Still mad as hell

My morning news had just one incident since yesterday of white on black trouble; a police officer with a choke hold on a young man, in prom clothing, who just escorted his sixteen year old sister to her prom. My brother used to put on his suit and take me places. When he showed up in his U.S. Air Force uniform, my dorm mates swarmed him. The police never did.

Monday I went to breakfast with my BFF. We used to go to breakfast a couple times a month, but she chucked winter in northeast Ohio two years ago and moved to Charleston, South Carolina. Now we go to breakfast a couple times a year, and it takes longer to catch up.

Carol is a retired medical professional. I am a retired artisan. We met forty odd years ago, divorced, raising small children. She’s Jimmy’s mother; the six year old who followed the only people he knew, my daughters, to the deep end of the YMCA pool, and terrified his mother and me when it was “accomplishment day”, and he performed in the deep end, starting with diving off the tall board. Jim’s retired from the Marines now, Special Operations.

My friend looked across the table Monday, deep in our kvetching, and said “Jo, you know I’m a dyed in the wool, hard core Republican.” (Which is why we don’t place blame when we talk politics.) “Jo, we’ve made a terrible mistake!” That pretty much summed up our conversation of world affairs, domestic affairs and cost of gasoline.

And I told her we’re paying the price for electing Obama as president for eight years. I see no bottom in sight to dismantling liberty and justice. How the hell did John McCain hit the Republican cross-hairs? Why have I and many of my friends hit the drug donut hole in March? We know why gas prices are climbing back to Dubya’s day. Will the CIA find new advanced interrogation techniques? Probably.

I can’t fix it. And I can’t stop being angry about it, reasonable or not.

The Washington Post today has a story about voter identity unease in the Trump’s Midwest; buyer’s remorse among voters who only thought they were poking a finger in an eye, to see what would happen. 

I do have an anecdotal incident to relate. We just had a primary election in Ohio. A friend told of her husband, a lifelong, dyed in the wool Republican, standing at the next station at the table, unable to declare “Republican” for the first time in six decades. He finally asked for an Independent ballot.

Greg, my physical therapist, and his wife, are expecting a baby any day now. Nora Grace. As I left today I reminded him to cancel next Friday for Grace, and let me know. “Nora Grace,” he replied. And I said “No. Right now any baby is Grace.”

The last towel is off the borrowed loom, which is returned. By the end of next week I may be weaving towels in colors of the rainbow. Some of you know what that means. Everyone else will find out. I may be less angry then.  I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me…”