I did not make my donut walk yesterday! This morning I’m tired, is that cause and effect? What spelling of doughnut do you prefer, the one that refers to the dough, or the one that I believe was made up by Dunkin’ Donuts, now DD? I prefer doughnoughts, zeroes made from dough. That isn’t where the word came from and was never the correct spelling, but it should be. I prefer zeroes over zeros though both are correct. The second looks like a Greek name to me and want to pronounce it that way.
Instead of taking a walk I did laundry. No clean underwear will do that to a person. It was a frustrating wash, one of the three machines was broken, the only large one. I didn’t find that out until after I loaded it. That meant doing the laundry in two shifts. Even then I couldn’t finish my laundry because I came down one minute late for the second load and somebody had emptied my clothes out of the machine so I had only one small machine and that of course can’t handle all the clothes from the big one. The person that emptied my clothes hadn’t come back to empty hers even when I finished the second dryer load. There was a water in the broken machine so some of the clothes that were in it was soaked. I had to handwash some of what couldn’t fit in the washer. It was a frustrating day.
On the bright side I just about finished programming next week’s Gord’s Gold. I’m waiting on two songs that are being sent to me. I only have room for one but maybe I can squeeze in the second. If not I’ll save it for next week. I already started programming that. I’m developing a system. I start with a song that I just added to my collection, either new or one that replaced music I lost. Then I let that song lead me to another that has some connection to it. Last week I played Changemakers by Crys Matthews, and that led me to playing Breathe Free by Villa Palagonia, and Lady in Waiting by Carolann Solebello; The common link is that they call quote Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus.
Today I’m getting my donut! I will walk there and back again, and pick up my prescription, and maybe buy potatoes. I need to do some extra walking to make up for yesterday. I also should record Gord’s Gold as the Seder is tomorrow night. I still can’t spell Seder without help, I typed Sedar first, and Word marked it as misspelled. I’m undecided on whether or not to capitalize it. I feel more comfortable with the capital, so I’ll keep it. I think of it as a proper noun.
I’m trying to get myself out of the habit of assigning motives and reasoning to people that disagree with me or do things I consider wrong. I have assiduously worn a mask since the CDC started recommending it. If everyone had done that from the beginning fewer people would have died from COVID-19. If people wore masked and socially distanced we’d be free of the disease now. This makes it easy to get angry at those that don’t wear masks. My first reaction is to judge when I see someone’s nose. That doesn’t mean I or anyone else knows what’s going on in somebody else’s mind. Not wearing a mask does not necessarily mean that they are selfish or stupid or Trump supporters or feel privileged. Some are one or more of these things but not all. Yesterday when I got on the elevator with my laundry I saw someone come in the building’s front door. I held the door open for him. I’m not thrilled with sharing an elevator, but I was wearing an KN95 mask, and I only take it up one flight. My exposure would be minimal. When he got on I saw that he was wearing his mask below his nose. I pointed at my nose and you know what he did? Apologized and pulled his mask up. He was perhaps not as conscientious as I am but that’s a far cry from being selfish. It’s more difficult for some than others to do any task. We all get lazy sometimes. We all get careless sometimes. On one of the runs to the laundry room I had my mask in my pocket and didn’t put it on. I didn’t encounter anyone and if I had it would have reminded me, but I still forgot, and I care about this a lot. People also forget their keys and cellphones. We’re fallible human beings. These are not all moral errors. I still hear people assuming anyone without a mask is a Trump supporter. I live in a neighborhood in the Bronx where hardly anyone is white, I don’t think this is a Trump stronghold, yet two-thirds of the people I saw two days ago were showing their nose.
The most important thing is, this isn’t just about masks, it’s about everything. Masks is just an issue that I hope I can raise without people getting too defensive. I’m so tempted to say that people that assign malignant rationales for the actions and words of others either harbor those malignant feelings themselves or do so to enjoy feeling morally superior. Just like with masks I’m sure those are the reasons some people do it, but not all, and it’s never right to accuse someone of it, because you don’t know. People don’t think of themselves as villains. They don’t live their lives trying to be bad. They justify their actions to themselves, albeit sometimes undeservedly.
Now to eat breakfast and watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I’m getting good, I wrote this first instead of putting it off. I’ll take my donut walk, and I’ll record my show. Tomorrow I’ll report back to you if I did. If I didn’t do what I said, don’t judge me.
Wise Madness 