How have I not written for three days? Sure, I haven’t done much but that’s no excuse. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t write yesterday. I just checked to see if I wrote something and forgot to post it, no, didn’t happen. The first two skipped days were because I was sick. I simply didn’t have the energy for it. It started as food poisoning then switched to a Crohn’s related bowel obstruction. The details are too TMI, but I wish I could discuss them. There’s a nice symmetry to the situation. Yesterday was my first day close to normal, though not 100%; the important thing is I could eat. I didn’t have my usual peanut butter omelet as my recovery breakfast, instead I had good old-fashioned bacon & eggs. I ate it with an appetite and a half. Nothing tastes better than food after a bad health fast. Back in 2000 I was I the hospital for three weeks without eating. I was fed by tubes directly into my blood. My first food was in my mouth was red jello; nothing ever tasted as good as that. After two days of eating nothing but red jello I was sick of it and vowed to never eat it again. I will never feel that way about bacon and eggs.
As I’ve been sick, and it rained yesterday I have not gone on a donut walk. I will set that right today. It better not rain. I need my exercise and my donut. Maybe I’ll be decadent and get ice cream too. I should try to walk four miles a day instead of my usual three for a while to make up for the days missed. It doesn’t really work that way, but I like to look at my health app and see that I’m averaging three miles a day. Sometimes I give in to my irrational desires. As long as I know it’s irrational and don’t let it cost anyone else something, and not too much to me, that’s harmless. I wonder people not acknowledging their being irrational bothers me more than their being irrational; I think it does. If they know it’s irrational they won’t make bad arguments to defend their behavior.
My top activity when I was sick was sleeping. I might have slept 16 hours out of 24 Friday into Saturday. When I wasn’t sleeping I listened to some great music, treasures came over my transom by Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, and Andrea Asprelli. I’ve known Andrea for maybe 10 years, and I still have to force myself to get her last name right, I want to call her “Asperelli.” I think there’s a name for that mistake, putting in an extra vowel sound into a word. Yesterday I got a new album from Steph Jenkins. The next Gord’s Gold is going to have a lot of new music. Having a radio show has severely cut into my classical music time. Classical is my default music when doing other things but now I have so much music to listen to feed the Gord’s Gold beast. Right now, I’m listening to something tough. It’s by an artist I don’t know and some of the songs are play-worthy, and some are insipid. Now I’m listening to Robert Johnson so it’s a matter of which great song should I play.
Today is the Centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. You’ll often here it described as a riot, but massacre is more accurate, it was not random violence, but violence targeted at blacks. The best description of Tulsa Pogrom as it was the destruction of a community, people, and buildings. I was not taught about it in school but learned more and more as time went on. The history was erased and had to be put together. There are some things we will never know, including the number of dead. I just read much of the Wikipedia Article on it. There is a lot to digest. The story was not simple. At first the police were on the side of justice, actively trying to prevent the lynching of a black man. Then blacks came to confront the lynch mob and all that was needed was a spark to ignite the kindling. I’m giving you homework, Read up on the massacre. Find what sources you can but don’t look for ones that will promote your point of view. Look for facts. The right talks of cancel culture but this was history deliberately canceled. You’ll learn things that will make you uncomfortable. We divide the world into victims and villains, but the lines aren’t clear. Some of the Native Americans who were forced to go to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears brought their slaves with them, establishing slavery in Oklahoma territory. I’m going to say no more. Just read and learn. Do not despair, people are capable of great enormities, but great kindness too. We are neither angels nor demons, and to deny either is to deny the truth.
Wise Madness 