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!

 

Climate change or somebody's butt sucking air?

I watch very little news on the national level any more.  When Trump was elected I made up my mind that I would give the man a chance and let a business man handle the finances of my country.  I do still call it "my" country although my fore fathers came here only 119 years ago.  I still have pictures of the Haas family clearing land to farm.  They are very grainy pictures and were not taken on a cell phone, but they show the progress.

I am proud of my roots.  My grandfather was 9 years old then.  My great grandfather brought the whole family a little at a time.  They settled in the Reno County area, but have since spread out across the country.  They cleared river bottom land and began farming.  Back then, there were no King Soopers, or Walmart and mostly people depended on each other.  My great, great grandmother was a person who took care of people when they were sick.  Great, great grandfather raised turkeys and geese and did custom farming.  I forget what they grew, but it seems like it was sorghum and they made molasses out of it.

I diverse.  Back to the subject at hand, which is the environment.  For years steel mills belched black smoke and there was no concern for the air we breathed, but then the powers that be woke up to the fact that we were killing each other by not protecting the air we breathe.  Thus was born the EPA and it became a world wide concern that we were polluting our environment and we only have one world.  So we passed laws and then we held summits and passed rules for protecting our earth.  It became a global concern.

And then someone elected Donald Trump and his ilk.  He does not believe in Global Warming.  He sets in his air conditioned office, rides in an air conditioned car from one place to another.  And or storms get more violent and more frequent.  We keep cutting down our rain forests and not replacing the trees that clean our air.  We pull out of the global community that is trying to save our world and hide our heads in the sand.

I do not profess to being an intelligent woman.  I hide from things that scare me, like global warming, genocide and anything that upsets my little apple cart.  I do not watch the national news because I am standing over here with my head in the sand.  I can not abide with racism and ignorance.  There are no gun laws.  We just settle our differences with an AK-47.  For God's sake, people, we are sending our children to "active shooter training" in our schools.  Where are the day's of sand and shovels?

Last night I talked to a friend in New Zealand.  Telephones are our link to any where in the world.  But now cell phones have replaced communication in person.  Send me a text.  What happened to coffee klatches?  What happened to a walk in the park?  What happened to a moonlight stroll?  What happened to honesty?  Integrity?  What happened to helping an old lady across the street?  Where is our common decency when we could carry on a conversation with someone and not tell them to go back where they came from?

We play follow the leader here in America.  It is now right and just to lock people in cages because they want to escape genocide in their country.  We build walls when we should be building bridges.  I never dreamed two short years ago that our country could be so divided and that Republican and Democrat could be dirty words.  But here we are.

I am going to church in a few hours and pray for my country.  It is my country too, you know.  I will first post this and then read the comments to my thoughts on facebook.  My friends will be supportive, but there will also be the negative comments calling me "an effin liberal."  Such is life.  I am proud to be who I am and where I came from, but then God made us all and he made us in his image.....or did he?

What is going on in my little pointy head today?

     Well, usually not much since I stay on "auto pilot" most of the time, but today my thoughts are a jumble.  First, I am glad they passed the "Gay Marriage Bill" in New York.  New York has always been on the cutting edge of the Gay Rights Movement, more so than even California in my humble opinion.  I have always been rather on the fence about the word "marriage" in connection with same sex couples, but they never gave me a choice in the matter so of course I supported it all the way.  I could have been satisfied with a different word, but that is just me.  I am very happy that my gay friends are making strides in that area and I celebrate this victory!  Now as long as they are given the same rights as hetrosexual couples it will be a good thing, but there is still that federal government to contend with, isn't there?
    As I look back on my life, I almost cringe at the inhumanity to man that I have seen.  I realize I did not actually "see" slavery, but I did see the Blacks treated as less than second class citizens.  I seen the riots because people of a different color wanted their children to have an education equal to the people they served.  Blacks were chattle which, if you remove the "h" becomes cattle.  Americans went to Africa and kidnapped them and brought them over here and then when they were freed, screamed at them to "Go back to Africa!"  They did not want to come here in the first place, but I am not going to go there this morning.  You are all aware of the Civil Rights struggle.
     Now, is that worse than what was done to women?  How many years or centuries were women deemed to be the property of some man and had no rights what so ever?  Ever study up on how women were treated since the beginning of time?  They could serve the husband, but if he died they were flat out of luck.  Where would I be today if I lived in those times?  Not here on a computer sharing my views with the world, that is for sure. 
     I think the homosexual population is going to be our last vista as far as equality is concerned.  I realize we still have the politically correct things we need to observe and they are more than even I can keep up with sometimes.  Like in our church, we must refer to God in the neutral sense, meaning he is neither  male nor female.  Sorry, I was raised that God is male.  God is God.  Years ago I had a tee shirt that said "When God made man, she was only kidding!"  But I never believed that for even a minute.  I know there are people reading this who will scoff at me, but who cares.  I scoff right back at them because I am a free, white woman and that is what I do.
    Back to the man's inhumanity to man thing for a bit.  I can recall way back when I lived in Nickerson. Kansas and dad would talk about a family of "niggras" that lived on the edge of town.  It was alright if they came to town to buy stuff in the daylight,  but they better not ever try to come to town after the sun went down.  In all honesty, I could not imagine why they would want to go to town in the dark because everything was closed!  I always thought my dad would have made a great KKK member and the only reason I think he wasn't was because mom could not spare the sheet!  I never laid eyes on this elusive family, nor did I ever see the "Gypsy's"  that were camped over to the West of the McQueen place.  And those are the ones I needed to watch because they were the ones that would steal me and go sell me some where if I was not a good little girl.
     Nickerson was a very white community.  Oh, we had our share of odd balls, but we were odd balls ourselves.  Darn good thing that was not illegal or they would have hung us all.  There was Hank Windiate, who was crippled on one side and went to town in a buckboard with a sad looking old horse.  Never married.  Across from him was Jerry and Ora Ayres.  She had a bit of brain damage from an accident when they were first married. He grew enough produce and peanuts to feed the county.  Jake Smith used to be a deputy and sat in a chair all day long cleaning his gun.  Rudolph Reinke lost his wife with the birth of his last daughter.  He raised his last 4 girls alone, was a handyman and did his work while singing at the top of his lungs in German.  We were the first house on that block.  Now this is just one block, and it is only a sampling.  This does not include Whittlin' Joe and Johnny Carson, or the family in the boxcar. 
     My point here is simply that I am not one to throw stones.  My childhood was typical, I feel, as was yours for your time and area.  Did God make anyone of us better than the other?  Is it my job to be judge and jury for mankind?  I rather think not.  I am going to set right here in my little corner of the world and continue to dispense my words of wisdom as they occur to me.  No doubt I will die a lonely old woman, but that is alright too.  When I get to heaven I am going to put on my dancing shoes and dance all over heaven.  Maybe God will let me set on his lap and help judge a few of the hypocrites that come knocking on the door.  Hey, maybe he will let me judge that one guy that told me just last year that I was going to rot in hell and should be burned at the stake for what I believe.  Know what?  I would probably let him in cause I bet he is sorry.  He just grew up on a different street than I did!