Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Have We Overcome Yet?


Here you have a perfectly lovely photo of some roses and some chickens. It is a rather meaningless picture and I have had a rather meaningless day. 

I have done something which seems to have solved the problem of my phone constantly dropping the internet connection. Don't ask me what I did because I do not know. But I did something. I have not solved the router problem because I looked that situation up on Google and the instructions seemed insurmountably difficult to me but I'm sure if I set my mind to it, I probably could figure it out. Mr. Moon's phone also reports that his security is weak and he gets the same message about refiguring the WiFi but he says, "It's been like that forever. I don't care." 
There you go. 

I suppose the high point of my day has been ordering a new nightgown from the Vermont Country Store. I actually made a list today of things I need to purchase. I decided that I am going to be more organized in all ways. 
That's a lie. 
I decided that I might as well make at least a tiny stab at it. And what's the first thing you do when you need to organize? Make lists, right? Nothing says determination like a good list. 
Hell, I even went to the shelf in the kitchen where I keep random things that I have no idea what to do with and dug out an old notebook that I'd bought at Old Navy, believe it or not, years and years and years ago. It's such a cool notebook that I've hardly ever used it but I'm not going to live forever so why not?

It looks like this. 

Front


Back

The pages are heavy duty paper and are lined. Inside the notebook interspersed between the blank pages are beautiful photos like the covers of vintage Mexican postcards, posters, and so forth. I have used a few of them for card-making. Well, back when I did things like that. 

It turns out that I had used at least a few of the pages of the notebook. There are lists in my handwriting, a wretched poem or two. The lists gave me pause. One of the pages' list went like this.


Wait. What? Where we planning on opening a coffee shop or a bar? I have a vague memory of that. Did I do real, adult research? 
It would appear that perhaps I did. Here's another list I found.


And then it occurred to me that this list came from the days when Kathleen and I were the Foley artists for the old time radio show productions that we used to do at the Monticello Opera House. 
Wow. 
When Kathleen coerced me into doing this with her, I didn't know a Foley artist from a Foley catheter. I knew a lot more about Foley catheters, actually. But I learned and oh, we had so much fun! The productions were not real radio shows, obviously, but we used authentic old radio show scripts and the actors all dressed in costumes of the era and sat in a semi-circle of chairs until their turns at the mic came up. Kathleen and I sat on tall stools behind our table with all of our sound-effects-making props and we knit and crocheted onstage, waiting for our services to be needed as per the script. I would bring a thermos of what we made quite clear was whiskey or some brown liquor but which was, in reality, as fake as the tiny door we used to open and shut when that was called for. It was red bush tea in that thermos that we sipped throughout the performances. We called ourselves The Miller Sisters because oddly enough, "Miller" was both our maiden names. 
We broke china onstage. We shot fake ray guns. We slammed down ancient, heavy telephones, we made the sound of horse hooves with coconuts, and we had an actual avalanche that our beloved Colin made for us to use in one of the Lone Ranger scripts. We had a wheelbarrow full of gravel that Kathleen could dump into a kiddy pool in the orchestra pit. It was a show-stopper! 
Oh, god. I'm feeling so nostalgic. 
We did everything completely straight-faced and no matter what happened, we showed no reaction. And things did happen. Trust me. But it turned into a beautiful bit although once I did break my toe while kicking a trashcan across the stage. 
One must suffer for one's art. 

So I found those lists today and remembered and I did the small and insignificant things that I do around here and made my little list of things I need including new towels and shelf organizers and hung the clothes on the line and cleaned the hen house and made sourdough dough. 

I'm not going to lie to you- it's been a bit of a hard day but the fact that the Minnesota police officer who murdered Daunte Wright has been charged with second degree manslaughter has been slightly satisfying. I would be happier, of course, if the charge had been, oh, murder since that's what it was, but she's been booked, and as far as I know is in jail. 
I swear to god, I don't even have the words to begin to say how ashamed I am of my country, my race. Another mother has lost her son. Another child has lost his daddy. Our world has lost another soul because a police officer saw nothing but Black and male. 
She thought she was using her taser? 
Fuck that shit. 

The day that a white kid gets pulled over for having something hanging from their rear-view mirror and then shot in the chest is the day that the pigs flying out my butt will burn in hell. 
I had a Virgin of Guadalupe car deodorizer hanging from my rear-view mirror for years because I loved it in the ironic sense that I love that goddess and never once did I worry that a cop would pull me over for it and of course, they never did.

Duante Wright is never going to be able to report, as I have just done, a completely normal day of human life. No small chores, no memories, no feelings of any type. 
Erased. Completely and utterly. Shot and killed. Dead and gone. 
You want to talk about cancel culture? There you have it. 

I am so sorry. 

Love...Ms. Moon







25 comments:

  1. your day has been all over the map, so to speak. Here.. cold, quiet... I am SO sad about yet another black man killed...because of.....bias and stupidity? I don't even have words. But..... here, we finally (after 25 years) have the news that the murderer of Kristin Smart, who disappeared 25 years ago.....has been arrested and held without bail- along with his father, who helped conceal the horrible crime. Really? 25 years? WTF? I can only hope her family is finally getting some closure after so many years of heartbroken sadness and major frustration. My heart aches almost every day at the senselessness of it all
    Susan M

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    1. Kristin Smart's family may now know what happened to her but I do not think that the knowledge of how she died will bring any sort of relief. The horror is unimaginable. I've just read about a thirteen year old boy who was murdered by cops in Chicago two weeks ago and I am ready to give up on the human race altogether.

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  2. Your recitation of a night on stage is as cool as when it happened. Actually, I remember some of the last shows you were in. Well done.

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    1. Thank you, Joanne- you have been with me for a very long time. I used to have a relatively exciting life, didn't I?

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  3. Your words on 'cancel culture' were probably the most powerful thing I've read today.

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    1. Well, when we say we live in a cancel culture, we don't know the half of it, do we?

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  4. Yes. It's disgusting.
    But to be honest, so much of modern life is based around disgusting, wrong ideas about life being promoted as virtues, as acceptable, as aspirational, while we continue on our path of destruction. The veil is so firmly pulled down over our eyes.

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    1. You're right, Jo. We are a strange and horrifying species.

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  5. Your handwriting style is so American with its loops, its slant and its flowing connectivity. It is a style that I have observed before - especially - though not exclusively - from American women. It must have something to do with how handwriting is or was taught in elementary schools.

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    1. When I was learning handwriting, every class room had a strip above the chalk board of how each letter was supposed to be formed. And I tried my hardest to copy it. You can find an example here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/803400021029114021/
      Did you not have these examples?

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    2. I think I am the same generation as YP. My experience in the 70's and 80's was that no importance was placed on hand writing. As long as you could do a basic print, that was legible, that was fine. My son aged 8 in 2011 had to practice again and again what we call cursive

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  6. It's all so senseless. I've been live streaming the Chauvin trial while pottering about at home and was chilled by the defence pathologist witness yesterday. This man is being sued by the family of a man who died in police custody in 2018 which he determined was natural causes. I looked him up and he studied at university in South Africa from 1977-1983. You have to wonder how living under apartheid shaped his beliefs. I hope the jury don't find him credible.

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    1. From what I've read, he's been used in several cop-murder defense trials. I guess he's the go-to guy. It enraged me to read what he'd said, especially about the car exhaust being a part of the cause of death. Like- oh, George Floyd would have just laid there and sucked in car exhaust on his own, right? One more reason to convict if you ask me.

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    2. Exactly. If car exhaust had anything to do with his death it was Chauvin that held him there breathing it in. It's such twisted logic the defence are using I can't even make sense of it right now.

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  7. and six senators voted against the stop hate crimes against asians act including one of mine. this is one fucked up country filled with fucked up people. thought she was going for her taser (and why would the kid need to be tased anyway). what, did she have her fucking belt on backwards?

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    1. That's my question -- why did she go for her taser? Would she have tased a white person? I bet not.

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  8. Pulling people over for their air fresheners is BS and should be illegal. It's obviously a ploy meant to allow police to harass people. I mean, what kind of safety risk do air fresheners pose? Have you ever heard of someone having an accident because they couldn't see past their air fresheners? No. Because it never happens.

    I loved seeing the old lists and that Mexicana notebook is awesome. It's funny what we all have lying around the house, isn't it? I'm impressed you researched opening a restaurant or cafe! I want to hear that story!

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    1. It's supreme and utter horseshit and everyone knows it.
      I think we were planning on opening a bar, actually. That served sandwiches. Thank god we never did.

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  9. Oh Foley artistry sounds fascinating. While I would never want to be on stage, being able to work in the background sounds just amazing!

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    1. Oh, we were right at the front of the stage! Kathleen and I were hams for sure.

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  10. The stage and sound effects, your penmanship, all superb!! I love the front and back covers of your journal and your list. Police persons slaughter of POC, so american it is like the fake glorified stories of amercian history that children are taught-Policing has become lynching in the name of to serve and protect. It's all a fucking lie.

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    1. It IS all a fucking lie, isn't it?
      It's constantly sickening if you have even one eye half open.

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  11. What ellen abbott and Steve said, why would the kid need to be tased? Exactly! I am ashamed and angry and so sorry but I do not know what to do to make it better. Please let me know what I should do so I can try to help.

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    1. I don't know what to do to make it better. I think that the more people who do stop to witness and video arrests made on Black people, the better things may get. It's too easy to say that body cams glitched and for cops to lie in reports but if there are witnesses, if there is film, they can't get away with it as easily. And who knows? If there are more witnesses, the cops may not be as apt to use unnecessary force as often.
      Maybe.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.