Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: August 2016

• Four Wheel Strive

  Posted at 1:38 am by kayewer, on August 28, 2016

  I think it’s never too late to apologize to somebody, so here I will issue (again) an apology to my friend who will know who she is when she reads this. I say again because I was called out on my blunder when it first happened. While hunting through the newspaper today I was reminded of that blunder and knew I should bring it up again so I can reapply egg to my face.

  Here is what happened. Several of us were meeting outside the old Moorestown Public Library, back in the days when the building was accepted as a cozy but slightly outdated part of the scenery in an exclusive community. The parking lot had poor lighting and the building next door had burned down. It was winter, at night, bleak and cold and dreadful. Still, we decided to carpool it down the road a way to the Starbucks. She offered to drive me over in her vehicle.

  It was impressive from where I stood in the parking lot but, not knowing much about any model without something immediately distinctive about it (like a Chrysler PT Cruiser or a Pontiac Aztek), I took my best guess looking at it from the side, and figured it looked like a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I knew Jeep distinguished its higher end models that way, and they were larger than the average back-woods sand dune models. Today those Grand Cherokees run in the $40,000 range, so for me at the time, that was notable. “Nice Jeep,” I said.

  Turns out it was a Cadillac Escalade. Those models today, I saw in the paper, cost $80,000.  Oops!  That’s like calling a yacht a dinghy. No wonder she scrunched her eyebrows as if 500 people had stood together in the parking lot and passed gas.

  Anyway, she made it a point to be gracious and show me what such a vehicle is all about. The inside was like the cabin of a luxury yacht. The dashboard was a command center. With one touch, she could properly acclimate the cabin so the drive felt like we were in a cozy living room fireplace on wheels. No car I have ever owned warmed my butt for me. The car had bells and whistles on a high class level. I was happy at the time because I had a CD player in my car (not anything like a Cadillac).

  Anyway, so I’m a woman who knows too little about cars to look at one from the side and know what I’m seeing. Sorry.

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• Represent Well

  Posted at 2:06 am by kayewer, on August 21, 2016

  I noticed that during the game show “Family Feud,” host Steve Harvey shakes hands with the losing family and, if they are African American, he tends to say to them in an under-voice, “You did good; you represented well.” Shortly after I came to this realization, I saw a Satanist in the news and realized that we should all be thinking about representing well.

  Showing one’s good side can be an individual, group, gender or larger societal thing, so Mr. Harvey could tell any family they represented well; they represented something well to get on the show, after all. Lately, however, overall we seem to have lost our sense of decorum. Children have less respect for adults, driving can be a tail-them-and-flip-the-bird nightmare if somebody misbehaves in the fast lane, we clobber each other for the latest bit of expensive junk and create whole hierarchies over that same junk (Apple wars, anybody?) So I watched a “bad guy” do something I’ve never witnessed before, and when it was over I was left scratching my head.

  David Suhor appeared in a Pensacola city council meeting on July 14 to give the morning invocation, as have religious groups of various types in the past. In this case, he appeared representing the Satanic Temple in the West Florida area. There was a short meeting on July 7 about discussing prayer at the council meetings, allowing Suhor to give that week’s invocation, and possibly stopping the practice of prayer in general, which you can read about here from the local CW TV network news feed online:

  http://wkrg.com/2016/07/07/the-satanic-temple-of-west-florida-will-deliver-invocation/

  And here is some feedback on how the ultimate event came about in the Washington Post:

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/07/20/why-a-satanic-temple-member-wants-to-perform-rituals-before-a-city-council-in-the-bible-belt/

  Without a quorum, no action either way was taken on July 7, so on July 14 a man dressed in what I will call the type of basic Satanic uniform–a hooded robe–one might expect to see, prepared to speak and was immediately drowned out by a large Christian presence invoking the Lord’s Prayer. The major concern at both meetings was that this man speaking at all would cause evil havoc to manifest itself. The council chair had the most disruptive people taken out of the courtroom.

  The religious front was standing for the Almighty, and I’m certainly on that side of the fence, but as I watched the clip I wondered who was really the most polite of the two factions. The Christian supporters shouted and showed very little bonhomie, even given the opportunity to show the way to the good side by example. Suhor calmly told the council that he could wait until things quieted down. After an agreement was reached to have the room be quiet while he got the matter over with, Suhor sang. Having just seen the touchingly poignant and fun film Florence Foster Jenkins about the famous off-key singing sensation of the early 20th Century, I’m glad the fellow had decent pipes. His song mentioned the fruit of forbidden knowledge and anarchic principles and ended as expected with “Hail, Satan!” Then it was over.

  The world has spun a few times since then, and Pensacola is as it was.

  I don’t know how I feel about the dark side representing well when the good side seemed a bit frustrated, but I know that we are still on polar opposition when it comes to the presence of evil among us. It will probably continue into ages well past our own. That doesn’t mean we can’t all work a bit harder to be polite and represent humanity itself well.

   

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• Friends or Phelps

  Posted at 3:10 am by kayewer, on August 14, 2016

  You know you’re good friends with somebody when they can ask you to blow off your usual evening mall hop together so she can watch the Olympics, and you say it’s fine.

  My best friend of over 25 years usually goes to the mall with me, but the other day she called me and said she really wanted to watch Michael Phelps win more gold medals in swimming. We humans are set upon doing certain things, liking certain celebrities, harboring certain rituals. The mall will be there next week (though Macy’s may not be, judging by their decision to close 100 of them), but the Olympics only happen for two weeks every four years, and watching big events like swimming on demand is impossible to enjoy with the same fervor, because you will likely have accidentally found out the results beforehand. I understand completely.

  The summer games are not really my thing, though I will watch gymnastics or synchronized swimming if they are on at a good hour.  The networks of NBC have events on all of their main and spinoff channels, but won’t be more specific about when certain events are going to happen, so I feel content to watch the news later on, or read the paper the next day, to find out what happened.

  Mostly we–meaning the United States–seem to be staying at the top of the leader board, and we have some seasoned competitors like Michael Phelps who can really rack up the gold medals and hold the attention of swim fans worldwide. He won the evening my friend watched, but did lose an event later on. Hey, it can be that way, just like getting a bargain blouse at the mall but missing out on that purse that caught your eye.

  Next week there will be a lot of track and field events, which neither of us likes, so the two of us will do what we do best: Olympic-style mall walking.

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• That’s Interesting

  Posted at 1:27 am by kayewer, on August 7, 2016

  School will be starting soon, and I think that we could solve many of the problems which can arise from intolerance and bullying if we could all teach our kids of all ages to use two simple words:  “That’s interesting.” Instead of ignoring or picking apart something new, as well as the person who introduced it to you, those two words can open a door to a better understanding of the world around us.

  Especially for pre-k and kindergarten, when children will be exposed for the first time to the various fish in the entire cultural net, the discomfort of a new environment, and the sudden demands of a structured schedule imposed by an adult they don’t even know, the experience can be complicated by all the new lifestyles surrounding them.  When overwhelmed with so many unknowns, a child has to start sorting and disposing, and sometimes that leads to saying things that can lead to bad first impressions and the formation of mismatched cliques and pecking orders which might be difficult to readjust later. If a child can simply say, “That’s interesting,” it leaves room for discussion.

  We have all seen the results of our social divisions and prejudices, so why not stop them as soon as we can? Take a few minutes to tell your youngsters to try saying those words when they come across somebody who seems different, and see what happens.  Children will like to talk about themselves, and they will learn from each other what makes our whole world interesting, while they take their front row seats to the future.

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