Holiday Madness

 blackfridayrushers

I can promise that I will not trample a man to death in NJ during a Black Friday store event as has happened. I will not cause a miscarriage through ramming up against a woman at another store as has happened. I will not get into a grab and punch festival at yet another store while fighting over some discounted item and who owns it. … I only buy the basics that I need, I purposefully curtail myself. What do I mean?

I refuse to excessively carbon load. My house is cold in winter and hot in summer. Jump in tub to keep core body temp down so as to not be carted off to a hospital in summer since I only accept having ONE air conditioner at two foot by one foot in the house. I drove my Prius ZERO miles this year and my friends yell at me about it since I’m going to ruin the car that way.

Jet travel contributes eight percent of carbon load. Do you think that I am ever going on a jet again? Hahaha! Yet I have people in my life that wring their hands over climate change and take extensive vacations by car or jet. Excuses range from “I can’t help myself” to “I am old and want to see the world before I die,.”

I have no sympathy for their wants. I have a two year old grandchild and the seventh generation Native American principle in mind. They, the more for me cavalier people, seem like ignoramus category or selfish, self-indulgent creatures.

Meanwhile look at the carbon load at each stage of the event: resource extraction, transport to manufacturing facility, conversion into a product. using other products  to make products be packaged like cardboard made from downed forests and forest life killed off in them indirectly. Then carbon load to ship to stores and have the people go to stores to get their hearts’ desires, which is another carbon load.

On Black Friday, I am going with my daughter, her husband and my two year old grandchild to a disgusting place called Chucky Cheese. It has deplorable pizza and someone dressed in a mouse-like costume. Then we will run around a playground and play in it at my neighborhood — the same one where my daughter played when young. Then we are out to a Japanese restaurant where food is cooked in front of you in an artistic fashion. I am sure that it will be fascinating to my grandchild since the rest of us have seen it many times.

I do get resentful. Let’s be clear here.

Why should should we all have to suffer from poor behaviors from others of our species? They can’t seem to help themselves, especially on Black Friday, which leads to carbon loading in precursors  — all of the stuff made and gobbled up by humans. Not fair to the poor people on the Earth and not fair to the rest of us who try so hard to delimit ourselves!

Thanksgiving in the USA is okay to me (the day before Black Friday madness) except for two points, The Pilgrim Thanksgiving myth annoys me as much as the counterpart about murderous, rapist, psychopath Columbus discovering America.

I do not mind celebrating the harvest. It has been done across the world for eons. I do mind that I have to celebrate Thanksgiving with a bunch of republicans in another state who hate Latinos, Blacks and the poor. They do, though, have love  … for Trump. So I keep my mouth shut. There is no point in my getting into a shouting match since they will not convince me and I won’t with them. So I keep my patter simple such as how are your children and other light fare topics.

Personally I like Indigenous persons day, Thanksgiving is mournful for me in light of that which has been done to Native Americans. Many Natives feel that way and so do I.

I don’t mind being thankful for harvest. I am. Yet I do mind being yelled at when I wend to my Mom’s home in NJ in a blizzard and was late to arrive while seeing many roadside accidents on the way while traveling from MA to central NJ. I resent listening to my castigation then, I resent listening to smug republicans showing hatred of others, I resent the day afterword when people go into am insane buying frenzy.

I have my own way of worship for harvest and life. It has nothing to do with travesty. In mind, I join my natives to say it is Indigenous Persons day,

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA

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