This is what happens when you get edumacated in the Magic Kingdom

Not quite ten years ago nineteen people took over four airplanes & flew them into buildings in New York City & Washington DC & a field in rural Pennsylvania & for a long time after that, no one wanted to get on a plane.  Yes, I know there were a lot of other things that came of it, but for the purposes of this story....

Here in Fladidah, we make a lot of our operating cash off of people who do not actually operate here.  This business of not getting on planes was a big big problem because no one brought their money here & the industry (& I do mean INDUSTRY) that revolves around the practice of overcharging touristas was feeling the pain.  Along with many many other such entities, Disney's Epcot Center threw open their doors & offered state residents significantly reduced entrance fees during specific week-days. 

I am not now & was not then a particular fan of Disney.  I am naturally suspicious of any large corporate entity.  Also I was not crazy about the mickeyfying of every story (Scrooge McDuck?  Really?)

Still we thought, lets see how Disney educates the youngsters.  Well, it was quite the eye opener.  & the biggest eye opener of all was the Monsanto Loves the People of the Earth exhibit.  It would be correct to say it kind of made my skin crawl.  Even A, who is not so likely to get amped up as me, kept shaking his head at the people lining up to hear a commercial (because whether there is a amusement park ride involved or not, endless platitudes about the wisdom of spraying your crops with Monsanto products is still a commercial).

We left the Agriculture-is-your-friend-so-long-as-you-are-on-the-other-end-of-a-large-piece-of-machinery Pavillion & went to have lunch.  In France.  A funny thing about France, a friend of mine teaches middle school to the Epcot employed offspring & she tells me she has a hard time convincing her students the the countries that border each other in International Plaza do not actually necessarily border each other in real life.  She discovered this was a problem when talking about World War II;  there was some confusion about Germans having to travel through Japan & Morocco to get to France.  I do not remember much about lunch except we were served white bread.  I have been to France.  I do not think they know what white bread is. They also served wine, which is how we happened to settle on France.

A while ago, another friend was doing an installation in one of the Epcot places-something to do with language & soy sauce...  Anyhow, he told me he often had lunch in Germany (where they serve beer) & then take a short walk around the plaza.  Although I cannot find it on the map he swears that Israel was somewhere near Norway (which I do kind of remember myself, you know, from geography class)  & one of his great joys was to watch the young Arab men pass by the blonde beauties of the Land of the Midnight Sun that are the stock-in-trade of international consumer marketing & make straight for the Israeli girls, who clearly had been chatted up by every Arab male over the age of five in the park & were frankly ready for something completely different.  He swears it happened every day & he was there for months.

So it seems there are some things you cannot teach people to buy, even in the Magic Kingdom.

Ongoing oratory overwhelms observation or This is the time of year I tell my representatives what I think of them

I for one am tired tired tired of people screaming faux facts about healthcare at each other.

While it is true that he who talks loudest talks last, chances are good it is not because he is correct or will even remain uncorrected, but because everyone who wants to have a real conversation has decided to have it in another room.

When that happens, it is no use whining at the door that you want in. Deliberately drowning out other voices loses you that privilege.

I have previously said I believe we have had a form of socialized healthcare for a long time & it has left middle income individuals footing most of the bill. I have also said I actually think it would make small businesses able to compete with their larger counterparts. Now I have written all my representatives outlining my view on healthcare (I am for it: not just for the affluent, not just for the employed). & I am completely confident that they will ignore me; they always have.

Several years ago I wrote to my-then-representative for outlining why I supported the tightening of the Brady Bill. Same rep then went to a press conference to explain why she had voted against it: in all the letters she received from her constituents not one supported it. Huh. I might have given her the benefit of the doubt & said maybe my lone voice got lost in the mail except her office replied to my letter. With a form letter, but a reply of any kind does mean it got there.

This kind of 'perfect score' is no doubt supposed to persuade anyone on the fence what the majority already believes & the inert that the decision is already made. & it probably works to some degree. The catch is, not surprisingly, there is always at least one person who knows it is a lie. & that begs the question: why would a representative lie to the people she represents about what they told her they want? The answer is simple: so there will be no discussion.

I guess I should not give a damn, after all I have healthcare- pretty good, government sponsored healthcare. Not because I am over 65 & not because I am disabled & not because I am a veteran. I am none of those things (though I do hope to be over 65 some day). I have excellent government sponsored healthcare because my husband works for a state university. It turns out that a very large percentage of the work-a-day insured & their insured dependents are in similar health plans: between federal, state & local government entities, the government is already the largest healthcare agency in the country.

The funny thing about this government healthcare is a lot of people the people protesting it want it. I do not just mean those who expect to collect Medicare someday. I know & I know you do, too, at least one person who wanted a city/state/national job because "while the pay is not so good the benefits are great". & finally, in truly amusing news this most conservative state I live in has no problem with public healthcare for....property that might suffer damage because it was built in flood plains or dredged wetlands or along the beaches. Its the people we do not want to take care of.

This time of year when I think about this time last year

This blog is one year old tomorrow. If I felt like flipping back to the 'published' page (I do not) I would tell you how many that is. I know it is more than 100.

This year, contrary to my predictions the rainy season has come early & steamy. I actually never said it would not be hot, I just said it would be dry. Well, it turns out you cannot predict the weather watching emus no matter what Laura Ingalls Wilder says. Although I think she used bees.

This is why I am hoping that this year I will get my July 4th wish. I hope it rains. I hope it rains all week-end. I hope the rain that started yesterday keeps going for five more days. & I hope that I can have a fireworks-free sleep after a drunk-driver-free afternoon. & I hope everyone else gets that, too. That's right I am forcing my crazy liberal wishes on all of you.

This is the time of year I wish I had a brain tumor

In '07, fire season came early & forecasters are predicting another big year for '09. From now until the first heavy rain (usually roundabout July), I will smell smoke. Most of it will be real.

I have heard that there is a particular part of the brain that responds to pressure (pressure as in the physical pressure of a growing tumor, not the other kind) by signaling the smell of smoke. People with this tumor walk around asking everyone "do you smell smoke" until they drop dead of said tumor. I realize this might be one of those soap opera diseases, but there are days I wish I had it.

That's right, I would rather just drop dead of a brain tumor than watch my home (or actually my animals) be consumed by fire. I am not good with fire. I was well into my 2os before I was comfortable lighting a paper match. You know the kind I mean, the matches that come in a flimsy matchbook & the cardboard is so cheap you worry they will flop around & light up your fingernails. Okay maybe I am the only one that worries about that.

The year after we moved here, two days after Christmas, our neighbor-over-the-back-fence had an electrical fire (the source being the unzoned trailer home I have previously mentioned). The flames took about fifteen minutes to sweep across his yard, consume our back fence & start moving towards our house. This was a slow moving fire. The fire department spent what I would describe as a ridiculous amount of time trying to put out the mobile home. They more or less ignored the creeping towards the property line until the row of pine trees went up like bottle rockets. The whooshing sound of twenty 'kerosene pines' popping & flaming at once got them to turn around. I remember the look on the senior fire-guy's face. He looked like he wished he was somewhere else. Every pasture for miles was ringed by a continuous chain of pine trees. & every farm had its own entrance from the road that may or may not be the street for which the lot has a street address.

Since that time we have put in a few gates. One of them links the back of our pasture with the back of W*****'s & D******'s; when this happens again, there will be another way to get firetrucks in & livestock out.

But on that day, the only reason we did not lose everything was D***** on one side & G*** on the other. They both worked tirelessly, brought their own buckets, their own hoses, shovels & rakes & spent the entire day watering down a large swath of grass about ten feet into our pasture. They both knew when to give up on the back line well before the fire crew. They have both put out more than one fire before (D****** on this very property when the grass grew long & then dried, touching the hotwire the then-current owner had put up to corral their stallion; G*** lost his childhood home to a fire, while he was still a child).

I remind myself how lucky we were to learn about fire that particular day. Now D****** is working out-of-state more than he is home & G*** has been dead almost two years. & I am more frightened than ever when I wonder if the person who best knows what to do when it happens again just might be me.

This is the time of year I like to rip-off Frida Kahlo

Earlier this week, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" was on & I loved every moment. Then began the seasonal descent into madness culminating on Dia de los Muertos, which I love just as much. I used to think the bible-South did not really observe Hallowe'en but I have learned it is like the seasons: it is subtle, but the change is there.

I reminisce about the drag queen parades of my young adulthood with the fondness usually reserved for Louisa May Alcott/Currier & Ives ice skating memoirs. O' callow youth, ba-blah, ba-blah. I am so fond of drag parades that I am always disappointed that drag races will not include the same cast of characters. I never thought they would, but still I can dream...

The earlier Hallowe'ens of my memory are blissful & free, when packs of costumed children roamed the neighborhoods & hardly a prank was played. The great apple-razor/poisoned candy hoaxes were not yet upon us. It was indeed a Golden Age.

& then there is a gap. Not having children (& not being a drag queen) I more-or-less lost track of this holiday for many years. Right up until the year after we moved here. That year, Hallowe'en fell on a Sunday (as it did again, 5 years later). For those of you that missed it, there was, I swear to G*d, a movement to trick or treat on Saturday instead so as not to sully the sabbath with this pagan ritual. Oy. Now that I think about it, I am not sure why football is permitted on Sunday. After all it a sanitized re-enactment of brute force acquiring territory through the carrying of a symbolic pig skin. But that is probably just me being difficult.

At around the same time, I discovered Frida Kahlo. Not that she was missing. Or that I had not ever heard of her or seen her work before. But something fell into place & I found my inner Frida. Every year, I take this reminder to enjoy these last flowers of the year, wear every outlandish article of clothing I own all at once & generally stop worrying about what other people think. I have decided against taking up smoking though. & I think I will try to avoid divorcing A just to marry him again.