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Same woman, same reaction . The difference? I had Julia in one arm and a diaper bag in the other. This time, as the woman got closer I ask Julia to say "hi" to the woman. Julia just stared and the woman just ignored.

I talk a lot of cuss ( Fantastic Mr. Fox reference). Its usually factually based but I talk a lot of BS. I have a talent for gleaning knowledge from slivers of information. I am also blessed with a curiosity level that allows requires me to be interested in all sorts of random stuff, very little is uninteresting to me. On the surface that's all pretty harmless but I am discovering that it is actually quite ego driven which isn't so harmless. I am reading a book that is forcing me to evaluate my actions and their motives. The book is The Lost Art of Compassion . The premise is that some Buddhist thought and some western psychology agree that when you are truly compassionate you are happier. I buy that and I want to be that. The book gives some instruction on how to become compassionate and one thing it stresses is that narcissism drives most of us more than we can imagine. Narcissism as the author tells is stealthy and this is where I come in. He talks about things we...

Many of you know that I live in the same house I grew up in. The street was racially mixed when I was a kid but now it is predominantly black. There are a couple of transitional housing places that tweak the "white" end numbers a bit but overall this is a black neighborhood. I just went to my front yard to get mail and retrieve the trashcan. As I got to the mailbox an unfamiliar (a resident or friend of someone in the transitional housing on our street) woman with white hair - white skin too - was walking down the street. I said "Hello, how are you?" but she didn't verbally respond. Instead she went to the opposite side of the street AND put her purse on the opposite shoulder only to come back to my side of the street when she was a full house or so past me. As she did this I wished her a good day, got my trashcan and came back inside. I am not overly concerned about racism ; I tend to see the individual more than the group but it is instances like this tha...