Blending Colours

Once I took up painting while in a course that exposed the class to the whole range of  art from the colour wheel to the intricacies of oriental brush use. I found the colour part, while fascinating in the range of its variety, the least inspirational. I had assumed that our special breed of  artists was filled with the creative angst and easily, instinctively slapped on gobs of paint and everything worked out from there. It wasn't that simple. There were methods of application, construction of materials, rules of design, costs and time involved. There was mixing and cleaning and a general mess to contend with that went along with all the esoteric matters of creative endeavors. At that point, I gave up, and swung my course load over to Literature. It was much easier to read someone else's hard work and dabble at my own word efforts than with sticky, icky paint. Which brings me to the point I am trying to ponder. We as a global society are in the age of colour,  mostly to do with skin colour. What the colour of someone's skin has to do with so much is mystifying but that's the way we humans are today. If someone has skin that is unusual in their surroundings, the first question is "where are you from".  They can be from down the street or across the world but why does it matter enough to ask? It is because we are currently embroiled in the aspect of colour. No longer can we sit smugly in our little colour pod whatever that might be, and say to ourselves that it is our world. It is what it has always been, everyone on the planet's world, only we weren't so close to seeing skin colours in all of their true human glory, as we are now. We can be anywhere on the globe in a matter of hours and the fondest wish of anyone I know or have heard of, is to see the world. If we want to see the world, we have to live in it and that means being part of its wondrous variety much like the possibility of an artist's easel that can see colours mix and blend into amazing numbers and kinds. Humans who are uncomfortable with skin colour are natural effects of a changing world, one that doesn't have hard lines any more in anything, but those that are slowly coming together in exciting ways. To some, colour is spiritual and to others, it's societal or historical or cultural but it doesn't change the one fact that we are all human creatures together on one earth. One day, the way we are going, we will get it, but for now, we are in a great struggle not really about technology, but because our sciences are forcing us to accommodate all humans no matter what their differences. And it's not easy. It should be since we all have the same stuff under our skins. But Technology is forcing us to make it a start if we would just allow it. Like giving up Art because it was too hard, and now regretting it, I hope we don't give up on each other. We need to stick together as human beings and learn that all our varieties and differences are age old and natural and then finally find ourselves. Earth, all that we have, is our easel and it's waiting.

There's Blaming and DIY

For some reason in our affluent society on this continent, there is a rash of blaming going on. It seems as though most of the troubles are someone else's fault. And not only that, from what we hear, money is the cure. Some time ago, in my travels about the globe, I heard a tale about  remote island dwellers who were isolated in their poverty. There was no work available and only tourists such as we who savoured their home-made seafood treats during our brief time there, offered this unique group, any small financial resources. The islanders blamed their poverty on the closest regional government for its lack of attention to the plight of their people. Something, therefore, was said to be done about it. A shipload of laying hens was dropped off at the island so that they could be used to sell eggs in the mainland markets and to start the people into the business of raising more chickens. This, the city fathers and mothers, thought was a good way to improve the economy of the islanders. When the team of advisors returned to the island community some time later, there wasn't a chicken to be had. There had been, however, some joyous days of feasting, during which, indeed, the islanders revelled at their good fortune in having the chickens. I suspect this tale is fictional since it's one I've heard over and over again in different parts of the world. But while the story is but a story, it does speak.  Blaming is easy but it doesn't do anything. Also, asking for help isn't a one way street. Both the blamer and the anticipated helper, have to make a plan to fix whatever the problem is and both parties must be there and ready to listen, cooperate and often make compromises. There must be a plan of action. It's too easy to blame or make a demand  but how, realistically, given that there is only so much tax money, can it be carried out?  It's crucial to look at the "big picture". It takes patience. What can't be done immediately, may be accomplished in installments of both time, money and most of all, participation.  Blame doesn't work. It is merely an expression of emotional frustration, not a solution to a problem. It can be called, perhaps, the first step toward a solution. Sometimes, as has been proven in many Third World areas, what is really needed is working out a DIY plan and for the aiders to stick around and help get it started up and running well.  If the islanders of the story, had been mentored sensitively by those who "dropped off" the chickens, and that they helped the people to get the business going along with monitoring it, it may have been successful. Mouths are made to plan not whine and hands are made to work, not beg.

Art of Email

Emailing has become an art just as the old letter writing once was. There are nuances to the matter of pecking away at a keyboard and sending off a few lines, or more, of text. In the days of yore, one was identified by what was seen on the envelope according to the penmanship style thereon. I was a prolific letter writer in-the-day and while I tried desperately to do something about my almost unreadable handwriting, it just wouldn't settle into any one legible pattern. As my scrawl went from page one to two and sometimes onward, its forms became more and more unreadable. The trouble was my thinking which tends to accelerate as I run along the paths of its global style and it often shoots off into multiple directions that become lost in the scramble of ideas. When I hand-wrote other pieces for articles or editor submissions, I could barely read them myself. Needless to say, I learned how to type, but being a self-taught endeavor as it was, I never did attain the speed of a steno or the acuity of a true journalist. Even today, flying around a keyboard which is something I do habitually, I make myriads of mistakes and spend a good deal of time backspacing in correcting to where I have almost worn out that key along with the "t", "i" and "r" and"e". ( Perhaps there is an acronym here.) I am sure some of you know how that goes. Then along came emails, and I fell in love with the whole concept. But, I wrote the way I did when I wrote letters. I am verbose but the ears and eyes of my beholders don't always match my love of length over strength in expression. I was told politely and otherwise, that my emails were cumbersome or to put it gently a "bloody waste of time". I had to do some fierce editing or lose friends. I began by using maddening short forms of words and mere letters to depict whole ones. I employed the dash rather than punctuation. I even tried the criminal keyboard act of using capital letters only. My reformed style was so personally embarrassing that I had to quit and reverted to doing my usual long-winded approach but editing it afterward and cutting out any extraneous words or, indeed, sentences and it worked rather well in the beginning. I have currently eliminated the editing and do it now, as I go along. They are still messages more lengthy than most persons' but both I, the sender and thou, the receiver, are much happier with the result. I think. I am still bothered when I get emails that have rampant usage mistakes that no one had bothered to correct. Incorrect spelling especially gets to me as do things like capitalizing words in the middle of sentences for no reason whatsoever. I see on-line that there is free help with this if one is able to find the very lightly underlined marked errors they do. And there is Spellcheck. Since I may have gone on far too long already, I end.

Out Fitted Sheet

Sometimes innovations in the home, don't work and fitted sheets are one. When they came out I thought they were a fine idea. Advertised to save time for the busy housewife whatever she was, I a working mother and spouse, bought them thinking they would be wonderful.  As time went on, after years of putting up with struggling fingers and wrists getting fitted sheets onto the new big mattresses, that war is over. The fitted sheet and I were enemies from the start. As I say, the idea is wonderful, but the people who make them can't be. Simply put, they skimp on their measurements which means I have to either buy fitted sheets that are too large or fight with the "right" sized corners to get them to stay where they should stay. Now, reformed to a flat sheet fan, I prefer to fold neatly the unfitted bottom sheet smartly into its corners with a quick tuck. When I want to remove sheets on wash day,  I can  whip them off and into the washing machine in a jiff.  No more walking to the other side of the room to  say "please" and beg each fitted corner to come off.  One good tug or two of the straight sheets and we are off and into the wash basket like a bar of wet soap. Also when I empty the dryer of its weekly load of sheets, I no longer with flat sheets, have to search to extricate the small things that lurk in the stitched corners such as stray socks, washcloths and knickers. Nothing can hide from me when flat sheets come out of the washer and go into the dryer. Or out of the dryer to be folded. Folding fitted sheets to lie neatly in the linen cupboard was a battle that I never did win. And I doubt that anyone ever has, due to a fitted sheet nature. I must confess that latterly, frustration with the fitted sheet led me to the laundry criminal act of cutting one corner so that the thing would lie flat on the bed. Most of the time I got away with it, but sometimes the guilty corner wandered somewhat and wrinkled up the whole mattress field. But overlooking these small mishaps, the plan generally worked quite well. Today, my horoscope said that Mercury was in some sort of phase that would bring pleasant surprises if I handled matters well. I did. I put all of the fitted sheets at the bottom of the linen closet and all of the flat sheets on top. I will use these lovely flat sheets until they wear out and they won't for years since I believe that spending good money on such essentials as they are, pays off in the long run. As to the old fitted ones, they will be used as floor wipes, paint and dust covers and car washing rags.  But from now on, no more new ones will appear in my house. That, of course, poses the problem of where to buy flat sheets all by themselves and not married badly into a set. Although it will be a challenge, somewhere, some store will sell me one flat sheet to a package and if so, I will be there with an open wallet and a smile.

As A Kid WWII

Being born during WWII meant that the fear of invasion was something you lived with. My uncles who came to visit, wore rough kakhi clothing and you felt its roughness when they hugged you hello or goodbye. They were late getting into the end of the war and didn't go overseas, but they had the boot camp training and took it without complaint. Complaining which is a daily news event these days, was unheard of then. The matter of war was always at the back of everyone's mind. It was the first piece reported on the radio and when you went to movies if you had enough rationing stamps to get gas and go there, you saw the first hand film of what was happening "overseas". The little books of rationing stamps for food and fuel, were valued and protected. We kids saved our pennies to buy war savings stamps at school and proudly put them into our stamp booklets. We all knew about margarine that was white and because it was rationed, not having too much sugar or butter and donating all the "silver paper" we could collect for the "war effort". Socks were knit for soldiers and boxes of food were sent to war torn countries. Today we buy poppies to remember the wars and the sacrifice of those who died in them, but then, we lived war every day - and night. When we said our prayers before bedtime we always put in our wishes for the troops and for ourselves, a safe night. Women went off to take jobs hitherto unknown to them and did it without complaint. We did without a lot of small things for the "war effort" and did it because we knew people who got one of those terrible telegrams that no one wants ever to receive. None of us were spoiled about having to do and wear and eat things that we didn't particularly like. No one was spoiled or demanding. The fear of possible invasion kept everyone from being "spoiled". My mother and her sister worked for a time, taking a "man's job", in a plywood plant shuffling around huge sheets of the stuff with their bandanas tied around their hair. My dad, who was too old to be "called up", was with his friend at night after work, on Air Raid runs on their bicycles up and down the streets to make sure the Blackout rules were carried on properly. In our homes, we had to hang blankets over the windows to be sure not to show any light that might possibly be seen by enemy bombers. My dad's friend was the neighbourhood Air Raid Warden. He was a British expat and knew all about the terrors of bombing. WWII was reality, not a movie but movie theatres showed glamorous Hollywood pictures to help everyone have a way to lighten up in the dark days. In 1945 and I was ten years old, when it was announced that the war was over, it was a gigantic weight lifted from the shoulders of everyone and with a magical joy, we all went down to the main street of town and joined the joyous crowds of people who were hugging each other and waving flags and celebrating the end of fear and tragedy and things that made us very sad. I remembered seeing former soldiers with missing limbs and still wearing their uniforms. Women and men who lost family members cried and shouted with joy all at the same time. And then after came a sobering and sometimes confusing, period of what to do next and all that it meant. But the great WWII fear was over.

Frat Brats

I thought sororities and fraternities were dead and gone. They should be. It is obvious that in this broad minded world, exclusive clubs have no place. They are lauded to provide brotherhood and sisterhood but they do so only for those invited. What their true meaning is, is gangism in its sneakiest form. The members of these organizations are gangs that in becoming a member to their exclusive halls means passing certain tests in order to remain a member. If their laws are broken, members are juried by their peers and after review, either remain in the group or are ousted. What is this? In our democratic society there is no place for invitational, walled in one way or another, be-suited or be-pinned groups in or near schools. We are all spouting philosophies of mosaic-like acceptance of everyone and in this day of global brotherhood there is no room for this rot. It doesn't matter how "good" or not, such a collection of persons are, they exclude those who either won't or can't abide by their rules or standards or whatever cover-ups they care to choose. They are closed, not open and to join in, one must run the gauntlet so-to-speak. When I was a teen and went to a high school meant to educate those choosing to go on to university, it allowed in practise, invitational clubs. The clubs were like fraternities and sororities and one could not join; one had to be invited. The kids in the school who wore the club sweaters or pins, were considered the coolest. All the students greatly admired them and secretly yearned to be them but the numbers were restricted and they would have to pass the tests. Most of the teens in the clubs came from the city's wealthiest and locally most famous. And while the school itself did not own up to the fact that most of activities of the clubs verbally and behaviourally happened within its walls, but met outside them, they, too respected these kids a trifle more and bent more to those wearing the symbols of these exclusive clubs. The town worked that way, like it or not. No one spoke of it. Relationships occurred mostly within the clubs that operated exactly like fraternities and sororities that these people would encounter when they left the school to go to higher education. At the top university, they were welcomed. Their families were donors after all. They had an "in". Let's not fool ourselves. I wasn't one of the rich kids and was not invited to any of the clubs, nor did I see on philosophical grounds the sense of these clubs. It didn't mean that I would have loved to turn them down if I were lucky enough to be tempted. I wasn't, and I suffered inside for all the years there and somehow felt unworthy. When I arrived at this high school, my well-off friends got into the clubs immediately but I was left out. They didn't notice because I gave out an I-don't-really-care attitude but I did care, and a lot. As a result I had to suck-it-up and find new friends and believe me, it was hard. I lucked out finding the best ones that I still have. I had to join all the other non-invitational clubs that were the real and best ones, open to everyone who wanted to work in them. In them, I learned about democracy and open mindedness. When we have reunions, the exclusive club folk, still sit together and behave as though the rest of the world doesn't exist. It does, and it's the real one.