Happy July 4th!
The United States celebrates its 245th birthday in 2021. That’s pretty amazing but at the same time, we’re still one of the new kids on the block. The countries of France and Spain have been around for over 500 years! That’s more than double! I think some people don’t understand when the phrase ‘democratic experiment’. Well, seeing that our country is half as old as some other countries, yeah, it still could turn out differently.
Podcast
Over the weekend I’ve listened to several podcasts. Yesterday I got caught up on Reparations: The Big Payback. It’s pretty amazing what I learn in this podcast I listen to. I’ve been listening for a while learning about slavery and how generations have suffered under systematic racism. I grew up in a small town in the middle of Ohio. One of the states where we were taught helped free the slaves. Sure free but not living there. You can still see that there were systems set up to keep blacks pinned down. A couple of months ago a teenage female was shot and killed because a full-grown male police officer felt threatened. Another example would be the prison population. These private prisons sell off the labor of the people convicted of crimes.
Reparation; The act or process of making amends for a wrong. Slavery was certainly wrong. The people who owned slaves treated them like animals. Actually, animals were treated better. This form of slavery is better known as chattel slavery. In today’s world, this is just unthinkable. Our government has gone to war over this which is rather ironic now learning more of our history. When slaves were freed Lincoln gave them 40 acres of their former slave owners. Well once Lincoln was killed those 40 acres were retracted. Yep, Andrew Johnson, confederate supporter, pulled back that guarantee of 40 acres for the prior slaves.
Seems so hard to believe that we’ve created these people for SO LONG. So I’d recommend that people educate themselves and learn more about how our country has treated Indians and slaves. We need to educate ourselves about how people are treated and the impacts. If you’re interested check out this link regarding Critical Race Theory.
Quote
A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished
Talmud
I got the book Quotes that will change your life last year. I’m going to try to start using them in my post. Quotes are great little tidbits of wisdom. For example did you know that Talmud is the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law and legend comprising the Mishnah and the Gemara. I certainly didn’t!
Movies
Last night we saw the 2011 movie The girl with the dragon tattoo. It was great! It’s 2.5 hours long but it moved so fast that it didn’t seem that long. The storyline is interesting and complicated. Daniel Craig was great. He’s always some nice eye candy for the ladies. There were several actors that we’ve seen in many movies.
The movie takes place in Sweden. It even starts in the middle of winter. It’s very interesting because they even talk about some of the family members being ex-Nazi and you see a different take because the family was extremely wealthy. If you bump up the plot of the movie it was about a 40-year-old mystery where a family member was killed, but the body was never found. If you’ve not seen it I would recommend the movie. It was engaging and entertaining the whole time.
More Podcasts
Something else I’ve been listening to is Rough Translations. This season focuses on the divide between people in the military and other Americans. This particular story focuses on Matt Lammers and Alicia Argelia a couple who met after Matt was injured in Iraq. Matt is missing 3 limbs. The couple discusses their lives. How they met, how they lived, how much Alicia was changing.
There was another episode I listened to that spoke about the division between the military and Silicon Valley. I didn’t know this but silicon valley first started with the military. The one big thing if you don’t know is the internet. The internet came from military investment. Isn’t that crazy? People don’t think of the military as being innovative but they have aligned themselves with other groups in order to grow and develop. That episode is named Rebels in the Valley.
Well enough for today. I hope this finds everyone well and feel free to leave a message. If you like the post, check out the last post, I learned 2 great things that happened 50 years ago.
Have a great week!
#July4th #slavery #reparations #npr #roughtranslations #movies #podcasts
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