Recently Robert and I were walking in our favorite Savannah library, Bull Street, when we came upon this poster …
Yes. Yes. Yes.
In spite of what the right-wing extremists say, we should be able to read what we want to read, as should our children.
I’m having a bit of trouble being happy today, after the Colorado Springs gay club massacre.
But today we were walking through Hobby Lobby, looking for Thanksgiving placemats for our family gathering, and I came across this.
And it made me smile. I needed to smile.
And HR seems to think the sentiment rings true.
P.S. But aren’t gay clubs supposed to be safe havens? Robert and I have visited them in New York City, Washington DC, Atlanta, Baltimore (HR’s hometown), New Orleans, etc. etc. etc.
But lately, whenever we go into a gay establishment, I look for the exits, just in case.
And even more sadly, when I go to our gay friendly church here in Savannah, I remind myself where the exits are, just in case.
It really shouldn’t be this way.
For some reason, I have always appreciated “the view from behind.” As a child, on the first day of each school year, I was a nervous wreck waiting for the teacher to announce our seating arrangement. Front of the class? 😢 Too much exposure! Far too much responsibility to “be.” A nice, comfy seat toward the back? 😁 Perfect. I get to observe, to “see.” To breathe calmly.
In this blog category, “The View from Behind,” I invite you to join me, somewhere in the back.
Robert and I walked into one of our area libraries today to get a book I just HAD to read.
At the entrance, we saw these very cool children-made posters.
May our children’s Right to Read be preserved.
May the far-right extremist voices be silenced, so democracy can prevail.
Tomorrow’s midterm elections may provide the answer
A blog category examining the difficult yet enlightening truth found in The 1619 Project.
There are similarities between the Post-Civil War Reconstruction atrocities and the Post-2020 Election Insurrection.
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“The number of voters supporting Trump, a white nationalist President, increased when he ran for a second term. And when Trump lost, some of his supporters led an insurrection in the nation’s Capitol, seeking, just as white mobs had done repeatedly during Reconstruction, to overturn and delegitimize an election won by a multiracial coalition of voters.
Then, in response to well-organized Black, Latino and Indigenous voters helping turn heavily Republican states such as Georgia and Arizona blue, Republicans began a coordinated effort to introduce and pass hundreds of bills that would make it harder for millions of Americans to vote.
Some have called these efforts—which came not even a year after the death of civil rights icon John Lewis, who in the 1960’s nearly lost his life to secure voting rights for Black Americans—the worst attack on voting in more than fifty years.” p. 455-456
And did you see the anti-democracy, white nationalist ex-President’s comments about all this in a speech the other day?
“On Thursday, former President Donald Trump told conservative radio host Wendy Bell that if he were to return to the Oval Office he would grant pardons and also apologize to participants in the January 6 insurrection. Trump promised that if ‘I decide to run, and if I win, I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons…with an apology to many.’” Slate
This blog category is the journaling and journey-ing of my quest to say (with cautious sincerity) “Hello, Anxiety” and to take a look at the condition from my “me-andering” views.
I recently came across this definition for anxiety, which rang so true for me.
“Anxiety — a condition in which the brain’s alarm bells keep on ringing, ringing, and ringing … Long after they have served any useful function.”
(from Transcendence: Healing and Transformation through Transcendental Meditation)
P.S. Just between us, I really don’t like some definitions, truthful though they may be.
A blog category examining the difficult yet enlightening truth found in The 1619 Project.
A major contributor to the prosperity of the United States …
“The prosperity of this country is inextricably linked with the forced labor of the ancestors of more than 30 million Black Americans, just as it is linked to the stolen land of the country’s indigenous people.
Though our high school history books seldom make this plain, slavery and the hundred-year period of racial apartheid and racial terrorism known ad Jim Crow were, above all else, systems of economic exploitation. To borrow a phrase from Ta-Nehisi Coates, racism is the child of economic profiteering, not the father.” p. 458
A blog category examining the difficult yet enlightening truth found in The 1619 Project.
“In 2020, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported on the racial implications of Stand Your Ground laws: the criminal justice system is ten times more likely to rule a homicide justifiable if the shooter is white and the victim is black than the other way around. In fact, the report notes that when a white person kills an African American, it is 281 percent more likely to be ruled a ‘justifiable homicide’ than a white-on-white killing.” (Full documentation on page 266)
TOILET TALES
May he be flushed. Flushed. Flushed. Flushed. Flushed. Flushed. Flushed … … … …
NealEnJoy 