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Today in My History 2001: Answering
"The Call" 2021: We've been shot
Books Read in 2022
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Books Read in 2022 Cast (updated 7/16)
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WHAT'S THAT YOU SAID? 4 February 2022 "Don't run. Your wombs will fall out." This sentence jumped out at me in the book I am currently reading ("Cloud Cuckoo Land"). It was said by a woman sending a girl on an errand in Constantinople in about the year 1450. It made me think of my grandmother. My grandparents lived in an apartment on a slight hill in San Francisco. Their front window looked out on the newspaper stand at the bottom of the hill, where new issues of the paper were delivered three times a day (they don't do that any more!). When the latest issue of the paper was delivered, my grandfather would give me money and send me down to pick up a copy. As I left the apartment, my grandmother would always say "Don't run! It's bad for your heart" and be angry with me if she learned that I had run up the stairs on the way back to the apartment. You wonder where these ideas come from. I remember that someone told me that dragonflies would sew up your lips if they got near you and it was years before I stopped being afraid of dragonflies.
In about the 5th grade we had a teacher who read us "health notes" right before we went to lunch. We often left the classroom slightly nauseous. I don't remember most of them but two stuck with me. One was about a boy who was playing under a palm tree when one of the palms dropped and imbedded itself in his head. The other was about two girls who ordered diet pills through the mail. One of them took the pill right away; the other put it on her dresser, to take it the next morning, and when she woke up, the pill had turned into a tapeworm. I wonder how a nun teacher was allowed to teach us such things! In our family we had a joke that if you didn't eat your vegetables your ears would fall off. The young son of a friend of ours was staying with us one night and when his mother was driving him home, he was very concerned and asked her if it was true that his ears would fall off if he didn't eat his vegetables. Kids will believe anything if it is said by an adult and sounds serious. They don't have enough life experience to be able to tell what is true and what isn't. This makes me think of what children of right-wing people are learning about our previous president and his administration. Are they being taught that The Big Lie is actually true? Do they learn that it's OK for the vice president to change the results of an election if he wants to? Do they think that it's OK for police to steal voting machines? Do they think that making rules for voting that makes it difficult to impossible for minorities to vote is a good thing? (Please tell me what's wrong with someone giving a bottle of water to a voter who has been standing in line in the sun for hours waiting for her turn to vote.) It's bad enough that Republican congresspersons seem to believe all these things, but maybe somewhere in the back of their heads, they know that they are all wrong, but children? Children will grow up believing the things they were taught and when they become voters, will that be the ultimate end of our democracy (if it hasn't ended yet)? [I haven't had the opportunity to talk with Brianna about what she is learning about government in her school, but I do wonder. Were the kids taught what a good man the 45th president was? Was his picture hanging in a place of honor in her school?] I've been listening to the former president talking about how "when" he is reelected in 2024, he will pardon all of the rioters sent to jail after January 6. And all the things he will do to control voting when he is in office again. (Has anybody ever pointed out to him that this is how he got into office in the first place...by defeating the candidate who got the most votes?) I can't believe with all the crazy stuff he's saying ... and with all the criminal behavior that is coming out in the January 6 hearings ... that his popularity is still in the 40-percents, that people still believe he should be the president
I've lived under a sort-of democracy for nearly 80 years.
Will the country still be a democracy when I die? |
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This is entry #7987