Happy I got Punchy to walk and unplug for a couple hours two days in a row, with friends and their parents* in pretty parks (as pretty as they can be in bleak January). I am the good kind of tired, though she is still going full-speed at 9:48 p.m., talking on her phone. I can hear her in her bedroom.
Good night to you.
Pandemic socializing: We met a friend and friend’s mom Friday; twin pals and their mom Saturday.
https://alicegarbarinihurley.medium.com/desert-island-grocery-list-ecdba62decda
What about yours? What’s on yours?
TGIF. It’s been a long, challenging school week for Punch, the first full one of the new year. Many appointments, much resistance, a Starbucks 7:30 a.m. bribe that didn’t work and plenty of wrinkles.
Also, some hope.
Life is not always smooth. One day at a time.
But at 3:45 p.m., we threw on layers and drove over to the Waterfront at Turtle 🐢 Back Zoo. P and her younger friend, who is like a brother to her, hung on the big playground (it was pretty empty, we all wore masks, and we sanitized hands back at the car) and his mom and I walked the 1.7 mile loop that passes it.
Grateful for that.
Jessi spotted a Great Blue Heron! That was awesome.
Good night to you. Watching an old movie with Dan.
Montclair, New Jersey, saw itself as a progressive utopia, until a video of a white woman calling the police on her Black neighbors went viral. For the latest issue of New York Magazine, writer Allison P. Davis (@allisonpdavis) looks at the fallout from the incident and what it’s like for the couple, six months later, to still share a property line. About the "Karen" next door, Norrinda Brown Hayat tells Davis: "I would be happy if she moved. It would not make me happy if she was in jail."
The cover artwork is by Portland, Oregon–based painter Julian Victor LaMarr Gaines (@juworkingonprojects), who first collaborated with New York on the magazine’s "I Voted" cover project. Gaines began his "Karens" series at the height of quarantine, when he had time to reflect and wanted to creatively express his negative personal experiences with white neighbors.
I was upset after reading the New York Magazine story (above) online.
I’ve been busy reading the thoughtful/angry/supportive/insulting responses to "The Other Side of Karen," the piece I published on Medium on December 23. I’ve been considering them carefully, pausing and writing back to I’d say 90 percent.
Thousands have read the piece, probably because it was "distributed" on a Medium channel and strikes a chord with a lot of people.
The voices of these readers, both Black and White, LGBTQ+ or not, are in my head when I take a walk, do the dishes, drift off to sleep at night.
I have not written back to those who call me names like "cracker," although I might. It depends on the exchange.
And I have been having heated, heartfelt discussions about it with:
Check this copy from uncomfortableconvos.com
AVAILABLE NOW
Some of the people on my bullet list (above) agree with my view. Some do not.
Figgy was furious Monday night in our living room, her voice pitching louder and louder, pointing out that her parents are not aware of our longstanding White privilege.
I heard her, just as I hear the other people writing back to me. Figgy is right.
Fig: Mom, you know how I kneel down at the end of a lawn when I see cool mosses? If I were a Black man, people would be calling the police on me.
Me: Yes, they might. I see that. But to be perfectly honest, I might think it’s quirky to see anyone kneeling down on the edge of my lawn and looking at it. I would probably go out and ask you what you’re doing.
Okay, Mom. It’s like the #MeToo movement. Would you say that if someone groped a woman, well, it wasn’t rape, so it doesn’t matter?
She then went onto slavery, landowner rights and other ways Whites have kept Blacks down.
Again, I heard her. I hear her.
My niece Leah was good enough to engage in a long conversation with me on the phone. She reinforced what Figgy had said, challenging me but without yelling at me, and opened my eyes more.
I’ve been having a back-and-forth with a reader who really wants me to reach out to Norrinda and Fareed Hayat, the Black couple at the heart of the story. He wants me to meet them and write their side of the story. Leah brought up that possibility, too.
I said that maybe I would, but have no idea if they would want to meet me.
Catch up later.
Coffee image cribbed from Newsweek.com coffee (+ cancer) story, which I have not read. (Note to Celia and Dan: Another news story about what coffee can and can't do.)
Here is the link I like:
https://medium.com/the-innovation/what-successful-employees-do-every-morning-7c3d64b19abd
I'm not sure I can make a habit of waiting 30 min after wakeup for morning coffee, or that I can (ever) limit it to one cup per day*, but I hope to take a quick walk every morning before Punchy's schoolday starts at 7:50 a.m.
I like the advice in this short article.
Have a good one.
*In my efforts to skirt sweets, I have embraced coffee. And the foodie in me loves it--searching out craft blends, organic half and half, cute cups etc. Coffee is my friend now, about 2 cups in the morning and one in the afternoon. That's a lot for someone who never liked coffee much (until Starbucks hit NYC in the late 1990s, and lured me in with whipped cream, caramel syrup and that trendy cup, plus dark chocolate dipped graham crackers, which I know from a press tour were originally made by exquisite Lake Champlain Chocolates in Vermont!).
Medium post:
https://alicegarbarinihurley.medium.com/the-mysteriouswoman-at-billys-bakery-69c8f5ab2e3
Again, writing this was therapy for me....it just feels good to have a creative task at hand.
Good night, be safe.
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