Sometimes I'm right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I'm in
I am everyday people, yeah yeah
There is a blue one who can't accept the green one
For living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee
Oh sha sha - we got to live together
I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me you know me and then
You can't figure out the bag l'm in
I am everyday people, yeah yeah
There is a long hair that doesn't like the short hair
For bein' such a rich one that will not help the poor one
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee
Oh sha sha-we got to live together
There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one that won't accept the white one
And different strokes for different folks
Oh sha sha-
I am everyday people.
Sly and the Family Stone, 1969
http://www.imeem.com/people/oOporH/music/HGbtI5u4/sly_the_family_stone_everyday_people/Sunday morning, about 8 miles from my home, a guy who had gone through five wives and couldn't keep a job walked into a local church where the congregation was bracing itself for a children's performance of "Annie" and opened up with a sawed-off shotgun. His four-page letter left in his Ford Escape blamed liberals, gays and lesbians, blacks, minorities in general, Democrats, and the State of Tennessee, which had just reduced his food stamps, for his inability to keep a job, and according to his neighbors, he also had issues with fundamentalist Christians. Two are dead, another 7 injured. Four are still in the hospital. The shooter is fine, although he had apparently been hoping for a cop-assisted suicide. Six of the nine victims were in their 60's and 70's, including the two that he murdered.
The last three days have been pretty painful in my "scruffy little city", as the New York Times once called us. We're all going through the "this sort of thing doesn't happen here" bit. Except that it did. We're all kind of muddling through, each of us in our own way.
If any of you who read this sad sort of news wonder what on earth to do, I hope that you'll do something kinda dumb and basic: when you go out the next time on your daily business, I hope you'll give a smile to someone who might not normally be part of your group. Someone with way too many tattoos, or dreadlocks, or a Confederate flag t-shirt, or black lipstick and nail polish, or a W bumper sticker, or someone who appears gay, or has an accent, or a woman in a hijab, or a man in a yarmulke, or some kids bouncing their low-rider, or a blue one, or a green one. Or whatever. I'm not naive enough to think that this will cure the world, but we have to start somewhere.
And I hope that your community doesn't have to go through anything like this. There is just no way to describe what it's like.
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
