Marta Amézquita and Stephen Padilla

00:05 You guys going to ask you to back up just a couple?

00:16 Did you hear my breathing?

00:22 My name is Martha a mezquita. I'm 69 years old and today is August 31st 2019. I'm at the tpr office having a conversation with my conversation partner.

00:37 I am Stephen for the I am 51 years old. Today is August 31st 2019 in the tpr offices and Martha and I have never met each other before.

00:50 That's exactly right. So I guess I'll start with his I'm on my way here. I was thinking we'll why am I doing this what came to my mind was that it sounded important enough for me to be interested to put my name in the drawing so to speak and so Stephens. Why did you agree to do this interview today with a perfect stranger myself? You just said the the whole idea when we look at the major news media. The people are yelling at each other and the news that sells is the people are yelling not the people are sitting down and talking with each other. They talked at each other instead of with each other and that was important to me to participate in a conversation with someone who does not share my views.

01:40 As human beings not as assumed enemies because of political ideology and a political ideology didn't cross my mind when I thought that this would be good because I can't seem to get a grip on how to blend it how to connect with that one division. So what I thought would be interesting since I've followed storycorps for so many years. I thought it would be great to have that conversation that's organic with another person whom I've never met and I I know that we're supposed to be opposites. I don't know what I believe systems are opposite to but I'm very interested in finding out more about you Steven and where we have this Division and maybe we can maybe we can Bridge it.

02:35 Well, I guess I'll answer the implied question there or at least the question that I inferred. I you know that I'm 51, you know that I'm a man you might be able to guess for my last name that I'm Hispanic not that it shows on the radio, but I'm a light-skin Hispanic because I'm also half Irish.

02:56 Politically, I am a Libertarian faith. I am an Evangelical Christian currently attended a Baptist congregation, but I consider myself nondenomination. I am a teacher and I am also a veteran but more importantly than my political ideology or what I do for a living. I am a song. I am a husband. I am a father and I'm a grandfather. I am a mother and four since 1977 really I have been an educator. I have taught elementary middle and at the University level. I've also been a learner which is really my if I were to describe myself is that I'm I'm constantly wanting to learn and go deeper into what I'm learning and I am a Roman Catholic. I'm my parents were my father was born in Mexico. My mother was is

03:56 Texans I grew up in the Border City of Laredo which probably has a lot to do with how I feel about things. My husband is a Vietnam veteran. So I respect all militaries. I live in Chicago and have lived in San Antonio since 1982.

04:15 I live vicariously I may say to your husband through you welcome home brother. I am not of that generation. I am a Desert Shield Desert Storm veteran and I spent 25 years in the Air Force and I'm honored to be in the presence of someone who knows what it was in the days that weren't as kind as they are to my generation my husband and I we celebrated our 50th anniversary on June 2nd, honestly Allegiant married a whole lifetime more longer than we've done anything else and where we come from if I were to use the little bit of a background of my generation which being 69 I grew up in the 60s that was born in 1950. Exactly. I went to college after we after my husband went to Vietnam after we were married after I had a child and I

05:15 Still was able to start teaching in 1977. So no one really inspired me or prompted me to be an educator, but I think at the time when I started I went into it because I already had a child and I loved teaching her so being an educator I think as you know, Steven opens up the world in a different way and you are so cognizant of this idea. Why can't we just have a conversation and ends at that and treats me very much and I I've never was able to not be able to have a conversation with anybody and I was hoping that today maybe I know that you said you were Evangelical Christian. I'm a Roman Catholic but we both Christians. I don't know. What did you do decide where your family comes from from the evangelico Christian background or maybe even Baptist.

06:15 Many young men after I left home. I wandered away from faith and 4 I'd say the first 20 years of my adult life. I was more agnostic then then a man of faith and it took the study of Science and History to bring me back around to face and the way that I the way that I say it to people and I have to be careful because some event jellicles will take this the wrong way because I never mean to to to insult Catholics. I tell people I was raised Roman Catholic, but I didn't become a Christian until I was 38 and it's not because Roman Catholicism isn't Christianity. It's that I have not accepted Christ in my heart until I was in midlife already had three step daughters and the biological daughter and all of a sudden

07:15 Oh, yeah, beautiful. So I came I was raised in a Christian Home. Although I myself cannot say that I was truly a Christian at that time. What is a true Christian?

07:33 I was following the church. I was not following the Christ. That's what I mean. You find people who say they're Christians, but you look at their lifestyle and you wonder if they mean it speaking with you about this because you understand me haven't been a Roman Catholic but you're Irish background, but I think we're going to happen. This is hard for younger people to understand but we didn't talk about our faith. It didn't really start happening. But when it did it imploded in such a way that it made me comfortable because finally we were talking about our faith and I always wonder why people say that we don't want that coming to that point that glorious point for you have this Epiphany for you accept Christ and all that as your savior.

08:33 I never understood that cuz I feel like I've always had it but I did there may have been several epiphanies, but putting that aside my my most important. I just a philosophy that I like to adhere to has transformed itself. It's like I've lived several lives first you just doing what you're supposed think you're supposed to be doing and you're just going through the motions and then add one point you become you mature and it becomes you want to know and then you start asking questions and delving deeper and that's when I I feel that I have understood I'm still not comfortable talking about Christianity because I wouldn't include everybody and I don't want to label. I don't want to live with us going to isolate. So if I have my neighbor who is in a atheist, I don't want to she made she may not even know that I'm a I'm a Christian, but I do conduct my way. I hope

09:33 In the kindness of ways that I hope people can pick up more than I'm a Christian that I'm a good person that I'm in accepting person that I'm a loving person and it said that the greatest cause of atheism is Christians because some of us who who Proclaim Christianity we go out and we Proclaim it in an angry and bitter way there's a there's a group that they called themselves Baptist, but every Baptist Congress in the world has some sort of them and they are not recognized as Baptists. Although they call themselves Baptists and they make the news for protesting at foot funerals and saying terrible things like godhatesfags.

10:23 And they make national news doing this and visit to some people that represents Christianity because they're the loud people on the news to me. It's important to represent the fact that Christ came to save everyone not that that there are some people who who have problems. We're all Sinners so I can get him back to this the storycorps. I did at the core of it. I I look forward to the stories that I hear on storycorps because it seems like we're strangers to each other. We don't know each other but it seems like it to people go into a conversation about something a story that happens and I think that is anything is going to save us and I'm hoping that that that comes across to my conversation day. It's our stories. It's it's not my degrees. It's not how you know my

11:23 Income or even my affiliation with with one party or another but I hope it is my humanity and something that I really strive to do and to teach my children and their they're adults. They're no longer they're on their own now, but I still want to be a light for them. So they can see that my what drives me what inspires me is to seek the story of the other person and to connect to it as much as possible reminds me of the old teacher saying that they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and that has meant everything in the classroom because if I don't connect with my students at one way or another then nothing that I teach the matters and I've I've talked K through 12, I currently teach adults very very much like like your career career path as has involved children as well as adults.

12:23 But even though adults if I'm not meeting their needs then what are they doing there? And what am I doing there? And if I don't ask the right questions then I don't know what their needs are and then I can't meet them. I really did not know what what that one small step was going to look like for me and I'm glad that had they not chosen their names and does not show showing up today to have this conversation. I don't think that I would I don't think I thought about it until I got the note and then I knew that I was going to come but then I had to revisit. What is this one small step and maybe instead of these drastic measures that we always think we need to bring about change. We just need one small step like we're taking and it is I don't believe it's

13:23 Professional because we're talking about things that matter to our hearts and then that have really made us who we are so I don't think we operate on a superficial level and inside we have talked about so far.

13:39 I agree have a question for me.

13:47 I haven't come in here with any higher expectations either but I am I am curious because we were matched for some reason they were both Christians, but maybe we were matched because I'm a Protestant or Catholic we weren't could be but I don't know what what your political leanings are. I told you that I'm a Libertarian. So I am curious what your political leaning is makes me feel it is funny anyway, but I grew up with a picture of President Kennedy and and then up the pope and somebody in our family went to Rome and brought back an image of the Pope at the time. It was when the 60s and it was a blessing for the family and I still have it to this day. So I grew up assuming

14:47 Dad, I was a Democrat. And so then that ideology I think the first time that I voted I may have waited for a Republican president along the way I was not so strict as we are today, but I know for sure that that in my heart I feel very strongly about being a Democrat and I'm not I don't think would I ever be able to be I wish there was some way for us not to be Democrats and Republicans even I wish there was another word and I don't mean to the Dunn ecological party or even Libertarians. I mean I had a very good friend who passed away and she was the only libertarian friend that I've ever had and she and I never never disagree on anything is so yeah. It's interesting that I don't really know how they matched us. But evidently whatever I wrote on my I never think I was very bad.

15:47 They felt that I was a complete opposite of you that we have much in common.

15:59 The understanding that you're going to take one small step towards each other. I don't know the things that people say on on Facebook other social media Twitter. Oh my goodness gracious Twitter that they have the the anonymizing factor of not seeing who they're so this does bring up a question. I guess now that I get to ask you.

16:28 How do you feel about the way the social media contributes to the political discussions that we're having these days?

16:37 Well, I don't Twitter or do Instagram I do Facebook and I'm very particular about keeping my Facebook small.

16:48 So I buy small. I mean the friends that I have on Facebook have been my colleagues my students my pasterns and my family and so I don't I remember one one occasion that I saw in 2017 something on Facebook and I'll just refer to case because it's the only social media then I am familiar with and it said that the pope was throw a trump and I knew in my heart that was not true and then I thought this is what they re keep referring to that this it was it was my one of my relatives had put it. It says it I get it now it but it's a wood said it's so bizarre and so absurd that I would I can't imagine taking that seriously. I remember just going to the docking side and just saying I don't want to see this before they didn't used to ask you why do you know?

17:48 I want to see if they would just take it off. But so I don't I can't imagine having friends that are that are inspired or that are that use social media as a place to net they do put some comments on there that are not my comments or something that I don't agree with but I just ignore it. It doesn't offend me. So I guess is my small world social media has not influenced me, but I know that it's been a forum for division.

18:24 That's my big concern. Is that social media as we know it today has boorem been more of a dividing Factor than the uniting factor. My my parents. The only reason they're on Facebook is so they can keep up with family and they don't participate in political discussions because they consider it too ugly and I disagree with that but just maybe just for me I really like connecting with it's not a true connection because connecting face-to-face and meeting up for coffee is always going to Trump going online and checking to see what my my friends are saying, but I have some very deep friends and they put they'll either tell me they gave me the idea that I can think about or quote or maybe they need their going through a Cancer and I get to know about it and I get to connect with them maybe there.

19:24 Country or maybe in San Antonio, but I get to feel their pain and think about them and pray for them. So I don't find it devices for me yet. But I think it's just that I just refused to seat for the division is when I do see a comment from a friend that is a pro but I don't believe in I just ignore it. I don't I don't find I'm not going to get into a debate. No, I don't think you know, I don't take the bait and I don't even know that I don't I'm not I don't get upset with a person because she or he is entitled to their opinion and I met at times wonder why they think that anybody would want to read then

20:09 But I don't take offense. What's up for me? Social media. Maybe it's my age My Generation. I don't know but I don't find it offensive yet, but I keep an open mind to see if it's going to happen if it does. So what about television news media? You are a bit older than I all though. Not as old as my parents. So are you seeing more of a change and television news media that I have in my lifetime. I've seen a big change. How do you feel about when the the television news media is portraying some sort of events were there two political or not? Find it to be quite it never used to be which entertainment it used to be as course. I grew up during the Vietnam War and the News was just one hour a day and it was just the facts or the numbers in the case of the Vietnam of fatalities. It would update you on on the fatality switch. It's a horrible concept.

21:09 Think of it, but it was not entertainment and I think I still I think my husband and I watched more news than we have to because we we become we always want to know what's happening and it becomes so to a point that we do turn it off because they keep talking about the storm one week before it gets here and then they're still talking about the storm and almost everything is trumped by the president and what he says and what it what he tweets and then there's a reaction and then to bring in the brainy people. They have all they have all of these degrees and they have a different perspective. And so I do get caught up in it sometimes because they have this fluency of thought and they explain things in a way that I don't normally see it but it all ends up being feminist.

22:02 And it's divisive regardless. I I'm always amazed how they find all these angles in the same story.

22:13 So but it is divisive. I still don't stay away from the news. I'm still I want to be informed but she the national news. I like to watch at least half an hour of that when you get a snippet of really what's happening. I get the newspaper. I read as much as I can about what's happening and sometimes the newspaper like today's paper was the news that happened 3 days ago, but I still read it. I still don't want it. I want to get the newspaper because I want to subscribe to something that's falling along the way of other sources people get the Apple news.

22:49 That comes in free into the phone instead of getting newspaper delivered and I I would hate for our newspaper to be gone like some in the newspapers have already.

22:58 To you see the the decline of of print news as something that that's bad for our ability to to to say that litter.

23:13 Can be a beautiful poem and it can also be the headline and it can be at the editorial and the can be the op-ed and it can be the cartoons and it can be so much. So I had to give up that art even though I can get it faster on my phone to read the newspaper until we found a spelling error and then bring that in and that was her way of encouraging students to pay attention to print media. I remember doing that only I talked the I increase at the University level. And so most of my students at Saint Mary's University did we're not familiar with that paper. Some of them were not from San Antonio and so I would bring the paper sometimes to show them different things and the ones from South America because we have students from from all over the world there really they were anime.

24:13 Eastwood we could print it on newspaper. I had West until the odds this writer would have been shot in my country for her printing this so I'm glad he said that because I don't know. The other students understand that the freedom of speech is still pretty much alive and well and that newspapers are printing stories you please don't have sometimes I think that people

24:42 In being so big on social activism are forgetting how blessed we are in this nation and the freedoms in the rights and their qualities that we do have even if it's not perfect. It's better than almost anywhere else in the world and I I I get concerned. Do you do you see the the younger adults with say under 30?

25:12 And I don't I don't like using the m word. I don't like to say Millennials because because too many people are there using it as a I mean, it's it's supposed to be a descriptor of a time frame that you were born, but it's turned in people have turned it into an insult.

25:29 And so would you say that that that people under 30 or maybe even under 35 that but they're more.

25:40 That they're less likely to view or more likely to view themselves as as being somehow put upon or or they have social inequalities dessert or to look at the bad instead of of the good of the freedoms. We have that pattern. I'd I know that when I was that age remember, I was already married going to college at getting a graduate degree working. So I think it is I want to defend them by saying I said this to my husband even I think they're so busy living life and it's the hardest time of their lives that they don't get into it as much as you and I do because we have more time to be thoughtful and to see patterns and even to be fearful.

26:31 And so maybe at that age I wasn't as as I mean, of course I listen to the Nixon and all that and all that chaos, and it was good while I was going to the university that I was going through that and I I couldn't believe it but I would read it and listen to it and not really have a conversation about it. So I don't want to defend them because I may not be looking for those patterns, but I think that everybody just living their life and the younger people are just living their life trying to make a go at their life at a time when I too was so busy that I wasn't as involved in it because remember with Watergate, I think it always happening and everything was on television even and I don't think it still took us by surprise when it happened. And so when I saw the movie recently in the last 2 years that they redid All of all the all the small details of the journalist and the newspaper and Ann.

27:31 I sat there in the theater thinking I lived through all this and I was so busy raising a family and going to the university then a lot of it. I missed the nuances of the political scheme of what was happening.

27:46 So I think you could bite it. I have more time right now in my Audi 70 next year. So I have more time right now to think about what is happening. What what can I do about it? What can I contribute and recently since May I've been volunteering with a shy uses which is an organization that

28:08 Healthy many ways but so I have been going to a woman's Detention Center in Kerens, Texas. And I think that it has changed my life in the way. They could I see the gratitude that I have for living in this country for my life. I drive home after being there and I I'm stuck in traffic cuz I usually leave at 6 and it takes about an hour and a half to get home and I have a lot of time to think and I just cannot believe how how lucky I am that I have that I'm in this country that I that I that I don't have to fight for Asylum that I don't have to come to different countries just to get to the border and then come in illegally in to try to see that they'll let me stay and it's just it's an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I have for everything that I've done as much with my life as

29:08 Could have done I don't know what else I could have done to take advantage of opportunities and I still look I'm here sitting having a conversation with you. It's just amazing blows me away. Are you still teaching know I stopped teaching. I thought I was spending use as a university after I graduated after I finished with I talked with the children. That was my that was my I guess I started teaching gifted children in 1977 when the state mandated that we do something different with with the most able Learners. And so I loved it.

29:48 Everything about it, except the identification process because as you know, you have to test for quantitative linguistic and spatial intelligence and I never liked doing that. I wish I could have just said a joke in the ones that got it. I'm in the program because you know, the gifted children have this amazing sense of humor. But so the reason why I'm saying this because when I retire I started teach I was an adjunct teacher at st. Mary's University and I did that for 10 years and I and I left it was a different way of teaching and it was some and here I am about Tango student. I grew up in the Border. My father didn't speak Spanish English. My mother didn't speak English and somehow the daughter becomes an English teacher where else but in this country as possible, so,

30:41 And I was I was stationed in Spain and the Basques in the catalonians had just just got into the legal right to speak their own language in public under the Franco regime. They were ever that. Yes could not speak their language. Yeah, but here we don't just we don't just accept it may encourage it.

31:15 Something that has changed over time for me has been I guess this concept that everybody needs to go to 4-year University to be successful. I never thought I would say this because of course I wouldn't order this to my own children while I was raising them, but it has come to my attention that specifically the students that are the university level at this very fine universities and they don't know why they're there. So I think there's there's been a I wish that there was about a different way a Socratic way of teaching students to think that they can make good decisions and not just put them in this in this should we say it's a very accepted that they would go to a junior college or university to become what they are going to become we don't we don't give enough Counseling in high school. I would say

32:15 How to prepare students for what they can be and specifically now that I've been through I've taught kindergarten through the university level. I know that there's probably a better way to teach her students to to get food for them to get their own their own destiny to find their own destiny. It may not be those that Jenny Varsity right away. And so I had a conversation recently with a group of people.

32:49 We have a Socrates Cafe at The Twig we meet once a month and the conversation came up with what is lasting what is lasting and it it's dumped us. I think we all is well. It would try to think about what if what is lasting and I think stories are lasting I think but I don't know that the education bit of it. I think we may have missed the boat with some of our students very much agree with you. And when I started my career and education, I was a full-time High School physics teacher and that was not a good experience and then I switched my father was a teacher that was one of the reasons I ended up becoming a teacher when I got out of the Air Force.

33:37 But times have changed considerably and I ended up now I teach and I've been an adjunct at Alamo Colleges teaching of the community colleges, but now I'm an IT instructor and I teach certifications.

33:54 Because when I got out of the Air Force and I tried to get it jobs, even though I had a four-year degree.

34:01 My four-year degree was worthless without certifications, even though you're all I got out in 2011 and I've finished my bachelor's in 2010. It's not like I haven't sold great cuz some people are hampered by the age of their of their education and this is something that I think I'm looking at it more as a failure of the high schools because the high school's went back when we were young and I can say we because I'm I'm old enough for four to seeing this change myself the high schools had

34:38 They had electrical shop and they had wood shop and they had let's say I went to maybe I'm I was good with my hands instead of with my mind. And so I go and I take I take auto shop.

35:02 I graduate high school and I go to work as an auto mechanic and then I get ase-certified and now I have my career but I was listening to a story a few months ago. We have a nationwide shortage of plumbers. Thank God here in San Antonio. We don't have a shortage of plumbers, but we're being fed by Mexico Nationwide. If you become a plumber, you can almost ask whatever you want as an hour early because because they're just staying so busy because they're so few of them to get their Steven. I have a question for you. Can you give an example of one of your views that has changed over time? What what cost you to change your opinion?

35:49 Well, I guess this we can take this back to an earlier part of our conversation my my faith when I was when I was growing up. I looked at my face as obedience to the church obedience to the priests and I looked at at things like a checklist. So if I get all the sacraments checked off and I was born when I get my baptism check then I get the the the sacrament of reconciliation check and I get Holy Communion check and then confirmation check and I was actually upset that you have to choose between marriage and holy orders.

36:36 Because then I couldn't have all my check marks checked off, but that's not what that's not what living your faith is about. And so as a as a young adult I wandered around as an agnostic. I would wear the label Christian when it suited me.

36:54 But I lived a very hedonistic lifestyle and Justified things and I played the the game that so many Americans do I looked at religion as a smorgasbord and so I picked and chose the things that I decided that I felt like believing in

37:11 And then I started seeing more and more evidence in history and more and more evidence in science.

37:20 That

37:21 Oh my goodness gracious the stuff that was written in the Bible and that we've been following for nearly two thousand years. Wow. They were right. This isn't just a bunch of stories that some weirdos made up we find more and more evidence everything the science of archaeology was born out of a desire to find out Biblical history. And now we have a subset of archaeology called biblical archaeology, but originally all archaeology was there and so that the history that's coming up as supporting.

37:57 Supporting the historicity of the Bible scientific evidence, especially when we're starting to get to get into the quantum level and we see things in and this is a paraphrase but Einstein's famous for saying that God didn't play dice with the universe now nearly a century later. We're seeing at the quantum level the evidence that it's true. We have these things that could not have happened were it not for an intelligent intervention and what we choose to name that intelligent intervention know we've chosen the name God.

38:37 In the Bible, he told us that his name is Yahweh, but

38:44 That that hit me and then out of out of some experiences in Wyoming when we move down here. My oldest stepdaughter had started going to church and independently had become a Christian and so I had the idea Well church is good for kids. So let's as a family let's start going and we found a non-denominational near the house and the very first

39:13 Sermon that I heard from Pastor Vernon welshans at the time it it just hit me like a ton of bricks and and yes, you know that the Lord has been slow. The Holy Spirit has been slowly working in my life as I allowed overtime. But because I was a scientist he showed me through the science.

39:37 What an interesting what an interesting of a door that was?

39:43 So I I I I come to there's a word that I wanted to say today and I haven't so I'm going to say that I've become I used to be a dualistic I had to do a listic mind. I think it was how life was before it's another words thinks we're more opposites. And actually that's one of the things that we teach children at the beginning of what are the opposite opposites, but I don't I don't have that anymore. I have a non-dualistic mind more and more the older I get I'm going into my seventh decade and I'm going into it fully aware that any time that I say. This is the way it has to be.

40:28 They're wrong. I'm right that that's when you that's when I cannot have a conversation with with you because how can it if we're opposites. So this is non-duality that I have in my thinking I think has helped me. I'm a lot happier because I think that's why I don't see the problem social media because I just it's not that I'm I'm a I'm a liberal hippie that just accepting everything is just that it doesn't bother me as much is it because I'm as old as I am. I don't know. I just want to say that I think it's because of which life you give a choice you can stay stagnant and thinking the same way that you did or you can you can continue to develop your mind and your heart and I chose to do that. And and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this and it's been so pleasant.

41:25 The day you stop learning is the day you start dying.

41:30 Very true