Sonja's Speculations

This week I’m going to look at memes again, with one exception at the end. You’ll see.

For the first meme of this week’s post, I will start with a memory from February 26, 2014. The picture shows a cartoonish woman swooning in bed with her hand held to her forehead. The text reads “I’ve got 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up scenarios in my head that I’m stressing about for absolutely no logical reason.” The picture was originally posted by a Facebook page called Believe in the Magic of Christmas, and the link is here. I understand this meme very well, because I spend most nights not sleeping while my brain pulls out every bad decision and mistake I’ve ever made and treats me to a slide show of my worst moments. Or I’ll just lay there thinking, “What if this happens? Or this?” It’s frustrating because I know most of these things won’t happen, but I can’t get my brain to shut up. So when I see this meme, I remind myself that I’m not responsible for the happiness of the world, I’m supposed to worry about my happiness. Sometimes it even helps.

The second meme of this week is an ironic one. The picture displays several bottles that appear to be alcohol with a circle cut in two by a line. The text reads “Join the 3 days challenge! No alcohol on February 29, 30 and 31!” It was posted by a Facebook page called “jus’ sayin” on February 26, 2019. Every year I see something similar to this posted, and it makes me laugh, because I know there are people who don’t remember that February has 28 days. The link for the meme is here.

Meme number three was also posted by the Facebook page “jus’ sayin”. The picture is of a bird sitting on the ground looking at the camera, and he seems to be frowning. The text says “The early bird can have the worm. Because worms are gross and mornings are stupid!” I agree with the sentiment of this meme whole-heartedly. I don’t like worms, and I’d be okay with mornings if they started somewhere around noon. The only reason I get up early and go to work is because I need to pay the bills. The picture of the bird makes me laugh when I see it because he looks so mad, but birds are supposed to love worms. I posted this one on February 27, 2019. The link for the meme is here.

Fourth on my list of meme’s for today’s blog is one I shared on Facebook on February 27, 2019. It was originally posted by Mercedes Jenouri on February 26, 2019. The first layer of this one shows colorful fish swimming in the ocean and colorful birds posing for the camera. The bottom picture is of children posing together for the camera, and there is every shade of skin possible. The text reads “Why do we cherish the variety of color in every species . . . But our own?” This meme brings out several emotions in me: sadness, because it’s true that we care too much about the color of people’s skin, anger, because my grandkids are biracial and they are treated unfairly by the same people who wish it wasn’t so hard for them, and longing for the day skin color doesn’t matter. The link for this meme is here.

The fifth piece of digitam media I want to look at this week is not a meme, it’s a video. The video was origianlly posted on February 27, 2019, by the Kent District Library page, and I shared it February 28, 2019. The link to the video is here. The video shows the devestation Port Arthur experienced during Hurricane Harvey. It also shows the empathy and sympathy for Port Arthur and other areas affected by Harvey shown by the Kent District Library. This library gathered donations for the Port Arthur Public Library, and they ultimately got more than 50,000 books for the PAPL. The title of the video is “Libraries Helping Libraries: The Books for Texas Story.” Every time I see it, I cry. I grew up in Port Arthur, and my Mom would bring me to the library weekly. The librarians were always nice to me, and they were always surprised when I would bring eight books up to check out. And the next week I’d be back for eight more having finished the ones from the previous week. I can’t imagine what my childhood would have been like without the PAPL, and I will be thrilled when they re-open their doors later this year.

So for this week’s rhetorical situation discussion, I thought I would use the video about the libraries. The purpose for the video is to let people see that just helping a little can go a long way. The PAPL lost the entire children’s section of books to the flood waters of Harvey, along with the computers, and not to mention the adult books. This loss affects every citizen in Port Arthur. The libraries in Michigan decided to step up and help instead of just saying, “Someone should do something.” I posted this video because of the impact the library had on me growing up. If I hadn’t lost most of my books, I would have been one of the first in line to donate books to the library. As it is, I plan to be one of the first people through the doors when they re-open. Maybe I should have been a librarian.