Consciousness

Last Sunday and next Sunday at 11:00 in the morning I dedicate to procuring groceries. My young friend is so busy with school and parttime work that he can help me then. But today was mine. In bare feet and calico dress I sat at the computer and read the usual morning newsletters I subscribe to. With no intention of turning on MTP with Rove, or any other MSM talk shows, I wondered if I could find something “different.” Gone were the days of watching that punditry to gain a little insight into current events as I prepared food to make next week’s meals after work. Gone were the years of piloting little souls and their teachers at Sunday School. I would check the mail to see everyone was safe and think about hurricanes in Jamaica, lost Chinese miners, a flood in Minnesota, and the innumerable questions of what the pols were doing. They, by their own design, were undoubtedly pressing the flesh for maximum coverage in tomorrow’s MSM coverage.
Bare feet probably lit the spark. I’m a schoolgirl with an afternoon to spend between morning and evening chores on the farm. So I head for the old schoolhouse on Sundays to see what I could read. There was a flyspecked globe and a set of World Books. All other books I had long since read. I thought of how arbitrary it was to color nations in pastel with sharp blacks dividing them. At the least, why couldn’t China be yellow, for that is what I’d been told about its people. Encyclopedias never quite answered my real questions of just what it was like to live in another part of the world and be like someone other than me. These days I think of that experience as tons of literature pours in about globalization.