The Greedy Bastards at EPEC strike again!

Today's mail has brought a "Notice of El Paso Electric Company's Petition to Change Rates."  This notice tells us that they filed their petition on Feb. 13, and that customers have 45 days from that date to seek intervention or further information.  That's right.  Even though we had 45 days, we now have only six until the March 30 deadline!

I have written a letter to the Public Utility Commission, requesting that they turn down this ridiculous request, based on pure and simple greed.  Here is what I wrote:

Public Utility Commission of Texas

P. O. Box 13326

Austin, Texas 78711-3326

Ref:  Docket No. 46831

               I have today received a "NOTICE OF EL PASO ELECTRIC COMPANY'S PETITION TO CHANGE RATES."  According to this notice, El Paso Electric (EPE or Company) filed this petition some six weeks ago, and finally has seen fit to advise me of the fact that I now have only six days in which to request intervention or further information.  This action, in and of itself, is - to say the least - somewhat disengenuous.

               I hereby object most strenuously to this seriously delayed action, and the petition itself.  As I understand the petition, EPE is telling us that they decided to invest their money in two new power generation facilities and other capital investment additions from 2015 and 2016.  Forgive this non-business person's obvious ignorance, but I thought that business investments were just that -  investments.  Why should the consumer, who was certainly not consulted prior to the new power generating facilities or other capital investment additions, now be called upon to hasten the return on EPE's investment?  I was not aware that investments work that way.  Beyond that question, I would like to know if it is EPE's intention to lower their new higher rates for the consumer once they have collected their accelerated return on investment?

               Frankly, the explanation provided by EPE in their notice fails to persuade me that this is an honest or even reasonable effort on their part.  I urgently request the Commission to reject this rate increase request.  I would remind the Commission that EPE enjoys a veritable monopoly here in West Texas, as the consumers here have no other options when it comes to obtaining electrical power.

Sincerely,

I don't really expect much to come of my little effort, but I do think this local monopoly has had it their greedy way for way too long.

Monopoly 'R Us?

I am calling out one Eddie Gutierrez, supposedly an El Paso native, and shill for El Paso Electric.  In a television ad that you can see here - Shilling for EPEC , young Mr. Gutierrez talks about how EPEC has invested billions in developing their grid, and then tries to make us believe that the only way EPEC can get their investment back is via a rate increase!

Do you understand that?  Hey, Eddie!  Tell your homies over there at EPEC that investments do not work that way!  You want to make money by investing?  Then, by all means, invest!  But, you don't get to increase your rates to speed up the process!  That isn't a return on investment!  That's a plain, out-and-out ripoff!  Stop.  Just.  Stop!

Some More Fading El Paso History

Manuel Hornedo, MD, a 1933 graduate of UTMB, Galveston, was a sort of pioneer, from a family of pioneers, right here in El Paso.  Early in my Nursing career I had the pleasure to work with him.  In the late 1970's, Dr. Hornedo was still working part time for the local City/County Health Department, performing physical examinations on well babies.  He had been the first medical director of our Health Department, way back in the early 1930's when he was a brand new doctor.

He was a great story teller, and he would tell us stories about his childhood, how and where he became a doctor, and how he came to be the director of the Health Department.  He was also an excellent diagnostician, and demonstrated his abilities to Nursing staff in the clinics.  He still maintained a little office inside a drug store, on Magoffin Avenue, just about a block before it runs into Alameda Ave.  I think that it was called the San Pedro Drug Store at one time.  I don't remember.  A lot of people who lived in that area still trusted him for their urgent needs (these were not people who had a "Primary Care" physician).

                                       (You can still see the words, San Pedro)

He told us how his father had a dairy, and he used to ride the wagon around town delivering milk with his father, as a child.  The area he remembered was what we have long called the Second Ward, or El Segundo Barrio.  He went to school at what is now El Paso High School, I believe, but I think he had a different name for it.  I long believed that he told us he went to Tulane for medical school, but an online search for him, just the other day says he went to UTMB Galveston.  Perhaps UTMB was post graduate studies for his specialty of Internal Medicine, but I can't say.  He caught our attention by telling us, however, that when he graduated from medical school, during the Great Depression, he could not afford to pay for transportation to get back home to El Paso.  So, he "rode the rails," or so he told us.

When he came home as a new doctor, he could not afford to open up a practice, and the only thing available to him was to become the Director of the local health department.  He showed us photographs that depicted some of the things that he did in the 1930's, and one memory I have of that is him posting a quarantine sign on a little house in the barrio, warning of Measles.  By the time I started working in Public Health, some forty years had gone by for him, and he was now the former Medical Director, and very well respected.

I do recall more than one occasion when he would look at one of the people who came in with babies for their examinations (These exams often included grandmothers and aunts, in addition to the mothers of the babies who were being seen), and from across the room be able to tell us (the nursing staff) about medical conditions that those parents or grandparents had.  He was also notorious for predicting the sex of unborn babies, by looking closely at the mothers.  He would have them come over to him (and, by the way, this was just as often a friend or relative who had accompanied the mother of a child being seen, as it was anyone else), and look deeply into their eyes, and make motions like any physician who is doing a cursory, visual evaluation or examination.

Finally, after a time, he would give his prediction, and everyone would take note.  Based on the feedback we received from the community, he was right much more often than wrong, so he pretty much had us all believing in his special power.  We asked him every time how it was that he could make his prediction, and he gave us many different answers.  He'd say, for instance, "I look just next to the pupil, and if you see a black spot, then it will be a boy."  Or, he'd say, "Deep inside the pupil, I look for a tiny gold speck, and if that is there, it will be a boy (or, a girl, depending on what he wanted us to believe that particular day).  Finally, after more than a year of working with him, he confessed.  When asked yet again how he did it, he said, "Well, I figure I have a 50-50 chance of getting it right, so I just go with whatever feels right."  Thus, we learned the secret, or one of the secrets, of a very good physician.

Dr. Hornedo was also constantly working on some kind of experiment to prove a pet theory of his, aimed at providing a cure for some condition or other.  I am afraid that I do not recall what, exactly, he was doing, but he had notebooks full of notes, and items pertinent to his research in his little office there at Magoffin and Raynor.  He never completed his research, and whatever he was after has been lost forever, but he did persevere until his death at an advanced age.

Update, Feb. 26, 2018:

A local El Paso Middle School was named for Dr. Hornedo, on the West Side of the city, and on their web site you can find more accurate information about this remarkable man.  https://www.episd.org/domain/748
I looked it over just this morning, and find corrections for a lot of gaps from these recollections of mine.  Take the time and look him up.

I also recall briefly touching a bit more local history, back when I was a young nurse.  I met Saul Kleinfeld in the late 1970's when I cared for his wife, who was stricken with cancer.  I don't recall what his distinction was, but he must have been important, since he got a street named after him.  I also provided home care to Henry Brennan, who was a retired engineer, from the local Street Department, I believe.

My point here is to show that there is lot of history here that is being lost forever in our rush to tear down what is old and replace with mostly large things, that will never return much to us for all our tax dollars.  Oh, and, Dr. Hornedo is not completely forgotten, since there is a middle school on the west side which bears his name.  I wonder if any of the kids or faculty there know anything about the man, though.

Just A Taste Of El Paso History.

The constant push from City Council to revitalize Downtown El Paso seems to have turned into a move to simply tear down the old, and build something new.  I suppose that would be OK if the something new was going to either provide shelter for human beings, or in some way be useful all the time for all the people.  Unfortunately, we appear to be building more and more structures that only receive part time use by a relatively low percentage of the city's population.

You'll forgive me for saying that this makes little sense.  On the one hand, it is almost as if they do not realize - or, at least, remember - that downtown El Paso just happens to be where most El Pasoans actually lived before the city got so big!  To make things worse, it is as if now Council thinks that downtown just is not worthy of actually being inhabited.

As a reminder of some of our history, I would like to relate part of one historical event from El Paso's past that is verifiable.  I think that I read about this in a book by our own Leon Metz, mostly because his is the only name that comes to mind when thinking about El Paso historians (Although the last name, Mangan, might be involved).  To make this a longer story, though, let me begin with a little personal history.

I graduated from El Paso Community College with an Associate Degree in Nursing, in August of 1976.  I had been working part time at El Paso's only Catholic hospital, as a student Nurse, up until that time.  As soon as I passed my State Boards, and received my Nursing License, in March of 1977, I moved to what was then a relatively new Sierra Medical Center.  I worked on what was called a Medical floor, and most of our patients were non-surgical and/or non-orthopedic.  We also took care of people whose surgical procedures had been complicated, raising their risk of infection, and making their care more intense, and prolonged.

In the late spring of 1977, we received a patient from surgery, whose routine gall bladder surgery had proven to be very complicated, and whose chance of recovery was not considered to be very good.  This lady, whose name was Nettie Manigold, was at the time about 79 years old.  Nettie quickly proved her doctors wrong, and earned the respect and admiration of all who came into contact with her.  She was the most compliant patient I ever personally worked with, and she did everything we ever asked her to do, which of course helped her to not only recover, when it had been thought she might not, but to recover rather quickly.

For some strange reason, as she got better and better, she got it fixed in her mind that I had done something extraordinary to "save her life," when in fact the single most contributing factor in her rapid improvement had to be her single minded purpose in working so hard to do all the things that we, her caregivers, asked of her.

Well, I was getting ready to change jobs about the same time that Nettie came up for her discharge, and we exchanged contact information.  From the moment that she left the hospital, and I left that same hospital's employ, Nettie, and later, her husband, Jesse, became my personal patients.  No, no, no.  Nothing formal, but since I went into Public Health Nursing, and I was working out of a clinic not too far from where they lived, they started by coming to the clinic once a month or so, to have their blood pressure checked, and to talk about how they were doing healthwise.

I know this may be hard to believe, but El Paso once had a Public Health Department that was formally known as the El Paso City/County Health Department, and the City and the County shared the budget for the operations, which delivered services to the entire county.  There were clinics from the Upper Valley, out to Fabens.  Plus, of course, different sections of the Department delivered services like Animal Control (that's right; animal control was under the purview of the Health Department), Vector Control (mosquitoes and various pests), Food Handlers' classes and cards and inspections of restaurants and businesses involved in food preparation.  Out of the neighborhood clinics we provided newborn visits (yes, we actually visited people in their homes), well baby examinations, immunizations (free of charge, if you can believe it), and general educational services about public health.

But, to get back to my story, I began to go visit Nettie and Jessie, in their little home in the heart of Tigua, so as to save them the trips to the clinics where I worked.  You see, Jesse had retired in 1950, after working for first, the Police Department, and then, the Fire Department.  They owned a very old Chevy, about a 1949 or 50, two door model.  They were on a fixed income that was already 27 years old, so obviously, they did not have disposable income.

Their little house?  It was located on a plot of land that Jesse had purchased in the depths of the depression.  He had built the house himself, as I recall.  This was on a short, little street known as West Drive.  I think the house is gone now, because nothing looks familiar when I drive by.  The house had been built of adobe and, by 1977, was in pretty sad condition. 

Well, over time I learned a bit about Jesse's history, as well as Nettie's.  He was usually not around on my visits, except to get his blood pressure checked, and then he would go off to a back room.  But, Nettie told me that he had been one of the first motorcycle cops in El Paso, and that he changed from being a cop to being a fireman because it was considered to be safer work.  She did not tell me that he must have been an awesome policeman, but I learned that from the book I mentioned, by Leon Metz.

At one time, long ago, likely in the 1920's or 30's, there was an entire area of town to which certain enterprises were confined.  The police allowed prostitution, gambling, and lots of drinking in an area that ran roughly from Chihuahuita, to La Bowie (the original Bowie).  Recent reports about tearing down one old building for the new arena reminded me of this particular incident.  One of those old buildings was once a house of ill repute, I believe?

Not necessarily at that same location, but somehow I think over closer to South 4th, 5th, or maybe 6th, and likely near Mesa, there occurred an incident in which my friend, Jesse Manigold, figured very prominently.  It seems that one of the ladies of the evening betook overmuch of whatever was usually served to the paying customers, and got crazy drunk.  She was waving a gun around, threatening all and sundry.  The cops moved folks out of the way, and tried to figure out what to do to control the situation.  Somebody, perhaps the lady herself, mentioned that "Jess" Manigold was needed because she either liked him, or responded to him in a positive way.  So, he was sent for, and in true Western style, he "went in alone," and persuaded her to give up the gun, and the entire incident ended without harm coming to anyone.

The report of this incident was told in a rather humorous fashion, and Jesse came out of it as the hero that he evidently was.  My point is that history of this nature is indeed getting lost, and the quicker those old buildings are torn down, the quicker everyone will have forgotten that El Paso's past is colorful and exciting.  Personally, I find it very sad.

I think that present City Council somehow believes that history is so insignificant, that it can be best ignored and should be thrown out like the baby with the bath water.  Tear this down, revitalize downtown, renew, and build things, not for dwellings, but for purposes that will leave large structures mostly empty and unused for most of the time.  Downtown is not really for people to live in, you know.  It's like they do not realize that downtown is actually where El Paso's people used to live.

The General Election of 2016 Explained 51 Years Ago.

Many, many years ago, about a year after I graduated from high school, a very wise man wrote these words:

We are doing something wrong. We haven't found out what it is yet. But somehow we have turned all these big glossy universities into places which the thinking young ones, the mavericks, the ones we need the most, cannot endure. So all the campuses are in the hands of the unaware, the incurably, unconsciously second class kids with second class minds and that ineffably second class goal of reasonable competence,reasonable security, reasonable happiness.

Perhaps this is the proper end product to people a second class world. All mavericks ever do, anyway, is make the sane, normal, industrious people feel uncomfortable. They ask the wrong questions. Such as-What is the meaning of all this. So weed them out. They are cultural mistakes. Leave the world to the heroes and the semi-heroes, and their rumpy little soft-eyed girls, racing like lemmings toward the warm sea of the Totally Adjusted Community.

(From "A Deadly Shade Of Gold"  (Travis McGee #5), by John D. MacDonald, 1965).

I doubt that very many people today have a clue about who Travis McGee was, or, for that matter, who his creator, John D. MacDonald, was.  Short version:  Travis McGee was the hero of a series of books in the mystery-thriller genre, and a sort of mid-century Robin Hood, trying to right wrongs, while paying his expenses, and a bit more, along the way.  He was widely admired, often copied, but never, ever duplicated.

This particular quote appears part way into a thriller wherein Mr. McGee was seeking information about some rare golden objects, and his musings were about the then state of higher learning in the United States.  He was visiting a university campus in Florida, about to meet and pick the mind of a highly educated expert (not coincidentally a professor) on rare artifacts.

I think what is so significant here is that Mr. MacDonald had these thoughts more than fifty years ago, and today we have seen the end results of what he saw way back then.  We just went through one of the saddest presidential elections in the history of this once great nation, and the products of that world described by him had a lot to do with the outcome of this election.

Our nation today is dominated by undereducated, unread, functional illiterates, who are too lazy to ever form an opinion on their own, and/or ill equipped to perform any basic research to check facts.  They are ignorant of history, which easily explains why we see the same mistakes being repeated over and over.  They are passionate about what they've been told to believe, without really knowing why they are passionate.  They, like the censors of days gone by, may not be able to articulate what it is, but they damn well know it when they see it!

It is indeed a sad day that got here all too quickly.  Fortunately, for me, I am now at an age where whatever bad things are about to happen will likely have little impact on me, since I will shuffle off this mortal coil soon enough.  I fear greatly for my now adult children and their children.  Please God someone, somewhere will interest the world in learning again, and maybe this soon to be new dark age will be avoided, or at least, short lived.

Maybe it IS just me

My wife had to go see her dentist in Cd. Juarez this morning, so I took her.  We have done this many times before, and several times since we came back to Texas from Costa Rica, so no big deal, right?

After her cleaning, and the replacement of one filling, we got in line at the downtown El Paso bridge.  We were happy to see that the line, while slow, was not as long as we've sometimes seen in the past.

When we finally got to the CBP Agent, I opened her window, and she handed him our passports.  He accepted the passports, which were open at the main page already, looked at us, greeted us, and then asked her for her name.  She gave it to him, and then he looked at me.

Now, I'll be honest here.  I bristled the moment he asked her for her name.  I mean, he was holding her passport, and it was open to the page where her name and pertinent information is written!  He asked me for my name, and I said, "John," but with disgust in my voice.  I will not deny it.  He said, "your full name."  So, I said my last name, too, with even more disgust in my voice.

He then told me to remove my cap, and he asked me why I was addressing him in such a manner, and I said, "Well, you're holding my passport in your hand, and there's my name right there, so why in the world do I have to tell you?"  His response was that he was just checking to see if I knew the information on the document, so he could know it is not fake.  Come on!  Doesn't he have a scanning device that will tell him if he has a fake passport?!

This only served to piss me off further.  I mean, come on!  I am 70 years old!  We're driving a relatively clean car, in good shape, and he thinks we might have a forged passport?  Well, then he decided that he had to make me go through all the hoops, and cross all of his anal retentive t's and dot his little i's.

"What were you doing in Mexico?"  My wife answered him, and he snapped at her, "I'm not asking you.  I'm addressing your husband."  
"How often do you go to Mexico?" 
"Where do you usually cross the border?"
"When was the last time you went to Mexico?"
"What kind of work do you do?"
"What kind of work did you do before you retired?"
"What were you doing in Blaine?"
"When were you in Blaine?"  (We crossed into Canada on a family trip up to the Pacific Northwest last June, remember)?
"Do you have any fruits?"
"Open the trunk."
"Open the rear window."
"Do you have any vegetables?"
"Do you have any meat?"
"Do you have any drugs or medicines?"

I mean, this power mad Nazi went through every thing he could think of just to get back at me for being unhappy with his questions!  I understand that he and his ilk think they are protecting us from terrorists, but come on!  We really need to rescind the truly awful Patriot Act!  And, border crossing agents need to be educated as to who they are supposed to be serving!  And, it would not hurt if they learned some manners!  I think that my years have earned me the right to be addressed with just a smidgen of common courtesy, with a please, a thank you, and maybe a sir, once in a while.

What do you think?  Am I over reacting?  Am I supposed to be subservient to a public servant?  Does he not owe me any respect at all?