Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Wandering Wondering

Warning: slight rant.

With all the sports on TV, fall is my favorite time for reading. I've never been good at just sitting and watching. My hands need to be busy or my mind wanders. So while Toby watches football, I like to read. I can look up now and then and watch the replays. Same with baseball, although I love watching the World Series - especially this one. Still, baseball can be boring at times, and a good book can be handy. I just finished "The Help" which was a good read. I'm not sure I liked the ending, but it was a thought provoking book. It does make you laugh, and yet it was such a terrible time in our history. Many of my friends went to see the movie and loved it. When it comes out on video, I will watch it.

In 1964, I started first grade. That was the year that they closed the black school in Electra, TX, and put everyone together. As a kid, it didn't matter to me. If there was any controversy in our little town, I didn't know about it. But reading "The Help" did remind me of a story that my dad told me. His first teaching/administrator job was in Chillicothe, TX, in the late 50's. Dad told me that the State of Texas had sent out new textbooks. He counted out all that he needed at his school, and then took the rest to the Black school, which was probably a one-room schoolhouse. When he tried to give the new textbooks to the teacher, the teacher told him that the Black school was not suppose to get NEW textbooks - that they were suppose to get the OLD textbooks. Dad was shocked by this. He said that there was plenty of new textbooks and gave them the books anyway. Such interesting times! If I were a great writer, maybe I could express my feelings about the relationships between people and races - love/hate, power/submission, acceptance/rebellion, etc. But read the book; the writer does it much better than I could in an entertaining way.

In "The Help" one of the characters points out the irony of the Junior Ladies League raising money to send to the Poor Starving Children in Africa while giving their cast off clothing to their help was sufficient. Last week I watched replays of the GOP candidate debates on the news - showing Romney and Perry going at it. Perry accused Romney of hiring illegal aliens to do his yard work. Ooh! Big gasp! Not! Why didn't Romney point out that Texas law states schools must not deny illegal aliens an education? Now there is a gasp. Why don't we gasp over the fact that it is Americans that support the drug cartels in Mexico and South America and cause lots of the problems there? Who else is buying their drugs? And the best we can do is to say, "Put up a fence!" or "Stay out!" while we sit on our sanctimonious butts doing very little for our southern neighbors, and send our military to Muslim countries pushing our government and religion on cultures we do not understand . And then we are shocked when they hate us, or say things like Karzai said about war and Pakistan, or after fighting for their freedom they embrace shair'a law.

Sorry about the rant. You know me. I'm just a dumb blonde who doesn't know much about foreign policy, but I have to wonder about some of America's choices.

3 comments:

Deb said...

"The Help" and "Water for Elephants" are both on my 'to read' list. Want to get to them before they get ruined by the film industry. But then, I could actually just NOT go to see them, huh?

Buck said...

I wonder about some of the choices we make as well, Lou. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger in this space.

Moogie P said...

It was a nice rant. I have downloaded The Help, but haven't read it yet because I'm a sports junkie.