The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some years ago I had a new neighbor and her husband buy the old schoolhouse next to the fire station up the road. Cute place, nicely restored by a glass artist friend who wanted to move to Portland to seek fame and fortune in the big city. Not that we’re the official Welcome Wagon of the South End, but we invited our newcomers over for dinner, got to know them over the following year and were surprised when we saw the For Sale sign on the front yard and their furniture gone. They had had grand plans for establishing a Tea Shop for her and a furniture shop for him on the island.

Okay, people come and go on the turbulent South End, for various reasons ranging from lack of health care in their proximity to the long and dreary winters. The grass is definitely greener here but folks get tired of mowing it. I get that. But what I didn’t get was these new found friends picking up and leaving without a fare thee well or a wave goodbye. Kind of makes a guy like me wonder if my judgement of folks is a waffle or two shy of breakfast.

Jump forward a couple of years and we’re on Orcas Island, wandering the tourist town of Eastsound when we pass by a little tea shop called, interestingly enough, Schoohouse Tea, a little too coincidental for my place in the cosmos, so naturally I want to go inside and see who’s behind the register. And yeah, it’s our old neighbor, more than a little embarrassed to be ‘discovered’ but after a few hems and haws and muted apologies over their fast escape velocity from the South End, she tells us the island just wasn’t spiritual enough for her tastes. Orcas, well, they’re basically refugees from the 60’s and she felt a kinship there she never got from us back on Camano, the island without a soul.

All righty, I guess the South End wasn’t her cuppa tea. We said good to see ya, good luck with the shop and your life, we got to catch the ferry back to perdition. Now the story might have ended here … except … a year later who should roll back into our little hellhole, the one without spirituality, but m’lady from the Age of Aquarius, building a house half a mile south of us. And better yet, she’d become a real estate broker!

I don’t pretend to be a guru of South End spirituality but c’mon, selling off our Paradise parcel by parcel, helping to clog our neighborhood with new traffic, cutting down the forest for McMansions, earning a living this way, trust me, that is not on the roadmap to Nirvana. And if we lacked soul before, I doubt selling used cars or real estate is going to bring us any closer to Shangri-La-La land. Money talks, they tell me, but not as loud here on the South End. That, I think, might be the key to our spirituality, what little we still have.

When I was a pup we were taught in school that the strength of this country was its diversity, the melting pot theory that different cultures blended together and the sum was greater than its parts. Course, looking back, what we were really saying was that immigrants were welcome from Western Europe. Third world countries, well, you could pick our fruit and vegetables for slave wages, we’ll turn a blind eye to illegal border crossings, got to have that labor force for the jobs the white kids won’t do any more.

Now we’re hearing that the Democrats want to homogenize the electorate, ruining the white Christian majority so they can win power pretty much for perpetuity, the reason being that foreigners won’t vote for the Republican Party, evidently because that party demonizes them as rapists and drug dealers and leeches on their society. Gee, ya think?

We got all kinds of names for this, white nationalism, Aryan Nation, racism, white supremist … but lately the nom de jour is the Great Replacement Theory. Sure don’t want a mixing of the races or the religions. White Christian country is what they want and watering it down with inferior people is their worst fear. And they know exactly who of us are inferior people. I’m not sure they really understand Christian values, but don’t tell that to them.

So much for the melting pot. So much for the slogan on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
No, we want to build a wall now and close that golden door. Maybe just another part of American History we won’t allow to be taught to our kids anymore. Along with slavery or Japanese internment or Jim Crow or Chinese deportations or … well, anything that shadows the idea of a lily white shining city on a hill. Making America great again isn’t making it white. It never was and it never will be. Jeez, give me a break….

Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, that, or just venting my irritation lately about my weekly shopping trip to the local chain grocery store. Quite awhile back my store put in automated checkout stations, something you might think is a good idea during the Pandemic plague era, protect the employees, protect you. Course, if you have a full shopping cart like I always do, that self check is problematic, items spilling over off the weigh-in platform, the time it takes to look up my broccoli, weigh it, decide if it’s organic, c’mon, I have to get home the same day and cook the damn stuff.

So naturally I gravitate to the lines where the human being says hello and moves my stuff three times faster than I ever could on the automated line. The trouble is, my store has decided in its apparent cost-cutting profit model to keep the check-out personnel to a minimum. Last week I got lucky, only one shopper ahead of me. Course, she had a cart loaded to the ceiling and to make it more nightmarish, she hauled out a wad of coupons gleaned from her newspaper ads, a guarantee of a long wait for all of us behind her.

To make my torture positively fiendish, she and the checker knew each other so it was a fine time to catch up on the happenings in each other’s life. For minutes at a time the checkout would stop, the gossip continue, the line behind me grow more agitated, me growing hot under the collar and finally time just stopped. Completely. Call Einstein, time had ended! I jerked my cart out of the cattle chute, went over to the self check and yeah, time started once again. Very slow, very very slow.

Yesterday I got behind another semi-truck load of groceries, the only check out aisle with a human, no bagger, and once again, call the ghost of Einstein, time stopped. And I swear to god, then it started to reverse itself. I was back in the line I’m always in, the one with no bagger, a yakking checker, a cart with a year’s supply of groceries and a fistful of coupons. And you know, you know as sure as you know the Big Bang theory, just before it’s your turn, just as you’ve started to move forward, the customer will ask for a rain check on that item she had a coupon for but was out of stock. Oh yeah, the Big Bang is going to happen all over again. When my head explodes….

“My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” said Justice Barrett in a speech at the Mitch McConnell Center in Kentucky last winter. Oh boy, that was before the leaked Roe v Wade draft that would overturn 50 years of precedent, something most Justices declared would be settled law. After the leak whatever trust folks had in the non-partisan court was pretty much shredded. Can you spell Dred Scott?

At this point in American history, at least the one we’re still allowed to teach without the stuff that might make students feel uncomfortable with, you know, native genocide, Japanese forced incarceration, slavery, KKK, lynchings, minor embarrassments like that, the last institution of capitol D democracy was the Supreme Court. Above the fray, unbiased judicial readings of the law, considered opinions unclouded by partisan politics, right? Right?

The Court was made a political pawn when McConnell refused to consider Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland because it was too close to the presidential election. The Democrats rolled over for this, always the pillow fighters in a political knife fight, but when Barrett was rammed through just prior to the next presidential election, well, it doesn’t take a Philadelphia lawyer to understand what court packing is all about. McConnell is a liar and a hypocrite, but then, all’s fair in love, war and politics, I guess.

So, Amy, to answer your assertion you made in a very partisan setting that the Court is not a bunch of partisan hacks, c’mon, who’s going to believe that now? You folks sold us a used car without the brakes and the wheels about to come off. Nice work if you can get it.

So you think ending a pregnancy is baby killing. Pure and simple like most things in life, right? No room for compromise on this, I guess, too bad for the victim of rape or the mother whose life is endangered if the embryo is carried to term. Tough luck, will of God, the Bible tells you so, whatever. A doctor who performs an abortion, they’re a murderer. Someone who helps, they’re an accomplice to infanticide. A pharmaceutical company that makes and sells an abortion pill, well, they’re selling poison and they’re killers. Pure and simple.

I wish I could think like this, all blacks and whites, no greys, no ambiguities, nothing that would keep me awake at night. Just read my religious text, Christian, Moslem, Dr. Seuss and find the answers spelled out. Women need to cover their bodies and their faces, music is evil, blasphemers should be punished. Says so in the Quaran. Says so in the Bible. Says so by the cat with the hat. Even when I refuse to believe science or the news, I can believe in that. And I have a hat.

The trouble is we need to all come to some kind of accommodation on what is right and what is wrong and what falls in between. What you call murder, most people in this country – and I literally mean most – consider this a woman’s health issue, a women’s rights issue, a question of who controls her own body, you or her. We could agree to make having a child less burdensome for the poor, we could make contraceptives and sex education available to more of us, we could make abortion something other than a desperate solution. But no, we aren’t really a very baby friendly nation, us Americans. Poor health care, high infant mortality rates, high mother mortality rates, poor parental leave programs, high daycare rates, do I need to go on?

If abortion is killing, what is selling handguns or semi-automatic rifles? Where’s your outrage? Where’s your consistency? Guns don’t kill, outlaws do? I will tell you, as warning, you may think you can tell women what to do but those days are long gone with Ozzie and Harriet and the Beaver. They’re not going to wear the burqa and they’re not going to turn back the clock to the Eisenhower Era. You may think this is making America great again, but you will reap the whirlwind of women’s rage. Be careful what you wish for….

The Southendomish Casino celebrated its Grand Opening last week. The ‘Big Hearted Little Casino” advertised itself as the gambling emporium with the most generous sluts in Puget Sound. Unfortunately, a typo in the Gazette brought unwanted scrutiny from the Sheriff’s department and the gambling commissioner, but the next issue’s correction cleared the air. SLOTS. Probably a lot of disappointed johns … but it IS a gambling joint, not a brothel.

Even so a small group from the Little Chapel in the Ravine, led by Pastor Paul, picketed noisily in the parking lot until Casino Security asked them to protest somewhere NOT on their private property. Trudy Hawkins and her husband Bobby lobbied to stand their ground against the Devil’s Playground, but Pastor Paul argued for setting up at the highway where their placards would be just as effective where cars turned in to the casino’s fresh blacktop entry. WOULD JESUS GAMBLE HIS PAYCHECK??? DON’T BET AGAINST HELL! An hour of marching in circles on the shoulder, Trudy needed to use a restroom and so did Wanda Jenkins, but damned if they were going to go into the casino to relieve themselves. Pastor Paul, always the mediator, reckoned they’d made their point anyway so the little band of righteous warriors broke for a potty stop. By then the Casino parking lot was crammed with their neighbors and friends hoping to cash in on generous slots and inexpensive bar specials.

The South End doesn’t have a patent on Sin, but we sure welcomed a place to house it. At least the first few days….. Generous or not, the casino always won over time, although plenty of folks happily tell me they’re lucky at the tables. The Laws of Probability don’t apply apparently, or else their bookkeeping is sloppy. I don’t think the Southendomish are going to get rich, not so far from the freeway. But I’m betting they’ll do okay even WITH the folks who never lose.

It’s not uncommon down here on the South End to be at the leading edge of the breaking wave. So far ahead, actually, that those trailing behind misunderstand us. And of course misunderstanding leads to mistrust and mistrust leads to avoidance and avoidance leads to contempt and contempt leads to fear and fear leads to hatred. We artists understand this implicitly. Or at least we like to say that is why our work is reviewed with such negative criticism. We’re just ahead of the Curve. We’re misunderstood. We’re too sensitive for this world.

Just recently the Institute of Medicine called for a review of a malady we South Enders have lived with most of our lives, one that heretofore was considered, not a disease, but a psychosomatic condition. Those who have never known its symptoms easily viewed us as whiners and misfits, slaggards and sloths. We were treated as psychological lepers, shunned by our newly arrived neighbors and subjected to their silent scorn, just as those with depression and anxiety were once similarly abused before science substantiated the underlying root cause. We suffered silently, secure in the knowledge that we were victims of a disease little understood or studied by the medical community.

Until now. What previously was diagnosed by our decidedly non-medical neighbors to the north as chronic laziness or chronic fatigue syndrome has now been deemed a true physiologic pathology deserving of a proper name: Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID), a crippling affliction most of my buddies and me have lived with for years with little sympathy from our mizzuses. Well, guess who’s going to have to apologize now, eh, little Miss Critical?? And, with a kinder gentler healthcare system in place, maybe now we can get the care and treatment we need … and even a sizeable disability check to help us cope with our difficult lives.

So next time you see a South Ender balking at work or employment, maybe you’ll show a bit of compassion. All I can say is you better hope this isn’t contagious.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy received a standing ovation from House Republicans during a meeting on Wednesday after he addressed leaked audio from a phone call he made days after the January 6 Capitol riot.

Just to recount the events that led up to this standing ovation from the Grand Old Party, Rep. McCarthy denied he ever made disparaging remarks about m’lord Trump, going so far in those comments where he stated he would ask His Majesty to step down, things had gone too far, insurrection had been incited and encouraged without condemning the storming of the halls of government. He didn’t say that, he told reporters, but of course … then came the transcripts and audio of the phone call where he had said all those things and more.

Honesty these days is a devalued value for the Republicans, obviously. Caught in a bald faced lie, some folks might be chagrined, some might apologize, some might ask forgiveness. But not the GOP leader. And not the House Republicans. Truth? YOU COULDN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! Now, if this was just cutting down the Washington family cherry tree, we might shake our head and tsk tsk a bit. Trying to overthrow the election and the government, calling for the head of Mike Pence, sacking the Capitol, planning the revolt, I don’t know, call me Pollyannish, but geez, this is a bridge slightly too far. And what I fear here is that these folks would gladly do it again, just doing a little less texting and phoning in case the press got hold of the evidence.

Remorse? No sir, no remorse. Apology? Get real. A standing ovation? C’mon now, have you no shame, sirs and ladies? Make America Great Again? What kind of America is this? Because I don’t think our parents would recognize it. My old man who fought in World War 2 might. It would look more like the country he fought than the one he fought for. Zieg Heil!

Well, it’s a sad day down here on the South End for many of the faithful congregation who worshipped every Sunday with the man we called Father
Freddy. Father Freddy was summoned home far too early to the Halls of Heaven this week and his sudden departure was a terrible shock to his many followers, many of whom have held vigil at the make-shift church that once was the Tyee Grocery. Candles flickered in the old concrete block store, giving a mournful reminder to traffic out on the highway that one of our own has passed.

Father Freddy died the way he lived, doing what he loved. He was what the press called — with so little real understanding — a Nettle Handler, one of those men who believed that the Word of God could be divined through manipulation of the dangerous weed. Every Sunday, as his congregation held their collective breaths, Father Freddy would grab those eight foot stalks of Itching Torment and squeeze Testimony from each and every one as the congregation moaned and swayed and sang and prayed. Every Sunday, until this last, Father Freddy would wrassle those stinging stalks to their Rightful Place, prone against the homemade pulpit of stacked Coca-Cola crates left over from Tyee Grocery’s halcyon days.

“Get thee BACK, you poisonous serpents,” he’d yell, wrapped in their toxic embrace. “You hold no fear for those assembled here!” he’d holler, soon to be victorious. And as One, the entire flock, exhausted from exhortation, would wail their Hosannahs on High, their faith once more confirmed and restored.

Last Sunday, Father Freddy succumbed to the hideous stings of a 10 foot monster he’d grown under halogens in the nettlearium behind his trailer, a greenhouse filled with stingers of every size and variety. Parishioners wanted to call 911, but Fred avowed that his faith would sustain him. Horrified, they watched him slowly scratch himself to death. Services will be held this coming Saturday in Father Fred’s special grove of wild nettles back in the ravine behind the church. Gloves are recommended. Donations can be made to the Nettle Survivor Network in the name of the Nettlecostal Church. Father Fred, I know, will be Sorely missed!!