The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Well, we are past the virtual conventions. Actually, considering Trump gave his nomination acceptance speech from the White House and his Sec. of State offered his endorsement while on a state sponsored trip to the Middle East, we are past conventions period. Laws too. So now we can go down the home stretch in what will no doubt be the ugliest of ugly elections in our history. Huugely ugly.

And in case the circus wouldn’t have three or more rings under the Big Top, we have police killings, Black Lives Matter protests, antifa rioting, white supremacists offering vigilante assistance, Post Office shenanigans, the continuing Covid plague, the whole shebang plowing fertile ground toward the November election which will no doubt take a few days to count all the late mail-in ballots. After that all hell breaks loose, count on that and take it to the bank.

Nobody is going to feel unsullied after a couple of months of mudslinging lies and horrorshow scare tactics. If this thing is close, batten down the hatches, a Cat 5 storm will flood the country until after Christmas into a bleak New Year. I’m like you, I’m really forward to what’s coming. America is going to be great. Again. What I think Mr. T meant, but misread his teleprompter, was America is going to be greater. You might even get tired of so much greatness. Our suburbs are going to be safe for white women. Again. Our employment numbers are going to be the best in history. Again. Not like they are now. Like they were back when America was great the first time. Or was that the second? The stock market is going to keep going through the roof so if you have a job you might consider calling your broker. Or get one. Use that payroll tax break. By the time you have to pay it back your stocks should double. That’s how the Big Boyz do it and now you can too. In the Greater America.

In the second term, if Mr. T wins, racism will be a thing of the past. Although in this term it doesn’t exist. Biden wants to defund the cops even though he says he doesn’t want to defund the cops. There goes the cities. And the suburbs will be sure to follow, all those looters and rioters and rapists, worse than the immigrants, wanting equal rights when we all know they have equal rights already in the pretty great America but nothing like the greatness that’s coming to this land of the free.

My friends are worried this guy will get a second term. My friends obviously don’t want a greater America. They think the election will be rigged or that the guy won’t leave the White House if he loses. Some of them think he might start a war with North Korea or who knows who, wag the dog, declare a national emergency, make Ivanka queen, send in the troops to restore Law and Order, ban MSNBC and the NY Times and lock up Bezos for distorting the truth in the Washington Post. Me. What, me worry? I’ve already seen what a great America looks like. I’ve already learned what kind of fellow citizens I have in this already great country. I know for a fact that we get the Leaders we deserve. Me worried? No, I’m scared to death….

By now you probably realize that the world you thought you lived in is not the world you actually live in. You thought the Covid Plague was keeping you from what used to be normal, that it was ravaging across the land, killing tens of thousands, 186 thousand, but now you realize the Pandemic was defeated by the courageous and farsighted actions of the President you thought you disliked. In fact, the man you thought was selfish and cruel is actually very kind, maybe the most unselfish and most kind person in this country. You thought he was racist but then you must have noticed that people of color at his convention gave testimonials to the opposite. His kids tell wonderful stories of his wonderfulness. You think they would lie?

He is the Defender of law and order but you thought he was actually guilty of impeachable acts, you thought he was in violation of a prohibition to use the White House for political gain, you thought maybe he was using the office to enrich himself and his wonderful kids, you thought the military was enjoined from being used for photo ops and you thought the Post Office was doing an okay job. See? You aren’t living in the Real World. Those riots in some of our major cities, they’re the work of Joe Biden and his gang of radicals. Bet you thought the incivility was on Donald’s watch, didn’t you? That’s because your anger blinds you to the Truth. He will make our cities safe again when he’s re-elected. Although they’re the safest they’ve ever been, but he’ll make them safer again. That’s his promise to you.

And the economy? Best it’s ever been but next term it will be even better. Those millions of unemployed? Don’t worry your faux news-filled head over it. More jobs are on the way, better jobs, higher paying jobs, maybe enough money for all of you to invest in the stock market where the real moolah is. And when you get the real payoff, you’ll also get a tax break. That’s his promise. If you’re smart, you’ll start shopping now like there’s no tomorrow … although tomorrow will be even better than it is now.

Those coal jobs are coming back, North Korea will turn over their nuclear weapons, Isis is defeated, the Taliban are on the run, Covid is cured. Miracles happen, Virginia. Santa is real. And yes, he’s in the White House and Christmas is coming to America. Again and again. Make out your list. Trust him, you’ll get everything your heart desires. You just have to believe. And stop reading the news.

Yesterday I drove over to Hutchison Park and the Little Library that has been vandalized a few times the past couple of weeks. I have been mouthing off about a mural that was airbrushed in the worst part of Seattle and Gomorrah around 1978, one where I chatted with the artist and lamented that in a week it would be desecrated. He told me it wouldn’t, that the community would respect it for what it was, Good Art unselfishly donated to them. Turns out he was right.

So I decided if I’m going to talk the talk, I needed to walk the walk. When I went over to the Little Library to board up the broken windows, the cyclone fence guyz were repairing the battered and busted up old one that had gone unfixed for four or five years, what to me was an indication that nobody cared about this little park and for that reason invited vandalism. Maybe, I told myself, this was the right time to upgrade the library, give the park a bit of new aesthetics, see if the improvements might not offer a Protective Art Shield to the place. What the hell did I have to lose other than a day or so of work building a stained glass replacement for the broken glass? Right?

Right? So yesterday a crabbing buddy of mine helped me clean up the broken safety glass, pull out the book racks and install a 2 foot by 3 foot framed stained glass replacement window. I suspect he thinks I’m a total idiot to put a bullseye on that library. And I suspect he might be right. But … I’m willing to put it to the test. If I’m wrong, okay, a day lost, a lesson learned and another notch in the belt of my cynicism. What are ya gonna do? I’m trying to put art in all our public places on our island and in Stanwoodopolis. If this is quixotic, or simply self serving, which a lot of folks think it is, then I’m kidding myself. Or I’m a fool. Or both.

But if I’m right, maybe, just maybe, this little island will become an Art Island, not just my stuff but the art of dozens and dozens of us, hundreds of us. Not everyone will be happy about that, trust me. Some folks think Camano could have stayed pristine and rural, just happy farmers tending their radish, milking their goats. This art stuff, it’s changing the pastoral ambience, it’s too modern, it’s not in keeping with the commuter crowd and the rich retirees. It belongs in the cities down the freeway, not here, not in their faces. Who’s paying for that? they’d ask when we built the Visitor Center and Sculpture Park and I would answer, not you, pardner. All a donation. And they would say, well, I hate it anyway.

I get it. Some folks wouldn’t hang a poster on their drywalled walls, much less a watercolor or an oil painting. Sure don’t need it, sure don’t want it, wouldn’t hang it if you gave it to em free. Sometimes, I guess, you just have to give it to em anyway….

One of our newspapers gives the Covid stats county by county each and every day. For a long time our county, Island County, had 11 deaths. A few weeks ago it surged to 12. Uh-oh, we thought, the spike has finally hit, time to hunker down even more, avoid all outside human contact, wear a mask even around each other. But then, miraculously, a few days later the number of deaths returned to 11. This week the number suddenly shot up to 13, a percentage rise that looked like Brazil or what’s about to hit Sturgis, South Dakota after the Harley Rally. We started locking the doors, bolting windows and avoiding each other.

The other day I noticed the death toll had reverted back to 11. You can imagine the toll this roller coaster ride is taking on our mental equilibrium, which, in my case at least, was already suffering plague vertigo. What I suspect, and I’m sure my conspiracy theorist cronies will agree wholeheartedly, is that the dead are rising up, returning to life and possibly being secreted away to some Deep State laboratory for further study or horrible experimentation. Or both!! That, or the Covid virus is something that escaped from government labs working on a plague that makes zombies of its victims, probably Republican zombies if my guess is correct.

That’s right, the Undead are going to vote! Mail in, walk in, whatever it takes. And worse, they’re no doubt among us now, infecting the population, killing them then bringing them back to life. Or some semblance of life. Republicanism is the new Zombie-ism. If you don’t believe it, check Qanon for proof. It’s all there, the quotes from doctors at the Z Lab, statistics of the death toll’s shrinking totals, the irrefutable studies by bots in the think tanks, all of it. Don’t just believe me, believe the Q!

The GOP convention is ongoing now. The President promises huuge surprises. I hate to give you a spoiler alert, but … no one will die very long of Covid under his watch. He has the Lazarus Cure, far better than any vaccine that would probably cause autism or worse. The newly undead will be forever grateful as should we. No doubt he’ll have their vote. Undertakers, maybe not.