Lilac Colored Glasses

Prior to my tumble down the stairs, I was planning to come back to my blog with a little song I heard recently. It’s an easy going, simple little tune and while CB and I do get a chuckle over it’s schlageriness (made that one up myself), it’s been stuck in my head ever since I decided it’d be a good “end of hiatus” tune.

However, I thought it best to tell you about what happened Monday and I couldn’t see a good place to segue into a Dutch schlageresque song. It’s kind of hard to stay upbeat when you feel so beat up.  Much of my physical pain is subsiding (though my wrist is hurting more) and the longer I’m able to sit in one place, the more I’ve made the mistake of reading the news.

I usually avoid the news because it depresses me and considering the month I’ve had, I don’t need to be more depressed, but this week I found myself clicking around the headlines and reading about things like the Maori protest in Auckland, the court’s decision to uphold Prop.8, the GOP trying to find ways to deny the first ever Hispanic woman from a place in the Supreme Court, and Israel’s Knesset trying to pass a law to imprison anyone who denies Israel is a Jewish state.

What most of it boils down to is discrimination, for one reason or another and it really makes me feel sick to read the comments of the “Joe the Plumbers” out there who find any reason they can to put down those who are different than them. I can’t say I know much about council seats in New Zealand, but the disgusting amount of racism in the comments blew me away.  And I won’t even get started on Prop. 8 cause that’s just asking for trolls. But again, the comments I saw? I can’t understand how people justify some of their own heinous opinions. These people are minorities who protested peacefully for their rights to be represented as human beings and they were mocked for “pissing people off by wasting their time in traffic”.

Are you kidding me?

I doubt that the African Americans who no longer have to drink from separate water fountains feel as though the Million Man March was a waste of time.
I doubt that the women who vote on every election day think that the suffragettes were lazy or whiny for demanding to be treated as equals in society.

Point is, the world is really bumming me out today. So before I limp off to rest my rear (and back and arm and toes), I’m going to do my best to stay positive and upbeat, and in doing so, I’d like to offer you all a happy little song to be lodged in your heads (disclaimer: I never said the song is actually any good, but it is upbeat and chipper).

Heb je even voor mij (loose translation: do you have a minute for me) – Frans Bauer