Mary Beth Writes

I wrote this yesterday: “I’m all over the place. How about you?”

Today I’m: “I think I lost weight last night and it was some of the heaviness of persistent stress.”

It’s happening, Friends. Yes, we all know nothing will be sensationally simple going forward. Right now, the Senate is where it was pre-election. (Though hold on, Stacey Abram’s Amazing Georgia is having TWO senate races in January.)

The Trump story right now is that Dems cheated by stuffing ballot boxes with Biden ballots. If Dems composed (tens of thousands?) of fake ballots to tip the scales … then why didn’t those durn cheaters vote for Dem senate and other down-ballot candidates? Did Dems not pay enough to the “backroom thugs?”

Sheesh.

What we witnessed and have been a part of of - is a nation saying "We are better than this." 

An opinion I’m seeing too many places - and I’m arguing it every single time.

“White women increased their support for Trump in this election.” And then the statement is jumped on by many others who are furious at white women.

Hark! Hark! THERE ARE NO EXIT POLLS ON ABSENTEE BALLOTS. Whatever opinions are being tossed around right now on the basis of demographic groups of voters – white women, Black youth, Hispanic males, college students, Ferrari owners – all of those stats are based on exit polls of people who voted IN PERSON.

It is not real information. Fight pigeonholing based on cardinals, bluebirds, and penguins.

There’s a lot to figure out but we won’t learn anything based on exit polls only of people who went to the polls and not by finding out who voted by mail and drop-off. 

There’s so much talk right now about how dysfunctional our society has become. All the cheating, lying, violence, rioting, harmful drug-using, laziness, racism, and xenophobia.

It’s the worse society most of us have seen in our lifetime. That’s what we are being told and that’s what way too many of us believe.

Most of us (who read my small website) are white; that’s the way my cookie crumbles.

Here’s what I think (and hope). I think the statement that society has become terrible – is the swan song of white privilege.

It’s been bad out there for a long, long time. Like this: I’ve been reading American history for decades, but it was only last year that I heard about the Tulsa Greenwood massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre  I knew that it is more fraught to be black than white in this society. I didn’t know about “the talk” Black parents have with their kids, because it is that effing dangerous to be a black teenager walking down a street. It never occurred to me that parents and grandparents of kids who are black live with an entire extra layer of stress and care.

Yes, there’s a lot to take in about being an American in 2020. But let’s not fall into wallows of self-pitying solipsism. Let’s not walk around pining for our personally less traumatic pasts. While we were having rather safe and pleasant lives, others were – and still are - suffering the ravages of systemic racism.

Like this right now: Did you know 140 people drowned two weeks ago, trying to emigrate to some place they could get jobs? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/02/refu-n02.html Are we aware that our sisters and brothers in Central America – RIGHT NOW - are on rooftops waiting for help? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/storm-eta-floods-honduras/vi-BB1aJGDh

I have more to say, but it’s sunny and 70 degrees outside and it is my holy belief that when the weather is like this in the Midwest in November, I better go out there.   

.....

This is the URL that Karen Kant mentions in her comment.  I'm so incredibnly moved. Read the story and then listen. Yes, this is what we mean.  Listen Here. 

Here is a jarring and ferocious poem about the world we want, that David sent to me. Read Here 

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Comments

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917826467/the-good-ones-tiny-desk-home-concert
Mary Beth's picture

Damn. When we go outside our privileged lives, what's out there is hard and beautiful and invites us to be powerful enough to listen and care. I inserted the URL at the end of my post, so you all can easily access it.

100% yes Thank you for this

YES!!!! On all counts. Lot's of work to do. Patricia/Fl

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GNTL - So Many Words!

5/30/2023

Grownups Noticing Their Lives - Words!

The month of May might have been above my paygrade. I contributed to a weeks-long writing project in our congregation. I met friends more often than usual to talk and catch up. Two grandkids came for a sleepover last week. Our daughter and her little dog spent last Friday with us. Saturday another grandkid slept over.

GNTL - Kathryn's Garden

5/29/2023

Grownups Noticing Their Lives - Kathryn’s Garden

My friend Kathryn sent some beautiful photos of her garden to me this morning, I asked if I could post them here and she said yes. 

Some of you know Kathryn Rouse so you know this is not a garden-come-lately. She’s been building and growing her garden since, I think, the late 1970’s. The bunny in a hurry is a Bill Reid sculpture.

I think Kathryn's photos are the right frame for the poem.

A-Z Observation

5/24/2023   O is for Observation

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was a pre-telescope Danish astronomer who looked at the sky more precisely than anyone before him had done. He was obsessively careful about measuring what he saw and he studied the sky every night he could. To accomplish what he wanted he reinvented and fine-tuned the sky-gauging tools of his era – sextant and quadrant.

You may have seen these tools in paintings of old-time sailors. They would hold them up to their face, look at the stars, figure out where they were in the world.

GNTL - Squirrels & Gardens & the Sonoran Desert

5/18/2023

Grownups Noticing Their Lives

My garden thrives in ignominy.

Yesterday I posted some frugal things I’ve done lately at the Non-Consumer Advocate website. I do this because the kinds of people who try to be frugal are often (not always) people who I wish would come over here and read my website, too. I don’t write too much about frugal strategies but I write lot about values. We are in the same Venn diagram, right?

GNTL - Walk, Mounds, Spirit

Grownups Noticing Their Lives

5/17/2023 

The local TV weather folks talked about ‘a pneumonia front’ for two days. I’d never heard the term before but we all know temps can change fast, right? It’s more generally called life on planet earth. Keep a jacket handy if you can.

M is for Various Mom Memories

If you haven’t read yesterday’s comments, go back to read some wonderful memories of peoples’ aunts and “aunts”.

My morning's been packed. Before it was even 8:00 we played facetime dollhouse with our 6-year-old grandkid. She laughed extremely hard at the wedding of wee Kristoff (the Frozen story) to a new clothespin doll from Goodwill, because the groomsman kept standing on the cupcake table. No one could get the groomsman to straighten out so a collie had to run over and bite him.

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