Groceries and War

My ex-husband was wonderfully un-racist. He didn't tell a lot of jokes but he sometimes told the following joke which I told to someone online once and they said "That's not a racist joke. It's a joke about racism."

People in Russia go to the grocery store and it's not open. There are signs posted saying it won't open until later. 

A crowd forms and is milling around, waiting for them to open and someone comes out and says "There's not enough food for everyone." and sends away the Jews. Every hour, he comes out and sends away another group.

At the end of the day, he says "There's no food at all. Everyone go home." One guy turns to another and says "The Jews get the best of everything."

I once read a story, I think in Reader's Digest, set during the Cold War. Some American family is hosting a Russian visitor for some reason and they take her on tours of places like the power company and at every place they go she is dismissive and contemptuous "Is better in Russia."

They give up on trying to impress her and stop at the grocery store on the way home to buy groceries and make sure they have food items she likes and she stands in the produce aisle and CRIES. She's never seen so much high quality, fresh produce in her life.

My ex-husband, father of my children, is half Norwegian AKA Viking. I haven't particularly studied Viking history but my kids have read up on it because it's part of their heritage.

My kids -- who are in their thirties and one was being mistaken for a PhD professor online when he was thirteen -- tell me that the Vikings went a-viking (raiding) because they lived in the far north with poor soils and harsh conditions and they had trouble learning to farm because the conditions were extremely unforgiving of mistakes.

So it was steal from their neighbors or die of starvation.

Viking men BATHED and were extremely clean pretty boys with fabulous hair and beautiful beards compared to most European men AND -- shock of shockers -- treated women dramatically BETTER than most European cultures.

They treated their women so well that their stolen wives were like "Woohoo! I have a Viking husband! I'm NEVER going home AGAIN!"

Women ran things in the house and men ran things outside the house and stolen wives eventually brought enough farming lore with them for Vikings to successfully grow their own food and no longer need to steal to avoid starvation. After that, they stopped going a-viking.

I LOATHE the war in Ukraine. But I believe Russia invaded Ukraine because it's the grain basket of the region and Russia desperately needs food.

I think helping Russia establish local, homegrown food security would be a step in the right direction for ending the war.

How we do that, I don't know. Maybe someone with spiffier credentials than a homeless blogger could come up with some solutions.

IF they cared to.

Which they probably don't.

Russia has been vilified as The Official Bad Guy ever since the end of World War II, a war in which they were allies of the US which was a shocking plot twist to ME when I learned it back when I had a bright yellow rotary phone and pet dinosaur. 

I wonder how many Gen Xers or whatever know that they helped us defeat Hitler and then we promptly decided they weren't our friends anymore.