Good Morning.
I am pondering what to write but I will get there eventually. I could tell you that my dog freaked out last night during a thunderstorm, not a bad one with only a few rumbles and flashes of lightening. I could tell you about my neighbors'
rummage sale where as many men as women showed up, single men apparently looking for some tools or a few plates for a bachelor apartment. I could tell you that my social security check arrived three days early for a change and is already spent. I could tell you I had the last of the sweet corn last night and I don't care if I have corn again until Thanksgiving when someone will fix up the casserole with the corn muffin mix and that I don't care if I ever have the green bean casserole with mushroom soup. I like the fried onion things on top but I'd rather just eat them out of the can.
What I will tell you, now that I am warmed up, is that I own a shopping list handwritten and signed by Thomas Jefferson.
The piece is about the size of an index card and contains two items - 10 pounds of coffee, not green, and 1000 nails wrought of preference. No crummy nails for Thomas. The list was given to my grandfather by a woman in Virginia and passed along to my father. I found it in his desk when I was clearing his house after he moved to a senior facility, and I have stared at it in awe at least a hundred times.
The history of the list is detailed on the back: Jefferson's order sent to the grocery store at Charlottesville, Virginia by his slaves, Apr. 6, 1822. In light of recent events I am even more blown away, first because of the Charlottesville reference but
also because the shopping was done by his slaves. At the moment nothing matters more to me than what happened
last weekend in that beautiful city - not the weather, the rummage sale, the laundry I need to haul downstairs, or my pathetic attempt to make a mocha like the one I get at Caribou. We have people, really brave people, who want to take down the statues and other symbols of a time when slaves were regarded as 3/5 of a person for purposes of property tax assessment and when husbands were sold away from their wives and children and beaten to shreds if they tried to escape to find them again. We had a war about whether these people should be kept in bondage; states' rights was the official, less honest reason ascribed to it, as in, get out of my face and let me live with my God given white supremacy. We have people today who will tell you exactly the same thing and they're up to a pile of no good. We got a real mess, and shoving it under the rug and pretending that it will just go away after awhile isn't going to work.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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