Category: Daily Life in the USA

U.S. Holiday Culture

One of the differences I notice between U.S. culture and the culture of India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Cambodia where I have lived is the way they celebrate holidays and festivals. In the Asian countries and in the United States, holidays are important, but in the U.S. our public holidays tend to be rather alike. Of course we do have seasonal aspects like Easter bunnies and Halloween costumes and Christmas trees, but festive days in the U.S. seem to me to be more time off from our regular work routine when we do fun things and less a celebration of the original origin and focus for the holiday. In the Asian countries people don’t just string up store-bought decorations like everyone else has, but the family, the church, the community come together to remember and enact the reason for the holiday.

A lack of focus on basic meanings and values appears in the American ignoring of special holiday times. Any holiday is noted not for its original meaning and special time but as an opportunity to sell decorations and trimmings. On my bike ride in southern Indiana yesterday this home displayed decorations for both Halloween and Thanksgiving although the holidays are a month apart.
And to further make my point, a house two doors away has its Christmas decorations up–a month before Christmas! That isn’t remembering, celebrating the reasons for having special times on the year and our lives but just commercialization.

False Alarm at Nazareth Home

Tonight about 8:35 PM, the Nazareth Home fire alarm went off. It is LOUD! Protocol here is if you call in any alarm, go out to meet the first responders. I didn’t know what was going on but went out to meet the fire trucks which arrived in three or four minutes and then showed them where the fire annunciator panel is located. Nazareth Home has three buildings and the alarm was going on in all of them. It took ten or fifteen minutes to find the annunciator panel in the main building because it was a Saturday night and staff were gone and offices locked up but finally they found it and were able stop the alarm. The firemen were a delightful group and while waiting, we taught each other about the organization of the fire department and about life with deaf people in Cambodia. An interesting evening! But we still don’t know why the alarm went off!?

Working on it…

In March I injured my shoulder in a freak occurrence. I thought it was just a bruise or a sprain but when I went for a medical exam on arrival in Louisville, my new doctor said that if it was still hurting seven months after the injury—it was, I should try therapy. I have been going to KORT therapy now for 9 or 10 sessions. Today Betsy was trying some pressure on muscles they say need to be strengthened to take pressure off the hurting shoulder area. There is progress but I’m getting resigned to the fact that there is going to be some pain the rest of my life.

Boxes galore…

I came back from Cambodia with just two suitcases so I’ve been replacing many things I couldn’t bring back with me–everything from a printer to LED clocks to a toilet brush. I try to buy local but because I was making so many short trips on my bicycle day after day, I finally got Walmart+ which provides free delivery even if the order is under $35. That has helped a LOT! One drawback is the large number of boxes I’ve accumulated. I can recycle them but have been saving some just because they’re really good boxes(!) and also too with limited storage space, I want to see if I need some boxes before I discard them. Right now they’re piling up in a corner. The big box on the wooden filing cabinet is a new (actually refurbished) desktop computer that arrived today. I hope to get it set up in the next day or two.

Fratelli Tutti: Kindness

Kindness frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others, from the frantic flurry of activity that forgets that others also have a right to be happy. Often nowadays we find neither the time nor the energy to stop and be kind to others, to say “excuse me”, “pardon me”, “thank you”. Yet every now and then, miraculously, a kind person appears and is willing to set everything else aside in order to show interest, to give the gift of a smile, to speak a word of encouragement, to listen amid general indifference. If we make a daily effort to do exactly this, we can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstandings can be overcome and conflict forestalled. Kindness ought to be cultivated; it is no superficial bourgeois virtue. Precisely because it entails esteem and respect for others, once kindness becomes a culture within society it transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared. Kindness facilitates the quest for consensus; it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges.

Pope Francis, in Fratelli Tutti, §224