End racism

It was -10 today.  MINUS.  Below zero!  I can’t say that it’s a huge surprise, as every year at this time we have a bit of a snowstorm, but today was beautifully sunny, even if frigid and blustery!  I’m not putting so much as a nose outdoors until it warms back up above freezing, thanks for asking!  Jerry is guarding my feet right now, after making an unreasonable amount of noise because he heard my neighbour drop off the paper at my door.  I think he’s tired out from that… Don’s doing pretty well, and his appetite makes me envious since he managed to eat a double-stuffed foot long sub and then went looking for dessert.  I ate half of a 6” sub and was stuffed.  What does that tell you?  (That clearly, my sandwich wasn’t as good as his.  Or something like that.)

I had an early morning visitor; my lay minister arrived after early Mass, so I dragged myself out of bed for 8am, and after he left, I jumped back into bed and slept for another 2.5 hours.  Oh, that felt good.  I didn’t even try to do anything else, because I could barely keep my eyes open!  From which you may infer that I had a good night’s sleep, which was interrupted by an early appointment!  Sadly, my regular support worker has been ill all week again, and I’ve had a series of fill-ins.  I’m thankful for the coverage, and I hope my worker recovers soon.  

Today is twenty five years since I started in the Canadian federal public service.  Back then, I would never have imagined that I’d be retired and dealing with the stuff that’s ongoing now.  I was just focussed on getting a full time permanent job and settling in to being Canadian.  In the intervening years, though, I did a few things, learned a lot, met some awesome people and got to work on some challenging projects.  One of the things that I learned was about the significance of today — the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.  Isn’t it sad that we have to make this statement?  That we actually need to tell people to not hate?  Racism, and hatred generally, have to be learned.  We’re not born with that behaviour ingrained.  How hard is is, then, to learn not to randomly hate groups?  I am seriously naive, I know, but I’d like to see people evaluated on their character, not something they can’t control.

OK, that’s more than enough.  This is one of the issues that gets me fired up quickly, so I’ll stop before I lose too many friends.  I’m confident enough to say that my friends are not racist (if they were, they wouldn’t be my friends) although we might disagree on certain points.  I’m going to see what options I have for dinner tonight - I don’t quite know yet what I’d like.  Good night!