Seven Days

One week. One week from today. Actually, more like one week from this very moment, Pam and I will be backing out of our driveway to begin the two day, 15 hour road trip to Loon Call Cottage in Union, Maine. At least that’s the plan. Something inside of me won’t quite let me believe that it will actually happen, visions of some last second national emergency stay-at-home order being proclaimed from on high keep dancing around in my head. So, I will believe it when I’m on the road.

We both will get our COVID tests on Wednesday the 24th, 72 hours before our planned arrival in The Pine Tree State, as per their Governor’s directive. We will check in to our cottage on the afternoon of the 27th. The first 24 hours will be filled with unpacking, making the place our own, arranging things to best accommodate our living preferences, buying groceries, organizing the inside and the dock to our liking. It will probably be the morning of the 29th, a Monday, when we will wake up and realize that ...we made it, we’re here, and now everything will be alright!

For the duration of the month of July, most of my Blog posts will be about our experiences, filled with pictures. Many of you will enjoy reading all about it, a lot of you won’t. Which is fine. You can’t please everyone. Speaking of which...

Yesterday’s post about the whole Aunt Jemima thing was crazy. It was the most read post I have written all year, but it was completely unique in one way. Never in the ten year history of this blog have I written such a widely read post that produced virtually no comments. Usually when something pops like that people have lots to say about it. This one?..crickets. I can only assume that most of you read it out of curiosity and didn’t agree with my conclusions but were too polite to say anything. That’s ok. It happens sometime. We don’t always see things the same way. I just found it strange, the silence.

The next seven days are going to be the slowest of my life...

Aunt Jemima...Seriously??

Just when you thought that life couldn’t possibly get any worse, news breaks that Aunt Jemima is being forced into early retirement because of the scourge of political correctness sweeping the nation. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the limp-wristed, gutless invertebrates at Quaker Oats have caved to the jackals of the left and stolen a cultural icon from white America. Oh, and George Soros is somehow involved...

At least that’s the impression I’m getting from Facebook and Instagram.

I would like to propose a slightly different explanation for this Aunt Jemima thing that involves advertising as a reflection of societal norms and how they have constantly changed, often rapidly, throughout the past hundred years. I should also point out the fact, apropos to nothing really, that Aunt Jemima is a truly awful imitation of real maple syrup and shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath.

Ok, so here’s a advertising campaign from the year of my birth, 1958...

Who doesn’t long for the days when a man felt entitled to beat his wife for the mortal sin of serving him stale coffee?

Well, maybe she can open it, but who’s going to be there to show her how to pour it?

Absolutely nothing worse than a poor, fat woman, am I right?

Good to know that there will still be plenty of women’s work in the exciting new space age!

And the ones who don’t are clearly savages.

Why, indeed?

Colored kids?

Wow...good to know that inside his unfortunate dark skin beats a white heart!

Ok, here’s the thing. If any of these advertisements caused you to wince, and I would hope that all of them did, you now understand that our society has evolved from a time when these types of stereotypes were perfectly acceptable to vast swaths of the buying public. No company doing business in 2020 would dream of running ads like these. Why? Because the assumptions behind them have been rejected by the vast majority of their customers. So what about dear old Aunt Jemima? Even she has changed through the years...a lot!

So...tell me again why Quaker Oats’ decision to finally retire the Aunt Jemima Mammy routine is such a horrible example of political correctness? 

Listen, for some of you, the picture of her on a plastic bottle of corn syrup with 16 artificial flavors is a comforting, harmless icon from your childhood and you just can’t understand what all the fuss is about. I get it, I really do. But, I would imagine she represents something else entirely to an awful lot of African Americans. Ask yourself this, if you think it’s wrong for a company to use words like, “Happy days is here. Time fo’ my Dee-licious pancakes ready mixed fo’ you.” Then maybe you can understand why a symbol from an era where that line was thought to be funny and clever might rub modern ears the wrong way.

I think that somehow the world will survive without Aunt Jemima. Chill out people!

Statues and History

The really cool thing about history is that a proper understanding of it makes confusing current events less intimidating. Take the business of people tearing down statues, or if you prefer, the dismantling of history. It’s been going on for a very, very long time. It goes something like this. A government or some other organization wielding power decides to erect a monument celebrating some such thing that they feel worthy of celebration. Years and years later, the government changes, the once powerful organization has lost its power and influence, and the next thing you know...BAMM!! That sucker comes down. Here are just a few examples...

Here’s a New Your City mob back in 1776 yanking down a statue of King George. This particular giant lead piece of history was melted down to make musket balls for rebel soldiers.

It took this band of exultant Hungarians in Budapest about ten minutes to dismantle this giant statue of Joseph Stalin once their rebellion began against the Soviet occupation in 1956. They ripped it to shreds and the parts were paraded all over the city. The Soviets eventually sent in the tanks to restore order, but the point was made valiantly by the Hungarian people...Thus always to tyrants.

What a grand time they had!!

Remember this? Wasn’t that long ago. April of 2003 in Baghdad. American soldiers pulled down a huge statue of Saddam Hussein and then the locals, yet another mob, went wild.

I had forgotten all about this beauty. May, 1991 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, literally two days after Communist strong man Mengistu Mariam left town, the locals were taking pick axes to the adoring statue of Vladimir Lenin.

One of the lessons of these paintings and photographs should be that...to the victor go the spoils. Generally speaking throughout history it is a rare thing for statues to go up celebrating the losing side of a great conflict. Another lesson from these paintings and photographs is that when statues do come down it is seldom during a picnic with dignitaries dressed in their finest, listening to speeches and cutting ribbons. It is normally a hot business with violence and gleeful vengeance in the hearts of the participants. 

I am not making a moral equivalence argument here, I am simply pointing out that A. Statues are erected only to eventually be either torn down or replaced, and B. Mobs are always present when it happens. History tells me so. Although I would rather be in the business of building statues than destroying them, at the end of the day you can’t have one without the other.

What Took Us So Long?

This day promises to be a screwed up mess. I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning, came downstairs and enjoyed the peculiar delicacy of watching the gyrations of the Asian stock markets, not something I recommend for the uninitiated. It’s like watching digital grass grow. Then I got myself fully up to speed on the latest labor negotiations between the billionaire owners and the millionaire players of Major League Baseball. The urge to strangle them all with my bare hands is strong at 4 in the morning, I learned.

After a couple of hours of this, I began to get sleepy again, so I went upstairs and laid down for what I thought would be a quick nap. Just woke up at 8 o’clock, my daily routine in pieces on the floor. It’s cloudy and wet outside, a gloomy forecast in place for several more days, and my Governor has created yet another paid holiday for State workers, Juneteenth, a day that celebrates the Emancipation of slaves in America. Say what you will about Ralph Northam, dude knows how to make up for blackface photos in a yearbook. We get it, Governor. You’re really sorry. But, setting aside the foibles of our witless Governor, why has the Emancipation of African Americans not already been a State holiday? I mean, its one of the seminal events of our nation’s history, ending as it did the legality of human bondage. I would have thought if Columbus gets a day, why not the ending of slavery?

So, yesterday I played 18 holes of golf at Royal New Kent, my first full 18 holes of the year. I played with my good buddy and business partner, Doug Greenwood. We played in a misting rain the entire time. We had the entire golf course to ourselves. It was great fun. I started off terribly. As one might expect after so long a layoff, a couple of 8’s in the first six holes. Then my body became reacquainted with the game of golf and I settled down and played quite well. Shot a 40 on the back nine to shoot 88, losing to Mr. Country Club-I play nine holes after dinner every night-my golf clubs cost more than your car, Greenwood by one lousy shot! If my friend Tommy Thompson is reading this, I need a putting lesson, bro. I missed every single makable putt, which I define as anything inside 10 feet, except one six footer. Dreadful. But it felt great to get out and play a round of golf. Really great.

The Oven Light Kerfuffle

36 years of marriage produces lots of stories. What follows is one from yesterday. If you are a veteran of a long and happy marriage, and you are a man, you will appreciate this one. If, on the other hand, you happen to be a woman, it will most likely produce much eye-rolling, so proceed with caution.

While at the grocery store, Pam sent me the following text which I produce here in its entirety: 

Pam: If you are at home, can you please unscrew the oven light and send me the details on what kind to get?

I was home, so I immediately went into the kitchen, opened the stove and looked inside. The fact that the light bulb was on when I opened the oven door gave me pause, but if I have learned anything in 36 years of marriage it’s not to question a clear directive from my wife. There is always method to her madness. So, I get down on my knees and stick my head into the oven trying to reach the bulb which was located in the back left corner, encased in a protective contraption that I struggled mightily to remove. Once that was done, the actual light bulb was burning hot, so I had to unscrew it with an oven mitt on. Again, the fact that I was burning my fingers unscrewing a working light bulb per my wife’s specific instructions was indeed puzzling...but mine was not to question why, mine was but to do or die. As soon as I finally retrieved the bulb I texted her back:

Me: 40 watt. Clear bulb...also, it’s working.

Pam: ??? Was it loose or something.

Now I was thoroughly confused. Something inside me was sensing a problem. I looked once again at her text instructions. I had followed them to the letter. I answered cautiously, employing an artful but harmless untruth:

Me: Yep. I think it might have been loose.

Notice the clever turn of that phrase. “Think” “might have been”, all prevarications that might come in handy later.

Anyway, I hear nothing further from Pam until she gets home, at which point she discovered that I had taken out the wrong bulb! The bulb that wasn’t working was the one underneath the microwave, the one that lights up the stove top. She pounced, “Honey, why did you take a working light bulb out of the oven when it was clearly the stove top light that was out? I told you to unscrew the “stove light”

Me: Um...no you didn’t. Your text specifically instructed me to remove the OVEN light.

Pam: Why would I ask you to remove a completely working light bulb?

Me: Indeed...it was perplexing, but you were very clear.

At this point, she is confident that I am full of crap and misread her text. She whips out her phone to show me how stupid I was and then discovered that...I was right.

Pam: Ok, but you should have known not to unscrew a perfectly good oven light!! You are supposed to be able to read my mind. What’s the matter with you??

After giving the above incident more thought I have come to the conclusion that if I had it to do over...I would still unscrew the working light bulb in that oven. Sure, it might seem stupid on the surface, but when Pam gives me specific instructions, I don’t want to fall into the bad habit of trying to interpret her intentions. That is a fool’s errand and nothing good can come from it.

So, we now have a spare oven light bulb, the stove top still struggles along in the darkness, I actually was right about something, and Pam got to exercise her eye roll muscles. Win, win.

COVID Madness

So, yesterday Pam and I received an email from our intrepid real estate people at On The Water In Maine. The owner, Tiffany Ford, had clearly labored carefully over this particular email since it was her attempt to share with us the final edict from the Governor of Maine with regards to the rules for out of state visitors. Tiffany’s frustrations were evident throughout as she tried her best to explain the unexplainable. The upshot of the Governor’s ruling will be a severe blow to her business and she knows it. 

I will not publish the entire email here but I will summarize it’s salient points, which I believe to be sand-poundingly ridiculous. What follows is a perfect example of government overreach, cover your ass bureaucracy, and anti-scientific reasoning made to look like prudence. Here goes:

If I plan on vacationing in Maine I will have to self quarantine for 14 days, a shelter in place order that prohibits even trips to the grocery store. If we desire food and groceries we must avail ourselves of limited delivery services. Since the majority of rentals with On The Water In Maine are less than two weeks, this would mean that all out of state visitors to the state would be faced with a very quiet and isolated vacation. However, the good Governor, in her grace and wisdom has offered us an olive branch. If we desire to avoid the two week quarantine we can get tested for COVID no later than 72 hours before our arrival in the State. If the test is negative, we can skip the quarantine!! But here’s the sand pounding sophistry part...nobody in Maine is authorized to demand to see our negative test while we are there because of...HIPAA laws. When I say nobody I do mean nobody. Not the cops, not our rental agency, not anyone who owns a restaurant or store that we are about to enter. The results of our COVID test then will be our little secret. So the entire project will be based on the honor system. Let’s set aside for a moment the worthlessness of such an exercise and turn our attention to the science involved here. If someone gets a negative test for COVID, all that tells us is that he or she did not have the virus on the day they were tested. It provides no such reassurance that he or she may not have been exposed to the virus during the long trip to Maine. Any number of  virus-y things may have happened during the 72 hours after the negative test was acquired. Moreover, while we are in Maine, we might pick up COVID while pumping gas, eating a lobster roll, or standing in line at RiverDucks Ice Cream. So, what public health purpose does this totally confidential, 72 hours old negative COVID test serve the State of Maine, other than making her Governor look like a loopy gasbag? 

It should be noted that the entire State of Maine has had fewer cases, hospitalizations and deaths than....Henrico County, making these draconian, business-crushing mandates especially hard to comprehend.

What has been my response to Tiffany Ford and my friends at On The Water In Maine? I fired off the following email late last night...

Tif,

 Pam and I have read through this email which I’m sure was very difficult for you to have to write. My wife will reply with more detailed thoughts, but I wanted to answer myself as well, since I have plenty to say.

First of all, we have no intention of cancelling our reservation. Although it is very clear to me that your Governor clearly does not wish us to come to Maine, and will be extremely distressed if we do, my answer to her is an emphatic, “NO.” I will not cancel my four weeks in Maine. There are many reasons why, not the least of which are the many many fine businesses that we have grown to love over the years in the Camden area to which our cancellation would do great harm. The Smiling Cow, Once Upon a Tree, Hazel’s, The Waterfront, Camden Deli, The Droughty Bear, Riverducks ice cream, and...On The Water in Maine.  We both know how important the short tourist season in Maine is to these and many other wonderful businesses in the Mid-Coast area. To bail on them because of this nonsensical government overreach would be unconscionable. Also, our July in Maine isn’t just a vacation, it is a crucial part of our lives and the lives of our family. The central role that OTWIM has played in so many of these trips has been something that we highly value. Your great care an attentiveness to our needs while we are up there has made everything so much easier and care free. There’s simply no way we would back out on ourselves OR you.

So, we will get tested and go about our lives. We will obey all the rules for social distancing and mask wearing. But we will NOT back away from our commitment to come to your beautiful state, despite your Governor’s wishes.

God Bless,

Doug

Fearing The Lion

I am contrarian by nature. I was born contrary and it’s gotten worse through the years. 2020 is not a good time for contrarians. If you’re the type of person who always feels bad for the Wildebeest, not because he’s always being pursued by the lion but because he has to stay squarely within the herd in order to survive, then the last three weeks has been a discomforting experience. Examples abound:

- At the beginning of the Coronavirus, I was uncomfortable being ordered into the confines of my home by a State-mandated quarantine. The mandate rubbed up against my sensitivities as a free man with agency, making me feel like the hapless Wildebeast. Compliance with the edict was difficult for me and although I followed the instructions laid out for me by the authorities, I did so under official, if silent protest.

- Now, with the murder of George Floyd and the resulting banishment of COVID-19 from the headlines and airwaves, it seems like suddenly everyone has decided that the virus no longer exists. I walk through stores surrounded by mask-less citizens who roll their eyes dismissively at me as they hurry past, much closer than the suggested six feet. So, just about the time that everyone around me seems ready for a robust game of Twister, I’m now suspicious that we have all gone for the headfake, exposing ourselves to imprudent risk from a virus that hasn’t gone anywhere, is still killing people, and for whom there is still no cure. 

- Several years ago when practically everyone I knew was defending Confederate Statues as beautiful art and part of the fabric of the history and attraction of Richmond, Virginia, I began to question if they might be more appropriately displayed somewhere else rather than Monument Avenue. The racial makeup of the city and the message that the prominent display of men who fought for, among other things, the preservation of slavery might be suggesting to African Americans played a big role in my change of viewpoint. Now, the wholesale, lawless dismantling of these same statues with the tacit approval of law enforcement strikes me as wrong. In other words, now that more people have come around to my way of thinking, I am uncomfortable with the process.

- At a time when the entire country seems to have awaken to the persistent reality of racial injustice, I find myself in agreement with this new awareness. I freely admit that being born white in America has benefits, indeed, conferring on white people like me some privilege that black and brown people do not enjoy. Each day brings new admonitions on Facebook and elsewhere informing me of my privilege and how it needs to be checked. Advice memes have popped up addressed to white people, advising us how to and how not to interact with our black friends. I have found many of these suggestions helpful and indeed enlightening.

- I also, simultaneously, find myself resisting some of the new chic thinking on race. The blank, black box that many people displayed on Facebook last Tuesday is exactly the sort of thing that a contrarian like me hates. Again, the Wildebeest. Listen, I didn’t tie yellow ribbons around my mailbox when our embassy in Tehran was overrun, I didn’t display an American flag in my yard after 9/11. I just don’t do hashtags out of stubbornness, I suppose. But, although I acknowledge that white privilege exists, I refuse to go along with the notion that it defines me. Yes, being born white brings privileges with it, but not as many privileges as being born rich does. Although being born super smart is nice, it doesn’t guarantee either success or happiness. The world is teeming with miserable smart people. Neither does the fact that I was born white explain away every success I have enjoyed. Some of it was a result of good parents, a measure of self discipline, a work ethic, and an unwillingness to accept defeat. In addition, admitting that America suffers from racism and that some of that racism is indeed systemic does not mean that I have to accept the notion that the entire American experiment is a fraud, designed exclusively for the purposes of establishing and promoting white supremacy. Every episode of cultural upheaval has moments of overreach. This sort of reductionism is an example of such overreach. I wholeheartedly reject it, which in my opinion does nothing to lessen my desire for constructive change.

All of my life, I have resisted any new fashion or idea which starts to sweep the nation and culture. The more something starts being promoted as the next big thing, I find myself drawn to the counter argument. It’s exactly why I have always been attracted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ while being repelled by most of the churches who claim to represent him. You will search the annals of history all of your life and not find anyone as counter cultural and revolutionary as the Son of God. Equally, you will find it very difficult to find an institution so invested in the status quo as many churches. It is a paradox.

If I had been born a Wildebeest, I would have hated the herd. The strict conformity of such an existence would have driven me nuts. So, yeah...I would have been the one who decided to drift away from the pack to check out that cool looking bush in the distance. You know what happens to him. So, I get it. My opinions here might bother some of you. But, you can’t live your entire life fearing the lion.