We Want Wings

 

Dear you, a brief post for the week that was:

You heard the news about the Brazilian baby born with a tail.  That story got as much digital ink as this week’s political traumas. I confess, to take a break from thinking about anything relevant, I clicked a link to a New York Post piece summing up the tail-tale.  I learned this happens sometimes, rarely, but sometimes.  The tail the baby boy sported is normally absorbed as we develop in the womb, turning magically into our tailbone.  Still curious, I googled the tailbone topic and got sucked into other questions about our evolving bodies:

“Can humans grow wings?”

“Why do humans have no fur?”

“Could a person grow feathers?”

“Will we evolve into crabs?”

“Can humans evolve with gills?”

That last question begged for a click.  A bit from the www.dailymail.co.uk article:

“Webbed feet, cat’s eyes and gills:  [These] Features are just some that humans could evolve to have to deal with a ‘water world’ due to global warming.  Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments. . .”

Evolution = survival.  Adapt or die. Or we could just nip global warming in the bud.  

Now, we have a shot at that.  At last, we can say it: Happy Infrastructure Week!  Finally. The trillion-dollar infrastructure bill passed this week aims to halt the heat, the melt, and the methane with innovative transportation, technology, and energy plans.  And we (you know who we are) are happy. We don’t want webbed feet, fins, or tails.  So de-volutionary. 

We want wings.

HAPPY INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK!

That's all.

Joyce

 

 

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

 

Swimming Pools and Politics

 

Dear you,

While the J6 rally was pretty lame yesterday, the poison consumed by millions of the benighted is still very popular, poison pimped as political nutrition. We are doing what we can, I suppose, to toss their toxins into another dustbin of history, but nothing seems to be working.  They don’t care, here or anywhere.  The “here” in Seagrove Beach analogy for ingesting poison mindlessly happened earlier this week.

Our west pool needed repair, the pool under my balcony. Monday/Tuesday, I noticed dudes at the pool mucking about.  A few hours later, I noticed the pool was slowly emptying.  I assumed there was some kind of pump taking the water to a big vat, and later they’d dispose of the chemically loaded (plus visitor urine loaded) goop in an approved/safe area.  I was wrong again.  More hours later, when I exited to run errands, the south parking lot was flooded with noxious pool water.  It was running towards the beach road and open storm drains.  The smell was gag-worthy. The chlorine in the air caused coughs, watery eyes, and maybe worse.  The guests noticed, coughing and eye leaking just like me, but didn’t care.  They were just pissed off that one of the two pools was closed.

Days later, the smell remained.  The condo complex should have been shut down by the EPA or OSHA or something.  This lazy choice by the HOA board/management got no blowback here in #DeathSantis Country where everyone is free to pollute at will, consume the poison of one’s choice, and spread toxic misinformation.  I know their reasons.  Money.  It would cost us to do it right.  I hate them.  Not much I can say to stop their privileging of money above all.  A toxic state of mind.

Pools and politics.  Orlando, Florida, a more civilized part of the state, has some rules about the former that should be applied to the latter:

“Do not drain your pool water into streets, gutters, or storm drains.”  Applied version: Do not spread your lies on social media sites, bumper stickers, or Fox & Friends.

“High levels of salts, chlorine, or other chemicals can make its way into waterways harming aquatic organisms and wildlife.”  Applied version: High levels of paranoia, science-denial, or other forms of ignorance can make their ways into public forums, harming those of us who have to share space with reactionaries and tinfoil hat wearers.

“Pumping the water directly into a sanitary sewer clean out is also not permitted.”  Applied version: Pumping the filth directly into a Matt Gaetz podcast is also not permitted.

Good luck getting those regulations passed in this zip code.

As for now, the effects on site at the Villas linger.  I haven’t seen birds in my holly tree, the palms and pines or even the bushes lately.  Is there a connection?  Perhaps.

The visitors don’t care.  All they know is the pool is back open and they can swim (and pee) without a care in the world.  The cost of their refreshed cement pond was only environmental.  A non-issue.  Poison apparently is a matter of opinion too.

Still here, dodging toxins of all kinds,

Your Joyce

 

Run for your life . . .

 

Dear you,

I blogged weeks ago about that dreaded Texas anti-abortion law.  Lone star women are running to other states to terminate pregnancies . . . if they have the means to travel.  I hear some are even headed to Mexico where abortion has been decriminalized.  Evacuations are the thing now.  We run away from each other, from Covid, from war; we run away from the anti-vaxer fascist next door.  We run from fires, tornadoes, floods, and of course, hurricanes.  In Seagrove Beach, we are hosting so many folks whose homes were wrecked by Ida; even if some structures are standing, power is not returning for weeks in places like LaPlace, Louisiana.

The unit across the landing from me is the temporary home to a family from LaPlace.  The group is big, grandmother, mother, two adult daughters, a couple of menfolk, a toddler, an elder with alzheimer’s and a teen with emotional problems.  That’s a lot. So far, they have been better neighbors than the usual vacationers.  But this could change.  How long can that many people stay jammed together in one condo and not lose their minds?  Perhaps they are good with it all, just being together and alive.  If their home is not repaired in time, where do they go next?  Where do we all go next? What’s the next reason to run? Here in the USA, it might be wise to prep for an exit because of a looming Civil War (part 2). The neo-confederates are assembling in D.C. a week from tomorrow, rallying to remember their January 6^th insurrection and honor its participants. Hideous people, tarnishing yet another September day.

Why that date, why September 18?  Maybe the neos have a special connection with that day and its noted celebrations. According to daysoftheyear.com, here’s what we celebrate on 9/18:

International Red Panda Day

Cheeseburger Day

First Love Day

Locate An Old Friend Day

Read An Ebook Day

Hug A Greeting Card Writer Day

Respect Day

Gymnastics Day

Water Monitoring Day

Coastal Cleanup Day

Eat An Apple Day

The only festivities on that list that seem to jive with fascist white nationalism are, maybe, cheeseburger day and locate an old friend day.  You know how they love to scream about libs taking away their beef.  And those “old friends” they want to locate are probably banned from Facebook and Twitter so they have to meet up at a rally. As for the other days, I am thinking endangered species, romance, reading, writers, athletes with opinions, environmental projects and the forever Eve-tainted apple are things they hate.  And forget about their relationship with “respect”.

These rally types are all over the place now.  And they really do want another Civil War; this is not hyperbole. Non-rally types should probably evacuate.

But we won’t. We still have power.

Running from fires, floods, winds, and war is the sensible thing to do.  But running from fascist assholes?  Not happening.  As they like to say, we will “stand our ground”.  And we will look so much prettier than them while doing that.

Stay.

Don’t evacuate.

Celebrate the best of September 18.

Joyce

 

Getting Over . . . Carrying On

 

Dear you,

This weekend, I kept the television running non-stop.  Between heartbreaking updates about our exit from Kabul and hurricane Ida, commercials carried on in the most disturbing way.  A former sitcom star screamed gleefully about “dynomite” Social Security benefits. A hyper-happy voiceover ordered me to “Show off your white smile this Labor Day!” An emu tried to sell me insurance.  Meanwhile, New Orleans went dark and thousands were left behind in Afghanistan.

The disconnect was unsettling.  The reality of events competing with the reality of the marketplace. Networks cannot run on nothing.  I know they need commercials to stay on the air and keep me informed.  But this seemed so out of alignment, twisted.  The twisting continues today.

I listen to details about how the #TexasTaliban essentially ended abortion rights in their state, how they pulled this off and why the SCOTUS majority just let it go.  Then, this:

“Here’s why birthday candles are the perfect gift.”

I listen to updates about Ida flooding the northeast.  And then this:

“Everything’s better between King’s Hawaiian bread.”

We seem, in some ways and in some places, to be carrying on. Life rolling along. No good can come from tears without action.  No good can come from walking around in sackcloth and ashes.  But it feels wrong to be bopping around all “dynomite” happy during these tragedies.  How to do this?  How to find balance without being mindless? Time for a refresher course in stoic philosophy. I have been reading and re-reading Marcus Aurelius since last year, perfect advice for these days. From Book III of his Meditations:

“You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought:  everything random, everything irrelevant.  And certainly everything self-important or malicious.  You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.  And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones – the thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be ashamed to be caught thinking.

Someone like that – someone who refuses to put off joining the elect – is a kind of priest, a servant of the gods, in touch with what is within him and what keeps a person undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests – the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.  With what leaves us dyed indelibly by justice, welcoming whole heartedly whatever comes – whatever we’re assigned – not worrying too often, or with any selfish motive, about what other people say. Or do, or think.

He does only what is his to do and considers constantly what the world has in store for him – doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best.  For we carry our fate with us – and it carries us.”

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t suggesting I stop brushing my teeth, buying presents, or eating tasty bread. He would be indifferent to inane commercial breaks and advise me to do the same.  He’d say focus, be an “athlete in the greatest of all contests – the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.”  He’d say learn this:

We live serious content interrupted by commercial breaks.

It all just is.

If I really get that, if I know how to roll, I can show off my smile this Labor Day with gravitas and balance. Like a stoic athlete.  Up and over the bar.

Still trying,

Joyce