Speaking Strictly as a Proud Snowflake in Everyday Ramblings

I heard in a factual news report this morning that Stephen Bannon, the White House advisor responsible for the inauguration speech and immigration ban calls people like me “Liberal Snowflakes”.

Just so you know I am a proud snowflake that feels very privileged to have been born in this country and to have grown up here with all sorts of resources and a sense of safety (most of the time) that others barely dare to dream of.

Last night after class one my students wanted to have dinner at a local Syrian restaurant that she enjoys. She has become friendly with the owner and after we spent most of our simple meal talking snowflake talk to each other he came over to talk to us.

He actually sat down and talked to us. He is Christian, a member of the Syriac Orthodox Church, (he called it Syrian Orthodox), which has a claim to being the oldest surviving Christian faith. There is an extensive diaspora of them in pockets around the world, and he said there were about 100 churches here in the U.S.

He father and brothers are with him here in America but his sisters are still in Syria, in a refugee camp in a former sports stadium. They are able to communicate by phone but he said with tears in his eyes that he believes there is no more hope for them to see each other again.

He is a supporter of our current President, Mr. Trump. He says that President Bashar al-Assad is bad, very bad, but the terrorists are worse.

There was a young man from Saudi Arabia that shaved and came to the camp posing as a refugee and blew himself up killing about 100 hundred people.

He doesn’t understand why Saudi Arabia was not included in the ban but feels that we must do everything possible to protect ourselves from terrorists.

There was more, it was a very moving conversation… I felt like there was a genuine connection and that just can’t be a bad thing in these divisive and difficult days as we have new thrills and chills coming at us constantly from Washington.

I find I need to talk about it and I shared a bit of the dinner conversation with St. Joe this morning and then later with another co-worker who shushed me and told me I wasn’t allowed to talk about politics at work…

Really? I asked her that, were people listening to other people and reporting others who spoke about politics?

She said not yet but that it would happen if I persisted. I work at home most of the time I had no idea that along with all the other bizarre stuff in my workplace I was now restricted about talking about, umm, the news. Wow.

One good thing though, our University President said that he instructed our Public Safety Department not to cooperate with requests for information or enforcement when it came to immigration checks.

Our whole institution is affected on every level by a worldwide flow of scientists, doctors, patients, staff and students so this snowflake thinks our University President said the right thing.

Even if it is Mr. Bannon’s strategic plan to get us all riled up so we look unreasonable and solidify the base of people that support our current President in the White House.

Bleh. Speaking of snowflakes we are having high freezing winds that are just scouring the area and snow and ice are expected overnight.

Or not. Nobody really knows for sure.

If I teach tomorrow, (weather permitting) I am teaching a nice low slow restorative class. We can practice melting.

Last updated February 03, 2017