Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Not Safer at Home Any More
The girl next door climbs a ladder to her second floor bedroom window. That’s how she comes home and how she leaves. Yesterday, she came down the ladder carrying a box. I don’t know what was in it.
This odd ingress and egress is due to the pandemic. Our neighbor girl, maybe 19 or 20, comes and goes several times a day and going in and out the upstairs window is a way to keep her and whatever germs she might harbor from her grandmother who neither comes nor goes, just stays inside trying to avoid getting sick.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Supreme Court just blocked our governor’s extension of the stay at home order until May 26th. Republican state legislators decided they couldn’t handle waiting a couple of weeks for the order to expire. Nor did they have any patience for a studied re-opening, you know, one that would be careful and incorporate teaching businesses how to protect their customers. There are only so many of them (customers) so you’d think they’d deserve special handling.
So I guess that ripping up Wisconsin’s stay at home order means that the neighbor girl can kick the ladder aside and just go in the front door, grandma be damned. Some things are more important than others and Republicans getting their way trumps grandma’s wishful thinking about her life expectancy.
I exaggerate. But not really.
The last time I looked (which was last night’s news), 83,000 Americans had died from Covid-19 in about the past six weeks. A city full of people. New people getting diagnosed and new people dying every day. Now, children are showing signs of weird and terrible Covid-related sicknesses. But Republicans are chastened not at all. They see this crisis as a ripe opportunity to gin up more faux conspiracy theories, give their gun-toting troops a new enemy – us, especially us old people because, you know, how whiny we are about this pesky virus.
All of this Republican craziness has moved me to a place I’ve avoided all these many years.
Absolute hatred.
I can’t believe I typed that phrase. But I did. And I won’t take it back.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Come on in. Have a seat.
I feel it, too, Jan. And I hate that I do. I hate my hatred.
Many have fumed and raged over the US’s/Republican’s refusal to halter the words and actions of Trump for the sake of political interests. There have been many breath-taking changes made which have affected the rights of vulnerable citizens. No one ever anticipated that the extreme right attitudes would extend beyond the right to bear arms, and to pay for their own privileged medical services, to the willingness to risk citizen deaths in their daily life for the sake of beliefs, politics, and the right to make money.
That’s not good. There must be many Republicans deeply concerned about this latest action?
Jan, I have been thinking that I, too, have nothing but raw hatred for more people than I have ever had in my lifetime. When I heard the news about Wisconsin tonight I thought probably it won’t make a lot of difference. Those who are smart enough to know staying home is the best way to stay safe and keep others safe will continue to stay home. Restaurants will open, most won’t go, those who go will get sick. What I wonder is whether those who make these butt-stupid decisions will ever realize their error and feel guilt. If I had the power, I would heap it on eye-ball deep. Thanks for the space to do my little rant at 2 in the morning – now I will go back to bed.
My son is not climbing a ladder, but he comes and goes and we don’t go anywhere because there’s no cure, no vaccine, and if we aren’t very careful, this is highly likely to kill us.
I think I passed through hatred and have moved into resignation. I can’t fix it. And it isn’t going to run its course so that life will resume and if it does resume, it won’t be the world we left in March.
It’s civil war and guess who has all the guns???
I’ve been feeling the same way. Wishing that they all get what they deserve.
Same types of crazy things happening here in Texas, too, even though the numbers continue to rise!