myself 2 decades ago

2 decades ago, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" ruled the airwaves, Skee-Lo wished he was a little bit taller, and Bone Thugs N Harmony sang about their welfare checks on "1st of the Month" (the song probably scared enough people to the point where Bill Clinton just had to sign the welfare reform law the following year).


And 2 decades ago, I was starting high school.

A lot of young adult novels start off with the 1st day of high school being very scary!

For me, I was just glad to be out of middle school. High school was just much better!

My middle school was Kawananakoa Middle School, which was seen as the "safe option" for Honolulu middle schools, but really, it wasn't immune from having wannabee gangstas (and a few real ones, who had nothing more to prove so didn't cause as much trouble as the wannabes),  nor was it immune to really corrupt teachers (Anjo, Komae, I'm talking about you on this blog post)

Kawananakoa Middle School was split between 2 high school 

districts - McKinley (who had the more immigrant, ghetto population) and Roosevelt (with a more upper class population mixed mostly with local Japanese and Native Hawaiians)!

Me, I went to McKinley High School!

Entering high school, we were mixed with those from Central Middle School (with a reputation of having an immigrant, low-income housing population) and Washington Middle School (which split between McKinley and Kaimuki High School, mixed income but mostly urbanized middle class)

Being that Central Middle School had a "scary" reputation, one of my Kawananakoa friends who was supposed to go to Central was just so scared to have to go to the same high school with the Central kids!  

Turns out he didn't have much to worry about! He was scared in the 1st day (he said he had gang members in his class), but it turned out most of them just left him alone! Most of the real gang members are too busy beefing with their rivals that they don't even bother bullying the so-called "nerds/geeks/emos/whatevers".  They might make a few minor jokes at their expense but it's not like they slam them into lockers and flush them into toilets!  They got bigger fish to fry!

The same was true for most of the jocks at my school!  Most of them are really chill dudes.  Unlike the "jocks" portrayed on TV or YA novels, the ones in my school don't even bother bullying the so-called "nerds/geeks/emos/whatevers".  They might make a few minor jokes at their expense but it's not like they slam them into lockers and flush them into toilets! They got bigger fish to fry!

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 AS for me, during my freshman year,  I tried to play it "low key" my first year, try not to bring too much attention to myself!  If I didn't have close friends in a certain class, I would be the more "quiet one", but that don't let that fool you. I could still crack an inappropriate joke, still mock a few girls when they were being whiny, and wasn't the best friend I should have been! A few friends turned against each other and instead of me being the diplomat, I just told them what they said each other behind their backs. Some of their jokes they said about each other were funny as hell, but over time, the whole thing just got exhausting! It was hard to juggle time between friends who don't like each other! By the middle of the sophomore year, everyone just burned out from dissing each other! 

Another thing that burned me out was that same year I went from middle to high school, my family got a house in a different part of the island! So I was commuting and using my grandma's address just to continue going to the school where at least I had a few friends!  But covering up that I'm using my grandma's address became too exhausting and caused a major rift between me and my parents! I hated (yes, hated) my parents for buying that house and hated (yes, hated) my parents for not moving back to the old community!  It got to the point where towards the end of my high school career, eff it, I just lived with my grandma full-time already!

(note: me and my parents discussed this issue with a trained professional, and we made peace on this issue recently) 

However, the main thing that keep me going strong was that McKinley High School had an exciting environment! It was the most immigrant high school in Hawaii, but it still had some local people! It was interesting to see Pacific Islanders and Asian immigrants embracing the West Coast gangsta rap trend that was popular when I entered high school! While most students embraced hip-hop (especially gangsta rap), other genres like ska, reggae, rave, punk rock and heavy metal had fans amongst our peers! Some of our peers weren't afraid to be an individual, having funky hairstyles and wearing thrift shop styles. 

McKinley High School also had the coolest traditions, from the Tiger Pride, the Bonfires, pep rallies and more! Just beware that we don't really worship that statue, being that is a relic of colonial times.  People just worship the Tiger Stripes instead!

I also had one of my favorite teachers in 9th grade -- Mr Newkirk. He was the English teacher and he made classic literature entertaining, with emphasis on performances.

I also liked my freshman PE, because it was much better than middle school PE. Back then, middle school PE was "you only play the popular team sports and if you suck, too bad". Whereas high school PE is "we got 3 teachers, so you get to chose  from 3 sports for the next 2 weeks. " It wasn't just the popular team sports, but we also had archery, billiards (walking to "Hawaiian Brian's" was the exercise), fishing (walking to so-called Magic "Island' was the exercise), lawn bowling, badminton, and more.


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High school life took a dip in sophomore year, but it got much more exciting in junior and senior years.

Learn more at

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2009/06/10-years-ago-today.html

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-double-3-years.html


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Also, I wrote another "myself, 2 decades ago" blog post 3 years ago, that one about my transition from elementary to middle school. Read it at
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/09/myself-2-decades-ago.html

A decade after Hurricane Katrina

A decade ago, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi, causing major damage.



The damage wasn't only physical, but also social and political.



The biggest city in the region that got hit was New Orleans, which is a famous tourist town, but also one of the poorest and most dangerous of major cities in the US.   The city was had long been run by corrupt leaders, long been losing jobs, and long been known as "Murder Capital of America".


When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, much of its population couldn't afford transportation to evacuate. They were stuck when the storm hit. To add insult to injury, there were school buses available but nobody even took the initiative to say "hey let's use these to evacuate some people outta here."


It's bad enough that much of New Orleans is below sea level, making the area vulnerable to flooding, especially when the levees broke.


But the disaster response by  local, state and federal officials were slow and inadequate! 


Because the majority of New Orleans population is African-American, there was a perception that the slow response by the federal government was on purpose.   It got Kanye West to go on TV and say "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  I don't agree with Kanye West on that, but I do think that George W. Bush's big mistake was hiring a FEMA director that had ZERO experience in dealing with major natural disasters!

But with Kanye West's remark, and Bush's hiring of a political crony to FEMA, Bush's reputation as president has never recovered!  A man who won re-election just a year earlier has now become someone even fellow Republicans want to distance themselves from!


AS Melisa Harris-Perry wrote, the response to Hurricane Katrina set into motion the eventual election of Barack Obama
http://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-debt-new-orleans/




But also let's remember that even the mostly European-American towns didn't get the help they need. It's just that the European-Americans were spread out amongst the various towns instead of being concentrated in a major city.

Cathy Young's "No, This Is the Story of the Hurricane"
http://reason.com/archives/2005/12/01/no-this-is-the-story-of-the-hu

To all those other Republican sins, add racism. Obviously, race and poverty are intertwined in America, and to that extent race was related to who survived in New Orleans. But the race mongers went far beyond that plain, and discomforting, fact. The trope that Bush doesn't give a damn if black people die was repeated by Moore, rapper Kanye West, self-styled civil rights activist Al Sharpton, and others.

It, too, was dramatically out of touch with the facts. Government ineptitude, like the hurricane itself, was an equal opportunity offender. People were just as neglected, probably more so, in predominantly white Katrina-stricken areas in Mississippi and Louisiana.

As Harry Shearer pointed out in The Huffington Post, "three weeks after landfall, their officials sit with populations of middle-class people largely homeless, waiting for help that still does not come. A lot of those people and officials, this being the suburbs, are white. The words from the officials' mouths...eerily echo the words cried out by black folks at the Convention Center almost three weeks ago: they keep promising buses and other help and it never comes, we feel betrayed by our own government."

But this corrective did little to displace the racism meme.

That article isn't just a "whites are the true victims" nonsense, as it also criticizes the right-wing pundits who were insensitive to the plight of the New Orleans victims.

Meanwhile, many on the right were fighting their own brand of culture wars. George Neumayr, executive editor of The American Spectator, wrote darkly about the "civilizational collapse" in ravaged New Orleans, victim of a "politically correct culture in which pathologies are allowed to fester in the name of 'progress.' " The pathologies in question ranged from violent rap music (there's nothing like a "Born a Pimp, Died a Playa" T-shirt or two to throw fear into the hearts of social conservatives) to a police department allegedly filled with criminals because of "let's-just-meet-the-quota-style affirmative action." The New Orleans Police Department does have a notorious history of corruption, but this problem long predated affirmative action.

Several conservative sites also ran a shrill screed by Robert Tracinski, editor of the Objectivist journal Intellectual Activist, who opined that the real devastation in New Orleans was a "man-made disaster" caused by "criminals and welfare parasites." The latter, Tracinski wrote, were "a mass of sheep" unable to help themselves due to "lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness."

Of course, Tracinski has no more idea than the rest of us how many of the refugees were on welfare and how many were working poor, how many suffered from "lack of initiative" and how many simply lacked the transportation to get out of town. The welfare state does cause social pathologies. But it might have been a little more decent to at least wait until all the "sheep," alive and dead, were plucked from the waters.

Such decency seemed in short supply in the weeks following Katrina. As the city began to retrieve its dead and the final tally was still expected to be in the thousands, some Republicans launched into a spin cycle, suggesting that 10,000 dead in a nation of 300 million wasn't that bad and pointing out that household accidents cause more annual casualties in America and the 2003 heat wave killed more people in Europe.

Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott rightly took them to task for this callous and clumsy attempt at damage control. Then he immediately turned to a numbers game of his own: Whatever the eventual death toll from Katrina, he asserted, it would take away the World Trade Center bombing from the right as a propaganda tool in the War on Terror because conservatives would no longer be able to "ritualistically invoke the '3,000 dead' to the same sonorous effect." One has to wonder if a body count below 1,000 would have been a disappointment.

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As for my thoughts on Hurricane Katrina at the time it was still fresh news, you can check out
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-katrina-some-of-my-thoughts.html


here's a few samples from that blog post

Even after a devastating disaster, there are those who pimp the pain of the destruction for political persons.

Already, some left-wingers blamed Bush, saying his inaction towards global warming has caused the hurricane.

Meanwhile. conservative preachers have said the hurricane is punishment to New Orleans for hosting gay parades and "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

Meanwhile, Islamic fanatics say the hurricane is Allah's revenge on the US!

Another conservative minister said that the looting of stores after the storm is the fault of liberals for not allowing religious indoctorination into public schools.

Bush is blamed for not having rescuers moving fast enough to save everyone.

To all those complainers mentioned, I want them to shut up already! Their comments aren't helping anyone, all they do is irritate us!

In that blog post, I also talked about the looting, and the soft bigotry of low expectations of the excuses made to defend the looters!