That's a picture of a vintage movie theater I took from the car window in some small town on our way up to Tennessee. I will tell you this- there is some scenic shit going on in a lot of those little towns between the downtown historical areas, the antebellum homes, the cute smaller homes that have been maintained for many, many years (always my favorites), the old theaters, the city halls and county courthouses, some of them quite old and rather majestic in a small town sort of way.
And the names of some of the towns.
Ooh boy.
I saw a name on the map as we were heading up that really made me laugh. The name of the town was "Soddy Daisy."
No. Not kidding. Truly.
And by golly, we had lunch on the way home in Soddy Daisy. We ended up a Mexican restaurant which had some of the best wall murals I've ever seen.
This too, is the south. Almost every tiny town you drive through now has its own Mexican restaurant. Or even two of them. You know how often I speak of The Mexican in Monticello. Well guess what? Another Mexican restaurant has moved in too and that rather upsets me. The original restaurant is so very good and so very reasonable and we have all watched the hard work that has gone into it over the years and yes, decades. Same people. Same family. The new restaurant is attached to a few other Mexican restaurants in Tallahassee so they are not quite as home-town. I am interested to see what will happen. I know that for awhile people will be curious and go there and then we shall see where loyalties lie.
One more thing I wanted to say about the south is about the public school education here and I am not proud of this.
Back when schools well and truly desegregated, there were a lot of white folks who did not want their precious little white babies going to school with black kids. Before then, the white schools got all the funding, while the black schools got diddly squat. Text books that had been replaced in the white schools, inferior facilities including everything from classrooms to labs to cafeterias to restrooms to sports fields to...
Well. You get the point.
So, here we are and the Black kids get to go to the GOOD schools and all of a sudden there is a huge influx of private, generally Christian schools for the white kids to attend and guess what? The funding for the public schools goes way down. I had a friend who taught in a public school in Havana, Florida which is not that far from here and that exact thing had happened. He suggested I might want to come volunteer in his classroom because they sure needed some help.
And I did.
And I do believe there may have been ten white kids in that entire elementary school.
And I need to add here that the private Christian schools were not exactly bastions of learning. At all. But hey! They were mostly white!
I could say so much more about this but I'll leave it there. The schools in Jefferson County, where I live, are still to this day so underfunded and inadequate that although this would be an excellent bedroom community for many people who work in Tallahassee, the school system is so bad that people with children simply will not move here despite the lower taxes, housing costs and more laid-back community.
Am I proud of this? Oh hell no. Still. I think things have the possibility to change although even Leon County's school system is taking drastic cuts in their budgets right now. And this is on Florida and Ron DeSantis in particular whose main mission in life appears to be to be as cruel to as many people as he can.
That's enough of that.
Glen's gone back up to The Camp as he calls it. He's meeting a guy tomorrow morning early to discuss the finishing of the floor. We are thinking about just getting a sort of concrete floor finishing which is quickly done, relatively inexpensive, and yes, there are choices as to how it will end up looking. As you may remember, we have been going back and forth about what sort of flooring to put in. The floors under the old carpet were just concrete or cement. Don't ask me the difference and honestly, I do not care. And Glen has reached the point where he just wants it done. And again- I really don't care. This is his baby. And rugs can be laid.
So that's that news and I spent most of the afternoon outside. I intended to spend all my time in the garden but looking out my bedroom window I realized that the bamboo is coming on strong and had to be kicked.
The bamboo appears to be extra sturdy this year. That one, which was in the camellia bed, is as big around as my wrist and about a foot and a half tall.
I probably spent half an hour kicking what's come up although I know I did not get it all because that shit is incredibly adapt at camouflage, hiding itself in flower beds and other garden areas. Today was Day One. There will be many more.
And then I got to the garden where I pulled a row of bolted arugula and some of the lettuces that were quite ready to come out of the ground and weeded the other side of the fence where the beans are planted and replanted a few areas where, upon closer examination, I realized that some of the sprouts had been done in by that last freeze. You know I love to weed so that was good.
I picked a lot of leaves off the arugula I had pulled that were still fine and fresh and I cleaned those and the lettuces in the garden sink Mr. Moon had made for me and what a joy was. I did a final rinse off when I got in the house and this is what the result was.
Mmmm...
Salad. Ain't that a pretty mess of greens?
Requisite picture of Maurice in the garden with me.
This morning when she slipped out the ripped screen of the back porch under the dog door to go about her morning rituals I gave her some instructions to go find me a kitten.
"You can be its mama," I said although that was a lie. I would be its mama. "It will love you and you will love it."
That too, was no doubt a lie but no harm in trying. Right?
Rachel had her back surgery today. It went well and they were home by noon. Phew! They told her no BLT for three months.
WHAT?
That would be Bending, Lifting, Twisting.
I think. I know for sure it's not bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
I'm so glad the surgery is over. Getting it has been a long and difficult road but it has finally happened. Now. May it really and truly help with her chronic and constant pain. She is a brave and strong woman to have been persistent enough to finally get doctors to really look at what was going on and to realize that she needed some help.
We shall not discuss how women are so often dismissed when it comes to complaints of pain.
But they are.
I believe I will go make a salad.
Love...Ms. Moon
I have fresh salad envy now. I'm glad May got help after a lot of pain. I hope she continues to do well now. Tell her an old northern lady who's never met her is thinking about her.
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear Boud. It was Rachel who got the surgery but I have so many family members that it really is hard to keep up with their names. I know. I call them by the wrong names myself at times.
DeleteThose are some gorgeous murals! Such color! We’re still buried under feet of snow. We have bare roads so there’s hope for spring and buying some garden plants. Lots of healing thoughts for Rachel. Back pain is no joke!
ReplyDeleteBack pain affects every moment we make. And chronic pain of any kind is a sort of torture that we don't realize the seriousness of until we experience it.
DeleteWomen continue to get the short end of the stick, even with female doctors it seems. I'm glad she's had the surgery and I hope her recovery goes well.
ReplyDeleteThose murals are beautiful.
I don't understand the US and how schools are funded, or not funded. Here public schools are funded by provincial and municipal taxes, but our fucking government, I spit on them, has started funding independent schools (Christian schools that can refuse kids even though they get public funding). The government only pays 70% of the normal, so the government is happy. Apparently the parents are happy to fork over tuition to insulate their children from the big, bad world of immigrants, poverty, and children with learning difficulties. Makes me so fucking angry.
However, working in the garden sounds wonderful and hopefully in two months I too will be in my garden:)
Yes! Our GD state has also started giving funding to private schools and that is just WRONG! There's supposedly this whole free choice when it comes to schools here now but I am not sure how that works. It all makes me so angry too. When the budget cuts here were announced, they said they'd have to cut programs for arts and sports. As if those were not important.
DeleteYes! You WILL be in your garden and that will make you happy.
One of my few remaining cousins lives in Soddy Daisy. I am the oldest remaining cousin on maternal side of the family and she is 5 years younger, but not nearly in as good a shape as me! I just called her to catch up after failing to do so for much too long and wasn't sure she would even be alive - as I am sure her no-good son wouldn't let me know. BUT she is and still living at home alone. So she caught up with my life and I listened to the same-old same-old she told me the last time I called.
ReplyDeleteLove love your gardening efforts - they even spur me of to plant a couple of tomato plant or two. But first I have to dig out 5 years of garlic gone wild out of the raised garden bed - and a trash tree which is taller than me now. We shall see.
My mom lives in Soddy, just above the 27 split on the way to Decatur. Love how we find neighbors on Mary’s blog! — Jenn
DeleteIt is almost unbelievable to me that TWO people who read here have connections in Soddy Daisy. Who could have guessed that? And yet, here we are! I love it!
DeleteAna- I have some garlic going wild too. I should do something with it. Pull it and plant zinnias there for one thing.
Racism runs so deep and is so hard to eradicate, isn't it -- it's maddening. Those are awesome murals!
ReplyDeleteI don't understand it, Debra. Evolutionarily, we come from the same line of critters as apes, of course, or at least we are cousins, and they are very, very distrustful and often antagonistic of "others". Those not of their tribe. I think we still have some of that fear. But I also believe a lot of racism is learned behavior. And just plain fucking ignorance.
DeleteThis disparity in Education goes way back and hasn't improved all that much in my whole lifetime really. My Dad went to the Indian Schools and they took the Children away from their Families, mistreated and abused them, many even Died, put them to work and called it an 'Education'... they called it Kill the Indian and Save the Man... Dad Lost Three Brothers who never made it to Adulthood. He vowed we'd get a better Education and more Opportunities which is why he made a Career out of the Military, Serving 27 Years, and mostly asked for Overseas Assignments where he was treated better than in America. Racism runs deep, we should not have generational wealth nor the Ethnicity of the Child dictating what kind of Education they should receive. Every Child in America, if given a decent Education and Opportunities would enrich the Nation greatly and be an Asset to all of Society. My Opinion is we've dumbed down our Nation so much now it's why someone like Donnie Two Dolls got Elected in the first place and why he says he Loves the Uneducated... easier to manipulate and weaponize poorly educated people and give them a perceived Enemy to Hate so that the Rich can further exploit them.
ReplyDeleteBohemian, I agree with every word you wrote. That was beautiful. Your father must have been an amazing man. And a smart one. I think a lot of Black men in those times also joined the military as a career for the same reasons your dad did. You want to hear something funny? Where I grew up, there were almost no native people at all and I had NO IDEA that there was prejudice against them in places where there was a population of them. Talk about your learned behavior...
Deletein my opinion, funding is a disaster for public schools. Wealthy communities have a large property tax base, and the schools get a good amount of funding. In my community our taxes are one of the highest in the entire state of MA. Yet when schools were rated across the state, ours was rated #23. Not #1 or 2 or 3! Despite the money allocated, performance is not so great. Sometimes, I feel decisionmakers feel sports are more important than education. For example, our regional high school is looking to add concession stands and bathrooms to support the playing fields at the high school.
ReplyDeleteStrong funding does not guarantee top performance. The system is broken.
Your garden is off to a good start with harvesting greens already.
The bamboo is relentless. Nothing seems to stop it.
Now that all the snow is gone, I will be spreading lime on my property to counter the highly acidic soil.
You are correct in that funding does not always dictate performance but it can certainly have a huge influence. We should start, I think, with paying our teachers more money. Their salaries are unbelievably dismal. And these people are taking care of our CHILDREN! Not just taking care of them but teaching them what they need to know to function in this world and also, they are expected to be social workers. It has become quite literally a thankless job.
DeleteThe system is broken.
Bamboo. I have an entire jungle of it. All I can seem to do is try my best to contain it within its present boundaries.
That is a delicious mess of greens, I can almost taste them. Gentle hugs to Rachel from me.
ReplyDeleteYes, m'am!
DeleteForgot to say SHAME on your Government systems, cutting school funding just because the kids are black?? SHAME SHAME SHAME!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, these days it's more a question of numbers in the classrooms. As white parents send their white kids to private (often inferior) schools, the number of kids in the public system drops. But it's all related. The county I live in has a very large Black population and it is a very rural county so, as I said- the tax base ain't much. And of course the poorest suffer the most from lack of funds.
DeleteOur bamboo starts sprouting more like late April or early May - we always call it "bamboo bashing" but kicking is more accurate. And then the kicked over shoots have to be picked up and composted because otherwise they start to smell terrible. I would like to go back in time and have a word with the neighbor that started planting that mess! There are businesses around here that specialize in bamboo eradication - which tempts me but birds nest in it and for sure nothing else can grow in the trashed soil where it's been for so long. Complain complain.
ReplyDeleteCeci
Yes. It is kicking. It's not hard, really. The hardest part for me is finding all of it. Every year some escape me until I realize they're ten feet tall and way too mature to kick over.
DeleteSigh.
The same bamboo that grows in my back yard grows all up and down the railroad track which is also pretty much in my back yard.
We need some pandas!
The education system is a disaster. How a country so rich can allow this to still go on is appalling. Not surprising, just appalling. And yes that is a pretty mess of greens (and washed in your new sink). I’m impressed you won the battle with that bamboo shoot! And to think that might not be more than a couple day’s growth. Wishing Rachel well. I hope she’s a well-behaved patient and has a good recovery. Also hope these first couple of days aren’t too miserable. Abrazos to her (and, of course, to you).
ReplyDeleteI know, I know. We can manage to spend billions and billions on a war that has no purpose whatsoever except to distract us from the fact that Donald Trump raped little girls and yet health care and education cannot get the money they need. It is absolutely insane. We have lost all sense of decency as a country.
DeleteIt is astounding how fast bamboo can grow.
I think Rachel WILL be a compliant patient. She wants to feel better so badly.
She said this morning that she was hungry so that's a good sign, right?
Abrazos back to you, dearheart.
Poor Rachel. It would be hard not to B, L, T for three whole months! Hope her recovery goes smoothly and quickly!
ReplyDeleteMy city is known for its great public schools and we've gotten very diverse over the many years I have lived here. It should be like this all over the country and it's terrible that it's not.
I don't even know how you can do that! She's not supposed to lift anything heavier than five pounds. I mean- the laundry weighs five pounds sometimes.
DeleteIt sounds like you live in a very, very progressive and smart city.
The murals are quite simply amazing.
ReplyDeleteAren't they?
DeleteThose are some great murals. Reminds me of the time in Idaho (I think, maybe a different state but up there) we were passing through, hungry, took an exit for a little town and the first place we saw was a little hole in the wall Mexican cafe. We were the only people there and the lady didn't speak english but man were those tacos good. I hope the new Mexican restaurant won't seriously impact the family owned one which just being in there is a delight.
ReplyDeleteI really don't understand the mental attitude of so many white people about black people, that they are somehow inferior and icky and refuse to allow them anything of quality...education, housing, jobs, etc.
I hope Rachel's surgery is successful.
I got huevos rancheros in that restaurant and they were so good. Nothing like eggs and tortillas and beans. And salsa! Perfect.
DeleteWe shall see how things go in Monticello with the new place. I don't see how they can be better than El Rancho Grande.
I have so many theories on why white people can be so prejudiced against other races, especially Black people. I honestly believe that we carry a huge burden of guilt for the enslaving of their ancestors by our ancestors and if it can be believed that Black people are inferior to white people and not even quite human (the predominant theory back in early times, of course), then it doesn't seem quite as bad as having enslaved and tortured you know, human beings.
That's just one theory.
I hope Rachel's surgery is successful too. She deserves a life not filled with pain.
I think our schools are in big trouble here. They sing their own praises, but it is just not true. I don't even know how we fix it from here. We have first graders telling the teacher to 'fuck off' and teachers can not punish them for that because it is felt that the kids learn this in the home and chastising them is criticizing their parents. That is foolishness.if a school can't hold children to a behavioral standard, how can they manage educational standards? You know, I picked up some old text books. If you want to see how far educational standards have declined, take a look at what 8th graders were learning in the 50s or before.
ReplyDeleteI have an old elementary school math book from when Glen's daddy was in school and a high schooler could not do these problems now. I honestly don't know why standards have slipped so much further every year. I'm not in the classroom so I can't speak to the behavioral issues. I never hear anything like that when my grands talk about school. But who knows? I do know that back when I was in elementary school and corporal punishment was almost an everyday classroom event, it did not seem to do one bit of good as far as I could see. The same kids got paddled day after day for doing the same things. And it sure did not help anyone learn any better when it came to reading, writing, and arithmetic either.
Deletebeautiful salad greens, yum and lovely murals...and school funding..I'm not sure how it works exactly - is anyone sure? Varies to some degree by State and no doubt... especially in the south....no doubt that race and economic status figures into that big time. So, so much farther to go on that front. Glad Rachels surgery went well! happy martini Friday to you all!
ReplyDeleteSusan M.
State by state, county by county, town by town. Another problem is that lawmakers seem to think they can dictate what sort of programs our schools need to use which is completely ridiculous. They don't know shit about education.
DeleteMartinis will be a solo affair for me tonight! Glen's still off at the Camp, as he calls it.
I have heard a tale.. A woman was missing her cat and told her older cat," Bring home our Tommy",and she did.. I am inclined to believe it as the cats under our care seem to understand us.
ReplyDeleteOh. I've always said that I think cats can understand what humans say perfectly well. They simply pretend they cannot.
DeleteI also think that Maurice has no interest at all in bringing me a kitten.
I’ll be thinking about Rachel. No bending for three months is challenging, I just got through no bending past 90 degree for. Six weeks and that was challenging enough. Does Rachel have one of those grabber tools to help pick things up? I loved that thing. I just might give everyone one for Xmas.
ReplyDeleteI love my grabber too! Also, a pair of very long-handled tongs that I sort of got by accident. I can reach things in the kitchen easily with them that I could not without them. I'll ask Rachel if she has a grabber.
DeleteHa! When you said BLT I immediately thought bacon, lettuce and tomato. I thought, "Why would they prohibit that?!"
ReplyDeleteThe greens and Maurice are looking fab and yes, the schools in some part of Florida are a problem. Where I grew up we had maybe three black kids in our entire public school -- more due to segregation in housing opportunities than in academics, but same effect. I suspect it's more integrated now but maybe not.
I hear Ron DeSantis is looking at another presidential run in 2028. FFS! Will we NEVER be rid of these people?!
I am going to have to add old men to the women who get pain dismissed. My father complained of leg pain all last winter - the Drs he saw all dismissed it with "your age, your hips" and he swore that there was more and even spent good money going to specialists that one Dr referred him to in case it wasn't hips, only to be told "your age, your hips" - the only thing that specialist gave that was anywhere near value for the $$$ he cost was the name of an orthopedic surgeon who sold him the potential for happiness before the scans taken for the miracle hip replacement showed the tumours all through his bones that were causing the pain.
ReplyDelete