Chatting It Up, In The O-H-I-O

WHAT A STRANGE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS! Late Thursday night/Friday morning, I reported that Friday at High School was going to be a busy day and then Saturday, turned out to be the same. I found myself chatting away, connecting with other people, even if in the most trivial way. I found it very satisfying. It seemed that many people just wanted to share their feels with an “other”. TIME TO RECONNECT!

Too much drama, too much uncertainty, was one of my standard “talking points”. All ya needed to say was “Wow, what strange times these are” and many people would start to open right up. Of course, I would Not then start to tell them what a jerk Trump is! Because, this was a time for sharing and reconciliation, I strongly felt; and, that seemed to work.

It was a wonderful coincidence that Saturday was Beautiful Weather in the entire state. People were out, walking, riding bikes, working outside their home. Sheri, my wife, ‘chose’ to clean and organize the garage (to get both cars in for the winter), and I ‘chose’ to patch and re-coat the asphalt driveway. Curious how we ‘choose’ to do such mundane and tedious work! You would think we would avoid such distasteful activity at all cost. I guess that shows how we can “Choose To Do What is Necessary”, a favorite theme here at The Connection: How well Adapted we are to be Free and Caused To Act at The Same Time! Choosing To Do what is Necessary To Do….. But I digress.

Chatting it up: My wife and I spoke to seven different neighbors! As we were outside for the entire mid-day, some of the conversations were rather prolonged, some fairly short. Add on to that, the one guy that drove by and slowed down to shout “F#<k you and F—- Biden Too!” and the lady that started to pump her fist, shout “hurray” and blow her horn as she came to our house and saw us. Our house has a bit of a reputation in the neighborhood as a hub of Democratic political activity. And it felt pretty good.

A young guy from four doors down came by with his three year old son riding a tricycle. I hardly know him, named Derrick, and he explained to me that he is a Republican, but that he wanted to congratulate us on the victory. Rather shyly and not all that articulately, he explained that Americans need to work together, especially in Congress. I agreed and most of the conversation was about his son.

Our neighbor across the street, Kason, has been flying the “Don’t Tread On Me” Tea Party ‘snake flag’ again, since the Governor shutdown much of the state due to The Virus. He really is a nice guy, a middle-aged family man, very personable and Fundamentalist Christian. He explained to me that he has a new pastor who has been big into the “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to the Lord what is His” idea, and therefore Kason has backed off on some of his political activism and even concerns. When asked if he was buying into Trump’s stolen election contention, he said he was now trying to believe only what he had personal experience of or close and trusted testimony to. In this case, he had neither of those, so he couldn’t say for sure whether the election was stolen or not. Strange as that was, I pretty much left it there, but did comment that it as too bad America no longer had a trusted news source like we did in the old days, Mr. Walter Cronkite, CBS National News!

On our street I had provided Biden signs for five different houses including our own. And several got their own. It was nice to be so well represented. We had some great conversations with some of these people. People were relieved that Joe and Kamala finally did it! Now, I should point out that My Neighborhood is Not representative of all of Ohio, or Biden would have won the state. Here in Franklin county, home to Columbus, we went almost 70% Biden, but in 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties (all rural) they went Trump, some as high as almost 90%!

But the chatting was initiated in School on Friday! As I wrote early Friday morning, I woke up upset and astonished by President Trump’s allegations at nightly news time Thursday evening. (See Discussing Politics in the Classroom, the following post.) He told the nation that the election was being stolen from him! What an outrageously untrue and destructive contention!

So on Friday, I did “checked in with” each and every class. How were they feeling, I asked. “We do not need any more drama or uncertainty this year,” I said, “but that is what our President has served up, a heaping, new portion.” I tried to carefully maintain a certain amount of neutrality, but I could not, in all good conscience, not question the basis of his contention. His contentions are in variance with the principles and realities of our country! It led to several good and civil discussions, and quite a few students voiced their distrust and dislike for Mr. Trump. “Why was it taking so long?” “What could Trump do?”, many student’s asked. At least, more of these young people were talking, instead of sitting in an unnatural silence in these often largely deserted and disrupted school days and in these uncertain times.

Time to move on, Pull together, and BEAT THAT VIRUS!!!