From Barbie-Pink Gloves to the Proud Boys and The Cult

Sitting at my computer I was racking my brain for a topic to write about when down the road came an 18-wheeler flatbed with six U-Boxes and a Donkey on top. The giant U-Haul rig parked directly across from my windows. And before I get any farther along I should explain to anyone who might be confused that the Donkey was the four wheeler kind, not the four legged kind. In other words a Donkey brand forklift was attached to the back of the rig extending the normal 72 feet length of an 18-wheeler out another 5-6 feet.

I've see moving vans and trucks of all sizes and descriptions parked across from my windows. It's one of the few downsides of having a main floor apartment near a building's entry door. But like many other things this can be a two-sided coin. It's an advantage to, say, a gossipy-type person who loves to see other people's possessions paraded by her windows or it could be a disadvantage to a person who likes the tranquil view of the woods on the other side of the road and green space that, on occasions, gets blocked by a wall of metal and rubber. 

I normally don't care what is loaded or unloaded outside my windows unless it's a person into an ambulance. But the driver of this particular rig caught and held my attention. She was a petite thing with a bouncing blonde ponytail and as she jumped down from the driver's seat and walked back to the Donkey she pulled on a pair of Barbie Pink work gloves that made me smile from ear to ear. And in no time at all she had that Donkey down on the ground and whipped it around to unload one of the U-Boxes. I held my breath thinking if she didn't turn her load just right she'd end up backing into my windows but my fear was short-lived. She was good---no, she was great at her job. She handled herself with the confidence of a tattooed, biker-bar bouncer and she parked that U-Box in the designated space with the ease and precision of a Victorian era maid setting a table for high tea. And like the Amazon drivers do after delivering a package to our mail room, she took a photo of her delivered U-Box, then she drove the Donkey back to its hookup brackets and straps and she was back on the road in less than six minutes from when she arrived.

It hit me that what I was seeing was the results of the second wave of the Feminism Movement that I was a part of back in '60s and '70s. We have equal opportunities for women in the labor force now that we didn't have back then, but not without getting some societal stretchmarks from people like The Proud Boys who feel they are being left behind or out-shined by women. That's an over simplification, of course, because the Proud Boys don't just hate women. They also hate transgenders, Muslims, immigrants and they are hardcore White Supremacists. Wouldn't it be nice if they died out for lack of breeding opportunities. I can't imagine a woman as capable and confident as my Barbie U-Haul Driver being attracted to a guy who spends his weekends playing soldier in the woods and planning for an Armageddon.

Still, social anthropologists who study hate groups like this say the danger is thinking that all hardcore racists are contained in these pocket groups that can be tracked. I, for one, have a hard time taking them seriously because their very name says they are proud that they haven't matured into fully functioning men---men who take responsibility for their own life choices instead of blaming go-getters like Ms Barbie Pink Gloves and so-called 'woke' people and others who don't look like them. In the meantime we forget that the Proud Boys have aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and other family members who have the same agenda of hate, but they keep a low profile. They are quietly running for offices on school boards, in townships and counties all over the country. They might not wear labels like the Proud Boys or even think of themselves as racists, but they are also in this culture war, while those of us on the other side are blissfully and willfully ignoring them as if they are as insignificant as a fly bussing around a family picnic table.

According to a website that tracks the Proud Boys we should be afraid of them and their extended orbit if Trump gets re-elected. Even though the January Sixth Insurrection decentralized the group when many of their leaders ended up with long prison terms, Trump is now promising to pardon them all if he's re-elected. In other words he's blowing his dog whistle again for them to stand back and stand by. 

Because the Proud Boys are equal opportunists when it comes to hating others, their members belong to a wide variety of other, more targeted hate groups as well and that's one of the main factors that helped coordinate activities that resulted in our first Insurrection at the Capital. I say "first" because it will happen again if Trump doesn't win our next election. Maybe the mobs won't be as big or maybe they're bring bigger weapons or both. But hopefully, the powers that be will be ready this time. 

<Rant On> Those of us who value democracy cannot stay complacent. We cannot stay silent! We must do what we can, while we still can, to get people to tune into what is at stake with the coming election. All the gains we've made in Equal Opportunities for women and people of color in the last 50 years will be undermined if the Democrats lose. Not to mention reproductive freedom is at stake. All the strides we've made towards cleaning up the planet will be turned back, and Trump is promising to throw out the Affordable Health Care Act along with getting rid of the regulatory agencies that protect our water, food chain and medical supplies. His plans to round up immigrants is literally right out of the 1930's Nazi handbook.

Biden may have made mistakes but he's a moral man of honor who we can trust to surround himself with good people should he die in office. Where Trump is a man with no moral compass who the first time around surrounded himself with people who are now either sitting in prison or who have come out against ever letting Trump near the Oval Office again. The polls all say that these two men are running neck to neck and that means too many people are turning a blind eye to the dangers of another Trump term. So those of us who aren't under the spell of the Trump Cult need to step up to the plate and help them see we're on the Crazy Train headed toward Fascism. We do that by speaking up whenever we are given the opportunity. We can, we must be willing to have some uncomfortable conversations with the goal of helping our Democracy to survive. The world does not need another immoral dictator. <Rant Off> 

Until Next Wednesday.  ©

The Christmas Letter

 

My Christmas cards and letters were dropped in the mail last week. I've been doing letters for well over a decade and the people who get them tell me I can’t stop now. They don’t take me long to write but it’s always hard to know how much of my life to reveal to my “brick-and-mortar” friends and family. (Can that term even be applied to people or is it just reserved for businesses?) Anyway, the blogging world is used to me spilling my thoughts all over the place but the people in my everyday world don’t have a clue what goes on in my head or my daily life, for that matter, and probably don’t even care if truth were known…except at Christmas when they get The Letter. That’s life. I won’t reprint the entire letter here but to give you a taste of what I wrote this year here’s the first paragraph:

Dear Friends and Family, 

Have you ever tried to write an annual Christmas letter and after a few false starts you decide your life is so boring that no one will get past the first paragraph before tossing your letter in the trash? Where do I start my 2014 letter? Nothing great happened this year, nothing bad either. And I didn’t take an exotic vacation you’d enjoy hearing about, although I did sit through a travel lecture on South America. Does that count? I didn’t take up drinking hard spirits or join a cult that chants before breakfast either in case you were holding your breath on those life changing choices that I’ve put on a shelf for someday maybe. Still, I went through my day planner looking for amazing and engaging data to jump-start this letter. January, February, March---yadda, yadda, yadda---all the way through to December and not a single thing had been penciled in worth sharing unless you want to hear about my shoulder surgery the end of October. Not to worry, I still have an arm and even though my surgeon has benched me from shoveling snow this winter, I’m thinking a long extension cord and a hair dryer might work to clear my sidewalks the next time it snows.

Then I went on to describe my adventures online and at classes I took during the year ending with a Facebook invitation to anyone who knew my parents and might want to see the photo essay book I just finished that covers their life spans. “I’m Jean R*****” I wrote, “if you want to send me a Facebook friend request. I only mention the name thing because there are people in my life who still don’t understand that I never took Don’s name when we got married. Note: I love you all anyway but when I die, I hope you remember who I am when the obituary gets written or read. I’m old and I have to worry about something.” Yup, I’m a product of the Feminist Movement, hear me roar which obviously not everyone has. I must be meowing like a kitten instead. And that explains why one of my nieces thought a hospital lost me a few years ago. 

By the way, once in a while people I’ve met in cyber space have asked to friend me on Facebook but I have never wanted to mix my “brick-and-mortar” family and friends with my cyber space friends. I still believe that’s the best thing for me to do to protect the privacy of my extended family. So 99.9% of the time I don’t accept friend requests if I don’t know the person face-to-face. Just thought you’d like to know in case you’re not Asha or Pam who make up that .1% and I have known them since shortly after Don's stroke.

Darn, it’s time to hop in the shower. I have to drop Levi off for his haircut, go get one of my own then brave the busy stores before swinging back around to pick up the dog. This week my day planner also includes a Christmas party and my movie and lunch club. Life, at the moment, is good here on Widowhood Lane. Thanks to my cleaning service, the house is sparkling and I even have Toll House cookies in the refrigerator to bake in case anyone wants to stop by between now and the end of the year. If no one does come to visit “the old widow” you’ll know what I’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve…drowning my sorrows in a glass of milk along with the German chocolate cookies. ©

P.S. Here’s a link to another post about the letter I sent out the first Christmas after Don passed away. Come the middle of January it will be three years since he died. Sometimes that seems like a 100 years ago and other days, it seems like only yesterday.

Doctors, Cheerleaders and Mechanics, Oh, My!

 

Thursday I had an appointment at the orthopedics center on the rich side of town where I’m guessing my bone doctor could walk to work from his gated community, if he was so inclined. I got there an hour early because I didn’t run into the road construction I expected along the way so I looked for a coffee shop near-by. In my part of the world Starbucks embeds mini coffee shops in grocery stores but in this rich man’s neighborhood I discovered their grocery store has a full service/maxi Starbucks with enough chairs to seat the entire Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad plus an extra chair for each girl to park her pompoms. Why do they need 39 or 40 sets of boobs and butt cheeks jiggling on the field at half-time? I once watched an entire episode of their training camp reality TV show to find an answer to that and other burning questions but all I got was another question that begs an answer: How do they keep from getting their private parts chafed from all that jumping around in their skin tight short-shorts?

The rich man’s grocery store also had something I’ve never seen in a public place. A deluxe family bathroom with a urinal, regular toilet and a child sized toilet. With over twelve years of experience under my belt of seeking out family bathrooms for my wheelchair bound husband, I had never seen a child’s toilet in one---nor a urinal now that I think about it. I would have taken a picture but I thought I might feel like a tourist from Kick’s Ville if I did. The grocery store also had people who took their customers’ groceries out and loaded them in their cars. That was a flash-back to a by-gone era when they quit giving that service on my side of town and now I want to be rich. Is it too late in life for that to happen short of winning the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes? All afternoon, I kept opening the front door hoping to see their camera crew parked on the street and them unloading a giant check made out to me. Life is so full of disappointments.

Wednesday I had an appointment to get my car’s 12,000 mile maintenance done where I learned that even with my hearing aids in the numbers 16 and 60 sound the same. In addition to the other stuff, I needed new windshield wiper blades and I was begrudging the fact that they’d “gone up” so much since I last bought a pair. Boy, did I feel silly when I told the cashier she made a mistake and undercharged me for the blades from what the (female) service manager told me they would cost. They had to call the service manager over where it was determined that my next service appointment should be at the hearing aid center.

The dealership where I take my car is in a small town near-by and it has more than their fair share of female employees working in traditionally male roles. And they’d hired a new one since my last visit---a certified mechanic so tiny she could have crawled in with the engine of my car, closed the hood and still have room left over to do pushups inside. A slight stretch of the truth, but you get the idea. She was petite like a Barbie Doll if Barbie Dolls worked on pink plastic cars. The waiting room has windows allowing customers to watch the mechanics at work and it crossed my mind that if their new mechanic wore a pair of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders’ shorts to go with her bouncy ponytail they could triple their business. (Hey, I wish I had thought to write that on a comment card.) Okay, that’s a sexist thing to say about her wearing shorts and not including the guy mechanics in on the new dress code suggestion but I’m old and I can be forgiven for poking fun.

In all seriousness, though, Betty Friedan would have been proud if she were alive and had been my side-kick at my Chevy dealership. And so am I. All that work we ladies of the Feminist Movement did in the `60s paid off for the current crop of young ladies. Girls get to be anything they want to be and as soon as my peer age group dies off there will be no one left to think it isn’t perfectly normal to have women (and men) let their talents and desire take them wherever and not be pigeon-holed by gender. Now, if we’d just break that glass ceiling in the White House before I die….. ©