UPLIFTING NEWS
...say WHAAAAT?!?!
Yikes! Every once in a blue moon, somebody berates me from not writing happy stuff, or questions why I don’t write more Happy Stuff. Well… because in my effort to move the racial dial from where America actually is - which is not a happy place - TO a happy place, I seldom have meaningful happy things to show. So until we get there I’ll stay focused on race in America as it actually is right now and not what we might pretend that it is. Someday...
But… I rolled out of bed this morning, brewed/poured/and drank my coffee, and then...HALLELUJAH... I read a couple of things that lifted my spirits and one…involving hegseth...well...not so uplifting.
This is a story about a man - a restaurateur in Minneapolis - the site of so much cruelty this past winter and the state murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti - who is bringing people together. People not only of different ethnicities, but people of opposite social strata. People with money and a willingness to share. People without money. People without homes. But all with an appetite, an appreciation for good food, and a desire for fellowship and community. AND, while doing good for his community and while providing an example for his country, he’s even doing good for himself and his family. It has been a very long time since I’ve seen and read something about what America COULD be.
Then I read about and saw photos of the Knicks game last night. I don’t know much about basketball. Ummm...close to nothing actually. Pretty much only what my friend Maynard taught me when he dragged me to a game in Maine featuring the Celtics farm team - the Maine Celtics - a year or so ago.
But I know togetherness and Americans just being Americans when I see it. I guess sports is The Great Bringer-Together-Er. Whatever it takes. But it was uplifting to see the photos accompanying the numerous stories about the game.
Both the restaurant story and the Knicks stories are stories about America at its best...what we could be. Why would anybody think that splitting us apart is somehow the country that we want? Well maybe because that’s the country so many people SEEM to want. After all the community restaurant is in Minneapolis… the exact same city I wrote about a couple of days ago, where all of the Minnesota State Republican politicians held a moment of silence to honor the man who murdered George Floyd just six blocks away from the restaurant.
Then the story about hegseth and his boss’s unabashed racism brought me back to earth. Well, maybe not all the way down, but closer than I had been floating for a while. But it was great to float above the fray for a little while and daydream for a moment of an America that could be. And here’s the thing...we actually COULD be like that. And my guess is if politicians weren’t so often pushing us to hate each other, we WOULD be like that. THAT’S the country that both you and I want to live in.
