Learning to be better from the best
Most Arkansas folks have an opinion about California. Whether it’s good or bad, it probably has to do with either Disneyland or politics. I would guess more folks recognize Nancy Pelosi’s name than they do, uh, what’s-his-name, our senior senator. But we would be doing California a disservice if we based our opinion on one political figure or a theme park.
I have visited California numerous times, and played tennis matches at the John Wayne Tennis Center in San Bernardino, where you must wear all whites. In one match, set up by the Center, when I met my opponent (who was a good 20 years younger than me) and told him I was from Arkansas, he reacted as if Arkansas didn’t have tennis courts, then casually said, “I’m ranked in California.”
It was a tennis snob attitude I would call “looking down his nose” at just playing me. I nodded. I could tell he thought he was doing me a favor by playing a backwoods novice player. We started warming up, and I sized him up as good, but not great.
His backhand was suspect. So I hit everything to his backhand, and won the match in straight sets. We walked over to rest, and Mr. I’m Ranked in California commented, “I can’t believe you just kept getting everything back. You know, I’m a ranked player in California!”
“Well, I’m also ranked … in Arkansas … and you need to work on your backhand,” I said as I put my racket in its case and walked off. That was tacky, but he deserved it.
I’ve visited Disneyland, spent a vacation at La Costa Spa, listened to the Kingston Trio play in a San Francisco park, and took a balloon ride over the Napa Valley vineyards.
Several years back we took a family trip to New York City, and our son Ashley had to go from a Scout float trip on the Buffalo National River directly there. Later that day, as Ashley and I were standing on Fifth Avenue looking down a street milling with cars and shoulder-to-shoulder people while fire sirens blared, he shook his head and said, “Dad, I think New York is a visiting place, not a living place.”
Wisdom from an observant 14-year old, and it fits my opinion of California to a T. I miss a few amenities by living in El Dorado, but I’ll take the five minutes from everywhere in town, the fishing or hunting in 10 minutes from my house, and give up dining in three-star restaurants, attending pro ball games, visiting big shopping malls and having to commute two or more hours.
California gave Hillary Clinton an overwhelming several-million-vote majority in the 2016 presidential election, and even some Republican strongholds such as Orange County went Democratic in the midterm elections.
Gov. Jerry Brown, before he left office, signed into law the first law in the nation to ban gender discrimination on corporate boards, which are now required to include women. That’s not just throwing a bone to the ladies. Numerous studies have shown a board with women on it is more productive than a male-only board.
California usually leads the nation, and we will follow suit; in a decade or two the thousands of all-male boards and commissions in our state and the country will have not just a woman on them, but an equal number of women.
Not everything starts in California, but the state dominates the issuance of patents, and it’s the place to go if you want to see the latest innovations. With Democrats running the state, the average citizen’s health coverage is top-notch. You might think the state is about to turn into a socialist commune and have a huge budget debt. But you’d be wrong. The state had a $21 billion budget surplus before the pandemic.
The state’s average medium wage is around $72,000, and residents’ longevity is 80.9 years. Arkansas average is around $47,000 and our longevity is 74.5 years. That might have something to do with the number of people smoking. In California it’s 11.3 percent and in Arkansas it’s 22 percent.
If California were an independent country, its annual gross national product would place it No. 5 in the world. The state is a hotbed for entrepreneurs with success stories that have influenced consumer habits around the world—companies such as Apple, Intel, Google, and more. It seems the creative atmosphere in the state combined with a huge amount of startup money from venture capitalists equals the best place in the world to start a new company.
California is the home of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, known in some circles as the wicked witch of the west. She is definitely against the border wall and is for mandatory health coverage for preexisting conditions. She favors increasing the minimum wage, has worked to keep veterans’ benefits from being reduced, and is a strong promoter of increasing teachers’ salaries and for providing all graduating high schoolers two years of free community college tuition.
That is just a sample of the devout Catholic who has five kids and a bunch of grandkids.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not even thinking about moving, because we can have it both ways. If we will just pull our heads out of the sand, instead of trying to lure in another polluting plant or low-rent business or hog farm or keep on.
Not only will we have our natural wonders, but we will have a state where the 21st century is not something we only see on movie screens.