
The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Brochure on MLK Day Reflections and LA Fire Updates
This episode reflects on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. while addressing the personal and societal challenges of racism and environmental crises like wildfires. Through personal anecdotes and community reflections, it emphasizes the importance of ongoing conversations around equity and safety.
• Honoring Martin Luther King Day as a time for reflection
• Personal stories of growing up in a community with a racist history
• Understanding the impact of racial inequality and the need for education
• Concerns over the regression of DEI initiatives in society
• Navigating family dynamics in a politically divided environment
• Update on the wildfires in Los Angeles and their personal impact
• Managing poor air quality and environmental challenges
• Practical steps taken to improve home air quality
• The intersection of personal histories and broader societal issues
• Encouragement for community engagement and active discussions
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Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.
Tracy:Today, I'm going to talk about Martin Luther King Day and also give you an update on our situation here with the fires and the fire aftermath. I'm recording this episode the day before it's live, so it's Martin Luther King Day here in the United States. Happy Martin Luther King Day. The day itself has become somewhat of a well, it's a federal holiday, but it's become the volunteer day, a day to volunteer in the community. It's become the community. It's become, I think, an important day in our society. I wish that I had been born a little bit earlier so that I would remember seeing and hearing Dr King speak on television, that I could have seen him and experienced him more in my life.
Tracy:I grew up in a town that, if I'm going to be honest with you, was and probably still is on the racist side. Am I proud of that? No, there are stories that go along with the history of our town that it had a KKK office, that it had a Nazi headquarters office and that it also housed Japanese prisoners, if you will, on one of the local golf courses in the internment camps. Now, I'm not sure if any of those are really true or to the extent that it took place, but I suspect that they're all true. When I was growing up, I didn't really understand very much about this and my family didn't really talk about it that much as well. As I got older, I started to have some friends who were African American or Black, who were African American or black. In my high school we had probably close to 2,000 students and there was only one black student. He was a very friendly, popular guy, but I often thought maybe he felt lonely or felt like he stuck out, which he did. I found out, probably in my 20s, that Glendale was the kind of place where if you were black, you didn't want to be caught after five o'clock when the sun went down that was probably in the 50s or before because you would be pulled over by the police and it was illegal for you to be in the town.
Tracy:As I got older, as an adult, I learned more and more about the history of my town and I understood why there weren't more Black people in our community and it made me sad to try to understand the ramifications of comments and ideas around racism and I tried to educate myself on how to be not racist, because nobody took the time to explain or explain educate me on that. I wasn't in school and I wasn't going to get it at home. This is one of the brochures that I didn't get. It took me a long time, sort of trial and error, to learn that some of the things that I had said in the past were racist and I still feel the guilt about those to this day.
Tracy:I try to be sensitive to everyone. Sometimes it's hard if you don't know all the details. Right, but I do try. Right, but I do try. Now there was a big push for DEI in the workplace and equality in many areas of our lives, and now some of that is being taken away or termed not as important, and that makes me sad. It really does, because anything that has to do with racial equality or ethnic equality or ethnic equality. It's just one step away from gender equality, and as a woman, I am still sensitive to the fact that women haven't been able to vote for really all that long in this society and as much as we try and as much as we talk about it, there's still a lot of gender inequality, and so the racial inequality also is across our society, and all those things make me sad. I think that we've come a long way, but we still have a long ways to go, and there are forces in our society today that don't fully support that.
Tracy:I think you know what I'm talking about. Am I liberal? Yes, have I always been liberal? Yes, it's interesting that my parents my father was a registered Republican and my mother for most of her life was a registered Democrat they used to joke when it came time to vote that they canceled each other out. As my mother aged, and especially after my father passed away and my mother's dementia grew stronger with her Parkinson's disease, she got more and more secretive about a lot of things, and one of those was her take on politics. She had no interest in talking to us about how she was voting or how she felt, and that was slightly frustrating on many levels, not just about voting or politics, but frustrating on many levels, not just about voting or politics, but even how she felt about what she was eating that day or where she wanted to go or what she wanted to watch on TV. Anyway, that's how I'm feeling today about Martin Luther King and his legacy and the importance of his legacy in our world. I'll leave it with that.
Tracy:Now an update on the fires. The two main fires here in Los Angeles are the Eaton Fire, which is our fire, I guess you could say the fire that impacted us the most, and also the Palisades fire, and both of them are still burning, but they're not anywhere close to where we are. We're not under an evacuation order or an evacuation warning, thank goodness. Are we still packed? Yes, is the stuff in the car? No, it's spread out all over our living room. Some of the challenges that we've had. Well, now at least you can find bottled water to purchase in the stores. It was a little iffy at first. The air quality has been very poor, even though you can see the sky and it's blue mostly when I go out, I still feel that the feeling in my throat like a hoarseness or I don't know what it is the burning. That's what it is, the burning in my throat, and so a lot of the times I'm still wearing a mask outside.
Tracy:I went out in the backyard the other day to try to do a little bit of yard work and unfortunately I did not take my mask. And also I wanted to water some of the plants and I watered down a lot of the leaves and stuff, but when I was raking just minimally, there's so much ash back there. It's ridiculous. There's branches and leaves, of course, but there's so much ash back there. It's ridiculous. There's branches and leaves, of course, but there's so much ash. And what they're telling us now is that we shouldn't use leaf blowers because that'll kick up the ash, um, and we should be very careful about about the ash, because it could burn, um, it could burn your skin. Well, it's burning my throat. So I watered down the whole yard to try to help that, but then I realized, well, it's in the trees and any breeze is going to throw all that stuff down again in the air. What we really need is rain, but there's no rain in sight, so that's where we are.
Tracy:A lot of people have been buying emergency supplies like batteries, lights, lanterns, flashlights, masks, of course, air purifiers. Right now we have four in our house. Our poor cat, he's asthmatic and he's really been suffering and with the four air purifiers it's helped a little bit. But I also have an air quality monitor so I can kind of keep track of where we are with the air, keep track of where we are with the air, the different baselines of the different areas of air quality. We also have a humidifier and luckily the humidity is better. When the fires were at their worst the humidity was very, very low and that's bad for asthma, so I'm able to keep it a little bit better.
Tracy:I'm always looking for something to improve the air quality. I know, believe it or not, with four air purifiers, the company that put in our central air and heat suggested that we only get the cheapest filters to put in the system because they said there's no difference. I finally, just yesterday, I just bit the bullet and I went out and I got the top-of-the-line filter to replace it with, from a $7 filter to a $25 filter. It's HEPA filter. It's HEPA. It is supposed to filter out everything from dirt, any kind of particles, allergens, to viruses, bacteria. I mean I thought why not? And we put that in last night and I was surprised. But he's had a lot less episodes. He still had some, but he's had a lot less episodes. He still had some, but he's had a lot less episodes.
Tracy:So my husband said well, I think the air is better. Maybe it's just my imagination, but because I could still smell smoke in the house, which was super frustrating because we don't open the windows. I run outside the door. I have to open the door. So that's where we are with that, trying to improve the air quality inside the house. I also ordered a steam mop. That's going to come, hopefully this week, because I was looking at.
Tracy:Vacuuming stirs up the dust. Obviously, we're tracking in ash, we're tracking in dust every time we come inside and vacuuming stirs it up. Mopping is a lot of work, let's face it. We have hardwood floors. So I went online, I looked at a lot of different things and I ordered a steam mop where you just put the pads in the washer. That sounds like a good thing. So I'm going to try that, to do everything I can to keep us safe and to keep us clean and to keep my cat comfortable. I think that's all I've got for today.
Tracy:I hope that everyone is having a good January and staying safe, if you're here or wherever you are, and next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page child diaries or facebook only child diaries podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm tracy wallace and these are the only child diaries.