Jacaranda trees in bloom
Not just Trader Joe's (although I do love Trader Joe's) but that I went shopping today when the store had just opened, and I walked the aisles with a small family, a woman and her four children. While she piled her basket with loaves of bread and vegetables, she chit-chatted on a cell phone the entire time, audibly, in a cheerful voice, about swimming in the afternoon, making dinner, weekend plans. Each child wore a long black robe and the three girls wore head-scarves. The woman herself was completely covered, except for her eyes in a black burkha. I can't help but think strict Muslim garb is creepy, especially that worn by the women, but who am I to judge, especially when the woman appeared to be quite jolly?
As I left the store, walking in front of me was another woman with her many children, dressed in a skirt to her ankles and an obvious wig, the garb of the Orthodox Jews who live in the neighborhood as well.
I'm not going to make any commentary, here, but if this can happen at Trader Joe's, why not everywhere else?
Sounds like the food co-op here. Thanks for the pictures.
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ReplyDeleteAmen to that! It CAN happen, one person at a time, one family at a time, one neighborhood at a time. I love this picture of world peace, starting right in your neighborhood. Thank you for spreading HOPE!
ReplyDeleteIn my neck of the woods Costco is the melting pot, a great variety of languages and garb against what is sometimes an almost surreal background, like when they had grand pianos on sale and lots of people were sitting and playing them, each lost in their own music, with the determined resident starlings flying in and out overhead. Excellent!
ReplyDeleteAh, Trader Joe's--the great equalizer!
ReplyDeleteBest,
Bonnie
We have jacaranda trees here in Florida, too. I love the way they scatter their blossoms like a violet carpet along the sidewalks and roadways.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a fascinating shopping trip!
The hospital I work in is like a small united nations. It's just north of downtown and people from every culture, race and language use and work in the hospital.
ReplyDeleteI love that tree! We obviously don't have those.
ReplyDeleteI was born and lived for a very short time in Montreal, in a fairly urban setting, and this is the norm I knew on some level.
I find our little corner of the world here in Burlington strangely cookie cutter.
I've always loved jacaranda trees! We had one in our front yard when I was growing up. And Trader Joe's rocks.
ReplyDeleteCome to Chicago sometime. Our Orthodox Jewish community and the Muslim community meld into one another! I've always thought it strange...but I guess it works that way in the Middle East, too!
ReplyDeleteAh! Now I want to photograph the Jacaranda trees on my block.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Room for all of us, whatever our garb, Elizabeth. Thanks.
ReplyDeletethis morning,
ReplyDeletei am thinking of all the reasons i
love
you.
Yep! That's LA. I loved the day about a year ago, when a bunch of us were at the beach, and an Arab woman and her kids were having a beach day right next to us, and all our kids were playing together. This woman was wearing a full birkha, which she proceeded to swim in with her kids! At one point a couple of us were wondering how on earth she managed to swim in all that fabric, and one of us suddenly said "Well, maybe that's her swimbirkha." Which seemed to make perfect sense. We didn't ask her though.
ReplyDeleteI think you mean it could only happen in the USA.
ReplyDeleteIt's really pretty simple.
Actually, Dave, that's not what I meant. There are plenty of places in the good old U.S.A. where that sort of tolerance isn't happening.
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