Skip to main content

Communique #11

I can't breath

Reflecting on the horrendous scene in Minneapolis, “I can’t breath”.  I think of the disproportionate number of people of color who get sick and die from Covid-19.  I think of the respirators pushing oxygen into the lungs of people who are horrible sick.  “I can’t breathe” and I think of the lack of good health care in the Inter-cities and among the rural poor in the United States.  Before the pandemic this was just normal.  With people in the streets there is hope for a new normal.

Still, I am seventy-one years old and this racial hatred has been present my whole life.  I have seen its many manifestations, a numbing number of means of disadvantaging the other.  I have seen how it has been used for political gain.  Everywhere I have lived, it lives, North, South and West.  When I took the white supremacy in Oregon course I felt overwhelmed by the relentless discrimination, it has so many heads.  I don’t know if it can be changed, it has been so persistent; it has shaped geography and mental spaces. “I can’t breath” it is so deep rooted, such a long history.  Good that so many are in the streets, these young people give me hope a dialogue about this scourge is long overdue.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Communique #4

Watching the sky this evening, wind moving the trees. Out the window, watching the movement of the evergreen limbs in motion. Are they moving in a different way? Has the pandemic changed this movement, the motion of the limbs? I wonder. Yes, it is nonsensical and yet, . . . I study the trees, the movement, and am mindful and alert to detect the change. While watching my mantra comes to me, “We are ALL in this together”. And if there is an omnipresent power acting as director, it would be a fine time for this enormous teaching moment. We are ALL in this together and if we can flatten the curve of the virus, we could flatten the curve of the climate crisis. Because we are ALL in this together. And yet, I can see that this could all spin down into chaos. I see both sides. I am pulled to the positive, hopeful side while fully acknowledging the dark possibilities. My strong suit here I feel is that I am seventy-one years old. Even with the worst projections I would still have l...

Communique #9

From “The Plague” by Albert Camus, the last paragraph of the book when the city gates are opened, the plague is gone. “Indeed, as he heard the cries of delight rising from the city, Rieux remembered that this delight was always threatened. For he knew what this joyous crowd did not, and what you can read in books — that the germ of the plague never dies or disappears, that it can lie dormant for decades in furniture and linens, that it waits patiently in rooms, in basements, in trunks, among handkerchiefs and paperwork, and that perhaps the day would come when, for the sorrow and education of men, the plague would revive its rats and dispatch them to die in a happy city.” What Camus doesn’t say in this last paragraph, but which he makes clear in the book is that the plague, plague response, lives on in the human species.  While this response is varied, it can be found back in time to the earlier plagues in human history.  Further, I would argue that one response can be...

Communique #15 The Taster

This election is too important to leave food to chance.  Biden needs a Taster.  I don’t think Trump will stop at anything to win. In  ancient Rome , the duty was often given to a slave (termed the  praegustator ). Roman Emperor  Claudius  was killed by poison in AD 54 even though he hired a food taster named  Halotus . [1]  Tasters were sometimes coerced. [2]  Over history, presidents and royal families have hired food tasters or sacrifices, over fear of being poisoned.  Queen Durdhara , the  Mauryan  empress, ate food that was prepared for her husband and died. [3] Adolf Hitler 's food taster  Margot Wölk  tried the food at 8:00 am every day, and if she did not fall ill the food would be sent to Hitler's military headquarters. [2]  President  Vladimir Putin  has hired a food taster who is part of his security staff to protect himself as well. [3]  In recent times, animals such as mice have been us...