My Latest Book & What I’m Listening To 1/3/21

I just walked down to the dumpster to take the air conditioning/heating filter that I try to remember to change on the 1st of each month. I missed it by a few days this month.

They will give us free filters but they’re so flimsy I just order my own.

Thank you for all the wonderful comments yesterday. It gave me hope for our future.

What I’m Listening To:

I am listening to a CD I got yesterday in the mail. It is Paul Cardall’s “Living For Eden.” And it is beautiful. I think it also has a calming affect on Charlie and Ivy.

Cardall has quickly become one of my favorite musicians. Here is a video with a sample from this album.

Here is his website. Cardall was born with half a heart. There is a book about him coming out next month.

“The Broken Miracle” duology was inspired by Paul’s experience living with half a heart for most of his life. Despite his health condition, he managed to build a thriving music career while on the brink of death.

“From discovering his passion for piano to the day of his life-defying transplant, readers will get a glimpse of the incredible journey he embarked on from his teenage years to adulthood.”

What I Just Finished Reading:

I finished reading“Call Your Daughter Home” last night. It was set in the days when blacks had no other choice than to humbly agree and do a white man’s bidding. Those too were dark days.

My next door neighbor Ervina happens to be black and her 26 year old grandson lives with her. She lost her only child, a son, many years ago. She’s keeping the grandson close to home for now.

She told me she’s not willing to put her grandson out there in this climate. Because she fears he will have a target on his back everywhere he goes.

I had never really thought of what that must be like.

Racism has been another layer of darkness in this country.

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22 Comments

  1. Brenda,
    You & I are on the same page about everything you said.
    You have such an eloquent way of writing about it!
    I feel like Joe Biden is really stepping up & preparing to be a just & sane president, & to be an actual leader for our country.
    I’m not worried about his mind going.
    I had hundreds of concerns about Trump over the last 4 years. I was willing to give him a chance. He quickly proved he was not a leader, just a bully & a con.
    Truly, his worst failure of all was knowing about the virus, pretending he didn’t, & brushing it off as a threat. He totally failed to lead America through this pandemic.

  2. We have moved a lot while raising our family, but most of our time has been spent in the upper Midwest. Two years ago, my then 14-yo son told me that one of his friends said that he should not be friends with a boy because he was Mexican American. My son knew this was very wrong and told this boy so. We had just moved back to the Midwest from the Bay Area in California and my son knew so many different kids who came from different cultures, religions, and different colors that it was normal to him. Well here in the country where we now live, there is a lot of quiet racism, but the last four years have encouraged many to be outright racist. I don’t have many friends here as the ladies at church were quite offended that we had friends in other states who were of different religions or Christian denominations that they did not approve of or were just different that it scared them.

    My dear, sweet 20 yo niece is half black and she was in tears while explaining how hard it was to grow up biracial in her town. My own parents were racist, but now they are not. They just grew up in an all white area and had never known anything else. We seemed to have taken such a huge leap backwards in the past 4 years. May we make a huge leap forward in loving each other. Also, in my experience, people who talk about “reverse racism” tend to have issues with people who are different or they are in a segregated area where minorities have been dealing with a significant amount of racism for a very long time, so they are understandably wary of white people.

  3. Brenda, thank you for the introduction to PAul, I love hearing about new music and have ordered this cd.
    The world is a crazy place and that is putting it mildly, there is discrimination everywhere, all over the world, not just on black people, on the Turks, the Gypsy’s, different caste systems in Indian, women everywhere and so many more people. There is also reverse discrimination in this country which not too many people talk about but many are subjected to. It must be a huge strain on your neighbor and all mothers/grandmothers of young black men knowing that if/when they go out something terrible could happen to them.

  4. I just listened to a few of Paul Cardall’s music videos. Very calming ! I am going to order the book based on his life! Thank you for telling us about him!

  5. Most of us who have lived in this country for generations, are rather mixed blood…whether we appear so or not. People should keep that in mind. We learned when we lived in Hawaii for a few years while hubby was in the Navy, not to go to certain places on our island…it was not safe. We appear totally white though I at least have Cherokee that I learned about…and do not show it much. But we lived in an area that was a mix of military folks and native people. There was a huge store across the street where I often shopped…however, when I went to purchase fabric there to sew with, they NEVER waited on me, no matter if I was next in line, until absolutely every other more native appearing person was waited on. There was a week a year when the Navy guys were warned to not ride bikes to work or walk too…it was a kind of open season on those who appeared white. That was a different experience for us…to be in that situation because of our skin color. None of that was apparent in the church however…we were all a huge mix of races and all got along just lovely…better than normal in fact. Some of our best friends there were Chinese and were so very good to us. So some experiences were great…others, we had to be careful!!

  7. Thank you Brenda for sharing Paul Cardall’s music.
    Hope you are feeling better today.
    Your posts show ways to better paths.
    Hugs.
    Joy

    1. I just found him myself a week or so ago. These days we need anything that calms our anxieties.

  8. Racism is something people don’t like to talk about which is vey sad indeed. I can’t begin to imagine what they were told as kids or how they were taught to intermingle and tolerate as they began to make their own choices but either way, it’s so shameful we continue to allow name calling and sarcasm spewed from politicians mouths that just make it more hateful. It is not acceptable and I am glad I was brought up better.
    No I am thankful I was taught better and chose to remain a kind person as I grew older.

    1. I was raised to stay away from people of a different color. But as I got older I realized that was so wrong. That mostly ignorance made people afraid of others who didn’t look like them.

  9. I just turned on Pandora and am listening to Paul Cardall’s music. Sooo peaceful. Thanks.

    1. I just love the soft melodies. It relaxes me. In a time of worry and anxiety about what’s going on, I can count on the music to soothe me.

  10. Another really good post, Brenda – thank you! I wonder if you saw a recent PBS program called Driving While Black? It opened my eyes and left me in tears – and I always thought of myself as pretty broad minded and yet there is so much that we don’t even think about that others have to seriously consider every day.
    Hope you’re feeling better. I am going to listen to the music you suggested. My son gave me a mini Google nest and I have been so enjoying listening to any music I wish at command.
    Mary

  11. Brenda, too many people find it easier to hate and belittle others than to face up to their own shortcomings. Many people are realizing that they somehow have been shortchanged in life and are fearful of losing their “position” in the world – whatever it is; some people believe that because they are “white” they are somehow entitled to be at the top, no matter what. It’s an easy excuse for failure to examine one’s own flaws and weaknesses – blame others for them, or blame others for somehow “stealing” you privilege from you and then you do not have to face the uncomfortable truth that maybe it’s something in yourself that has blocked you from succeeding to the extent you believe you should have. It’s also convenient for the people at the top to keep the people who actually build their wealth for them by doing the work necessary to generate that wealth for the “owners of capital” to keep us at each other’s throats. It’s deliberate and has been done since the dawn of civilization. If we’re focusing on targeting people who are not actually our enemies, we won’t be focusing on the forces that have actually put us in this position in the United States – where less than 10% of Americans and people who don’t even live in our country own more than 80% of all wealth and assets in our country. So we’re programmed, we are taught to blames others for everything that happens to us that we don’t like – but the others we’re taught to target are usually in the same boat we are. We’re aiming our arrows at people who are just like us instead of those we should be aiming them at.

  12. Bless your neighbor’s heart. And it is so sad to realize we still live with it so much. My daughter is adopted from Mexico. She’s now 31 and has faced it off n on all her life. I’ve seen it happen to her. Once in a fabric-yarn store we’ve shopped in for years she was followed around the yarn Dept by an older white store clerk. I was in the back of the store looking at something else. And the funny thing was she was carrying a clutch purse. Not quite likely she’d stash a couple of skeins of yarn or some size 11 knitting needles. Kids in HS used to tell her to go back to Mexico. They get that from their parents.

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