The Times, They MAY Be a Changin'

It's hard to know, I mean if, how much and when. Harder now than say six months ago, when I pretty much concluded I had figured most things out. By seventy that seems fair, about right.

But then along came a pandemic, an economic meltdown and then ANOTHER murder of a African-American. I was going to add "without cause", but hell, murder is death without cause isn't it?

People took the streets. One was forced to wonder in the earliest hours of this tragedy if part of the reaction was people just wanting so badly to get out and mix with others. That notion was dispelled rapidly. Most were wearing masks, and astonishingly, lots of them were white.

Lots of people are discussing whether this is like the mid-sixties. I was alive back then, living in Flint, Michigan a factory town with very segregated neighborhoods. I remember seeing the images of black men and women being blasted with water hoses and german shepherds raging to be released.

I won't say that I was outraged. I was a teenager and my head was filled with anything but social issues, morality, fairness, you know equality. I lived in white land, I went to school in white land. Most everyone I knew openly used the "n" word and I was no different.

But the marches got bigger and well, legislation passed and Johnson signed it into law amidst smiles and congratulatory backslapping.

Outward appearances changed but not much else. I know, real change did occur, but I saw no difference in MY neighborhood, MY school. And for all kinds of reasons not much changed in Black America either.

So I'm not especially capable of judging whether today is different in a serious way from the 60's.

But I'm betting it is.

I'm betting we are on the verge of an awakening in the world, and I'll explain why.

It's a thing called cosmic consciousness.

Take the LGBTQ community. For years public opinion didn't budge much. Those who favored equal rights for our gay and lesbian friends were a minority and nothing much changed. But then, suddenly, in the blink of an eye (certainly not to the men and women who were victimized by hatred) things changed. Now a majority favored gay marriage and gay adoption. At least it seemed that way.

As more and more businesses, aware of the demographics of their customers, began to feature gay couples and gay families in their ads, sure there were boycotts but they were almost universally ineffectual. While no one was looking a whole bunch of folks decided that gay was okay with them.

We may be looking at something similar today. Now solid and rather huge numbers of white folk believe that indeed there is systemic racism in this country and always has been. The system as they say was set up to promote and protect the rights of white people to control the lives of black people one way or another.

But that doesn't explain how it happened.

That's where cosmic consciousness comes in.

The God I believe in is a persuader rather than a "fixer". I just can't reconcile free will any other way than to accept that God wills us to our highest self but does not force. He calls to each and every one of us each moment urging us to our most human.

Some of us hear really well, most of us don't but occasionally. Some of us reject goodness, rightness, out of hand, believing that weakness makes one a "loser". But regardless the whispers go on for all our lives.. But we do change, some of us, over the years. God brings it to bear on us and sometimes we listen.

We are finally struck by the logic, the evidence, the MORALITY of this new idea that finally takes hold. We convert ourselves and we become "better" people.

God, as always has been busy, whispering all these centuries. Finally, I am suggesting, the tipping point has been reached. The flood gates blow open and the waters surge around the world.

People are gathering everywhere. Statues are being torn down WORLDWIDE, that represent men (sorry but I've seen no statues of women) who were authoritarian, traitors, and other such refuse. We shout, no we scream, "Black Lives Matter" .

We see and feel that this is a holy moment. I call it the recognition, either directly or by "feeling" that when we raise up this "other" all of us rise with them. That is the idea that I think is taking hold.

We are beginning to see that so many of us are other. Not just African-Americans but Latinos, Asians, women, gays, transgenders, and the first "others" in this country our Native peoples.  We are starting to recognize that right now those among us who need  the most are those we  were brought here against their will.

My hope and my dream is that this movement will continue and will travel to the next location and we will raise our voices to raise up that group who is being treated unfairly, and then another and another.

To those who think that we will simply become the new oppressors, think again. I don't think that will happen. If it does we deserve whatever fate lies in store, for we will have learned nothing.

But what I'm seeing around the world is not people who have learned nothing, rather the opposite. There is a quietness, a determined look, a steady eye. There is great pain, and deep frustration and a spilling of angry words often enough. But there is strength and a determination that this minute will not pass us by.

For God's sake, my generation, the generation of flower children and no more war, and countless claims of righteous equality to come, ended up failing America so badly that we are faced with a deranged madman at the helm of state. He will gladly take us to the pit of hell if it serves his interest of one.

Damn, we will not let this minute pass us by.

Tripping Over A Loose Neuron On the Way to the Pandemic

In times like this, one has entirely too much time on their hands. And when hands are idle, well, forgetting about the devil, I can get into plenty of trouble on my own.

So, I often spend lots of time wandering around in the logic, feelings, data, intuitive leanings and flotsom of my brain. A nice normal brain I think, not a brain hemmed in with superlatives or self-congratulatory adjectives.

Oh, I see, this is leaving you bored already huh?

Well, if you got better things to do, I'll understand. I blogged for ten years and mostly people suggested to me that they indeed had better things to do. And that was a time when there were ACTUAL better things to do.

Okay, I'll begin with the burning question that I must get out.

But first, let me set the background. This goes back to my childhood and attending public school with a variety of people, some friends and some not friends, mostly . I went to an institution known as Hamady High School located on the outskirts of the factory town known as Flint Michigan. It was not a large school (my graduating class was 103 if I recall).

A good many of my graduating class consisted of people I had gone to kindergarden with, the rest mostly I had met by junior high when the three feeder elementary schools all led to the one junior high. In other words, many of us grew up together and knew each other well.

Our school, like many others was extremely cliquish. There was the perverbial "in" group consisting of those persons who did the sports, cheered the sports, and "ran" the school government. They were on all the committees for float construction, pep rallies, prom planning. They were also the candidates for all the "pretty" things like queen and kings of various extravaganzas.

There was the "other" group consisting of my friends and acquaintances, and we befriended others who were "cool" and all that stuff. We wore leather jackets a lot, smoked cigarettes and drank a beer now and then. We "ran" with boys from so-called rough schools. Our group was not a group but smaller neucleic groups who interchanged people as events might dictate.

The next group was also unnamed but clear. Almost all of us were working class kids but some seemed to be worse off. They were the poorer among us and looked it. They kept to themselves mostly, or we made it clear that we wanted nothing to do with them.

Last were the group of catch-all folks. These were the nerds of the day, the "serious students" , the religious types. They were all nice but frankly they often didn't enjoy or had stricter parents and didn't participate.

We all stuck to our group. We might interact in class rooms as needed but there was no doubt when in the hallways or bathrooms, you kept to your own kind.

I started out in the "in" group but was pushed out inch by inch and I finally realized that I was not wanted by at least 8th grade or so, and by 9th grade I was finding friendship in the "cool" group.

Now fast track to the present.

We have to one degree or another reestablished some contact through Facebook. I decided when I got friend requests from people from the "in" group, that I would lay aside past grievances, and see where 30-40 years had taken these people and the people I called friends in high school. I decided to give everyone a clean slate to work from and let "bygones be bygones".

Before too long I realized that many of the "in" crowd had become fundamentalists and politically conservative if that is today a fair term given the wacked out theories some of them spout. True conservatives now blanch at being connected to these folks. I was quickled "unfriended" by a good many of them. (while they would probably recognize themselves here, none will read it, so no worries).

That simmered for years and I left Facebook, suffering from burnout over the 2016 election. I went to rallies, marched, carried signs, made dozens of phone calls to elected officials. And then I truly gave up and turned inward. I worked on my spiritual life, I quilted (2) knit (2) crocheted (2), mosaiced (2) and beaded up things (6). I macramed bracelets and necklaces.

And then the virus hit and I felt I should return to the news in some form. And eventually I wanted to touch base with people on Facebook, mostly to assure myself that folks were okay.

And after weeks of Facebook and seeing the same people still fighting so vigorously over the same issues--all people I admire to be sure--it struck me.

The payOFF is coming folks!

I realized that the people who I had connected with on Facebook after all these years who were my original "group" were essentially all liberals, all left of center by a mile in their thinking about race and religion, about equality and fairness, about the need to redistribute wealth in this country and return to a strong middle class.

I realized that all the people I had reconnected to in the in group, were not these things. I was regularly pointed to read this and read that--regularly cited to World Net Daily, Breitbart, and other notorious rags with little truth content. It was even explained to me by one lady whom I knew quite well, that there was not a racist bone in her body which was proveable by the fact that she took in a pregnant Black girl and helped her until she gave birth and as she said, "my goodness she was darker than Obama!" as if shade of unwhiteness was proof of her open-mindedness.

Oh by the way, all the nerds? They turned out to be all over the place, but MOST were and are damn fine individuals who think deeply and logically.

Now, it's important to know that as far as I can see, this has little to do with education or profession or lack of either. The spread of jobs and careers is large. Some stayed in Flint or nearby all their lives. Others have traveled and lived many places in the country. Married and divorced, remarried or not, there is no common thread I can find.

My question is this: In our youth, when we are still mightily uninformed and have so much yet to learn about the world and our place  in it, is there something subconscious  that reognizes "kindred" spirits, people who will one day think essentially along the same lines as we do? Who will judge the world and it's people by the same standards and definitions of decency, fairness, equality and so forth as we come to?

Make no mistake, I was raised to believe white people were superior. I recall incidents of my youth where I stated that, mimicing my father and other adults around me. By 11th grade or so, I was going to the occasional party with friends where there were Black kids and Hispanic kids and I thought it was way cool. I started to read more about race  especially in college where I had *gasp* Black friends, black boyfriends.  By the time I was in my second year of college I was ashamed of my past beliefs.

I don't recall my high school friends being any different from me. Perhaps they were but I didn't detect it.

So again, I ask, do we subconsciously see the "seeds' of the person others will become and gravitate to those like "us" whoever us is perceived to be at 13 or 16?

Did you have cliques at school? Anyone upon thinking back have similar experiences?

In the great scheme of things (gosh I just love lazy composing with phrases used by all), it's a fairly unimportant thing, but we have precious little to do these days left to our own devices as it were.

What say you?