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I have a very extended family. When we first got married my husband gave up trying to remember second cousins, cousins once and twice removed, cousins-in-law, etc., etc. and called them all my ‘step-neighbors-in-law.” While most of my relatives are from European ancestry like me, I also have step-neighbors-in-law who are African-American, Japanese, Latino, and Jewish. To me, they’re just family and I love them all. If only all people would just consider each other family the world would be a better place.

In Sunday School most kids learn the song about how Jesus loves all the little children of the world. The lyrics help to teach kids not to be prejudiced against others because of their race. But part of the song, while well meaning, is inaccurate. Humans are not really red, yellow, black and white. Native Americans do not have red skin. The only truly red skin I’ve ever seen was on people with light colored skin who got severe sunburns. And Asians are not yellow. The only person with truly yellow skin I’ve seen was of Anglo-Saxon ancestry who was dying with liver jaundice. I have seen a couple of African and some African-American people whose skin was such a dark mahogany-brown it was almost black, but most African Americans I’ve seen have skin in various shades of brown. And the only person I’ve ever seen with truly white skin was a little albino girl who happened to be African-American. Maybe we should change the lyrics of that song to say, “Tan, and brown, and beige and pink, God still loves us when we stink.” And if we all learn to love each other there will be a lot less stinking in the world.

When I was a kid, way back in the 1940s and ‘50s, Kids could just go out and play. We weren’t allowed to leave our neighborhood without permission from parents, but no adults watched us while we played. We were free to use our imaginations and spent most of our time doing that. The boys usually wanted to play “Cowboys and Indians” or have wars with their cap pistols and squirt guns. Girls preferred dressing up like princesses or playing “House” with toy dishes, dolls, and whatever we could use for furniture. Often we’d figure out ways to compromise so boys and girls who lived near each other could all use our imaginations together. We could climb trees and pretend those were forts or castles, and go back and forth between each others’ yards freely. Sometimes we’d do things like jump rope, play “Catch” with balls, or play games with rules, like “Tag.”  But usually we pretended. Sadly, recent generations of children haven’t been able to play outside without adult supervision because it’s not considered safe for them to do that. And it’s no fun to use your imagination with adults watching and judging you if you’re a kid. Today most kids play video games, and those do involve imaginary characters and situations. They have limits, so they aren’t as creative as our free play used to be, and any interaction with other players is at a distance. Even kids sitting next to each other and playing the same game aren’t watching each other’s expressions and body language. But at least they do allow kids to do some pretending.

I grew up in a semi-rural county in the San Francisco Bay Area, Everyone in our small town was white except for one Chinese family whose daughter was my friend in school. I assumed most other Chinese people lived in the San Francisco Chinatown because they wanted to be with other people like themselves. And I thought all the African American people lived in Marin City for the same reason. Every year before the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and freeway were built we’d drive through Richmond at Christmas on our way to my cousins’ house. I’d see lots of African-American out playing on their new bikes and other things my family couldn’t afford. I assumed they were rich. When I was eleven years old I was sent to the Stanford Convalescent home because of my severe asthma. The only other kid my age there was an African American boy. To me he was just a boy and I didn’t think about his race. Other than him, I never knew anyone else who was African-American until I gotta college. That was when when the Civil Rights movement began, and was horrified to learn about all the prejudice and discrimination that existed. I didn’t participate in any protests, but I did go door to door in Oakland getting African-Americans to register to vote. When the Civil Rights Act passed I assumed prejudice would be eliminated. The Bay Area became integrated and I didn’t pay any more attention to people’s race than to their clothes or hair styles. Lots of my friends and even some of my relatives were African American. Of course I knew there were still some bigots in the world, but I assumed there weren’t many people like that. Boy, was I ever wrong!

I’m having technical problems and can’t access any of my e-mail accounts. None of ny passwords will work. Hope I can get those problems solved and be back on the internet soon.

I wonder who took the video of that police officer kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck. Whoever it was, he couldn’t have known what a huge difference it would make. Of course he probably intended to share it on the internet and hoped it would get that officer in trouble, but he couldn’t have guessed it would influence thousands – maybe even millions of people. Hopefully, in the long run, it will do a lot toward eliminating, or at least cutting down on, racial bigotry. We never know how something we do or say can go out into the world and make a difference, either for better or for worse. I hope I, and everyone who reads this, will try to do and say things that can be used for good.

Prejudice is assuming all members of a group are the same. A negative prejudice about a group of humans is bigotry. For early humans, prejudice was a survival instinct. For example, if someone ate a poisonous fungus and died, others would avoid all funguses. They would miss out on delicious mushrooms, but the prejudice against them would save their lives. For most of human history, if people saw others who looked different from themselves and those they knew, it was strongly possible that those different people were coming to invade and take over the territory. But this is the twenty-first century and it’s time we got over bigotry. The Corona virus has shown us that everyone on our planet is connected and related. We are all one family. So, come on, people, now let’s come together and love one another right NOW.

Years ago I got in a discussion with an online group about the worst natural disaster. Strangely, everyone preferred the disasters they experienced themselves. People who lived where there are hurricanes said they knew when those were coming and could shelter from them. People who lived where there are tornadoes said those are rare and only hit a narrow area. People who lived where earthquakes happen said those only happen a few times in a century. Nobody in that group had experienced volcanic eruptions or tsunamis. Of course forest fires happen often, cover large areas, and you can’t shelter from them, but most of those are started by humans, or equipment humans invented. Now we’re experiencing a different disaster, the Covid epidemic. It’s happening everywhere, but we’re trying to shelter from it, and hope it never happens again.

One (maybe the only) advantage to the Corona virus epidemic is it has provided something other that presidential election politics to talk about. But politics are everywhere. One definition of the word, politics, is “a conflict between people or groups trying to achieve power.” I know some people who have stopped attending any church because of bad experiences with church politics. But nobody is likely to say they’ll never set foot in any office again because they’ve experienced office politics. And even how to deal with the virus has become a matter of politics. Do people wanting to reopen everything or people wanting to remain cautious have the most power? What about those who think we should keep wearing masks vs those who don’t? Any time more than two people are together politics happen. But, guess what! There’s a solution! We can be polite to each other and agree to disagree, while respecting each other’s point of view. Someone who chooses not to wear a mask can avoid getting close to people who do wear them. We can vote for different candidates without being nasty about it. As old song says, “Come on people, now let’s get together and love one another right now.”

Years ago some people talked about trickle down economy, meaning if the big businesses got more money some of that would trickle down to help everyone else. With the current economic problems and talk about government help to big corporations we’re dealing with the same concept. Here’s an idea for an experiment to see if that would work. From now on, only take showers, no tub baths. Every time you bathe, put lots of soap on your hair, face, neck and shoulders, and scrub those places, but don’t put any soap or touch anywhere else on your body. And only aim the water at your head, neck, and shoulders. Some might trickle down below. Do the same thing every time you bathe for four years. Would all of your body stay healthy? I don’t think so.