Inauguralistic fixation

How many whose eyes were focused on the inauguration also listened? felt? truly cared? or was it just something to say "I was there" or "I watched it on TV" or just spent the moment as "something to do"?

I'd never watched an inauguration before. This one? One of those moments in history it's hard to believe actually took place. Born in the '30s, I remember raw racism. I remember wanting to play with the child my mother's "maid" brought with her, but being told "no". I remember stores' restrooms plainly marked "White only." I remember being told to say "white lady" and "negro woman" because "lady" could never be used to refer to "them".

Yes, racism reigned, even in the conversations, when attitudes were assumed shared (an unspoken "you're white, so you must share my prejudice"). I remember the boil inside when the "N" word was freely tossed about, and my protests which fell on jeering ears. I did all the stupid "honky" things trying to help, like insisting Eva, the "maid" sit at the table with us (embarrassed her profoundly, oblivious me). I remember wondering why there were no people of color at the coastal beaches; why "yard men" were to be met only at the back door; why "back of the bus" was "their place"; that "knowing their place" had any significance at all? And later, how that applied as well, to being a woman, knowing "her place". Racism was twin to sexism. Racial bias trumped gender bias. Or was it the other way around?

College at a Baptist school in Texas allowed no color, and some of the professors (1950's) swore "I'll resign if they ever let them (blacks) into this school." Christian school, Christian professors, mind you. Later, as I taught school, I overheard students say they were going "nigger nockin'" on the way home. All this before schools were integrated.

I remember the dangers of protest. How in Waco, Texas, the effort to join black friends in church meetings, gospel-music singing with a particular enthusiast friend met with her parent's bleak fear of the realities -- how being seen with anyone white, in a car with anyone white endangered her life. Our hope of the beauteous blend of our mellow voices was forever dashed, because of fear and its realities.

How difficult it was to be trusted as a whitey who meant friendship rather than ill intent. How efforts to train up my own children to drop prejudices in a super-saturated prejudicial world. How it felt to be insulted when opening my home to "them". How demonstrative it became (and almost felt false) to go to the newly integrated town pool as the only white venturers to dare "mixing" in the same water. Yet, looking back, how glad I was to have taken that baby step, ...that baby step and others. How limited my own understanding was, still is. How blind are we to the earmarks of those annoying little seams that connect one prejudice to another; how strong the threads; how durable, despite our efforts to obliterate them.

If nothing else, I watched those who belittled me and mine (for our efforts to forget racial differences and become blind to color) suddenly find it "OKAY" to get on a political bandwagon. I watched, and wondered what they had forgotten in their new-found flag-waving, what they had put aside, what memories they had stuffed away. Was it guilt? Or just another means to grab attention?

I voted. After, and only after Mrs. Clinton was out of the running, my vote went to Mr. Obama. My vote had
nothing to do with color.

Yet, as I watched this momentous ceremony -- momentous because of its differences, however similar the testosteronics still are -- I knew there resided a mini-kernel of hope, somewhere, somehow, for those of us who care about fairness catching up with fact, reality becoming inclusive of ALL -- even gender-wise. For, however long it may take, the last frontier (being female) may become more than a dot on the horizon of hope.

Took us long enough to recognize racism. Will sexism ever be admitted? Or is it so deeply embedded in the societal hard drive it can not only never be extracted, but will never ever even be detected for what it is?

Like ageism, sexism, I fear, is here to stay. And few will have ever noticed either had true validity. Few will ever know the symptoms. Like some acceptable disease, one wonders about a cure. Is it not first necessary to recognize a sickness prior to seeking treatment? The insidious symptoms, like rashes, come and go in so many shapes and forms.

So do we, as when oblivious, return to "some of my best friends are. . . ." ? The only answer, I believe, is to continuously seek to evolve, grow, change, learn, seek to know,
and in so doing, so do.

Yes, we are ever at the threshold, if we are alive, that is.

A grand beginning

Weather perfect; activity delightful; company (close and distant) special and loving.
Great.

That was January 1. Memorable. Wow.

a year?

We decide it was good or bad? and, entering the next 12 months, we know just what it is we want out of those 365 days? are we so well informed? are we forgetting, when we say "glad that's over" that there were excellent days, wonderful times, premium moments? do we discount the best of days and maximize the memory (fuzzy?) of those negatives which did not eradicate us?

We "live" through the end of another year, celebrating the potential for new beginnings, hoping for we know not what.

The moments were the gems; the tiny segments of our lives the pinnacle-isms we didn't know we were privy to, we were showered by, we were gifted with == our Gifts.
Is it possible, somehow, to tune in to the pure delight even one moment can emit?

Simple things can create such pleasurable moments

Delightful, that day, during a quiet walk in the park.

How do we achieve understanding when

it's selective? The desire to understand's required, first of all. But before that, somehow it's important to realize we're not exactly connected. We can read all about hunger, poverty, doing without, and what they're supposed to be like, but until we realize we have little idea how an in depth experience of those things feels, we don't even know we don't "understand". '
At a moment of truth (experience), we might find ourselves wondering just "what was left out of the package I was supposed to get", like the child said at a less-than-superabundant christmas:
"Is this all?"
The majority of us have no idea at all. Hunger, to us, is missing one meal; poverty? it's losing in the stock market; doing without? not being able to get that second house or car or ipod or coveted piece of jewelry.
There are far too many individuals out there in our periphery who know the definitions intimately.

Six in eight

Counting today, six day-pieces (or pieces of days) left in 2008. Strange, saying adios to another year, knowing how mostly, time's not even acknowledged. Contemplating all the things we human beings take for granted is wipe-outish. It'd be priceless to be able to call up specific moments in time whenever, re-examining all the pluses and maybe-not-minuses-after-all in each moment. Might surprise us. Wish we were capable of full experience (maybe).

Guilty as charged?

How often we jump to conclusions, forming negative judgements when facts are completely unknown. Sometimes, those we're judging have made decisions based upon the most private realities with no other solution, (health, grief, loss, etc.).

Judging, in absence of the facts, is a habit to lose.

Narrow focus?

So many ads: Ten days 'til Christmas. Everything (almost) splayed in red or green. There are other holidays. Hanukkah's the end of this week! And what about folks who don't or CAN'T observe some grand celebratory event. Guess attention could be paid to the rest of the planet. X days 'til hmm. It's the commerciality that nags. On the same page a newspaper proclaimed the presence of the destitute flashed the gleam of banal bling.
Wonder. Does anybody notice? Or is it too uncomfortable?

December beginning..

Always a kind of beginning afoot, even at the end of something. Semantics at worst. No scenario to it. There's a December to everything. When I wanted to stay longer somewhere, not go home even though it was time, my mother would say "if you don't go, you can't come back" (if it never ends, it won't ever beginagain.) I'm still working on that one. She liked those little sayings. Not sure whether I did back then.

We hope for the Januaries, the new, the untested, the unopened door (maybe). The hope? Blind (or the denial of our) positivity overrides any realistic dread. But to ignore the Decembers? Missing out.

Last day...

of November, of Hurricane Season, of a great month, and it's sealed its goodness with a beautiful rain. And, another special birthday celebrantiasis. Happy birthday, chickidoodle. I know you enjoyed the raindrops. Hee.

Okay!

These two were inseparable when we first rescued them. Shown here, they've just had a wild workout (chase scene) and are resting up for the next one.

Nowadays, each does her own thing, but neither seems to try to boss the other, even though Rassie is almost twice the size of the Spriglet.

Who would have believed they'd be such a perfect match?

Uh oh.

Can't sneak around here at all. Ever since I posted the pic of Sprig's eyes, her shelter bud Rascal's been hanging around hinting bigtime. "Where's my picture?" or "I do somethin' wrong?" or "Whatd'y'want, money, to put my mug shot up?" No, Rascal. Just didn't get around to it. Here goes:
Now Sprig's gonna see this, and. . well, there goes the blog. I'll have to get them their own computer so they can . . you get it. Otherwise.......... Hafta add one thing we found out about female tabby cats. They're extremely rare. Wow. So now, Rassie, see? You're a special kitty. Known fact, anyway.

Every little being has differences. This particular kitten, one rescued from the shelter, along with a much larger cat, was labeled a "stray". From her behavior, she was no more a stray than the local rock star. Clearly, she'd been someone's pet, dumped on the shelter doorstep. We figured the dumping was because of her deformities (scrawny leetle back legs) which, keep her slowed down not one iota. She's duly into everything, and mega-inquisitive, even more so than her shelter bud. We named her "Sprig" because she's just that -- not a twig, but smaller, as parts go. She follows her own agenda, not interested in any other kind, but has been seen cooperating when the mood strikes her. Unique personality. Well, that's to be expected, for sure!

from florida sanderson, on the election .....

How I hate profiling, (having been profiled by age, among other things)..... I see it as such an easy pothole in which to foil forward progress.

Mr. Obama got my 73-year-old woman's vote. All the same, I will proudly wear my "Hillary for President "apparel, because this statement needs to be made: Men (black men included) were enfranchised well before women were, and yes, now, have succeeded in ceiling-crashing.
But, until gender as a "negative" measurement of qualification is put away once and for all (just as finally race seems to have been packed out) there will be those for whom profiling's "final frontiers" are the eternal holdouts. Such lame excuses, prejudices and "gotta-reject-something" (a.k.a. mindless choicemaking) will leave skidmarks on the underpants of history.

This old dame's proud to have rallied 'round the future, however frightening it may become. At least the vote counted and, right or wrong, I got to contribute my bit.

And that includes my contributions toward Hillary's campaign.

Change? Is it truly possible?

And from the trenches, we,
brushing off particles, layers, crusts
of a head-shaking past, shun nagging experience for
too-thready trust in a might-be future.

Something about hope never disintegrates.
And women cannot let that fact go,
whatever is taken from us.