It is just after eight in the morning and I am sitting at the kitchen table in a more than 200 year old house in Maine. Today is Labor Day, i.e. we have the Monday off and a lovely long weekend. I am surrounded by memories from the last at least 100 years. There are roosters on the wallpaper, painted wooden signs with some pearl of wisdom over every door, and on every bathroom door there is a little wooden heart saying “Here is the door you look for!” The house and the barns outside are red and white. If I didn’t know any better, I would assume I was in Astrid Lindgren’s Bullerby. This here in the middle of nowhere feels like an ideal world.
But there is also this other world out there, not far away actually. Where the American president unleashes tirades of hate almost daily. Where thousands of neo-Nazis march through a town in Eastern Germany and chase immigrants. Where I think for the first time that I am glad for safety reasons that there isn’t any child of color in the classes I go on a trip to Germany with soon – and I am ashamed of this thought.
I have been living in different worlds for many years now. I have always been proud that we are all open and liberal, mixing more and more, becoming more and more one world. But suddenly there is this huge countermovement, full of hatred, that I don’t understand. They might be afraid of the unknown, of potential change, of maybe everything I have experienced. But that is no excuse to take the law into their own hands, to be willing to abandon democratic values. And I am very afraid of those people, whose nationality I share. I am afraid that they destroy everything I highly value.
|Watched| Pretty Little Liars, Sense8
|Read| Allein in der Wildnis, Der Fluss
|Listened to| Jason Mraz
|Done| it was the first proper school week, i.e. I started teaching again; on Saturday my boyfriend and I drove up to Maine for the Labor Day weekend
|Eaten| quinoa, burrito, vegan icecream, donuts, French onion soup, steak au poivre
|Drunk| water, green tea, coffee, blueberry beer, margarita, my first PSL of the year
|Thought| I would love to stay for vacation here in Maine for several weeks
|Been happy| long weekends always make me happy plus I am in my favorite place in America
|Laughed| I had cocktails with a new colleague and we had much fun
|Desired| I really hoped to finally see some moose, but it didn’t happen
|Bought| nothing
|Clicked| I read the news online
© janavar