Random Wondering

By Renee Bess

What follows is a series of random thoughts or “mind wonderings” I was able to capture as they floated by. Thanks for allowing me to share them with you.

• ·         I wonder what it’s like to be a woman at the RNC and know one of the party’s platform planks denies your sovereignty over your own body. What’s it like to be a black GOP’er and know many of the other convention attendees hold you in the same low regard they hold President Obama simply because you share the President’s ethnicity? What’s it like for the LGBT Republicans who know some members of the party’s faithful believe you can pray away the gay while others wish you would disappear altogether? What’s it like to be a black LGBT Republican convention-goer? Never mind. My brain is starting to hurt.

It’s All In A Name

by Cindy Bryerose

Ever been labeled? Ever labeled someone yourself?  Everyone’s done both, sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing.  It starts from an early age and continues through life.  Even before we are born we are labeled as the baby, the wee one, the bundle of joy or my father’s favorite “another tax deduction.” As soon as we are born we are again labeled.  In my case it was baby girl Thorpe.  A few days later, my parents, finally settled on a name Cynthia Claire Thorpe, and promptly called me Cindy.  Is that another label? 

As children, we are given many labels; tomboy, sissy girl, freckled face, nosy, above average, chatty, and big head.  Believe me those are some of the polite ones.  Labels come at us from all directions, friends, family, teachers, and even people we don’t know.  How can someone who doesn’t even know me slap a label on me?  Everyone does including me; we have all seen someone in public and described them to someone else.  “I saw this lady in Wal-Mart who was so____________. “ Well you get the picture.  We like to label people. A nasty hangover from our past, perhaps, still causing headaches in the present.  So much for the old saying: United we stand, divided we fall.