MISS POLLY'S

8/24/13

8/24/13

Proof again in the power of patience

And lure of irrelevancy

Yet kindness. Acknowledgement matters.

Just acknowledgement.

Thank you.

There’s  something unpredictable about juries; There is supposed to be.

the obvious imbalance and lack of peer-ness of the Florida jury that said nothing. to

a suburn  urban warrior man determined to keep his supposed  haven  safe by driving around with a gun;  tracked and swore and fought  with and ultimately shot and killed a teenaged neighborhood boy who lived in his same gated community:

That the jury was composed of six white middle-aged women is an  imbalance is not supposed to be predictable.

A Category Five Parade

There are walks; there are marches; lazy, hazy summer perambulations by the bay. There are ancients and horribles; there are brownies and cub scouts and all kinds of uniforms scuffling through cordoned streets in communities everywhere. There are middle and high school kids in scratchy polyester band suits toting trombones and drums through crowds of local tax-payers. There are unknown and innumerable honorables riding proudly before local fire trucks in festooned festivities. There are a lot of parades.

Then there is Bristol. To borrow from hurricane nomenclature, The Bristol Fourth of July Parade is a category five.

I only had to actually go to the Bristol Parade once, in 1976, when I was working in public tv and had to wear a little white painters hat that read CH 36  – Have a Public Affair. It was. And I hope I never have to witness such a thing in pubic again.

I mean parades are all public affairs; Bristol is a mother orgy. There are Shriners. There are sippers and sinners, octogenarians and infants. People are painted and sweaty and in need of toilets. They holler and hoot and shoot noisy fire at strangers. After the patriotic retreat, the debris is a social archeologists dream.   Heck, even Clydesdale horses leave a giant dump in Bristol on July 4th!

All to say I was not an entirely willing viewer this Fourth, but I am a very willing and good voyeur especially when I don#t have to leave my living room. I watched the first third of this Fourth. It was different.

This not 1976.

The Money

My first scribbled note, like the line (falsely) attributed to Mark Felt (A.K.A. Deep Throat), was about the money and following it towards a truth ( or at least to a good story – as greed, power, and trickery will always write).  I wrote that the parade was a waste of it.

The Bristol Fourth of July Parade is a major event that is neither insignificant nor inexpensive. Acts, marchers, bands, and decorations are selected by and paid by the folk who ride in convertibles, are the town elders and get the fanciest hats and titles.  It is not karaoke night at the local Rappers Café.  But, it is a big fancy party for ancestral Bristol and they really do  it big and well.

Illusions never come cheap. And even our favorite Americana cartoonist  Norman Rockwell#‘s real life relations were dichotomous.

After the #64 division had passed, the parade proper began.

:

The War

My second scribbled note reads: The Care and Feeding of Jingoism and The Arts of Distraction. It was prompted by a giant float of cliche Patriotism from Raytheon that stopped me in my tracks and dropped my jaw and reminded me that this was a parade being presented in wartime. Scary.

Patriot Missile maker Raytheon#‘s motorized tableau was the size of several football fields (or

fighter jet carrier decks).Smiling red-white-and-blue-clad Patriot cheerleaders stood on a flower-covered  bow, gesturing like bad salesmen towards an ACTUAL REAL PATRIOT MISSILE   The crowds cheered. The float was Best in Parade.

The flowers made me think of Ferdinand the bull who would not fight; The Raytheon float just made me think of bull waste.

2013

But that was all then and this is all now and Buddy Cianci will still be allowed, even welcome, in Bristol.

The jets may be silenced by sequester, real hooligans sequestered by six-pack patrols. But the Fourth; July 4^th will fall and cherry bombs will burst in air.

We can’t help it.  It’s our country’s birthday. A lot of our soldiers are coming home and we’ll be in Bristol eating cake.

October 7, 2012

On Why We Take

From

“the entitlees”

The maimed, weak,  the  blurry or blind.

None of us wanted to end up in whatever our situations are.  None of us wished for the cushy life of crippleddom.   And if any one wants to trade  their abilities for a roll up easy street, I’ll sell you  my not so perfect passage for a food stamp.

We hate being “on disability”  as much as we deeply appreciate it.

So, to you, who feel protected, invested and saved, here’s some flashfact:

Other than that 1% cherry at the top of the sundae best, there’s not much to really hold on to when the heat’s on. The health coverage you think you have through your job may be terrific .. But if you get sick, you will lose that job, and that insurance, and that money.  It doesn’t take long.

We the “collectors” mostly collect a lot of excess aggravation and bullshit for whatever puny or punitive  pittance we’re collecting from something we did in the past.

Because we, the entitlees, had past lives: we were pre-existing before our conditions.  We were the soldiers, sisters, brothers, sweetest aunts and favorite uncles who got fucked up by something (disease, war, accident, or birth).  Whatever funds we once had, we now don’t. We  truly are grateful to be getting a few hundred bucks to live on.  And we are very indebted to George W Bush for getting Medicare  to pay for drugs and medication.

But you know: you who rarely have to wait and never are denied.  You know you don’t want to be us: always pissing across the tide and begging for what’s right and what was promised: always in the long and always wrong line.

Perhaps I don’t look like you imagine.

I used to be one of your daughters and if the spoon wasn’t silver, it was a worthy replica.  But all of it tarnishes in time and  times can go badly at times.

I’M  NOW A SEMI-PRECIOUS WEASEL. A facsimile of the old me

It started when I lied to my mother. “Everything’s fine; the job is great.”

Truth was, the job was gone, I  had an incurable debilitating disease, and things were decidedly ungreat.  Truth was, I was sliding into poverty and uselessness on a greased pole. Truth was I was becoming the ultimate shame for a good Yankee and Republican family: a dole-rider.

Before their eyes I would loss teeth and hair and start searching trash cans for Muscatel.   I’d start by dropping particles, then acid, then my kids on their heads.  I’d have a pet snake and a boyfriend named “Wha?”

This was when they started praying for a merciful and quick end to the bloodline.  Stop the spread of shame. Sacrifice for the good of the few.

I did feel terribly guilty about it – like the poor old dog who knows he’s not supposed to pee on the carpet, who knows his transgressions attach in effect to his sires, but can’t find a tree in the house.  I felt sheepish – but I moved towards the trough.

And, though it may offend, I believe I am living the American Dream

March

But this madness?    .

Insert whatever freaks of nature or happenstance are freaking you.

Yeah yeah. Lion roar!. but, for real, the lions want to kill us. even the best of us.