Author Archives: Alice T4

Thank You

We are grateful for many people right now. Grocery store stockers, postal clerks, truck drivers, couriers, restaurant workers, farmers, doctors and nurses, police and fire people…It’s a long list. These are today’s heroes. They keep our civilization going.

To the people who maintain our internet, our electricity and heat, and our tap water: thank you! To news staffers, late night comics working without a live audience, techs at their stations, road repair crews, government contact persons: thank you so much!

And to all neighbors, friends, and family who are missing the presence of others like crazy, thank you too, for staying inside and dealing with the loneliness somehow. You are keeping us all as safe as possible. May you be well. This situation is temporary. I hope our gratitude is permanent.

The Trouble with Skittles

Remember when Donald Trump Jr. compared Syrian refugees to Skittles? He asked if you would eat a handful of the candies if you knew a few among them would kill you. He considered this a good reason for the US to refuse to admit any of those desperate people.

I thought that was disgusting. Then I saw some Skittles commercials. Looks like disgusting is just how they play the game.

In one ad, a boy seems to have broken out in zits; only the pimples are Skittles. A girl demonstrates her affection by picking Skittles off his face and eating them. She in turn breaks out in Skittles, smiling fondly.

In another ad, a dread-locked Black man in a Rasta cap milks a giraffe, which is nibbling on a rainbow. The “milk” streams down between his legs, turning into Skittles. You see him from the back. It looks like he’s pissing. Meanwhile, he laughs a big deep phony laugh, like this is the most fun thing ever.

I can’t even list the ways I find this offensive. But whoever designed these ads made them disgusting on purpose. After all, they want us to buy a product that is nearly all sugar. It rots our teeth, makes us fat, and increases our risk of diabetes. The whole enterprise is disgusting.

I wish the US would welcome people who are fleeing war, poverty, or gang violence. We could absorb them into the body politic with few if any bad side effects. In other words, in every possible way, they are not like Skittles.

We are this Web

We are the sum of our minds.

This new creature, Humanity, is a collective, as all complex organisms are collectives of smaller beings. Most life is collaboration.

We think that because our bodies are separate, our minds are too. But they’re not. They leak. They spread. The ripples of our thoughts rock the world.

Imagine there’s a thin bright line between you and a person you’re close to. Now imagine that person moves. The line connecting you moves with them.

Imagine there’s a line like that between you and every person you meet. The line stretches but never disappears so long as both of you exist.

Imagine the world as a web of these lines, these human connections. That is who we are. That web. That net.