class.

By the end of the six-week period, many students have written the beginning, the end, and outlined the middle of the book.

As I mentioned earlier, the biggest problem with writing is to figure out that first step. In addition, grammar, format, and submission methods are discussed.

Nothing turns an editor or agent off like poorly constructed sentences and grammatical errors. You might have the greatest story ever told, that legendary ‘Great American Novel’, but if the editor can’t get past the first few pages because of poor writing, it will make no matter. Today, we’re fortunate to have spell check, which catches the majority of these errors—but not all.

If you’re interested in more information about any of the writing classes at Lamar, go to www.lulearn.net’writesite or contact Rhonda at 880-2233.

There’s a lot of myths about writing, and either at the conference or the writing classes, you’ll have many of them dispelled.

So, if you’ve ever had the itch to write, the next few months can scratch it for you.


rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

take a grandson fishing

Add a Day to Your Life-Take a Grandchild Fishing

We’ve all heard it said that God never counts a day of fishing against your life span. Who knows, maybe He’ll even toss in an extra day if you take a grandchild fishing. And maybe even a third day if the child manages to snag a fish on that first trip.

That’s what happened to Gayle and me when a couple Saturdays back, we went fishing for the first time in a few years.

We’ve had our boats, and always got a kick out of fishing the river and lake. Once, years back, we had a deep V in which we went offshore—offshore to me being no more than a couple miles from the beach.

Once we had a twenty-one foot pontoon boat, and believe me, cumbersome as they are, they are ideal fishing platforms. We sold our last boat, a jon boat, a couple years back. It had been setting up for the past ten.

Now, we bank fish at Sabine Lake, and usually we do okay. More than anything, it’s a chance to relax, soak up some sun and breathe in the fresh, clean air off the water.

A month or so back, the older grandson, Keegan, who is almost five, mentioned something about fishing. At that age, their little I-want-this and I-want-that minds jump from one interest to the other faster than a cricket dodging a hungry chicken.

I just figured he’d let it drop, but he didn’t.

One day he popped in and informed me he had found the ideal fishing pole at Target.

Again, I just figured he’d let it drop, but, guess what? He didn’t.

Without warning, all the planets fell into line, Mars was larger than it would be for the next trillion years, and the day arrive when we kept him because both his Mom and Dad were working. Fate couldn’t have dealt out a better hand to the little guy, so, we decided, why not?

That morning, we found him a small Zebco rod and reel, a Lightning McQueen outfit. Back at the house, I pulled out our tackle boxes, brushed ten years of dust and debris off them; dusted, then washed and oiled the fishing rods and reels; finally managed to find a couple that worked well.

I’m not even going to go into the problems we faced getting licenses on a Saturday. But we got them.

We decided to go to Sabine Lake. We could have fished down at Port Neches Park, but the little guy would have had to wear a lifejacket, and the ninety-degree plus sun was too hot.

We fished the south revetment with all the rocks where I quickly discovered ten years had handily curtailed my balance as I tried to bounce from one rock to another. While I was bouncing, Gayle was catching fish. Finally we gave up and headed down to the causeway.

The beach was sandy, the water shallow, and believe it or not, the fish were biting, more or less.

Keegan quickly shed his shirt while I threw out his bait and handed him his rod.
In the meantime, Gayle caught another fish.

And then Keegan had a strike, and his line drew tight and the tip of his rod bent down.

Oh, was he excited, yelling for his ‘MeeMee’ to come help.

He did the most of it, and hauled in a fat little redfish about fifteen inches long. After we took a few pictures, we turned the fish back, explaining to the little guy we had to obey the law.

We were out two, maybe three hours, and all three of us were ready to come home and hop in the swimming pool.

Maybe next time, he’ll catch one that Gayle can fry up for him.

I know one thing, from the look on his face and the way he laughed, he’s got the making of a lifelong fisherman.

The other grandson is Mikey. He isn’t quite three. Another couple years, and we’ll have a team of fishermen around here.

Do you think God might toss in a fourth extra day for another grandson?

Oh, well, even if He doesn’t, it’s worth it.

free is nice, best is better

Free is Nice, but Best is Better.

A wag on my old high school chat group sent me this article that is typical of many whizzing around cyberspace this year.

The article states that “Obama’s health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it, whose members will be exempt from it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a treasury chief who evaded his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke.”

Now, we can laugh at this, but you know, if you stop and think about it, it could also make you cry.

I don’t know the name of committee head who made the remark-if they made the remark, but you’re as aware as I that no one in Congress understands the entire bill. It’s impossible. From front to back, the document is couched in government jargon.

However, you and I both know that when Congress started pushing the bill that 1. the majority of our representatives had not read it and consequently, 2. they had no idea what was in it, and 3. they knew they were exempt from it.

Given the third point, it is obvious why they were indifferent to the first two points. Hey, we’re just stupid and ignorant beasts of the field out here. They’re important; they’re Congressmen(at least until 2010).

I don’t see how anyone can argue those points, nor 4. argue that our president doesn’t smoke. Of course, smoking is his own choice. It’s no skin off my teeth if he wants to savage his body like that, but he has a lot of gall to insist he knows what’s best for millions of Americans while abusing his own body.

On top of that, 5. we cannot dispute the fact Treasury Chief Geithner did not pay his 2001-2004 taxes in the amount of $43,100.00, or 6. that the surgeon general from Alabama is overweight.

What our president has given us is a collection of administrators with little or no self-discipline to tell us what to do. Excuse me for saying it, but that’s like naming Bonnie and Clyde the president of the First National Bank and entrusting them with the bank customers’ money.

And point 7., at 9:41 am, August 20, 2009, the U.S. debt was “11,731,591,419,387.00 and growing over a hundred thousand every five (5) seconds. That comes out in excess of thirty-eight thousand for each American—not counting the twenty million illegals in the country.

And Folks, we still have the trillions of the health care bill to add.

I hear from the media that the Democrats are tired of trying to come up with a bi-partisan bill. There’s talk they’ll go it alone, using the strong-arm tactic of ‘reconciliation’, a political technique allowing a group to bend the rules enough to pass a bill.

You know, those guys-and gals up there-I’m talking about both parties- are, the most part, career leeches—whoops, I mean legislators. They’ve made a more than comfortable living off the American taxpayer for a good spell.

I find it hard to believe (but then I’m not too smart) that the Democrats would hazard a chance on pushing the bill through by themselves and taking the subsequent political hit next year.

Given the ineptness with which government has run various programs over the years (FEMA for a beginning), the plan has a better than average chance of catastrophe. If that happens, there goes the Democrat party.

I’d hazard a guess that then only the iron-clad liberals would stick with the party. From left-leaning voters all the way over to staunch conservatives would be furious at the tax hit they’ll take plus the trauma of the health bill being jammed down their throats.

Cal Thomas summed it up when he quoted an excerpt from an editorial in the Daily Mail in Britain. “Our(Britain) survival rates for breast, prostate, ovarian, and lung cancers are among the worst in Europe despite huge additional expenditures.” Free is nice, but best is better.

The writer is right. Free is nice, but best is better, and despite our problems, our health care is the best in the world.








www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

Dilemma of Bare Toes

The Dilemma of Bare Toes

I’m sitting here now looking at a sixty-seven year-old portrait of Dad, Mom, my brother, Sam, and me that was made in Shamrock, Texas only a hour or so before Dad left to go overseas in World War II. The year was 1943.

In the portrait, Dad wore his Navy blues, his three stripes showing proudly on his sleeve. Mom, wearing a black coat with a white blouse, sat next to him, and I stood next to her. Dad held Sam, who was about one at the time. With the exception of Sam, we all wore sailor hats.

For the next two years, like hundreds of thousands of families with no husbands or fathers, we went about the job in our small town of keeping the country running until the men came home.

Those years when I was seven through twelve stand out as the carefree days of summer should, idyllic and filled with adventure.

Our spring and autumns were a mixture of chores and school. The summers brought more chores, but also allowed us the freedom to roam the small town.

With the ending of school came the annual shedding of footwear and a summer of unrequited freedom. Of course, we suffered stubbed toes and bloody cuts until our bare feet had toughened to the hardpan roads and simmering hot asphalt streets.

Who can forget the agony of stepping in a glob of hot tar and bouncing around on one foot while trying to scrape it off the other?

There were numerous advantages to going barefoot. First, no shoes or socks. Hop up and out bed, into your pants and shirt, gobble breakfast, and head out for another day of play.

It’s hard to forget the delicious feel of running your toes through cool sand or grass. The only feeling better was sitting in the shade of a giant cottonwood dangling your sizzling feet in the icy water of a bubbling creek.

And among us boys, it was a given fact you could run almost as fast as Superman in your bare feet. Bare feet gave better purchase when balancing on a log over a creek.

Of course there were disadvantages.

Tree roots, rocks, and any other a number of unmovable objects played havoc with our bare toes. As soon as the skin healed back over the bloody toe, you’d invariably smash it again.

While the picture show would let you in barefoot Saturday afternoon, you had to wear shoes at night. Another disadvantage was riding bicycles, for back then the pedals came apart at the slightest bump, and instead of a flat pedal to propel yourself, you were forced to clamp your arch around a six-inch long cylinder.
And you never got used to that.

Another disadvantage were the grass burrs and goatheads. Grass burrs have heads with hundreds of tiny stickers, which, while they will stick, are fairly soft. Goatheads are about the size of a pea with one point projecting from each side-and that point won’t break. Our summer toughened feet could handle grass burrs without too much pain, but goatheads were the dickens itself to a boy’s foot.

Back then, you just couldn’t avoid grass burrs and goatheads. They were everywhere. When we came to a patch we had to cross we’d screw up our courage and on the count of three, take off. Once running, you didn’t dare stop. I don’t know why, but racing across a patch, we picked up only a few stickers, nowhere near as many as if we tried picking our way across step-by-step.

When we went out to milk the cows or slop the hogs, we always slipped into rubber boots. Not even our leathery feet could tolerate what the cow lots had to offer.

Yeah, looking at this old color picture in the original plastic Deco Art frame, brings back wonderful memories.

I just hope my children can look back over sixty-odd years of their life with their own wonderful memories.

www.kentconwell.blogspot.com

Rant, Rave, Curse-And Say Nothing

409-724-2956
rconwell@gt.rr.com

Rant, Rave, Crawfish, but No Answers
If you missed last Sunday’s Enterprise article interviewing State Representative Joe Deshotel, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Teuscher, Catholic Bishop Curtis Guillory, and the Reverend James Fuller, you missed a point I’ve tried to emphasize regarding the health bill.
The bill is too vague, as in ‘not specific.’
The language in every section of the currently proposed health bill could be interpreted in several different ways, depending upon those doing the interpreting.
In other words, the thousand page plus document is the personification of politically obtuse narrative. And let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, our Congress is a master at obtuse narrative.
All of the gentleman in the article recognize the need for reform. Only one got into specifics, the others relying on inference and platitudes and anger.
No disrespect intended, but only one seemed to have a firm, specific grasp on specific problems and solutions regarding some aspects of the bill.
According to the Enterprise, Representative Deshotel stated that while health care is an issue of great concern, much of the hysteria over Obama’s proposal is irrational and the rumors absurd. “That’s so stupid-it let’s you know that’s not the issue-the issue is the president. They haven’t come to accept an African-American president,” he said.
‘Stupid’ is an ill-chosen remark. Stupid means ‘dull, foolish, inane.’ I suggest millions of Americans who simply want to express themselves or demand clarity are not stupid. They can’t all be ‘dull, foolish, inane.’
Then the extrapolation between ‘stupid’ and what the speaker considers consider the real issue is difficult for me to grasp. Sure, there are folks opposed to Obama because of his race, but not the majority of us.
Why is the hysteria ‘irrational’? Why is it ‘absurd’? How about letting us in on why you so believe. Perhaps we can agree. ‘Anyone can see it,’ is no answer.
Dr. Teuscher, who believes in reform, stated the government should not get into the medical health arena until it solves its current problems. Then he gave specific reasons. 1. Medicare is not paying its full share, leading doctors to limit the number of patients.
2. The system’s financing mechanism is broken. They’re paying for Medicare last year with payroll taxes you’re going tot pay next year. It’s not sustainable. It’s completely unsustainable.”
Now, that’s specific, but it is nothing we haven’t known. Why hasn’t something been done about Medicare? You really believe tossing a whole new system into the confused milieu right now is going to make things better?
Both Bishop Gillory and Reverend Fuller addressed it from their pulpits appropriately.
Neither provided any specific explanations regarding various aspects of the bill. Their bailiwick is the souls and care of their flocks, and both gentleman carry out their callings with the fervor that will assure them of stars in the crown when they meet St. Peter.
However, the Reverend did point out one aspect regarding the cost of health care. Noting that his own premiums were prohibitive, he suggested perhaps that might be lowered with the new bill. Then, he added that such a decrease could help offset the higher taxes expected to accompany a national health care system. And a system in which everyone paid into could result in lower costs for all.
The only exceptions I take to the gentleman’s remarks are two vague and indeterminate words, could and could. If you’ll listen to the proponents’ arguments, they are filled with ‘might’, ‘could,’ ‘looks like,’ ‘supposedly,’ ‘should’, and other such vague terms.
Neither the bishop, the reverend or the representative provided any specific answers. And that’s the overall problem with this bill.
If our lives are to be changed, we’re entitled to the dignity of a ‘will’, not ‘could’.


www.kentconwell.blogspot.com
rconwell@gt.rr.com

family memories

Summer on the Farm-Now Only a Poignant Memory

Back when I was just a kid without much common sense and even fewer neurons whizzing through my brain, I always looked forward to spending time at my maternal grandparents’ farm out by Lubbock, Texas on that vast expanse of geography my uncles called the ‘Great Plains’. That was just another name for the Staked Plains or the Llano Estacado.


The plains were called Staked Plains, so the story goes because they were flat and treeless—treeless and flat. Either way you said it, there was nothing growing on that vast expanse of Texas to point a hapless explorer back to the spot from which he had departed earlier that morning.

But there were those inventive yahoos who had an ‘eureka’ moment and drove stakes in the hard ground, i.e., Staked Plains, as a means to assist their return to their ‘however so humble’ abode that night.

It’s an eerie feeling, whether it be land or water; to quickly scan the empty vastness surrounding you and see nothing except your canteen and your pony (boat), neither I’m sorry to say, would offer much of a starting point for your trek back to your camp.

Now, I lived in Wheeler, some 250 miles from my grandparents; my older cousin, Dooley, 17, and his older brothers lived in Amarillo, a hundred miles closer to our grandparents. That branch of the family being right on the way, we always stopped in Amarillo and some of the family accompanied us on to the plains.

Dooley was five or six years older than me or Ed; consequently, as cousins do, he always picked on us. If you had older cousins, farm cousins, you know what I mean. They could be merciless in their taunting, but this time, Ed and I had already plotted our revenge before he could act. Heh, heh, heh.

Outside of the corrals and pigpens was a large water tank, fed by a windmill. Giant cottonwoods surrounded the tank, and naturally, like all boys, we’d strung up ropes in the limbs so we could play Tarzan.

Trust me, this plot had been thought out over a few month’a time, so we had a pretty god idea how it was going down.

The rope was about three-quarters of an inch thick, and we’d cut a little over half-way through it about a foot from the end, then used black electrical tape to wrap it. When Dooley sneered at us for holding above the tape, we said it was because we didn’t want our hands to slip. Heh, heh, heh. The dumb nut.

Now, it was a heap of fun to swing way out, then skim back in barely missing the water, but that’s not how Ed and I did it. Grabbing above the tape, we could only swing out a few feet, then tribble back in.

Dooley would yell at us. “Dummies! Now watch this. This is how you chickens ought to do it,” and then he’d grab the very bottom of the rope and go whizzing out over the tank, almost parallel to the water. He sneered at us.

He called us chicken-livered, and a lot of worse names. We just grinned at each other, hoping he’d hurry up and take the fall.

He’d make all kinds of fun at us

And then it happened.

Boy, that would sure have been a picture. He seemed to freeze in mid-air, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaping, and the scream stuck on his lips.
By the time he hit the water, we’d hit the hardpan road for our neighbor’s a quarter mile away.

If you know anything about cow tanks, you know just how that fine, dark black mud can penetrate everything, stain everything, and stink up
everything.

Naturally, he caught us and worked us over; perversely we even enjoyed it, even the cow patties in the middle of the back, and other such touches of rural revenge.

We all headed back home the next day, but not before Ed and I started planning our revenge on Dooley, and the day that we would start gathering eggs. Heh, heh, heh.

That was in the early fifties; Dooley enlisted in the US Army and was sent to Korea a few months later just after he turned eighteen. He went out on patrol and never returned. He is listed as MIA.I still get teary-eyed thinking about Dooley.

I feel sorry for those guys who never had a cousin like him. He was mean to us, but we loved the heck out of that guy.