Mrs CorC? was laid off last week in a cost-saving move by corporate. Sucks. We are using the down time to clear out junk in the old hacienda. I took some books to the Y for their book sale. My dream is that we will be rid of enough stuff to commence work on the home remodel. The pricy stuff will be new windows, a rear patio door and hardwood flooring downstairs. With luck, we can have the house ready for the family at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
I’ve been on course to reach my weight loss goals. My swimming is coming along, well uh, swimmingly. I will do a 2-mile swim now without a second thought.
I live in Richmond, Virginia. We have in Richmond, an avenue where Confederate monuments are placed in positions of honor. They have been here for over a century. It is lovely statuary in an exquisite urban setting. If political ideology clouds your aesthetic sense, you will be offended by monuments to Robert E. Lee and others. Sorry. The street, Monument Avenue, is lovely . Destroying beautiful things are what barbarians do. Art is also supposed to make one think and frequently makes us uncomfortable. Think about that.
Yes, I know all about slavery. We Southern white males are not idiots. Nor are we ignorant. How is destroying Monument Avenue, even with its allusion to a tragic past, going to eliminate the horror of slavery from our history ? Books in this country are already banned for superficial reasons. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is not taught in schools because Mark Twain used the “N” word. The study of history and literature isn’t for the timid. Art isn’t about sentimentality. How can people we don’t much care for or agree with create beautiful things? Yet they do. And always have.
This has been on my mind for a while. I needed to express my thoughts.
Dispatches From Dystopia 
This! I totally agree. I never understood the banning of books, especially the literary classics. They’re classics for a reason! The school system sold the public on the idea that it would teach us how to *think*. How can we think properly when we’re sent the message that certain thoughts (i.e. writings) are banned and thus somehow forbidden? They skew the palette, allowing us to play within narrow parameters. Funk dat. Now they’re erasing history. Well, you know what they say; those who don’t learn it are doomed to repeat it! Ugh. 🙂
No kidding. Europe is full of statues to nasty people, like Napoldon or Peter the Great, to name two. But they’ve been dead long enough so that nobody remembers or cares what SOB’s they really were. The people just like looking at the statues.
This re-writing or revising history is a risky business. Getting rid of Confederate Monuments is about letting one current interpretation of history prevail over others.
The monuments are about the survival of the South, just as one theme of “Gone With The Wind” is survival. It’s an enigma to us in 2017, but had you witnessed the destruction of the South and Richmond in April 1865, survival and recovery would be very valid sentiments.
> Destroying beautiful things are what barbarians do. Art is also supposed to make one think and frequently makes us uncomfortable.
Good point. While I can understand where they’re coming from, I think removing the statues is more in support of “forgetting” than “healing.” It would be better to put up additional monuments commemorating freedom and liberation, or whatever.
Certainly. Plus it costs real money to move the statues. And Richmond, VA, for one city, is in tight financial straits.