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| Test drive |
I don't know why I'm so very bad at forms and procedures. There was a day I was quite good at such things. But now, whenever I try to get somewhere with my taxes, everything just sort of explodes. It's hard to explain. The closest analogy that comes to mind at this moment is when you take too many clean clothes out of the dryer and socks and towels and underwear keep falling out of your arms and onto a floor covered in dirty clothes.Oh, and then I wrote the following, which I won't put in blockquotes.
That was a terrible analogy because the feeling is a lot worse.
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What else is going on? We went to Opulent Temple's White Party on Friday night. Opulent Temple is one of the big bad sound camps at Burning Man, meaning their gig is they construct a dance floor big enough for a couple thousand people walled in with indescribable constructions and blast various kinds of house music all night, augmented at strategic moments with great blasts of flame into the night sky. Above you are the stars and below you the dust and around you a great pressing mob of dancing people in every kind of outfit imaginable except anything you'd see on the street. But this party was a fundraiser held at the Bently Reserve on Sansome St in San Francisco. I told my boss, who's family is from Mexico, and he said, what, a party for white people, but no, just for people wearing white. Opulent hosts a white party on White Wednesday at the Burn and it's quite spectacular and this one was no less so. It was a great amount of fun, great music, great venue, great people.
But I can't get over how much it really was a white party. Here's the smoking balcony that looks out over Battery St.
The only black people I remember were the security staff in their black suits. A few people were here and there that could be "of color," i.e. Asian or Hispanic, but for the most part Burning Man and its events remains a mysteriously white person thing.
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Between Facebook and the other opportunities I have for wasting time I'm not sure what this blog is for. I really enjoy reading yours, but my time is looking for a purpose. My old trumpet-playing buddy said on Facebook an hour or two ago that I should just pick that up again, I was very good. High praise from someone who's played the horn professionally since high school. He has photos up on FB of himself with pretty much all the great trumpeters of our time. I'm kinda jelly. And my father's electronic keyboard that I've set up in the living room (and which, to my delight, the kids love playing with) has really good action, according to a piano-playing friend who was over last night, and I'm wondering how hard it could really be if I get a teach-myself book that doesn't waste my time teaching me music theory I already know but just sets me up with exercises. Surely there is such a book if I just look for it.
OK, well, it's almost 10pm which means I need to go to the airport and get my mom. She's coming home from a visit to see my brother in New Orleans. In a week she flies off to Ireland. She's awesome.
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| A quilt in progress for K and J |
8 comments:
Your mom is indeed awesome.
As for people of color, this link intrigued me:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/schoeller-photography
I got there through some other link that described that this is how the majority of people will look in fifty years as we blend.
Here's a description
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/funderburg-text
In this country, maybe, despite the common accusation that Amerika is deeply racist. But I think it will take longer. In 50 years Euro-whites will no longer be a majority but the majority will then be shared amongst people who are white, Hispanic, and various permutations of Asian.
But the stories in your link are fascinating. I am intrigued by the coming post-racialism but it's a ways off yet.
I tend to disagree, Don, although I guess I'd be hard pressed to defend that. My son and his friends, who are in their mid-twenties now, pretty much ignore race, at least in one sense. They joke with each other, as if they find it humorous that the white-centric society they landed in makes such distinctions, but, really, it is almost more like how you might joke with a good friend who has real curly hair, or is bald. These are people who find the concept of tolerance a bit obnoxious--who is "tolerating" whom? SO, I guess I would say we might, if we were alive to see it, be surprised at how quickly things change when a certain tipping point is reached. I already find it encouraging that when reading comments to news articles about the shooting in Overland Park, KS, the OVERWHELMING response from commenters is anti-hate/anti-racist. What people are willing, or not, to say out loud may not really be a result of real change in our attitudes, but it certainly must be a precursor to that.
I don't disagree about the increased mixing (even saying that is oogy, as it acknowledges "race" more than I care to), I just feel sometimes change takes longer than people expect. But you are right, a certain hard-to-define tipping point can be reached and all of a sudden half your kid's friends are married in ways that were once illegal.
50 years is two and a half generations. A lot can happen in that time.
Maybe there is more wisdom than we think in the poem, shake and shake the ketchup bottle, none will come, and then a lot'll. At least, you know, we should keep trying.
Re blogging... I can't give a coherent answer about what my blog is for, and I've thought to give it up many times, but I never do. I guess the bottom line is that I simply enjoy having a place I designed (somewhat) to yatter on about whatever and get a smidge of feedback (hopefully).
I've noticed significant drop-off in my readership. Either my readers (the lurking ones) learned how to mask their presence from my Stat-counter tracker (not difficult), or nobody bovvers with my blog any more but you, Paula, and every once in a blood moon ol' Teeter, here. Dick is a constant presence, but he doesn't count. ;-)
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