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