But, My Heart… by Cathleen Ferose

A friend found words that express my heart so well on this whole issue. Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and so many others. Remember them, yes. But unless we do far more, there will be far more names to remember. Racism and hatred- especially the institutionalized sorts- have to go, and soon.

I waited, on the stairs inside my house, with my phone
With my son
For the verdict to go down
For the man who “stood his ground” and killed Trayvon Martin
He was acquitted, as you know
My son, pleaded with me why,
How could they do that?
And some weak joke about Florida justice wouldn’t cut it

This is my America
My country, tis of thee, sweet land of
Sweet land of
Sweet land of
I can’t sing

You see, my eyes might be blue,
and my hair some shade of blonde
But, my heart

When the elderly Mrs. Harn’s taught me in Sunday school class
When I was too young for school
“Jesus loves the little children, all of the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight”
My heart believed that
When my classmate Kimberly called the school janitor a nigger in first grade
I sat there, as if time stopped.
I saw his face, the tear that formed in his eye, as he turned his head away
I felt his pain.
When I turned back to my classmate
I did not look at her as the same little girl
In pretty dresses
And fixed hair
Because Kimberly didn’t see John as he picked up after us
Did chores while whistling
Or fix things around our school
She took offense at what
His creator gave him

That was taught to her

My parents
Forgot to do some things most do
They never identified a person by their race
 That I can remember.
So when I saw John, I saw him.
Oh, I knew he had that nice ebony skin,
The kind that didn’t burn, like mine,
But I saw him.
Might be the same reason that I was half way through a year of teaching my first period class
Before I noticed that whites were in the minority
There were all races sitting in my classroom
But they were my beloved students, not labels

Hashtag
Hands up, Don’t shoot
Hashtag
I can’t breathe
Hashtag
If they gunned me down
Hashtag
If I die in police custody

When I hear those words,
Those cries
The fear that my fellow citizens have
Living in the land of the ----
It becomes my fear and those cries belong to the faces of people I know

It’s the young man who is such a good friend to my son
It’s the young men that I will see dressed in suits in debate competition this weekend
My students sitting in my classroom
Those on the sports field and in the gym
It’s my friend’s nephews
That one who plays in the band at church
It’s a college student named Xavier at UT
Who is a son to me

It is not us and them It is not black and white
It is us, we, together
It is not Black History month, it is our collective history
When are we going to stop the madness?
Let us tell the truth.
We sing their songs. They are our songs
And watch them play sports on our teams
They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and perhaps family
We’ve read their books, our books
And admired their achievements in fields from science to politics
And consider that American progress

And yet
For them, their America, our America
Still isn’t a land of liberty

Until a person will be judged By the content of their character
And not the color of their skin
It. Will. Not. Be.
Martin knew what he was talking about

Sometimes I look around and think that I am in the minority
Feeling out of place
Knowing I’ll raise my voice anyways
And I will hold out my hand
My white hand
In their struggle
In our struggle to find the soul of this country
 America in 2015

You see, my eyes might be blue, And my hair some shade of blonde
But, my heart…

 

A Dozen Random Thanksgiving Thoughts

A Baker's dozen... even more apropro since that is Sharon's maiden name!

1. As a kid, one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving was the artwork at school. Whether coloring Pilgrims and Indians, using construction paper to make giant turkeys and maize, or drawing cornucopia spilling out food (once including a cooked turkey and a pan of dressing), I loved it.
2. For years I thought dressing and stuffing were always one and the same.[1]
3. My first idea that they were different was that it was dressing until we ate too much, then it became stuffing.
4. Around age 5 or 6 I thought we should dress up as Pilgrims or Indians for Thanksgiving. We did have to dress up a bit for the meal, but only in a nicer than playing outside sort of way. Having to wear a starched button down to eat convinced me that if I had to dress up, it should be as an Indian, not a Pilgrim. Growing up out west, the Indians I was familiar with didn't wear as much as the those around Plymouth Rock likely did, especially late in the fall. Nowadays we tend to stay in jammies until we have company coming. I tend to stay in jammies even then unless it's not family or someone living here. I did change into jeans yesterday to play basketball with Tyler later in the afternoon, but reverted to jammies shorts as soon as we were back inside!
5. I always preferred white meat, although it was usually a little drier than I wanted (back then everyone baked the turkey). So I smothered the meat in gravy and/or cranberry sauce. I still do that today, no matter how moist the turkey is.
6. Since Mom made stuffing as well as gravy, our white meat was not nearly as dry as some people's.
7. Over the years I got pretty experimental with leftovers. Turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry, salsa, and pico soft tacos, anyone? With guac? Yum!
8. Pumpkin pie and/or pecan pie with eggs, sausage, or bacon... breakfast of champions!
9. As a kid, Thanksgiving never meant all that much to me. Then for a while it was one of my very favorite holidays. Having learned to live a thankful life, it's become less of a big deal for some reason. As it gets radically commercialized, it feels more and more like just another sad commentary on out of control USAculture.
10. I don't know if I have a favorite Thanksgiving, but contenders include:
    • The first Thanksgiving after my first[2] wedding. Sharon wanted to invite both families (17 people, and we may have had more; I don't recall) over. She cooked everything in a kitchen that with dining nook was maybe 12'x7' (barely room to open the fridge or over across from each other). The over was the smallest I have seen; think we had to take all the racks out and cut the turkey up a bit to make it fit). We had a couch and two bean bags and brought the four dining room chairs into the living room. Others sat on the floor. It was a great time.
    • My brother Bill got married Thanksgiving weekend fourteen years ago. We drove all day Thanksgiving from Austin, TX to Augusta, GA. We found a DQ open for lunch in east Texas. They had brought in everything to provide a full Thanksgiving meal, which we soooo wanted! But traveling, we weren't sure if it would make us need to stop more, so we regretfully stuck with standard DQ fare. Should have just chanced it. Drove back Sunday. Long trip, but worth it. Love you, Bill and Laura!
    • The Thanksgiving after Josiah got back from Iraq, and not just because we got to see him and his buddy Matt blowing Dr Pepper across a microfiber tablecloth.
    I think it's probably whichever one I'm living at the moment.
11. For years I thought maize had to me multi-colored, despite knowing that it's the Spanish word for the thing we call corn, just mispronounced. I still think of "mayze" as multi-colored corn and "ma-eese" as any corn. I have always loved the way "mayze" looks. The one time I tried some I was underwhelmed.
12. One year some of us dressed up to play cowboys and Indians. After we finished killing each other off (I'm pretty sure we all died many painful, often ignominious deaths) we sat down for a pretend Thanksgiving feast.
13. I always loved cranberry sauce, more appropriately known as cranberry jelly. As a kid, that was the only way I really liked it. The closer it was to having actual cranberries, the less I was interested. Now I like it all, but especially home-made cranberry sauces that are more about the berries. Sharon makes a seriously yummy blueberry cranberry sauce. In fact, as soon as I post this I am going to go eat some!

Special thanks to Kimmie Webster for making me think about the jammies with her new tradition of PJs only Thanksgivings!

Notes
[1] It's all dressing, but it's stuffing if you stuffed the turkey with it. You're welcome.
[2] First and only, and that's perfect! 8^)

Persevering under the crushing yoke of Mileshood

To all concerned:

Yes, I am still persevering under the crushing yoke of Mileshood.[1] Each day I have to hang out with people I love, eat at all sorts of incredible non-chain restaurants, revel in creativity, hang out with people who love me, hug and be hugged, make music, think weird thoughts, write, laugh & cry with people, look at beauty all around me, and so on.

Despite all of this, I love my life.

Denise Canny asks, "Man... what have you done to deserve such a woeful existence?"

Over the last few years I decided to:

• love unreservedly;
• live unoffended;
• be me and enjoy it;
• do things i like and am good at;
• hug a lot.

Y'all beware, if you do these things, you could end up like me.

[1] Thanks, Randy Kirchhof, for that delicious expression.

Modern Thanksgiving checklist:

Modern Thanksgiving checklist:

[ ] Family
[ ] Friends
[ ] Food
[ ] chainsaw to cut swath through hordes of shoppers to get what I want

Black Friday is the anti-holiday. I hate it with a perfect hatred.

It's an abomination, whether I am looking at it from a Christian standpoint or not. It elevates greed to insane levels. If there is a god of Black Friday, it's Loki.

What's wrong with it? Beyond the obvious (making greed a virtue and people treating each other like scum to get what they want a few bucks cheaper), it's not even good for the economy. It forces merchants and manufacturers to focus too much on a single day and it forces people to work unnecessarily over the holidays.

It makes a total mockery of Thanksgiving.

Boycott Black Friday!

What if They Threw a Wedding and Nobody Came?

Anyone who knows me realizes I'm not big on formality (an understatement of epic proportions). Nevertheless, my bride to be wanted a traditional wedding so we had one-- for the most part. Money was tight so there were some oddities on the way, but it was traditional enough.

One thing, however, horrified my mother. We didn't send out invitations. We didn't see the point in spending that money (this was before the internet; you couldn't simply invite everyone via a Facebook page or email). It was all in person or over the phone.

Mom did her best. Her final argument, her trump card, should (in her mind) have forced my hand.

"You realize your grandmother will never come without a formal invitation."

"She loves me. She'll come." (She came and never said a word about an invitation.)

Her frustration now at critical mass, a second motivation beyond Mom's simple love of all things formal slipped out. "All these years, I've sent hundreds of gifts to all our relatives and friends when their kids got married. It's time we got some back." This was so foreign to who I am that to this day I'm still not sure how I kept a straight face or what I said.

(In Mom's defense, she grew up dirt poor on the wrong side of the tracks in Selma, Alabama during the depression so propriety and formality went hand in hand with respect. I understood her viewpoint; Sharon and I simply saw things differently.)

But I digress (surprise!). Suffice it to say that though we kept it simple and inexpensive it was traditional, and we planned it. Nothing was left to chance.

Most people plan weddings. It may be traditional or non-traditional, but weddings tend to be planned. Nobody simply throws a wedding.

Nobody except Stefanie McLin and Matthew Monk. They threw a wedding.

There was a modicum of planning. I think the groom's mens' shirts matched. Their pants were all somewhere vaguely in the neighborhood of brown. The bridesmaids wore purplish dresses, varying from shiny, purple party dresses to a white sun dress with little purple flowers. Matt and Stef worked out with the pastor what the service and vows would be. They picked out flowers. Other than that they simply threw a wedding.

The facebook invite included the following items over the course of a few weeks (from memory, not verbatim, but all true):

• Invite anyone you like, whether we know them or not. Everyone is welcome.
• Who can help set up? There should be some sort of an aisle to walk down, and some chairs would be nice.
• Pot luck reception; it would be great if everyone posted here what you're bringing (very few did)

Questions the invitees asked included:

• Exactly where (in this 351 acre park) is it?
• How should we dress? (answer I found out Stefanie had given at her shower: "Wear whatever you want. You might want to play in the creek or go kayaking afterward.")

Someone sat up on the rocks above where chairs and blankets were set up (with two, 15 foot ribbons marking the aisle) and played guitar and sang until the wedding started. The parties walked in more or less like in any wedding, but a lot more relaxed, pretty much at their own paces.

Dogs wandered through. Nobody cared.

It was Will Bibee's first wedding. You have to know Will; this is a pastor who's been known to bring a rubber chicken to church to make sure people don't get too religious. The dude is chill. But he was just nervous enough to ask. "Who gives this man to this woman?" (I went with it. "I do!" but I don't think anyone heard over the laughter.) Will stopped in the middle to tell some funny stories about Matt and Stef. He referenced the whole thing as a hippie wedding (it was, but the drug of choice was the love of God).

Everyone then carried their chairs and blankets a good hundred and fifty yards to where the tables were set up for the reception.

Nobody really knew what would be there. Nobody cared.

As we set the food out Sharon realized there were no cups. A total pot luck, and the only thing missing was cups? Awesome! I drove to the store and bought cups. When I returned, I found someone had showed up with cups right after I left (we brought lots of cups home; if you throw a wedding soon I can bring cups!) We ran out of meat just before the last half dozen people got their plates; more meat showed up two minutes later. We had plenty of everything.

Even cake... and they had not planned a wedding cake. There was cake left over.

Several people showed up late, missing the ceremony entirely (most because they were part of a conference this morning). Nobody cared.

If you like gala performances and spending what could have been a down payment on your house for a big party, a dress you'll wear once, and rented tuxedos, that's fine. Go with what works for you. But I highly recommend throwing a wedding. If you can go with no expectations, just being with friends and family and having a good time, it will be a blast.

God doesn't care. The state doesn't care. You don't have to care.

I've known JP weddings that resulted in wonderful lifetime marriages. Then there's all the money and media attention Charles and Diana had, and we know how well that worked out. Our culture has bought into this lie we have to spend a ton of money and have a fancy ceremony to have a wedding. All you really need is two people committing to one another, and hopefully some form of family and community to celebrate with you and support you. Everything else is optional.

"But what if I threw a wedding and nobody came through?"

Ah, but what if they did? That would be something, wouldn't it?

It was.