Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Ashes

  • Are our ashes threatened by ash borers?
  • Are ash borers blue, red or a blend to emerald?
  • Does it matter if your ash is being bored or someone else’s?
  • Either way is a bored ash painful to behold or experience?
  • Does it pay to watch your ash?
  • How about other ashes?
  • What can save your ash or are you ashen at the prospect of losing your ash, or collectively, all our ashes?
  • Arborist allusions aside, is there a Third Degree societal intersectionality (a seemingly innocent term but, in fact, insidious and invidious) that transcends ash borin ——- the burning reality of racist ashes?
  • Do you recall last year’s Third Degree digging into the systemic racism buried in the segregated cemeteries of America?
  • Was the proposed “dig ‘em up” and “mix ‘em up’ and “let ‘em rest in pieces together” just partial solution?
  • Isn’t failing to handle ashes properly a problem? Sensitivity and personally being touched certainly considerations as well?
  • Was it classic oversight or denial —didn’t see the forest for all the trees, all the ashes out there? Cremains crying out for social justice?
  • Does racial remedy require us to move our ashes?
  • In fact, will we all have to haul ashes and spread ‘em all over America to insure the necessary, integrated result?
  • Is the thought or sight of spread ashes appealing?
  • Given the vast amount of ashes and, often, just pieces of ash out there, what new arrangements are needed?
  • Will more ash holes be the result?
  • Will climate change be affected by all those new ash holes with end of life assertions fouling the air?
  • Since tree hugging is common practice, won’t ash kissing become another considerate custom of cremains commemoration or is it already?
  • So if kissing ashes goodbye is going to be common, will we have yet achieved racial equity of ashes?
  • Since all ashes look alike, is achieving proper racial mixture, however defined, difficult if not impossible?
  • Does the reality of colorblind ashes reveal a real life solution avoided by those who blow smoke about systemic racism?
  • Should one pile of ashes say to another: “Get your head out”?

Socrates reminds”. “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.

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