Heritage, I Don’t Respect Your Heritage

I wrote this screed last week to prod my low information friends on facebook, so I thought I’d just put a copy of it here.

Flaggots, that’s what I call them, those people that display the “Stars & Bars”, the Virginia batte flag. The flag that represents treason, cruelty, ignorance, thievery, slavery, hatred, terrorism, racism and quite obviously to everyone but them, it’s the flag of sore losers.

Last week a white domestic terrorist managed to kill more that twice as many Americans in a few moments than ISIS has killed in the last two years. One of those killed was assassinated: South Carolina State Senator,  Pastor Clementa Pinckney, a black man whose body is lying in state with the confederate flag waving over his murdered corpse. “You rape our women, you’re taking over our county and you got to go”, the assassin said before he ended that Bible study. This was an act of right-wing domestic terrorism, which is exactly what the Department of Homeland Security has been warning us about since its creation. This terrorist was a flaggot, hardly one photograph of him without a symbol of hatred.

For ninety years no one notable in the United States used that flag, not even the KKK, they used Old Glory in their meetings.  It wasn’t until there was talk of integration and Brown V Board of Education did The White Citizen’s Council drag out the stars & bars again in the early 50s, it didn’t go up in South Carolina until 1961 as the civil rights movement gained steam. So, sure, it’s not about racism. (snark).

Now there is a call to take down the flag over the statehouse, Walmart, Amazon and other companies have stopped selling flag-based products and the Republicans, Conservatives & Libertarians are behaving in their predictable hypocritical fashion –  “They’re Attacking Our Free Speech!!”.  No, my right leaning friends, we are just exercising our right to free speech, you just don’t like what we are saying. No one is banning that awful flag! And I feel embarrassed for some of you that I feel the need to point this out. We are simply using our first amendment rights to shame you into doing what is right.

The right is so funny, forever saying “Let the free-market decide”, unless it decides against their opinions, then it’s the end of America. Well, the free-market has decided, and it has decided that it doesn’t want to sell this symbol of hatred and apartheid anymore. Those of us on the left and the centrists will shame that flag right off that flagpole is South Carolina, make no mistake. So go ahead and wave your flag, say what you like as you promote your delusions, exercise your right to free speech as every American should. But don’t act so surprised when a majority of Americans disagree with you and are using their right to free speech to call you out on your lies and pop the bubble of your fantasy world with the needle of truth and the stickpin of fact. If you don’t like things the way they are then come up with a convincing argument, organize and vote!  This is the American way.

I feel the need to point out that no former confederate state contributes to the Federal Treasury, indeed all of them receive more money from the federal government annually than they pay in (Florida comes in at about zero). So whenever a southerner makes fun of New York, New Jersey and California, they are making fun of the people that are paying their bills and those jokes are not so funny when you know this fact.

In closing I would just like to note that the USA is a remarkable country that allows agents of government to fly a flag of treason and pay for roads and schools named after traitors. I mean in Germany the nazi flag is outlawed and no Jewish kid ever has to go to Joseph Goebbels Middle School, unlike here.

Space Coast Clown

As you might know, my childhood, in the sixties, were spent on the Space Coast of Florida and looking back it’s easy to realize that there is no place else I’d rather have spent it. I mean it was rural, woodsy and wild as well as a modern place of national pride that so very much represented how bright the future could be. Plus, it was just plain groovy:  from watching rocket launches at Cape Canaveral from my backyard to watching Star Trek and I Dream of Jeannie on the TV, all while wearing psychedelic beach pants and enjoying the new exciting taste of a nice glass of Tang.

I lived across the street from the Max K. Rhoads Park, which was a kind of community serve-all; ball games, playground, swimming, a huge BBQ pit, several pavilions with grills, and a large hall for weddings and such. My brother Andy and I spent nearly every free waking hour there hanging out with Barry, the son of the live-in caretaker, doing what little barefoot boys from Florida do.  There was always free food and soda whenever there were people having a party or picnic. I’ve found that people tend to be generous to eight year old boys that are so serious about their playtime.

One such time, after stashing some Penthouse magazines in our secret fort in the woods that bordered the park, we decided to head to the hall where we could see people gathering, FREE SODA! I can still smell the BBQ while I’m writing this and could smell it then as we crossed the two or three acres from the secret fort to the hall. I remember that it was rock & roll music that day, and the people were drinking and smoking. We headed to the BBQ pit where, indeed, we got that free soda from the two old guys manning the pit. They were asking us if we were invited, and Barry, who was always full of shit, offered up a bold-faced “Yeah!”, before the guilt and embarrassment had time to wash over my face. I know now that they were just toying with us, I mean we must have looked like little barefoot pig-pens by this time, mingling amidst all the dressed up guests for the party. The pit-master laughed and told us to go and play and that he’d save us some chicken when it was done.

After that we started off to the other side of the park where there was another small party with kids. I can’t remember for sure, it may have been an all girls’ party or perhaps one with older kids because we hadn’t closely investigated that part of the park. We never made it closer because on our way, the most wonderful thing happened. I found a red Cricket disposable lighter!  TREASURE!!!  It might not sound like much now but those things were new on the market and this was my first one! As the three of us were passing around my incredible find, a strange noise from out of nowhere increasing in volume and frequency stole all our attention. Honing in on the source, we looked up. Overhead about three stories high and descending quickly, was a clown wearing a jet-pack!  What the hell? A clown wearing a jet-pack dipped down right over the three of us, then back up, and over the lake, and off into the distance, in a straight line!

The experience must have stressed out my little brain because I don’t recall much after that. The next thing I remember is that it was getting dark and Barry went home to his trailer and me and Andy swam through the lake on our way home (we didn’t have to take a bath if we swam through the lake). We told Mom about it, gave her all the details, we did everything to convince her but she didn’t believe us.   Why should she? This was, at the time, something that might have appeared in movies or on TV. Definately not something a clown would be flying over the park on the Space Coast of Florida in the late 60s.

Orchid Trees

This is a little something I shared over on facebook and I brought it over here because it’ll fit right in with the memoirs thing and I don’t have much time right now…

You might be surprised to learn that I have planted hundreds of trees throughout my lifetime, not as a mission or anything like that, it’s just part of who I am and I really don’t think about it too much. Anyway, after checking on my apple seedling that I put in the ground this year I started wondering about all my other babies. So I figured that I’d get on Google Street View and take a little drive through my past and it ended up being quite a remarkable trip.
Six states in over fifty years and almost all the trees are still there and so big, you can’t even see my childhood home in Ohio from the road any longer. The Red Oak that I planted at The Taverne of Richfield (my first cooking job), was as tall as the three stories it complements.  After all this touring it started getting a little emotional for me, haunting really, so I was a bit hesitant to visit my early childhood home in Florida to see if the very first tree I planted was still there.  Even though I highly doubted it I did, and there she was, the Orchid Tree that I had planted from seed with my mother when I was four or five years old, looking lively & lush and ready to go for another fifty years!

I love the Google Street View..!

Well, We All Knew that I Needed a Change Anyway…

If you’re reading this you already know that Blogger must’ve had a near-death experience, saw the light, met The Lord and has changed her whoring ways (I’ll bet she quit smoking too). I, like peenee, just can’t stand for some company unjustly dictating what I can and cannot do, so here I am, a bit excited about having a fresh blotter and the truth be told, I wanted to take my bloviating in a new direction anyway.  In my case Blogger just did us all a favor as you can tell from the weedy way I’ve been posting over there.

This is enough work for now, doing the set-up of this blog & such.  Now I must return to Blogger to let everyone know how to get here, retrieve my delecates, and then fumigate…..

Love You All..!!