Side by Side x 3

Living gratefully today, I appreciate cooler air, a breeze, and all the sounds I am able to hear. I am noticing the scampering of our neighborhood squirrels as they get busy with their day.

Side by side is revealing itself as a blog topic today in three different ways. The first one is a boisterous Happy Anniversary to my brother Morry and his wife Chris on their 45th wedding anniversary. Have a special day! Morry was the first of my siblings to get married. I was not quite 11 years old. I remember a lot of blue in dresses and tuxedos :-) 

It is also Juneteenth. Our newest national holiday marks the date in 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that enslaved African Americans in Texas finally learned that they had been freed. It also celebrates African American culture. I had never even heard of Juneteenth until the last few years, and I have a degree in Social Science and taught high school social studies for ten years. There's an example of white-centered education right there. 

Where does side by side come in, you are asking?  The song "Ebony and Ivory" came into my head this morning. Black and white, side-by-side on piano keyboards. It is a duet by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, released in 1982. Listen to it here.  Consider these lyrics, today and every day:

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?

We all know that people are the same wherever you go
There is good and bad in ev'ryone
We learn to live, when we learn to give
Each other what we need to survive, together alive

And the third side by side?  Our two sister books, side-by-side:

Last June, we were just starting to cull through the poems we had written in April and pulling a book together. With so much to learn about self-publishing, we forged ahead and had April in Pieces available on Amazon by early November. That was the same month we did a second poem-a-day challenge and the idea for our second book was born. What Life Has Dished Up went live on Amazon earlier this month. Two poem compilations by seven sisters in a year. We are proud, inspired, and humbled by it all. And we write on.

Harmony, perfect or imperfect, side-by-side or solo or group, resides in the best things in life. Create some harmony today.