Hello.
We are two weeks behind.
Why?
Well, to be honest, it's been kind of a blur, so I don't know exactly how or why I've been so busy. There was frozen pipes, a tree fell on our shed, I drove up to Des Moines and back to listen to a presentation for my social cultural diversity class that was actually pretty awesome (we'll see if I get time to describe it).
The snow melted and it got warm, I discovered the tree only mostly missed the shed, I cleaned up the dirt and water that got into the rather large hole that a rather large branch has punched through the roof, Suzannah and I spent most of a day trying to figure out how to keep a tarp on the roof during an intensely windy day. We had a health emergency with a relative. And amidst that all, I've been trying to keep up with classwork. And more recently I've gotten fed up with always being behind and have been going a bit crazy trying to figure out how to be more efficient and balanced with my time and responsibilities. Getting done everything that needs to be done, for school, for life admin, for the house, for the relationship.
So it's been pretty busy.
As is, I still have a lot to do, so I've set a 30 minute timer (one of the things I'm trying to do to give myself more time: timeboxing. Perhaps I'll talk about that a bit) for these two blog posts so I don't spend too much time on them.
Alright, that's why this is two and a half weeks late. Let's talk about some of the details I mentioned.
The tree hit the shed:
Yup, when I was finally able to get up to the shed, I saw a branch had punched clean through the roof. Looking more closely and further, there were several dents and a few smaller holes as well. Thankfully it hadn't rained, and not too much of the snowmelt. had gotten in, and where it had dripped wasn't anything important. Looks like it's going to be fine, and more recently Suzannah put in the insurance claim and so we're going to get reimbursed for it, we just have to get someone to actually come out and do the work. Which is hard in general in Fairfield (our gutters people took...5 months? to come out? And then did a poor job, because it was still leaking, and then said they were charging us more to fix the leak, and then never showed up (despite weekly calls) to fix it. I'm contemplating leaving a scathing review about them, but a) it's a small town and b) I seem to always decide it was a bad idea to leave scathing reviews, after I do it, as of late. On the other hand, people should be warned, if someone is unreliable. I wish we had known. Maybe a neutral but accurate review, which is damming enough. On the third hand, ain't nobody got time for that.
Let's see, what else did I mention. Ah, the Des Moines trip. For my social cultural diversity class, we each have to choose a marginalized group to learn more about and do some advocacy action related to. I chose Blacks in Iowa. I grew up and lived in a fairly monocultural background, and don't have a lot of experience with that culture. And I suspect they are underserved in Iowa, as there are very few on them. I could imagine feeling pretty isolated being from that culture, or even just having that skin color, in Iowa.
In any case, I was supposed to do some cultural immersion activities for part of the assignment, and found out the African American Museaum of Iowa was hosting a presentation on the Black Panther's of Des Moines, and doing it in Des Moines. I thought that was cool and would hopefully give me an opportunity to meet some people from that community. Well, the presenter was nice, but white, as were most of the people there. The info was interesting and useful, but then what was really cool was that one of the actual original members of that group (the Black Panthers of Des Moines) was in the audience, and filled in some of the missing or incorrect information from the presentation, as well as told some pretty great first hand stories. They seemed really nice and grounded, and it was pretty awesome to get some history from someone who was a part of that history.
By the way, I know one of the few things I thought I knew about the Black Panthers was they they were more agressive than MLK's approach. I think that is kind of inaccurate and reductionist, from what I now know. They were advocating for using violence only in self-defense, when they were being subjected to police brutality. And it does seem like there was some gnarly, unfair violence going on against them.
I'm not saying I agree with their specific approach, I definitely fall more on the Gandhi non-violence side of things, but I do think people have a right to defend themselves when being attacked. And I think most people's perceptions about them come from very limited information filtered through a negative media spin. I'm always a fan of truth, even when it's more nuanced and harder to fit into a media sound bite, so just FYI.
Anyhoo, I'm just about at the end of my 30 minutes, which was supposed to be for both posts, so I'm going to end this one now and post the next.
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