(no subject)
Nov. 28th, 2003 04:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urocyonIt turned out not to be a stressful day, at least. Since I'm well in the grip of Yet Another Cold, I gave in and took a long nap this afternoon/evening; usually, I avoid it even if there's time, since it can be a tad disorienting. It did seem to help.
We wound up not having any sort of family gathering today. Tim and Debbie and the kids are in Ohio, visiting her (rather extended) family; she's one of six children, and one weekend with the entire brood was enough for me. We were still planning to get together for dinner with my grandmother, likely at a restaurant, but she didn't seem interested this year. (Possibly because she has gotten even stranger about food and eating since her heart attack and bypass--we would be there, and she might have to eat something substantial--but it's hard to tell.)
It may not sit well, but eating out is actually the most practical choice, without Debbie around to bully Mamaw to their house. We have tried cooking the bulk of holiday dinners--say, everything but a vegetable dish or so--and taking them up to her house before, but this is an uncomfortable solution, since her apparent OCD has gotten worse over the past 10 years or so. (I say "apparent" because while I don't know that she's ever been diagnosed, it's horribly obvious.) It was bad enough before, but I never felt like a hostile invader, leaving filth and destruction in my wake. *wry smile* Having her eat at our house isn't really an option anymore; she doesn't come in the door if she can help it now. (She doesn't get out of her car at the curb, if she can help it, for that matter.) It's being terrified of the animals, more than anything else, and we have kept them under control when she's been here. Not much else we can do, I suppose. This is the lady who stopped going to the park because the overfed squirrels kept running at her. (obDaveBarry: I'm not making this up.)
That made me think of Christmas a few years ago, when Tim and Debbie were gone and Mamaw came down here for dinner. Trying to keep the peace, we'd talked to the vet several days beforehand, and he'd okayed giving B.B. half a tablet of my mother's Xanax at a time. (She's big enough.) So, about half an hour before Mamaw was due, I dosed the dog, and she continued to hang around underfoot. Right before, I shut her in my bedroom, hoping she'd take a nap. No luck; she spent the next half hour whining and scratching to get out and join the party. After I went in there, feeling like a real ogre, and gave her another dose, she only got more hyper. Just our luck--a paradoxical reaction when we'd stooped to drugging a reasonably well-behaved animal just to try to mollify my nutsy grandmother. :) Even if Mamaw wanted to come, I couldn't repeat anything similar.
I may feel an urge to rant a bit about Mamaw's behavior occasionally, but I do love her very much. Dealing with the lady on a daily basis can get frustrating--though I doubt her, erm, quirks would be nearly so maddening were I not concerned.
It's just as well that we didn't make any sort of big deal out of the holiday; I've gone from years-long ambivalence toward it, into outright distaste. Not that it ever felt that relevant, with the schools' force-fed emphasis on brave Pilgrims. It was certainly interesting, later, to read about Puritans, in Massachusetts and otherwise. Somehow, I was also not that surprised to find suggestions that both the stock story and the first official proclamation may have roots in Virginia--it is hardly an isolated concept, and they had a headstart.
Perhaps the coverage in schools is a bit more rounded these days; after all, I recently saw some indications that indentured servitude is no longer being treated as an unqualified good for everyone involved. Still, it strikes me as a hollow, sorry excuse for a public holiday. No matter how many coats of paint are slapped on it, its story is based on particularly nasty colonialism and pushed on the public as part of a unifying myth of origin.
I shouldn't need to elaborate on the moral schizophrenia of presenting the image of people sitting down for a friendly feast with another group of people they're soon going to try to exterminate--while ignoring that this ever happened--much less continuing to present it while mistreating the decendents of the few who managed to survive disease and violence.
Not wanting to celebrate could be a bit awkward, unfortunately, particularly when the whole family is available. I'd rather not come across as a huge crank to the kids, in particular. I am comfortable celebrating Christmas in a purely secular spirit, but can't see clear to do this; I may just wind up making excuses in future, far from ideal as that may be. For some reason, discussing my concerns with my mother didn't seem to do a great deal of good. She seems to view it as a harmless excuse for a get-together and a huge meal, as, I suspect, do most adults.
The more I think about it, though, the more I consider that the holiday does have particular religious significance--as was pointed out to FDR when he moved the date for shopping considerations--beyond its obvious tie-in with Puritanism (helping explain its late popularity in the South). The--IMO, somewhat shallow--message of thanksgiving and fellowship is frequently accepted as a laudable one. Do we really need anyone, much less the federal government, to set aside a day and tell us that we should feel thankful? I find that insulting.
Real harvest celebrations certainly have their place in various cultures (and with the timing in the appropriate climate, that one would seem more likely related to hunting or hog-killing), but setting aside a fairly arbitrary one day a year for general thankfulness seems bizarre. That's not celebrating the readiness of the first corn, that's emphasizing an artificial separation between daily life and spirituality. It doesn't sit well with me.
Some, particularly in the Native community, find something redeeming in the example of hospitality, even to those who have already behaved badly. If anything, I tend to take that as a given.
One thing I have been thinking about again lately, though, is the trouble a lot of people--particularly indigenous people--have gotten into through a simple mistake: insisting on giving people the benefit of the doubt, even past the point that they've forfeited all claim to it. I have seen this one in action too many times. When confronted with a person whose actions you simply cannot believe, it is very tempting to try to assume that his motives couldn't be nearly as bad as they seem. Perhaps he's just totally ignorant of how to behave around other humans, perhaps he's crazy, but his intent is probably not flat-out malicious. (As a slightly less extreme example, maybe he truly doesn't know how offensive his behavior and speech are, and could use some hints before, hopefully instead of, a good punch in the mouth.) The burden of evidence, even when you suspect nasty intentions, is high before it's truly acceptable to act as if this is the case--particularly when dealing with people who aren't that familiar with the culture. Trying to deal with people politely will often persist well past the point that they've clearly demonstrated bad motives; in this time, they've had a chance to get a foot in the door and have quite possibly done some damage already. By the time you decide that a less-polite response is called for, it can be difficult to eject them, and they have surely broken some things.
How to deal with this? I have no idea. It's such a deep-seated cultural thing. Useful in some ways, but potentially damaging in others--easy enough to see in Radford, largely overrun by the horribly-contemptuous-of-locals. (But not actively into, say, slaughter or enslavement, making for quite an improvement over some similar situations.) For a bit of probably unnecessary clarification, people-in-general are welcome; people who move in next door to me, don't bother to talk to me, then act like I'm somewhat less than human are not. This tendency would also account for an, erm, interesting episode or two in my personal life. :)
We wound up not having any sort of family gathering today. Tim and Debbie and the kids are in Ohio, visiting her (rather extended) family; she's one of six children, and one weekend with the entire brood was enough for me. We were still planning to get together for dinner with my grandmother, likely at a restaurant, but she didn't seem interested this year. (Possibly because she has gotten even stranger about food and eating since her heart attack and bypass--we would be there, and she might have to eat something substantial--but it's hard to tell.)
It may not sit well, but eating out is actually the most practical choice, without Debbie around to bully Mamaw to their house. We have tried cooking the bulk of holiday dinners--say, everything but a vegetable dish or so--and taking them up to her house before, but this is an uncomfortable solution, since her apparent OCD has gotten worse over the past 10 years or so. (I say "apparent" because while I don't know that she's ever been diagnosed, it's horribly obvious.) It was bad enough before, but I never felt like a hostile invader, leaving filth and destruction in my wake. *wry smile* Having her eat at our house isn't really an option anymore; she doesn't come in the door if she can help it now. (She doesn't get out of her car at the curb, if she can help it, for that matter.) It's being terrified of the animals, more than anything else, and we have kept them under control when she's been here. Not much else we can do, I suppose. This is the lady who stopped going to the park because the overfed squirrels kept running at her. (obDaveBarry: I'm not making this up.)
That made me think of Christmas a few years ago, when Tim and Debbie were gone and Mamaw came down here for dinner. Trying to keep the peace, we'd talked to the vet several days beforehand, and he'd okayed giving B.B. half a tablet of my mother's Xanax at a time. (She's big enough.) So, about half an hour before Mamaw was due, I dosed the dog, and she continued to hang around underfoot. Right before, I shut her in my bedroom, hoping she'd take a nap. No luck; she spent the next half hour whining and scratching to get out and join the party. After I went in there, feeling like a real ogre, and gave her another dose, she only got more hyper. Just our luck--a paradoxical reaction when we'd stooped to drugging a reasonably well-behaved animal just to try to mollify my nutsy grandmother. :) Even if Mamaw wanted to come, I couldn't repeat anything similar.
I may feel an urge to rant a bit about Mamaw's behavior occasionally, but I do love her very much. Dealing with the lady on a daily basis can get frustrating--though I doubt her, erm, quirks would be nearly so maddening were I not concerned.
It's just as well that we didn't make any sort of big deal out of the holiday; I've gone from years-long ambivalence toward it, into outright distaste. Not that it ever felt that relevant, with the schools' force-fed emphasis on brave Pilgrims. It was certainly interesting, later, to read about Puritans, in Massachusetts and otherwise. Somehow, I was also not that surprised to find suggestions that both the stock story and the first official proclamation may have roots in Virginia--it is hardly an isolated concept, and they had a headstart.
Perhaps the coverage in schools is a bit more rounded these days; after all, I recently saw some indications that indentured servitude is no longer being treated as an unqualified good for everyone involved. Still, it strikes me as a hollow, sorry excuse for a public holiday. No matter how many coats of paint are slapped on it, its story is based on particularly nasty colonialism and pushed on the public as part of a unifying myth of origin.
I shouldn't need to elaborate on the moral schizophrenia of presenting the image of people sitting down for a friendly feast with another group of people they're soon going to try to exterminate--while ignoring that this ever happened--much less continuing to present it while mistreating the decendents of the few who managed to survive disease and violence.
Not wanting to celebrate could be a bit awkward, unfortunately, particularly when the whole family is available. I'd rather not come across as a huge crank to the kids, in particular. I am comfortable celebrating Christmas in a purely secular spirit, but can't see clear to do this; I may just wind up making excuses in future, far from ideal as that may be. For some reason, discussing my concerns with my mother didn't seem to do a great deal of good. She seems to view it as a harmless excuse for a get-together and a huge meal, as, I suspect, do most adults.
The more I think about it, though, the more I consider that the holiday does have particular religious significance--as was pointed out to FDR when he moved the date for shopping considerations--beyond its obvious tie-in with Puritanism (helping explain its late popularity in the South). The--IMO, somewhat shallow--message of thanksgiving and fellowship is frequently accepted as a laudable one. Do we really need anyone, much less the federal government, to set aside a day and tell us that we should feel thankful? I find that insulting.
Real harvest celebrations certainly have their place in various cultures (and with the timing in the appropriate climate, that one would seem more likely related to hunting or hog-killing), but setting aside a fairly arbitrary one day a year for general thankfulness seems bizarre. That's not celebrating the readiness of the first corn, that's emphasizing an artificial separation between daily life and spirituality. It doesn't sit well with me.
Some, particularly in the Native community, find something redeeming in the example of hospitality, even to those who have already behaved badly. If anything, I tend to take that as a given.
One thing I have been thinking about again lately, though, is the trouble a lot of people--particularly indigenous people--have gotten into through a simple mistake: insisting on giving people the benefit of the doubt, even past the point that they've forfeited all claim to it. I have seen this one in action too many times. When confronted with a person whose actions you simply cannot believe, it is very tempting to try to assume that his motives couldn't be nearly as bad as they seem. Perhaps he's just totally ignorant of how to behave around other humans, perhaps he's crazy, but his intent is probably not flat-out malicious. (As a slightly less extreme example, maybe he truly doesn't know how offensive his behavior and speech are, and could use some hints before, hopefully instead of, a good punch in the mouth.) The burden of evidence, even when you suspect nasty intentions, is high before it's truly acceptable to act as if this is the case--particularly when dealing with people who aren't that familiar with the culture. Trying to deal with people politely will often persist well past the point that they've clearly demonstrated bad motives; in this time, they've had a chance to get a foot in the door and have quite possibly done some damage already. By the time you decide that a less-polite response is called for, it can be difficult to eject them, and they have surely broken some things.
How to deal with this? I have no idea. It's such a deep-seated cultural thing. Useful in some ways, but potentially damaging in others--easy enough to see in Radford, largely overrun by the horribly-contemptuous-of-locals. (But not actively into, say, slaughter or enslavement, making for quite an improvement over some similar situations.) For a bit of probably unnecessary clarification, people-in-general are welcome; people who move in next door to me, don't bother to talk to me, then act like I'm somewhat less than human are not. This tendency would also account for an, erm, interesting episode or two in my personal life. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-28 05:27 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/users/jenandtonics/676203.html
no subject
Date: 2003-12-05 05:34 am (UTC)