I asked myself that question a few months ago, as I looked at my reflection in a bathroom mirror. It was almost a random inquiry; a sudden revelation after years of suffering with depression and alcoholism. I’ve contemplated suicide more times than I can recount and have actually come very close to ending my own life on a few occasions.
How is it that I’m still here?
Recently I conversed with a younger friend who had turned 40 last year and is at a tough point in his life. He had spent nearly a decade in education before joining an alleged friend to start a business. This “friend” took the money he’d invested and abandoned the project. So now my pal is nearly bankrupt and has to resort to an Uber-type job to earn a living. We conversed between rides. The gig economy emerged after the “Great Recession”. I fell victim to it after losing my job with an engineering firm in 2010. It can be humiliating, as people struggle to find work.
As I described in a previous essay, I began fighting alcoholism in the mid-1980s. I still haven’t won – and I know I never really will – but I’ve succeeded in controlling it. Equally wicked and unrelenting, depression and alcoholism are perfect companions – global serial killers. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been impacted by either of these afflictions.
But people don’t always tell the truth about their lives.
Regardless, I still wonder how I’ve come this far. I’m certainly glad that I have. Between October 2024 and January 2025 I lost three of my closest friends. I’m at the point in time where I don’t count the number of likes I get on Facebook or Instagram. I count the number of people I’ve outlived. Then again, one doesn’t get to this point in life without going through a few bumps and bruises. And that means losing people we know and love.
How are you still alive?
I don’t know. Honestly…I have no idea. But I’m here – and I’ll just keep moving forward.
When looking at photos like this, I never know what’s more disturbing: that someone thought it’d be a great idea to dress up in such a fashion or that somebody else thought it needed to be memorialized.
December 7 – International Civil Aviation Day; National Letter Writing Day
December 9 – John Milton’s Birthday; Christmas Card Day; International Anti-Corruption Day; International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide; National Llama Day
December 10 – Emily Dickinson’s Birthday; Dewey Decimal System Day; Human Rights Day; International Animal Rights Day; Nobel Prize Day
December 17 – National Maple Syrup Day (U.S.); Wright Brothers Day (U.S.)
December 18 – International Migrants Day; National Twin Day (U.S.)
December 20 – International Human Solidarity Day
December 21 – Crossword Puzzle Day; Look on the Bright Side Day; National Short Story Day; Summer Solstice (Southern Hemisphere); Winter Solstice (Northern Hemisphere)
“With each meal, be aware that the food we eat was once a life, and to honor it as such. Say thank you to the members of the plant and animal kingdoms who have given up their life so we can continue ours: the vegetable, berry, four legged, swimmer and winged nations. Pray for their continued abundance and protection.”
Molly Larkin, “A Native American Teaching on The Gift of Food”
My father, George De La Garza, Sr., in South Korea in 1954
This is my father’s recollection of returning home from military service in Korea.
I had thought of joining the military when I got older. My older brother, Jesse, did. He was 17 and failing out of school when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in the summer of 1942. They shipped him out to the Pacific region. He was stationed on some remote island, when he killed his first person. He said it was at night, and Jesse and his commanding officer were hidden in some thick foliage – looking for…whatever. Then they spotted a Japanese solider approaching. Jesse’s CO ordered him to kill the guy…“or I’ll kill you first and then him.” He was still 17 and had no choice. Jesse saw other casualties – adults and children; soldiers and civilians – in the wicked and bloody chaos of World War II’s Pacific theatre. He caught malaria, before returning home.
Jesse received a slew of awards, including a Purple Heart by Gen. Douglas MacArthur himself. He got an honorable discharge and quickly came back to Dallas. One Saturday morning me and Jesse, our younger brother, and some other friends visited a local barbershop. As sat conversing in Spanish and English, the shop’s owner approached and – in his heavy Scottish brogue – ordered us to leave. “We don’t cut Mexicans’ hair.”
Here we all were – born and raised in the Dallas area, not causing any ruckus – and a foreign-born man tells us to leave. At some point over the next couple of days, a massive rock found its way through the large glass window of that shop. I swear I don’t know how that happened!
That experience kind of left me bitter about this great country and the freedom it was supposed to have. I no longer had any desire to join the military.
Then came Korea – and I had no choice.
I had just turned 21 in January 1954, when my father drove me to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Dallas – just like he’d done with Jesse more than a decade earlier. I had rarely been outside of Dallas and never outside of Texas. I arrived at Fort Bliss in El Paso, a little scared and not knowing what to think. After basic training, they put me on another bus to Los Angeles, then a train to Seattle, and finally a ship to Korea.
From what I understood later, Korea wasn’t nearly as bad as World War II, but when is there ever a pleasant war? More importantly I understood why Jesse never wanted to talk about his own experiences.
By then the U.S. armed forces had been (forcibly) integrated, so men of all shapes, sizes and colors served together. I developed close friendships with many of my Black comrades. I could envision these connections lasting a lifetime.
It was only two years, but it felt like decades. We left Korea on a ship for Seattle. Once there we had to take a train down to Los Angeles. I stood with my Black buddies on the platform, before we had to board. My friends started walking away from me.
“Hey, guys, where are you going?” I asked, still innocent – naïve actually.
“We have to go to the rear of the train,” one of them called back to me.
The rear of the train – where the Negroes had to go.
Oh yeah, I told myself. We’re back in America – the land of the free.
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Revelers at Trump’s “Gatsby” gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate
“Wait…why are over 40 million people on SNAP? It’s not the 1930s. We’re not in a depression. I have a hard time believing that many people actually need food assistance in America.”
Nothing says classy like helping a disabled person navigating a grocery store aisle. Nothing says trashy like one of the wealthiest people in the country throwing a lavish party while others are struggling to pay for food.
That’s the message inherent in Donald Trump’s recent Halloween bash at his Mar-a-Lago estate. In the richest nation on Earth, the president of the United States is wallowing in his own ego and greed, as literally millions of average citizens wonder how they’re going to pay their bills and provide for their families.
As of this writing, the ongoing government shutdown has become the longest in U.S. history. The chaos hasn’t affected me personally yet, but I remain leery and concerned. The last shutdown in 2018 did impact the government agency for which my company does a great deal of contract work. The present mess, though, is already upset the livelihoods of millions of people who have been furloughed from their jobs and others – such as air traffic controllers – who have been forced to work without pay.
The latter is an obscene contradiction in that members of Congress are still getting paid. Yes, the political elite are receiving their salaries, while doing no work. Some federal employees are working, but not receiving their pay. Please tell me I’m not the only one realizes how screwed up this is.
Trump’s “Gatsby” festival is not just a true indication of the President’s own arrogance and disrespect for humanity, but the growing economic disparities in the U.S. This is a nation that boasts that someone like Jeff Bezos can grow a business from a garage operation into multi-billion dollar conglomerate; yet allows a foreign-born oligarch like Elon Musk to dictate how the U.S. government should function.
Glenn Beck’s comment regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food benefits, is yet another hallmark of how disconnected the self-appointed elite – left or right – is with reality. Conservative extremists like Beck are quick to condemn those who reach out for public assistance, but ignore the systems that create those needs. Meanwhile radical liberals denounce corporations and business leaders, but don’t seem to understand personal responsibility is more than a Republican catchphrase.
I had to go on food and energy assistance a few years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out what money I’d earned over nearly a decade of freelance and contract work. I’d been on unemployment insurance before, but I knew I’d paid into that. Help to buy food and pay my energy bills was a different creature. I’m gainfully employed now, with full health benefits and a retirement plan. I’m making a good living and satisfied with how my life is going.
But I understand completely how upset millions of Americans are with none of those things. As the current morass continues, I wonder how this is happening. How is the wealthiest country on Earth mired in such a serious financial crisis? How is it that so many people – literally millions – are struggling just to live? While Trump and his family and their minions party like the world is theirs and only theirs.
If this is such an affluent nation, absolutely no one should have to rely upon food, housing and energy assistance! Not everyone needs to earn a six- or seven-figure salary or live in a multi-room mansion in a gated community. Indeed, able-bodied and able-minded people should be accountable for their own actions. But why do some people have to decide whether to pay the light bill or buy food?
Shortly after the turn of the century I joined a Dallas-area Toastmasters group. I had met one of the co-founders, and he convinced me at least to visit. I did and instantly felt a connection to this group of intellectuals who, like me, had something important to say. Sadly, I became disillusioned with the group and left in the spring of 2004. But, before I found a position with an engineering company in November 2002, that cofounder and I engaged in a rather tense discussion about economics and self-reliance. Even though I definitely don’t consider myself conservative, that man insisted I belonged on the Republican side of things. He was a devoted acolyte of Ronald Reagan and strongly supported then-President George W. Bush. He was a small business owner, Jewish and openly queer. He shocked me one time, however, when he said he didn’t really care what his fellow conservatives thought about either his ethnicity or his sexuality. He was more concerned about the overall welfare of society.
A few months before I found that full-time job, he remarked that I “only represent a small percentage” of people across the country – in a sense mocking my lack of full employment. Later he had commented that business owners should be allowed to discriminate against people strictly on the basis of race or gender; that anyone on the wrong end of that bigotry can just find another place to give their business.
“Yeah,” I responded, “just like Hitler did.”
Ever see someone’s face overwhelmed with that proverbial deer-in-the-headlights expression? His consternation was obvious enough for the blind to see.
But that, in essence, is the problem with our political leaders. Remember they’re still earning their salaries – while doing no work. When does the madness end? And where’s the justice?
Chief Writing Wolf 