So, yeah. I have been liking posting on IG, it seems like a good way to get things out there.
I didn't post two Fridays ago-did I do that one early? but anyway I was busy getting ready to go to Florida for the kids' Spring Break. Of course, I can't leave without cleaning the home top to bottom (it's super nice to come home to a clean house!) and had errands to run, things to do--I valiantly tried to clear off space on my laptop but it was a disaster and now I think I'll have to go to Chicago/the Apple Store to have them help me...all this before leaving on the big road trip.
Florida was great. Warm, sunny, by the sea, what could be better? And it's always amazing to me when I've done a long drive-I cannot believe I did that! But during that week it was the 20th anniversary of me getting my face slashed and so I wrote a small post about that. It has been suggested to me that my bio lead off with that incident, but it's not really something I want to sensationalize or try to use to my advantage. Yet, the whole situation was a story. And it's still very vivid.
Then, there was the whole nuttery over trying to take away all the funding for Special Olympics. Is it to own the libs? I mean, what is wrong with people? To provide an easy layup for someone to then go and "save" the funding? WTF. My son has only gone to one basketball practice but he really loved it! He can't even dribble a ball but he was included and it made my heart swell with a sigh of relief. If you have a child with disabilities, one struggle is the realization that friendships are hard to come by and activities are few and far between.
It seemed like there were some grown men (no discernible disability) playing basketball in another court with some of the adults in Special Olympics and that was also awesome.
Plus, Special Olympics is almost all volunteers.
I was surprised at how agitated I became over the proposal to defund Special Olympics. Enough with the cruelty!
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My daughter wanted a YA book and there is a super cool independent bookstore where we were so I looked around and picked up two books-"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and Elie Wiesel's "Night" for some extra empathy-inducing brain stuffing. I started with UTC and am thinking about the context and the purpose. It's really quite an extraordinary book and Harriet Beecher Stowe really did a genius move, though the fact that the Civil War came after was probably very painful for her. (or I imagine it must have been).
On the way down, we had stopped at the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL and it was really quite moving. My daughter had not wanted to go because she wanted to get to where we were going, but I'm glad we went. The memorial is so well done and hopefully the start of something better, because the fact that POC are still not fully accepted is a stain on our nation.
I was wondering who could/would be the Harriet Beecher Stowe of our time? Empathy. She sought for all people to understand that people held in slavery were just like people who were not. And she did a great job of that.
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well, now I'm being called back to work on our taxes.
And encourage my daughter to write more lyrics for a school assignment to write a blues song. She's off to a good start, needs to add some more thoughts then maybe I can help her get it into a structure. She and I wrote a song together--like 4 years ago now. It was fun and so let's see what she comes up with!
ok, maybe tomorrow I'll write another post. xo