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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2140872-In-Vino/day/5-14-2020
Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #2140872
You will find Veritas
Because I usually am in Vino


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         In 2009, I gave up my studies as a medievalist and musician, left my home, my family, my life and moved to Provence in southern France for a guy. In 2012, I moved away from him to study wine.

         Today, I'm a vagabond sommelier working in Paris at one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in the world, struggling to find some purpose to what I deem the rest of my life. I'm still married and after 8 10 years, I'm still trying to fit-in with French life and culture and to understand why the French are the way they are. Because they're weird in a different way that I think Americans are weird.

Perhaps it's me who's weird.
May 14, 2020 at 6:39am
May 14, 2020 at 6:39am
#983530
There was an article in the NY Times   on May 5th. But I heard about this yesterday during the 13h news broadcast my husband was watching during lunch. Ireland sent aid to the Navajo tribes in return for their aid in the Potato Famine 170 years ago.

Can we back up a bit?

The Navajo did what now?

I learned about the Potato Famine. I learned - albeit in a watered-down, light version - about how we were genocidal assholes to the Native Americans. But I had never heard about this. Why is that? Why are we not learning about how despite being beaten down, killed, chased out of their homes and off their land, and having everything taken away from them a group of people stood up and said "What is happening to that group of people we barely know anything about, thousands of miles away is awful. Let's help them."

Why are we not learning about how the people we treated like shit, turned around and gave a helping hand to our relatives overseas?

This is what we should be learning about. While the atrocities our ancestors committed should be studied and brought to the forefront so that we learn that racism, xenophobia, genocide are wrong and the fear of what is different is an unnecessary fear, we should also be learning about how compassion and empathy can still survive. We should be learning about how a group of people stood up for others. That it is possible to be strong even when you've lost everything. We don't learn about the sides of humanity that show the good. Not in the right way. Good actions aren't rewarded because we don't reward them. They aren't remembered the way they should be.

I have more to say about this subject, but I don't know how to put it into words. Topics like this lead into other topics and I am out of practice writing opinion, non-fiction, what-have-you essays. But I had to get that off my chest. I'm angry I never learned about this in school. I'm angry that this isn't common knowledge in the US. I'm angrier about how we treated the Native Americans. I often liken it to how the Jews were treated in Europe and being Jewish, the Native American experience resonates strongly with me.

That's it for now. For today. I don't know. I'm getting angry.


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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2140872-In-Vino/day/5-14-2020