Tag: politics

…a little storytelling…

Like anyone who gets news via the Internet, I am daily confronted with photos of bubbas with their big bellies and big guns and big belligerence thinking they’re standing up for their rights or their freedoms or what-the-hell ever. I’m always trying to think of names for them (beyond “white supremacists”): bevy of bumpkins? rabble of rednecks? herd of hillbillies? obstinacy of oafs?

It’s a fun game, but because I’m a storyteller, I have another level of fun. I come up with tales about them.

First, I must establish character. These dudes likely never served in the military, and if they’re hunters, they don’t need the weapons they brandish for a squirrel, a rabbit, a deer, etc. Their fallback reason for gun ownership is that they’re protecting their homes and families. I know and love people who say and do the same, although none of them are out waving their guns in public and showing up in my Twitter feed, and I thank y’all for that.

Next, I must think about setting. They are not home protecting their homes and families. They’re standing around businesses and government buildings bullying and berating other people–which I have to tell you, if I were going to a government building to do business and saw them posturing and carrying on, I’d forego a driver’s license or marriage license or building permit and just go home.

Home. Where they should be. You know. To protect their families and property.

Now I have to develop story, and story needs conflict. I pick one from the group–we’ll call him Big Dude–and imagine his home life. I don’t know what his job is, but he gets by. He lives in a decent house on an acre of land. He’s married to Missy and they have two kids who are elementary school age. Missy works for an insurance company and during the Time of Corona, she’s able to work from home. She’s trying to do her job and home school their kids and probably clean the bathroom and let the dog in and out ten times a day. A little help would be nice, but Big Dude is not there. He’s gone somewhere with his friends to stand up for his rights. It’s beginning to be a bit of a pain for her, quite honestly.

Big Dude’s second cousin, Good Ol’ Brian, comes over looking for Big Dude to get help fixing his garage door. Brian has been divorced a few years and has no children, so he’s a kind of honorary uncle to his friends’ kids. When he comes in the house, he can see at a glance that Missy is off the hook. In no time at all, he’s got the kids in the kitchen watching Sponge Bob on his tablet while he makes grilled cheese sandwiches and heats up a can of tomato soup. The dog stays on high alert for a falling bread crust and is finally out from under Missy’s feet.

Meanwhile, Missy answers three emails, takes a load of clothes out of the dryer, refills it, and begins washing a load of sheets. She takes two minutes of precious alone time to pee (she doesn’t forget to wash her hands afterward) and brush her hair, which she forgot to do that morning. When she heads back to her computer, Brian calls her into the kitchen. The kids are eating and laughing at Sponge Bob. Brian points to her place at the table, where he’s put a steaming bowl of soup, a diagonally cut grilled cheese sandwich, and a fresh cup of coffee.

Big Dude, you really should have stayed home and protected your family. Won’t be long and you’ll be discovering a whole new meaning to social distancing.

Love,
Team Brian

Tribute


One of my favorite family photos–my father holding his oldest grandchild Daniel.

He left us on this day in 1985, and he was: a loving father and grandfather. A devoted husband. A retired Army vet. An educator. An artist. A writer. An historian. A public servant. A youngest brother to three siblings and an affectionate uncle and son who never stopped missing his late mother and late father.

As I miss mine. If he were alive today, he’d be utterly horrified by the country for whom he landed at Normandy on D Day, willing to sacrifice everything from the most basic comforts to his own life for liberty and justice.

I’m grateful he’s resting in peace.

they wanted to drive somewhere, work, or shop

On March 15, 2020, a mass shooting occurred in Springfield, Missouri. After firing indiscriminately from his vehicle at passersby, the 31-year-old perpetrator shot and killed four people at a convenience store before fatally turning his weapon on himself. The victims inside the store were identified as 57-year-old employee Troy Rapp, 46-year-old waste management contractor Shannon Perkins, and 22-year-old customer Matthew Hicks-Morris. A police officer killed outside the store was 32-year-old Christopher Walsh. Employee Jayne Gilson was shot five times but survived. Police officer Josiah Overton suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

The perpetrator’s weapons included a 7.62×39mm SKS semi-automatic rifle and a 9×19mm Glock semi-automatic pistol. In a search of the perpetrator’s residence, police recovered accessories, including ammunition and magazines, for the SKS rifle and Glock pistol used in the attack.

where to begin…

So like many others with an internet connection, I’ve been trying to keep up with the news and updates on COVID-19. I remind you right here: I’ve lived through a pandemic and lost friends to a virus that was abysmally mishandled by the administration under whose watch it first struck, by agencies that were supposed to inform and protect the public, that was politicized and whose sufferers were marginalized, cruelly treated, mocked… I could go on, but to what point, really.

Recent history. I posted as I always do on World AIDS Day (December 1) to recognize those living with HIV and lost to AIDS, among them people I still love because love outlasts death. I also posted on Instagram, and my post was noted by an account called theaidsmemorial, who asked if they could use my photos and if I’d share a little information about my friends. Of course I said yes to all, and I also began following their account.

It has been emotionally brutal. Reading people’s stories and seeing their photos of the lost ones has taken me back to the hardest time in my life. I read every single post and usually end up crying. Time has not softened these losses or the hurt survivors still feel at how often family, society, medicine, government, church failed to comfort, support, respect, and care for people with AIDS. Don’t get me wrong. I saw and experienced powerful stories of compassion and love, as well. I remember every healthcare worker, agency representative, family member, and friend who sustained my loved ones and me through those years. I remember every celebrity and political figure and public figure who rose to their absolute best as advocates and supporters. But most of all, I remember the ill and the dying having to find their OWN way to fight for their lives, to form movements, to wage war against apathy, cruelty, and inaction even as they fell. ACT UP, FIGHT AIDS! and SILENCE = DEATH were not slogans. They were battle cries.

These days, I read and study and follow each day’s news and wonder, Did we learn nothing?

I understand the complexity and many-sidedness of a public health crisis, but I’m offering fair warning to those who know me. Do NOT try to engage me in any conversation in which you defend the indefensible. A lie is lie. A failure is a failure. Incompetence and bigotry can hide behind whatever facade they wish to, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I will call out hypocrisy, dishonesty, indifference, and inhumanity as I see it, and I don’t give one solid fuck where your politics reside. I know where my conscience resides.

they wanted to go to work

On February 26, 2020, a mass shooting occurred at the Molson Coors Beverage Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The perpetrator shot and killed five coworkers before fatally turning the gun on himself. His weapons were a .45-caliber Springfield XD(M) semi-automatic pistol equipped with a Dead Air Armament Ghost suppressor and a .40-caliber Walther P99C semi-automatic pistol.

• Jesus Valle Jr. (33)
• Gennady Levshetz (61)
• Trevor Wetselaar (33)
• Dana Walk (57)
• Dale Hudson (60)

Just so you know…

Politics: driving me out of my mind.

However, I will say that Twitter is my place where I read and research what people are talking about, and as a result, I have found some really smart people, been educated about things that challenge my comfort zone, discovered some authors whose fiction I freaking love for escape and entertainment–both laughter and tears. So there’s that.

I will not let my brain or heart atrophy.

Social….stuff

For the past several years, I’ve committed to making a blog post every day of the year. The only way I’ve been able to maintain that is by keeping a running list of content for the days I’m unable to post, and then when I can, catching up and dating the posts to the days I would have posted them if I’d had time.

I think below is roughly my online interaction since my first Internet log-in (via AOL) in 1997:

AOL chatrooms 1997 to around 2002
AOL message boards 2002 to around 2004
Live Journal 2004 to 2011
This Word Press blog 2011 to present

Along the way, of course, there was MySpace, where I had little presence, to Facebook, which I came to abhor. I went from who knows how many friends on FB to I think a current five after the 2016 election. I have never regretted the decision to cut that off, though I do miss my nieces’ and nephews’ and grandnieces’ and -nephews’ FB posts. I can, however, sort of keep up with some of them via Instagram, which is my busiest social media site, even though I am constantly disgruntled that it’s owned by Facebook.

A few months ago I began to visit my Twitter account daily after years of basically ignoring it. I don’t post there–mostly I retweet things and comment on other people’s feeds, but I use it to read what people are talking about. It’s the way I know what memes are making the rounds, but it’s also how I find the topics I want to research for myself–usually relating to social and political issues. Politics and history were part of my upbringing, as they were both always discussed in my home–around the dinner table, for example.

It was when I got to college that I discovered how wired my brain was for sociology, and it became my minor.

Sociology is defined as the “study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution.” (Thanks Wikipedia.)

I’ve said on here before that I often feel like I’m an alien sent to study humans on this planet. Humans never cease to interest me. Human behavior can both dazzle and horrify me. Sometimes I weary of it all and step back–but if I’m stepping into music or movies or books for escape, well damn, there they still are, pesky humans who entertain and amuse and challenge and educate me.

Thank goodness for animals and nature–though that can be dicey, too, because of how humans treat animals and our planet. But somehow I maintain.

The fiction I worked on this year drove me to research things that have led me down interesting paths. I’ve explored a lot of things about which I have some longstanding and strong opinions. I have found many of those opinions challenged both by my studies and my observations.

There is nothing so alluring as complacency. It’s comfortable to use our own experience or the experiences of those close to us as the yardstick by which we measure the world. But the world is big, and we are small. A yardstick is not enough.

I said on someone’s Twitter feed that my mantra going into 2020 is “learn more, do better.”

There is a lot to learn, and doing better not only means opening myself up to tough teachers, but not succumbing to the comfortable.

A curse/a blessing

The phrase “may you live in interesting times” is often called a Chinese curse. Its origin is not Chinese, and whether or not it is a blessing or a curse depends on one’s perspective.

Interesting can certainly mean brutal, painful, or turbulent. But in such times, humans can also rise to our best. We can find imaginative solutions to challenges. Out of painful times often emerge fresh ideas and a renaissance of creativity of the type that renews and celebrates instead of denigrates and tears us down and apart.

Today was interesting from a historical perspective, and I have a million thoughts, all of which are undoubtedly better expressed by others, and many of which would be met with derision and an eyeroll from those who disagree with me. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think for the approval of others, and I’m unfazed by anyone who believes I don’t actually think. I’m secure in what I believe, and most importantly, I know that my default settings are compassion and balance.

What hurt me most today, and should hurt anyone who has ever known someone who’s been widowed, was the cruelty directed at Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. The words, the disgusting applause and laughter for the words: simply not tolerable.

Recently my friend Denece pointed out that I share a birthday with a powerful woman. Today, I stand with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi not just for those of her political beliefs with which I am aligned, but because the photo below reminds me of the power of women who support each other, who hold one another up, who show strength, grace, and kindness when it’s most needed. It’s not the power of politics or wealth or fame; it’s the power of character.


Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite