Soapbox

So I've got this dog, and I'm trying to decide- how much do I love baby spinach and fresh tomatoes?

Tucker doesn't get walked enough. I admit that. I'm sure Caesar Milan would say to just walk him (and myself) 7 or 8 miles a day and all my problems would be moot. Hah! I get him out for 20 minute walk or so (depending on weather) and frankly, beyond that, that's what I have a yard for! He runs the fence-line when dogs go past, we play fetch and he just wanders and sniffs. That was enough for Boomer.

If an idle brain is the devil's playground, a smart dog is surely demon-possessed, and Tucker proves that nearly every day. He's still technically a puppy and so of course he digs- actually mostly he scrapes little trenches and drops his tennis balls in them, which is not big deal to me. It's just dirt and can be scraped back in. I just have to be careful not to twist an ankle when walking across the yard.

He loves to chew plastic recyclables and will steal them from the bin when the door is open and dash outside with them and tear them up under his favorite tree. Socks from an unwatched laundry basket and unattended shoes will also be spirited away with great glee.

Friday I walked out on the deck and thought, Wait- what's wrong with this picture?… The large plastic pot that I plant basil in every year (the bunnies eat it if it's down in the yard) was gone. Tucker had dragged it- full- off the deck, then dumped it out a few feet away, then tore the pot into pieces. Yum!  (Bear in mind, the house and yard are full of dog toys, which apparently are inferior to the human variety.) 

OK, how much do I want fresh basil all summer?( A lot)  I could buy a new pot and put it up on the picnic table. It would look a little odd but we don't all sit at the table very often. I worry, though- will it just provide him with the incentive to learn how to climb on the chairs to get to it? Or maybe he'll just chew the chairs- they are heavy plastic, after all.

He also likes to chew sticks (perhaps he's part beaver) and will drag apart firewood stacks and brush piles left from pruning. Last week, among the sticks scattered here and there I found one of the bamboo poles from my vegetable garden that I used to let the beans climb. I had taken them down for the winter and laid them right by the fence, so I thought he had probably teased one out through the fence.

So,when I turned the soil in the bed the other day, I moved the poles away from the fence to protect them from him. 2 days ago I found 2 more poles out in the yard, and a distinct bowing to one part of the fence proved he had just jumped over and dragged them out.
Try to keep my toys away from me, will ya, lady? Ha!

Well crap. My fencing is only three feet high, to make it easy for me to step in and out, but the corner posts are taller, so Ted suggested I tie string around the garden just above the top of the fence and string empty coke cans all along it, which will clatter and clank if he hits them. He's kind of skittish of weird noises, so I thought this might do the trick.

My first clue that this problem would not be solved so cheaply or easily came yesterday when I was attaching the twine and Tucker was chewing happily the little tag bits trailing from the knots on the corner poles. He watched with great fascination as I strung the cans, so I wacked them with a stick so they'd make a noise and told him to "leave it". Then I got the bottle of bitter Lime spray and doused the cans (and the knots) with it, just to be safe.

This morning I looked out and sure enough- the cans have already been chewed down and dragged around the yard like lovely, musical toys. Apparently bitter Lime does not taste as bad as twine tastes good. Score canine 1, human 0.

I can go buy new, taller fencing and spend probably an entire day replacing what I have (while Tucker  jumps in and out to see what I"m doing and steals a few tools to see what they taste like, no doubt) but then I have to either fashion some sort of gate or do the pole-vault with my hoe to get in the garden myself. And I'm just not as limber as I used to be. Hmmm… how much do I want my veggies this year?

I could just abandon the garden until next year, when hopefully Tucker will be a better doggy citizen and stick to only jumping in the strawberry bed and eating all my berries, as Boomer used to do. What do you think the odds are of that, though?

Yeah, I should probably just go by 4-foot fencing. Or maybe 5…

I keep thinking about purple fingers,
on smiling, white-bearded men
and graceful dark-eyed women swathed in veils
all proudly displaying their purple fingers,
the symbol of true liberty,

our promise to them that from now on,
when they want to change the world,
they can do it with their fingers.

In a voice trembling with indignation
a man in a pinstripe suit speaks of liberty
and of his confederate heritage.
He says the Civil War was never about slavery-
and of course, it wasn't, for him.
Virginia, he says, stood tall against government oppression
and refused to kill their kin in South Carolina!
Instead they picked up their guns
and broke the Union and slaughtered their kin
in Delaware and Ohio,
all in the name of freedom,
and I keep hearing the ringing of bells and seeing white hoods
and wondering why no one asks him,
freedom for whom?

He speaks with righteous anger
of the tyranny of our current federal government
and of the atrocities of General Sherman
as if the burning of Atlanta
was Obama's campaign promise to the North.
He points his finger and says that the civil war,
like the American Revolution before it
was just people striving for freedom,
freedom from a government on the wrong path
but I keep thinking about purple fingers,
thinking that this man's blood must run violet by now.
I keep hearing bells,
the ringing of guns and the cracking of bells,
like the one that cracked on the day we promised each other
that from now on,
every American citizen would be born with a purple finger.

This man dismisses slavery
and excuses the secessionist, gun-soaked talk of today,
blames it all on oppression by the government
which we voted for with our fingers.
I keep hearing that bell,
the one that meant we would never again have to use a gun
to change whats wrong
and the sound of a weapon being loaded
And I keep seeing  white hoods,
because they're so close now that they can taste it,
so close to ripping those hoods off and saying
"OK, yeah, we hate him because he's black,
because for us, the tyranny of having someone else win the election
is worse than the tyranny of kings or the tyranny of chains,
and for us, the only freedom that matters
is our freedom to stop you from being different."

They love this nation like a psychotic boyfriend,
ready to beat her, rape her, attack anyone she even talks to.
They'll tear her apart, if they have to,
in the name of their devotion
but I keep thinking about those purple fingers
and the smiling men and solemn women…

we promised them that those fingers were all they'd ever need.

An open letter to Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church

Dear Mr. Phelps-
Today I bought a cute  little black dress
to wear to the funeral of whoever it is that died
and made you Jesus.

After all- at least with the Pope an entire college of cardinals have to vote
in order for him to be called God's Voice here on earth.
You seem to have elected yourself Pope of the World,
exhaulted above all others by virtue of being
the only one who somehow was able to suss out,
hidden in among all that New Testament crap about "love" and "peace",
and turning cheeks and judging not,
that God's true top priority for mankind was:
hitting on chicks.

Now me, I don't see why, if God hates fags so much
they weren't included in his famous Top 10 list.
Surely, if homosexuality is such a deal-breaker
it would rank above mere coveting!
But it never even got a "thou shalt not"
or made the final cut as a deadly sin.
Most of the rest of us were fooled by this, but you-
you have the discerning mind, the vision
to know that what God cares about most is
persecuting people who don't persecute gays.

And the true profits are always reviled, aren't they?
The KKK says that they repudiate your activities
(though I wonder which activities they object to-
the activity where you show up at churches and cemeteries
and attack grieving families for the sin of careing about, well, anything besides homosexuality-
or the part where you don't lynch people or tie them to car bumpers?)

Tell me Mr. Phelps, how does it feel to be so low on the evolutionary scale
that even the KKK won't be seen with you
for fear you'll make them look bad?
You and your followers are the child-molesters of the religious crazy world:
the ones even the father-rapers and mother-stabbers
would shank in the shower if they got a chance.

But are you filled with hate- or fear?
Are you evil, or incredibly stupid- or cunningly calculating?
Or, is it possible that you truly know not what you do?
On Judgment Day, will God call you up to the throne and say
"Fred, who the hell died and made you me??"
and smite you with an iron fist of justice?
Or will He put a gentle hand on your head, sigh,
and guide you to the place of eternal healing
where sad, tortured souls are at last washed cleaned?

I do not know the answer to that question.
I only know that each time I simply speak your name
I feel the urgent need to gargle.
And I have my little black dress ready, either way.

I am not your girl friend.
I am not your child.
I don't even know your name, although I did you the courtesy of telling you mine. Yet you don't even use it: instead, you close our conversation, a brief informational exchange between two complete strangers, with the presumed intimacy of calling me "Sweetheart."

I'm not sweet on you, and you're not in my heart. We've never even met! Ah, but you weren't flirting with me when you said that, were you? No, you simply meant it as…a… pleasantry. And you seem like a pleasant guy. You  certainly meant no offense, probably aren't even aware of what you've done, you. I bet that all your life you've heard men- your father, your doctor, your boss- speak to adult women this way: "Honey" "Kiddo" "Girl", infantalizing capable, mature women, reducing them to cherished children as if that is somehow flattery.

So I'm just letting you know: it's not. It's not cute. It's not a compliment to pretend a regard that we both know you cannot feel, or to speak as if  I'm so young and innocent that you just adore and want to protect me on sight. 
It's actually an assertion of dominance, an indirect verbal cue to me that you are the leader here- the one in charge. By calling me, an older woman whom you have never met "sweetheart" you deftly smashed our brief relationship as equals- probably without thinking about it. Six questions into our conversation and you put me in my place.

Imagine a woman walking up to a male police officer and saying "Hey there honey- can I park here without a permit?" You'd think her pretty rude and presumptious. But go ahead- tell me I"m wrong. Tell me I"m imagining it.

No no, of course you didn't mean anything demeaning by it. I believe you. That's why I'm telling you: it is demeaning. It's a quiet, subtle power play, the kind some people throw around every day without thinking. "Don't worry your sweet, fuzzy, (senile?) little head honey, Daddy's here."
Well I have a Daddy, thanks. And he raised me to be a capable, independent woman.

You don't have to call me "ma'am". You don't have to call me by my name. But you don't even know me. So, unless you're courting me, or adopting me- do me a favor:

don't call me "sweetheart".