The Value of Integrating a Pet

If you have one of these small animals living with you, such as a dog, cat, etc. You know that they have their signals, they read yours, and many can build up a vocabulary of spoken human words. Just like we come to know a particular bark or yawn to have meaning.

Training this pup is a form of meditation in what feels like a topsy-turvy world. The effort everyone in our family is putting into finding a way to peacefully coexist with our new little buddy, reminds us all that even when the shared vocabulary is limited there is a way to come to an understanding.

It's not a perfect world and we evolve our approach when things don't seem to connect. We are in constant conversation with our trainer. But, we recognize failure as an event, not "something Louis (like Armstrong) did wrong." We just keep our focus on rewarding what we want to continue, ignoring what is irrelevant, and talking through what we want to change.

For our family, the value of integrating a pet has been in the need to constantly evolve our approach. Life is dynamic and as we learn more, we ground and grow at the same time.

DNA: Historical and Messy

Lately, I've been working on marriages and piecing together relationships. There are a lot of repeat names. But as you look through the slave owning history. You see that a slave owner owned several farms. And every enslaved laborer was likely to have the name of the plantation or its owner as their documented surname.

It gets messy that is for sure. Especially if you don't understand the history. It's not that 10 sibling pairs have married. It's that 10 pairs of people who were the descendants of captives have married.

In today's world, it's like you picking 10 of your closest coupled-off friends and giving them all your last name. Then giving their partners all your neighbor's last name. All of a sudden there are 10 pairs of Smith Jones' on paper. None of them blood relations. What a mess to sort out.

And now, you understand the difficulties that institutionalized human trafficking and the legalized ownership of people creates from family tree point of view.

The DNA IS helping. In our family, we can begin to parse out one of those 10 couples that is a connected to all of us. But finding the one couple is like a needle in a haystack. It is a lot of collaborative work.

Right now, many of us are working together tirelessly on breaking a knot. I don't know all my DNA cousins directly but our desire to understand who we are bonds us.

My older relatives stories are helping. We believe we have a split generation playing mayhem in our sorting by names. One in which parents were still having children as their older sons started their families. All, giving family names like James, John, to the elder boys.

It's intriguing, historical, messy and poignant.

Enough parties, it’s time for Politics of Sound Mind

Here’s the thing: As a voting adult, I’d like to consider an idea and then make decision.

So, let’s say ✅I agree with healthcare ideals but think we have to refine taxation approaches. ✅I agree with school funding. And, think after this reign of the ministry of magic, 🔜we should hold a responsible amnesty. ✅Let’s fund some dedicated immigration judges, get some real and updated rules on the table. ✅I want to work in a corporation, believe in making money 💸💰because money is our means to change; and, ✅want corporations to contribute to change, via what the people who run them and their product/service does for society and, believe in citizens and corporations being ✅environmentally responsible 🌎🌍🌏and showing up with tangible contributions when the hat is passed around for “funds for our collective good”. I don’t want to be labeled as some flavor of the month, splintered member, concocted by reflection of the right side of the brain which can only live in the compartmentalized world. Nope. I want to show up as a force of like-minded people who can get to a pretty decent version of a shared world vision. Because quite frankly, it’s not about my individual impulse. It’s about being of sound mind and being able to decide how to conserve the ideas of individual rights and freedoms that matter. It's about progress past those that are falling short of what is good for humankind, within our nation, and even beyond our nation’s boundaries.

Doing the best thing for our nation might require a party that is nimble enough to encompass and tolerate many views.