permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 1:33 PM, Kelda Lorax <kelda@riseup.net> wrote:

> I am quite racist, in the sense that I have unbidden racist things pop
> into my mind and thus I scrutinize my mind heavily.
>

What a unique and important topic to bring up. Outstanding. I now see where
you are coming from.
Maybe we can explore this. I said previously that when such unwanted neural
energies burden my as I make my way through each day I respond by thinking
about the Australian Aborigines and their contribution to mankind and that
they hold the keys to one living in harmony with Nature or rather Gaia.
Poof, racist thoughts gone. If only I had known how to do that from age 1
to age 40. A related story from my time growing up in a university town.
There was a black gentleman who lived nearby whose brother was a stone
mason. George Baldwin was a gardener by profession and an eccentric fellow
of small stature. He did yard work and landscape maintnance in
neighborhoods mostly occupied by university faculty members and their
neighbors. He talked to the plants. He was such a skilled horticulturist
that he became
the famous botanist WC Coker's (Coker-Totten "Trees of the Southeastern
United States") favorite gardener. That was a real honor for him.
He worked for my parents and other people in the neighborhood. Sometimes he
would come to work and after a while disappear for hours.
A search would find him curled up under a bush with a wine bottle. No
problem. To each, his own. Anyway George seemed to me to be some kind of
plant guru, distant and elite, his lack of education notwithstanding. There
was something about him and about his work that exuded a mystique about the
Earth' landscape, the world of plants what left a lasting impression on me.
At age 40 I became a landscape contractor and later moved to farmland and
entered the world of natural gardening and permaculture. So, there you go.
instead of racist thoughts popping into my mind I have memories of George,
a supreme steward of the Earth I was graced to have known and benefitted
from.


> Not because I want to oppress but because I no longer want to be the
> oppressor. If you think it's because I Want to think people of color are
> lesser, than you don't understand my meaning.
>

No, I did not think that.

>
> On a gentler note, my husband and I were talking about this whole string
> and he said "Well, everyone feels defensive at first"
> -spoken from a man who was Seriously Annoyed every time I pointed out how
> racist he is, but now looks for it himself and helps other white people see
> theirs.
>

Well done, Kelda!



-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared









-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared