Brookeside of Life pt 1

Happy Music Tuesday!

You know, I started these to spread joy. But sometimes I feel the need to stew in our world’s history. I find comfort from it actually. It’s absolutely astounding that we still exist. Humans can be so ruthless, cruel and short sighted. But incredibly, so much good and brilliance still exists. 

My song choice is Rasputina’s “In Old Yellowcake”.  This song utilizes imagery of the destruction of Fallujah. Yellowcake refers to the Yellowcake forgery, documents that falsely showed Saddam was buying materials for WMDs from Niger.

I wasn’t aware of all of this history until I heard this song. I was in my late teens/ early twenties at the time of these horrific events and was too full of myself to be aware of what was happening in the world. I was also the child of conservative parents that didn’t offer any distrust to the US administration of the time. I wonder if I had been aware, would I have lived my life differently? Would I have chosen a different college major? Would I have made different friends? I know I would’ve voted differently… 

When I think about our current US administration (which I do my best not to for mental health reasons) and the regular US citizens that support it, I do my best to think of my past self; misguided, only valuing myself through the boys I chose to date, and just trying to get through a 500 level Astronomy class. I choose to find that compassion for everyone. 

In these dark times in our history, I think of Fred Roger’s famous words of comfort “Look for the helpers.” Now that I’m a healthy adult, it’s time to be one of the helpers too. I’m going to donate blood today. And look at some happy news https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ 

Take care of yourselves.