I read a really good article from Vox today about dealing with what they have dubbed “Trump Fatigue Syndrome.” It is well worth a read because I think it has a lot of validity. I know I’m not the only one amongst my like-minded friends and family who have experienced this to some extent. For me, part of it is that I really can barely stand to hear him speak. At times—especially if he is not using a teleprompter, which he seems to have embraced now despite ridiculing President Obama for using one—he sounds like an absolute idiot. I’m not the best public speaker but at least I can manage to put together a cogent argument without sounding like the village idiot. I feel offended and embarrassed by his poor language and oratory skills.
Anyway, I learned pretty quickly that if I wanted to survive this with my psyche intact, I was going to have to limit my intake. I have instinctively done what the article recommends. During the election season, I had CNN on all day, every day. Now I leave the TV off and listen to music. I obsessively read every political news story in the sites that are on my read feeder. I had already limited those sites to ones that were fairly credible so of course I do not read demonstrably false sites. Now I skim through those stories and try to glean the tidbits without falling into that time-sucking rabbit hole. I am trying to get back on track with my book reading, although I still read the occasional political book. That’s okay...I know when I need to read something else. That’s why I’m currently reading a book about some teenagers making a zombie movie.
It’s important to know when to step away and that is a hard lesson to learn. After the 2012 election, I took a fairly long (at least for me) break from politics. My guy had won and I needed to get back on an even keel. I jumped in again for the 2016 race and that one didn’t turn out as well for me (or for our country...or for the world...but I digress) and it hasn’t been easy to regain my equilibrium. I am doing that and sometimes that involves just stepping away for a bit. It doesn’t have to be for a month, or a week, or even a day. Sometimes I just need a few hours to cleanse my palate. Music and books are a big part of that for me.
It is up to each of us to find that outlet for ourselves. One thing I would add to the Vox article is that it is vital to find your Happy Place™. You need something to which you can retreat when you feel overwhelmed. Don’t let him steal your joy. Find it within yourself and nurture it. If it involves quietly reading a book, taking a walk to clear your head, spending fun times with friends and family, curling up with your critters, or rocking your face off at a concert, DO IT. He can’t take that away from you. I don’t doubt that many of us will see some dark days ahead and experience setbacks, some of them major. We are already seeing quite a bit of pushback, though, aren’t we? The courts issued a major smackdown on that horrid travel ban, he’s not making any friends in the intelligence community, people are starting to dig up the dirt on the Russian connection, and a handful of Republicans are balking at the new health care bill. There are limits to what our President can do and I think he is starting to find that out. I take heart in that.
So don’t despair, Warriors. It’s not going to be an easy four years*, but we have to support each other. Part of that is taking care of ourselves so that we have the strength and fortitude to be there for others when they need us. We stand together!
We don’t go see movies in the theater that often, mainly because we have so much to watch at home. It’s kind of a special treat to go to the theater. We have a couple of movie franchises that we always see in the theater: Star Trek and Bond. I think Tarantino movies are now included in that rarified air.
We had heard enough good things about Jordan Peele’s movie “Get Out” that we decided we wanted to go see it now rather than waiting for it on DVD or streaming. It even won out over the John Wick sequel, which is saying a lot because we loved the first movie!
No regrets on our choice. I am still jazzed over the movie and we’ve been home for over an hour. It is like a drive-in movie, but better. It has all the elements of a drive-in movie—or a B-movie, if you will—but it’s smarter and more subtle. The creepiness is insidious. On the surface, everything seems fairly cool, if a little awkward, but you just know that something deeper is happening.
I’m generally very quiet in the theater, but this was a movie made for a raucous crowd, and there were cheers, jeers, and laughter at various points throughout the movie. I’ll cop to occasionally yelling, “Kill him!” It was a pretty good crowd for an early evening show in the Bend, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this movie is a bona fide low-budget hit.
For a low-budget movie, it absolutely delivers. It is legit scary, it is dark and creepy, but there are moments that are both cringe-worthy and hilarious. It struck me as “The Stepford Wives” but about racism rather than misogyny.
This movie is a blast and well worth a watch, whether you see it in the theater or later. It is not one to miss!
As I look back on it, I guess it started at the theater that night. Or at least that’s when I first noticed that something was wrong.
We went out for dinner at one of our favorite places, and everything was great. A wonderful conversation with my cousin and his partner about their recent vacation, discussion about a possible cruise together a few years from now, great food, and plenty of drinks.
I suppose we should have known that something was wrong when the back entrance to the theater—one that we use often—was locked. I guess they didn’t have enough people to staff it.
It seemed like a pretty good crowd in the theater, although the seats next to us were empty until just before the show. I noticed that the box seats weren’t full and the floor and the mezzanine looked to be a little more sparse than was the case at most shows.
As the show commenced, we drank our beers, and as usual, I started to doze off part of the way in. Unless it’s something that totally captivates and energizes me, I can’t help it. It was a very low-key show and I drifted off for a moment. I woke up just before the intermission and we headed off to the restroom. I had to stand in line for a while, and even then, I didn’t really notice that anything was amiss.
We got back to our seats in plenty of time for the second half of the show. We settled in—I was wide awake now—and I sipped the wine my husband brought me.
That was when I started noticing it. The coughing. It came from several rows behind us. Then closer to us. Then a few seats down from us. Most of it sounded like a dry, hacking cough, but some of it was a...well, I guess I would say that it was a wet cough. At times, it was so loud that I couldn’t hear the actors onstage. It was constant. I exchanged a glance with my husband and I saw that he was concerned, too. I whispered in his ear, “What is going on? This is awful!”
It continued throughout the rest of the show, and although my initial feeling was annoyance, I ended up worried. I had never heard that kind of thing at a show before.
When the show was over, we got out of there as quickly as possible. We both expressed concern about the incessant coughing, and when I texted my cousin, he said that it bothered him and his partner, too. At that point, I don’t think any of us were feeling any real danger. I know I wasn’t, although I had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
We turned on the TV when we got home, and that’s when the news reports started coming in. London was first, although there was a lot of speculation that it began in the chicken farms in China. No real surprise there. Then the reports started trickling in from the East coast. Jersey and New York. There were incidents at the airport in Atlanta. People dying on planes, even a pilot! Quarantines of planes, sitting on the tarmac for hours. It was in the airports, too. People collapsing at baggage claim, airline agents keeling over behind the counter. It wasn’t too long before all flights in and out of the country were canceled. The president issued a statement that he would “bomb the shit” out of whoever was behind this.
But of course, that was empty rhetoric, and it was too late by that point, anyway. I doubt that anyone was behind it. Viruses happen, right? Anyone with half a brain knew this wasn’t just a possibility...it was an inevitability.
We stayed in contact with family and friends as long as the lines were operational. That lasted maybe two weeks after our night out at the theater. It became obvious pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be able to combat whatever this was. Without the help of the United States, the global health network couldn’t cope. We were able to watch the news during that time and saw the chaos and the mass deaths. We watched the footage of Atlanta when....
Never mind. I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to write about it. Hell, I don’t want to think about it.
It’s been a month now and we are still here. Neither of us has any sort of fever, cough, or other symptoms, and I’m certain we would have them by now if we had been exposed. We still have power, although we know that won’t be the case for long. We are working on what we can do about that. We’ll figure something out. I really don’t want to say too much. We hope to get out soon and check on people, but things look pretty dangerous right now. We haven’t seen any cars on our road for days, and we haven’t heard any traffic sounds from the nearby overpass. It’s so quiet now that we hear every little sound, including owls and coyotes. I’m a little afraid to walk out into the yard! Ha!
I think we’ll survive this. And by ‘we,’ I mean the human race. When we lost the news feed, the mortality rate was disturbingly high, but quarantine measures were being put into place. We can only hope that it will be enough to save the majority of people around the world. We just don’t know right now.
It occurs to me that Abraham Lincoln had a very bad night at the theater. I’m worried that our night at the theater might be worse. His assassination was horrible but I’m starting to wonder if we are looking at extinction.
In the meantime, we got some groceries...some peanut butter...should last a couple of days! Ha! I can’t resist the song references, even if I can’t play any music because we’re trying to save energy. I miss it.
I hope everyone is okay. I hope we’ll be okay.
***
Notes:
This is obviously not real. At least I hope it is obvious that it is not real.
Get your damn flu shot! Is it 100% effective? No. But it could provide you some protection against an influenza virus.
There really were people coughing like crazy at the show tonight. It was bad enough that I wanted to write this!
There really is a very serious strain of avian influenza circulating in China right now. It has about a 40% mortality rate. That is some serious stuff, people.
The current Resident is planning on cutting the CDC’s budget by about 12%. This would be disastrous for public health, both here and abroad. Lives will be lost.
I was on a big Clash kick for a while, which resulted in a natural progression to a Big Audio Dynamite kick. If you don’t know, B.A.D. was the post-Clash project of one of The Clash’s founding members, Mick Jones.
As I started looking up songs and lyrics, I fell down the rabbit hole. One link led to another and I stumbled onto an amazing discovery: an unreleased B.A.D. album!
It’s like rock and roll archaeology!
Yep, way back in 1997, B.A.D. recorded an album but due to a dispute with their record company, it was never released in physical format. The band released it on their website for free, but this was twenty years ago, so it was no longer available. Hell, their WEBSITE is defunct.
But like a dog with a bone, I was determined. I was up into the wee hours as I looked for a legitimate source for the album. I finally found it and when I did, I was blown away. I was up until 5 AM listening to it and I think it is some of their coolest work. What a shame it was never released! It looks like there were several mix tracks on the original download and I was unable to find a source for those, so if anyone can hit me up, please do so!
As much as I love discovering new music that trips my trigger, finding undiscovered music by old favorites is a bit sweeter. Just when you think you’ve heard everything that is out there by them, you find new stuff and it’s incredible!
I adore Mick Jones. I think he’s a genuine musical genius and he continues to make music to this day. Any guy who can write a song like “Around the Girl in 80 Ways” (trust me, it’s sweet) is okay by me. “Admit you’re wrong when she is right.” Mick gets it!
Here are a couple of my favorite songs from this unreleased gem. And remember to keep seeking out music, whether it’s old, new, or new to you. It’s not going to come to you...keep searching. There is so much great music out there and if you tell me otherwise, I’ll tell you that you aren’t looking hard enough!
I often pass a church on my way home from the grocery store or the library and they always have a pithy saying on their sign. I think there is a website where churches get these sayings because I’ve seen other posts with the similar lame sentiments.
My personal favorite is, and always will be, “Stop Drop and Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell.”
Now that is some freakin’ WISDOM right there!
I don’t generally go around getting pissed off at church signs. I usually just roll my eyes and cruise right on by. But last week’s sign caught my eye and it really did piss me off.
It was the saying there in the photo.
I may or may not have flipped the sign off as I drove by. (Okay, I totally flipped off the sign. Double bird, too.)
I find that sentiment completely offensive. I live a full and happy life completely god-free, and I know plenty of others who do, too. Our lives are not pointless. How dare this church or any other church tell me that my life is pointless? (And let’s not even get into the fact that they are comparing me to a pencil. If anything, I’d choose to be a purple Sharpie, okay? Bastards.)
I have adopted a “live and let live” attitude towards others’ religious beliefs. As long as you keep it out of my government and out of our schools and don’t harm your kids or other people, it’s really none of my business. I don’t care. Your religion is your business. I’m cool with that! Just don’t try to convert me, okay? You will only succeed in irritating me and making me not want to be around you. I’m cool with your religion. I expect—indeed, I demand!—that you be cool with my lack of one. See how that works?
Anyway, so why does any church get off on posting such a hostile sign? And yes, I DO think it is hostile. It is saying that MY LIFE IS POINTLESS.
A couple of years ago, I recall seeing a Facebook post from a friend concerning religion and atheists. Another friend commented that they didn’t see how anyone who doesn’t believe in God (their capitalization, not mine) can possibly find any joy in life. I commented that I find joy every day in the things around me. I have a happy life with a husband who is a kind and decent man; I love our cat; I live out in the country in our own little wildlife preserve and I get to see all kinds of birds and other wildlife; I have family and friends who love me; I get to travel and see all kinds of interesting things and meet interesting people. I have so much music to listen to and so many books to read! Joy is everywhere!
Another friend commented, “Beth is one of the happiest people I know.”
The other friend (who didn’t get how anyone without a god could find joy) apologized to me, said that they didn’t know I was an atheist, and then they defriended me.
::sigh:: Okay. I get it. You don’t like having your ideas challenged. That’s fine.
But here is something that people like my former friend, or the church with the stupid sign, need to understand: there are many of us who live productive, meaningful, and very happy lives without relying on any belief in any sort of deity. We enjoy helping others, we have compassion, we want to do good in this world. We do it not because we will reap any reward in some potential afterlife. We do it because we live in the here and now and we want to help in the here and now. It’s not because we want to feel good, although helping others definitely feels good. We do it because it is the right thing to do for our fellow human beings, for our fellow creatures on the planet, AND for our planet!
All that without any sort of god. Kinda crazy, huh?
I won’t be attending your church, you with the nasty sign. I would never say that YOUR life is pointless. I don’t think it’s very nice of you to say that MINE is.
Ken is out with his mentee at a hockey game tonight, so I was on my own for dinner.
I decided to watch a couple of episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Hulu. With her recent death, I had seen a few clips of the show and remembered how much I enjoyed it. For whatever reason, it was one that I didn’t go back and watch multiple times like “I Love Lucy” or “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” But I watched it in real time back in the ‘70s, and I even watched the spinoffs, “Rhoda” and “Phyllis.”
I watched the first two episodes of the series and it was like a total wallop of déjà vu. When it originally aired, I was in junior high and high school, sitting around and watching TV after dinner, and with maybe five channels—tops!—it wasn’t difficult for me to be able to persuade my parents to watch a show like MTM. I mean, everyone loved Mary, right?
I was struck by just how engaging MTM was as Mary Richards. Kind, funny, smart, and as Mr. Grant said, “You’ve got spunk! I hate spunk.” Her movements, her body language, her expressions...just perfection. Valerie Harper as Rhoda was brash, self-deprecating, tough, but with a heart of gold. And Cloris Leachman as Phyllis was just brilliant. There was so much implied in what she said and did, and it was so subtle.
As I watched, I realized how much this show probably shaped my attitude about being a woman. Whether in the workplace or at home, married or single, Mary Richards was a role model for so many of us, even if SOME of us (raising hand) didn’t truly realize it until just now.
What really struck me was this exchange in the very first episode of the series. Mary’s ex-boyfriend, a doctor, comes to visit her in Minneapolis. There seems to be the possibility that they might get back together, but she quickly realizes that she broke it off with him for all the right reasons and she had no desire to get back together with him. He asks if she really just told him goodbye and she says yes, I suppose so.
He says: “Take care of yourself.”
She says: “I think I just did.”
Maybe it’s a matter of looking at that from a much older perspective from when I first saw it, and from having been there a few times myself, but HOLY SHIT. Is that one of the most powerful moments for a woman? Yes, it is! I think most of us have been to that point, where we know that it is time to put ourselves first. To come to the realization that you don’t give a fuck about what your parents will think or what anyone else will think, or that some people will completely shun you and be angry with you for your decision. That you are better off on your own. I speak from experience here. It’s better to be happy on your own than to be in a bad relationship.
To say, “Enough. I want to do what is best for me, and that means not having YOU in my life. I’m better off taking care of myself and I am perfectly capable of doing so.”
I was going to write that I’m sure that holds true for plenty of men, too, but you know what? It’s not the same. In 1970, when this show came out, it was still a pretty radical idea that women didn’t need to be married to have a fulfilling life. And when you come from a very conservative, religious family, divorce was still a stigma. When I got a divorce in 1989, I was worried that my parents would be angry with me. At one point, I felt like they were taking sides against me with my ex because for whatever reason they kept in touch with him for a while, and my Dad set me straight about that pretty quickly. He said they loved me totally and my concerns were unfounded. (Pro tip: maintaining relationships with ex whatever-in-laws is usually not a great idea, although there can be mitigating circumstances.)
So for Mary Richards to be a single working woman and to be happy and fulfilled was a big deal at the time. In watching those two episodes tonight, after not having seen any for decades, it made me realize that Mary Richards had an effect on me and I didn’t even realize it.
Here’s to you, Mary Tyler Moore, and here’s to you, Mary Richards. You were both trailblazers and I am grateful.
Off to farm, off to State, each going our separate ways
Graduation message still sweet in our ears
~~ “Long Gone Long” by The Rainmakers
A few years ago at a dinner after the funeral of a family member, I was sitting at a table with some of my cousins, my Mom, and my sister Diana. I don’t recall exactly what we were talking about, but my cousin Curt said to me, “Since you’re the token liberal in our family, I’ll ask you this,” and my sister Diana didn’t say anything, but just raised her hand. Curt looked at her and started laughing, then said to my Mom, “What did you DO?!” Mom just kind of laughed and shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”
If any of that sounds mean-spirited, it wasn’t, not at all. It’s something I still laugh about, and Curt and I have been having interesting and respectful discussions since our college days. We still get a chance to have an occasional chat and I always enjoy them immensely.
It leads to something that I have pondered quite a bit: since I come from a conservative family, in a conservative state, and grew up in a very conservative small town, how the heck did I end up a flamin’ liberal?! Same with my sister Di and with Cousin Shane. This is something I’ve even discussed with Di and Shane, just because I’m curious about how that could happen. What was different about us?
A few things spring to mind.
Music
To continue to use the three of us (me, Diana, and Shane) as examples, we all got into music at an early age. Diana was a Beatlemaniac and I was listening to her 45s and albums from the time I was probably six years old. (She taught me how to do the Monkey.) Shane and I really started getting into music even when we were in grade school and things really took off when we got into junior high and high school. I think it’s fair to say that we were obsessed. We started off mild, with stuff like The Eagles and Journey, but then we discovered bands like Queen and Cheap Trick and Heart and then holy mama, PUNK ROCK hit us like a hurricane! I subscribed to Creem magazine and I think I subscribed to Circus for a while, too. We read about these crazy music scenes in New York and London and pored over lyrics and obsessed about the music as well as the musicians.
I grew up in a fundamentalist religious household and rock music was often seen as something satanic or evil. I was never forbidden to listen to it—that train had already sailed—but there were always sermons at church, or books laying around, about the dangers of rock music. I used to laugh about it at the time, but you know what? I look back at it now and I realize that there really was an inherent danger in the music.
Not that it was satanic or evil or contained occult messages—that’s just silly. But there was definitely a message there about thinking for yourself, questioning authority, being anti-establishment. And there was plenty of stuff about sex. I mean, hey, it’s rock and roll! So yes, that is dangerous to the conservative, religious atmosphere in which I was raised. Even beyond all that, it gave us a glimpse of a lifestyle other than our small-town Midwestern existence. There were big cities where things were happening, people were doing their own thing and being themselves, people were going out at night and just totally rocking out! Music was a taste of other things out there. Things we wanted to experience.
Intellectual curiosity
I was going to make that heading “books,” but I realized that Shane doesn’t read a lot of fiction books. I changed it to what I did because while being a reader means that you are undoubtedly intellectually curious, you can still be intellectually curious without being a reader. (Does that make sense?) Di and I have always been avid readers, both of nonfiction and fiction (and the occasional science textbook for me), but Shane has his own way of being intellectually curious. After a recent trip to Europe, he is currently working on learning some phrases in Polish. Just as with music, reading and continued learning allow us to get a glimpse of other worlds, other cultures, other ways of life. Shane and I also took a lot of German in high school (and I took some in college), and we agree that a second language should be mandatory in high school. It taught us so much about a different culture and really opened our eyes to a bigger world.
Travel
When we were kids, we went on a lot of trips with our parents. My family usually split our summer and winter vacations between Minnesota and Florida, respectively. Not a lot of variety there, but on the drives up to Minnesota or down to Florida, we stopped at a lot of places along the way to learn about history. Shane went on a lot of trips with his Dad, to places out East and to the western states. We all still love to travel and we all seem to have that same urge to learn things when we go to places. I always joke about how when I go to someplace new, I end up buying a half a dozen books about it! (I’ve got plenty of books about New Orleans and Las Vegas if you want to borrow some!) This is also related to the above categories because when you travel, you get to meet people and see cultures that you aren’t familiar with. You get to see that there is a lot more to the world than what is in your little local bubble.
Going off to college
This is the only one that applies just to me, and I think I might be the one who needed it the most. (Di and Shane both attended our local Indiana University extension.) I went off to the big city of Muncie, Indiana (haha) to go to Ball State University. Ball State is a good-sized state college, with an enrollment of maybe 20,000 when I was there. I lived in dorms my first three years and then off-campus for my senior year. What an eye-opener that experience was! All of it. I was around people from all over the state and some from other countries. There were party kids, there were studious kids (I tried to dabble at everything!), there were frat boys and sorority girls (we didn’t hang out much with them, although we partied a lot at the “Animal House” type frat), there were rich kids and there were kids like me. Not only did I get to meet all kinds of people I had never met before, it broke me out of that mold that I’d been stuck in when I was in high school: the nerdy bookworm type. I realize now that that isn’t a bad thing, but when it’s your senior year in high school and you don’t get invited to the prom, it’s kind of like, “Well...fuck.”
Anyway, all that changed when I got to college. People liked my weird sense of humor. They liked that I was into music. The guys at the local record shop got to know me and always had suggestions for me. I dated the drummer in a band called The Generics. I went from being an unpopular kid in high school to being voted Resident of the Year on my dorm floor my junior year. (I still don’t get that! I also got the Foulest Mouth award. THAT I understand! Some things never change.) I’m not sure how much anyone other than the professors were interested in my intellectual capacity, but that was okay. I got a good education but I also got the opportunity for people to like me for ME, and to not judge me based on what they had heard from someone else in a tiny school. As a painfully shy kid, I really needed that. I still remember the name of the first boy who told me I was beautiful: L*** V. R*****. Okay, fine, he was drunk...but it was stunning for me to hear that for the first time. So much so that I still remember his name after all these years! Like, “Hey, wait a minute...you can be smart AND pretty??”
(Aside: Holy shit! I just looked him up and he’s an accountant in Indianapolis! That’s why I redacted his name. Not cool to put someone’s name on a blog entry, even if it’s for something nice. Cheers to you, sir. Your words are a nice memory for me and made a difference in my life.)
Honorable Mentions to:
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Second City TV, Beyond Our Control (a local show), Saturday Night Live, Fridays, Midnight Special, American Bandstand, Soul Train, and what the hell, even Dance Fever with Deney Terio!
I really don’t know if all of this culminated in me being a liberal in a red state. I do think that much of it had an effect on me. I read something a while back that I found shocking. There are a lot of people in this country who have never left their home state. I wish I could recall the exact percentage, but it was shockingly high to me...maybe 20%? When you are exposed to nothing other than the same influences you have had from your first moment, how can you learn and grow?
I hope this doesn’t come across as “elitist.” Heck, I live in the heartland...how can I be one of those coastal elites? Ha! And it’s not to say that those who didn’t do any of these things didn’t end up with the same outlook that I have. However, I do feel that my worldview is different from a lot of the people in my area. I don’t know the exact combination of factors that set me on a different path, but I’m glad it’s the one I took. I’m happy with being me.
And even though I never got to go to prom, I had plenty of chances to work it out on the dance floor later!
