Raquel Martina Martinez

Earth date: August 31, 2020“Join Facebook.” My friend said. “It’s a great way to stay in touch. A lot of the old gang is on there.” After years of spending every day with hundreds of other souls, I knew being retired would be a shock to the system. It would be only HoneyBunch and me in the house, no pets, with an occasional once a month visit from our kids and grandkids, so, I joined FaceBook for the fun of it and lasted a few months before I dropped out. FaceBook was very antisocial, and it wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my retirement.Some of those who “friended” me weren’t very friendly. Now that I was no longer their supervisor at work and they didn’t have to pretend to like me, they let me know it. I had retired from one of those jobs where I had to mediate between two groups. They had taken sides instead of working together and I was the messenger, and we all know what happens to the messenger. I stayed off FaceBook for several months until the new career I sought required …

Earth date: August 24, 2020“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” made a lot of sense to me. It was the chant during the anti-war protests back in the 1960’s and early 70’s. Lyndon Johnson became President after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and instead of keeping a promise to bring our military home from Vietnam, he escalated the war in 1964. He increased the number of soldiers sent to fight to a whopping 35,000 every month. He had also promised to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen but that never happened during his time in office. I didn’t like that he had made empty promises to win the election. I learned the difference between a politician and a patriot. I suggested to my dad over dinner one evening that maybe he should vote Republican in the 1968 Presidential election. Nixon wanted to end the war, and maybe he would honor Johnson’s broken promise and lower the voting age. It made sense that if you were old enough to die for your country, you should be…

Earth Date:August 17, 2020When the Vietnam War was at its worst in the 1960’s and early 70’s, the military draft was still in effect and thirty-five thousand young men between the ages of 18 through 25 were called up each month to serve in the US military. It was law and to defy that law meant federal imprisonment. There were several ways a young man could circumvent the system. They could opt for a deferment. After high school, they could continue on to college or get married. Either option was a deferment. It kept them on the rolls but they would not be called to serve unless under dire conditions. My older brother was one year ahead of me in high school, so I saw what happened to young males as they reached eighteen years of age. They were required by federal law to sign up with the Selective Service. Because he was a junior in high school, my brother could not be drafted until after he graduated, but if he signed up for college immediately, carried a full load of classes, and stay…

Earth date: August 10, 2020Are you registered to vote? If the answer is no or you are not sure, skip this blog (as scintillating as it is) and go check on your status. Go to: www.votetexas.gov/register-to-vote/ . If you live elsewhere, it is just as easy to access voter registration information in you state. Be prepared. Election day is eighty-four days away (November 3rd) and the deadline to be registered to vote is in half that time (October 5th). Do not wait; do it now. It might take 30 days to get your card. Make sure it matches the ID you are going to use, and if there is an error, you will have to get the registration card corrected before you can use it. You might not have enough time to have it fixed before Election Day. The website will provide most of the information you need: who is eligible to vote, how to get an application, whether you are already registered, how to report a lost registration card, and how to update or correct information. Do it immediately since as prev…

Earth date: August 3, 2020One hundred and forty-seven days ago I went to the bank, had the car checked, and went shopping inside stores for what I knew could be the last time in a long while. People made fun of us with cases of water, pantry items, hand sanitizer, and paper goods.Yes, I was among those who bought more than my share of toilet paper, because long before the President closed down the US borders and the nation, I had witnessed the corona virus Covid-19 firsthand. Two daughters-in-law came down with a “new strain” of flu in the fall, both were hospitalized, and one died. We believed it may have been this virus, and if it could do that to two healthy, young women, it was serious. But how does one shut down a nation of over 332 million people? What does that mean? We knew there was no cure, no vaccine, so how long would we be sheltered in place while the medical community came up with a solution? What if closing down our country meant there would be no food, no water, no ele…