You Can Do It: Thanks, Ruby!

 When my beloved art teacher left the middle school back in 1987, she gave me some loving but hard life lessons about change and impermanence. I hold on to everything she taught me except this: “we are all replaceable.”

(She taught me this so I wouldn’t resent her successor….and both have continued to impact my life for decades.)
I raged and still I rage at the concept of us being replaceable. Each connection is its own, unique. I’m not content being— or seeing others as— a cog in a machine. This is part of my obsession with The Little Prince. Our inherent uniqueness is something I devote my life to cherishing and celebrating.
Today, Brooke Rollins (secretary of Agriculture for the current administration) basically said that immigrants need to leave, Medicaid recipients need to replace their jobs, and what can’t be replaced that way can be done with automated (robot/ai) technology. His only concern is not affecting the food supply.
There is so much that is so wrong with that. The need for asylum, the need for diversity, the need for social services for those who cannot work, the need for the human touch….


He spoke of a 100% American workforce. I cringe…. And yet to me, a 100% American work force would be diverse, colorful, multiply abled, multigenerational, multiethnic etc… our windows on the world are very different!
Right now I’m hurting and angry and scared and horrified. So I started this with my art teacher’s room from a scary time in life (7th grade.)
Her room had a big sign: “You Can Do It.” Ruby, I can’t do it alone, but I’ll keep fighting. And I’m glad you refused to be erased in my life.

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