Wading In

Make baby steps of kindness in 2011 By Kelvin Wade December 30, 2010 With 2011 on the horizon, many people are preparing New Year's resolutions that they'll never keep. By Martin Luther King Day, you will have blown your diet, let the house get messy again or traded in exercise for TV watching. Hey, I've been there. However, I've already embarked upon something that will define life from now on. And that is taking baby steps of kindness. I was at Starbucks a month ago with a friend. While she was telling me something, I couldn't focus on her words because a serviceman in fatigues walked in and stood in line. Something impelled me to go up and purchase his coffee and pastry, shake his hand and thank him for his service. He was very appreciative and I decided there on the spot I would repeat this small gesture as often as I could. I went home and looked up ways to send service members letters and packages. Little things mean a lot. There are people on my street who ha...

Christmas is worth the hassle By Kelvin Wade December 22, 2010 As the song goes, it's the most wonderful time of the year. But it's also the most stressful. One doesn't have to be the Grinch or Scrooge in order to feel put upon by the Christmas season. Right now, there are people who are wishing it were Dec. 26 so they can exhale. It starts with Black Friday. You see those great deals you know you're never going to come close to getting because there's no way you're camping out or standing in a line for hours freezing just for the chance to buy something at a discount. During the Christmas season, every store you go to is packed. The parking is horrendous, the lines are long and the selection is skimpy because a horde has descended upon the store before you ever showed up. Every restaurant is crowded. The post office is even slower than normal, something that seems to be an impossibility. Then someone unexpectedly gives you a gift and you fret because you feel ...

Support all the troops By Kelvin Wade December 16, 2010 My respect for the military started with my father. Master Chief Petty Officer Orvis Wade served in the U.S. Navy for 30 years. My family grew up on military bases including Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, and Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato. We moved to Fairfield in 1976 when our dad was stationed at Alameda. Fairfield loves the military. We've fought elections over who wants to protect Travis Air Force Base more. We have families who have loved ones in harm's way and others serving in relative peace in faraway places who deserve our support and respect. But what I can't respect is the fact that the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is still in force. We're still spending millions to hound hundreds of gays out of the military every year. Though Republicans are currently blocking repeal, this isn't a partisan issue. In a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 77 percent of Americans support l...

The tea party's last supper By Kelvin Wade December 10, 2010 With President Obama and the Democrats' capitulation to Republicans on taxes, where did the deficit hawks go? Where are the tea partiers? Where are the Solano County Tea Party Patriots? And where are they nationally? The government is preparing to spend billions. The tax framework the White House and Republicans have proposed will offer tax cuts to everyone, including millionaires and billionaires. It extends unemployment 13 months and the Earned Income Tax Credit, as well as makes other tax changes for individuals and business. It provides a generous inheritance tax. There's also a reduction in payroll taxes so Americans will take home more in their paychecks. Total price tag? About $900 billion over two years according to Moneywatch's Jill Schlesinger. That's larger than the bank bailouts and auto company bailouts combined. It's larger than the $787 billion stimulus bill (which was one-third tax cuts...

Friends, strangers and predators By Kelvin Wade December 02, 2010 Who's a stranger? I've told the story of when I was 5 and my family and I were visiting relatives in San Augustine, Texas. Two men drove up in a dirty old truck and asked me if I'd like to go with them to see a sawmill. I had no idea what a sawmill was but I knew I wanted to see one so I climbed into their truck. My brother Orvis saw me and quickly got our mother, who came flying out of the house to get me out of the truck. Who's a stranger in 2010? Most of us have hundreds of Facebook friends; many or most are friends of friends and other people we've never met. That is the point of social networking, to network and make new friends and contacts. What we've done is turned what we used to call acquaintances into friends. Now 'friend' tends to mean anyone whose name you can spell correctly. I thought of this when going to log on to my old MySpace account this week. I hadn't logged on t...

Bad flight still beats trip to ICU By Kelvin Wade November 25, 2010 It happened last weekend. I'd just enjoyed a Spamless eight-day Mexican Riviera Carnival cruise. I made it through an impossibly long Southwest line at San Diego International Airport. I made it through security without the horror (for them) of being digitally strip-searched and no one tried to touch my junk. But as I awaited my flight, I read an ominous text from my girlfriend Cathi's daughter. 'It's ugly out there. It should be a fun ride home. Like an amusement park ride. Yippee!' Yes, it was raining in San Diego but nothing to get upset about. The flight started uneventfully, a rapid ascension into the heavens. Soon we were high above the clouds looking at an amazing warm sunset from miles above the earth. I thumbed through Sky Mall while Cathi slept. I finished my second tiny bag of peanuts and downed a plastic cupful of Coca-Cola Zero. Then someone unleashed hell. The sky went black. I noticed...

Issues need to be taken seriously by both parties By Kelvin Wade November 04, 2010 'However (political parties) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people. . .' - George Washington, Sept. 17, 1796 Many of our Founding Fathers were wary of political parties. The fear was that they would inflame the passions of the people and be used for party ends to the detriment of the republic. Watching the rise of the tea party and the Republican wave on election night reminded me of Washington's farewell address where he made the above remark. I don't write this as a Democrat because I'm not a Democrat. I left the Democratic Party a decade ago. I had found myself thinking about what was good for the Democrats first. When you liberate yourself from parties, you feel like you don't owe anyone your vote. Pol...

That's right, non-voters. I'm the boss of you By Kelvin Wade October 28, 2010 Hey, you! Yeah, I'm talking about you, the one who isn't planning on voting next week. I just have a few things I'd like for you to consider for a moment. What if you were next in line at a fast food counter and I came in, brushed past you and ordered some food? Then, before you could say a word, I snatched your purse or wallet and counted out the money for my meal, took my bag of food and bounced out. What would you think about a scenario like that? How about another? Picture yourself standing in line at the DMV. If the clerks were moving any slower they'd be going in reverse. You're hot, annoyed and your feet hurt. You make it up to the window to pay your registration and the woman behind the counter points over your shoulder. You turn to see what she's pointing at and it's me sitting in a chair by the wall. I lift a finger skyward and then the clerk tells you that you ha...

Whipping our state government into shape By Kelvin Wade October 21, 2010 This year offers us the opportunity to change how our government functions with nine propositions on the November ballot. While I have reservations about the initiative process, if we must use it we should use it to change how Sacramento works. For those who haven't given it much thought, allow me to show you what I think of the initiatives. Proposition 19 legalizes marijuana and allows local cities to tax it. There have been some groups who say the projected revenues are off base. But even if that's true, it's time California led the way on legalization. Passing this will spark a much-needed national conversation. In 2007, 74,000 Californians were arrested on marijuana charges. Let's give police something else to do. Proposition 20 takes redistricting for the House of Representatives out of the hands of the Legislature and gives it to a citizens' commission. No more bizarre-shaped districts d...

Slavery info shocks, explains, liberates By Kelvin Wade October 13, 2010 On Monday, my brother Tony wrote about coming across some genealogical information on the Wade family. The info piqued my interest because several months ago I opened an account on Ancestry.com hoping to piece together the history of the Wades. I was stymied trying to go back further than my great-grandparents. When I received the information from Tony, I used it to do some more digging and was astonished at what I found. Of course, I knew my ancestors were slaves but it's different when you have a name and dollar amount to attach to them. It is horrific knowing our great-great-great grandparents Ned and Anarchy Wade and their three children were slaves in San Augustine, Texas. How do you own humans as slaves? And if that isn't bad enough, how do you to that to children? While it's sad and moving, it's cleared up a mystery for me. Our father told us that Johnny Allen Wade, who was killed in the Ok...

Are you waiting for Superman? By Kelvin Wade October 07, 2010 4:40PM Working with my grandkids on their studies has focused my attention like never before on our education system. One thing that's caught my eye is a new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, the director of 'An Inconvenient Truth,' about our crumbling public education system called 'Waiting for Superman.' I think everyone should see it. The title comes from Harlem Kids Zone leader and educator Geoffrey Canada's lament that one of the saddest days in his childhood was when his mother told him Superman wasn't real. It was then he realized no one was coming to save him from poverty and the ghetto. Now I wrote that Guggenheim directed 'An Inconvenient Truth' for a reason. I'm betting conservative readers are already prejudiced against the film for that reason alone. If I tell you one of the points of the movie is that public education reform is often hamstrung by teachers unions, I bet th...

New texting laws aren't working By Kelvin Wade September 30, 2010 Laws against texting while driving ran up against a tough opponent this week: the facts. The Highway Data Loss Institute, which is affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, conducted a study of texting bans in four states, including California. It found that not only did the bans not lower the number of accidents, crashes actually increased in three of the four states. Researchers believe people have altered the way they text since the laws have been enacted. Instead of holding the phone up at eye level, people are holding their phones low to avoid tickets. Trying to beat the law is creating more of a distraction than if there were no ban. While it's sure to dishearten Oprah and her No Phone Zone campaign, I admit that I'm a part-time texting-while-driving scofflaw. I sometimes read texts while driving. I will pull over to write a text but that's only because it's hard for me to one...

Be responsible: Secure your dogs By Kelvin Wade September 23, 2010 It's been nearly two weeks since two joggers were attacked by three dangerous roaming dogs on Pavilion Drive. Heroic neighbors Gary Paquet and John Bettencourt raced outside and shot the dogs, preventing a tragic situation from turning deadly. The animals have been destroyed. One of the women has been seriously injured. And now we wait to see if the Solano County District Attorney's Office will bring criminal charges against the owners of the dogs. How many of those reading this have had the experience of encountering aggressive dogs? I suspect many. I once had a huge, angry, black Lab race up to me at Hillview Park near the then-Amy Blanc school. Its apologetic owner came running up to take control of it. My brother Tony had an encounter with an aggressive dog he had to fend off with a stick while out walking. This isn't 10,000 B.C. when we have to be wary of saber-toothed tigers. We should be able to walk...

The crazy train rolls on By Kelvin Wade September 16, 2010 While the start of the NFL season, a mosque near Ground Zero, Quran burnings and Lady GaGa's meat dress distracted the nation, an insidious plot was launched across this nation this week that hardly anyone noticed. Yes, the president of the United States addressed returning school children across the country. Before you scoff, remember last year this address caused a War of the Worlds-style panic with terrified parents pulling their children from schools lest their little minds be liquefied by the slickly packaged socialism, communism and other isms being peddled by the undocumented Kenyan in the White House. This year, for reasons unknown, the alarm wasn't sounded. Maybe Glenn Beck is on vacation or Dr. Laura really has lost her First Amendment rights after her N-word rant. For some reason, the terror level wasn't raised and our children sat defenseless before television screens across the nation while Barack the ...

Retargeting Tobacco Tactics By Kelvin Wade September 09, 2010 In a new report, the Centers for Disease Control is reporting that 20 percent of Americans smoke. The people at the CDC are alarmed that with all of the anti-smoking awareness and programs available, 47 million adults still light up. However, California has lowered its smoking rate to 13 percent and our lung cancer rate has fallen much more rapidly than the rest of the country. It's hard to believe there was a time when smoking was socially acceptable. Almost every television personality in the '50s and early '60s promoted cigarettes. You can log on to YouTube and watch Fred Flintstone sing, 'Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!' It wasn't that long ago that smoking was permitted in restaurants and stores in California. We willingly engaged in the fiction that there could be smoking and nonsmoking parts of a restaurant. It was nothing to see sand-filled ashtrays in stores or purchase clothing...

You can't kill an idea By Kelvin Wade September 02, 2010 I originally wrote about the sentencing this week of Matt Garcia's killer, Henry Don Williams, to 50 years to life in prison. It's fitting that Williams has been sentenced almost two years to the day he shot Matt. Williams will now reap what he has sown. But as I read over the column, I realized I didn't want to dedicate an entire commentary to the evil that men do. Let this be the end of him. I want to write about Matt. The first conversation I had with Matt Garcia at Joe's Buffet in the summer of 2007 is so poignant now. He told me how much he loved Fairfield. He said he planned on raising his children here, living his entire life here and, he told me he was going to die here. I remember thinking some politicians are dedicated to politics and their careers but this was someone who was genuinely motivated by his love for the community. We talked about gangs. He told me about his father being in prison. He we...

Death finally brings war home to me By Kelvin Wade August 26, 2010 Last week, as Cathi was getting ready for work, we were talking about a former co-worker of hers who had a son in the military in Afghanistan. He'd been on multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. We talked about the transition to civilian life for him when he comes home after being there for so long and so many tours. Ten minutes after Cathi left for work, my phone rang. It was Cathi calling to tell me her co-worker's son had been killed in Afghanistan. It was eerie that we'd just been talking about him. Chief Special Warfare Operator Collin Thomas, 33, was a Navy Seal killed in combat operations in eastern Afghanistan. This fallen war hero had earned three Bronze Stars with combat 'V,' a Purple Heart, and numerous other medals and commendations. I was surprised how hard his death hit me. I didn't know him and never met Cathi's co-worker. What was bothering me crystallized when I poste...