Archive for January, 2011
High Five
Here they are:
1. Which movie(s) made you cry?
2. Would you rather spend the rest of your life without a significant other, or have a partner who is extremely difficult?
3. What is your vice(s)?
4. If you watch “American Idol,” what do you think of this season without Simon Cowell?
5. If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?
Dear Governor Rendell,
If Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” is a “simpleton” and an “idiot,” I am, too.
You’re clear about the way to solve Pennsylvania’s money problems is by building casinos. In the “60 Minutes” interview, Stahl said, “People are losing money for the state to get its revenue.” You replied, while gnashing your teeth and grimacing (if it wasn’t so scary, this mom would be impressed), “You’re not getting it. Those people would lose that money anyway! Don’t you understand? You guys don’t get that! You’re simpletons! You’re idiots if you don’t get that.”
So let me get this straight. You’re providing a service for all those people with gambling problems or people who don’t realize they have a gambling issue by building a casino in their backyard. You’re making it easier to lose their money, all the while making money for your State. Is that right? Brilliant.
I’ve grown tired of the argument, the individual can make a choice to [fill in the blank], in your case to gamble or not. It’s the same argument I encounter every day about the obesity epidemic, “People just need to eat less and move more.” While this is true, we do NOT have an obesity pandemic just because people are eating too many Twinkies and drinking sodas and sitting in front of the television. I agree these do not help, but really what we have is a society, a culture, an environment which makes it easy to eat unhealthy foods and not be active. We have $0.99 cent menus at fast food restaurants full of high caloric foods, while salads cost five times as much. We have neighborhoods that are unsafe to send our children out to play in. We have schools that don’t provide the mandatory PE minutes per week for our kids. We have rich communities with access to fresh produce and farmers’ markets. This is not the case in poor neighborhoods. Does an individual have a role in whether they eat a Big Mac or not? Yes. Does a person have a choice whether to get off the couch to be active? Hell, yeah. Does a retired woman with a limited income have the right to walk down to the new casino in your State and blow it all on the slot machines? Yes. Yes. Yes.
But, Sir, why would you make it easier for that to happen? I say if you are so smart come up with innovative ideas to pull your state out of the red without relying on the vulnerable. Take the road less traveled…Serve the public you were elected to, instead of using them. Use your brain and power for good.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely yours…
This is a wonderful way to start off the week, don’t you think?
- This weekend my 18-year-old went on her first road trip with two other VERY YOUNG, eighteen-year-olds. I tried to convince her to stay home, watch movies with me, eat ice cream. You see I have a very overactive imagination, especially when it comes to bad things happening to my children. What if Kelly got stranded in the middle of the desert traveling up the 15 Freeway? What if while driving through Vegas some sleazy manager convinced her to be a showgirl, aka stripper? What if a trucker seeing how lovely and YOUNG my daughter and her friends are lured them to a truck stop? What if there was a freakish, the most freakish, snowstorm in Utah? One where the weather reporter said, “We’ve never seen such freakish snow in one hundred million years.” Kelly’s sense of direction is less than to be desired. You don’t know how many frantic calls I get where she is lost driving a freeway she’s traveled all her life. How was she going to be on a trip eight hours from home? After contemplating slashing tires, siphoning gas, and restricting her to the house, I let her go. And here’s the good news, I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke from anxiety. In fact, I slept quite well. I’m beginning to realize that life is much easier if you concentrate on the good things, and not the bad possibilities. I might even get on a plane now. Okay, let’s not go overboard.
- A college boy wore the same pair of jeans for 15 months, sometimes sleeping in them, as an experiment. He would wipe dirt and other things off with a wet paper towel. After the 15 months, his Human Ecology professor tested them for bacteria, and they had “normal” levels of bacteria. Underwear seems to save the day. Why is this good news for me? I have a 7-year-old son who insists on wearing the same jeans over and over again. We have bought him four pairs now so he won’t have to go 15 months wearing the same ones, but if he wanted to he could as long as he’s wearing underwear. I’m not ready to share this good news with him.
- Don Ritchie invites suicide jumpers to tea, and is awarded an Australian medal of honor for saving hundreds of lives. Ritchie and his wife bought a house overlooking the ocean, but they could also see the rugged cliffs of the The Gap, infamous for its beauty and the place where 50 commit suicide every year. Known as the “Angel of the Gap” he watches the view from his windows and when he sees someone lingering too long, he crosses the path and offers for them to follow him back to his house for a cup of tea.
Share your good news!!
Here they are…
- What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
- Time or Money?
- What is your favorite childhood memory?
- If you could do it all again, would you change anything?
- What is the one thing you’d love to do but you’re too chicken?
For Pops–
The other day I was walking Chewy. The sun was high in the sky, and warm on my face. I watched Chewy as he pranced along as if he was a toy poodle and not an American Bulldog who weighed seventy pounds. Spring must have been in the air because he smelled every blade of grass, and then lifted his big head to smell the breeze. I was so enjoying the day and walk that I hadn’t noticed the woman in the car on the other side of the street. She’d slowed down to a snail’s pace. I smiled, but then realized the woman was sneering, not at me but Chewy. Her face was contorted with contempt and hate.
By this time, Chewy had noticed the woman, too. She’d unrolled her window. Chewy wagged his tail. He wags his tail so hard it rocks his whole body back and forth. His body language says, “Isn’t this fun? Be my friend.” But the woman wasn’t having it.
“Get rid of that dog,” she said. “He could kill someone.” She raced off before I could sic my wagging dog on her.
Chewy went on with his business, but I seethed. This wasn’t the first time an older woman had showed contempt for Chewy. These women always hiding in their cars, pointing at Chewy, their faces screwed up with disdain, scared.
Then I realized this fear is no different than racists or those who fear Muslims and label them all terrorists. Chewy has been lumped in with all those pit bulls and American Bulldogs who have been trained to fight, who have been trained to kill. For the record, Chewy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Admittedly, he’s tried but they’re too small for his big paws. He’ll lick you to death for sure.
This month we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. We honored the man who’d done so much for civil rights. He would have been eighty-two on January 15th, and I wonder what he would think of our world today. Yes, we have an African-American in the White House, arguably the most powerful man in the world. But go into poor communities throughout the country and what do you find? A disproportionately amount of people of color. In prisons? The same thing. I wonder…
I work in one of the most diverse communities in the country. There are people from 60 different countries and 30 different languages are spoken. Walk down the street and this is what you’ll see.
And this…
And this…
If you’ve never been to this community, you’d see Vietnamese, East Africans, African-Americans, Latinos walking down the busy streets. You’d probably be startled by the diversity. You might be scared. I’m not, although sometimes late at night walking to my car after work, it can be intimidating. But even residents feel this way. They need more streetlights, a police presence, they need a safer community.
In the ’70s, my dad owned a junkyard in Southeast San Diego. He was one of only a few white men in the neighborhood. All day he’d shoot the shit with the black men in the neighborhood, smoking cigarettes, talking, talking. My dad took us to Christ the King, a Catholic Church in that part of town. I was amazed by the joyful clapping and singing the mostly Black congregation did. They even had an electric guitar and drums. Most Catholic churches I’d attended were pristine, quiet, boring. My dad lived in Oakland for a year, doing work up there. He lived in a Black neighborhood, and when we went up and visited we played with Black kids well into the night.
“I don’t see color.” This is a common phrase people use when proving themselves to be anti-racist. Of course there are different colors, cultures, religions. The “I don’t see color” discounts diversity. I think in order for people to stop being scared, they need to talk to a woman or man who are Muslim, speak to an immigrant from Vietnam, ask a Latina what it’s like to move from Mexico and try to find her way in the States. I’ve had the opportunity to make friends with Somali sisters who dress in head scarves and practice fasting during Ramadan.
“How can you fast the whole month?” I asked them.
“Allah wants us to know how many people suffer without food. He wants us to know their pain. Be empathetic.”
I thought it crazy to fast from sunrise to sunset, but now I get it.
If I hadn’t had this friendship, I would have lumped them into all those head scarf wearing women who appear mousy and do what the men say. But you have never met two fiercer women who love their children beyond belief. Aren’t we the same when it comes to wanting what’s best for our children?
I’m no Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ll never win the Nobel Peace Prize. But I am a woman who’s dad has taught her to go into neighborhoods, reach across the aisles, shoot the shit. I’m a woman who is humbled by a dog who wags his tail in the face of hate and fear.
