Jonathots Daily Blog
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A. International Snowball Hats
B. Nordic Poleless Skiing
C. Ladies Figure Slush Skating
D. Three-Man Bob Slobbering
E. Frisball (deflated basketballs are tossed through the air to the goal to score points)
Jonathots Daily Blog
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It doesn’t have to be my “ism” to create a schism.
A schism is a split–usually between people.
G-Pop was rolling into his motel when a young man crossed his path. There was an immediate tension. Three years ago it may have been different, but the chasm among people has grown as the anger, malice and dissension have mounted in our country.
For you see, what the young man saw in G-Pop was a fat, 60-year-old white man with Nordic features. He, being a young fellow of color, felt disdain for such a creature, assuming that a Caucasian elderly gentleman must certainly carry the opinions promoted in the marketplace, which look down on him.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yet likewise, to some degree a woman in this country must assume that the men she meets are guilty of chauvinism because of the reinstitution of male superiority.
Also, somebody wearing an American flag on his or her lapel is no longer viewed as a patriotic person, but rather, a potential radical who might be a proponent of “America, love it or leave it.”
Unbridled prejudice has made us suspicious of one another.
It is the casualty of the 2016 election. The campaign was more than a “rocky transition” in our political system. We legitimized the “isms”–chauvinism, racism, ageism, sexism and nationalism, placing the American populace back into armed camps.
Before the campaign, we had the appearance of inching our way to the table of negotiation. Now we are back to rejecting one another.
So in that brief moment when G-Pop came across the young man, he realized it was important to tear down those walls and try to restore some sense of reconciliation.
It requires a combination of “greet” and “meet,” establishing a friendly invitation and following it up with a piece of self-deprecation.
“Hello, my friend,” initiated G-Pop.
The young man gave a quick nod.
“You would think at my age that I should have figured out how to do things, but would you believe I still stumble around, making tons of mistakes?”
This second statement caused the young fellow to pause and turn. So G-Pop offered a third.
“Aren’t you blessed that you’ve still got time to learn stuff and be smarter than me?”
He smiled and replied, “Oh, you’re plenty smart, I’m sure.”
G-Pop concluded, “Some days it’s just hard for me to prove it. Have a great day, my friend.”
The young man laughed.
There had been a greeting, followed by a meeting of the souls. Months and months of aggravated verbal assaults, televised through the media, had been addressed but not conquered.
The work of those who believe in faith, hope and charity has increased but not changed. In a world of tribulation, it is up to us to be of good cheer.
We have increased the schism in this country by allowing errant ideas to be given breath, and therefore a life of their own.
Getting offended or proclaiming it unfair will not change the situation. We will need to bridge the schism by exposing the nasty “isms.”
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Jonathots Daily Blog
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(Transcript)
Two or three days of snow, then a brief warming period, followed by a frigid arctic blast, leaving the countryside glistening with ice, rendering everything precarious.
This was the winter of 1967.
It left all of us in grouchy moods, even though we insisted we were hearty “Ohioans,” accustomed to such frosty conditions. We basically just muddled through it, quietly complaining about “the winter of our discontent.”
Arriving back in my classroom after the Christmas holidays, I discovered that our female math teacher was gone. The initial explanation was that she was battling a severe bout of the flu.
But it took little time for the sour grapevine of the gossip mill to unearth the details. She had actually left town due to a pregnancy out-of-wedlock, making her the subject of great local scandal. My coach joked that considering she was a math teacher, she certainly didn’t do a very good job “counting her days.”
The whole locker room laughed, and I joined in–even though I didn’t get it.
Replacing her was a tall, lanky, clumsy olive-skinned fellow with thin brown greasy hair and a beak for a nose which would have been more suitable for the Family Ostrich. He was a tentative sort. Honestly, it appeared this was his first excursion as an educator.
Yes, he was an oddity. An Ichabod who resembled a crane. And in our community of conformity, he became a necessary target and needful diversion for our present boredom.
Especially when we found out that he was inept at discipline. We tormented him with our ridicule and teasing.
He wore the same brown suit every day with a white shirt and a brown tie with a gold design which could just as easily have been a speck of dried-on scrambled egg.
He had a hilarious tendency to point at the blackboard using his middle finger (which by the way, appeared to have three knuckles) and we always burst into laughter. He would whirl around and screech in a scratchy voice, “Silence!” We laughed harder.
One day a cheerleader inched her way to his desk, supposedly to ask him a question. He was so delighted for the kind attention that he failed to notice that she was taking blackboard erasers from their perch behind his back and softly laying them against his coat with her hand, creating an amazing chalk-dust design. After she returned to her seat and he turned around, we all once again erupted in great guffaws. He had no idea. Matter of fact, the same marks of chalk were on his suit four days later.
He persisted. So did we.
Matter of fact, it became more nasty when one student thought it would be funny to place an anonymous note in the suggestion box in the principal’s office, complaining about Mr. Bayonne’s teaching style.
Long story short, when we returned after our Easter vacation of resurrecting our Lord and chomping on Easter bunny candy, he was gone. We had successfully driven a stranger away–simply because we deemed him strange.
I often think about Mr. Bayonne. He may not have been suited to instruct the rabble of high school hoodlums, but he certainly deserved better treatment. But in our tiny world of thinking, this math teacher just didn’t add up.
I have spent much of my life trying to make sure that I never “Bayonned” anyone again, and in so doing I have discovered a magnificent reality:
It takes different people to make me different. And if I don’t become different, I’m stuck … going no further than where I am.
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Bologna with a ring.
It is not a marriage ceremony for piglets. It is a delightful application of a delectable American treat propagated and promoted in the Great Lake States.
I am in Michigan. They know their bologna. First, they recognize that it is spelled b-o-l-o-g-n-a rather than b-a-l-o-n-e-y. Of course, one of my friends back in high school thought it was” ball-only,” so named for the part of the bull extracted to make the stuff. He was greatly relieved when I told him that bologna was just an accumulation of hooves, belly fat and ear wax, forcibly removed from Missouri male cows.
Michigan is a land of bologna. (I mean that well.) Fried, seared, “jalapeno’d,” grilled, barbecued and of course, breaded. But for me, the most flavorful incarnation is bologna in a ring. Ring bologna–stuffed into a tube and folded over into the shape of a horseshoe and then tied at the bottom to create a psychedelic “O.” Ring bologna. The original YouTube–sometimes in flavors, but best left alone: sweet, firm, a little garlic, squeezed into a casing, plump and ready for slicing. (Sounds like my junior prom date…)
It is right that ring bologna is a regional product of these Nordic Northmen. For we are Vikings. We eat slabs of meat without apology. And when necessary, we can use our large ring bologna as a weapon against our tofu-eating enemies.
Anyway, I like the taste.
I have one dilemma–how can you eat as much of the ring of the bologna as you want and still keep it around for a respectable length of time so that you aren’t viewed by spectators as a glutton? This is important. Fat people like me have to think about such things. For instance, I can’t sit in a restaurant and enjoy a piece of pie. Everyone around me is thinking, “Oh, that’s how he got so fat.” I am not alone. It is the same situation for the black man. He cannot eat watermelon in public at the Mississippi State Fair. Likewise, a Japanese person can’t cut you off in traffic or wear a camera around his neck. Chinese people can’t shop at Wal-mart without hearing a drone of complaints about the products. Those of a Middle-Eastern descent find it difficult to stop off and pick up a couple bags of fertilizer at Ace Hardware. Native Americans don’t hang around outside the cigar store, and Mexicans stay away from 7-11’s, unless they’re looking for work. It’s just the way things played out.
A fat guy with a ring of bologna needs to make it last long enough that those who are watching determine it to be a normal consumption rate for the delicacy. It’s tough.
So I bought my ring bologna on Monday at 11:00 A.M. and finished the last piece on Wednesday at 10:12 A.M. Nearly forty-eight hours. Such control. Unbelievable discipline. I am humbled and proud. I wish I could tell you it was easy. It wasn’t. I even dreamed about my ring. One of my visions was a little sexy, so I won’t get into it here.
Soon I will leave Michigan and return to the world where bologna is sliced, stuffed into a package, stacked neatly and forced to be Oscar Meyer. I weep for my trapped comrades. How they wish to be in a ring, hanging out in Michigan, waiting for some Spartan or Wolverine to purchase them for game day. Alas!
So here’s to ring bologna–the Super Bowl Ring of high fat, enormous calories, immense cholesterol luncheon food products. If it is a sin, I pray for God’s grace–or hope the Creator Himself has had a fling with the ring.
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A voice writing in the wilderness
Jonathots Daily Blog 