The street poor will be back, and they won’t love us for sicking the cops on them. It’s illegal to camp out on the street the way they do—the way they must—so the cops knock them around, rob them if they have anything worth stealing, then order them away or jail them. The miserable will be made even more miserable. None of that can help Amy. I suppose, though, that it will make the Dunns feel better about the way they treated her.
God, I hate this place. I mean, I love it. It’s home. These are my people. But I hate it. It’s like an island surrounded by sharks—except that sharks don’t bother you unless you go in the water. But our land sharks are on their way in. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get hungry enough.
Also, Donner has a plan for putting people back to work. He hopes to get laws changed, suspend “overly restrictive” minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board. What’s adequate, I wonder: A house or apartment? A room? A bed in a shared room? A barracks bed? Space on a floor? Space on the ground? And what about people with big families? Won’t they be seen as bad investments? Won’t it make much more sense for companies to hire single people, childless couples, or, at most, people with only one or two kids? I wonder. And what about those suspended laws? Will it be legal to poison, mutilate, or infect people—as long as you provide them with food, water, and space to die? Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn’t vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.
I can take a lot of pain without falling apart. I’ve had to learn to do that. But it was hard, today, to keep pedaling and keep up with the others when just about everyone I saw made me feel worse and worse.
My father glanced back at me every now and then. He tells me, “You can beat this thing. You don’t have to give in to it.” He has always pretended, or perhaps believed, that my hyperempathy syndrome was something I could shake off and forget about. The sharing isn’t real, after all. It isn’t some magic or ESP that allows me to share the pain or the pleasure of other people. It’s delusional. Even I admit that. My brother Keith used to pretend to be hurt just to trick me into sharing his supposed pain. Once he used red ink as fake blood to make me bleed. I was eleven then, and I still bled through the skin when I saw someone else bleeding. I couldn’t help doing it, and I always worried that it would give me away to people outside the family.
To my father, the whole business is shameful. He’s a preacher and a professor and a dean. A first wife who was a drug addict and a daughter who is drug damaged is not something he wants to boast about. Lucky for me. Being the most vulnerable person I know is damned sure not something I want to boast about.
An odd thing about Thanksgiving – those arguments family members have over the dinner table and around the TV, while eating too much food and watching the football game, are actually one of the few truly authentic Thanksgiving Day traditions. Allow me to explain…
In 2014 I posted a quote from the book Thank You Sarah, written by Laurie Halse Anderson and illustrated by Matt Faulkner. It was one of many books I’d checked out of the local library and brought home as potential bedtime-story-reading-material for my child. It was just an illustrated history of the founding of Thanksgiving, but the details were both eye opening and surprising (to me, at least). The most important details were these:
Thanksgiving was created with the express purpose of setting aside one day a year where families and community members could put aside their differences and share a meal, in the hopes that the community-based connection would heal the wounds of the civil war.
The Thanksgiving myth that is retold every year, is actually a story that Sarah Hale used to convince people to both participate in the holiday and to behave civilly while doing so. The objective was to bring (white) people together and repair relationships after the civil war, which pitted family members against one another in battle – imagine the dinner table after your cousins come back from a war where they, literally, tried to kill one another (or where one succeeded in killing the other). The myth was basically a parable told in the context of ‘if the tribes can behave civilly when in the company of their enemies then, surely, we white folk can do better.’
Put another way, the Thanksgiving myth is blatantly racist story that uses a fictitious (or grossly exaggerated) story about a community the US government was actively committing genocide against (before, during, and after the civil war) as a form of mass emotional blackmail. When the objective is reparations, even highly specific reparations (like veterans of the civil war and their families), that isn’t the best tactic. Unfortunately, over time, the myth stuck and the emphasis on reparations was lost.
Quick aside – Here are some historic resources about the history behind Thanksgiving:
Since learning about the historically accurate reasons for our annual Thanksgiving celebration, those reasons have been quietly nagging at me. We’ve, quite literally, had an official day of reparations in our federal calendar since 1863, and somehow that purpose got lost in a collective hyper fixation on a racist myth and excessive eating.
The idea of Thanksgiving returning to its roots as a day focused on making amends, both personally and nationally, is something worth discussing. Given that focus, what should the holiday look like? What should communities, families and individuals do to celebrate?
I don’t have an answer, I just wish the questions were being asked and answered, sincerely and thoughtfully, throughout the month of November.
My Thanksgiving Tree
What does all of this have to do with my Thanksgiving tree?
Since the holiday is not used for its intended purposes, I decided to play with those themes in my Thanksgiving Tree. Sadly, I am only marginally successful. Honestly, I look at the current in-progress collection of ornaments and I worry that it comes across as a cringy left-leaning white-culture holiday tree.
By way of explanation, here is my list of topics for the ornaments (in no particular order): a) strong women, b) peace, peace symbols, c) the planet, environmentalism, d) family, community, e) nostalgia (things from my childhood that I associate with Thanksgiving, like Snoopy, woodland creatures, etc.), and f) reparations that should be addressed during this holiday.
Obviously, this is less a form of activism and more akin to a vision board in the form of a Christmas Tree.
It’s a way to contemplate the topic and maybe even begin conversations.
It’s something small and tangible I have started doing in recognition of what should be happening during this holiday.
I just discovered the Halloween version of those holiday yule log videos!
Cozy Cottage is one of many YouTube channels that offer Halloween themed ambiance videos. As you can see from the photo above, this does a great job of turning my living room centerpiece (the TV) into an effective Halloween background ambiance machine – lightly spooky music included.
For something with general background music (mostly elevator style Jazz and the ambiance instrumentals generally played at local coffee shops) then check out Coffee Shop Ambiance, which has a long list of coffee shop inspired backgrounds for every season of the year, including a Halloween themed shop filled with jack-o-lanterns (above).
Over at Martia’s Muses, there’s a lovely ‘green witches’ house‘ (See above). I’m not sure why it’s called a ‘witches’ house. It’s just an old-fashioned kitchen filled with pumpkins, apples, and other cooking supplies – not even jack-o-lanterns. This image is accompanied by outdoor rain (or is it a fireplace?) and forest sounds mixed with a little music. Once again, the channel has a long list of seasons and scenery to choose from.
For just a fireplace with a crackling fire (no music or outdoor noise) then go to Rainy (above) or Escape Ambience.
Side note: I love this fireplace image. However, I grew up with a fireplace that my family used very regularly, so I have to be careful to refrain from thinking about what I’m looking at. Anyone experienced with fire will immediately note that everything about this image just screams FLAMMABLE and fire OUTSIDE the fireplace and DANGER! In the real world, I would never allow this to happen. Yet, it’s very pretty and cozy and seasonal and not real; so, I will use it until the thinking part of my brain can stand it no longer.
After looking through all of those channels, YouTube starts generating suggestions for similar channels with the same service – background music/sounds with holiday and seasonal scenery. I honestly did not know there were so many! It makes sense that this niche exists, it’s just not something I ever went looking for on YouTube before.
Personally, I tend to you the regular streaming services, like Netflix, for a yule log video during the holidays. If you’d rather use Netflix, then I recommend the Witcher fireplace. It’s not specifically designed for Halloween, but it works.
Last year I decided to try decorating the Christmas tree for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and New Years. It may sound odd, but it works extremely well. Here are a few arguments for pulling out the tree on October 1st and changing up the decorations on the day after each holiday.
Artificial trees are expensive. Even the cheap ones are $100+. I’ve seen some listings for close to $1000 and I’m sure there are more expensive options out there. If I’m going to spend the same amount of money (or more) that I spent on my new couch for a holiday decoration, then it only makes sense to find ways to use it more often. Why let it collect dust in storage for 11 out of every 12 months?
Options for decorating an apartment. As an apartment dweller, the amount of space I have to decorate during the holidays is minimal. All apartments have rules and limitations on what can/not be done to their walls and in the area just outside your front door. In addition to that, general space in an apartment tends to be limited. Finding a spot for the tree is a challenge, but it’s less of a challenge than trying to find places for statues, Knick knacks, wall hangings, etc. Most people have a spot where the Christmas tree is set up every year, so taking that space and putting that same tree in that designated spot is reasonably easy. Plus, there’s always under the tree! In the photos below, you’ll see how things that can’t be placed on the tree, can be placed under it, and the whole thing works visually while remaining contained in a manageably small(ish) area.
Storage: Ornaments are small and tree lights and other decorations don’t take up much space. That, combined with the tree that is already taking up storage space, is a lot easier to coordinate than a misc. collection of holiday specific decorations.
Themes: Ornaments are available in every possible style and theme. It’s easy to find characters from movies, old cartoons, TV shows, legends and myths – practically anything you can think of has been turned into an ornament by someone, somewhere. I’ve started keeping track of the things that I address/represent during each distinct holiday. Since the theme changes each month, beginning October 1st and ending the first week of January, that provides plenty of room for growing a meaningful (to me) collection of ornaments based on each holiday’s theme. As time goes on, I have the ability to change those themes by changing a few ornaments – while keeping the space taken up in my storage area to a minimum.
For an example, here is this year’s Halloween tree. It’s heavily focused on Halloween themed shows that I like, costumes, trick or treating, dragons, and transformations. Last year I covered the entire thing in little plastic monarch butterflies, but they were a bit transparent, and the colors weren’t bright enough, so they just blended into the tree. Now I have a few brightly colored ornaments that represent butterflies, moths, and bees, which works.
In the future, I intend to add homage to the Salem witch trials and witch burnings in general.
I really like the way ancestors are honored during the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday, but I have not figured out how to transform that general concept into my heritage and traditions. Someday I will, most likely, start adding ornaments that honor people on my genealogical family tree.
Living Amongst America’s Homeless published in 2018 by Perry Castillo, is a blog post about homelessness and the best way to find effective solutions to extreme poverty and homelessness. I am mentioned in the discussion under the blog post:
“One thing I’ve noticed in the past two years of living indoors is that I am far from being the only ex-homeless person who is airing their views on the matter. I’ve tuned in especially to Ms. Adora Myers, whose recommendations on this pinned Quora post seem to me to be well worth considering, as well as is the detail with which she answered an offensive question without bothering to dignify it: https://www.quora.com/Should-homeless-people-be-rounded-up-and-forced-into-work-camps.”
Thank you Perry Castillo for the compliment and the link to my Quora posting!
It’s a well-designed program that is reasonably easy to fit into a full-time working professional’s busy life. The focus is on negotiation with a heavy emphasis on the kinds of negotiations lawyers and salespeople participate in.
If you are looking for something to help with internal negotiations with coworkers and contractors already committed to a project, then the examples and exercises provided may feel like they don’t apply but the techniques being taught are solid and can be modified to suit any situation.
Truthfully, this was my own struggle in this class, because policy development requires a lot of internal negotiation with coworkers, which is distinctly different from a sale call or a legal negotiation over the acquisition of a large property (a common theme in the homework). However, after taking some time to process everything I learned, I realized that it’s all about working with people and most of the techniques are heavily focused on understanding how people behave during a negotiation and the best ways to navigate the conversation – it’s all about working and communication with people.
