Camera, adventurer combine to make a local super hero

Posted: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 8:11 pm

By Jane Howard Lee

I need to find a Superman cape and give it to Bert Marshal.

Baytown Bert seems to be making a difference around his dear city, and I want to thank him for that. And I think he’d look good in a super hero cape. I doubt he’d wear tights with it though but that’s OK. Tights wouldn’t be practical to wear on his wanderings.

Bert, who maintains several websites dedicated primarily to Baytown’s sights and history, is fond of wandering around solo with a camera in hand. He calls himself a lone wolf, but I don’t think he is quite that. He’s got lots of friends and admirers, and on his blogs he talks a lot about going off on adventures with a couple of friends, their kids and, well, enough folks to make it more like a wolf pack than a lone wolf.

Bert loves photography, photojournalism, geocaching and wandering. His wanderings sometimes lead him to see things that not too many people see.

His ability to really look at and really see things makes him more likely to notice problems and unpleasant things. Bert, being Bert, isn’t one to just say, “Well, darn, that was an unpleasant thing to see.”

No, Bert, being Bert, spreads the word and works on getting the unpleasantness removed. He has learned how best to spread the word and how to get a reaction from spreading the word and how to politely approach officials and usually follows the philosophy of getting more bees with honey.

Here are a couple of examples.

Bert has been sending me some photos and information about some problem areas in Baytown. They are areas that he wandered around or through on his wanderings or places that someone told him about, perhaps mentioning problems there and Bert made it a point to wander that way. Bert probably hoped that I would write something about these problems spots and maybe get something done about them and I would have, I swear, but Bert tends to get the job done before I can find time to get on it.

One of the most recent locations to earn Bert’s attention is a spot on Wismer Road.

Bert sent me some e-mails that were copies of missives he sent to appropriate city officials. He sent photos, information, documentation and, having these well-read blogs on his websites and by sending copies of the e-mails to people whose names were then listed on the e-mails as having received copies, let it be known to whoever was interested that they (the city officials) were not the only ones aware of the problem. Of course, that means people knew their reactions would be observed.

City officials jumped in and investigated though I am sure they would have done so even if they hadn’t had that overwhelming sense of being watched.

They said the nasty site looked a lot worse than it was ... no chemicals, no leaky stuff, no health hazards other than a mosquito-breeding murky ugly, somewhat trashy bit of land and water.

A beaver dam created part of the problem, they said, and that was quickly removed and the beavers urged to relocate. The water flowed again.

Well, that nasty, nasty looking spot out on Wismer Road has now been cleaned up. Bert sent round an e-mail applauding the city’s quick action to accomplish that and posted before and after photos.

He applauds the city, but I’ve got to throw in some clapping for Bert.

Friend Bert also has tackled what appeared to be some very poor drainage at the Baytown Bark Park and a situation in Pelly Park on Main Street where a rusty, dilapidated pump jack poses a hazard (once fenced to keep kids out, that fence is down and just made for more metal for someone to trip on or get hurt on) and is an eyesore to say the least.

With Bert on the case, that situation is bound to change.

So thanks to Bert, who is a great community watch dog, and I think he should add that term to that list he uses to describe himself (I had to look up philomath, Bert) on his web pages and blogs.

Good job, Bert, from your fellow philomath friend.

You can visit Baytown Bert’s websites at http://BaytownBert.us, http://OurBaytown.com and at http://baytownbert.blogspot.com.

 Jane Howard Lee is a reporter at the Baytown Sun.

* Giant Superman compliments of Barbara Pugh (friend of BB and uber-trickster)

Which Candidate is Best? You Decide!

I have an easy and logical method for determining which Presidential candidate is best for the future of the United States of America. I simply watch the news sources and see whom Hollywood endorses and which candidate our enemies are rooting for and I vote for the other campaigner. I find it curiously peculiar that many wealthy Hollywood actors, third world despots and economically competing governments often want the same candidate to win the election.

It's tried and true, uncannily accurate and history does indeed repeat itself, so I use this formula each presidential election to make sure I am helping to secure our future well-being as a superpower, which incidentally is something I feel is vitally important.

According to Reuters – "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, renowned for colorful insults of world leaders, called U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a confused "beauty queen" on Friday after she said he was a dictator. Chavez, a leftist who often mocks U.S. President George W. Bush, invoked the advice of Jesus Christ on how to handle the slights by Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska and a former beauty pageant winner".

I think its safe to say whom Mr. Chavez would like to see in the White House especially when Barack Obama is promising an expanded non-military diplomatic Bill Clintonesque agenda (which sounds good on paper, but hardly works in the real world), but how about Iran's scruffy dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who just last year inaugurated an international conference called World Without America--attended by anti-Americans from all over the world, including the U.S.?

According to Middle East expert Amir Taheri "Obama's election would boost President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chances of winning a second term next June. Ahmadinejad's entourage claims that his "steadfastness in resisting the American Great Satan" was a factor in helping Obama defeat "hardliners" such as Hillary Clinton and, later, it hopes, John McCain". He's an Obama man for sure.

Let's move on to Europe's preference for the next American President. Europe hates America; it's no secret. Even though we protect their borders with the world's most powerful military presence and pump billions of American dollars into their collective economies and pulled their bacon out of the fire two times in the last century – they hate us. I'll leave it to the experts as to what they think and since they are our competitors for global domination, their preference is important.

"The 5 largest European countries are unanimous in their desire to see Barack Obama elected whilst John McCain's rating is extremely low. If they could vote, only 1% of French, 5% of German and 8% of Spanish respondents would elect John McCain. In the United States, the Republican candidate is behind by 10 points." so says the FRANCE 24 / Harris Interactive poll.

According to this poll, 99% of the French want Barack Obama. To me this is a Euro-klaxon horn of alarming concern. The French see themselves as the true leader of the European Common Market and detest everything American. If they want Barack Obama, they feel they can manipulate him and triumph over us as a country. Yes, it is that simple.

But isn't John McCain just another paw-parrot of George W. Bush? Hasn't he voted almost identical as what GWB wanted? John McCain was considered a freethinking renegade Republican until the Primaries started and then his fellow Republican contenders labeled him as nothing more than a pinko liberal, which wasn't true. He would occasionally vote against a Republican initiative if he felt it was a bad plan and that made him a maverick. Now, if I read the newsprint correctly, he's become a staunch conservative who eats out of GWB's hand and that also is not so.

Okay, let's move on. What about our venerated Hollywood movie stars? Why in heaven's name would they be for raising their own taxes, cutting our military back to near nothing and making our country vulnerable – just like they did when they threw their collective monies behind electing Bill Clinton - twice? Why would they be so vehement towards the George W. Bush presidency and blame him personally for our economic woes, when the government has been Democratically controlled for the last two years? It's a mind-boggling conundrum for sure and for the life of me, I can't understand why this doesn't raise serious debate everywhere on our politically active campuses.

I thought the January 3rd, 2007 election of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House was supposed to be a magic economic panacea or something, but nope, it wasn't and their approval rating for running the government is so low, the only scapegoat they point towards is poor old George.

So, is this column nothing more than a John McCain infomercial? The answer is no it's not, but as I said at the beginning, whomever our competitors, world anti-American dictators and our enemies want in the White House is an excellent barometer and since they all want Barack Obama, then I will vote for the other fellow thank you.

Baytown Bert’s Top Ten List for Global Change

Boy howdy, if I am put in charge I will make a few changes. I am assigning a real cool sounding name to this sweeping referendum: “Baytown Bert’s Top Ten List for Global (read Baytown) Change” and make it so. I don’t even know who is in charge of making these kinds of decisions, but give me the go ahead and I will jump in feet first. I will be tough as Ted Poe, Chuck Norris and that Maricopa County Sheriff rolled into one.

Here goes: If someone is caught red-handed shoplifting or convicted in a court of law, I will make sure their photograph is printed on a billboard beside the store they stole from, printed in the local newspaper and their name and image broadcast on our local TV channel for one year. I will set up a national database and register them as thieves along with putting a mark on their driver’s license to remind officers and shopkeepers that they steal. As much as fifteen percent of the cost of items we purchase is to pay for security and shop-lifters greedy fingers. I say make the thief pay for their crime and then we honest shoppers can get lower prices.

Number two will be converting our school system over to an “advance as you progress” system, where each student moves forward on their own merit. What? We have that already? Let’s change it then to where each student moves forward each month, or repeats it right then. Instead of TAAS, TAKS, or some other kind of mandatory State test, students are aptitude tested on a two to three year reoccurring basis. This way parents and students will know individual strengths and weaknesses and can get a head start on a specific education, rather than a general or generic degree. Maybe students will finish 12-14 years of school in 8-10 and actually know something that will help them secure employment.

Here’s number three and it’s a doozy. I will demand the power companies move all electrical wires under ground and remove the “telephone” poles. They are ugly, make the city ugly and fail repeatedly during bad storms.

I’m already into number four and I’m just getting warmed up. We need a cable company which provides paying customers 10 channels worth watching. I will settle for 10, even though I pay for 150. 140 channels of stupid stuff by stupid program directors and we are paying for it? Who is stupid here? We stupid. We are paying this company to pump stupid stuff into our homes.

Hello number five! I want to see a coordinated and driver friendly traffic light flow system set up on Garth, North Main and Alexander Drive (for starters) and I don’t want to pay another consulting company to figure this out. I want it to happen.

Call me butter, cause I’m on a roll with number six. I want a bi-weekly free concert of local aspiring talent, church choirs and jazz ensembles in Bicentennial Park. It could be co-sponsored/promoted by Lee College and the City of Baytown and would promote culture exchange in this historically blue-collar oil city and that’s something we would all benefit from.

7-UP! I would like to see more than three cash registers open at Wal-Mart at any one time, excluding the self-service registers. I would settle for the manager of this store making a public apology for coming to this conclusion before someone makes a scene. See the Food Town on North Main for how it should be done.

Number eight is a desperate plea more than a simple wish. I will institute an emergency radio station for Baytown and surrounding areas to inform local folks when disaster strikes. If Hurricane Ike taught us anything, it was we can’t rely on Houston radio to give us specifics or instruction from our city leaders.

Here’s number nine, number nine, number nine (that’s a reference to the White album by The Beatles for your amusement). I want to see more advocates for the city of Baytown and less folks griping about the city and its failings. The city is what we make it folks and it’s that simple. It takes two hands to do almost anything. City leaders need input and they need it before decisions are made.

My number ten and last wish for Baytown, Baytonians and all of us living close by is we somehow learn to embrace a philosophy where we are generally proud to be from here. Like number nine, we individual citizens must work together to make our schools safer and more productive, the quality of work emanating from Baytown superior and the overall positive attitude of this area significant in the total scheme of Texas life.

Searching for the good

I have a book on my shelf titled Searching for the Good by Thomas A. Brewer. It’s about his journey to war and back during the Vietnam years. Like my son, Thomas Brewer was wounded in action and like me; he endured the vicious heat, monsoons and the oppressive elements of the tropics. I relate to his experience in so many ways, having endured over 21 months as a G.I. in South East Asia and all that goes with it for soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors.

I never saw a bullet fly past me in anger though, but much of what a service member endures is shared by all members and can be quite difficult to bear. Remote assignments, extreme weather conditions, impossible missions and long hours of sometimes severe physical and mental stress are all chalked up as routine duty in the life of an American fighting man or woman.

This book has special significance for me, as it has photos and details about the father of a friend, who was a combat medic in Vietnam and who shares my first name – Bert (Hale). My friend, Adam is a “Marine on stand-by” and a Forward Observer during Desert Storm. Semper Fidelis (always faithful) to all Marines and all of my brothers and sisters in arms who serve or served with honor and to those who spent or spend countless hours praying and agonizing over loved ones in harms way.

Thomas Brewer went off to war in 1967 when most Americans still believed in the mission to stop Communism. He came home with two bullet holes in his body and as support for the war waned, bullet holes in his patriotism. Our current war on terrorism is becoming less and less of a daily concern to most of us, something we wish would just go away and in many ways is today’s Vietnam War. Some of us have given up hope for the future in Iraq.

Like my generation of Vietnam Veterans, I’m afraid the returning Vet will become confused about their service to our country and forget the good they accomplished, after all, for every negative incident reported there are thousands of righteous acts performed and these will go unnoticed to most and probably forgotten.

In my own son, I listen as he reacts bitterly to the way some decisions were handled in Iraq and if Donald Rumsfeld’s name comes up, he gets livid. This is all well and good, as he has earned the right to gripe, but also shows he is educating himself on American military policies and world events. Like Thomas Brewer, Nick has returned from war and enrolled in college to put it all behind him.

Like Thomas Brewer and millions of other veterans I doubt seriously if they will allow themselves to be spit on or derided by those who have ideals, but no military experience. While talking to my son, I’ve encouraged him to lay down his rifle and pick up his books, using his mind and tongue instead of violence to get his point across when faced with the idealist’s angry rhetoric.

For many veterans they will spend a lifetime sorting out their past service, where they did their jobs with honor and will make every attempt to get on with their lives, in spite of possible pain, doubt and torment. They will be looking for the good in life, as they’ve seen and experienced the bad.

Now this column is not really so much about the soldier, or the book, but about our little big city and the way we view it and ourselves while living here. Many of us were born and raised here, or came with the idea that this was the place to be, but along the way we’ve become disillusioned and lost faith and focus about the Baytown area. We’ve bought into the criticism.

When Baytown is mentioned, all we see is the bad; bad leadership, bad business, bad education, air, ordinances, roads, crime and the lists keep growing. I think it’s time to examine what is good about Baytown and put the bad behind us.

This last Friday night thousands of Baytown people gathered at Stallworth stadium to raise awareness and funds to fight the terrible enemy cancer and cheer on its survivors. This morning many Baytonians are pedaling their bicycles toward Austin for the MS-150, a charity ride to help defeat Multiple Sclerosis. My brother Terry is a Ride Marshal and this is his 10th MS-150. Read the Baytown Sun Forum on any given day and you will be informed about a benefit barbeque for someone in need. Baytonians, in spite of our many heated opinions, are caring folk.

Mutual support groups abound in our city and many will join the fight against the barge terminal on Cedar Bayou at Roseland Park May 3rd as Mean Gene Kelton and the Diehards provide a free public concert. We are a vocal bunch politically, but the last time I heard, no one was throwing punches at the town meetings and the Mayor, city council members and city manager are all approachable.

There is plenty of good to see in Baytown. We just have to search for it sometimes.

Should I vote for Barack Obama?

I listened to Presidential hopeful Barack Obama address the nation this past Tuesday with his eloquent history lesson beginning at the penning of the Constitution through the many civil rights advances and its many problems. The man is very much a public speaker, at least as long as he sticks to his prepared material. He talks so well that almost nothing he says can be contested. I have the transcript on my desk as I write this column and have read and re-read it. It's a very good speech, maybe one of the greatest speeches of our day.

Although interesting and fluent, it's not necessary for Barack Obama to give me a 30-minute history lesson on race-relations in this country to win my vote. What I do need as a voter is his assurance that everyone under his future administration is going to get a far shake and that 20 years of the "most segregated moment in American life occurs on Sunday morning" is not ingrained in his subconscious mind. If John McCain had a 20-year history of sitting under the Pastor Wright's opposite and then told the world that he believed in racial healing, everyone would openly reject him. Heckfire, Hillary wouldn't even go there.

Mr. Obama's charismatic delivery is somehow wasted on me, as I have an inbuilt spam-filter when it comes to what I perceive to be possibly smoke and mirrors. Flowery speeches promising vague returns defined as "change" doesn't make me salivate. I simply want line item yes' and no's. I want to see a voting record that has more than "present" in the little boxes. Mr. Obama is either in excess on one count or sadly lacking on the other.

At least with Hillary Clinton we have 15 years of hard evidence to go by if she is our choice, but Mr. Obama is a mirage of sorts. He promises. He points out old seemingly difficult to change problems and promises to fix them. Somehow. Even though his problem-fixing promises are weak and there is no record of his past successes, he has plenty of followers ready to believe him.

About 20 years ago I attended a large gathering of non-denominational basically Christian people in Houston for a Bill Gothard seminar on Basic Life. We were seated in a large auditorium with what appeared to be a thousand or more people and before us was a stage with a giant two-section curtain. Everyone rose to his or her feet as the curtain opened and a projected image of Bill Gothard appeared to be walking onto the stage. A thunderous applause greeted him from the crowd around me.

Much to my wife's dismay, I did not follow suit, but remained seated and did not clap my hands. I looked around and folks were smiling and clapping and anxiously awaiting the night's presentation. Interspersed were others, like myself, who simply would not partake of greeting something that only appeared to be real, but simply put, was a mirage. There is a term for this kind of crowd mentality and it comes from the saying "like sheep to the slaughter". It's "Sheeple" or sheep-people. I saw this same behavior at an Obama speech when he sneezed and his audience of supporters cheered with giddy abandonment.

Now, don't get me wrong, Bill Gothard does indeed teach sound basic life principles, most of which embrace level-headed decision making, but fail to address everyday problems we encounter and I had no problem sitting and listening to his teaching, albeit by virtual proxy. What I did find disturbing was how easily his image and just his image moved people. I also walked away from his seminar with no clear idea of how to implement his teaching into every day life.

Mr. Obama's cultured appearance and incredible speaking ability hyper-boosts him as he exposes old difficult problems, but only hints of solutions. His description of black and white angst over race issues is dead-on, but can he actually change anything? Will his holding the Oval Office make racial unity possible? His followers think so.

Will his admission that Washington is riddled with insider back-scratching and corruption change in his administration? Can he fix it? What is his plan? If we dismantle our Army in Iraq and bring them home, what will we do with all these troops and the war machine? How will surrendering the Middle East make us stronger? I'm afraid Mr. Obama's plan will simply return us to Bill Clinton's day of a weakened military through sweeping military budget cuts, raised taxes and make matters worse.

Finally, the coup de grace for me in deciding if Mr. Obama is "The Candidate" is by listening to France and Germany. Who is Europe supporting for our leader? According to a European based poll of five major countries, Hillary Clinton was the favorite by 43%, while Barack Obama was only able to garner 11%. The Europeans who are our competitors and want their share of the pie (rather the whole pie) gave John McCain a 1% vote. That settles it for me.

What I see in this poll is they think Hillary Clinton will compromise, like her husband did. They are unsure of Barack Obama, because they have no idea what he plans to do and John McCain? John McCain will continue doing what America needs, even if it means putting America first. They fear him.

I personally am not interested one iota what the Europeans think if it means compromising the American way of life.

City Counsel in Jackboots?

The proverbial fur is flying since Garry Brumback strong-armed the city counsel members into doing things his way. Rumor is that behind closed doors, Herr Garry and his brown-shirt boys plot destruction of rights of the peace-loving and happy-go-lucky Baytonians, all the while polishing their jackboots in giddy abandonment.

I seem to remember the many people who sat in judgment of our past city government because they (apparently) could not make a judicial decision of anything and were guilty of causing the city to fall into a slum. Now, they are being proactive in making a difference and also willing to rescind, amend and flat-out open things up for discussion and is it me, or are we hearing some of the same folks griping?

Let's take a look at our rights being violated (perceived) and the new ordinances that have been voted into law...logically, if possible.

We can claim that because it is our property, we can dang well do what we want and this sounds good, but suppose our neighbor decides to cross OUR lines of propriety. I mean, we do have standards, right?

We may feel like what we do is perfectly fine and dandy, while half the people on our street think we run down the neighborhood or deflate property values and prays we will move back to the hills with our hillbilly kinfolk.

We can be indignant and say everyone else is wrong, claiming it as our right to do what we want with our own property, but by putting the shoe on our other foot we can readily see that some folks don’t cipher the way we do. We can scream socialism, communism and fourteen-otherisms, but the bottom line is some of our behavior may actually scream out to be regulated by our neighbors. If I stack a pile of tires and lumber by my house and the city inspector shows up with a citation, it is because my neighbors object to it, not because the jack-booted city council is making their rounds.

I’ve never organized or ran a garage sale, but I’ve sat in my car, twisting my neck and head out the window trying to negotiate around a covey of cars on the semi-narrow streets of my neighborhood on numerous occasions and I wasn’t “all that” patient either.

One time in particular, the traffic became impassable when a lady literally parked in the middle of the street, unloaded her kiddos and walked away from her car amidst the cacophony of car horns. It didn’t faze her in the slightest (I wanted to use a Taser on her, but thought it would be rude). The next weekend, the same house resurrected the sale and when I became aware of it, I redirected my vehicle down another street.

Do I think all garage sales should be banished? Why, no, but I do think folks should consider the effect continuous garage sales have on their neighbors and since this is taken for granted (the obvious eludes some), it needs to be regulated in my opinion.

I ran a lawn service out of my house here in Chaparral Village (middle-working-class neighborhood at best) for about 10 years and I had a trailer with equipment on it. At the end of each mowing day, I would unload the trailer, putting the equipment out of sight in my garage or out-building and physically pushed the small trailer to the back of my property.

I did this for security AND for the sake of the neighborhood. I must have pushed that trailer 500 times. I could have thrown a tarp over it and chained an angry and vicious rottweiler to it I guess, but I found it in my own best interest, to just move it.

I considered renting a storage space for my trailer, but I felt it would be more cost effective (more money in my family's bank account) to keep the equipment here.

It is my estimation that these many new ordinances are not to penalize the random homeowner for mild infractions, but to give the city power to back up the complaints of citizens who are tired of the 2 boats, 6 cars (2 in the yard) the permanently stored lowboy, weekly yard sales (yard sales? I thought they were garage sales) etc. etc.

I talked to a nice lady on the Jenkins Park trail yesterday and she, like so many, also expressed distrust of our city council’s decisions and we chatted for about ten minutes. I played the devil’s advocate in a friendly way and explained that any attempt by city council to change the status quo was going to run into opposition and criticism and that they are willing to make adjustments if the new ordinances do not work as planned.

And…I told her that it was my opinion that so many of the outspoken critics are just that – outspoken critics with nothing to offer but complaints. They never offer anything constructive, but delight in playing arm-chair city manager or mayor.

By the way, I think Garry Brumback and Mayor Don Carlos wear Crocs, but don’t hold me to that.