Somewhere
Problems, I have a lot of problems, you know; most of them seem to involve neglecting to think first. But it's also a fact that when I spend all my time thinking things out, nothing actually gets done, which is the other problem. I mean, why not recognize that I'm going to cut twice anyway instead of wasting time measuring twice when I get the same measurement both times and it still doesn't fit.
For breakfast with my Farmers Rye Bread from Germany, I don't get out my Limburger cheese when Linda is home, nor the German Brick cheese for the same reason, but I'd been wanting some liver-cheese that nowadays is sold as Braunschweiger to go with Limburger on the excellent Rye; and Linda is sitting up in bed with coffee and PCNH, so I made my breakfast with compromised ingredient aged-Swiss cheese. Two brands of Braunschweiger, bought yesterday at two different grocery stories just to test them. Small half a sandwich of each. Turns out I prefer the flavor of one and the texture of the other, but neither is as good as the liver-cheese my mother used to buy for me when I was a boy, nomesane? Square sliced, with the protection of pork fat around the edge, to be peeled off and discarded. What's best these days is the chicken liver paté from Trader Joe's, but TJ's is there and Bubba is here, and something about never the twain shall meet.
Last night I drank a big mug of ice water right before turning out the light, knowing full well what would happen by midnight. And I was right, it happened; but I refused to get up, closed my eyes, and went right back to sleep - - which invariably brings on wild dreams about looking frantically for a restroom in public places and they're all Occupied. However, by the time I get up - - I treated myself to the gift of, especially seeing that I'm no longer blogging daily, after forty or fifty years of getting up just before four o'clock predawn to read and study and write, nowadays getting up about five or six o'clock like a civilized retired person, and once recently seven o'clock, though on Sundays I get up at three o'clock - - the CHF seems to have let most of the water drain into my ankles and feet instead of pumping it into my bladder, which then calls for FuroForty and stay at home, doesn't it.
Linda will scold me for my lack of delicacy in expressing myself, but it could have been a lot more specific; and, anyway, I blog for myself, not for public even though I did change my +Time and FaceBook post settings from "myself only" back to "public".
What am I doing these days? Loving life in 7H, worrying about my weight and eating plain yogurt for supper, playing free solitaire online, watching Poirot movies: they're free online and I love the old cars from the classic era. Poirot always surprises me with his identification of the murderer, although more and more I'm starting to get my eye on the first character who comes innocently to him seeking help early on, sometimes even before the murder(s) is(are) committed. It doesn't bother me that the guilty fool invariably shows up at the finale for the family gathering at which Poirot sorts out the facts and, IDing the murderer, stuns everyone especially the guilty party. Any murderer with any sense would know to be on a plane (cruise ship, these are the nineteen-twenties and early thirties) for South America when the rest of the family gathers for Poirot's magic meeting. And there's usually a love affair that gets affirmed.
What else am I doing? Reading and trying to work out for my own understanding what Critical Race Theory is really all about. Even some churches have come out against CRT. All of us churches have our problems, for TEC it's our bishops who became high-ranking Confederate officers and now we have to disown them even though that's impossible, our history is part of what makes us who we need to watch out for instead of trying to forget; our theologians who defended slavery a hundred years ago whom we shove into the closet; our pew-markers that say "Robert E Lee Sat Here" that we move to the safe in the parish office, and people like me who grew up oblivious in the middle of it. This week I read that the SBC was founded specifically in defense of slavery (who believes everything they read?), and if that's so, it explains their seemingly rabid opposition to the CRT idea or anything else that's different from what they like to see themselves as. But if you think racism doesn't underlie our most basic institutions, suppositions, assumptions, points of view, and way of life, you're as blind a stupid damn fool as I admit to having been. I'm trying to work my way out of, not sure how I'm doing.
CRT is correct and true, right on. But we don't want it taught and spread because it rocks our comfortable boat. If you can't see that, you're blind to the concept of Loving your neighbor.
Definition of oblivious moral evil: a Christian who thinks "loving my neighbor as myself" means forcing myself to smile and wave to the new Black family next door even though they caused my property's marketability to drop by moving in to the neighborhood. That ain't It. "Loving my neighbor as myself" has nothing to do with people I know or can see. "Loving my neighbor as myself" means wanting to pay for, through whatever increased taxes are necessary, the proper shelter, education, food, medical care, Opportunity, for the thousands of children across America, Black, White or Other, to pay whatever is required to help them rise out of the immobile cultural, institutional poverty and ignorance to which they are consigned, but whom I in my self-righteous piety insisted not be aborted during their mothers' pregnancy.
What's going on here today before being taken down in a day or so, week or so?
In a graduating ceremony in Texas, the class valedictorian breaking from her valedictory address to speak out against a dehumanizing law that invades the rights of a woman regarding control of her own body. And yes, it's about abortion.
In the dreams that I'm not having, America is becoming a place where I don't think everyone has to be like me, believe like me, vote like me, have my values. America a place where we leave people alone to mind their own business and make their own decisions. In my dreams.
Why aren't more people coming back now as pandemic restrictions are lifted? Is it because during shelter-in-place they realized that what they want is different, something other than what we offered them during Old Normal?
IDK&ABC&BLM&CRT&LGBTQ+&RSF&PTL
T+