I knew nothing about this except that it was on one of my lists, and then I read one of Jamaica Kincaid's short stories in The Secret Self. Lushly stark, if that's possible. I thought I would feel more connection with the protagonist given her name; I didn't, hence the "stark." Brief asides to Paul Gaugin (one of his paintings is on the cover) and, I'll have to check, I think The Second Sex.
I approached the front yard with a shovel and a hoe and a swan rake, actually wearing boots because I anticipated a boot-on-the-shovel method of digging.
Oh-ho-ho.
I might have been better off with a sod-cutting plough. I did maybe a third of the area I intended before the hoe broke. I worked for a while with a fork and trowel before stopping. I'll attempt the rest tomorrow after the epoxy dries the hoe into one again. I hope.
I noticed another branch off the evergreen and one cracked off a plum, and just now, when I'm quite Done for the day, looking out the bedroom window, I noticed another small one broken off the cherry tree. Lest anyone think my beating the crap outta my trees was in vain, I should point out that these broken branches were higher than my reach, unless they were on the evergreen, which I ignored, or the cherry, which I forgot about. So I hauled a bunch of plum branches to the back and started cutting them up for the brush pile I mistook my left forefinger for a branch and decided I was too tired to see or cut straight. So I stopped.
RDC oiled the patio furniture and it looks miles better. And I finished swapping the windows. Last night I melted the care tag on one of the curtains into the iron, so I rehung the washed living room curtains wrinkled. RDC suggests either melting or sanding the polyester off the iron, since isoprophyl alcohol won't touch it; I favor buying a new iron.
I finally hung the new birdfeeder. The birds have already decided that the New and Different is not a threat and I can't wait for a squirrel to try it.
I had lunch with someone the other day who repeated someone else's description of two adjacent houses, one covered with anti-war signs and the other with a U.S. flag and a Marines flag, as "dueling houses." I said, because this really gets me, "I don't know why those two concepts have to be perceived as opposing."
Can o' worms, party of four.
She asked what I meant, and I said that a silver lining from last September was that anyone could fly the flag without being misunderstood: the whole country could claim it. But now it's shifted back to "belonging" only to a certain faction or mindset.
She didn't know what I meant, which I found frustrating since she agreed with the "dueling" perception. While I paused, thinking how politely to communicate the contradiction I saw in her stance, happily someone else got my back by saying that yes, she had flown her flag immediately after September 11th but not during the action in Afghanistan, "because I didn't want...," she paused,
"...to be misunderstood?" I suggested, and
she nodded, "anyone to think I supported that bombing." Explaining herself further, she said she sees that the flag represents jingoistic support of the conservative end of the spectrum rather than patriotism. I nodded, glad to have someone articulate the thought.
We then explained jingoistic: simplistic, reductionist slogans that quash discourse, such as "My country right or wrong" and "America--love it or leave it."
I didn't know how to communicate the contradiction I saw between the first person's a) perception of the flying the flag and peace as dueling concepts yet b) disagreement with the notion that the flag does not belong to all patriotic citizens. I am tongue-tied when it comes to polite but impassioned debate.
(And of course anyone should fly the flag and not be concerned with What Someone Might Think, but I think it's testament to how much the flag does "belong" more to conservatives that being misunderstood is so valid a concern.)
I brought it upon myself though. I had mentioned seeing a recent abuse of the flag that pressed all my buttons.
I hate car flags. I hate that they are made of flimsy plastic, that the wind rends them to tatters yet their owners don't replace them even when the stripes are half gone, their disposability. This most egregious offense yet was a U.S. flag on the left rear door of a car, with a Denver Broncos football team's flag on the right rear door.
These people didn't even know that the flag should always be on its own right and higher than any other domestic flag or pennant. I left unsaid the obvious, that football, stupid waste of time or not, should not be (by flag height) thus equated to the ideals of the United States of America, let alone (by being on the right) supersede them. Isn't knowledge of right treatment of the flag basic civic knowledge?
In later September 2001, I saw a photograph of a sidewalk outside the U.S. embassy in Canberra. (I think. Somewhere in Australia anyway.) A flag lay on the pavement, a carpet for letters and candles and flowers people had lain there in support of us in our crisis. I recoiled at that photograph, on a gut level, because that the flag shouldn't be on the ground is instinctual to me (speaking of jingoistic), then reprimanded myself: other countries are less goose-steppy about their flags and it's kindness, so accept it. I made the mistake of telling my father that, trying to explain what I saw as a fault in my reaction. He--he who told me I was in for a world of hurt in my idealism, who was my first opponent when I realized how ineffectual "America--love it or leave it" is as a statement of purpose, who taught me how to treat the flag--couldn't get past its being on the ground: another failure on my end to communicate my thought.
I don't see that similar ignorance or abuse by citizens or resident aliens, when committed with similar kind intent, is okay. It's yours. Treat it well.