231 Ready for December?

Are You Ready for December? 

Oh, my, dear readers, I am so NOT ready for it to be December yet. My “to-do” list is so long that it is now the “should-have-gotten-done” list. And, as the Christmas holiday season approaches, said list will get longer and longer. Thanksgiving is over. 

Black Friday was ignored by almost all of the family--we do it online!! Getting up EARLY is/was never a preferred option in our respective group--particularly not to find parking, to fight crowds, AND have one’s brain functioning to know what stores had what. By the way, the kitchen floor by the fireplace still has a pile of Black Friday ads that I would bet are at least a tree limb wasted. 

Thanksgiving is the time, I believe, when we are supposed to count our blessings and get along with one another. 

That means--in our families--politics is off-limits, sexual orientation is off-limits, and religion is “iffy.” 

Traditionally, we go around the table and say one thing for which we are thankful. Sometimes the responses are not what one hopes: “Thank goodness there is enough gravy this year” or “I am thankful no one brought sauerkraut.” Sometimes there ARE lovely sentiments, though. Ah, such are the memories we share. 

But to get to the real point of my blog this week is that I don’t think our citizens take the meaning of Thanksgiving --nor that of Christmas--in the spirit in which they were meant. We are less serious as a family than when I was little. No more early morning church on Thanksgiving Day. The Christmas midnight service for the past few years is dependent on the weather and how prepared we are for the next morning.

Holiday meanings have deteriorated, almost completely lost under a cloud of media hype, sales pitches, marketing, and commercialism. I see nothing in the news (print/radio/social media)--absolutely nothing--that says we are better off for having celebrated a fabulous and/or fabulously fattening dinner and watching lots of TV (generally football and more football) with family, friends, and loved ones. Nor has Black Friday helped me in any way! And have you seen the price for a live seven-foot fir tree? www.MarketWatch.com says $80-100! Gracious! I am glad The Nutcracker ballet is still a tradition!

Here are a couple of the occurrences that have made me even more discouraged for our country and our communities. You will notice they are very different, but each touched off a kind of sad rage in me.

A year or so ago, I wrote about school dress codes and how I felt they were unfair to girls. On www.mediaflare this week, in an article by staffer Jordan Donohue, the report was that a teenage girl had been removed from her class by a male administrator (interrupting the class, no less) who said her rip in one knee of her jeans was disrupting the

class and she was to be suspended. 

ONE RIP, ONE KNEE CAP--which did not entirely show! I find this to be sexism, victim blaming, and shaming. The administrator told the irate parents that the rip in the jeans could “cause boys (sic) hormones to react in a negative way and would disturb their education.” WHAT! Jeez! I, who think school uniforms may be a societal leveler in schools, am outraged by this. Here are the jeans in question: NOT FAIR! NOT FAIR! 

Then the following information really made an impact on my vague memories of all of the random gun violence stories. I have adapted it from a Washington Post article, "The Terrible Numbers that Grow….," November 18, 2019, by Bonnie Berkowitz, et al. Is no one safe? Anywhere? Ever? The places change, the numbers change, but the choice of weapon remains the same. In the United States, people who want to kill a lot of other people most often do it with guns. Public mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of the country’s gun deaths, but they are “uniquely terrifying because they occur without warning in the most mundane places.” Most of the victims are chosen not for what they have done but simply for where they happen to be. 

Berkowitz continues: “There is no universally accepted definition of a public mass shooting, and this piece defines it narrowly. It looks at the 170 shootings in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (two shooters in a few cases). It does not include shootings tied to robberies that went awry, and it does not include domestic shootings that took place exclusively in private homes. A broader definition would yield much higher numbers.” 

Okay, elected officials – we need gun laws and we need them now! One company is called www.cheaperthandirt.com (does that say something in itself?) and then I found this photo of a Miss Kitty gun. MISS KITTY?

WHAT! The price run from $500 to $1000 and up according to Google. Also, please note that everything I read about the AR-15 says it is called a DEFENSIVE weapon and not an ASSAULT rifle. How, pray tell, does AR translate to “defensive?” I find this very SCARY! VERY SCARY! 

Where is grace and peace and understanding? I need to cheer up! We are relatively healthy (considering age, etc.), we have a nice home and great friends. But I want more for the world we will leave to future generations. 

Maybe the fact that I love winter and snow will help. The cold temperatures give me a feeling of a cleansed earth, of time for reflection, and a period of silence. (Question: where does sound go when there is silence?) To me, there is nothing more lovely than a winter sky with twinkling stars or fresh snow when your footprints are the first ones to leave their mark in white purity. I think I just need some snow and SOON (and maybe even in NYC!)

Merry Everything &

A Happy Always!

Glenne