Blog 2205 – 10.31.2021

True Colors

They who insist on seeing the whole world as black or white refuse to see all the rich, true colors that there are. I was born in 1950 before television was in many homes and because my family moved to Detroit, Michigan from Chattanooga, Tennessee in the early nineteen fifties when we returned to Chattanooga after a couple of years in Detroit we owned a black and white TV before there was a station to watch it on in the Chattanooga area. I was almost grown before I ever got to see The Wizard of Oz in color and then it was on my aunt Pat’s TV watching the beloved movie with my young cousin Stacey, my Sweet Tootie. The movie released in 1939 begins in black and white and changes to color when Dorothy lands in Kansas with a thud, her house crushing the Wicked Witch of the East wearing her Ruby red slippers and red and white striped stockings.

Munchkin Land is ablaze with all the colors of the rainbow and at the very center of the little folks’ town is the swirling start of the yellow brick road to the Emerald City of Oz. It is there that Dorothy’s living color adventure begins.

They who insist on seeing the world as only black and white miss out on all the colors. As a poor boy growing up on the poor side of town, in a poor state, in a poor part of the country, I was taught to respectfully refer to people with darker skin than my my own as colored people. Years later I would learn that none of us are truly black or white, but that we are all colored people with the same Mother Earth and Father Sky.

“The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people passing by…what a wonderful world.” – a world indeed, in living color.

I found the puzzle pictured today on the discount aisle at the Norfolk, Nebraska Walmart yesterday and bought it for my puzzle loving pretty wife, Linda. I sent her a picture and plan to drive it home to her in a few weeks when my work assignment here is over. The trees have put on their party dresses in Nebraska and the little Munchkins will be out in force tonight decked out in colorful costumes and masks trying to fill their goodie baskets and threatening all their neighbors with “Trick or Treat.” I don’t think in my almost ten years of working and living on the road that I have ever had a trick or treater knock on my camper door. I will buy a big bag of candy just in case and probably end up eating it all myself as usual.

Happy Halloween, Pilgrims. The pilgrim Puritans did not celebrate Halloween. They still don’t, just the day after, All Saints Day, and Thanksgiving. Their world was black and white then and for many it still is. I prefer to paint with all the colors of the rainbow and the wind, like Pocahontas.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17W6ZFhO3sSDqpmRhAaoqRzTWf-WjAYX9/view?usp=drivesdk

Painter’s Song