Saturday, November 01, 2014

Football Counter-Programming #9

This may start out kinda deep in today's Football Counter-Programming. But don't worry. It won't stay that way for long.
Source: http://www.pinterest.com/totallytinu/guardmarching-band-akamylove/

I have to stay here. This is my homeland. I have no where else to go.

 I heard a Crimean say this on the radio Tuesday morning, describing his desire to avoid being forced into Russian citizenship and his desire to live in his ancestral homeland and for the Ukraine to become independent again someday.

Hearing this made me think about my own life--so much nicer than his. And I thought that I don't have that strong a sense of place. I don't have such an overwhelming desire to maintain historic roots. This is clear, because I left my home(land) and show no sign of preparing to go back. Certainly I am not moving heaven and earth to go back to it. And it's not just the politics of the situation either. If a foreign nation, like say Mexico, took over Georgia next month, I would be EVEN LESS inclined to move my family back into that mess. (Though I hope I would try to provide a refuge for my family members living down there who wanted to try and get out.)

So, is this "lack of place" a failing of mine? Or am I reflecting the privilege of my economic status and my national freedoms? Because I have the opportunity and the luxury and the freedom to go wherever I can manage to go, do I have no urgency to be anywhere in particular?

Do I simply care more about me and what is happening to me now than I care about where I have been and what brought me to this place and this time? And if that is true . . . is that a personality flaw?

What do you think? Are you drawn to a certain place? Do you feel less than yourself in a new environment or do you make adjustments and settle easily anywhere? Am I missing out on a fundamental part of my heritage? Leave me scathing--but honest--opinions in the comments below.

Maybe I don't have an answer to these questions. But I do have some connections to the past, as evidenced by this item that I found today.

I was helping Lynda in the basement this morning, sorting through old saved kids clothes, looking for some new (old) seasonal stuff for Hannah.

And lo and behold, look at what I found! The Boaz onesie that my coworkers gave me when Hannah was born!

Certainly it is one of the weirdest kid gifts you may ever see--it features fluorescent pink wording of one of the Old Testament's most famous people. And of course, it is accompanied by everyone's favorite lettuce-eater, the gentle manatee. Sadly none of my kids are small enough to fit into it anymore. It should have been a cherished heirloom that would have been proudly handed down from generation to generation. But now it is a flash-in-the-pan oddity that future generations can't hope to understand.

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