Mejol didn't know

So, I still don't know how my parents met and I have no uncles or aunts to ask--all dead.

But we did talk about our grandmother, Lina Manona Jones, and her gun.

She ran a boarding house for a few years and had residents that couldn't be trusted. She carried a pistol in the pocket of her apron, and everyone knew it.

Once, when my Aunt Georgie couldn't get Grandma to come to the door of her trailer, she called my Dad to come and go in and see if Grandma was dead.

He knocked and knocked and opened the door with Aunt Georgie's key and called for Grandma all the way down the length of the trailer.

When he opened her bedroom door, she was sitting up with her gun aimed toward him.

No one died.

I mentioned in another post that my father had a pistol  under the counter of his bar and quit bar-tending when he had to point it at a drunk friend.

Mejol and I decided we were from 'pistol packin' people".

Not bad, though Mejol and I would never own a gun.

Not bad.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdTebleamxYfCasoyjiXB9Y40J4IesPwU

Link to my you tube blog

 

I just realized

I just realized today that I don't know how my parents met.

I should know that, shouldn't I?

But I don't.

He was a farm boy with an eighth grade education from Monroe County and she was a school teacher from McDowell County.

He did go to McDowell to work in the mines, so they must have met there--but I have no idea how.

He grew up on a turkey farm and was told from childhood that only stupid people in the city ate turkey. So when he was in a boarding house in the mine fields, he tasted turkey for the first time. He wouldn't believe it was turkey until the land-lady took him into the kitchen and showed him the carcass.

I know that but I don't know how he met my mother.

My mother grew up dirt poor. She wore rain boots to school one year because the family couldn't afford shoes for all 7 of their children (two of whom died in childhood).

Yet she and two of her sisters, Elsie and Georgie, all earned master's degrees (Elsie a doctorate) and taught school all their working lives. Elsie even taught in college for a few years.

I know all that but don't know how Virgil met Cleo.

I'll ask my cousin Mejol when I talk to her this week to see if she knows.

I'd love to know and don't know why I don't.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdTebleamxYfCasoyjiXB9Y40J4IesPwU  link to my video blog.

 

Why are women viewed differently?

 Besides Bernie Sanders (God love him) and his mittens, no one seemed to comment on any man's dressing at the Inauguration, lots of folks in the media and on line are obsessing about what Kamala and Michelle and Jill wore.

They wore what they wore, just as their husbands did.

But no press on the men.

Clothes are clothes.

All of us put them on every day and take them off every night.

Get over it America.

Clothes are just clothes.

I'm an Episcopalian

I've been emailing back and forth with my son, who is a member of the Episcopal Cathedral in Baltimore, about how hard it is to bear the name "Christian" when so many so-called "Christians" supported the former president, even up to and including the seditious attack on the U.S. Capitol on the Feast of the Epiphany.

Wise men, who were of other faiths, came that day to worship the toddler Jesus and give him gifts.

Not so wise men and women, on the celebration of that day, came to desecrate the symbol of our democracy and called themselves 'christian'.

We Episcopalians need to make clear that we are not 'christians' like the Evangelicals who supported Trump or the 'christians' who stormed the Capitol.

Obviously, not all those shouting 'hang Pence!' were there a 'christians', but some were.

It's hard to be called a Christian with no distinction about 'which' Christians we are.

I am an Anglican Christian who believes the vote was, as many in the past administration said, the most valid vote ever.

I am an Anglican Christians who supports democracy and the rule of law and equal treatment for all people and the end to voter suppression.

I am an Anglican Christian who wants racism stamped out, poverty defeated, and all people welcomed into this country--that welcomed all of us, except native Americans--when we came from different lands.

That's the Christianity I'm called to.

Not the 'christianity' that continues to support discrimination and sedition.

Here I stand.

Stand with me.

 

 

"One nation under God..."

 If it stopped there, we'd be in big trouble.

But it continues like this: "with liberty and justice for all."

No matter what you think, we are not a Christian nation.

We have Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Hindus and agnostics and atheists.

And we all have "liberty and justice" in this country.

Get over it, Evangelicals, we are a people of many faiths.

We need to acknowledge that and move on.

Religion is one of the things that divides us.

We need to realize how diverse we are as a people and proclaim "liberty and justice for all" over and over.

I love living in a diverse country--and I believe, with all my soul, in 'liberty and justice' for all of us.

"Normal"

I've listened to NPR and watched CNN, MSNBC and even Fox News and the word I've heard most is this: "normal".

The ceremonies, the press conference, the speeches, the music, the comments.

And the word I heard most today is this: "normal".

Biden and Harris have brought back 'normal' to our land.

The best thing the former President did recently was not show up for any of it.

That, if nothing else, brought normalcy back.

I love 'normal'.

I love 'quiet'.

I love 'boring', even.

And it's all back, thank the good Lord.

"Normal" is what we all need, what we have longed for for years.

And it's back.

Take a deep breath and breathe out saying "normal".

Didn't that feel good?

 

Breathe....

Nothing calms you down like paying attention to your breathing. Long deep breaths held for a few moments and slowly exhaled. Breathing is a central part of most meditation techniques.

Today I can breathe....

I watched the Biden/Harris inauguration most of the morning.

Only two weeks since mobs of people stormed the Capitol to try to stop the count of the Electoral College votes and 'hang Mike Pence', the scene was much different on the steps of the Capitol.

And I can breathe again....

The whole world can. The nightmare of the last 4 years is over--we can have peaceful, restful sleep tonight. Climate change, the pandemic, immigration reform, racism and inequality  and many other ignored issues will be addressed very differently now.

So, breathe....Breathe....Breathe....