Skip to main content

Self-made, by the Glow of Our Brows

This is not, you know, exactly the land of milk and honey.  

 Sometimes, in the Promised Land--perhaps always in the Promised Land--there will be those who got there before we did, and if you do not, as the Chosen People of the Lord almost always do, take such measures as will cleanse the Promised Land of the people who think they got there before you, you will discover that they put up yard signs, and driveway signs, and other signs that you are Deluded Scum:  part of the 47%.  

 Being part of the Deluded Scum, undeniably new to the neighborhood, and being pointlessly curious about what the hill was after which the nearest main road was named--El Camino del Cerro--I decided to drive up to the end of the camino to see the hill.  

 It is a trailhead; that is to say, there is a parking lot there, and if you do truly believe you are one of the Chosen People who do not sweat, you can park your car there and slog off into the dry heat.  You will sweat, of course, but you do not have to admit it.  You can finesse it, as a purported Victorian saying from the 1950s says, by calling it something else:  "Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow."

 You cannot, though, finesse how unwanted you are by the Philistines who moved here to get away from you in the first place.  "Get Lost!"

 (Read absolutely nothing into the use of the name, "Philistines".  I do not care who owns or swabs the tomb where the baby Jesus was assuredly not born, nor who leaped up into heaven from which particular rock.  I am only amused at how preceding generations of immigrants howl and bellow at the succeeding generations of immigrants.)

 "Get lost!" the sign says, right next to the trailhead.  It is a tired chant.  The weeds grow over it, but the sentiment is sharp in mustard and catsup colors.  

 It is a sad way to live.  It is road rage at the end of a dirt road.  But what can be done about it?  Not much.  About all we can do is to open a bank account in the Caymans, or maybe Switzerland.  They will love us for whom we are:  won't they?  

 Unless they got there first, of course.  

 Pay no attention to them.  They are horses' somethings.  They sweat.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more