Author: Bev

I’m no poet but don’t you know it; not a stanza extravaganza nor alliteration configuration.  But my thoughts ought naught be canceled.  Erased or disgraced….

I wish to cancel you.  Cancel who?

Cancel you!  Cancel culture?

Who are you?  Cancel-culture-vulture.

Offends me.  Or sends me.

Cancel reading.  Cancel seeding.

Hit the ceiling.  Hurt my feelings.

Cancel dinner.  Cancel lunch.

Next cancel breakfast.  I have a hunch.

Lash out.  Cash you out.

Cancel smart.  Cancel heart.

Freak out.  Speak out.

Been canceled.  Been banned.

Unfriended.  Befriended.

Don’t like history.  It feels wrong.

It should be better.  Could be better.

Cancel learning.  Cancel yearning.

Cancel potato.  Cancel fun.

Cancel kindness.  Cancel hope.

Cancel left.  Cancel right.

They piddle on the middle.  We wait not hate.

Sun rise.  Cancel compromise.

Powerful-cancel.  Elite-control.

Cancel thought.  Cancel reason.  Who can please ’em?

Cancel gender.  With agenda.

Cancel monuments.  Cancel history.

Cancel love.  And the One above.

Cancel freedom.  Cancel speech.

Cancel prayer.  Cancel care.

Cancel-hoards.  Cancel-words.

I don’t like you.  Cancel you.

I don’t know you.  Cancel who?

 

One does not have to be a food expert in order to engage in culinary travels.  Most travel makes food procurement mandatory.  Some of it is nothing to write home about.

Travel food, one of the highlights of the adventure, tends to define a place for the foreign traveler, in particular.  Foreign food is rife with cultural misinterpretation, and subjective taste. 

Some of my food expectations when traveling have made the experience bewildering. For example, when in France, I thought we should eat “French food.”

The best food we ate in Paris was, oiled and seasoned haricot-verte (stick-thin, whole green beans) from an Italian deli. I still regret sticking to my preconceived notions about foreign dining, when we could have probably enjoyed an awesome meal in the Italian restaurant below that deli in Paris.

We found an inexpensive German-made chocolate bar while meandering through a Parisian neighborhood grocery; wishing later that we had bought several.  This compares sadly to the little box of overpriced Belgian chocolates from a specialty shop in, yes, Belgium, that had the same icky mystery filling of any old U.S. boxed chocolates.

In Finale Liguria, Italy, where my Italian was understood with a Canadian accent, the strawberry gelato from a beach-side shop, was so delectable that I quickly learned the correct enunciation, gelato alla fregola, to get it again behind a long line of other quick learners.  This contrasts with the truly boring pasta in Verona, Italy that I could have made better at home.

Both a language issue and a revelation about my husband, was the tuna pizza at a hotel restaurant in northern Italy.  I was too weary to consult the phrase book for our pizza selection so we winged-it.  It was Italy, it was pizza, what’s to screw up?

When you’re thinking pizza toppings, does tonno sound to you like it might translate to tomatoes?  To this overtired brain, it did.  Well, it doesn’t mean tomatoes, it means tuna.  Who puts tuna on pizza?

The look on my husband’s face when our tuna pizza arrived was priceless.  Understand that this man is known for trying almost any food.

His response was something like the full-body-spasm that precedes throwing up, rising from the stomach, through the diaphragm, the esophagus and into the facial muscles.  I’d never seen this reaction to food in decades of marriage to this man.  In all fairness, our cats probably would have walked away from that pizza.

The next food-like and language observation was along the autobahn in Germany.  I’m not a potty-joke kind of person, but this one has to be told.

We’re comfortable with the romance languages, rooted in Latin (French, Spanish, Italian), but German is way out of our comfort zone.  Highway signs in particular were difficult for us to comprehend, especially because they came too fast for this navigator to grab the phrase book and translate.  But, one German highway word that we will never forget is, Ausfahrt, which means exit.  We snort-laughed for miles at that one.

Language mistakes have to constitute some of the funniest mistakes a person can make.  Add a language mistake to a travel-weary-food conundrum and you might just have a stand-up comedy routine. 

This brings me to the Mantisse, a chocolate-filled muffin that we discovered in McDonald’s restaurants throughout France.  I fell in love with these things.  So, as we pulled up to a drive thru, our daughter asked her dad to order her favorite, crepes and I from the back seat this time, asked for a Mantisse.  It must have been one of our tired moments, because both of them swore I ordered, “mymanJesus.” 

I realize that it is a personal preference, and many of you will have your own, but we liked nary a restaurant meal that we tried in Europe.  Particularly disappointing was the grisly, chewy mystery meat special of the day that we tried at a road-side, mom-and-pop’s type restaurant, packed with regulars, in rural France.  The gravy/sauce though was wonderfully, stereotypically French.  Similarly, my Parisian plate of runny cheese sauce that was supposed to be shrimp ravioli, tasted like nothing, watered-down, and cost eight euros.

But the autobahn ham sandwiches, jambon-beurre, were perfection, as well as almost every market, deli, or food-truck, a la carte items we lived on (baguettes, cheese, pain au chocolat, grapes, etc.).  Middle-Eastern walk-ups of kabobs and gyros became a favorite destination from within small walled cities to mid-size towns, throughout the continent.  They also provided much coveted “French fries” to our daughter, under the English moniker, chips.  FYI potato chips in Europe, are crisps.

We periodically bought a case of bottled water at big grocery stores and kept it in our car trunk (boot, in our English, steering wheel on the right, rental).  But do you think we could get a bottle of “fizzy” water, gazeuse, in a French restaurant?  Later, we learned to ask for the most common brand name, Perrier.

Aboard the QEII and Queen Mary, we avoided our scheduled, formal meals, for which one had to dress formally.  We tried it once and the food was okay but not our cup of tea, get it, cup of tea, English formality….

However, the afternoon teas, complete with scones, cucumber sandwiches, etc., were nice enough; the chocolate chip cookies at the buffets were addictive; the Fish n Chips at the pub was everything the English tradition touts; and every buffet was true to its delicious stereotype, making thrice-daily walks on deck mandatory.

Finally, I will end this discussion of food and foreign travel with a cautionary tale.  Go prepared with your own over-the-counter remedies, such as Pepto-Bismol, Tylenol, antacids, etc.  There are green-crossed signs easily identifying pharmacies in every city in Western Europe but I dare you to find an over-the-counter item in there.  Nor are these items available in neighborhood groceries, or in what we know as dollar stores.

Bon voyage and bon apetit.    

The Lie of the Easy Access Phone Card, is my next tale of misadventure.  This one is a twofer.  It happened not once, but twice.  First, it was in the very same German destination as the Baden Baden ham experience from Memories of Travel.

This was 2008, before the ease of using cell phones between foreign countries and home had evolved.  We were told by travel experts at the time that the best way to phone home was to purchase a phone card at any neighborhood Tabac (Tobacco shop).

This is what we had done, in France on our way to Germany.  My husband thought he plugged in all the right numbers and codes to use the card from our nice German hotel.  So, he called his mom to chat about some highlights of the trip so far, for about twenty minutes.

The shock didn’t come until the next morning when I, alone, stood in front of a very stern, slim, dark-haired, middle-aged woman, demanding that I pay the phone charge of more than one hundred euros, which had been attached to our room bill of around two hundred euros.  My daughter and husband had gone to retrieve the car from the parking garage, so I stood alone in protest – “we used a phone card for that call,” to a solid response of – “that doesn’t work in Germany.”

“Okay,” this traveler nearly cried, as she shelled out more than three-hundred euros for that little misadventure.

This incident was followed a few days later by The Tale of the Norman Bates Hotel/Prison Scandal, which ended our attempts to call home using phone cards.  It was in France this time so we thought we’d emerge unscathed.  Not so much, but in a surprising caper.

We were tired and again, hungry.  We filled the car with gas and had to find a hotel soon.  It wasn’t rural and it wasn’t urban; maybe suburban industrialish would best describe the area.  We finally found a small, ranch style, U.S.-type homegrown motel.

It wasn’t great but it would do.  I think we picked up some food after getting gas, because we sat at picnic tables and ate outside the front valet area of the mostly deserted motel.  A few biker-type guests arrived and also meandered around outdoors.

Once more or less settled into our room, I had – after some struggle to get internet access, paid a bill via my laptop, and we planned to use our phone card at a pay phone in the hallway.  It took all three of us to figure out how to place that call to our friend who was manning our business and household affairs.

Lo and behold, we had locked ourselves out of our room.  I went to the front desk to beg for help and came upon the male manager, locking a metal grid across the desk area preparing to leave for the night.  What?

First, he yelled at me in and out of French, but reluctantly got us back into our room.  “Stupid Americans,” mumble mumble.  Second, we were essentially being locked into this hotel property with nobody remaining on sight from management.  Again, what?

There was a “back” door to the outside of our room and we stepped out, making sure we could get back in, to come and go to our car for bottled water and fruit, when we saw a gate had been closed to the property.  Twilight Zone music began to play in our heads – loudly.  I think we all jumped into bed and pulled the covers over our heads to quell the creepiness, at least until restless sleep took over.

Last in this series of tales is, The Tale of Your Teenage Daughter Hates You.  If you require reference material for this story, I will suggest two movies: 3 Days to Kill and European Vacation.

We thought it would be an epic coming of age, pre-graduation gift to our seventeen-year-old daughter, taking her to Europe.  Do you know the phrase, “it was the thought that counts?”  But now, many years down the road, the whole thing counts as a redacted, edited, and revisionist historical blessing to said daughter.

This tale is shared by way of teenager-daughter-dialogue which is not intended to elicit a response from her parents.  I think this is known as rhetorical speech.

“They have no internet service;” and the related, “I can’t get this dumb code to work.”

“I want French fries;” This is France, how hard could it be to find French fries in France?

“I have to pee;” “You want me to pee where?”  “You know that is a hole in the ground, not a                 restroom and there’s a man peeing against the wall in there?” and “Where do you put the toilet paper?”

“No!  I really mean it, NO!” – repeat – repeat – repeat….

Said teenager’s resounding no in Europe has become a yes in the telling of her own travel tales. “That was the worst meal, your spanakopita is better…, dad would have loved the feta with every meal….”

Staying inside her body like chickenpox, she had unknowingly caught the flu-like travel bug while still gestating in the womb, and it flares up periodically.  Her husband caught the bug from her, “when we were in Athens…, the beer in Germany….”

So, even the most negative of travel experiences imprint on one’s memories as life-enhancing travel tales. 

 

 

William Shakespeare’s “now is the winter of our discontent,” seems somehow appropriate today as I feel a smidgen trapped inside an igloo.  From in here to out there I see ice, snow, and restriction.

Last year’s travel restrictions continue and our forced hibernation is making me a tad nostalgic. So, in the next few columns, I’m going a travelin’. 

I think the expansive quality of travel memories – to make negative experiences into positively amusing stories – defines travel.  Travel experiences invite embellishment and detail, just like big-fish stories, I suppose.

Our travel memories are a part of our developing life story.  We become the person of those tales.  And, maybe that person is not who we expected to be, because we traveled.

What does travel do for the people who engage in it?  Why bother?

I extemporaneously testified at my brother-in-law’s memorial service, to the joyful fact that his marrying my sister not only extended our family but expanded my worldview beyond my country of birth to his country, Canada.  “He changed my life by exposing a green, young girl from rural Pennsylvania to another whole nation, a couple of French swear words, hockey as a national sport, and the seed of a desire to travel – for which I will be eternally grateful.”

I wonder who grows up wanting to travel compared to home-grown folks that want never to wander past their birth borders.  My assumption was, if you grow up traveling – if your wonder-lusting parents took you to other countries, arranged back-packing adventures, taught you languages, sent you to semester abroad, etc., you would become an adult who travels.

I was raised with little concept of vacation – as in the annual, planned, family excursion to the beach or big-time amusement park, like many other middle class American families have.  Other than car trips most Sunday’s to visit aunts, uncles, and grandparents, either a few miles or thirty to forty miles; and once each to Michigan and Florida to visit extended family, I didn’t travel as a child.

But, thanks to my brother-in-law Fred, I graduated high school and headed directly to a travel trade school, thinking of becoming a flight attendant.  But it was rail travel up and down the eastern seaboard that captured my heart for the next few years; broken up by a flight or two to California with friends, culminating in a big, cross-country, coming of age car trip with my friend Barb, before landing back home for a time.

The words, expanse or expand come to mind every time I think of travel.  Travel moments especially, because of their combined qualities of fear, excitement, dread, desire, hope and disappointment have the unique and innate capacity to dilate, broaden, fatten, amplify, enlarge, stretch, and increase in scope, the persons we are intended to become.

What is it about travel memories that make us transform truly terrifying moments, into funny travel tales?  Negative experiences become amusing stories of mishaps, turned adventure.

I will begin with the 2008 tale which I call, Beam Me Up Scotty, which was my mother of all anxiety attacks with seasickness on the side, aboard the QEII, my first cruise ship experience.  I was led to believe seasickness was a legend of the past and departed with the Mayflower.

I was a twentieth century woman who had endured twenty-four hours of labor without a drop of pain medicine.  I was a female Jack Sparrow with modern ballasts beneath me – who laughed “nah-ha-ha,” to seasickness.

Who knew that once we departed the New York Harbor and cruised beyond the Hudson River, for the Atlantic Ocean, a pale would descend over me that enshrouded my whole being and caused me to scream inside for a helicopter to get me immediately off of that freaking boat?  If I had had legs at that moment, I may have surrendered to the panic mixed with nausea, vertigo, and crazy nightmarish thoughts and jumped, life jacket training on the Lido deck be damned.

But I was cemented to my berth, knowing no helicopter rescue was forthcoming and feeling rather certain this catatonic hell would probably never end.  That was fun.

The Tale of the Bologna Salad was the second or third time on that trip that I looked with envy at my daughter’s plate, back at mine, and really wanted to steal my child’s food.  We were weary and had just settled into our hotel in Germany, where the next day we had planned to briefly meet a business associate with whom we had worked from the states for many years but had never met in person.

It was one of those travel moments when you’re hungry, tired, intolerant of everything and everybody – you just want both sustenance and sleep – now.  You have morphed into a colicky, cry-baby who cannot be soothed.  Everybody nearby catches your misery, like a cold, unless they’re just as travel-crazed as you are, then all burst into hysterics at the slightest provocation.  “Somebody, please break out the Xanax!”

I wanted something to eat that was light but satisfying.  When I saw on the menu, salad with Baden Baden ham, my eyes lit up and voila, my travel-crazed mind confirmed, “this is it.”

In my mind’s eye, Baden Baden ham, a specialty of this part of Germany, would be a mouth-watering combination of prosciutto and Canadian bacon, and this atop an attentively-crafted garden salad of mixed, dark, leafy, greens, Asiago cheese, and maybe fresh tomatoes.  You can imagine my dismay when Baden Baden ham turned out to be julienne-slices of bologna, the lettuce was the tasteless, nutrient-bare, iceberg variety, and the cheese I swear was American or maybe cheddar, if you stretch.

We howled!  My tormented laugh, however, was like when you’re embarrassed at a public mistake you’ve made, like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk.  You know you’ve done it; you turn around and look at the crack like it was an evil moat, that you’d be a fool not to have tripped over. But you want to be the bigger person in spite of feeling cheated, robbed or offended.

Suddenly, I’m no longer trapped inside that igloo, and I’m in Europe.  Join me for some more inner travels next week.

“The visible is the invisible written down.” – The Roots of Christian Mysticism

Nothing is perfect even if the grass looks greener on the other side.  Our perception of over there might be fooling us.  I’ve been sure I saw a massive, lumbering critter in the distance ahead of me in the woods, only to see up close that it was a leafy branch, waving in the breeze.

As it turns out, our eyes are scientifically unreliable instruments of truth.  Because of blind spots, fields of vision, resolution, visual angles, holes in pixelated pictures, and patterns of data sent to the brain – the content of what we see is based mostly on perception.  Then, imagination fills in the gaps of what we “think” we see.

“Don’t make a quick judgment, because I’m not finished yet,” a booming voice told me in a dream.  I instantly thought of the end of the Wizard of Oz where we see a somewhat frail old man speaking into a microphone, behind a curtain, behind a door.  Perceptions.

This dream reminded me of our young exuberant cat, Simpkin and how his approach to the office door has changed over time.  First, Simmy obsessed over the lace curtains, custom-made many years ago by my own hand, for the French doors separating the office from the dining room.

The making of those curtains was a labor-intensive endeavor, therefore, making them irreplaceable to this growing older woman, no longer much interested in custom-making anything.  The fully clawed Simpkin, after weeks of daily attempting to scale the irreplaceable lace curtains, and countless, successful unhinging events of the rod, (not me), at the bottom of the door – which by the way was installed upside-down, by whom, I will not disclose, turned his obsession to the door itself.

All of a sudden, it seems, in his grand old age of two, Simpkin had forgotten about the curtains and the doors, and wanted what’s on the other side.  We’d come full circle with Simmy, and the grass had become greener on the other side of the doors with the lace curtains.  His myopic vision had transferred to other things as he grew up a bit.

But, what about my vision, perception, and that dream?   I can look at my life one of two ways – like Dorothy from Kansas, or, Dorothy from Oz.  I can either see my life from a distance as an epic adventure, or up close and myopically, as a one-dimensional trial-by-fire ordeal.  What a different impression and attitude each choice in perception makes in the one-and-the-same life.

In dreams, they say that an older presence signals wisdom being imparted, and we should pay special attention to what elders are saying to us.  So, I should listen to that roaring, old man, shouldn’t I? “Don’t make a quick judgment, because I’m not finished yet,” he said.

I’ve had my life figured out many times over – in as many years as I’ve lived, being naturally contemplative.  Will it be door number 1, door number 2, or….?  I don’t know, but it will be an epic adventure, in the finding out; that much I’ve decided.

So, I’m thinking that when tempted to look longingly to the grass over there, where it appears so much more appealing than our grass, don’t make a quick judgment.  The master-gardener/architect isn’t finished yet with our landscape and in this “Snowy Evening,” according to Robert Frost, we have miles to go before we sleep.

“How essential it is…to be able to live inside a mind with attractive and interesting pictures on the walls.”– William Lyon Phelps

 Over the last year most of us have spent more time at home than, well, ever.

When we’re home for too long, some of us get an itch we can’t scratch, until we’ve gotta get outta the house.  Others love our cocoons and have nary a desire to budge.

On the other hand, after being away from home for an extended period, we miss home.  “I can’t wait to get home,” usually followed by “and sleep in my own bed,” we say.

But when you first walk through the door, you notice that something isn’t quite right.  It doesn’t feel lived in.  It doesn’t have its homey smells.  It’s awkward at first.  Your home isn’t home, just yet.

Then, there is the moment, following a crisis or trauma when we sadly say, “I don’t want to go home just yet,” because we know that reality lives at home.  And sometimes we’re just not ready for reality.

To some of us, home is our homeland, where we were born or grew up.  That home brings with it a whole slew of emotion, acknowledged or not.

Why do we want to stay home, or come home?  Is it because that’s where the things are that define us, that remind us of who we are; and reassure us that all is well?

When does a house become a home?  I surmise that a house becomes a home, when you’ve invested your soul into it.

After all, it has been said since the time of Pliny (Rome 23-79 AD), and popularized in the USA in the 1800s, that “Home is where the heart is.”

This might be why there is such a lot of emotion bound up in the buying and selling of homes.  Perhaps home is the seat of memories and the place where we reconcile our past and plan our future, while living in the present.

Does home mean a house?  Or, is home, where you are?

When I taught college-level Marriage and Family classes, my theoretical focus on the family, was where we are now; not where we were or where we might be, but where we are and where might we go from here.   Home, as one’s state of mind is really about being real, genuine, flawed, and a variation of normal – not some ideal, fake, dating site model of perfection.

Home, is not always a concrete place built of brick and mortar, sometimes it’s the state of your soul. Is your home a comfortable, safe place, filled with diverse contributions of this thought, that idea, a thing – or a zillion things, and people who’ve deposited bits of matter into the place?

Home is a tapestry that tells a coherent story on the front, but underneath is a rather ratty, gnarly jumble of multi-colored threads that couldn’t possibly produce such a purposeful design, could they?

Maybe home is a literal building where we dwell.  Or maybe home is an actual place, but inside us where the substance of who we are resides.  More than anything, I want there to be “attractive and interesting pictures on the walls” of both of these homes of mine.

Furnishings and stuff are just reminders, cues, tokens of a life lived; things that assist with memories that remind us of experiences, along with the feelings those experiences stimulated – all of which are the substance of happiness.

How homely are you; how suited to the home?  Does ordinary domestic life have to be unalluring, unaesthetic, or unattractive, as the most obvious definition of homely implies?  Or can it be the other definition of the word, comfortable, cozy, snug, friendly, and welcoming?

What pictures are on the walls of your mind, your home?  I think mine are fine art, all the dreamy impressionist paintings I’ve loved, highlighting gardens, flowers, soft brush strokes, and the colors of real life, muted but saturated and full of promise.

How are things at home?  If you don’t see any pictures on your walls, please dream some, and make them homemade, custom art that reflects you.

Welcome home.

 

 

 

This last week there was a widespread call for unity, from certain political leaders in Washington, D.C.  It seems a hollow call if the speaker and listener are not agreed on what their proposed unity is meant to accomplish.

A fashion statement at the Inaugural, combining blue symbolic of Democrats and red symbolic of Republicans, making purple, isn’t really enough to convince the wounded sensibilities and dramatically different ideologies of these two opposite franchises.  This got me thinking about the concept of unity and agreement.

Instead of a plea for a gathering of minds, might this call for unity from the powerful to the disenfranchised, be more so a demand that all of you agree with me and mine?  Karl Marx could easily have said this.

Marx would, however, have been referring to the industrial-capitalist elite, demanding compliance from the laboring class.  My statement was about the contemporary American political elite, demanding compliance from the rest of us regular folks.

Who are they kidding, our former and current national political leaders are all wealthy, some of them, uber-wealthy from long careers of political influence?  Like on Wall Street, there is no such thing among the elite in politics, as insider trading or they would all be spending some time in the jail where Martha Stewart once traded recipes.

These leaders are in a position to demand our agreement, unity, or obedience because they increasingly hold our purse strings.  How many times have we heard from our elite political leaders or would-be politicians that they know what America wants and what America needs?  Really?

A hundred years ago when I taught Introduction to Sociology, I particularly liked teaching several sections, among them, the Melting Pot (Assimilation) vs. the Salad Bowl (Differentiation).  Assimilation spoke to European emigration to the U.S. in the 19th century, when the goal was nation-building, and one nation, under God was the ideal.

People agreed at that time, that the nation would be best served by a people with one identity, therefore, the various immigrant nationalities were expected, or forced – depending upon one’s perspective, to set aside their unique national heritage and identity for the sake of becoming American.  We, the people, became a melting pot of many different nationalities.

I’m okay with soup, but its consolidation of a bunch of flavors, textures, and solids into a smooth, singular sensation leaves me wanting.  In fact, the soups I prefer are chunky, not a pulverized, smooth amalgamation of nothing in particular.

I overwhelmingly prefer salad.  The crunch, surprising changes in flavor, and discernible differences in ingredients are what satisfy my palate.

Differentiation (the salad bowl) speaks to more recent emigration to the U.S. and a “we are the world,” multi-culturalism.  The salad bowl metaphor depicts our culture as one in which a flavorful, colorful, crunchy mixture of unique cultures work separately and together to freely form a diverse people into one union – unity within diversity. 

Personally, I think the crunchy part of the salad is the most telling, culturally.  Differences between groups produce a crunch.  “You’re being crunchy today,” is another way of saying you’re not so easy to get along with.  The clash of cultural or ideational textures sometimes “rub us the wrong way;” just like wool bristles against the skin.

Speaking of the crunchiness of culture, how about that Tower of Babel in Genesis, chapters 10-11.  The history of our “Christian nation” suggests that many of us have understood this story as an allegory about God’s judgment on a narcissistic bunch of unruly, mean-spirited control-freaks with one mind and goal, trying to set themselves above God.

I learned a potentially more plausible truth of the matter of The Tower of Babel, from a Rabbi (Sacks, Not in God’s Name).  Genesis Chapter 10 tells of seventy nations with seventy languages (think salad bowl) – God-given differences and each respected for their uniqueness, working at nation-building. 

By Genesis Chapter 11, one imperial power imposed its will on the seventy nations, making them follow one God, one truth, and one way, and speak one language.  This now, one nation was orderly and compliant (a primary goal of nation-builders), but bland and devoid of life and color (think melting pot or soup).

When God confused the language of the builders of the tower (Genesis 11:7) He was not pronouncing judgment, but restoring the nations to their distinct, unique, cultural identities.  Sacks (Not in God’s Name) suggests that the whole of the Hebrew Bible is God’s attempt to show humankind the way out of our “fundamental human dilemma” of difference.

It appears to be a fact of life that people have trouble getting along.  Homogenous, we are not; that’s only for milk, not people.

Even if we come from a similar geographical location, share a history, have the same faith, agree pretty much about how to save or spend money, and so on, we’re bound to have differences in gender identity and roles, personal preferences about little things, who’s in charge of this or that, and really countless selfish inclinations.  We won’t see eye to eye on everything, all the time.

People who disagree are all convinced they’re right.  I guess the question is then, how important is it to be right? 

The thing is, if you insist on being right, there is an opposite, a person you believe is wrong and you want to prove it.  Those of us dressed in purple, standing on the Mason-Dixon line, or symbolically living in Switzerland, just want us all to get along, find a middle ground, a place of peace and hope and kindness.  What do you say we let the other guy be right?