Friday afternoon

 

Not to stretch it and say "innocent", but it seems like I always show up surprised, having no idea what's going on. 

Music, I miss all the good and bad stuff that everyone around me catches. I always have, no doubt in part because I like quiet, I don't work or walk or rest or drive or sleep or ride with music going on around me; my pervasive thoughts and mind are bothersome enough. 

Theater, films, I don't go or watch. Popular television shows either, don't ask me if I agree with the Emmy awards or the Oscar nominations, I have no idea, never heard of any of it. If CFB picks back up in earnest for the Fall 2021 football season, I'll go there for the Gators and Blue and the SEC and whoever's playing Ohio State. Also, for FSU now that Caroline's there, a rising sophomore, makes Papa a Seminole and I have, and proudly wear for her, a Garnet and Gold hat. 

Otherwise, now and then I surface and realize I'm totally oblivious.

Black Lives Matter, to me it sounds like respecting the dignity of every human being, until a friend told me, I wasn't aware of self-enriching non-profit establishments that trademarked and profit off a high-sounding slogan. Being told did not change my enthusiasm for the idea, but encouraged me to be more cautious of what I espouse.

Now comes Critical Race Theory, defined at least on one side as a set of ideas that view racism as structural instead of as expressed through individual prejudice. If you think otherwise, wake up, I grew up there, no Blacks would have been tolerated on the sugar white sands of PCB when I was a boy. Nor White girls dating Black boys. Nor Black tellers in the Bank, and likely no White men working the city garbage truck that came twice a week, nor Black cops riding PCPD motorcycles. 

Although I don't know whether that's what all the fuss is about, and I'm pretty sure I don't see the difference between CRT and racism as we know it, and there's got to be the subjectivity of experience, I entirely agree with what I read defining Critical Race Theory. Whether it's the caste system in India or who can marry who in the Old South I grew up in, or who sits where on the city transit bus riding to their place of work as a household servant for the white family, or who is hired to fill a receptionist job vacancy at the Chamber of Commerce , or who may serve the Paten or drink from the Chalice, racism is so enculturated that we don't realize it, the depth of it. That's not a slam at us, it's just how it is. Within a culture a universal, unconscious sense of "Place".

I remember being at the University of Florida in the early 1950s and, while my university was still segregated by law and custom, it was when I started realizing that my very way of life that had always seemed so natural, proper, right, unconsciously to me on the top tier, that to be otherwise was unthinkable, was evil to the core. I didn't even have thoughts about what was right, just lived in what was. All the racism is still there, ingrained, it doesn't occur to us, it's the way it is. Years ago I saw a cartoon in which two Indians in India were chatting, criticizing racial segregation in America and one says to the other, "I don't know what's wrong with those Americans, you'd think they were being asked to go to school with Untouchables".

It wouldn't be all that different if it were to surface as Critical Economic Theory in which we wealthy who like that we can afford to eat out and order the "lobster twin" while watching military aircraft exercises in the skies above us,

(is it good? it's the best, I've feasted on it many times while living in New England, or on business there) won't countenance paying more taxes to abolish poverty in America. We'd rather spend it on ourselves, and tip the wait staff if they are pleasant, servile and quick enough. If you think this is right and good, you are (hopefully unconsciously) the critical economic problem. Which of course spills over into what Critical Race Theory apparently is all about, it's so ingrained that we don't see it and if it's pointed out, our response is If you don't like it here, go back where you came from. 

We don't realize that "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being" no longer means, as it once would have, being for integrated pubic schools; nowadays it means, as already mentioned here, condemning and working to bring down, an economic system in which a privileged White class politically perpetuates a poverty class dominated by people of color, who cannot rise and who grab every opportunity for public welfare assistance to keep from having to do filthy, menial, backbreaking or demeaning work and for poverty level compensation. What are answers? I don't have them, but that "Workers of the World, Unite!" wasn't it. 

And that Jesus saying "You will always have the poor with you" lets nobody off the hook.

++++++

On the other hand, the national Episcopal Church decrying the Supreme Court decision upholding Philadelphia area Catholic social services' right to carry out their beliefs, policies and practices for placing foster children does not make TEC right, only vocal. 

NO rights matter but children's rights to loving care, careful placement, competent monitoring. I don't know who does a good job and who does not, but those competent and effective whose work and ministry is the care of children deserve encouragement not lawsuits to enforce shifting cultural norms even though I am for the new norms.

But not the arrogant self-righteous exclusive pontifical Obscenities' determination to excommunicate the President because he differs with them on abortion. We are not yet to the point that the USCCB or TEC or the SBC control the U S Government. 

Why am I writing all this? Most likely because I don't feel like fooling with Sunday's sermon.

That's a 1936 Chevrolet and it looks excellent except that in the restoration and customizing its headlights were set way too low to pass judgment for stock. If you lived and loved a 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939 Chevrolet as I did, the slightest change jumps out at you!!

And that's a Forty Ford DeLuxe coupe. There's a company that, under license from FoMoCo, is manufacturing and selling the bodies. Jiminy. Paint mine maroon and don't look for me back in time for supper.

And that's a '37 Ford. Called a five-window coupe because - - well, WTH, count them!

Back to food but on a different note, the German rye bread and limburger cheese is excellent. On the sandwich I had butter, German mustard, and sliced onion, but that "mask" was not needed, unnecessary. Hold your breath, take a bite, and it's quietly scrumptious, a mild, creamy cheese and incomparably delicious bread.

ABC, RSF & PTL 

T+