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.
ReplyDeleteThose 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!
ReplyDeleteWomen 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:)
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.
Racism runs so deep and is so hard to eradicate, isn't it -- it's maddening. Those are awesome murals!
ReplyDeleteThis 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.
ReplyDeletein 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.