Oh, my! It saddens me to think that the world is watching the land of the free and the home of the brave this month.
My local newspaper includes an insert from USA Today to keep from having to cut and paste all the not-local news itself.
Some of the headlines in there this morning include:
In Baton Rouge, another dark day
Obama urges politicians to temper rhetoric (You know how much Donald really respects the president’s advice.)
Choice of Pence gives Clinton greater options (She can pretty much choose anyone now.)
Pokemon merchandise flying off the shelves
Late-night hosts tee up convention plans
Jennifer Lopez was a vision in white
No way to win the election without women (Duh.)
Ivanka to work on Dad’s image (Good luck with that, Sweetheart.)
And I understand poor Mrs.Trump III is going to hold forth at the convention tonight. I surely hope her husband doesn’t interrupt and cut her off repeatedly as he did with Pence on Sunday.
And could someone please get that woman some warm business clothes or give her a Claritin? She always looks like she is about to sneeze.
I wonder why I feel so sorry for a woman who is so rich and so beautiful?
We are having a cold snap here today, so I decided to drive around and do some documenting.
You can see that I have the A/C on full blast and the seat coolers are on too.
I believe we moved here exactly 58 years ago, just before my sophomore year in high school. It was during the cotton farming boom and my father was going to work in that business with my uncles after having worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma since coming home from “The War,”
I thought it was wonderful. The population here then was about 15,000. Previously the largest town I had gone to school in had about 2000 souls. Big excitement.
I only lived here my last three years of high school and I came back for a couple of summers when I was in college, so I don’t have a lifetime of memories from here. But those three years were important ones in my life.
First we rented a little house on Cherry Street while our new house was being built. We moved in here at Christmastime. I thought it was a wonderful house.
When we lived there, there was a beautiful green lawn and a lovely mimosa tree.
I attended church here with my family and fell in love with the minister’s handsome son. Looking back, I can see that was one of the “biggies” in my life. “Our Song” was “When I fall in love, it will be forever.” The heart of the young girl that I was then was, indeed, given away forever. But, I digress. Another story. Another time.
It’s a little run-down now, but my mother still supports it with her monthly check and my sister has been a faithful member all her life. Recently, they lost a regular pastor of their own, as is the case now with a number of the churches in town.
This congregation is the sort that flourishes here now. Its young parishioners were converted by fundamentalists, away from their traditional Roman Catholic faith. Mothers’ hearts were broken.
I always thought this one below was the prettiest church in town:
Disciples of Christ
There was a cotton boom when we moved here. The company Daddy joined was Acid Delinters. After the ginning and baling, the cotton seed had to have the fuzz removed before the cotton seed oil could be rendered. It was sort of a middle-man step.
That boom busted, as they all do. The plant is long-abandoned now.
After that, Daddy bought the franchises on some Phillips 66 gas stations around town. I liked to joke that my father was a big Texas oil man.
They are all abandoned now too. The Interstate bypassed them all. I’m not sure if these are they or not. But close enough.
Now here’s a relic:
This is all that’s left of an old evaporative air cooler, sometimes affectionately referred to as a swamp cooler. They worked great in this arid climate. I loved the way they smelled.
You would think that the fracking boom would have saved the lovely heart of this little town. Sadly, most of the business has moved out on the Interstate, where there are dozens of “man-towns,” chain motels, and convenience stores.
Around town, lots of great old buildings are boarded up now.
Don’t get all excited about that horse. It’s a piece of statuary.
There is a brand new Caesar’s Hot and Ready $5.99 Pizza store that opened this week. The line to try it out queued around the block at the drive up window. Folks here do not get out of their air-conditioned pickup to venture inside. Maybe I’ll take a picture of it when I drive through to pick up my hot and ready tonight.
This entry reads like a slice of life with no closing paragraph. It is just that.
Exactly twenty years ago next month I moved to Oregon to teach at Chemawa Indian School. Among the many forms this federally-funded BIA school required of me was one called “Indian Preference for Hiring.”
Look at me:
Could anyone be whiter? And just look at what one of my students so sweetly referred to as “like shit white-girl hair.”
Yet, the BIA and my students treated me as though I was as native as my beloved ancestor.
Every morning when I went to work at Chemawa, at that time such a dysfunctional place, I reminded myself that I was doing it to honor him. He would be so proud to know that my “drop of Indian blood” helped put me there, to work with and help those precious, mostly-troubled high-schoolers.
We descendants sometimes sport this tee shirt:
You can call me Pocahontas if you want to. That just says something about you. Not about me.
Declaring our independence was just the first of a lot of very difficult steps on the way to getting us “united.” After declaring us independent, our now-deified founders spent almost a dozen years engaged in bloody battles and sending John Jay and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton from colony to colony trying to get everyone on the same page to sign off on the Constitution.
You see, those thirteen colonies saw themselves as discrete and independent too. A lot like European countries.
And now, the country we declared ourselves independent from has also declared itself independent from the rest of the European Union and sees us as its greatest ally.
Independence can be a good thing. Sadly, these days, hardly anyone admires adult offspring who live in their parent’s basement well into their forties. Or a neighbor who borrows a cup of sugar week after week.
Still helpfulness, neighborliness, and generosity go a long way, on your block, in your family, and globally. We just need our friends and family. Think: “This fragile Earth, Our Island Home.”
Elderly parents will eventually need someone to move back into the basement to lend a hand. Younger English citizens love their European passports with freedom to travel and work any where in “The United States of Europe.” Can you imagine needing passports and different currency to drive from Oregon to California? Well, okay. So that was a bad example.
Seems to me that, with the exception of Donald Trump, most of the people who are in favor of building walls on our borders are “deeply religious.” But, you know, borders are arbitrary and man-made. Not ordained by God. I sure hope young Mr. Trudeau doesn’t get it into his head to build a wall because too many of us like his single-payer health care plan and are fleeing Palo Alto for Saskatoon.
We Yanks do love our independence, and we know it didn’t come easy. Visited the cemetery here a few days ago.
Of course, I am a woman, totally lacking in testosterone, so I don’t really embrace the concept of war. I think conversation is just a better way to address differences of opinion.
I think this one below is my favorite picture illustrating freedom and independence: Two little girls singing patriotic songs in front of a national monument, not constrained by their gender or attire or age.
God Bless America. Land that I love. With liberty and justice — for whom? You know the answer to that one.
