Tag: history

Segregation

Somehow, it never occurred to me that my parents were there for desegregation. We learned all about it in school, but they never had us ask our parents about it… We once had to ask our grandparents about some event, but I don’t recall what it even was. But why didn’t we use our own family members more with history? They, after all, did live through much of the detailed stuff that is referenced in the classrooms… and it makes things more memorable when we can tie them to something personal.

I remember, actually, doing one interview for school with my dad. Part of it, at least, was about race stuff, but it wasn’t tied as much to all the things we learn about, the events and people and such. It was about how a parent grew up relative to another race. I remember that much. It’s when I learned that the first black person my dad met was his college roommate, in college. Also that his parents didn’t particularly like (or know at all) black people, but, since black people weren’t ever around – remember how he never met one until he left home for college – my dad was exposed to much of an opinion about black people. In a way, the almost-certain racism never got much of a chance to be passed on to him. No, he didn’t get to know people of other races, but he also didn’t have any hostility toward them.

Fast forward to the next generation, and I grew up going to school in the most diverse county in the most diverse city in the country. Several of my best friends and crushes growing up were races other than white. And it never even occurred to me to care. People were just people. Kind folks were kind and mean ones were mean. Race truly never came up as a factor beyond looks.

Kind of cool, really…

Anyway, I’ve gone way off topic here. The point was that history class missed a huge learning opportunity here, and I want to remedy it as best as I can. I’ve already reached out to both my parents for some basic memory sharing, and I’m arranging really sitting and talking with them about it in the near future, too. How cool that my parents were there for so much stuff that we learned about in school… And how bizarre that that never truly occurred to me that they could share with me all about it personally, not just from a learned knowledge base. (Like how my mom was talking to me at Dealey Plaza about JFK’s assassination… but I subconsciously thought she was telling things she had learned in school – she was a great student, after all – not that she was remembering it from the live news reports…)

I have so much to discuss with my parents…and I almost feel a need to bring along a textbook!

I just might…

Post-a-day 2023

Better late-night than never

I finally got him to walk me through the seemingly fifty-million places he lived and with whom throughout his life tonight. I’ve only been trying to figure it out from the random pieces he mentions here and there, but so much of it has contradicted with other things he’s said, I’ve been at such a loss as to when on earth actually went down in his life before I met him.

So, tonight after dinner, he lay on the sofa, digesting, and slowly thought through it all, relaying it to me slowly, but in order for once. There were vague bits here and there, but I finally have a reasonable picture of his moving about and why for each one.

Phew… finally, I feel some relief about that. As it turns out, there were actually even more moves and more convolution than I had previously understood there to be, but I now actually know about them, which makes a positive difference. (At last, I’ll be able to know what on earth his family are referencing when they talk about times passed! Woohoo!)

But it did take a long time, during which I seriously needed to potty, and even had to stand leaning over by the end of it, just to relieve pressure on my bladder. That wasn’t cool. And it was also about twenty ‘til midnight by the time he finished. I was already tired from little sleep and a busy day with teaching little kids at the karate event all midday today, so I was beyond exhausted. But it was worth it, since he was willing to take the time to think through it all, so I could understand things.

Thank you, God, for this life. Please, help us all to release the traumas that we carry. Help us to find comfort, release, and ease in your love. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Gratitude

I am grateful for many things, many aspects, within and including my life. Though my country of origin has many problems – ones on which it is working and ones on which it is not -, I am ever grateful for my opportunity and blessing to have been born here. So much in life seems like a game of chance, and our origins seem often to be part of that. I am grateful for the family who have raised me, for the friends who have joined my family, for the city and state who have always been here, and for the country whose history – including all of its many, many struggles and failures – and whose people’s endurance and passion allowed for my life to happen so beautifully as it does today.

Whatever you do, do it with all your heart. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. I believe that much of my country’s history was filled with people who lived by those two ideas. Their being human, they certainly had their faults. But a lack of heart and passion was not one of them. And so, I am grateful every day for the opportunities they allowed me, over 200 years later.

Remember: Everything and anything you do can and will have an impact on the future, somehow. How can we do out best to make that impact be a positive one for this planet and for its inhabitants?

Post-a-day 2021

Mulan

Tomorrow night, we will be watching Mulan (the live-action, not the animated) for the first time. While we aren’t sure about dressing up – yes, we do dress to theme when we see films and shows in theatres, so we have no reason not to do it at home, too, right now – we are planning to have Chinese food for dinner. Since, however, we all prefer to follow more the paleo type of diet, I am brainstorming options of easy-to-prepare-by-myself dishes. I’ve done the chicken fried wild rice before, so that’s on the list. All I need to add are eggs* and carrots, which are easy enough to procure. I’m wondering if an egg-drop soup could be possible, or something like szechuan veggies or something… Going to check with a friend of mine who cooks bourgie stuff, too, and who happens to be Chinese. I think she might have some tried and true ideas. Fingers crossed!

*Fun fact: When I spent all that time with the acrobats, I learned on the train how to cook eggs the way Chinese people do for fried rice – never how I would have guessed, but I am super glad I learned it, because it is delicious! Also, I realize that could be referring to either how I learned to cook it or how it is actually cooked – both were never how I would have guessed, so I guess the unclear statement was, in fact, true, no matter the interpretation! 😛 (Slash, yes, hashtag nerd/dork, I know.) 😀

Post-a-day 2020

32,000 troops in New York Harbor

I just e-mailed a history expert in order to find a possible answer to two questions my mom and I had out of watching “Hamilton”.

1) How many men would have been aboard each ship?

2) How long was the journey from England to New York in 1776?

We wanted to know how many ships were in the harbor in order to produce 32,000 troops, as the line in the song says, and realized that we had no idea how big the ships even were and what their capacities were for men (and ammunition, etc.).

And that set of thoughts led us to wondering how long they had had to spend at sea.

And so, rather than put forth lots of effort in researching myself, I figured it smartest to reach out to an expert first, and doing further personal research second, if needed.

Why does this even matter?

Because we are total nerds in my family, and we care about things like this. 😛

I mean, what else would one be asking after watching “Hamilton”? Haha

Post-a-day 2020

The story for tonight

Tonight, I keep it extremely short:

Lin-Manuel Miranda, I thank you – you have given the world such wonder and love and beautiful creativity and expression, and we, the people, are grateful. 😉

And for all of it – you are a gift, and you have shared your treasure with the world at large… for that, and for following your passion and love, you have helped to make the world a better place on both a personal and a global level.

Thank you.

Post-a-day 2020

Cinco de Mayo

Perusing the various social aspects of my phone as I get in my final required steps before I am allowed to go to bed for the night, I have noticed a sense of slight oddness…, but I have been unable to identify what is odd, nor really be sure that something is, indeed, odd… I’m just tired, and under the after-effects of a large margarita (from six hours ago, mind you) and lots of tamales and tacos to fill my belly and tire me out.

I had consciously decided to gorge on them in celebration of Cinco de Mayo – truly more of a Texas day of celebration of Mexican culture than a Mexican celebration of boosted morale in the midst of a takeover by France… – and to be delighted with the whole experience… and I have been – today has been great.

But, sitting here on my bed, there is something tickling at the back of my tired mind and body…

I wiggle and trench my shoulders a bit, and it suddenly hits me, as I declare happily, “That’s what’s weird! I don’t have a shirt on!”

As usual when I am really tired, I messed up the order of things in getting ready for bed, and forgot the one that involves putting on a shirt. 😂

So, I popped over to clothes, selected a soft t-shirt, and pulled it on happily.

Aaahhh… that feels good… satisfying.

At last, the oddness is gone, and I feel whole in my bedtime preparations. 😂

Silly, silly… 😂

Post-a-day 2020

Education

I feel that one of the most valuable things that school could give a student at the time of the education (that is, while in school) is relevance and immediate applicability.

As we have been reading various books on utopias and dystopias in one of my classes this semester, so much of it all has become relevant in my life within a very short time of its initial introduction.  

The struggle one character has with God in this book, and how she finds change to be inevitable (and, therefore, God), applies to my life the week following my reading of it… I can relate to her struggle immediately, and then the change comes up in conversation and contemplation regarding my relationships with people in my life.

I think teachers, schools, curriculum planners aim to have books students read in school to be relevant to the students’ lives, but they often fall short of the mark… they miss the applicability of the ideas and actions somehow, and only assume that this specific struggle must be applicable to all students of this age… and it often isn’t.

From English class, we need concepts, ideas, brainstormed theories that we can learn to apply to any part of life…

For history class, a historical context would be only an enhancement of our understanding of what’s going on right now, what people are discussing from the news, and why it seems to matter so much… we hardly do more than regurgitate facts, and rarely know much about what they really were like or why it mattered to people who lived it (and therefore why it might matter to us).

I today was learning of a book about a man struggling in Russia, and, as I heard the details, I knew it was around the 1920s…, because of the Russian refugees in season four of “Downton Abbey”… there was a story in which I could invest myself, and ideas to which I could relate and from which I could draw my own ideas and conclusions, and the history just kind of stuck with the affinity for the people in the story…

I interested myself with the French Revolution recently, because I discovered the wonder of the film “The Scarlett Pimpernel”… and I remember details about the revolution because of how they connect with the story of the film and its characters.

The actual history became relevant and immediately applicable for me, because of my investment in the film.

The same is so with my investment in “Downton Abbey”.

How could I possibly relate to the Russian refugees or to the French upper class, when I merely read some statements of facts, names, locations, dates, and a summed-up given political meaning to it all?

I guess that’s why I remember just about nothing from my history classes in school…

Perhaps it everybody needs this kind of education, but everyone certainly could benefit greatly from it, I dare say.

You know what I mean?

Post-a-day 2019

Free thinking

I found myself today wondering on the phrase “The sky’s the limit.”

If, when considering ‘the sky’, we are imagining that 62-75 miles or so (100-120 km, for us nerds) of the earth’s atmosphere – as I think most people do -, it has me wonder two things in quick succession.

First: How old is that phrase?

Then: In what kind of sad and limited mental world must one live to have the sky alone, out of the whole universe (and whatever might be beyond), be the limit of one’s dreams and such?

How could someone have gotten to the Moon with such a limitation on one’s thinking?

It sounds – initially, anyway – like a declaration of near-limitless possibilities… today, however, upon a bit of consideration, I must say that it feels rather restrictive and of a field of rather small thinking.

Is this just a matter of timing, that the moon and Mars explorations hadn’t happened yet, and were still too far into the future for anyone to notice?

Post-a-day 2019

The planets align…(?)

I went to see my friend’s theatre production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” this morning.

Tonight, on the way home, I selected my leisure audiobook (instead of my current school one, for which I must pay attention and make bookmarks in it as I listen to it), because I needed a break from making my brain work extra while driving.

It was the final section of Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath.

The topic – something of which I had no idea until I heard it tonight – was the Holocaust.

Talk about that as coincidence – twice has this book popped up at exactly the right moment of coincidence.

First it was with the actual story of David and Goliath lining up with my Bible reading (which has been going on for years, by the way, and I only just happened to be at that part right as I re-began Malcolm Gladwell’s book [I had switched from the Kindle edition, which had fallen flat due to my schedule, to an audiobook, which had only just become available through the public library]), and now with this play!

Awesome, isn’t it?

And, just for fun, let’s throw in the title of this writing, one which I determined to connect as best I could manage to these coincidences… and which I hadn’t considered as connecting to anything else when I came up with it.

Tonight, as I munched on my dinner and snuggled next to an air heater, I watched the rest of the first episode of “The Magic School Bus”…, which involves the phone-caller at the end complaining about how the map had shown the planets all nicely lined up, and how that was totally not the case almost ever.

That’s a fun coincidence, too, though not quite the same as the other two.

Also, just a fun fact, that episode talked about the nine planets of our solar system, and how ‘Pluto actually will still be inside Neptune’s orbit until 1999.’

!!!!! 1999 !!!!! That’s totally the past

(Obviously, I knew that I was watching an old show, since I had actually seen it when I was a child, but I was surprised at just how old it turned out to be.)

But, it turns out that the show started in 1994, and so 1999 was a little while into the future back then… so was that awful declaration that I ignore about Pluto…

P.S. Talk about diversity: Take a look at that class of Miss Frizzle’s!

Post-a-day 2018