Just for one day. Proceeds to go to the charity of my choice.
Tag: dailyprompt
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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?
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It’s important.
And no, it’s not just a gesture, like genuflecting. It has real-world consequences. There are few things that make me angrier than people who treat voting like a game. We see them all the time interviewed on election day after coming out of the polls, smirking at the camera as they say, “I voted for Jill Stein/Ralph Nader/Mickey Mouse/Brexit. Wanted to send the durned POLLYTISHUNS a message.”In the 20th century American south, black Americans were killed for even attempting to register as voters, and even after the Civil Rights Act, every effort was made to prevent them from casting a ballot. The voting machines in black neighborhoods had a way of breaking down, lines would go around the block, people who could not afford to miss a day’s pay would be faced with the choice of voting or working. When Harvey Gantt ran against Jesse Helms in 1990, black districts in North Carolina were flooded with leaflets worded to make it sound as if anyone who’d moved within the last year would be arrested if they tried to vote.
I know someone who went door-to-door the day before the election, trying to convince voters that it was untrue. She got kind smiles from older folks who said, yes, they knew it wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter whether it was legal or not. They could get arrested for it anyway.
In 2004, I traveled to New Orleans, got up before dawn, and poll-watched in a neighborhood where so many voters had been deliberately left off the rolls they had to send out for more provisional ballots.
Hell yes. I vote.
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Always.
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is from Lola Montez, the 19th century adventuress, actress and courtesan. My life has been nothing like hers, nor would I want it to be, but I’ve thought of her motto every time I find myself becoming anxious about the future, especially if I am facing a moral decision. “Courage, and deal the cards.”
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My happy gentile childhood is largely responsible for that. Discovering my parents were Santa Claus was no great shock because they already seemed half supernatural to me.
Even now, when I can sleep soundly on Christmas Eve and there is no wonderful mystery waiting to be lit up in the living room on Christmas morning, I still feel a little of that magic.
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The closest I came was a cross-country trip with my family when I was a teenager, in an RV that included bunks, a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a TV. My little brother’s pet hamster,and our dwarf Cairn terrier, Vieux-Carre, came along for the ride.
My two fondest memories of “camping”:
Standing in the doorway of the RV in a KOA campground and looking up, awed by the night sky over New Mexico. I’d never seen so many stars.
A dusk in Arizona at another KOA campground when our terrier delighted a 7-year-old French tourist by bringing a tennis ball to her. My mother and I called in English and gestured at her, miming throwing a ball. The little girl tossed it, and Vieux-Carre dashed away and brought it back, dropping it in front of her.
The girl almost hopped up and down in excitement. “Maman, Maman!” she shouted, followed by a flow of liquid syllables as she pointed at our terrier, who was doing its ball-nudging “throw-it-again” soft-shoe at her feet.
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And after my coffee.
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I don’t use them. The closest thing I have to a “favorite” emoji dates back to the 80s/90s, when what we call “emojis” were sideways faces created like this:
: – ( .
My boyfriend back then, Tim, was one of the first people to establish himself (for better or worse) as an online personality. He was known for “flaming”
Someone posted a piece suggesting various emojis to use as avatars. One showed a frowning, angry face that was meant to say “I get flamed a lot.” The next one was a snarling, angry face with fangs meant to convey “I get flamed a lot by Tim.”
Pam Troy 