tangerines, plums, apples, raspberries.
Fascinating, no?
Category: Uncategorized
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uncluttering.
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Daily writing promptShare a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
One long weekend when I was in third grade, on our way to a picnic, our car was rear-ended. Hard. Of course, nobody wore seatbelts back then. My sister was badly hurt and I had a concussion.
By Tuesday, I was deemed recovered enough to go to school even though, along with being confused and traumatized, I had classic black eye and was miserable and self-conscious about it.
At the time, Tareyton Cigarettes had a wildly popular ad campaign featuring people with black eyes proudly holding up cigarettes and vowing they’d rather “fight than switch” to another brand. As soon as I walked onto the property of Our Lady of Lourdes Grammar, a boy about my age saw me, stopped, goggled and then ran around a corner yelling to a playmate, “Hey, come look at this girl! She’s a Tareyton smoker!” — which made me laugh.
Instead of staring, pointing, and mocking me, he’d offered a funny explanation for the way I looked in the context of something every kid on the playground loved — television. I enjoyed the bonus of being a “Tareyton smoker” for the rest of the week.
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…the ability to make decisions, to move from job to job, to utter one’s beliefs, without fear of losing access to the necessities of life as a result.
Back in the ’90s I had a co-worker with a partially controlled but ultimately incurable medical condition. It was not dangerous — so long as it was monitored and he continued to get medication for it.
He hated where he worked. He would have loved to find another job. But changing employers would have jeapordized his insurance, and therefore, his life.He had the same “choice” someone has when they are robbed at gunpoint. “Your _____ or your life.” The fact that it was employers and insurance companies rather than the government offering him this “choice” did not make him any less a prisoner.
There’s a common myth that restrictions on freedom can only be imposed by government. People forget that the Hayes Code, which so effectively censored American movies throughout much of the 20th century, was created and enforced by film studios — not the government. The Hollywood Blacklist was an industry, not a government creation. Hell, American slavery itself was less a government institution than something the government simply allowed in certain parts of the country.
To restrict freedom, all that powerful organizations, or even just mobs, have to do is up the ante to the point where the choice is between compliance or ruin.
It doesn’t have to be immediately life-threatening to be effective. Are you working a badly paid job that allows you no time to train for another job, no margin to set aside any savings? Quitting means betting you can find another, better-paying job before you end up on the street. So you stay. Have you striven to build a career over the years, through hard work and sacrifice? Utter the “wrong” opinion and you could lose it all, end up pumping gas or driving a truck instead of teaching, or acting, or directing, or writing. (The current euphemism for this is “consequences.”) So you remain silent, even lie when asked what you believe. Because you could lose too much if you didn’t.
And no, I don’t care what opinions are being expressed. Here’s a truth a lot people don’t want to hear — The umbrella that protects some right wing idiot’s right to say the bigoted things they believe also protects my right, as a left-leaning liberal, to say the things I believe.
Take that protection from them, and you take it from me and everyone else.
That is the uncomfortable, sometimes even unpalatable truth about freedom.
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It’s not just that we “disagree” on discrete political issues. It’s that Trump rejects our entire system. We “disagree” on basics like the peaceful transfer of power, the checks and balances in our government, on basic human rights, which I don’t think the man — or his followers — is capable of grasping.
I disliked George Bush II intensely. I did not think, and I still don’t think, he had the brains to be president. Nothing so far has changed my mind about that.
But I believe that, like most of us, George Bush II was not deliberately raised by his father to feel zero empathy. In the old photograph of George W. Bush holding his two infant daughters, there’s genuine tenderness and joy, a human feeling that seems lacking in Trump. George Bush II, born to wealth and power, is a grossly entitled man, but entitlement is not the sum total of his personality and outlook. If I were alone with him, I would not be afraid to make eye contact.
I cannot say the same about Trump.
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Send out queries.
I cannot think of a duller diary entry than outlining one’s hoped-for career path.
Are you folks even trying these days?
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Sometimes I volunteer at the polls.
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Just for one day. Proceeds to go to the charity of my choice.
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…is Apple. I got my first Mac in about 1984 and have stuck with it ever since. At that time I had a front-row seat to the burgeonining computer culture, and from what I saw, non-Mac computer engineers loathed Apple because their products were so easy for non-computer engineers to use. This has left me prejudiced in Apple’s favor.
Other brands I like:
At this moment, a local chocolate company called Dandelion Chocolate. I wrote a piece about them for the Nob Hill Gazette years ago when they were starting out and they were very nice about giving me a tour of their operation. Also, on Friday, I enjoyed a delicious cacao fruit smoothie at their Ferry Building shop.
Prager, a small port winery in Sonoma. Their dessert ports go down like velvet. And twenty years ago, when we visited, they had a very nice, friendly cat. With a loud purr.
Kuali Salsa Macha, a small operation manufactured out of Oakland. It makes everything taste better. Vanished back in January, but the local Mexitessen keeps promising jars will reappear on their shelves any time now.
Table Foods Dosa Chips. Good with labne mixed with Kuali Salsa and a squeeze of lime. Ostensibly healthier than potato chips. Don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what I tell myself.
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Does anybody?
Pam Troy 