And so it is Christmas, and what you have done?

That’s an opening line from one of many fine songs that John Lennon wrote, with the above lyric being part of a song that would become a holiday classic. Lennon’s song is one of reflection in which the listener is asked to look back at the year nearly past and ask if it has been time well spent.

Such is the holiday season that we all enjoy the present while recalling Christmas seasons of our times past. For many of us well into adulthoold it’s also a time to think back to holiday seasons of our youth - and the people who made it possible - chiefly, our parents. Those of us of the Baby Boomer vintage are often the sons and daughters of  parents who endured and survived the Great Depression and World War II, two consecutive eras that tested the resolve of America, and would produce what would be called “the Greatest Generation.”

That greatest generation went through times and hardships that succeeding American generations cannot imagine. Today, American teenage boys bury themselves in their rooms with their X Boxes and games of make believe. Boys of their age in the 1930s and 1940s were either working as shoe shine boys in a desperate attempt to help their cash-strapped families, or preparing to go to war to help save the world from fascist dictators.

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas reflected on this recently in a holiday column in which he wrote about how far he had come in making an income far behind what his parents could have dreamed of earning. Thomas wrote that the amount of money his father made “would be considered poverty wages by today’s standards,” and yet the columnist says, “I never heard him complain. He always provided for us and taught us to be grateful for what we had and to live within our means.”

The gratefulness and the wisdom of those words ring true to many of us who grew up the children of parents who endured harsh times in their own childhoods. My parents were of that mold, the children of the Great Depression, and who as adults and parents never generated a considerable income as judged by today’s standards. My siblings and I didn’t have much growing up in the way of fancy stuff, i.e. a nice house, new cars, lots of new clothes, but I can’t recall ever being bummed out about it.

That’s because we had something much better - the unconditional and unbroken love of two parents who pored their every being into their children when they weren’t working to provide for them. Like Thomas, I sometimes look at my paycheck and think about how much more is in it that what my own Dad made, and yet, I don’t think I’m one bit happier than he was, nor do I think I’m his equal in the fatherhood department.

My father’s generation was generally content with what they had because they knew how little they use to have. That would all change with the rise of the American economy and mass marketing that relentlessly promotes all sorts of creature comforts.

“Beginning with the Baby Boomers, we began to transition from being content with what we have to a sense of being entitled to ever-expanding pieces of the economic pie,” Thomas writes. “We demand more money, more things, more pleasure. Why has the acquisition of `more’ produced so much less - less contentment, less happiness?”

Those questions delve into religious and spiritual realms, of which I’m not qualifed to address. I would say, though, columnist Thomas is on to something when he asks: “Has more stuff - or its pursut - assuaged you? If not, maybe you were given the wrong gift.”

The greatest gift, it turns out, doesn’t come wrapped in a present. It comes in the embrace of a mother or an abrazo from a Dad, and feeling the glow of it all, and simply being content with the greatest gift of all.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, it is rumored, may be coming back to Texas to run for governor in 2010. If so, she may have to face some angry conservatives who are peeved over the senator’s efforts to find some wiggle room in the border fence project.

Hutchison voted for the fence a year ago when desperate Republicans wanted to show middle America it was doing something to keep Mexicans out as the mid-term 2006 elections loomed. Since then, the Texas senator has been trying to nuance the border fence project, insisting that the federal government take into account the input of border communities  before it puts up the dang thing.

The latest from Kay Bailey: She slipped in a provision in one of those massive spending bills Congress always passes to keep the clocks going at all of those federal agencies that are indispensable to our way of life. Hutchison’s provision would tweak the 2006 border fence law to allow the Homeland Security secretary to dispense with fencing and physical barriers in those areas “where he deterimes those resources are not needed.”

Hutchison’s dig? She wants to make sure that the feds listen to local officials, including Border Patrol chiefs, on where the fence should go, but don’t worry fence fans, the senator is not against the construction of the thing, lest she get disowned by her fellow GOPers.

“Sen. Hutchison believes Customs and Border Protection can better make decisions about resource allocation along the border than members (of Congress) who have never been to the region,” said the senator’s spokesman, Matt Machowiak, in an AP story. Gee, that would cover most of the Congress people, you know, the ones who have never been here but are always clamoring for securing the border.

And further wiggle room possibilities emerged this week as well when The Monitor reported that Homeland Security is considering combining the famed fence with a much-needed levee repair project in the RGV. Combining the two is the brainchild of county judges J.D. Salinas of Hidalgo and Carlos Cascos. The concept seemed like a longshot given the current national political mood to keep extraneous Mexicans out of the U.S.

A manager with one of Hidalgo County’s larger drainage districts tells The Monitor that he expects Homeland Security to move forward on a design that combines the fence project with levee repair. County judges Cascos and Salinas says it makes the most sense to combine the two projects, with higher and fortified levees acting as a more natural barrier to keep Mexicans out while protecting the Valley from catastrophic-like Katrina flooding that left New Orleans awash.

Anti-fence forces shouldn’t get too encouraged, however, because some conservative natives in Washington of the GOP variety are getting restless to get the fence up, all 700 miles of it as specified in the 2006 bill. Talk of levees being used as part of the fence system isn’t going to make the immigration restrictionists happy. They want a fence, come hell or the high water of catastrophic flooding over the well-worn levees in the RGV.

Opposition to the fence is strongest in the RGV along the U.S.-Mexico border. No such opposition exists in southern California and Arizona, where the intertwining sort of business and cultural relationships that we have here are largely absent in those parts of the border. Hutchison and other Texas political leaders are pushing for more local input, leading DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to say that “we want to be open to negotiate.”

Chertoff says he’s open to “alternative solutions” in looking at the fence project. The same has been heard from Valley Border Patrol Sector Chief Ron Vitiello, who after initial reservations about the fence-levee idea, now says the concept is aligned with what his agency is looking at for security purposes.

Finding some wiggle room amid the political clamoring for a border fence won’t be easy. Thanks to Hutchison and Valley leaders making their voices heard, perhaps a bit of light is getting through the talk show chatter.

For those Brownsville folk who so admire the McAllen model of success, and who gush about that city’s political and business establishment, here’s a news flash.

If you’re looking for the most vociferous and passionate opposition to the border fence, check in at the McAllen Chamber of Commerce. That’s where “No Border Wall” bumper stickers are passed out like candy, and where the chamber’s director, (an Anglo fellow, I might add), will tell anyone who will listen that the whole concept of the fence is built on American racism and ignorance.

McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez, who is a CPA and is about as square and dull as it gets for a politician, has been busy scurrying up the border, trying to drum up opposition to the dreaded muro. But here’s the good news for you McAllen types: At least you won’t have to see the dang ugly thing everyday like those of us in Brownsville, Hidalgo, Rio Grande City and Roma.

About 10 miles from the border, McAllen is free and clear of the upcoming fence to be built to make middle America feel better that we’re finally doing something to keep Mexicans out. The teeming power shopping centers in Emerald City will continue unabated, choking with foot traffic and credit cards blazing through the cash registers of the foofy stores and resturants that are stuffed with business.

Mayor Cortez and the McAllen chamber types are worried that the fence will lead to a dip in the city’s vaunted retail economy. Did you know that more Mexicans, (of the wealthy variety, not the hated drywallers who are a threat to national security), use more of their plastic money in McAllen than any other U.S. city. Yep, it’s true.

Don’t worry, Mayor Cortez, the wealthy Mexicans who make up over half of your city’s retail sales will keep on spending, wall or no wall. Oh sure, they will be annoyed, maybe a little upset, when they drive over the bridges in Hidalgo and Pharr and see the border wall on either side of them.

But you know what? They’ll just shrug and move on to spend their precious dollars in McAllen. Those Mexicanos will correctly figure out that the fence is there to keep out the pobres, not them, the keepers of McAllen’s economy.

Cortez and Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos are fighting the good fight on the border fence. Cortez seems to think that if he can just talk enough that surely the sound business principles he speaks of will prevail. Cascos is the one with the notion of the feds finally doing something to shore up his county’s badly eroded levees, and then using those improved flood blockers as a natural wall to keep out all of those drywallers, hotel cleaning ladies, and landscaping workers that are threatening our national security.

Ah, Cortez and Cascos, those crazy dreamers, and both are CPAs!

The feds have put on a couple of border wall hearings in the Rio Grande Valley recently to make it look they’re listening, but they’re not. These dudes from Homeland Security are just going through the motions. Just like Santa, the feds are checking off their list: Quickie environmental studies, check; quickie public hearings to hear local blah, blah opposing the fence, check; permission sought to survey land under private ownership, check; and preparing eminent domain orders to seize said private lands for the fence, double check, check.

A trusted source who is dealing with the feds on the fence tells me that the muro will  run in an almost continuous path from the Gateway Bridge to the Veterans Bridge in Brownsville. The whole backside of the University of Texas-Brownsville campus will have the fence as its backdrop. The fence will run so close behind the baseball field at UTB-TSC that any homeruns will bounce off it, with the ball pinging back into the field of play. Hey, it’ll be like the green monster at Boston’s Fenway Park. Cool.

The fence will be 16-to18 feet in height in most places, and most likely will be pipe-like looking things fused together, one after another, running for dozens of miles between Brownsville and Matamoros. It won’t be much of a struggle to get the pipes into the ground on government-owned land, be it federal, state or local. Private land will be more cumbersome, but it will get done, for there is nothing to ultimately stop the forces for the fence.

You know, there’s a bunch of oddities to this so-called border fence. None perhaps odder than the hundreds of miles of no-man’s land that this fence will create between U.S. territory and the river. American forces fought fiercely, as we know, in the 1840s to capture a sliver of land from Mexico. Now, it looks like we’re giving some of it back in the form of the land that will be on the southern side of the fence, away from the U.S. and back to Mexico.

What would Jacob Brown think? We can’t know that, obviously, but the spot where Brownsville’s namesake died fighting for his country against Mexican forces will be on the other side of the fence, one long homerun away from the UTB-TSC diamond.

U.S. News & World Report has another one of those list stories that news magazines like to do.

You know the type. Best places to live, best places to do business, yada, yada. This one is about the best high schools in America, as judged by U.S. News and their experts. And on this list, boys and girls, at number 4, is a school that is in our neighborhood. It’s not one of the foofy high schools in north San Antonio named after a Republican icon, (Reagan, O’Connor), or the richy-rich, preppy types in Dallas, (i.e. Highland Park whose mascot is the Scotties for goodness sakes).

Nope, coming in at as the number 4 best open enrollment high school in the U.S.A. is Hidalgo High School. That’s not all.  At number 6 on this list is The Science Academy/Med High of Mercedes, a regional high school that is geared to preparing students for college. The only other Texas school in the top 10 for open enrollment schools is the above mentioned Scotties of Highland Park, where students drive their Land Rovers and Lexus vehicles to school, if they’re not driven there by the family chauffeur.

Meanwhile, at Hidalgo High School, which is  wedged between McAllen and Reynosa, the school has a 94 percent graduation rate, and every student in the 2005-06 academic year took two Advanced Placement courses. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was sufficiently impressed and provided an $800,000 grant that has allowed the school to work with local colleges in offering up to 60 hours of free college credits on the high school campus.

Overall, among 18,790 high schools nationwide, U.S. News ranks Hidalgo High, with its 95.3 percent college readiness, as the 11th best high school in America. The Rio Grande Valley high school was profiled by the magazine in its most recent issue, with a photo of Hidalgo students cheering at a pep rally.

The national ranking and attention is certainly something worth cheering about. Isn’t it something that a region that is often maligned by the national and state media, (and by some of its own residents), for being too poor, corrupt, or too Hispanic, is  producing two of the nation’s top 10 open enrollment high schools? How does that happen?

First, our Valley youngsters are as bright and capable as any to be found elsewhere in America. They don’t always get the best facilities or nicest buildings, but given high expectations to meet with some quality instruction, they can shine like students anywhere. Second, the improving state of colleges and universities in our region is playing a very helpful role in the rise of a school like Hidalgo High.

The U.S. News story mentions both South Texas College of McAllen and the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg as playing important supporting roles for Hidalgo High in the way of college prep courses and higher education exposure those campuses provide to local students. South Texas College didn’t even exist 15 year ago. Today, the community college has over 15,000 students, a sure sign of the opportunities our local people will seize if they are offered.

In Brownsville, UT-Brownsville is not even 20 years old, and it is only in the last 10 years or so that UT-Pan American has really begun to get first-rate facilities. Here’s the point: Our region was deprived for so long of the sort of higher educational facilities that much of the country takes for granted, and it surely stunted the educational advancement of our young people.

Now, it’s a new generation. And those bright, smiling faces from Hidalgo High that are featured in the latest issue of U.S. News know they have great possibilities and bright futures. That’s what attending at top 10 high school will do for you.

The U.S. News story has the obligatory mentions of the area’s high poverty rate, high percentage of Hispanic residents, blah, blah, blah, but who cares? It has all been said before. Wouldn’t it be something if, for once, a major news organization would do a story about a school district or high school that is underperforming despite enjoying a high tax base and fabulous funding?

For now, we’ll enjoy the success of the Hidalgo Pirates and revel in the possibilities, and positive attention one of our area schools is enjoying.

“Reaching for the dream,” the U.S. News headline says over the story about Hidalgo High, with a subhead that adds, “On the border of Texas and Mexico, an exceptional school,” and I would say, an exceptional people of the American variety.

What a week, no,  in the courtroom of state District Judge Ben Euresti, a former district attorney, and yet such a good friend to defense lawyers throughout Cameron County.

On the same day, in the same courtroom, Euresti saw a defendant convicted of murdering her husband walk out of his courtroom with a mere probationary sentence, and if that wasn’t enough, the good judge saw to it that a man with a long history of drunk driving was given his walking papers as well.

Holy cow, wait until Bill O’Reilly of Fox News finds out about this stuff! 

In the first case, a jury in Euresti’s courtroom on Dec. 6 saw fit to convict Traci Rhode of murdering her husband in cold blood, and yet, inexplicably, gave the defendant a 10-year probationary sentence. Euresti, ever the tough judge, tacked on a $10,000 fine just to show Rhode that being convicted of murdering her husband is indeed a big deal.

The drama continued in Euresti’s 107th District Court when the hanging judge continued his onslaught on crime by reinstating probation for a defendant with eight DWI convinctions, including four of the felony variety. Hector Abel de la Torre has had other scrapes with the law in addition to all of his DWI troubles. The Valley Morning Star reported that de la Torre also has a record of 17 misdemeanor arrests that include resisting arrest, burglary of a vehicle, burglary of a habitation, and fleeing from a police officer.

And so what to do with a defendant with such a criminal history Why, of course, suspend his seven-year prison sentence and reinstate his probation. That’s what the good judge decided to do Thursday, making it a two-fer with the Rhode case.

“I’m trying to send you a message,” Euresti told de la Torre, as reported by the Morning Star.

And what better message to send a defendant with a pattern of criminal activity and who seemingly has shown no ability to break that history of bad behavior? Get him out of the county jail and set him free. What a message, indeed, judge.

A thread running through both cases is Ernesto Gamez, the pompous and melodramatic Brownsville defense attorney who has such a grand view of his legal abilities that he named his non-descript law office the “Justice For All” building.

Apparently, Gamez helps brings justice for convicted murderers and defendants with multiple DWI convictions. Perhaps, one shouldn’t be so hard on the diminutive and theatrical Gamez, who as they say in sports jargon, has done the most with what he has, which in this case isn’t much when it comes to legal intellectual firepower. Neto, as his buds call him, makes up for it with attitude, strutting around the Cameron County Courthouse like big man on campus.

Gamez sure appears to have his way in certain courtrooms, where judges roll over like tumbleweeds to give Mr. Justice For All what he desires and requests. His legal rationales belong in the law books that Supreme Court justices consult before handing down their weighty decisions. Here’s what Neto had to say about why his defendant with a long list of DWIs and other crimes ought to be set free from jail.

“He has helped save arms and limbs, that’s strong testimony,” Gamez told the Morning Star about his DWI client, who is an X-ray technician. “That was compelling.”

It’s too bad that Gamez wasn’t the lawyer for singer Joe Lopez, who was tried and then convincted on rape charges in recent years. Had Neto been there for Joe, (in Euresti’s courtroom no doubt), the famed defense lawyer could have said, “Joe Lopez has entertained millions. His melodic voice, the way his leather pants on stage encase him, it all brings joys and aesthetic viewing pleasure for those who love his music and masculinity.”

But alas, Neto wasn’t there for Joe. Si no, that would have have been strong testimony, ese.

But enough about Neto. How about that Ben Euresti? How many judges have let a convicted murderer and a guy with multiple DWI felonies walk out of his courtroom - on the same day - with mere probationary sentences? As comedian George Lopez would say, must be nice.

The next time you drive by the Cameron County Courthouse, that cornerstone of judicial fairness where all get a fair shake no matter who their lawyer is, take a look at that imposing brick wall being built on the westside of the building. No, it’s not the border wall. It’s a wall to protect the parking lot where the judges park. They say it’s to provide added protection for the jefes.

But, personally, I think it’s going up to to trap all of the great legal expertise and intellect that spills out of those great minds in robes. The wall looks pretty imposing, but apparently it’s not high enough to keep convicted murderers and DWI felons from walking out of the courthouse like free men and women, light of step, and with justice for all walking right beside them.

Here’s what would seem to be an impossible dream. The cities of Brownsville, Harlingen, San Benito and other smaller Cameron County communities band together to decide on a funding plan to build a regional events center - and agree where to build it.

Looking to the west, Cameron County residents see the Dodge Arena in Hidalgo, a $20 million multi-purpose complex that seats nearly 7,000, and has attracted a bevy of major entertainers, along with three sports teams/tenants, since opening in 2003. Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos would like his county to have the same sort of facility, calling it “a no-brainer.”

Maybe. But here’s something to know about such facilities. They rarely make much money because they are so expensive to operate and maintain. Cascos said as much in an article in The Brownsville Herald last week, saying, “They (events centers) are not meant to generate positive cash flow or positive revenue, but what it does do is add another quality life of section (for the area).”

By any measure, Dodge Arena looks to be a success story after four years. The facility is owned by the city of Hidalgo-Texas Municipal Faclities Corp., with the owners leasing the arena to promoters and sports teams. The arena and its operators have attracted a steady stream of well-known entertainers, as well as hosting an NBA developmental league team that is tied to the San Antonio Spurs, and indoor hockey and football teams.

Is the Rio Grande Valley big enough for two such facilities? A critical determination with such facilities is filling them up with not only events, but tenants. An arena that sits empty for too many days without out any action turns an already struggling financial operation into a huge money loser. So with a nearby Dodge Arena already taking up considerable entertainment space in the region, along with three sports teams, is there enough oxygen left to make a Cameron County events center a viable idea?

Cascos at least wants to explore the idea. The county judge has sent out letters to mayors, chambers of commerce presidents, school superintendents, and other governmental entities in the area in touting the regional events center idea. County commissioners recently passed a resolution supporting a regional convention/events center in Cameron County, and Cascos is seeking wider support for the concept.

The steps to take are many and all lined with difficulty. First, the governmental entitities would need to agree on a funding scheme/plan to offer to taxpayers for their consideration and possible approval. Hiking property taxes for such a project would be a non-starter, as it is most parts of the country, so another option would have to come forward. In San Antonio, for example, the AT&T Center where the Spurs play was financed by an increase in hotel/motel and rental car taxes and fees.

Then comes the major issue of where to build such an events center. A location right by the expressway between Brownsville and Harlingen would seem to be the logical choice, but would local residents be willing to pay for such a facility that’s not physically located in their city? Valley communities do not have a positive track record in seeing the greater regional good over the wishes and wants of individual communities.

The whole thing looks like a real long shot right now when one considers all of the hoops and turns that have to be successfully navigated to make this project an even viable idea. Cascos, however, would appear to be the sort of low-key, thoughtful, and methodical political leader who could get the idea somewhere.

Plenty of careful and professional market analysis would need to be done, with the final call based on cold, hard, and truthful economic numbers, not some vague call to improving area quality of life. That’s what happened in Edinburg some years ago with the building of a water park that city leaders there touted, but then crashed rather quickly because there simply was not the business justification to make the venture successful.

The Valley may very well need only one regional entertainment center for some years to come. That wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, and besides there are other more pressing needs, like say better streets, more branch libraries, and improving parks.