OF: Random Thoughts

So, I here there's a planned strike by Walmart workers slated for Black Friday. I think of my best friend's elderly grandmother living in Tennessee who is canceling Thanksgiving dinner at her house this year because she has to wake at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day to work her shift at...Walmart. She also has to do the same for Black Friday. I hate Walmart, and made a conscientious decision to stop shopping there in 2005, and I honestly do not notice any marked difference in my bottom line.

I am a working-class person, a mother who manages just fine without football stadium-sized stores chock-a-block with all that is heinous about Americana and the sad ironies of low-income, "Great Value" consumerism. We buy cheap products made in foreign countries to save money, and we become poorer as a result. Americans fail to understand (or care about?) the ramifications of a day's simple purchases, about the philosophy behind those purchases. They pretend to be powerless, unaccountable, without option, "I shop at Walmart because I have no choice!" laments the average pacifist. You have choice. You have power.

The average person has power that s/he parts with via his or her wallet. He parts with his conscience every day through his wallet. For adult-sized footie-pajamas, and flat screens, and jumbo packs of Lay's Potato Chips, and sticks of carcinogenic deodorant that smell of freesia or some exotic island delicacy. I am tired of these people who pretend they cannot choose something else because it's too damned inconvenient to live without the option of shopping for toilet paper at 3 a.m., or for a discounted laptop on Thanksgiving morning. Corporations: I am tired, so tired of Walmart, and Papa John's, and Denny's, and every other entity strong-arming the working person. Consumers: I am disgusted, so very disgusted by people lining up in the godless hours of the night to participate in our most horrid display of national avarice, Black Friday. I sincerely hope the workers of Walmart strike. Strike for all they're worth. Strike, strike, strike, and not be thwarted by corporate intimidation.

It is not anti-American or class warfare or socialist or lazy or godless to want a living wage for yourself or others. It is basic human dignity.

______



There's an essay that people on Twitter are getting incised about: "How to live Without Irony," by Christy Wampole. It's basically a critique of hipster culture, and boy are the hipsters defensive in their responses to this opinion piece! I can't help but feel a bit inclined to agree with the writer. Hipsters also "produce a distinct irritation in me," but I'd probably have to say it's because I've felt largely alienated or rejected by that whole culture. I'm never cool enough to belong with the cool kids and their various cultural appropriations which are always, excruciatingly, out of my reach for reasons beyond my control.

OF: Loneliness

"Loneliness is the greatest poverty." -Mother Theresa

"An artist is always alone--if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness." -Henry Miller

"If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry." -Anton Chekhov

"Music was invented to confirm human loneliness." -Lawrence Durrell

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life." -Eugene O'Neill

"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate." -Germaine Greer

"Moon! Moon! I am prone before you. Pity me, and drench me in loneliness." -Amy Lowell

OF: Hope

Just over four years ago, I was a 9th grade English teacher at Morrow High School in Morrow, GA--a school whose student body was overwhelmingly, if not entirely, composed of low-income students of color. During a vocabulary exercise, I asked students to use choose the correct word to complete a sentence which began 'When Barack Obama is President...'. My students were upset. "Don't joke like that, Ms. A," they said, "A black man will never get into the White House."

Just a few short months after that exercise, I held my infant daughter in my arms and cried joyful tears as Barack Obama put his hand on the Lincoln bible and became sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. That night, after the inaugural balls, after the toasts--Obama and his family slept in the house that black slaves built. That fact, as well as the symbolic significance of Obama's choice of the Lincoln bible, was not lost on me. I looked at Obama, born of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan, and I saw myself. I saw my students. I saw all the generations of 'No' and 'Never' crashing down. I thought of my students--living on the literal and economic edges of Atlanta, an American city characterized by the Civil Rights--and I had hope.

After last Tuesday's re-election of President Obama--I have hope, still.

The world is changing, and I welcome it. There is power in symbolism. There is power in believing you can, that we all can.

Despite the vitriolic political discourse of our elected officials, I have hope.

Despite the coded racism of Fox News and its associated pundits (where white men lament the end of "traditional America" i.e. white, Christian hegemony), I have hope.

Despite Ann Coulter and Donald Trump, I have hope!

I have hope that fills me.

My former students--wherever you are in the world--I think of you today. I hope for you.