Hell Night

Sage (on left) and Harvey

Peggy and I put our five cats in the laundry room at night so we can sleep. Yesterday morning, they all burst forth in enormous distress, but Scully was in the worst shape, jumping onto her window shelf and yowling nonstop: "Last night was horrible, horrible! No words can describe what I've been through! I can't bear my terror for another moment! For chrissake, DO SOMETHING!!!" 

Aghast, I approached her with an empty show of confidence, empty because she was so overwrought that I feared being bitten. She instead leaned into my body in trembling silence: "The nightmare is over," she whispered, "I know you will protect me."

Within minutes, Scully and three of the boys were ready for breakfast. Only Harvey remained distraught. Instead of lying splayed-out in the middle of whatever room we were in, he spent his day behind the clothes washer. It was the first time he had shown fear.

Harvey was but four months of age when he came to share our home last November. From day one, the long-haired gray kitten with piercing green eyes and a lion's ruff, dominated our household. He playfully ambushed our 15-pound patriarch, Brewsky, and became best buds with Sage, our timid, big-eyed tabby. He treated Scully like the lady she is, but his attempts to play with the grump of the family, Ollie, were met with yowls, hisses, and swats. Harvey's response was to pounce on Ollie in a manner that said, "How dare you flatter yourself that you scare me!" whereupon Ollie would run from the kitten half his size. 

When Harvey would lie on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor, I would stop cooking and rub his belly (Peggy complained that I was not only abandoning my work, I was widening the roadblock). After a few strokes, he would grasp my hand in his mouth and hold it there, making it necessary for me to rub him with my other hand. And so it went with one hand in the mouth of a zoned-out cat, and the other hand caressing his pillowy belly, all while assuring Peggy that petting Harvey was way more important than cooking. I meant it too. Building trust with one's cat depends entirely upon the amenability of said cat, and this is especially true in the case of belly rubs, which represent the ultimate in feline vulnerability. Peggy took a less enlightened view, "He's just using you," she would argue, and I would respond, "You can write on my tombstone:

Here Lies Harvey's Love Slut

He Died Smiling

R.I.P.

I think I know what frightened the cats. Our laundry room opens to the outside, and in warm weather, we leave the wooden door open so the cats can watch the night pass through the steel-mess security door. My guess is that something big, smelly, and scary came to that door from the nearby creek. Thankfully, Harvey got over his fear by the next night, but during the hours that we weren't having to step around him, our hearts ached.

Stupider and Stupider

 

I believe that George Floyd was murdered, which means that I was onboard with the protestors. Then came huge demonstrations in which policemen were assaulted, Molotov cocktails were thrown, businesses were looted or burned, and social distancing was ignored; and I began to wonder if the demonstrators reserve arson, looting, vandalism, and violence, for themselves alone, or if they would allow the same rights to everyone who feels strongly about an issue.

Next came calls for defunding or abolishing the police followed by outrage over the Atlanta killing of a black man who forcibly stole a cop's stun gun and fired it at him. After that came the toppling of statues of Spanish explorers, Confederate soldiers, Union generals, George Washington, U.S. Grant, Thomas Jefferson, the creator of America's national anthem, and unknown others. Among Eugene's statuary casualties was a University of Oregon work called Pioneer Mother and another entitled simply The Pioneer (some emotionally fragile students explained that the statues so offended them that they had been forced to walk out of their way to classes to avoid seeing them). There are three oddities about the attack on these statues: (1) Although the vandals clearly feel superior to the people who came here over the Oregon Trail, they showed no remorse for the fact that they too live on land stolen from the Indians. (2) The U of O was already considering the statues removal. (3) Pioneer Mother was meant to correct the gender inequity of previous statues, suggesting that the effort of yesterday's liberal intellectuals to create a better world are only worthy of destruction in the eyes of today's liberal demonstrators. 

The University of Oregon's Pioneer Mother statue

When I reflect upon the demonstrators' words and actions, the following seems evident: their contempt for the law; their embrace of mob rule; their belief in easy fixes; their refusal to compromise or dialogue; their unwillingness to consider that they might be in the wrong; their labeling as racist those who disagree with them; their confidence that had they lived 50-250 years ago, they would have held the same values they hold today; their failure to consider that their descendants might judge them as harshly as they judge their ancestors; their refusal to accept responsibility for taking the law into their own hands; their belief that there is only one way to be moral, and that they alone have virtue to follow it; and their blind faith in the belief that the police are criminals, the criminals are victims, and the gateway to a better world lies in firing the police and emptying the prisons. 

In my view, these people are petty, childish, shallow, vicious, vindictive, hypocritical, cowardly, intolerant, unintelligent, unimaginative, and puritanical. Rather than interpreting the overwhelming bi-racial outrage following George Floyd's death as a hopeful sign that the nation is ready for change, they instead assume that the masses are irredeemable bigots who must be forced into change through violence and intimidation on the part of such enlightened beings as themselves. As occurred during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, these youth seem bent upon sweeping the countryside like locusts for the purpose of devouring the old in the certainty that whatever values that they, in their twenty-year-old wisdom, can't understand and appreciate aren't worth understanding and appreciating. If their energy holds, I can but assume that when the demonstrators run out of public statuary to destroy, they will turn their purification efforts to street signs, libraries, art museums, churches, and graveyards, and whatever else offends their readily offended imaginations. 

God help those of us who live in liberal areas that are ruled over by gutless local governments that refuse to act in the face of mob rule, and god help the entire nation for having a swaggering president whose remedy for every bad situation only ends in making it worse.

Reflections Following a Minnesota Murder

I lived in Minneapolis for two winters. At 3.3 million, its metro population is greater than the entire state of Mississippi where I spent my first 36-years, and of Eugene, Oregon where I've lived for 32-years. Eugene and Minneapolis are alike in that their populace is educated, secular, affluent, and Democratic (or, as Trump would say, strongly Democrat). By contrast, Mississippi is staunchly Christian, strongly Republican and leads the nation in poverty, ignorance, obesity, oppression, and early death.

My mother condescended toward black people, but my father treated them well, as did I considering my immaturity and ignorance. Although he went to an all black school, my best friend in high school was a black boy named Jerry Kelly. When my white friends and I went camping one weekend, Jerry went too, and when my father and I went camping 400-miles from home, Jerry went too. The South had an unwritten code about what a white person could do with black people and what he or she couldn't. For example, when I was in high school, my white friends would simply walk in on me without knocking, but Jerry wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing, and when my white friends and I drove around town drinking, Jerry wasn't invited.

The only bad moment, racially speaking, that I had with Jerry occurred when we were running my father's 115 mile paper route. Most days, my father and I ran the route together, him driving and me throwing papers, but some days, we would hire Jerry to replace one of us. On this particular day, I told Jerry to go into a cafe to collect for the paper. He said he didn't want to go because the cafe was run by white people (black people couldn't enter white-run cafes, although some such businesses had side windows for their black patrons). Being infinitely more naive than Jerry, I assured him that there would be no problem since he wasn't there to order. So, in he went, and, seconds later, out he came, closely followed by a raging white woman.

Much of my prejudice toward black people didn't come from living in Mississippi but in Minnesota where gangs of belligerent black teenagers would stalk downtown streets, daring white pedestrians to remain on the sidewalk. I also encountered groups of loud and aggressive black people on city buses. I came to regard them as hyenas, a perception that returned this week when I watched black mobs looting white-owned stores.

My Mississippi hometown had its last lynching in 1953, when I was four, and a previous lynching in 1928, when my father was in his teens. In the 1928 lynching, a mob took two brothers from the city jail, shooting one, and dragging the other behind a car before hanging his corpse from a tree.

When I was young, I romanticized people who didn't fit society's norms. For example, I sought out the friendship of homosexuals and black people, and I was captivated both by the Freedom Riders and the Weather Underground. Because I valued appearance over substance, I was even drawn to groups that sought one another's annihilation, for example the KKK and the Black Panthers. I also loved snazzy uniforms, and so I favored the looks of Confederate soldiers over the Union, and of the SS over the Allies. Although I felt superior to people who brainlessly hated what their neighbors hated and loved what their neighbors loved, my values were equally shallow and a lot less consistent.

My British and Australian readers know about the murder of George Floyd, but they might not know about a New York City white woman named Amy Cooper who called the police to report that she and her Cocker Spaniel were being physically threatened by a middle-aged black bird watcher who objected to her dog being unleashed in a Central Park area set aside for wildlife.* Once she was on the phone, Ms Cooper worked herself into the appearance of hysteria, all while the black man filmed her performance. After being fired from her $175,000 job with an investment firm, Amy Cooper botched multiple apologies so badly that she finally hired a PR firm. For example, she had sought to minimize her behavior by claiming that, "Words are just words," and "I didn't intend to harm that man in any way," and she even tried to win the public's sympathy by saying, "My entire life is being destroyed right now.” Does the Me Too movement's insistence that women are too pure to frame men ("Believe the Women") include the Amy Coopers of the world, and does it really hold that no black man ever came to a bad end because of a white woman's lies?

Although local bumper stickers laud diversity, Eugene is hardly diverse. Black people and Asians are rare, and Hispanics are too poor--and too afraid of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)--to engage in politics. Even so, white Eugenians have been out in the thousands (the largest protest reaching 10,000**) protesting the Floyd murder, and they've been at it for more than a week, during which several businesses were vandalized. The spectacle of white crowds in a white city shouting insults at a white police force 2,000 miles from a black man's murder strikes me as impotent, and I even wonder the extent to which the size of the protests (not just in Eugene, but in the nation and the world) has been fueled by hatred for Trump and frustration over Covid lock-downs. Whatever the truth about this, Covid deaths can be expected to mushroom, especially among black people.

*https://www.thedailyworld.com/opinion/commentary-george-floyd-killed-in-minneapolis-is-why-amy-coopers-central-park-call-was-so-repugnant/ 

**https://www.kezi.com/content/news/Massive-crowd-gathers-for-protest-march-570907911.html

The Life and Times of a Galloping Nandina

My Favorite Coleus

Last week, Peggy and I celebrated our first outing since mid-March by visiting an outdoor nursery from which we emerged with a coleus, fifteen marigolds, a basket of violas, and eight variegated lamiums. Except for the coleus, we planted everything outdoors. 

Peggy's bedroom has green walls and no plants. My bedroom has pink walls and up to forty-four plants. It is my favorite place on earth, and my GQ handsome Ollie must agree because when I call him to bed each night, I can hear him galloping from three rooms away.

My last bedroom addition was a Gulf Stream Nandina that I named Tommy in honor of my father, and which I moved indoors last fall. It was Tommy's fourth move since he entered my life in 2016. The first was from the nursery to my yard. When that didn't work out, I put him in a pot and switched him seasonally from deck to patio. Still he struggled. Then one night while Ollie and I were cuddling, I longed to have Tommy beside me, so I vainly searched the indexes of fifteen houseplant books for advice. Mystified but undeterred,  Ollie and I welcomed Tommy into our bedroom two days later. His health improved so fast and so dramatically that I've since concluded that, like Ollie, Tommy would have galloped to join me if only he could.
  

Ollie Used to Make it Hard for Peggy to Get Off the Pot

Looking at my plants is the last thing I do each day and, because my grow-light burns all night, I get to see them afresh in the wee hours and then again when I awaken in the morning. Next to Peggy and our five cats, plants are the most important things in my life.

Some Thoughts about Trump and the Pandemic as of Today, April 21

"Trump news is so terrifying I can barely stand to read it." 

--from a British reader and friend

Trump news is terrifying, not just because of the things he does but from the disastrous effects on health, human rights, and the environment, that are posed by the people he hires and the judges he appoints. For instance, yesterday, a court upheld Texas' efforts to prevent abortions during the pandemic, and the day before that, another court forbade the governor of Kansas from banning church services during the pandemic. 

When Trump took office, I wondered if this was what it was like to live in Germany when Hitler came to power, and the feeling has intensified. The only hope I can find is that his approval rating has generally been in the low forties, but sadly it is now at 49%. I, of course, can't see what there is to approve of, but when he turned his daily pandemic briefings into lie-strewn taxpayer-financed political events at which he boasted of how well he was handling things, blamed the Democrats and the Chinese for the pandemic, and insulted reporters when they asked such questions as, "What do you have to say to people who are afraid?" his popularity increased among those who favor "strong man" regimes. Last week, he even boasted: “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total." Although his supporters claim to favor a weak federal government and strong local governments, they didn't object to this, suggesting that they actually like a strong federal government when their candidate is running it. 

The fact is that the laws that are supposed to protect America from would-be dictators only apply if the people of America respect those laws. A man like Trump will override them to the extent that the people allow him to, and with federal judges in his pocket, he won't even encounter resistance from that quarter.

Now, there is enormous pressure here to go back to pre-pandemic behavior, and much of that pressure is coming from Christians, from the far-right, and from the gun crowd (there being overlap among the three). Most governors are trying to prevent this, but Trump has been countenancing insurrection against them through such tweets as, "Liberate Michigan," "Liberate Minnesota," and "Liberate Virginia." It's also true that some governors are themselves backing a return to pre-pandemic behavior. For example, the governor of Georgia didn't bother to consult with his state's mayors before decreeing--today--that Georgia return to business-as-usual. If the medical authorities are right, this will lead to disaster, but here's what I think.

A week or two ago, it was reported that black people, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans die of Covid-19 in much higher numbers than Americans of Northern European ancestry, and it has long been known that sick people and the elderly are at greater risk, so is all this pressure to reopen society inspired by the thought that, "Hell, this virus probably won't hurt us much, and here is our chance to rid society of all the undesirables who are sponging off the government and draining "our" Social Security. Let's get out there and spread this thing around before scientists come up with a way to prevent it"? I suspect that, in the minds of millions (a third of Americans favor a return to what they refer to as normalcy), this is true, and my suspicion is intensified by the sight of guns (in states with open-carry laws), the Gadsden Flag (see image), and Confederate Battle Flags at these rapidly growing demonstrations. These are not people who care about the "rights" of anyone but themselves and their select group.

Another factor is that many Christians imagine that Jesus will keep them from getting sick (as the signs proclaim, "Jesus is My Vaccine"). Ironically, the parts of America in which evangelicals are dominant are the same parts that have a high incidence of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, problems that make Covid more deadly. So, on the one hand, you have people who see the pandemic as a way to rid society of "undesirables," and, on the other, you have such Christians as imagine themselves immune.