The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Sometime back I donated stained glass to the new Island County Administration Building, a 7 foot tall by 21 foot long window facing the highway. The editor of the Crab Cracker sent me a link to the Facebook threads from concerned citizens with a note: Don’t know whether this will make you laugh or cry. Or both. I’m not a subscriber to any social media and after reading a couple dozen comments from my fellow islanders, I remembered why.

The first critic demanded to know what my window cost us taxpayers and who authorized it and what the hell anyway? Damn government! Damn county! The usual, followed by a few more of the same angry tirades before someone mentioned they thought maybe it was a donation by a local artist. The first writer responded with outrage over what upkeep and maintenance would cost. Are county employees going to do that on the taxpayer dime? A few folks mentioned the artist in question had donated a few other artworks to the area, one even said he was a pretty generous fellow, but mostly the subsequent threads were pissed off screeds. No good deed goes unpunished, not in these partisan times. There’s an anger seeping over the land that corrodes any potential for approval or appreciation. That, or the neighbors just don’t care for my idea of art, free or not.

Back when we built the Visitor Center I became the de-facto contractor when all I hoped to do was donate the 15 foot by 12 foot stained glass front. I got hate letters, the glass was shot with small caliber bullets, the building itself was the target for repeated assaults by bottles thrown from vehicles by irate taxpayers, some who, in their rage, stopped by to give me a piece of their mind. “Who’s paying for this?” they wanted to know. “Are my taxes paying for this??”
Invariably I would put down the hammer and reply cheerfully, “It’s your lucky day. Not a dime out of your pocket, pal, all donations, all volunteer labor.” To which, almost without fail, they would stomp back to their vehicle, turn and say with no little bitterness, “I still don’t like it!!”

I’m betting they still don’t.

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