Peavy, Pointy, and Venus de Milo

Dear you,

While Marvin Peavy still flies his freak flag in my neighborhood, making news by resisting fines and hosting a Trump rally yesterday (nice choice for the Sabbath), I/we all carry on swayed by whatever version of “breaking news” we hear.  Depending on the source, the swaying effect can range from apathy, due to exhaustion and waiting for change, to red-in-the-face rage.  I know this because my cashier at the local Publix yesterday was an example of the latter.

After driving by that very unattractive rally group, I arrived at Publix a bit agitated but refusing to let them “own” this Lib on a pleasant Sunday.  I selected the best available produce and products at the current inflated rates and headed to the checkout lane.  The cashier is someone I always chat with.  She is retired and doing this gig to get out of the house, so you don’t need to sympathize in this case.  She is not a poor, fixed income senior who has to keep working part-time to survive.  The gal is rich.  You should see the ice on her fingers and wrists.  Anyway, iced up cashier was not in a cool mood this day.  I could tell by her violent tossing of items to the way-too-skinny bagging boy after scanning.  And her eyes above the required mask?  They looked pinched and pointy.  I don’t know exactly how eyes can look pointy, but they did.  When she was scan-tossing my items, we did the usual “how are you” exchange.  I commented on the fact that the crowds were lightening up on 30A but more fall break kids are bound to come.  She rolled her pointy eyes and said “I know.  It never ends.”  I responded with a reference to “school’s out forever” and added it didn’t matter anyway since so many parents are now enraged by education. “They, the parents, think they should decide what kids are taught. Might as well home school.”  Pointy stopped scanning when I said that.  “They should!!!! Parents should control learning.  Now all schools do is teach sex stuff and that CRT.”

Oh no.  She went there.  She has been swaying to the tune of Tucker Carlson or that OAN thing.

After dismissing her fear of sex stuff by explaining it’s just simple biology, anatomy, or sociology 101, I asked what she thought CRT was.  “Critical Race Theory.  I know what it is!!!!!”  I exhaled and noted she knew what the letters stood for but wondered if she knew what the course contained.  “Do you know the curriculum for that line of study, the reading material, the questions posed for consideration”?  Pointy Eyes went blank.

Of course she didn’t know.  If I had tried to explain the need for CRT, she would have repeated that cherished notion about kids only needing reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.  She said it once already.  I didn’t want to hear it again.

No history, no art, no physics, no astronomy, no literature, no music, no geography, no philosophy, no political science, no chemistry, no critical thinking much less critical race theory, etc. etc.  Basically, Know Nothing.

Her ideally educated child will never be able to identify this:

I think she is what Pointy Eyes and Marvin Peavy want our children (and me) to be, mute, immobile, disarmed, unable to strike back.  Actually, they would hate Venus de Milo because she is Aphrodite, the goddess of sex (oh no!).  And then there’s the nudity thing (oh no!).  And the polytheistic world she ruled (oh no!).  Oh yes, we must ban her from the classroom too.

Talk about cancel culture.  Look out, dear you, Pointy and Peavy are all riled up and on a mission.  They sure know how to ruin a Sunday.  You can only imagine what else is on their “ruin it” list.

Nevertheless, we will keep the faith.

#Resist

Joyce

Tangled Up in Blue/Camo, Coors, and Cornhole . . .

 

Dear you,

This morning Captain Kirk went to space (for real) in a Bezos rocket.  A quick trip, but it seemed to do what travel to strange places does best – teach us to see things anew, pop our minds open.  During the post-flight interview, Shatner appeared to be transformed, intoxicated by that heavenly shade of blue and the beauty of Mother Earth below.  Most of us can’t afford this experience, so we stay local underneath that mind blowing blue.  Here in the Seagrove Beach zone, travelers keep coming, but not to see anew. The current crowd is heavy Tennessee since the first two weeks of October are fall break for their kids.

These TN travelers have been the recent focus of my ongoing anthropological study, and I have learned this so far:

1. The teenage girls wear camo themed clothing, bikinis, pajamas, tank tops and of course the ubiquitous baseball caps.  They are ready, day or night, to hunt or participate in a pop-up civil war.  Kudos for double duty fashion.

2. Coors light seems to be the beer of choice, especially at 9 A.M. for the under 18 set whose parents are totally missing in action.  They purchase this beverage by the caseload.  Without proper identification.  Good luck trying to buy alcohol here without an ID if you are a young black man from Atlanta.

3. They love playing cornhole.  They toss a bean bag into a hole carved in a slanted piece of wood.  They wear #1 (camo) while doing this and hold #2 (Coors Water) in their non-tossing hand.

Okay, it’s all a matter of taste.  Not every traveler wants to experience the shock and awe of the unknown or the beautiful.  Not every traveler can boldly go where only the rich and blue obsessed can go.  Some travel to one place and do the same things they do in any other place.  In this case, Tennessee is just doing its thing in a coastal setting.  Camo, Coors, and Cornhole by the sea. I understand.

Another pretty obvious assessment I can make regards political style. They (mostly) are conservative and thrilled by the “Trump Won” banner down the street.  Much editorial thought has been published about how Democrats better start courting this demographic or face annihilation by the GOP who owns their votes (and minds).  Even if they are outnumbered in our country, we should supposedly adjust, seek to understand.

Understand.  I do understand.  I just don’t live as they do, and I do not want to.  I don’t wear camo.  I prefer workout wear in solid colors and little black dresses.  And if you ever see me in a baseball cap, I’ve probably had brain surgery, possibly a lobotomy. I don’t like light beer. Especially Coors Light.  It tastes like swamp water.  Hand me a Guinness Stout, even in hot weather.  As for cornhole, no.  Just no. 

All those cultural differences aren’t critical, but the politics thing is.  Because of observation number four:

4. On many, many of their vehicles I see what I have seen all season, that revised American flag with the black stripes and blue line in the middle.

Supporting the blue line, no matter what. Tangled up in a not so heavenly shade of Shatner blue. Even after they view the latest outrage, the brutal attack on a paraplegic driver in Ohio, dragged from his car without mercy.  This stuff just keeps happening and happening and happening and the Dems cannot get a police reform bill passed because we need some of “them” to come on board.  We need to make sure we don’t alienate the thin blue line, camo wearing, light beer drinking, bag tossing people. 

No.  It is not happening, Dems.  You know that. We have to use whatever power we have to get some shit done as quickly as possible.  They aren’t messing around and they are not at all inclined to “understand” us.  And while we honor their freedoms and choices, please be clear about the fact that they do not honor ours in return. 

This is sad. Like losing someone, part of us.  As Bob Dylan wrote:

“All the people we used to know/they’re an illusion to me now/some are mathematicians/some are carpenter’s wives/I don’t know how it all got started/I don’t know what they do with their lives/But me, I’m still on the road/heading for another joint/we always did feel the same/we just saw it from a different point of view/tangled up in blue.”

A different point of view indeed.

See blue anew.

Anthropology class dismissed.

Joyce

Showtime!

 

Dear you,

Everything feels like a movie now.  I know I have a dramatic nature and pretend my life is a Baz Luhrmann production, but really, everything feels like a movie now.  Some titles and plots align with what passes for my reality:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Daniel-Day Lewis character, a surgeon and player, returns to his home in Prague in spite of the Soviet occupation.  He does this for love, love of homeland and a woman.  The once lively city is drab and paralyzed.  He stays anyway.  Ah, love.  Me.  I return to Floribama, watching the destruction of land, water, and wildlife. I stay anyway.  Ah, love?

The Year of Living Dangerously

No real plot connection here, but the title is all 2020 (and even 2021).  The simplest, dullest things are life threatening. I go shopping surrounded by hordes of Covid deniers! How daring!  I go to the dentist as soon as the mini-shutdown in Florida is lifted!  Daring!  I walk around outside without a mask, risking contact with vacationing drunks who just have to hug me!  Daring!  I go to random open houses and breathe not-so-fresh air in confined, overpriced spaces!  Daring!  I eat questionable takeout from the one Asian restaurant that hasn’t closed due to fear, fear of the local idiots who blame the “China Virus” on them. Daring!  Everything is dangerous now.  (A commercial just aired raising alarm about the dangers of cleaning the gutters on your roof.  Pulling leaves out of roof drains while standing on a ladder is lethal!  I am not at all interested in doing that.  But I have been known to pop bread in the toaster without washing my hands first. Daring!)

Gone with the Wind

Dear white nationalists, cry all you want about the end of an era and cancel culture, but those stupid Confederate monuments are coming down.  Good riddance.  Goodbye.

 Apocalypse Now

We are all end-of-days characters these days, heroes or villains, depending on your point of view.  Charlie Sheen is the protagonist on a mission (Willard).  Marlon Brando is the antagonist on an ego trip (Kurtz).  This morality tale took more than a year to film.  It was hell.  It was like being in hell while making a movie about hell.  Meta-hell. During the odyssey, Charlie Sheen suffered a nervous breakdown and a heart attack.  Marlon Brando (Kurtz) showed up for the gig looking more like Jabba the Hutt than a charismatic anti-hero.  Cinematic failure seemed unavoidable, but in the end . . . a masterpiece!  The hero lives and Mr. Kurtz?  He dead.  I intend to survive the apocalypse like Willard/Sheen.  And I hope whatever Kurtz symbolizes today heads into the abyss taking “the horror” with him.  Fuck the apocalypse.

The Devil Wears Prada

On my most misanthropic days, I am Miranda Priestly.  Everyone disappoints me.  Everyone is fat and stupid. Everyone is wearing their own versions of hideous skirts.  And everyone moves at a glacial pace.  You know how that thrills me.  That’s all.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

That would be most women in America now, the “handmaids” aside.  Apparently, our bodies belong to the be-fruitful-and-multiply overlords. 

Jesus Camp

Better known as busy season at my condo complex. The converted and the converters get all drunk and destructive, but it’s okay because they do so while wearing charming Bible verse t-shirts.  Testify!

It’s all show biz, folks . . .

That’s a wrap.

Joyce