Sunday Salon: Bleeding Minnesota

It's time for Sunday Salon.  Usually this is space to talk about what we're reading.  This time, my post is related to something I have had college courses in, and have read more than once: The Constitution of the United States.  Most especially, this relates to some of the best words ever written in any document establishing a government:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

These rights are being threatened in the United States as they have seldom been threatened before, most recently by incidents in Minnesota, the shooting of American citizens in American streets by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troops.  I want to call ICE "brown shirts," after Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), but Cezary Jan Strusiewicz says ICE is not like the SA.  

"And when ICE agents aren’t wearing their vest-and-hat starter kit, they dress up as civilians. They’ve been known to pretend to be utility workers (electric company, gas, even delivery drivers) to trick people into letting them into their houses. Do you think the Brownshirts ever bothered with ruses? Hell no. They were proud of being fascists." 

So with these tricks and ruses, maybe ICE is more like the KGB. 

 Anne at My Head is Full of Books wrote this Sunday on the recent incidents in Minnesota.  She charges each of us:  

Now I urge you: to find out what your church, synagogue, temple, mosque, or other community centers are doing to end the trouble with ICE and how you can send financial or physical support. Figure it out and publish your actions on your blog. It is time for us behind the scenes book-bloggers to get activated! We can't sit this one out.

She describes the latest pronouncement on the incident by her denomination, the Presbyterian Church.  Though I am off my feed about organized religion as an old woman, I was raised Episcopalian and am proud to say so with their stands on a number of issues in our nation today.  Here's what Episcopal leadership has to say: 

In an evening letter to the church, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe referenced Matthew 4:12-23, the Jan. 25 Gospel reading, saying Jesus understood the divisions sewn “when earthly powers persuade human beings to fear one another, regard one another as strangers, and believe that there is not enough to go around.”

“In our time, the deadly power of those divisions is on display on the streets of Minneapolis, in other places across the United States, and in other countries around the world,” he said. “As has too often been the case throughout history, the most vulnerable among us are bearing the burden, shouldering the greatest share of risk and loss, and enduring the violation of their very humanity.”

And not unlike vulnerable communities, Episcopalians can no longer expect to practice their faith without risk; the Constitutional right to peaceful protest comes with deadly risk, he continued.

“In the coming years, our church will continue to be tested in every conceivable way as we insist that death and despair do not have the last word, and as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God. We will be required to hold fast to God’s promise to make all things new, because our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness.”

I have communicated my horror and disgust at these incidents in Minnesota to my senators and representative, to the governor and legislature of my state.  This is no time for "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot."  These are indeed "times that try men's souls," and women's souls, too.

I served my country in the United States Coast Guard, in which I took an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."  I hold myself still bound by that oath. 

RESIST! 

Sunday Salon: My Favorite Little-known Series, the Green-Sky Trilogy

                                 

In the mid-1980s, when our daughters were in middle school, we came upon an enchanting computer game called "Below the Root."  Little did we know at the time that it was based on a children's trilogy known collectively as The Green-Sky Trilogy.  We loved the game, all four of us.  Take two children and two adults who could be child-like, add a charming game, and there's a sale for someone!

Learning about the game's basis in a three-book series, I sought that series out and finally found all three in paperback.  We all read it, and I still have it, as I treasure the books I enjoy most.  I read to my grandson from this series when he was a wee one, as a way of getting him used to the rhythm of stories and as a way of letting him bond with me through my voice.  He became an avid reader.

The story involves the Kindar, an ethereal people who live in the high boughs of a forest, a place called Green-Sky.  The key to the story is their relationship to the Erdlings, underground dwellers who live below the root of a holy tree that has great spiritual significance to the Kindar.  It was the Kindar who imprisoned the Erdlings.  Difficulties begin when the Kindar discover that their Holy Root is withering, threatening their existence.  Then an Erdling child who flees when she is told her pet rabbit must be sacrificed to feed her people finds her way onto the surface, and then into Green-Sky.  She develops a friendship with a Kindar child, and the Erdlings are released.  However, there exists a high level of distrust between the Kindar and the Erdlings.  

The author, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, was a schoolteacher.  During her writing career, spanning from 1964 to 2011, she wrote some 46 books, three of which were Newbery Honors books, meaning that they fell short of being awarded a Newbery Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in children's literature, but qualified for the recognition of Newbery Honors.

 The first pages of the first book in the series, Below the Root, introduce Raamo, the young male protagonist of the series.  He has, to his great surprise, been appointed to the temple of the Ol-Zhaan, the spiritual leaders of Green-Sky.  And thus, the reader is drawn into the story.  Beyond that, I found it hard to put down, and read it through in a short time.  It is time for me to re-read this trilogy.  I just wish we still had the game and a computer that would play it.

Recommended for middle-school-age children, and for adults who haven't totally forgotten how good children's literature can be. 

#Sunday Salon 

 

Sunday Salon: The Last Few Days Before Christmas

 These last few days before Christmas my husband and I have been:

Wrapping Christmas presents and getting some in the mail.  The mail-out presents don't have far to go, just from here in north Florida to our friends Tom and Amanda in central Florida, and should arrive Wednesday.  Others are local.  Some have already been given, to our nephew Paul who visited us from Australia, where he lives.

Watching NFL football, particularly games in the AFC South conference.  Our team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, have been tearin' up the pea patch and finally getting some recognition.  We watched them beat the Denver Broncos yesterday, 34-20, after almost every prognosticator had predicted they'd lose.  Not the first time the Jaguars have been underrated against the Broncos.  The first time was 4 January 1997, when the Jaguars were dissed as "jagwads" by Denver sports writer Woody Paige.  That fired up the team enough that they won, 30-27.  The effect on the fans was electrifying, and we were among the throng who flocked to the stadium in the dark of night to welcome the team home.  Their airplane received permission to divert to a circle path over the stadium before landing at Jacksonville International Airport.  And when they arrived, and quarterback Mark Brunell said into the microphone, "Jacksonville, do you believe in miracles?" -- Pandemonium!

Reading.  I'm into a book titled Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, by Max Fraser.  It was suggested by a newly-found distant cousin when I mentioned to her that my maternal ancestors had gone from eastern Tennessee, one location of our mutual roots, to Indiana.  Cousin Nancy suggested they may have been part of this migration.  I'm also reading, via Kindle, You Went to Emergency for WHAT?, a hilarious yet somewhat acerbic account by Australian paramedic Tom Booth of the ridiculous demands often made on hospital emergency departments.  

 Doing genealogy.  One way I'm hoping to preserve my family history and that of my husband is to contribute to the collaborative family tree at WikiTree, which is for genealogists by genealogists.  It strictly requires that members provide source citations to reliable sources, an aspect that I am 100% behind.  I've just ordered a book on how to see to it that one's family history is preserved after one has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Celebrating.  Our grandson Victor just turned 21, and we had a small family celebration.  He's in college now, and is planning on moving to North Carolina next year.

Next week, I think we'll spend most of our time recovering!

Happy Holidays to all!

#Sunday Salon