11/10/2025
If you’ve enjoyed our flowers or flower bulbs or appreciated our contributions to the community you’ve seen firsthand the beauty of our team. -Our team that includes Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists, immigrants, and natural born citizens all working together. I’m sharing this because I see hateful, derogatory rhetoric spreading through our town in the wake of the election of a Muslim mayor of a different place 300 miles away. - A mayor elect who, oddly enough, voices kindness and togetherness for all people and faiths. And yet here- in my small town, where people preach that they know and love their neighbors and care about community, I see more racism and bigotry than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m calling it out. I’m calling out the Facebook memes of cops riding camels in NYC, the “here comes Sharia law” fear mongering, the use of the slur “towel head”, people saying “did you forget 9/11”. The only “extreme” thing I see is the hate on the fingertips and keyboards of people who spread this crap, reminding us that they’re not really moved by love, kindness, and togetherness and that they don’t really know or love their neighbors. I bet many of them don’t realize that the people who work beside them every day, right here, in our small town in rural NY, are the very people they sneer at on the internet. -Because I don’t see that kind of hate in person. I see these same people sharing baked goods and recipes with each other, asking about how their wives who are battling breast cancer are doing, and talking about the successes and failures in their backyard vegetable gardens. Let’s have more of that and less keyboard, rage-bait nastiness this holiday season and always.
