Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Dig It Friday Round-Up
I feel like I’ve aged five years in a month. It’s like the age fairy got fed up with my prancing around thinking I was forty and decided to just slam the door on that nonsense. Actually, it’s the result of getting my cataracts removed – having perfect, crisp vision comes with a cost. Blurs serve. Remember that. That which is blurry is open to interpretation.
I’ve given the torment of gardening the heave-ho. I have five pots of geraniums, a tiny patch of basil and cilantro, and one hanging plant along with the perennials already in the ground – the hostas and such that would grow even if they were paved over. The truly resilient, that’s what’s left. And no fucking vegetables, no Victory Garden (oh, so un-aptly named). I’m done with trying to be Little Miss Farmer. I am hanging up my spade forever. It’s a deep and exhilarating freedom I’ve never felt before.
A tremendously rich guy who is also a local elected official bought a $2.6 million historic house on Milwaukee’s swanky Lake Drive and is going to tear it down and build a new house. And people went nuts. Not seriously nuts. Not 24/7 picketing or tying themselves to the door knobs nuts. Just online petition and ambiguous yard signs nuts. It irked me at first that some insanely rich guy could just buy something historically important and flatten it and then I thought, so what? Nothing lasts forever. In a few years, we’ll forget it was even there.
We went to the symphony tonight and I fell asleep several times. It was a very long, very dramatic piece of music called Carmina Burana by Carl Orff that involved the full orchestra, an adult chorus of about 100 people, a youth chorus with about 50 kids, and three soloists. And captions, including this one, “she has a fine head of hair but, when it comes to seizing an opportunity she is bald.” I was awake for that one and it has stuck with me. It has also stuck with me that in this majority minority city the youth chorus of 50 kids had just a single African American child.
It is real easy to fall prey to becoming a bb in a bare room. Just rolling from side to side endlessly from one injustice to another – kids at the border, ICE ’rounding up’ families to deport, gun violence, homelessness, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and on and on. I’m pretty locked in to homelessness, menstrual equity, and senior issues but a very big part of me wants to get in the car and go to Texas to do something about the kids being kept in cages. Like what, like what could a person possibly do? I don’t know. I’m going to look into it, though, and report back.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Hello from Andalucía!
I only found you a few short weeks ago and am greatly enjoying your writing. After reading this particular entry above, I left the tab open as I knew I had just read what you needed on another blog, though it took me a few days to find it again.
In answer to your ending of “Like what, like what could a person possibly do? “, here you are.
https://onehotmessalaska.blogspot.com/2019/06/suggested-letter-to-congress-about.html
The situation is appalling. It’s got to the point where I can no longer read anything about Trump directly, finding it a fraction less daunting to read about these things from people who are strongly against, so that I can persuade myself that right will prevail eventually with the actions and votes of people such as you and onehotmess. Thank you for being the much-needed sanity in all the craziness.
Thank you!
I am often in awe at the way you capture my thoughts and feelings, and I am sure, those of many of us who have “been around awhile.
I love gardening. But the truth is that the realities of aging – creaky joints and waning strength – make it much harder to do the work. When we got married nearly 38 years ago, one of Jim’s pronouncements was, “I don’t want to be a farmer!” And the message was clear – if I wanted flowers or food to grow in our yard I was on my own. In recent years he’s started helping, occasionally pulling a treasured poppy or bee balm because it looks like a weed, but doing the digging and hauling I can no longer do. He is not happy in this work. So while I am not ceasing, I am returning flower beds to lawn, slowly, and although I know it is best, it makes me sad.
Only one African American kid. Unfortunately, not surprising. I recently had a conversation with someone that I thought was fairly enlightened and then they started ranting about how inner-city families should just get themselves somewhere where there are fruits and vegetables so that they eat healthier. And I looked at her in amazement because she didn’t seem to realize that transportation, funds, and other things might get in the way of that.
Amazement is correct!
I work in a doctor’s office, and we see a range of patients in their ability to pay. A new technician was commenting at lunch about her work experience at her previous job, and she said that the low-income patients were always so mean. I responded that they are worn out and degraded and waiting to be judged by others, and it is a defense mechanism. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to me.
Good for you for showing her things through a different lens.
I’ve dramatically downsized my gardening expectations for myself, love puttering around, love things that return each year, have a few herbs and pretty flowers and very happy with that. over time, priorities change, things that we once worried about fade away, and life becomes easier and less stressful. as for the babies at the border and state of the world, this seems to be so much worse, and like you, I wish I could do something to help.