aahhh, juneteenth

i'm home today because it is an unusual state holiday, juneteeth, the anniversary of the slaves in texas finding out---THREE YEARS LATER---about lincoln's emancipation proclamation.

the 81st legislative session is over, ended june 1, and life is returning to normal, whatever that is. a special session is on the horizon so they can finish unfinished business, but right now i do not care one whig.

i am sooo grateful for this day off.

this past session, my third at the legislative budget board, was a hard one for people at my agency, and maybe people at other agencies, but especially at my agency, because two of my fellow employees DIED during the session.

in the 20-something years of institutional memory of my longer-tenured colleagues, this is the first time an active employee has died. and not just one active employee, but two.

was it a coincidence that these deaths came during the session? that is unanswerable unless you can read god's mind. but session are stressful, and that could have contributed...

one colleague died in april. he had a seizure and was in the hospital where a week later, on Easter Sunday, he had a fatal stroke. the medical professionals discovered after the fact that he had had a brain tumor.

i didn't know him well at all--we bumped into each other in the kitchen occasionally. i was told that in the period before the seizure, he complained about being tired. but who wasn't making that same complaint?

a month later, another colleague didn't come into work one day. no one answered when they called. a couple of people went to her home. they called the police, who entered and found her in bed, dead. she had had a heart attack in her sleep.

what was particularly hard about this death was that this woman was still working at 68, putting in time to be eligible for a retirement pension, saving her pennies for retirement, and SHE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO ENJOY IT.

after my boss told me of her death, my second thought was "Way to go!" dying in yoru sleep is nice. and...you don't have to keep working under stressful conditions. reminds me of the humorous coffee mug with the statement, "I'm not calling in sick, I'm calling in dead".

don't get me wrong, there are perks, the main one being that i work in a pretty good office with a lot of really cool people, and we do get comp time for all that overtime we put in during sessions, so you get extra time off. if i use all my comp time and accrued vacation time this year, it adds up to about 7 paid weeks off from work. not bad.

the worst thing about the job is being at the mercy of the legislature's schedule, which is to meet from january through may in odd-numbered years and then do little in the interim. maybe have a special session or two, campaign for re-election, etc. that doesn't really affect me.

who came up with this crazy idea of meeting for 5 months every other year? my hunch is that way back when texas was first a state, the "founding fathers" decided that because it's such a big state, and there were no planes, trains, or automobiles, it would be efficient to condense legislation time so legislators could go back to their communities and farm, practice law, or do whatever else they did to make a living. (they still only get paid about $7 grand a year--yes, you do have to be rich to run the state government.)

so the schedule has been like that since 1845. and now we DO have planes, trains, and automobiles...

i ask you: people, does this make any sense? not to me it doesn't. count in deaths, stress, broken marriages, neglect of children, illness, exhaustion, nervous breakdowns, overtime and comp time, utilities from working late nights, etc., and it just doesn't seem very humane to me.

how do you change this? well. i asked. (you knew i would do that, right?)

this is what i learned. there would have to be a referendum, and the voters in texas would have to approve a change in the schedule. and that has been tried before, and the voters voted it down.

people, i'm asking you, if this ever comes up for a vote again, vote FOR change, not against it. i beg of you.