The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Give the guy some credit, he never quits. He’s the proverbial bad penny, the Grinch who stole America. And if he wasn’t totally pissed off before, he is now. He feels your pain and shares your grievance. Oh boy, he’s going to be the warrior king who seeks revenge on the woke crowd the right wing blame for their grudges and resentments. He’ll be their bully, the righteous dude who kicks sand in the faces of the wimps. He’s their outlaw ruler, the bad boy who beats up on the minorities they hate too. And yesterday he was indicted, first President in our history to receive the honor. You better believe he’s spitting nails down there in Muddy Lago.

You might be wondering if you’re one of the wimps, one of the woke, one of those retribution will be meted out on. Good chance you are. Hitler had a few favorite targets. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals. If you’re going to be the champion of the aggrieved, best to find a scapegoat. Or two. Maybe a lot more. Trans, gays, the press, Hollywood, the educated elite, the coastal folks, blacks, most everyone not white, immigrants, college professors, Democrats, liberals — it’s a wide net. Chances are pretty good you’re on the hit list of those who need swift retaliation and harsh vengeance. Lock em up! Lock em up! He means You, buddy.

Course, if you attack too many groups, you run the risk of losing their support. Sure, we might want revenge on, oh, drag queens, but call for the castigation of dozens of enemy lists, what’s left are the Fox News addicts and I seriously doubt they make up a majority of Americans. Maybe in the South, probably in Idaho, but it’s a big country and most of us wimps aren’t too worried that Hollywood is undermining the nation’s morality. Or what shoes M&M cartoon ads are wearing. Last survey I saw asking if ‘woke’ was derogatory or not, most folks thought it was a positive thing. Most of us would like to believe we’re not dozing off at the wheel, much less aim the car at those who actually are awake. And more to the point, most of us don’t want Donald driving anything more lethal than his golf cart. Anybody in his foursome maybe ought to be careful.

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Maybe you’re not like me — and geez, I hope you’re not — but I’m at that juncture in life where reminiscing is a better pastime than daydreaming about the future. I know, I know, Be Here Now, practice Mindfulness, yeah, yeah, but I’m 72 years old and there’s a lot more in the rearview than what’s up ahead and okay, I realize I need to keep my eye on the road for what’s coming up. Nevertheless…

Jimmy Buffet has a nice song called A Pirate Looks Back at 40. Talk to him about Mindfulness, I’m nearly twice that age. Let me drag up memories and regrets, wins and losses, successes and defeats, mistakes and triumphs, I think I earned the right.
My old man is 99. In a month or so he’ll break the century mark. I haven’t got a clue what he thinks about all day long in his small room in the assisted living joint we put him in. I talk to him every day and for the past couple of years his dementia has gotten worse to the point he doesn’t know what day of the week or sometimes what hour of the day. Gotta admit, sometimes I don’t either. Neither of us really cares.

I remember when my boxer, Dr. Gonzo, reached the age where she mostly slept next to the woodstove, maybe dreaming her old dog dreams, maybe not, seemingly content to stay warm, eat, hang around us all day. I suspect it’s us humans who think too much, worry too much, maybe lose sight of the small comforts old age affords us. We can just slow down, sleep a little more, fall into a more natural rhythm finally, one we fought tooth and nail against as obsessive ambitious human beings.

Me, I’m content lately to reminisce.

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In the wake of the Stanwoodopolis Chamber of Commerce’s spectacular crash and burn, numerous groups have jumped in to fill the vacuum left by the now defunct Chamber. Over the years the Camano Chamber attempted to join forces with the city’s group without much success. Given that the island entrepreneurs vacated their own Visitor Center years ago, big surprise neither managed to create a larger vision. Stanwoodopolis, of course, suffered from the ‘twin city syndrome’, the toxic vestiges of east vs west that dates back to the pioneer days. Separate cities with their own city halls, schools, fire departments, all within a rock’s throw from each other, prevented mutual trust. Put a weekend art show on the east side, the west side felt slighted. History, for those who ignore it, has a way of getting the last laugh.

But … where there’s a vacuum, fools rush in. Jimmy Slattery, owner of the now defunct Rock and Gem Shoppe, stated recently that he is looking into a new group that would take the place of the old Chamber. “We’re going to call it the League of Capitalism,” Jimmy told the Cracker in an exclusive interview. “Fresh start, new blood, lower dues. We have some pretty adventurous ideas for reinvigorating the downtown flood zones. Nothing solid just yet, but you wait and see. I think the citizens of this town will be excited by what we’ll have to offer.”

Me, I’m not holding my breath. I’ve lived in a lot of places, some small, some as large as Stanwoodopolis, a town metastisizing fast as new suburbs can be built, roads paved and the slap-boxes annexed, but none with a Chamber of Commerce run completely into the swamp. In its dying breath this Chamber needed to keep its final summer music venue in order to fulfill its fiscal obligations. Maybe they just needed a name change, something other than commerce in the title. At any rate, probably a merciful death. Out here in the hinterlands the Island Chamber plugs along, offering the Stanwoodopolis chamberites a membership if they want to join up with the realtors. Business as usual, boyz, business as usual. And Jimmy, best of luck.

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Maybe I’ve neglected to mention that before I graduated from the Univ. of Wisconsin with two useless majors in Sociology and English, I panicked and took some courses senior year in Education. If nothing else, I could at least teach youngsters grammar, punctuation, syntax, political science, demographics and the like. Not as if I had a passion for teaching kids stuff they couldn’t use either — at least for jobs and careers — but we humanities majors are a bit more ‘high-minded’, meaning, we weren’t in it for the bucks.

Today I drove past my old school, Cherokee Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, still standing albeit a lot more shabby than the shabby it was when I taught there in 1972. I taught 8th grade English and no, not sociology, history, a subject I had never seriously studied, one my principal decided I could study a night or two prior to each class. Which begs the question, why the hell did I need a college degree?

My last professor in Education, the aging hag who made my last semester miserable, called me in for a conference to offer me her nomination to Phi Beta Kappa in exchange for my commitment to teach secondary rather than pursue a masters or doctorate. Since none of the above mattered one whit to me, I said, yah shure, u betcha. Some bargain. But I took a job teaching. A deal’s a deal.

This, like I said, was 1972, hot on the heels of the campus riots, student strikes, ROTC bombings, radical outrage. You think I was going to be an orthodox teacher? C’mon, we were tearing down walls. My kids got the full-bore, no grades, no seating chart, no authoritarian prison guard teacher expecting to revolutionize his classroom with guerilla tactics. We read outside with kids in the trees, made movies of zombies who were the kids in other classrooms, created our own syllabus, butted heads with fellow teachers and the administration and even some conservative parents. Oddly enough.

The kids were confused, the staff was confounded, the administration was concerned and I was pretty sure my career was kaput. We were all correct. C’est la vie, I guess. And so, ironically enough, the rest of my life my college degree wouldn’t be guaranteeing me employment. Lucky break for me.

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In the tidal wash of the Silicon Valley Bank debacle, concerned citizens are making a run at our local banks, fearing that the dominoes are falling fast now. Right wing commentators are blaming the woke culture of the SVB, don’t ask me how that might be the underlying cause of a bank’s default when they’re actually due to large investments in long term federal bonds locked in at interest rates pretty low when inflation is driving those rates steadily upward, an awkward moment when investors started pulling out and the bank was forced to sell at losses in the bazillions. Maybe the woke CFO was cow-towing to the Tech Boyz’ interest in promoting trans agendas, but … somehow I doubt it. Personally, and in full disclosure, I didn’t graduate from Wharton with a bizness degree, but I think maybe the Trump administration’s easing of banking guardrails might have been more of a reason than woke cultural concerns. Just saying….

Time maybe to haul down to our own local fiduciaries and relive the runs of the Depression Era, line up at dawn and hope to pull our life savings out before the bank goes into default. No doubt their own woke agenda makes them vulnerable to blatant mismanagement. Not sure what exactly but if you can’t trust the True Conservatives, who can you trust? George Soros? Just because he’s a billionaire? Savvy investors probably should know that their individual accounts are guaranteed by the government up to a quarter of a million bucks, an amount maybe 1% of local depositors have socked away in the Bank of Stanwoodopolis. I guess folks never watched Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life tossing out his own money to nervous citizens to save the bank and of course the town. Where’s Jimmy when we need him?

Jimmy, needless to point out, is a Hollywood creation. Part of the woke culture. Trans, Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, litter boxes in schools. That Hollywood. Time, maybe, to pull your money out of the bank. Before it’s too late. Which is why, in this time of existential fiscal peril, we at the South End Fiduciary Strategies are here to serve a nervous public with creative options for that cash you’ve had the wisdom to withdraw from your local woke banks. No need to bury it in the back yard behind that dead 1967 Chevy van you intend to restore some day or gamble it on cryptocurrencies. At Fiduciary Strategies our team of investment counselors will assist you in low risk, high return monetary tactics guaranteed to weather the turbulent waters of today’s uncertain bank viability and the unsettled equities markets. Stop in today and put your hard earned dollars to work for you, not your woke banker. We might not be Jimmy Stewart but we aren’t Hollywood either. South End Fiduciary Strategies. We’re the team you can trust.

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