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Showing posts with label Geraldine Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geraldine Green. Show all posts
Geraldine Green ✒ I wrote a letter to SPD Officer Ducre about the murder of his partner K9 Jedi and took it over to the South Precinct where Jedi’s memorial is displayed. 


I was the only one there for the last half hour of the lobby being open tonight so I got the opportunity to meet and have a very meaningful conversation with Officer Dionne Perkins who was keeping watch at the memorial. 

As we talked it came over me what heavy duty she was actually doing, having to watch and listen and respond to all the public’s outpouring of loss and grief over what was done to Jedi. 

That’s some heavy emotional labor. I felt so deeply blessed by her, when she listened to me tell her about my own CPTSD and how dogs have healed my heart, how traumatized I had been in life but how the unconditional love of dogs has brought me peace and deep healing. I told her I knew what a traumatic event Jedi’s murder was for Officer Ducre and for all the responding officers that night, and now for the whole precinct and SPD at large. 


Officer Dionne and I spoke about the dogs in our lives and how much Officer Ducre must be hurting and we both started crying. I reached out to her and just said, “hugs?” And she turned towards me and just took me into her arms. In that moment we were two women who knew the moment we were occupying, the moment of the recognition of lived experience, the lived experience of the healing power of canines in our lives and in the lives of law enforcement, those brave and valiant dogs who put their full hearts and very lives into protecting their people at any and all costs to them. 

There is no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends. K9 Jedi did that for Officer Ducre, and though he suffered in agonizing pain from his stab wounds he was courageous and valiant to the very end. We humans have much to learn from him. 
Rest in peace, brave warrior dog. You have earned your wings.

Geraldine Green is a Tolerance Advocate

Unconditional Love Of Dogs

Geraldine Green outlines the hostility directed her way on Facebook for not conforming to other people's expectations.

Since lockdowns and heightened political divisions here I’ve literally been deleted by hundreds simply for not toeing the line and going along with everything many people have been pushing on my personal posts. 

I’ve been deleted and blocked by close friends simply because I didn’t jump onto their bandwagon and buy into their sloganeering on my posts and politely explained my reasoning why I didn’t. When they kept blasting their ideology at me I gave them polite warnings to please stop and move on. These are the people who deleted and/or blocked me.

I only delete and block when someone has been increasingly rude, disrespectful, and mean to me on my posts. I never delete or block people for their political views but I have routinely been deleted and blocked for mine.

I have both Democrats and Republicans in my friends, as well as socialists, Marxists, Trotskyists, every sort of radical under the sun, and not just from the left, either. I read what they have to say so I’m informed but that in no way means I agree with them. I don’t argue with them on their posts but they tend to try and argue with me on mine. It’s annoying because I’m not interested in arguing with anyone. And I’m especially not interested in ideological dumping on my posts. I don’t buy into indoctrination of any kind and I think that’s very unsettling for some because they want me to agree with them and to take a stand. They want me to buy in to their brand of ideological indoctrination. Well, if they’d been paying attention they’d realize I take stands all the time, they’re just not the stands we all agree on!

I don’t feel any need to coerce anyone into anything in my writing or in the links I share. If you agree with things I say, great, and if you disagree with me, that’s also fine, but only commenting to me to register your disagreement and annoyance with my views and to dump your ideology on me and the other friends reading along doesn’t help anyone. That’s actually counterproductive to anything you’re saying! It would serve you much better to just scroll on by and then write your own posts expressing your opinions on your own timeline. That’s not a difficult concept to understand! Just imagine, not wasting energy on registering disagreement and annoyance and scrolling on!

But so many just want to inflict their anger online and dump and delete and block and run rather than taking a step back and considering the differing narrative, the challenging opinion. It’s like they’re out hunting for any reason to shoot anyone down who doesn’t just capitulate to them and whatever they’re pushing. It’s that pushing I can’t stand! I don’t back down. If you’re pushing I stop listening. 

Geraldine Green is a Tolerance Advocate

Scroll On By

Geraldine Green on the downside of social media. 

There’s not a day goes by now that I don’t consider disengaging from social media and either deactivating or completely deleting my account. I’ve tried keeping it on and taking breaks but it’s too easy to return and look at when I wake up in the morning and grab my phone or when I’m waiting somewhere or any freakin time. 

Social media is perniciously addicting and I’m really struggling with all the toxicity on here right now, all the mean snark and nastiness, all the uncharitable weaponized political posts and comments carpet bombing everyone.

And I’m not seeking any sympathy here or asking for anyone to say they’d miss me if I left, no, I’m not looking for any of that. I’m merely expressing what I’ve been feeling for so long.

Sometimes it makes my stomach turn to see people I love be so rude and disrespectful and hateful on here. That stuff has caused me to think differently about them, and I’m certain my old fashioned, traditional American values have undoubtedly caused the same in them, they think differently about me now because I don’t condemn who they condemn.

I support law enforcement, and I don’t call for riots and revolution. So be it. They have their reasons and I have mine but right now I don’t support what I’ve been seeing from some people I thought were friends. I can’t stomach their tone. They’re losing their humanity and compassion and they’ve stopped caring about who they’re hurting. They seem to think their war on America is justified and that we all deserve what’s been going on online and in our streets and whatever is coming. I do not stand among them and I will not read or participate in their war on everything and everyone. It’s toxic poison. And this is exactly why there’s not a day goes by that I don’t consider deactivating or deleting.

Geraldine Green is a Tolerance Advocate

Social Media Is Perniciously Addicting

Geraldine Green answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.


TPQ: What are you currently reading? 

GG: I am currently reading The Places That Scare You by Pema Chödrön.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

GG: That’s a tough question! I’d say that the best book I’ve ever read was The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky because of its complexities and the worst one was the Dialectical Behavior Therapy manual by Marsha Linehan for its insulting tediousness and what I consider the co-optation of popularized American Buddhism by psychotherapy.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

GG: The book I cherished most as a child was Madeline and the Bad Hat, by Ludwig Bemelmans.

TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?

GG: My favorite author in childhood was Beverly Cleary.

TPQ: First book to really own you?

GG: The first book I’d say that really owned me was On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. I read it in high school and it represented complete freedom to me.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

GG: My favorite male author is Fyodor Dostoevsky for his brilliance and insight to the human condition and my favorite female author is Barbara Kingsolver for her very high quality of storytelling in fiction.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

GG: My preference is for fiction because I love to follow each author’s unique style of character and story line development.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

GG: I’d have to say that the autobiography that most impressed me was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. I was really captured by how she was able to find her voice again after suffering serious trauma. A year after I read nearly all her books I got to attend one of her readings and met her in person following the event. She was an astoundingly gracious woman whose voice I shall never forget. That she focused all her attention on me when we were conversing really impressed me because she had no airs about her. She was totally real and down home, real Southern American graciousness.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

GG: There are far too many authors and books I point blank refuse to read to list here!

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

GG: I’ve shared many books with others over the years so that they would more fully understand me and those sorts of books have continually changed for me as I’ve aged, of course. So few people I’ve given books to have actually even read them! So I’ve stopped doing that because I really think that there is no book other than my own writing, my own poems and prose writing, that could actually help anyone to more fully understand me. Every author’s vision is so much their own and though there have been books that I have seen myself in they are still not me and since I love to write so much myself it is my own voice I hope that assists someone in more fully understanding me.

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

GG: The last book I gave as a present was Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman, to my son.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

GG: I’m not a big fan of turning books into movies because the writer’s voice is so often lost.

TPQ: A "must read" you intend getting to before you die?

GG: I used to think I had “must reads” to attend to when I was in grad school for literature years ago but ever since then I only feel compelled to read something when my current interests and curiosity are piqued by articles or prose pieces and stories I find online or when a friend recommends a title to me. I think I lost all compulsion to read any particular author’s magnus opus after I ditched grad school. Haha!

Geraldine Green runs in the age of Covid!

Booker's Dozen @ Geraldine Green

Geraldine Green details the ground she has covered in the course of her intellectual journey.

Look, I realize I really need to set the record straight here about me and how I arrive at the views I come to hold.

I am not one who just jumps on to any bandwagon when everyone else seems to be jumping on. I am one of those people who always holds a very skeptical eye towards nearly all social movements and their claims. I am not interested in proving whether I’m virtuous or not to anyone. I do not just blindly believe what people say just because they say it. I look into everything. Everything. 

I actually spend hours and hours every single day investigating claims online. I look for critical essays about everything. I read massive amounts of essays written by all kinds of thinkers, left, right, and center. I look for facts in each of them and I look to see where each essay overlaps with another. I look for the similarities and the differences in every piece I read. I take copious notes and refer to them often. I do all this before I even think of posting the most socially critical ones here online.

Over the decades since my days in grad school I have gone from being a radical feminist leftist socialist Christian to potential conversion to Orthodox Judaism to animist pagan spirituality to skeptical atheist humanism. My family was extremely conservative politically so I was taught a great deal about US History and the Constitution. My family was very active in politics at the regional and national level so they made sure I knew what was going on and their take on it. I was basically required to read everything, even including socialist and communist tomes so I would be thoroughly informed. This was very important to my family. They were nothing like what many people today think conservatives are like. No, my family were real intellectuals who made sure they were fully informed about everything, from every direction. Their deep reading had a profound effect on me, one that taught me to investigate everything, every claim that came my way, so that I could determine the facts behind those claims. 

My mother and my gran always told me that if I didn’t fully investigate I’d never have all the information to properly form my opinions. Though they’d both undoubtedly chafe at where I’ve arrived at my rejection of what they held most dearly to them, religion, they would most certainly respect the intellectual rigor I applied to reach my completely secular conclusions. I read everything I could find about religious and spiritual indoctrination and found great solace in the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maryam Namazie, Brendan O’Neill, and especially Christopher Hitchens. And as a direct result of reading all of them my thinking became even more critically honed, especially because several of those authors had originally been Marxist or leftist who later found deep interest in conservative thought. I found it fascinating that they originally came from the left and how their thinking changed over time.

Over the last eight years I’ve grown very weary of what passes as leftist socialist progressivism and how its adherents tend to quell intellectual dissent and enforce conformity within the rank and file. Disagreement and dissent are met with ad hominem attacks, call outs, and doxxing. They have become the champions of censorship and cancel culture, though they would roundly reject that depiction. Nonetheless, those of us who often express dissent with them are basically silenced and deleted, as if our studied notions do not deserve respect or attention. And they do not seem to understand that this is at great cost to them. So many of us who once held fast to them no longer support anything they’re saying. We are tired of being called insulting names and being summarily dismissed simply for disagreeing with them. They really don’t want to actually participate in any conversation unless you already agree with them! That’s no conversation where I come from.

So I don’t just buy in to everything that everyone is pushing. I read profusely in order to arrive at my conclusions. This is not a quick or mindless process. I engage in much deep thinking before I tell you anything. You may just see the links I post and automatically assume I’m just regurgitating what I happen to have seen. You couldn’t be more wrong! It doesn’t matter to me whether the links I post come from the right or the left or the center. What matters to me is how they present their arguments and their reasoning. 

Consequently I’ve found the conservative writers and speakers to be far more rigorous and thusly more convincing. I realize that bothers many of my friends. That’s really too bad, though, because if they really understood how much time and effort I actually put in to studying and contemplating these things they might be far less bothered by my conclusions. Maybe then they could finally begin to respect where I’m actually coming from.

Geraldine Green runs in the age of Covid!

Critical Thinking Along The Way

Geraldine Green identifies some of the problems with social media backed perspectives.

The biggest problem I’ve noticed online is the escalating proliferation of nonsense that many proclaim as facts. The real fact is that anyone anywhere can write anything online at any time and boldly proclaim that what they’ve written is the truth. They then provide endless links to bolster their claims, while claiming the links to also be the truth and therefore prove their point(s), when those links are actually just to others who also hold no real credentials but who have bigger followings than the first writer who added the link to them. The first writer conflates the link author’s large number of followers with factual credence when nothing could be further from the truth. 

A large number of followers does not equal credence with any authority! And yet to many keyboard warriors the large numbers of followers lend credibility to someone who is actually quite undeserving. Hence all the noisy quacks online spouting misinformation all the time. There is no scholarship involved, no value placed in regular book reading by real scholars, no offline education that demonstrates any real credibility, but rather shows only the loads of dubious Googling and shouting about debunking and then discrediting those who actually do the real work, the real work of book study and scholarship that provide actual credible and credentialed citations by other scholars. 

Anyone anywhere at any time can write anything online and call it anything and people will buy it and think it’s the truth just because they read it online. So few look further than online. They do not look for the books written by the reputable scholars on the topics they’re interested in. They don’t seem to think it’s necessary because they seem to think they have everything they need online. And that is the crux of the problem. So many of them have never subjected themselves to a scholarly discipline. They don’t know what it means to follow through on a particular field of study and how disciplined one must be to meet its completion. 

It takes a great deal of time and humility and commitment, none of it is instant like Google, it is rather a long and arduous process of realization, a realization acquired through deep book study and scholarly discussion with qualified mentors, the deepest realization that no true scholarship exists in a vacuum. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And so, obviously, many opinions stated as truth online have no real or truthful foundation


Geraldine Green runs in the age of Covid!


Escalating Proliferation Of Nonsense

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