Guess I'm Just Naive

My 9-year-old son came home from school one day this week and began discussing politics. He asked me who I was going to vote for in the election next week. I told him and then he told me that at school that day his friend Seth (not his real name) said he did not want a black guy to be president. My son asked him why, and Seth replied that he didn't like black people.

My son then asked Seth if he was a racist. "What's a racist?" Seth asked.
"A racist is someone who doesn't like people of other races or colors," my son said.
"Oh. Yeah, I'm a racist," Seth replied, as if it were just another way to talk about yourself. Why yes, now that I know what a numismatist is, I do enjoy coin collecting!

My son went on to explain that this was not a good thing and asked Seth why he was a racist. Seth told my son, matter-of-factly, that he just did not like black people. Gibby and I had a conversation about this and he knew already that it wasn't right. What was worse to me was that I know kids his age really are still expressing the views of their parents, so Seth's parents are almost surely feeding this attitude to their children. It just blew my mind.

Race is not an issue for me in this election, but maybe it should be. If electing a black president does anything positive to change the opinions of people like this, it can only be a good thing. Then again, the darker color of our president's skin would probably precede anything good Obama might do in office in the mind of a racist. Such is the preset lens of racism.

Famine . . . Then Feast

So I ignore this blog for a long while and then suddenly want to post a whole slew of things - go figure. This is a photo of my oldest daughter's wrists covered in bracelets made out of colorful plastic beads. She held still, but I moved the camera (on purpose) to get this effect.

Blue Jean Mural

This painting is done on several pairs of blue jeans and it hangs in Cafe Lulu in Bayview on KK. I would give credit to the artist, but I don't know who did it. Anyone know? There are a few of them like this hanging in there. Great cafe, by the way, right next to Broad Vocabulary.

Lake Michigan

A few views of the lakeshore last week when my daughter was running in a race down there. She came in third, by the way - woohoo!

Sorry for Talking Politics

I am very uncomfortable talking about politics. I HATE it when a Christian friend comes up to me and starts talking to me about how this economy is all Clinton's fault and how of course he or she is voting for McCain because he is "pro-life."

After I commented on how fellow Christians so often just assume you are going to vote for the Republican candidate because they espouse pro-life views, a good friend responded, "Who would make such an assumption??!! Until we can find a "pro-life" candidate who is as protective of lives after birth as before, there's no assumption to be made." How refreshing, and she is also a Christian. There are plenty of good people on both sides of the political debate, just please, please, please don't assume that Jesus would vote Republican.

http://tinyurl.com/45u4h9

New Stuff

This is a garbage bin on the street in Seattle, seen from behind a chainlink fence with blue slats.

I took this photo while on a field trip with my daughter's class at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This is part of the Petroleum Planet exhibit and features multicolored tubes of bubbling crude oil, which is going down in price, by the way. I bought gasoline at $2.99/gal. today. Never thought I'd get excited about getting gasoline for three dollars a gallon!

Bad News . . . Good News! . . . Bad News?

I had a strange day, emotionally. I heard of this really tragic accident involving a child. It was just awful and I felt sick when I heard about it. But the story has a twist. The child in this story was described to me as a three-year old Ethiopian boy. A very good friend of mine just recently adopted a three-year old Ethiopian boy. How many of those are in the area? Then I really got sick. I called my good friend immediately, but could not get a hold of her. It wasn't until hours later that she called me back and I found out that her children were fine. I was SO relieved. Then shortly afterwards, like a couple seconds later, I felt bad again just knowing that this horrible thing had happened to some family and I was relieved it didn't happen to MY friend's family, yet whoever this happened to was certainly suffering in ways that most people cannot even begin to imagine. I won't go into what happened to this child, but it was so awful in so many ways. Now I am praying that this unknown family can get through this somehow.