May Day–an English corruption of the French m’aidez which means “help me”. See…I still remember some French from High School and College!
Just found out that that someone I lost contact with a long time ago passed away in 2021. I always wanted to know why she went no contact. Something about that time was painful for her. She was so talented. She wanted to be a fashion designer. She sewed and even did tailoring. She designed and made clothes for herself for special occasions. She wanted to be loved, but we were in a time where love was difficult if not impossible to find. Many males did not want to commit and those that did did not treat the commitment as sacred. When our mothers got pregnant, the males married them…mostly, especially in the South…the small town and rural South. When we came along, males felt no such societal pressure. Hit it and leave, I believe was their mantra.
We got one message from the society in which we lived, however our lived experience was so different. Maybe she found some peace in not being around people who knew of and also lived her experience. Maybe…
It’s almost the end of April and I have found exactly one volunteer zinnia. One…last December there was more than one volunteer and, when December finally realized that it was the season of cold, they quickly succumbed. With climate change, the flora is confounded.
I haven’t been to the Dollar Store in months. Recently, I went because last year the price of a gallon of weed killer was reasonable. I was surprised. The price was the same, but the same brand had a gallon and a third size and it was double the price of the gallon size. Make that make sense. Also, the price of seed packets was reasonable and the store had a good selection!
Remember the flat head thumbtacks that we bought for what less than fifty cents? Do people not use them anymore? I went to two stores and neither had thumbtacks. I did find the flathead thumbtacks on Amazon. Maybe, a craft store like Michaels still carries those old-fashioned thumbtacks. However, I am not driving miles and miles to get thumbtacks that shouldn’t even cost a dollar. I suppose you ask why pushpins wouldn’t have worked. I needed a flathead thumbtack that wouldn’t interfere with the intended use. A pushpin would have been non-aesthetic and an obstacle.
I wonder how many women are suckered in by the Hallmark Romcom movies? The Western fantasy male female relationship? I’ve always wondered about the fantasy because, historically, most marriages weren’t about love. Usually the people did not hate each other, but neither would they have labeled their feelings this Western emotion “love”. In my family, in a quick overview, most married because of pregnancy. Then, they soldiered on for a lifetime. Not saying this is the way to go, but I don’t think “love” ever entered the equation. Maybe, it should’ve. One hears stories about couples who did not get along, but mostly the unhappiness was suppressed. I think, that, to them, commitment mattered. Stability mattered. Family mattered. Community mattered. Those “matters” overrode the personal dynamics between the wife and husband. I think they paid no attention to the Western fantasy of “love” and maybe had a good laugh when watching the white actors in the movies navigating the fantasy.
Remember picking a daisy and saying as you plucked the petals–he loves me; he loves me not? You can’t do that with the variety of wild daisies in my yard. The petals are tiny and thin, not like the broad petals of the daisies I picked when I was growing up. The yellow center is the same…
Why do people think that they should spew their hate on social media for all to hear? What ever happened to public face versus private face? I don’t see this country as being civilized. Part of being civilized is living and let live. Part of being civilized is knowing that difference does not automatically mean conflict. You can say that spewing hate is a lack of civility. It is, but when people living in the same country feel and express those negative feelings on a daily basis, something more than civility is at stake. Civilization–refinement of thought, manners, or taste; a relatively high level of cultural and technological development specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained. Merriam-Webster Dictionary Emotional troglodytes cannot sustain a civilization. Unfortunately, a great number of people in this country are Homo lacerta cerebrum. Maybe it’s the water!
Think, many people in this country cannot read with comprehension. They cannot write a sentence, much less a paragraph. Many cannot read a map. Many do not know the states that make up the United States. Many do not know the names of the branches of government or their functions. Many want to regress to a time when they had no rights in this country.
Same playbook…measles outbreak…it’s the immigrants; high gas prices–the Iranians won’t give me what I want and they’re fighting back; pregnant women dying–if you can’t do what a woman is born to do, you deserve to die. Alpha(?) white males with tiny penises must rule the world!!!! Memory–I knew a Viet Nam Vet and one of the stories he told about that time was the fun he and the other Black males had parading their “jewels” in the barracks which embarrassed and shamed the white males who had nothing to parade. The point is in this country there is always an “Other” to blame for the shortcomings that negatively affect the “People”. And the “People” always, always eagerly blame the “Other”. It’s as though the “People” have a blindness when it comes to seeing that the ones pointing the finger at the “Other” are the cause of what they are experiencing.
I went to the Frist Museum. The artist I went to see–Barbara Bullock. She was raised by a well-off aunt and uncle who lived in New York. She moved to Tennessee as an adult. One of her pictures really spoke to me–a man reading a newspaper and shadow drawn next to him of a woman who appears to be planning something that the man will not like. I think that’s Bullock’s view of how the patriarchy will end. Males will be oblivious because they refuse to see the carnage they have caused.
She also painted pictures of the class divide among Blacks. She understood the futile anger of we who had, but whose parents never really saw us as individuals and they never once told us that it was okay to be different.
I see headlines about the rich and powerful wanting to live forever. Thought–could these people be so terrified of the judgement that awaits them as a consequence of the evil they have perpetrated and caused to be perpetrated? I doubt if the devil himself would welcome them in his domain of hellfire and brimstone. Remember the tale of Cronos who was so afraid of his children that he swallowed them? I think the devil would be equally afraid of his spawn.
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Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power. Their first rule is “don’t rock the boat.” If someone makes trouble and you can get him, do it. If you can’t get him, bring him in. Give him some of the action, let him have a taste of power. Power is all anyone wants, and if he has a promise of it as a reward for being good, he’ll be good. Anyone who does not play by those rules is incomprehensible to most politicians. Shirley Chisholm
It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their pres- tige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs? Shirley Chisholm
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