My friend Lisa was upset about the flippant way the youth of today use the word ‘ghetto.’ In fact, comments like, “She’s so ghetto,” changes the depth of the word for people who lived and suffered under horrendous conditions. Lisa asked the people that follow her blog what they thought about this new usage of the word ‘ghetto.’ With some changes, this was my comment.
Wanting to validate my thoughts, I looked up the word ghetto. Webster dictionary defines ghetto as “1 a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live. 2 a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.”
An image of the word ‘ghetto’ conjures an Americanized picture in my mind. In western America, one would think of ghettos after visiting some of the reservations where incarcerated Native Americans lived. If you go to Chicago and see the Projects, you would think of ghetto. In all parts of the States, there are areas for indigent people and other areas for the very poor. It is not by choice they live this way but because of ‘social, legal, or economic pressure.’
As a young child, I remember hearing the elders speak of the people in ‘the bottoms,’ a part of my hometown that was occupied by those less fortunate than those who lived in the better part of the city. Lest not forget the phase, ‘they came from the other side of the tracks.’ My community held those people of color, who found their way out of their situation to live the good life, in high esteem. While other people continued to settle in the ghetto for lack of hope.
The expression ‘you can take a person out of the country but you can’t take the country out of a person’ applies here. The environment a person grows up in forms a certain way of thinking and reacting, and becomes a part of that person. No matter how much pretense a person displays in public, it is in private the baggage of the past can appear. In other words, no matter how much the person tries to leave old ways behind, the successful people still feels where they came from. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
Regardless of what Webster says, or the labels ghetto implies about people, the word ghetto is nothing but a product of it’s time. A book by Joyce Sequichie Hifler called A Cherokee Feast of Days wrote, “Whatever becomes second nature to us has first caught on in our thinking, only to operate, in time, without thinking at all.
No, I don't care for the flippant used of ghetto. It has negative images attached. As Joyce wrote, “We have to fight habit with habit, deliberately changing one thought, one action, for another. If we simply try to remove the habit without filling the vacuum, we are opening the door for more and worse to come in.” I wonder how ‘ghetto’ will be used in the future.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Train
You’ve never seen America until you’ve seen it by train. Observations of the landscape viewed from the large windows of each car let’s you see the beauty of this country frame by frame. The settings of the mountains, meadows, rivers, and farmlands with rolls of grain open eyes to a simpler life. Reality in secluded places not accessible by any means, other than the trains, exposes a style of living seldom experienced by those in the city or suburbia.
The narrow gauge trains of the west journey through much of the country’s most majestic places. Slowly the trains wind their way around curves, embracing the hills and mountains as they travel through some of the most beautiful unseen topography. The view is a picture of the wonders of nature, worthy of any canvas or digital photograph. As these trains trek over the terrain, they take you to the next mountain that’s just as majestic as the last.
On most trips in the west, you could cross bridges that are a football field long with an eight hundred foot drop. The scenery over these tassels guarantees to leave you breathless as your aerial view outlines the beauty of places seen only from a train. Imagine trying to see a hundred foot waterfalls off well-defined mountains from an airplane.
These trips are great adventures to enjoy with your children or grandkids, giving all involved memories for a lifetime. From seeing the animals, both wild and domestic, as they feed near the forest edge, or watching them track across the fields. You can view all this from a coach with wide windows and air-conditioned comfort or from an open coach where the wind blows through your hair. Some caution here regarding the insects you may encounter at high speeds. On less commercial train trips, you can enjoy the reenactments of an old west with train holdups, guns fights, and banjo playing.
Of all the trains that have ever existed, I prefer the steam engines. To me the steam engines have a spirit. A breathe of steam from these locomotives exhales, and drives the pistols that turn the wheels through the landscape of unblemished lands, makes my heart flutter. The train accepts its momentum with each breath as it rocks me into a serene comfort, while it chases the rails down the road.
The large gauge trains travel the regular rail lines in the eastern part of the Unites States. Many of the trains of yesterday have disappeared. If it were not for a small group of dedicated people, who volunteer to keep these trains running, we would lose a piece of history. I’m thankful for these volunteers, who maintain the narrow gauge, and what is left of the wide gauge trains, because they do so for the love of these majesty iron horses.
The narrow gauge trains of the west journey through much of the country’s most majestic places. Slowly the trains wind their way around curves, embracing the hills and mountains as they travel through some of the most beautiful unseen topography. The view is a picture of the wonders of nature, worthy of any canvas or digital photograph. As these trains trek over the terrain, they take you to the next mountain that’s just as majestic as the last.
On most trips in the west, you could cross bridges that are a football field long with an eight hundred foot drop. The scenery over these tassels guarantees to leave you breathless as your aerial view outlines the beauty of places seen only from a train. Imagine trying to see a hundred foot waterfalls off well-defined mountains from an airplane.
These trips are great adventures to enjoy with your children or grandkids, giving all involved memories for a lifetime. From seeing the animals, both wild and domestic, as they feed near the forest edge, or watching them track across the fields. You can view all this from a coach with wide windows and air-conditioned comfort or from an open coach where the wind blows through your hair. Some caution here regarding the insects you may encounter at high speeds. On less commercial train trips, you can enjoy the reenactments of an old west with train holdups, guns fights, and banjo playing.
Of all the trains that have ever existed, I prefer the steam engines. To me the steam engines have a spirit. A breathe of steam from these locomotives exhales, and drives the pistols that turn the wheels through the landscape of unblemished lands, makes my heart flutter. The train accepts its momentum with each breath as it rocks me into a serene comfort, while it chases the rails down the road.
The large gauge trains travel the regular rail lines in the eastern part of the Unites States. Many of the trains of yesterday have disappeared. If it were not for a small group of dedicated people, who volunteer to keep these trains running, we would lose a piece of history. I’m thankful for these volunteers, who maintain the narrow gauge, and what is left of the wide gauge trains, because they do so for the love of these majesty iron horses.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
