Grandson Daniel, who you may remember just finished a run as Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” here in Savannah, is at a three-week drama camp.
I have been sending him silly cards of encouragement. Here is my latest. In order to understand it, you must know that the family dog is named Coastal. (We live in Savannah, next to the Atlantic Ocean, and my daughter’s medical company is called Coastal Care Partners.)
Puppy dog Coastal …
And here’s the card …
Grandfatherly Fun!
Hot Savannah!
116 degrees?!
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And climate change is a leftist myth. Or as my state’s insane and anti-democracy Marjorie Taylor Greene explains,
May the heat silence her voice.
And may tomorrow be cooler in Savannah!
Here’s a silly post from back in 2013 about an encounter with an unfortunately deceased possum.
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So Tuesday I picked up grandson Daniel …
…at soccer camp and headed back to his house. Traversing up the driveway, discussing Skylander Giants, we both saw this at about the same time:
A small, dead, open-eyed possum in the neatly manicured front lawn. “Look, Abu! A big rat!” Daniel yelled, as he excitedly unbuckled his seat belt, careening toward the thing.
“I think it’s a possum, Daniel, and I also think he’s dead.” (WHY do I use verbs like “think” in times like this? The possum was dead as a doornail with bugs swarming around its head.)
“That means he’s not breathing,” Daniel explained to me.
“Why don’t you go in the house and cool off, while I get rid of our friend?”
“NO!” Daniel screamed. “We have to show it to Mommy!”
“Well, he can stay here for a few minutes.” (Like the possum was going somewhere.)
At about that time, Olivia and Larkin, the cute twins from next door, came running into the driveway, straight from a pool party. And of course, Daniel had to show them …
… explaining that the “rat, I mean possum, was dead and couldn’t move, so don’t touch it till Mommy comes home because we are going to show it to her.”
Her expression says it all.
(Touch it?!)
“Glorious”
Marveling this morning at the joy and many moods of PURPLE.
“All the other colors are just colors, but purple seems to have a soul – when you look at it, it’s looking back at you.” Uniek Swain
The other evening Robert and I were out and about here in Historic District Savannah when we happened upon a young couple. Strangers. The young man was perched on the sidewalk, photographing the striking statuary in the front courtyard of The Telfair Museum when we walked by.
He started up a conversation by showing us his terrific black and white pics. We hit it off immediately and went to World of Beer where we enjoyed a couple of hours of newfound camaraderie, discovering a truckload of common interests and concerns. Great fun.
As we were finally saying our goodbyes, the young man suggested that he take a picture of our feet together. I cherish out-of the-blue ideas like that!
We all loved the result. And we appreciated the truth of the young man’s closing comment: “Now we’re all in the stream together.”
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About Standing (in Kinship)
We all have the same little bones in our feet
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.
— Kimberly Blaeser
A blog category looking at a topic we white folks usually don’t like to talk about.
I SO wish all my childhood memories were fond and happy. They should be, right? Some of mine, many of mine, maybe most of mine are joyful. Going into the woods to pick out and chop down our Christmas tree. Such fun. Summer vacations at a tiny, inexpensive motel at Jacksonville Beach. Neighborhood fish fries after softball games. I could go on.
But, if truth be told, not all of my early childhood memories are so happy.
I remember cowering under my bed, after watching The Wizard of Oz, thinking that those flying monkeys were absolutely horrendous. And might be up in the skies outside my window.
I remember purposefully and loudly falling off my bed as a little kid when I would hear my parents fighting in their nearby bedroom. I sometimes pretended to sleepwalk for the same reason.
But one of my most harrowing early memories is an uglier, impossible-to-understand one, a darker one, even though it involves such unforgettable hot and fiery light.
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I am a skinny, freckled, awkwardly sensitive little kid in hand-me-down shorts. My parents, four brothers and I live in a crowded small house in the Peach Orchard section of Cochran Field on the outskirts of Macon, Georgia.
It is summer, a sweltering night in the South. It is probably 1957 or 58.
I’m in the backseat of our ancient station wagon, dad driving, mom directly in front of me, at least one brother also in the back.
No air conditioning, of course. No seat belts. Windows down. Warm night air blowing my hair and keeping my outstretched hand standing up as we make our way down the road. Incredibly, I can occasionally hear the tires make sticky, sucky sounds as they roll over tar-patched cracks, still oozing from the day’s unmerciful Macon sun.
It’s a sultry night in Georgia.
“Something’s on fire,” one of my folks say.
We get closer. The fire appears on my side of the car. I can feel the heat before I can see what’s burning. I quickly pull my hand inside the window.
I am mesmerized. A cross, unbelievably tall, is on fire! I have to crane my neck up to see the top of the flames. I hear dogs barking. I see people in white Halloween costumes mulling around the cross. I smell gas. And see smoke around the flames. People are yelling. A weird party.
The cross is just SO big. Way too big for Jesus to carry up a hill. And the cross was’t on fire in the Bible, I’m sure of that. It is summer, and I go to Vacation Bible School.
“Neal, roll your window up!”
I’m scared. But I don’t know why I’m scared.
“NEAL, ROLL YOUR WINDOW UP NOW!”
I obey. But it’s like the heater is on full blast.
My father starts to speed past. But why? I’ve never seen anything like this. Why can’t we watch? I have to turn around quickly to see the cross get smaller and smaller. It finally morphs into a tiny lighted dot behind me.
It’s hotter than it’s ever been in the car. The heater MUST be on. It’s sizzling. Suffocating.
And it’s quieter than it’s ever been. Our car is usually loud with rambunctious boys yelling to be heard over one another.
Finally, I feel slightly cooler air begin to blow in from my mother’s window.
“Neal, roll your window down.”
We ride in silence till my father turns on the radio. I hear quiet music.
“What WAS that?” I ask.
“That was bad people doing something bad.”
I don’t understand.
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Over six decades later, I look upon that night as one of those loss-of-innocence junctures. I can’t remember exactly how my parents explained what was really happening at that “weird party.” But I did find out, at some point, that the cross was being burned in a white couple’s front yard to warn them about being sympathetic to the struggles of black people. Vigilante hatred. Burning on the cross.
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I wish I could say that the temperature has gotten so very much cooler in the South—or elsewhere in our nation. That the tar doesn’t still melt and stick to our tires. That air conditioning has decreased the scorch. That there are no more “weird parties.” But I cannot.
Just look at yesterday’s “Real Feel”:
Another “weird party” just down the road that stretches from my Savannah to Brunswick. You probably know the horrific story of that hot day in Georgia when vigilante hatred burned anew …
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May we somehow as a people learn how to live.
May
we
respect
a
woman’s
right.
A new blog category examining how our lack of civility today is causing horrendous harm. And perhaps what we can do in our own tiny worlds to make our big world more kind.
My mother and father, decades ago, taught me, more by example than word, to be polite, to say “Thank you” and “I’m sorry.” To give others the benefit of the doubt. To be KIND. I most definitely HAVE NOT always lived up to their instructions, but I always harbored them (instructions and parents) in my mind and heart.
My folks have passed away now.
I am beginning to fear that maybe common civility and etiquette (two of kindness’s offspring) have passed away as well.
Recently watching Ketanji Brown Jackson garnering enough votes in the Senate to become the first black woman ever to become a justice on the Supreme Court in its nearly 250 year history, I was shocked, embarrassed, appalled to see the Republican side of the aisle get up and walk stoically, rudely out of the chamber after the tally had been announced.
Political and ideological side-ings aside, what has happened to common courtesy? Jackson won enough votes to be seated. Why not at least applaud (even if with gritted teeth) the historic First Time Ever?
At this year’s supposedly celebratory Oscars, Chris Rock and Will Smith … well, you know.
At nearly every red light (at least here in Savannah), you DO NOT start to drive forward when the light turns green. Even though, as I learned in kindergarten, green means go. Why not, for heaven’s sake? Because folks now keep speeding, barreling through the red light for five, ten seconds after the light changes. That early greenness at traffic lights has now become Guillotine Green.
Controversial House of Representatives member Marjorie Taylor Greene (from my Georgia) insanely screeches for Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten to stay out of girls’ bathrooms! What? Huh?
President Biden hot-mike-ly refers to a Fox News correspondent as a “stupid SOB.”
Trump …. Don’t get me started.
The other day, Yankees fans throw debris at Cleveland Guardians outfielders at game’s end.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Are we so politically, culturally, ideologically separated that common courtesy, simple kindness, and for-the-good-of-all common sense have left the room?
Are we in such a hurry to “Get There!” that we will risk our lives and the lives of others (even our babies in child seats as I saw recently) to risk it through the Green Guillotine?
Is Simple Kindness sliding down the hierarchy of Best Human Practices?
I hope not. But I just don’t know. This blog category examines those questions.
Suggestion For This Moment: I encourage you to set forth a little INTENTION to simply pay more ATTENTION to how you treat other people in your life TODAY. Family at home. Coworkers. Folks on the street, in nearby cars, at the checkout line, etc. Just try to bring AWARENESS to the dynamics of your human connections for the rest of this day. I will too.
NealEnJoy 