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| GIRL JUMPING HEARTS |
Working close to the earth, being responsible with money, observing the law, protecting nature, helping neighbors in need, being a loyal friend, morality and aproaching problems by being practical are some of Rain's values.
She shared in her post that her childhood on a small farm as well as living on a ranch as an adult shaped her values. So quite reasonably her political view of immigration is unsurprising. Being a practical person without knowing a complete solution, Rain shared a few doable ideas for improving immigration at our borders.
My experience as a child of a naturalized citizen I have similar values. Rain and I have more in common than not. We grew our vegetables and some of our fruit. My parents never took government assistance, father went to great pains to be sure he always obeyed the law. Preparing our taxes was a particularly tense time. Tax forms had to be perfect for his income and my mother's cottage doll making business. We had no debts other than borrowing money to buy our house. Father paid off the debt. He demonstrated his value for education; father modeled the joy of learning studying advanced math every night. He filled notebooks with mathematical formulas and his calculations as he studied theoretical advanced math books.
There were differences. Both of my parents were university educated. Their close friends were from their college days. We, however, lived in low income neighborhoods with mostly blue collar workers until I was in high school. Though my parents were educated, politics were seldom mentioned and discussed in our home beyond my father explaining joyfully, "The presidential campaign conventions are super wonderful". Rain comes from a family far more politically vocal. Rain like her parents follows the news with interest and passion. Her example amazes me. Her well thought out arguments! She has instilled in me an interest in politics.
I was not taught to be snobbish about being the educated elite. Uncle Fred, mother's brother, was a shoe salesman. I am not sure he graduated from high school. I grew up thinking he was as good as my college educated parents.
Wearing my thicker skin. I am allowing my premise to fall away. My premise being a few strategies can make a smooth bridge of understanding between the right and left. My pet experiment is a pie in the sky dream. My idea of finding a way is futile. Left and right citizens cannot talk to one another in a civil tone. How silly to think our fellow citizens would take on explaining where they come from before expressing their opinions.Telling ones story is too difficult. Sadly citizens would not listen and hear how those who oppose them came to their mutually good values. I am a day dreamer thinking we can invent a grass roots level method for all of us citizens to start to turn the tide away from becoming more and more polarized. We will continue to gulp up messages that tickle and confirm our individual ever widening different views.
Monday, April 15 -16
My spirits improved after getting an answer to this request:
"consider my invitation to a brainstorm on how to conduct ourselves in both addressing problems of children living in poverty here and those refugee children who would die in their native country and are coming in ever greater numbers. If you cannot post on my blog, send by email. I will post your input.
The answer I welcome:
It's easy: Take care of your own children and homeland first. Always. If you "care" so much, get a ticket to whatever poverty-stricken area you wish and help out. But take care of our own business first! And DO NOT steal from others so you can support feeding the world's down-trodden. If that is your belief, go for it. Without the rest of us.
My response:
On Monday my mood improved after receiving my friends challenging response. I am grateful for my friends trust in the face that we do not agree. Her words are more gentle then sometimes, still I feel a little defensive. I might defensively say something that would end our friendship and dialog over the past 5 years. This blog is about civil conversation not the place for my knee jerk response. Then I step back and wonder why I feel guilt for not taking action beyond writing. I am guilty as I should be. I feel I am not an asset helping at the soup kitchen like I used to. I declined a request to teach watercolor in Belize to children at a summer church camp. Certainly I could find some place where I could contribute with doing something and not just writing and talking. No, no! My search for weaving back the fabric of our society is a good thing to do.
I feel very grateful of how my friend continues to correspond even though we do not agree on many things. I understand her admiration for New Yorker frankness and her dedication to volunteering. She is a good person and writer of political articles in a right wing news letter, as well as writing stories and plays. During the Carter and Regan Administration she wrote presidential speeches. She is knowlegeable.
Another writer of stories and plays is my cousin, Jim Cunningham who liked some of my Facebook posts. He recently published a book of his short stories available on Amazon. He is giving all the money he gets from book sales to St. Jude's Hospital for Children.
His poignant stories often burst my bubble and increase my empathy. A few of his stories are somewhat autobiographical. All of the stories are like stepping under someone elses' skin and leave lasting impressions.
One of Jim's stories, "Where the Mountain Meets the Plain" is about a present day father and his son who own a small ranch. They are among the disappearing few small family run agricultural businesses. Perhaps their strong values are disappearing. People of the land use to extend their helping hand when neighbors are in need - one important value that made our country great. Jim's story says much about the goodness of people giving of themselves just like the way our nation was built. After mulling over Jim's powerful and awesomely concise story, I am sad that our old values are being tested by extreme challenges.
I hope I have been fair in my tone on my friend's response on how we should conduct ourselves so our trust continues. Jim's story brings home to me that volunteering is not like it used to be in solving problems. Jim's insights on citizen volunteering illustrates the problem with my friend's simple solution.
Another point of my bringing Jim's stories into this blog post is story telling is best for communicating ideas. Telling your personal story is a powerful way towards effectively beginning a civil discussion that will bring people together in understanding. If we stick to personal experiences it will be harder for alien sources to infiltrate our national dialogue around elections.
I watched Yo-Yo Ma on the importance of telling each other our stories on PBS News Hour April 15.
"Culture turns the other into us, and it does this through trust, imagination, and empathy. So, let's tell each other our stories and make it our epic, one for the ages."
Rain wrote on a Facebook link to this blog.
Diane and I tried an experiment-- discussing our very different ideas on immigration. She went first and I followed. Our goal was to show that people can differ on important issues and still remain friends. Mostly, this is helped by not discussing those topics lol. We made an exception for the blog, which generally doesn't do politics at all.
She wanted us to begin by what in our background had led us to what we currently think on immigration; so that's what we did. Hers was... on the 10th and mine the 13th. I don't think either of us believe we have all the answers for a situation that may grow much worse if global climate change makes some areas unlivable. I don't think the world is ready for what might come and some of that is because we have no idea what it will be as much is projecting based on the past except human history is short and especially that recorded or with tools to do measuring; so it's geologic and fossils that provide data. The one thing we know for sure from that-- earth can change a lot even without human interference.
7 comments:
And this morning I read that Yuma AZ has declared an emergency as the migrants are arriving in buses and being released onto the street with no facilities to offer them. The city fears they will turn to violence to get food or maybe lodging. I still see Trump as right about the national emergency and if Congress did its job more would be ready for what might yet come. Congress though does not want to do anything. They are counting on taking over the Senate and the Presidency with it. Sad :( for the migrants and the border towns.
Fox News report says mayor proclaimed a humanitarian crisis and asked for federal government assistance because there were more immigrants coming into the city than leaving. Washington Post adds mayor warned of mobs roaming the streets looking to satisfy basic human needs. And residents looking to protect their property. A group of 360 were apprehended near Lukeville, Arizona, yesterday. But with no ability to hold them, agents engaged in what is catch-and-release processed them and then let them go at a local bus terminal. The number of people coming into Yuma swamps the capacity of volunteers and supplies. Oakland and Pittsburgh has accepted the challenge of taking in migrants.
As much as I would like to continue the attempt of having civil conversations, my personal life is temporarily getting in the way. My husband and I are having life changes. Today is the first day of a course my husband and I are taking on his living with a chronic condition. So far the condition is not diagnosed. Furthermore I will be incompacitated for a week after my eye lid surgery. I am also taking a beginning Tai Chi class.
Chicago did too. I liked though what Cher wrote that she understood about helping immigrants: “… but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY?”.
This is such a political game with humans as the pawns.
Rain, creeping legislation increases advantages for the rich as our current tax reform. A very few rich own most of the wealth, the middle class is smaller as more of us become the new poor. Creeping legeslative power seekers divert our attention to tabloid style focus on individuals with finger pointing. Those in power withhold the money to process would be immigrants. Creeping lies pushing buttons to make us confused about facts.
Is a civil conversation possible.
I came across a better way than asking everyone to tell their story with every public comment they make on social media or talking with others. On Facebook a friend is starting on maybe a lesser hot button issue. If they did that everyone would be able to tell if their message was from a real person and not an alien trying to influence our down fall of our Democratic Republic. He is tagging people to post for say seven days a different thing they are doing to help prevent climate change and each day they tag someone else to do the same.
Congratulations on both your efforts to demonstrate civil discourse — how to discuss controversial topics when strong opposing views are present — and remain friends. I think if everyone took a debate course in school in which you learn to argue convincingly both sides of any issue this might help with critical thinking and tolerance. We could surely use a lot more of each in communication today.
Joared,
Thank you for suggesting education like a debate course. My debate experience in High School was under the direction of a biased teacher and I was chastised for not being convincing that Capital Punishment is not a deterent as shown by research. I was not given any instruction on how to form a convincing argument.
The interest in this post has encouraged me to write another post with additional thoughts on how to discuss hot issues and remain friends. I will research debating skills.
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