Segregation is still alive and well in spite of it all.

 I just watched a segment on television about an old theater in some place down south.  Might have been Birmingham, Alabama.  There are two important facts here.  #1 is I am actually paying attention to the television and we are still having segregation problems and it is not just down south that it is happening.  

They were showing the history of the theater and explaining how it had been used as a headquarters for Ku Klux Klan meetings.  They gave the history to explain why the theater was the prime place for a museum to replace the KKK.  I am old enough that I can remember back when "night riders" interacted with black people in such a way that occasionally the black person would not return home in the same condition they left in.  This was acceptable behavior back when I was a kid growing up in Nickerson, Kansas.  I expect that the city of Nickerson could build their own museum, but not thinking they are going to do that!

I have very vague memories of my mom and dad having hushed conversations, before he would leave the house for an unknown destination.  When we got up the next morning for school he would still be asleep.  Hindsight is such a much better vision then living in the present!  We would hear hushed conversations in the school yard that abruptly ceased when we came near.  Guess this was something only the older kids were privy to.  

There were no Mexicans in our town.  No blacks.  There was a family that lived in the boxcar down on the curve that we suspected were maybe Indians.  We learned later that the word was "Indeginous", but then they were Indians and they kept to themselves.  There was a father, mother and 3 daughters.  Once I went to their house out of curiosity.  The house was very neat and the mother did not talk at all.  The father just glared.  I never did that again!

After they had been there for what seemed like a long time, Eveline was allowed to attend school.  Granted, no one played with her, but by then we were out of the "playing" stage and into the "trying to learn something that would be meaningful in our future."  Mostly, that involved cooking or baking, or cleaning house.  Eveline did come to my home a time or two, but mother was quick to point out that she had "very long fingernails and God only knew where they had been" so we must never touch anything she had touched!    

I am happy to report that later in her life my, mother actually acknowledged that there were people in this  world who were not lily white like us.  There were things like gay people, Mexicans, and black people!  We further learned that they were human and as such deserved the same treatment as our white friends.  Now in all fairness, I have not been a citizen of Nickerson for over 65 years, but you should know that when I last cruised the streets I did not see anything but white, anglo saxon, protestants.  Sadly something else I did not see, was any new buildings or thriving businesses.  There were a couple run down looking trailer parks and lots of abandoned buildings up on Main Street.  Nickerson seemed to be a step back in time.  What does that tell you?

As for my life, I think I have come a long way.  I have had the pleasure of being grandmother and/or great grandmother to several mixed grand children both half black, half Indian, and a couple not sure of paternity.  Does this make me anything different than I was when I was a snot nosed kid in Nickerson?  I think not.

I wish the people who work so hard for a good life could have crossed my path way back when.  There is a song I used to sing in camp and never really knew what it stood for.  Let me just sing you a couple bars:

"Jesus loves the little children.  All the children of the world!  Red and yellow, black and white, All are precious in his sight! Jesus loves the children of the world!"

I hope I can remember that no matter where I wander and no matter where I roam, or who I meet in my life journeys that we are all children of God and as such are blessed by his goodness and help me to love my brother as myself.  And with that ,  I wish you all peace!

 

Happy Thanksgiving or the pilgrims progress.

Thanksgiving is once more upon us.  Time to bake the old turkey and laden the table with food.  Time to be grateful for all the bounty we possess.  Thank God for our big warm house and the car in the drive and the money in the bank.  Yep.  Got lots to be thankful for as we count all these blessings.  Well, unless of course you are an Indian!

Oh, wait, I can not call them that anymore.  They are now known as Indigenous People.  Indigenous is defined in Webster's dictionary as "originating in and characteristic of a particular  region or country."  It is interesting to note that the next entry is indigent, which is defined as "lacking the necessities of life because of poverty."  See how that works out?

Back in the day when I went to school in Nickerson, Kansas, we were taught about Thanksgiving.  The first Thanksgiving was in 1621.  Seems the land was at that time populated by Indians.  They roamed free.  They rode horses and hunted the buffalo.  They made all their own tomahawks, lances, saddles, blankets, moccasins, cooking utensils, clothes, and on and on.  Everything they needed and used was made from the land.  The Pilgrims wanted to celebrate their first harvest in this new land and for some reason beyond the grasp of my small mind, the Indians wanted to help.  I think they felt sorry for this "ragtag" lot who were struggling for survival and brought food to them.  Lordy, it went down hill from there.

I do not remember dates and times, but it was not too long before they began to expand westward and the Indian lands were no longer Indian lands.  Treaties were made and treaties were broken.  White people killed Indians and Indians killed white people.  A railroad was pushed across the plains and buffaloes were in the way so they were slaughtered taking away the mainstay of food, shelter, and tools.  Indians were pushed to reservations, and then moved.  Study your history.  If you can look at it objectively, you may note that we came here and virtually shoved the Indians into corners.  I wonder if I went today to Jamestown or the Dakotas and set a table out with all the amenities of Thanksgiving, if any of the Indigenous  would come.  As a member of the white race, with German, Irish, French, and English blood running through my veins, I rather doubt it.

I do know one thing and that is even today we are still screwing the Indigenous people.  We want a pipeline across their sacred tribal lands and our leaders ram it through.  The deer and the antelope are gone.  The buffalo are cornered.  No doubt there is a Walmart in the heart of the reservation.  I remember 55 years ago when I worked as a barmaid, it was illegal to sell beer to the Indians that worked on the railroad.  They might go crazy and scalp us!

I have granddaughters who have Southern Ute blood in their veins.  They sometimes go to the reservation and take part in the heritage celebrations of the Southern Ute.  They are beautiful examples of humanity.  I would love to go with them some day, but I may be too old to make it over that pass again.  Who knows.

So when you carve your turkey and thicken your gravy, before you cut your pumpkin pie, pause for just one moment and think about how you got into your big house on the hill and thank your God, that the first Thanksgiving was not the last.  Go outside at night and try to imagine, as you look up at the star filled sky, what our world would have been like had the first natives of this land not taken pity on a bunch of pathetic, starving pilgrims  on the banks of the new world.

Then tuck your babies in their beds and go put your good dishes back in the cupboard and lay down on your featherbed, secure in your white heritage.

I hope I do not get deported!

123 years ago a man named Johann Jakob Haas and his second wife, Maria Dorathea (Schrade) landed at Ellis Island Immigration Center.  They came from Dettingen Wrtt, Germany.  Those 2 people were my  great grandfather and step great grandmother. He had 9 children with this second wife.  This was called his second family.

 (Great grandfather had been married before and fathered 7 children with his first wife, Elizabeth Beck.  My grandfather was in his first family.)

At the time I was born, Jakob and Maria had been in the United States of America 47 years.  I guess that makes me a third generation immigrant!  Not sure how that works, but it seems my kids would then be fourth generation immigrants.

How sad it is that I woke up this morning with this on my mind.  And that my second thought was that I am a child of white privilege was even sadder.  My grand children are a mix of races.  I have one black,  2 Indians, one mexican and then then token white boy.  The great grandkids are a hodge podge and we no longer see color at my house.

I know that our government is "cracking down on the illegals" and this breaks my heart.  To see a mother torn from her children and sent back to Mexico because a paper is not in her possession that gives her the rights I have makes me sick.  She raised her kids by working and spending her money in the local market place.  Her kids went to the local school not just for a day or two, but for years.  Years.  She wanted to be here or she would have gone back to Mexico a long time ago.

Does anyone except me remember when the government cracked down on the illegals because they were taking work from the local people by working in the fields?  Seems the migrant farm workers did not come and the crops rotted in the fields because that was work our local people who were legal did not want to do.  Hot out there in the broiling sun .

Our government has never made it easy to get citizenship and it has never been cheap.  Lawyers and paperswork and courts do not make it conducive for people who work very cheap to afford the help they need.  So punish them.  I was born into my citizenship, but many were not.

I know of one man who is 3 semesters short of getting his degree in business management.  He has worked hard to pay tuition and buy books by working in the fields, but he is not a citizen.  He will be sent back to Mexico under the current regieme.  His father was granted his citizenship, but has not received the final paper.  It is lost out there somewhere, so all he has done has been in vain.

Somewhere along the rocky road to today, this freedom train went off the tracks.  The government is fighting the Indians because the pipeline wants to go across thier land and water and do we remember who was here first?  Hell no we don't!  We took thier land.  Then we decided we didn't want them to be there and we took that land and gave them different land and now we change our minds again!  I bet the Indians are wondering why they invited us to that first Thanksgiving!

It would be nice to build a big rocket ship and put all the elitist ignoramuses on it and ship them to the moon and leave us peace loving people here to drink out of the same water faucets and play on the same beaches.  Remember the hippies?  Remember the love generation?  Remember the Viet Nam war?  Remember Stonewall? We are afraid of immigrants.  They might do us harm.  Remember Timothy McVey?  American born.  Remember Columbine?  American born!  Where is our rationale?

It is going to be a long day.  I wish I had a bright spot to give you, but this morning I do not.  This morning my heart is bleeding for my America.  The one we had before someone decided to make it great again.

My corner of the world is getting smaller.

I woke up this morning in my little bed and lay there for a minute to think about the day ahead.  First I thought about all the shootings and the riots and it made me very sad.  I thought back to when God first made this earth and how perfect it was.  He just wanted companionship and Adam and Eve gave him that, but in typical fashion, they wanted more.  Or at least Eve did.  From the apple to Cain and Able was just a short hop and from there to now it has been all down hill.  Brad and Angelina are divorcing and if I click enough keys I can get all the dirt on that but I really don't care.  Oklahoma is arresting a police officer, but it does not change anything.  The man is still dead whether or not it was intentional or just an honest mistake, his life is gone.

The "Indigenous Tribes" are trying to stop a pipeline.  I can remember when they were Indians and they lived on reservations that were theirs given to them by our Government in exchange for all the rest of the whole United States that they thought was theirs.  What happened to that?  Oh, we needed oil.  Now I remember.  Fossil fuel is what makes our world turn.  We can get wind and solar power, but that is too clean and we will always have wind and sun, or so we think.  What I want to know is why it is only the people on the reservation trying to save our planet?  Why aren't all of us outraged that our government is completely ignoring the fact that this is THEIR land and not ours.  We only have this one earth and unless someone knows something I don't, we need to preserve it and water is just pretty necessary in that equation.

Wars are raging around the world and I have no idea why.  Wait, yes I do.  War is a matter of one person or nation imposing their will and beliefs on another person or nation.  Both sides think they are right.  For some reason our great land seems to think it is our business.  Babies are being aborted and children die from child abuse here in our country on a daily basis.  Animals are mistreated and left on chains to suffer in the back yard of a master who has no heart.  Homeless people beg for a crumb and a blanket to stave off the cold while our city fathers burn their cardboard shacks. 

Where are our peacekeepers?  Where are our Mother Teresa's?  Where are our people who care about our brothers and sisters?  Why is skin color even an issue?  Why is an accent even an issue?  Who is right and who is wrong and what difference does it make in the grand scheme of things?  But wait!  There is hope!

I remember somewhere in the far recesses of my mind a glimpse of news that a huge asteroid or something like that is hurling through space and will most assuredly crash into our dear mother earth.
Think about that!  Will it knock us out of our orbit and send us flying through space with no gravity to keep us implanted on our Terra firma?  It could happen and then would the size of your bank account make a difference?  Would your opinions matter?  Could your friends save you?  Can your fancy BMW go fast enough to save you from the apocalypse that is sure to follow?  Just some thoughts this morning.

Welcome to my world!

To pee or not to pee; that is the question!

I can not believe our leaders!!!   They would have Caitlyn Jenner who was Bruce Jenner in the men's room and Chastity Bono who is now Chaz Bono in the women's room.  Have they actually thought that through?  I am sorry, while the wise men and women in Washington argue about who should pee where, the young people are being interviewed on television and it does not appear to be a problem with them!  Could the powers that be possibly just shut the bleep up and let them handle it?

I ask you, when you, as a born man or woman, go into a restroom is the paramount thought in your mind just exactly whether that effeminate looking man over there is a "born man" or did he have an alteration or is he indeed a woman thinking she is a man.  I have never given second thoughts to whether I might have led a better life had I been born a man, but that is because I am happy as a woman.  I am a mother and was a wife.  I am fulfilled in the female role.  But what if I wasn't?

As far back as time there have been men and women who functioned in a role that was not on their birth certificate.  Indians had "two spirits".  In school we had tomboys.  It was accepted as a fact of life.  We all got along and now this is all called into question because someone wants to pee!  Oh, for crying out loud, get over it.  In this great country of ours and despite what the presidential candidates say, it is a great country.  Look around at the depths to which we, through our "leaders" have sunk!

We are going to build a wall to keep the damned Mexicans out. 
We are going to destroy ISIS. 
We are going to make sure wages are not raised for fast food workers because we are afraid a Big Mac may go up a nickel.
We are going to repeal health care because we have health care at work and we do not care about your health care because you might want your policy to offer birth control. 
We definitely want birth control because we do not want you on welfare.
We are so worried about who pees where that we are forgetting about you wanting to take our guns and we need them in case someone wants to pee in the bathroom with the sign that says you have to be born that sex to pee in there.
And the list goes on and on. 

Give me a friggin' break.  Did you ever hear your mother say "Mind your own damn business.?"  Does it really affect your life?  You want to protect your children who are more broad minded and understanding then you ever were or will ever be?  Try this with your children.  Listen to them.  Listen to what upsets them.  They talk about the future and the environment.  They talk about world order.  Teach them compassion.  Teach them to feed the hungry and clothe the poor.  Teach them that their word is their bond. 

Stop tilting at windmills and fearing the shadows that do not exist.  Research the heroine problem the kids have because they are being taught at home that they are better than someone else.  Why do kids hang out in gangs?  Acceptance.  Teach them acceptance at home and they will spread acceptance across the globe.

And since our country was built on religious freedom, talk to them about a man named Jesus!

All I can say, America, is be very careful what you wish for because you just might get it.