Hold on, Come on

I. Hold On

Clothespin-people, below, made in England by Tanda Toys (1960s?) hold the lace half-curtain in my bedroom.
The southern light is extra bright today because sun is bouncing off new snow outside. After two winters with almost no snow (unheard of), this is very cheering. (I don't have to shovel it or drive in it, but I think I'd feel the same even if I were a car-owner. Winters should be snowy!)

I'm on the ground floor, and with no yard on the south side, passers-by walk right in front of my windows. Sheers give privacy while letting in light for my giant Boston fern that winters inside.
Fern is looking shaggy, having lost a lot of fronds, but always holds on, and every summer recuperates outside—and grows bigger, now taking up almost half the floor space.

Fern came from a place I house- and cat-sat three years ago.
The woman had died of cancer, and the man later moved out east with the cats and gave away the plants. 

My landlord came by with the building inspector the other day. (The landlord then installed new smoke detectors. I'd just been wondering if I should change their batteries, so that's a good thing.)

Do you ever try to imagine how you would appear to a stranger?
I was trying to imagine what my rooms look like to these people who don't know me... (Or barely know me--the landlord is a new owner. I've only met him once, but he's a nice young man who takes good care of the place.)

"TOYS & BOOKS: Who is this person?" (Personally, I would want to meet them.)
____________________________

II. COME ON!

bink took photos at the protest of Trump's administration at the Capitol on Weds., when people around the country gathered at all fifty state capitols.
She circled her favorite placard in red. I love it!
GEE WHIZ
YOU GUYS,
COME ON!

"So Minnesotan," bink said.

I love this understated appeal to people's decency:
"Heck now, folks, should you be doing that?"
It's a genuine homespun humanity that reminds me of what Minnesotan Garrison Keillor was going for on his Prairie Home Companion radio show.

I never loved Keillor and his show though. It wasn't genuine.
I always saw him like Sam Anderson describes in this 2006 Slate Article, "A Prairie Home Conundrum: The Mysterious Appeal of Garrison Keillor".

Keillor's "willful simplicity is annoying because, after a while, it starts to feel prescriptive.
Being a responsible adult doesn't necessarily mean speaking slowly about tomatoes.
[His] sense of affectation is why some people instinctively dislike such a likable entertainer."

Yes, GK was an shrewd entertainer playing a part of a gee-whiz guy, and that is why some people (and I) were not surprised when dozens of women named Keillor as sexually inappropriate (during #meToo, but some allegations went back many years).
[Overview at NPR: "Investigation: For some who lived in it, Keillor's world wasn't funny", 2018]

But Keillor was a great storyteller, and I was disappointed (as I always am) that a storyteller like him couldn't rise to the challenge of telling a good story about the TRUTH of their own complicated behavior.

A Lutheranish guy like him should be able to say with Saint Paul,
I do not do the things I want to do, but the things I hate.
There's a story.

Instead it’s all Peter. “Never saw the guy before!”

Louis CK and Sherman Alexie are others, and Neil Gaiman is the latest storyteller who can't seem to see themselves as anything less than the entirely-good guy.

Come on, you guys!
People in power (not just men) act in ways that make other people (not just women) queasy, threatened, or worse?
Ya don't say.

And we ourselves, we who think of ourselves as good people: not everything we do is good, right?
Country-Western songs get it right. Welcome to the human race: You are bound to be the Bad Guy in someone else's story.
It's just not possible that our lives will always slot perfectly into the larger picture or other people's lives.

Maybe it was accidental. Maybe it was unintentional. Maybe it was "not that bad".
Maybe it was.
There is a big difference between being a thoughtless jerk and being a serial rapist like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.

There’s a big difference between misgendering someone and taking over the United States government so that you can outlaw transgender people.
There is a big difference between a microaggression and a lynching.

But the lesser wrongs count. There's a need, I'd say, for more good storytellers to say in public,
Yes I did that. Here's how that happens; here's how it works; here's where I slot in...
Me too.

Have I missed it? There must be some thoughtful, honest, smart, vulnerable (even funny) ‘mea culpa’…
Let me know if you know of one!

In real-life, places like Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon are not as wholesome as he spun it.

Sam Anderson again:

"Wobegon is a little like [Faulkner's] Yoknapatawpha County, but Midwestern—i.e., with all the murder, rape, class warfare, and incest translated into gardening, ice fishing, and gentle boyish hijinks."

And the uncle (like one of mine) who touches up women and girls at the annual family picnic is translated into an avuncular radio personality.

GEE WHIZ YOU GUYS, COME ON!