The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Just before Election Day a major blow hit our area, knocking out power, internet, phones and most remnants of what we like to call civilization.  Five days later, yesterday, the power came back on and we could get the dreaded election results we’d missed.  You know and I know and so does Q that this was no coincidence, this blackout, just another conspiracy to rig the polls while some of us could do no watching, not while we were struggling to stay warm, forage for unspoiled food, haul water and help the neighbors who didn’t have generators whining 24/7 for 120 straight hours.  Who could possibly know what tampering was at play down at the ballot boxes.  Or what last minute Dirty Tricks were being conducted in the electron darkness.

We fully expected the power might never return.  Possibly the entire country was cast into the Bronze Age, the coup Trump had planned for Jan. 6^th nearly two years ago might have taken place, the country might have declared martial law and the Proud Boys possibly confirmed to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court.  The Storm Qanon had predicted had manifested while we were occupied with surviving, little knowing the real occupation had arrived.  The Red Tsunami had swept away democracy as we once knew it.

But … as is usual, paranoia might have some basis in reality, just not most of it.  Our state, Washington state, ‘woke’ that it is, remained mostly blue.  Florida, well, there was your tsunami, with a hurricane close on its heels, headed right at Mar-a-Lago, another embarrassment for the President-in-Exile who refused to heed evacuation notices.  The Red Wave, the one predicted by nearly all the pollsters and pundits, washed weakly to shore.  As of right now, the House looks like it will go red, the Senate, probably a repeat of the Georgia vote, the state that will determine the majority.  From where I sit, power on, lights aplenty, water running, refrigerators working, internet back, phone working … I feel like we dodged some bullets.

If the women who voted based on abortion rights or the kids who voted to save the planet, I thank you.  If you were the dickwad who voted for Dr. Oz or thought De Sanctimonious was the answer to inflation or the Ukrainian war, hello, the country hasn’t gone totally batshit crazy.  Just yet.  Return to your idiot newsfeeds and hope to god your power doesn’t go out for five days.  Stuck with your own fantasies and conspiracy theories, you won’t make it.  Bolt the doors, load your AR-15’s, listen for the zombie apocalypse coming for you.  Exactly what you feared….

A bunch of us yahoos are gathering for the apocalyptic midterm election returns coming  this Tuesday, masochists all, hunkering down for what portends to be the end of civilization in America as we know it, plenty of liquid courage at the ready.  The pundits are predicting a Red Wave based pretty much on the price of gas and groceries, which are, according to the GOP, Biden’s fault.  No doubt the rest of Europe, the Chinese, hell, the entire world’s inflationary woes are Sleepy Joe’s fault.  That damn Joe!

I’m really not sure why we’re even having elections.  Plenty of Republican candidates have already declared that if they lose, the election was rigged.  If they win, it must be okay, fair and square.  Somehow when Trump lost and plenty of GOP Reps and Senators won in the 2020 fiasco, the elections were both.  Go figure.  My pals are thinking the worst this time around.  The demise of Democracy.  Post truth.  Fascism on the march here in the Yew Ess Aye and around the globe.  Doomsday for the Democrats.  Nothing short of a Proud Boy takeover.  Thank you, Donald J. Trump, for destroying America.

Me, I’m clinging desperately to a longshot  turnout by women and maybe even the younger generation.  I know, fat chance.  But the kids, you’d think with all the existential threats swirling around their little metaverse, they’d intuitively understand the absolute necessity to keep the bootlicking Trumpists from ascending to power.  Although … maybe they’ve drunk the Kool-aid too.  The women, that little agenda of the Supreme Court might have given them some inkling as to what’s coming.

Course, in the era of social media, all bets are off.  Black is white, good is bad, truth is bullshit and vice versa.  I don’t have a clue anymore.  Folks just believe what they read and see on their bubbled sites and only read and watch the sites they want to believe.  Maybe the Storm is coming.  Maybe Q is on the way.  Maybe Jesus is orbiting the planet, planning a Grand Entrance.  Maybe gravity is faux science.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve.  All this evolution to produce big brains and it comes to this, just chimps who invented the internet and the computer, then used them to make themselves stupid.  Serves us right….

Okay, so I got my 3^rd Covid booster, and yeah, I know, probably Bill Gates’ tracking devices too, but I’m willing to throw the dice, take my chances and see if I can keep from contracting Long Haul Covid in my advanced geezerhood.  Thought while I was at it, I’d take the flu shot too.  Being careful about money, if not nano-trackers, I googled up Medicare to see if they covered flu shots and yah, shure, u betcha, they did.  Except when I made an appointment at one of our local pharmacies, they said they couldn’t find my Medicare Advantage program that would cover it.  But … the nice man at the counter said since I’d made a reservation he’d discount the copay and once I got my correct card, they’d refund the money.

Maybe you know where this is going….  They’re NOT going to refund any money and my good friends at United Health, a nice woman who can speak English but not very well, told me they do not cover flu vaccinations.  What the &%@#?  Last year’s flu vaccine was covered, but by a different pharmacy.  You tell me….

What I think, other than feeling duped for 70 bucks, was how impossible it seems to navigate our best-in-the-world health care system.  This is enrollment time in case you missed getting three or four calls per day from potential future healthcare providers.  If I thought it would help, we’d change to one that offered flu shots … but of course they’d probably be the one that had a higher co-pay or hidden fees or worse premiums.  If I was a Philadelphia lawyer with a medical and pharmaceutical degree, one willing to read the terms of agreement of multiple providers, compare the apples and oranges with the melons and bananas, sure, I’d switch over every damn year just to see if I could get a preventive care vaccination for free.

With only so much time left of my Golden Years I thought maybe I could spend that research on something, oh, slightly more enjoyable and far less maddening.  Next year I’ll probably just take my chances on the flu.  If I come down with a case of it, maybe then I’ll read the fine prints of these world class health care providers while I’m recuperating.

Some years Halloween comes early to the South End … and some years it never seems to leave.  Down here in the nettle regions the kids get driven north to the Stanwoodopolis Suburbs where the candy flows like bottled mineral water and the sodium lights force phantom predators back into the shadows.  This season we just got the fright-filled statistics from studies that show philanthropy by the wealthy dropped by nearly 5%, wealthy being those who made over $200,000 a year.

I guess the candy jars are going to empty a tad earlier when our little ‘Takers’ roll up to the festooned front doors of the Tricklers.  Forget that trickle down theory of supply-siders, I think the drought of charity may be a prolonged one.  And no, it isn’t the result of Global Warming….  Next year we’ll probably see moats around the castles and the gated communities will add spikes to the fences.  Treats for the beggaring poor?  Fuggedaboudit!  When times get tough, some hearts get harder.

In the same study they found that the poorer folks had actually increased their charitable giving by as much as the wealthy had decreased theirs.  I suspect when we belong to a community, we think of neighbors as real people struggling with the same problems as the rest of us.  We don’t think of folks who can’t afford health care, folks who lost a job, folks who had their house repossessed as vampires feeding on the Body Politic.  They’re us.  They’re not who we ‘Unfriend’ when they need help the most.  They’re who we look at in our own mirror.

It would be way too easy to demonize the rich.  Oh, sure, we could send the kids out this Halloween in tuxedoes and Armani suits.  Wearing fangs.  But charity, like our mothers said, begins at home, so maybe we should trickle some down to them.  And no, I don’t mean give them another tax break.  They already got Christmas 365 days a year.

Eco-activists are at it again in the art museums.  Following the tomato soup assault on Van Gogh, this week we have the mashed potato splatter on Monet.  I’m at a loss to connect the spud dots on this movement to turn art into a food fight, but I wish the anti-oil crowd would pick something other than museums to demonstrate their rage.  Although … I can understand using mashed potatoes.  After all, one of the better stories of Donald Trump as a kid was the one where his brother got sick and tired of Donald bullying him and finally dumped a plate of the stuff on the future president’s head, a humiliation that haunted him throughout his never ending childhood.  Let’s just say that Trump was a more appropriate target for the eco-spudsters than the Monet.

Hard to say what metaphoric point these folks are trying to make.  Other than maybe we ought to do something to save the damned planet.  Monet painted impressionistic ponds and flowers, nature through the lens of astigmatism, what’s not to like?  Maybe throw pies at Francis Bacon’s horror laden paintings instead.  Or toss spaghetti at Dali’s surrealistic melting clocks.  As if any of that would make sense to a public addicted to violence and social media trolling.

I mean, what’s next, strangle puppies at the dog pound?  C’mon, kidz, dumping on art is best left to the critics.  Even the philistine ones….  Go trash an elevator playing Muzak.  Superglue yourselves to a sports stadium.  Lash out at Hallmark cards or protest car commercials.  Go down to Wall Street and sling hash at the bronze bull.  Gotta be a hundred better pillars of greed or crappy art to make your statement.  Why pick on the best our culture has to offer?  You gonna actually kill the fat lady singing in the opera?  Piss on the collected works of Shakespeare?  Burn some books but only the really great ones?   Smash a Stradivarius using a leg of lamb?

I know, it’s hard, but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to pick up your game.  It may take a little imagination … or a lot.  Kind of why you might use Monet or Van Gogh or a few others as your muse, not your target.  Just saying….

Right off the get-go here I want to declare I’m a Plague survivor.  Two vaccinations, three boosters, fairly careful the past two or three years (who can keep track anymore?).  But so far so good.  So imagine my dismay when our President comes out and warns us we might be on the verge of nuclear annihilation.  And you thought climate change was something to worry about.

I guess you don’t have to sweat Long Haul Covid, forget about long haul anything when they drop the Big One!  I was twelve years old, a snot-nosed kid in Georgia when the Cuban missile crisis was putting us on the brink of … Atomic War!  Neighbors were building fallout shelters, stocking them with food and water, guns and ammo, figuring, I guess, they’d survive the holocaust and kill the mutants who banged on their door.  My school was conducting ‘duck and cover’ drills.  You think ‘Active Shooter’ drills are messing up kids’ heads, try Dr. Strangelove on for size — as the real deal.

So okay, there’s always some kind of existential threat, some virus or asteroid or robot apocalypse, some unexpected menace, government overthrow, a new war, famine and drought, another ice age.  You could maybe get used to one of those … but all of them coming at you at once?  I don’t think so.  Maybe just pull the sheets over your head, call your boss and tell him you’re sick, turn off the TV, cancel the newspapers, avoid social media and imagine a happy place.  A place you once lived in but forgot how to find again.  A place where the sun shines and children play, a Shangri-la-la far from the maddening crowd.  Puppies romp and butterflies fly.  Laughter fills the air like puffy clouds and worries drop away and evaporate.  Does that place really exist, you ask?

If it does, you know how to find it. It’s not on your GPS, you won’t find it online, you can’t find it past a secret door the other side of your Closet of Anxieties.   You want to worry about the future, it isn’t there.  The future is the last place you want to look.  Try right here….

In the aftermath of 9-11 when the Trade Towers were destroyed, I noticed a lot of friends, couples mostly, broke up.  Maybe just a coincidence, but it sure seemed like that event led to questioning everything from politics to marital compatibility.  After a couple of years of Covid isolation, I bet something similar is going on, folks trapped in their homes and apartments, slowly reassessing jobs and marriages and lifestyles, taking a hard look at new realities.

The South End String Band started up right after 9-11.  You need help with the math, that was 21 years ago.  We started out as a back porch ensemble, mostly beers and potlucks, pickin and grinning, no big expectations, just play some music, bbq, socialize, anything goes.  We ended up with two dozen folks but eventually whittled that down to 11, then started playing benefits, small gigs, eventually larger concerts, made 4 CD’s, ended up with 5 of us going into 2022.  Last two years we didn’t play very often, didn’t do concerts, didn’t even practice much, just waited for the Plague to run its course, no need for the band to be Super Spreaders.

So when the first member quit — by email —maybe we shouldn’t have been too surprised.  Next day, the second one quit … and shortly after that the third, all by email, nicely impersonal, definitely socially distanced.  21 years … and we get a digital WE QUIT.

Bands don’t generally have a long expiration date.  Tough life, a musician’s.  Road trips, groupies, drugs, crooked promoters, disruptive spouses, the inevitable corrosion of fame.  21 years is longer than the Beatles, longer than the Who, okay, maybe never catch the Rolling Stones unless we get blood transfusions like Keith Richards, and even then, probably not.

But here’s the deal: don’t write us off.  We got a banjo, we got a fiddler, we got a bass from one of the original band, we’re the South End String Band, dammit, and we’re not going anywhere … fast!  Stay tuned.

In case you haven’t been tuning in to the midterm election debates and their talking points, you might have missed the shocking news that schools around this once great nation of ours are installing litter boxes for the kids who identify as felines.  Yes, you heard right, there is an outcry from the far right, those defenders of family values, patriotism and birth gender to stop these extreme left wing radicals from turning our institutions of learning into a veritable zoo of children claiming cat status.  I know, it’s hard for me to believe too, but if candidates for school boards are sounding the alarm, you know it must be true.

What’s next? you ask.  Fire hydrants in every hallway for the canine identifiers?  Pastures for the equine crowd?  Milking stations for the bovines?  Is there no end to the madness of these leftist anti-MAGA’s?  I don’t know about you, but I for one think it’s time to get down to the PTA and demand that this animal transference stop!  Bad enough the kids want sex changes, now they want equal status as bestial middle schoolers.  By high school they would be fully devolved … and don’t get me going on evolution.  Another good reason to ban those books with extreme ideas.

Historians one day will look back at these troubled times where homosexuality was condoned, where children with sex changes could use the opposite sex’s bathroom … or the same sex bathroom … or, well, you know what I mean … where abortions were given out free to any and all, and the only thing stopping this all-out assault on our Christian values, our American values, was the vigilance of the folks who understood that Hollywood and the Sodomites planned to undermine everything dear to this society.  Like to keep and bear arms, just to name one fundamental right.  If kids are allowed to trans-species, how will the law abiding gun owning hunters know what is fair game and what might be someone’s feral kid?  Litter boxes are just the first step in the decline and fall of this once proud nation.  Make em use a toilet!

We got a tradition down here on the South End that when we want to purge our bounty, clear out our closets or empty our sheds, we drag the unwanted possessions down to the highway, slap a FREE sign on the treasures and let the passing motorists fight for the spoils.  Usually only takes half a day before someone slams on their brakes, jumps out of their pickup, does a cursory investigation, then grabs what items would fit in their closets or their sheds.

Sure, we could haul the stuff down to the thrift stores up north but they would charge money selling them to pay for their overhead and rental so why not skip the middleman and reach out directly to our fellow indigents?  I carried out two nice maple colonial chairs circa 1950, cushions reupholstered, mint condition (okay, pretty good condition), set them at the end of the driveway with a woman’s Schwinn bicycle and a rug.  The rug was gone in an hour, the bike in a day and the chairs — well, I suspect the new owner needed to find a truck or van, but they disappeared today, two days later.  Saved me that hellish trip into town, saved the scroungers mucho bucks, probably saved the planet too although I don’t want to get overly carried away here, just doing our part, no need to thank us or even throw a good review on Yelp or whatever social media you still think is worth the End of Democracy and Civilization as You Know It.

All I’m saying: down here on the island’s Banana Belt, capitalism has evolved.  The barter system still works, garage sales outpace the mercantiles now that Tyee Store is ancient history, non-fungible tokens have taken root at the History of the World Gallery … and roadside thrift stores bypass the backlogged goods waiting in ports from San Diego to Vancouver.   Future economists, no doubt, will study us.  Meanwhile, anyone need a perfectly good microwave, come on down tomorrow.  Satisfaction guaranteed!

I was visiting a friend who has a farm on the north end of the island last week, got a tour of the new calves that will be hamburger for us next year, a spin around the gardens and orchard, then a detour past a dilapidated building he planned to tear down.  He figured he could just jerk a couple of beams in the middle with his tractor and the whole kit and caboodle would collapse, easy as pie.  Naturally I told him about tying a rope to my old shed, hitching it to the pickup and driving away … only to have the entire shed, instead of collapsing in a heap, fall toward my truck, missing me by only a couple of feet.  Always happy to give advice based on my own idiotic misadventures….

Which got me to telling the story of the day when I had already finished framing and roofing our new house back in the last century and needed to cut away some studs in the downstairs for the massive masonry stove’s brick wall to be exposed to the bedroom for heat.  No big deal, I thought, as usual neglecting small details like bearing loads and beam calculations, just knock out a 2×6 or two, probably add some structural support …  you know, later.  But after removing the first stud, I didn’t notice the adjoining studs were starting to bow.  At least not until I knocked out the second 2×6.  Then I could actually watch the next ones in line bending with the weight they couldn’t support by themselves.

I tried to jam the last missing stud back into place but too late, the first story floor had descended too far for that so I ran into the next room, lopped off a few inches of the 2×6 and rammed it into place.  Whereupon it too began to bow.  If you can imagine what it’s like to watch your entire house slowly collapsing, you might have some notion of the panic I was feeling.  The question that ran through my fevered head went something like this:  at what point do you save yourself even if you lose the house, your life’s savings, your months of work and sweat?

One more shortened stud, I figured, and if that didn’t work I would have to get out from under the falling tonnage of a two story house succumbing to gravity.  It too was bowing once it got in partly in place and I’d beaten on it with an 8 pound maul I used for splitting rounds of firewood.  Amazingly, miraculously, the slow descent of the house stopped.  I rammed another stud into place and listened for creaking or cracking.  Nothing.  Completely wasted, I sat down to ponder what had just transpired.  And to count my lucky stars.  Later I would have to rebrace that bearing wall.  But … definitely later.

There is a nearly incalculably small margin between luck and catastrophe, success or failure, happiness or misery.  For me that margin is about an inch and a half.  The distance I never quite managed to raise the floor back to its original level.  It’s okay, it’s just fine.  You watch your world tilt on its axis, you maybe won’t mind if it doesn’t come back completely to its former orbit, just so long as you weren’t spun off.