These hoya flowers are past their prime. It's a natural part of the cycle of birth and death.
From Bloomscape:
"Hoya plants are some of the easiest indoor houseplants to care for. They are slow-growing vining plants native to tropical and subtropical Asia. They are also known as Wax plants due to their thick and shiny foliage. As Hoyas mature, they produce clusters of sweet-smelling star-shaped flowers."
They were pretty amazing a week ago.
And even though those blooms are gone, there's a new cluster starting to bud.
This plant has been growing downstairs in our 'greenhouse' - really a room with lots of south facing windows - for years. It does tend to bloom most years with minimal care on my part.
Spring is technically here according to the calendar, but we still have plenty of winter on the ground and icicles hanging from our roof.
[While the drop on its way down is kind of neat, I accidentally deleted the drop that was just below the end of the icicle, still suspended by a trail of water. The whole three foot icicle, after growing for a week or two, came crashing down just after I took this picture.]
[UPDATE March 24, 2021 1:30am: I found the deleted album on my phone and there was the other picture. So here it is: ]
But we are getting significantly more light every day. At Anchorage's latitude we are gaining almost 6 minutes a day - an hour in 10 days. That's just the official 'daylight' but we have much longer twilight periods than further south.
Yesterday I pulled out my bike - the old one with the studded tires - to ride to a routine annual physical not far from our house.
And here's rider's view on my way home. I'm still amazed at how well the studded tires worked on the icier parts of the way home.
But we also have had a lot of positive things happening. My sense is that the anger of Republicans that boiled over on January 6 is a reflection that they feel their privilege slipping away. They, of course, don't think of it as privilege. They still believe in various mantras that help justify why rich people are rich and poor people are poor. Mantras that put all the onus on the individual and ignore how social norms and beliefs, economic and legal infrastructure, and the media portrayal of some ideal USA, all combine to advantage white males. But their anger now reflects that women and people of color have made great strides toward equality. The election of a black president brought it all home, for many. White males no longer can assume they get to go to the front of the line. Now women and minorities have much better access to good education and then good jobs. Just look at how the number of women
doctors and
lawyers and
members of Congress have increased in recent decades. The same is true for people of color.
For example.
Our job now is to change the conditions that produce people who understand their place in the world and work to make the world more just for everyone. No individual has to save the world. We all just have to take care of our selves and our families and friends. If we have energy and resources and creativity left over, then we can help others, then we can work for a happier society.
But when we do work to improve the conditions we live in, we should working humbly. Not to prove how good we are. Not to make others grateful to us. But in recognition that we've been lucky to have what we have and that in our own gratefulness, we want to share it. Some of what we have we have earned through our own hard work. Some because we've been the lucky winners of t
he birth lottery.
But nature itself is a lottery which affects our happiness. I've heard that, despite what one might think, more people get down during spring and early summer than other times of the year. I did double check on that and found that indeed, spring and early summer are the worst. And it's more so further north than closer to the equator. So I send my hoya flowers and dripping icicle to all. May you find pockets of peace and hope that you can fill up with good stories, good friends, good food, and good ideas.
Posts like this are why I keep coming to your blog. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the feedback. This is a somewhat bifurcated post. Was it the pictures, the commentary after the pictures, or the combination that you liked?
DeleteA friend of mine and I were talking a couple of weeks ago and he said about the pandemic, we are all in this together. I no, you have been able to work from home, not lost a dime in wages. You have someone bring you whatever you need and you do realize that people of color are twice as likely to die of the virus and that who I see doing most of the shopping in the stores while you sit here in what I like to call a ‘cyber castle’ not having to take any risk. Is that not the height of white privilege? (no preexisting conditions) I am a little passionate about this because my first job was in a grocery store and those people did not sign on to risk their live for you.
ReplyDeleteThe one time you went out you took your grade book with you, I went to Sagaya that week and counted the people inside at 11 and it was over 90 not counting employees so I guess a place that lets only 6 people in might not be comparable. Have you ever worn a mask, for 4 o 6 straight hours? I do volunteer work and the part of the campus I am on is where people go to take off their masks so they can breathe, if you saw them you would demand them being fired and then scurry back to you cyber castle.. My wife has wear a n95 mask and sometimes I can see its outline on her face hours after she has gotten off work. There is that old saying about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Did you wear you mask the whole way to your Dr appointment?
My wife ask me when I was going to get my shot and I told her there were people who needed it more than me. And, I do volunteer work 4 times a week do my own shopping go to the gym and just about anything I did before the pandemic. Wear a mask social distance and wash your hands and you will be ok. You muscled your way to the from of the line to get your shot. Those essential workers don’t have the time to work the system like you. Privilege.
You do not like white privilege don’t engage in it. That’s what got you through this.
Oliver
Oliver, you tell us what you told a friend about his/her white privilege keeping him safe during the pandemic. You end with "You do not like white privilege, don't engage in it. That's what got you through this."
DeleteI'm not sure how people 'don't engage in it.' It's part of the whole system. It's how people in authority treat you.
My discussion of white privilege is not intended to guilt people, but rather to help them become aware that they have some unearned advantage. And there are lots of different kinds of unearned advantages society bestows. There are good looks, age, money, athletic ability, a loving family, intelligence, ability to read other people, and many other talents.
Many white folks come up short on most of these. Their whiteness may be one of the few advantages they have. I suspect this is group may be most threatened by cultural changes. They see many black folks who are doing much better than they are and white privilege seems like a joke to them. The key is that compared to a black person in their same circumstances, they have an advantage. That was certainly true in Jim Crow South. Maybe poor whites no longer do have much privilege. Certainly terms like "white trash" are among the few slurs that don't bring a rebuke. I think that Trump took advantage of that liberal oversight. Poor parenting, poverty, bad schools all play a big role in disadvantaging people whether they are white or not.
White privilege isn't something an individual can turn off. Sure, they might, in some cases use it to go to the head of the line like, say an important person using her status to get a reservation at a restaurant that's otherwise 'all booked up.'
When it comes to the vaccine, old age was an advantage for getting it earlier.
But my point is not to scold, but to get folks to understand things that may have been invisible, to see that white privilege played a role in their success. They didn't do it 'all by themselves.' Bill Gates knows he had lots of advantages including wealthy parents, great schooling, and early access to computers that other people didn't have. And an aptitude for those machines..
Changing white privilege is a societal task, not an individual task. It involves rewriting laws that disadvantage people of color, rewrite the books so they better reflect history, change barriers to entrance (to good schools, and good jobs).
Individuals can work for these changes, they can share their wealth or talents, they can help people understand white privilege. But they can't stop "engaging in it." Because white privilege for some has bestowed historical advantage (white folks who benefited from slave labor, or just the fact that they got jobs women and people of color were not allowed into. For others white privilege is something they get when they arrive in the US and people treat them better because they are white.
Unless, by that you mean, intentionally use it to gain an advantage. But that's not limited to White people. That too is part of our national ethic embodied in capitalism which favors competition over cooperation. Competition, within an ethical standard of fairness and human rights, is fine. But uncoupled from those values it becomes doing what you want without concern for others until some other competitor blocks you. This is the world extolled by Ayn Rand and embraced by Libertarians.
There are a lot of general statements here and I could come up with conditions and exceptions for them all. But there isn't time for that here and now. But feel free to point out where I'm wrong. But base your criticism on what I actually wrote. Not what you imagine I wrote. Thanks.
Its 03/24 720pm here.
ReplyDeleteThe shots of nature, yes.
Realizing interdependence heals the particulars of race and gender. The individual becomes convinced of karma, and of reincarnation. There literally becomes nothing to engage in, no activism. And yet, all is engagement, activism. Its both yes and no, and not yes, and not no, and beyond from which these manifest. Ethics, and behaviors, are applied metaphysics.