Scream already
Folks in Estes Park are to the point where they don't even wait for proper introductions at a gathering before relating how much they dislike our current commander in chief. I'm so thankful I'm not related to the man, because imagine how uncomfortable things would get if I fired back, "Oh, yeah, good to meet you, I'm his nephew."
We used to have a filter, we used to think, I think, if others were milling about who might overhear a casual conversation we were having with a friend, we ought to be a bit circumspect before offering up assassination jokes or cutting insights into the ignorance of registered voters. Now we just launch right in, apparently, because who could possibly be offended by demeaning the body habitus and speech impediments of the holder of the highest public office in the land. My country tis of thee, DT sucks - do you downhill ski?
Having said that, I'm all for a good public demonstration, a release of pressure and tension, agony and angst, directed nowhere but into the night sky. Regardless of topic, regardless of politics, I admire anyone locally who can mobilize locals, wrest them away on a Wednesday night from potato chips and the Goldbergs. For years, I've let residents know most of the stuff they are complaining to me about at the local level, stuff that flies in the face of reason or isn't getting fixed when the fix seems pretty simple, could be solved much quicker and easier by just massing in Bond Park with a few signs and some righteous indignation.
Instead, they continue writing letter after letter, scheduling meeting upon meeting with various town officials, speak their allotted time during public comments, and are then disappointed when their carefully thought-out arguments are ignored, their requests for balance or consideration of potentially unintended consequences openly derided, even their appearance (hell, even a misquote for posterity) excluded from the sporadic newspaper coverage of town board meetings (which until recently read like a direct transcript with heretical Politburo members airbrushed out, so unimaginative and biased was the reporting, illustrative of what passes for a degree from the "that's not writing, that's typing" schools of journalism, where skill-set mastery centers mostly on swearing allegiance to moral ambivalence and correctly setting an iPhone to record).
So when I commiserate, and suggest instead they should buy some poster board, grab a friend, and join me in Bond Park, I am amazed how this just stops all conversation bolt-lock dead. No half-hearted nods, no pretend promises to consider it. Just baffled bafflement, as if I had just started rapping in Mandarin. Election not go your way? Better stock up on beer. PDEs, or public displays of emotion, any emotion, are just not part of the fabric of folks born/reborn in Estes Park. Takes too much effort, and oxygen is thin. Plus what would the neighbors think?
Hey, I was you the first couple of go-rounds with Bill and the Boys, banging my head against a wall until I decided I didn't need the results, head throbbing, wall unmoved. Note that, as I look back fondly on my first ridiculously misguided (because I wasn't even exercising my right to free speech in the same area code as where I could potentially effect change) public appearances, a decade later, the library has moved all local history to the museum. Let local history record (wink wink) my repeated ineffectual pleas to the town board ten years earlier had absolutely no influence on that. If a non-entity makes a noise in a forest, does the tsk-tsking from the trees make the non-entity even more invisible?
Build-up to the "Scream at the Sky" event scheduled locally for last night somehow wormed its way into some national feature stories. As I said, I may not be down with the cause, but I certainly appreciate when others manage to get Estes Park mentioned alongside New York, Boston, and Dallas, plus I wanted to see how someone else, finally, had riled the geriatric corps from their slumber to shout and gnash and jump up and down where I had so often failed.
If there was yelling last night in Estes Park, let the record show it didn't begin on time. At 7:03, still hearing nothing, having driven around the town square for the third time with the passenger window rolled down, feeling only the chill sans noise, I finally noticed a few souls huddled together near the Enos Mills statue. Farther along, I saw a couple walking that direction, potentially heading their way. But it was dark, and cold, and I was disappointed that Estes Park had perhaps, once again, just pretended to be like Boston, or New York, or Dallas, or Eugene. So I retreated to the library, hearing nothing on the way or once in the building, wondering if the other side was just as feckless at translating abreaction into results. Perhaps they'll eventually put the WAV file on YouTube. If loud noises ever happened in that 30-minute block, I couldn't make them out over the cheap library headphones (not tuned to anything, just donned to avoid interruption).
So now I'm concerned that 80% of people polled in America hate everything, and the new anger generation somehow believes action means exercising some muscles around the mouth. Seriously, is Trump shade just the latest form of complaining about the weather, or are you folks complaining about him to me actually going to do something about it?
We used to have a filter, we used to think, I think, if others were milling about who might overhear a casual conversation we were having with a friend, we ought to be a bit circumspect before offering up assassination jokes or cutting insights into the ignorance of registered voters. Now we just launch right in, apparently, because who could possibly be offended by demeaning the body habitus and speech impediments of the holder of the highest public office in the land. My country tis of thee, DT sucks - do you downhill ski?
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| Did 10 really went? Or did 10 intend to went? |
Having said that, I'm all for a good public demonstration, a release of pressure and tension, agony and angst, directed nowhere but into the night sky. Regardless of topic, regardless of politics, I admire anyone locally who can mobilize locals, wrest them away on a Wednesday night from potato chips and the Goldbergs. For years, I've let residents know most of the stuff they are complaining to me about at the local level, stuff that flies in the face of reason or isn't getting fixed when the fix seems pretty simple, could be solved much quicker and easier by just massing in Bond Park with a few signs and some righteous indignation.
Instead, they continue writing letter after letter, scheduling meeting upon meeting with various town officials, speak their allotted time during public comments, and are then disappointed when their carefully thought-out arguments are ignored, their requests for balance or consideration of potentially unintended consequences openly derided, even their appearance (hell, even a misquote for posterity) excluded from the sporadic newspaper coverage of town board meetings (which until recently read like a direct transcript with heretical Politburo members airbrushed out, so unimaginative and biased was the reporting, illustrative of what passes for a degree from the "that's not writing, that's typing" schools of journalism, where skill-set mastery centers mostly on swearing allegiance to moral ambivalence and correctly setting an iPhone to record).
So when I commiserate, and suggest instead they should buy some poster board, grab a friend, and join me in Bond Park, I am amazed how this just stops all conversation bolt-lock dead. No half-hearted nods, no pretend promises to consider it. Just baffled bafflement, as if I had just started rapping in Mandarin. Election not go your way? Better stock up on beer. PDEs, or public displays of emotion, any emotion, are just not part of the fabric of folks born/reborn in Estes Park. Takes too much effort, and oxygen is thin. Plus what would the neighbors think?
Hey, I was you the first couple of go-rounds with Bill and the Boys, banging my head against a wall until I decided I didn't need the results, head throbbing, wall unmoved. Note that, as I look back fondly on my first ridiculously misguided (because I wasn't even exercising my right to free speech in the same area code as where I could potentially effect change) public appearances, a decade later, the library has moved all local history to the museum. Let local history record (wink wink) my repeated ineffectual pleas to the town board ten years earlier had absolutely no influence on that. If a non-entity makes a noise in a forest, does the tsk-tsking from the trees make the non-entity even more invisible?
Build-up to the "Scream at the Sky" event scheduled locally for last night somehow wormed its way into some national feature stories. As I said, I may not be down with the cause, but I certainly appreciate when others manage to get Estes Park mentioned alongside New York, Boston, and Dallas, plus I wanted to see how someone else, finally, had riled the geriatric corps from their slumber to shout and gnash and jump up and down where I had so often failed.
If there was yelling last night in Estes Park, let the record show it didn't begin on time. At 7:03, still hearing nothing, having driven around the town square for the third time with the passenger window rolled down, feeling only the chill sans noise, I finally noticed a few souls huddled together near the Enos Mills statue. Farther along, I saw a couple walking that direction, potentially heading their way. But it was dark, and cold, and I was disappointed that Estes Park had perhaps, once again, just pretended to be like Boston, or New York, or Dallas, or Eugene. So I retreated to the library, hearing nothing on the way or once in the building, wondering if the other side was just as feckless at translating abreaction into results. Perhaps they'll eventually put the WAV file on YouTube. If loud noises ever happened in that 30-minute block, I couldn't make them out over the cheap library headphones (not tuned to anything, just donned to avoid interruption).
So now I'm concerned that 80% of people polled in America hate everything, and the new anger generation somehow believes action means exercising some muscles around the mouth. Seriously, is Trump shade just the latest form of complaining about the weather, or are you folks complaining about him to me actually going to do something about it?
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