'I Hate Him', Said Matrons Over Cucumber Sandwiches - How Patrician Ladies Were Delighted By The Attack On The President

Vicki Parker liked to organize neighborhood soirees - gatherings of friends and neighbors to honor local poets and artists and to share ideas about America and the political scene. A recent event feted Abigail Saunders, an elderly woman who had been writing verse for decades without notice or publication.  Despite her claim that she was writing only for herself 'and for those souls who feel inspired by my words', she had hoped that some journal would accept her work. 

The work, however, was a treacly assemblage of childhood memories of her cat, the arbor in the yard, and  the picnics on the lawn.  She never got much beyond 'the pretty blossoms, the birds in the sky, O what wonders where they fly' but Vicki persisted.   Her voice was true, she said, and her words metaphors, charming allusions to a better world.  

The assembly gathered in Vicki's suburban home smiled with each verse, each bound by acceptance of the hostess' kind invitation to at least pay lip service to the poet and to try their best to find a scintilla of meaning in the poet's childish lines. 

When Vicki opened the gathering up for questions, there were but a desultory few who politely lobbed a few marshmallows - was there a real arbor, when during the day did she write, etc. - but the reading ended as all of Vicki's events did with tea sandwiches and iced tea and little else. 

It happened that one of these events - this time to fete a local artist - followed the attempted shooting of the President at the White House press dinner; and the group was more interested in parsing the attempt on his life than listening to Mildred Barnes talk about her still lifes. 

It was a disgrace, the women all nodded in agreement, that such violence should occur.  'We must rid the country of guns', said one to which others chimed in with the same opinion.  Guns, guns, guns, they said in chorus, the symbol of an America gone wrong; and from there turned to the seditious nature of conservatism, its idolatry of guns, individualism, and raw capitalism.  Trump deserved it, they all agreed, for anyone promoting an ethos of white supremacy, Wall Street greed, and American xenophobia was bound to be the subject of hatred. 

If there was ever a more treasonous opinion, it would be hard to imagine.

Each of these suburban matrons had grown up with the same privilege as Vicki. They were proud, patriotic Philadelphians and Bostonians, schooled in the Constitution, the War of Independence, and their ancestors' role in both.  Ginny Adams was an Adams of the John Adams family and had just moved from her home on Beacon Hill to the Washington area because of grandchildren.  She hated to give up the silver, crystal, lace and Chippendale of her family home, and had looked up at the portraits of the founders of America every morning. 

Despite her Republicanism, her deep Old English patrician roots, and her love of country, Ginny had come to hate Donald Trump not so much for his policies - she was certainly for lower taxes, the private sector, and secure borders - but for his persona.  He was a boor, a charlatan, a cheap Las Vegas trickster with a fondness for line dancers, arm candy, and meretricious spending.  The White House ballroom was the last straw, a defilement of old, historic, 18th century propriety, one that reflected the values of her family. 

'Disgusting', she shouted to the noisy women up in arms about the further fall of America into the hands of gunrunners and dogs of war. 

'Disgusting, what, dear?' she was asked. 

'The ballroom, Isabel, the ballroom', Ginny replied, but Isabel couldn't follow the non sequitur exactly and what it had to do with the attempted assassination, so turned to the group who were now onto Melania, her slanty eyes, triple plastic surgeries, and empty head.  'What I wouldn't give to have Michelle back in the White House', one said. 

 

Sort of, most women privately agreed. They would rather have the elegant, statuesque, beautiful Melania than this....Here all of them stopped themselves short from admitting very racist thoughts, for Michelle did look like, God forbid...some....What they were all thinking never was said, never could be said, and never would be said, but there it was. 

'Please, ladies, please', Vicki pleaded. 'Can we let Margaret (the artist in residence) have the floor?' but none of the women, flushed with the delirium that speaking one's mind about the evil in the White House produced - a kind of feverish, overheated pleasure - wanted to look at lifeless, amateurish, clunky, clownish paintings by some street painter. 

The poor artist only managed to show a few of her tableaux before the women scraped their chairs and went back to the living room, the Chablis and cucumber-and-chutney tea sandwiches.  'What will he do next?', said one, referring of course to the President. 'ICE and DOGE were bad enough, but that boorish thug has other fish to fry.'

While Vicki was happy to see her friends so animated and so committed to the downfall of the President, she felt badly for Mildred Barnes who had hoped to show off her entire portfolio but had been stopped in her tracks.  'I must invite her back another time', thought Vicki tending to the maid who couldn't keep up with the demand for her canapes and truffles.

If these ladies of all people, women of presumed stature, breeding, education, and sincerity, could have  so quickly turned the corner, gone round the bend with complicit hatred, what hope was there for ordinary Americans? The bile and venomous, inchoate hatred now viral in the country and spreading has its consequences.  Tantamount to crying 'Fire' in a crowded theatre, free speech gone awry, turned nasty, bullying, and unconscionable. 

Vicki tried to square her ordinary sentiments of diversity, equity, and inclusivity with her growing visceral hatred for the President - good and evil have always co-existed, she said, struggling to remember her college Kierkegaard...or was it Augustine? - but squaring was irrelevant in a time of political apocalypse; and so even she, perhaps the most reserved if not recondite member of her suburban friends, lost it.  From the dignified patron of the arts, she became the harridan of Beeker Lane, the Madwoman of Chaillot, as crazed and addled as any woman in America. 

For the next meeting she did away with the frills - no more still life artists or neighborhood poets - and replaced them with a political litany, a mudwrestling event with no holds barred.  Matrons they might be but they had not lost their moxie. 

The lights were always on way past midnight at 4567 Beeker Lane, doors banging, shouts in the garden; but what could you expect when the tyrant, the boor, the fascist was still in the White House?

Finding Jesus In Mud And Wattle - How A Simple Man Found Sex And God In The African Bush

Henry Dodd was a simple man, born to simple parents in a mill town of western Massachusetts, who summers and after school unclogging textile factory drains pouring into the Reacher River - a nasty job pulling gobs of gunk that had backed waste water up into the floor sluices and put the looms on hold. 

He hated New England, the long winters, the ice dams that built up in the gutters, the car batteries that died, the shoveling, the salting, and the endless black, cinder-pocked snow drifts. Winter seemed endless, and Spring on the river when the shit from the mills upstream, loosened from their ice shelves, drifted past like flotsam and jetsam, stray bolts of gabardine, chocks of organza, and bits and pieces of lumber and restaurant trash from Worcester was no idyll. 

And so it was that Henry had dreams about Africa, a hot, tropical place of untold mystery, romance, and adventure.  He  bought the latest copies of Captain Marvel and The African Queen and wished he were there, on safari on the veldt, the great white hunter tracking wildebeest, rhino, and lion; or in the lairs of the great silverback gorillas in the mountains of the Congo. 

 

Henry was an impressionable boy, and early fantasies stayed with him; so when it was time to decide on a career, it was Africa.  Not only would he be able to track antelope and springboks, but he would be able to help black people out of the miasma of poverty. 

He was the first of his family to to to college, so he had no Ivy League pretentions, and applied to forgiving Midwest schools.  He was accepted at Miami of Ohio and said his goodbyes on a bright September day hoping for the best. 

College was about what he expected - remember, Henry was no great shakes, a good boy, good student, faithful, and orderly but not about to move the world - and this minor academic stage was perfect for him.  The school demanded little and he asked even less but the flame of Africa remained burning bright despite his remedial courses, physical education, and final exams. 

The Peace Corps took him, for he was an ideal candidate.  The agency not unlike long distance bus carriers wanted someone smart enough to drive the bus but not so smart as to be distracted by Kant or Heidegger and land in a ditch.  There was a position open in a Sahelian country of West Africa and he felt blessed.  Chicken raising, although far from his textile background, was just the thing to build a career from the ground up. 

Now, Henry knew nothing about Africans except from Captain Marvel, and so was unprepared for village life.  Not only was there no adventure there, no wildebeests, no romance, and no excitement, it was a penurious, miserable existence far worse than he ever could have imagined unclogging drains over the Reacher.  The Africans were an indolent, buggering, capricious lot, rutting day and night in the the flowering bushes, cadging cooking oil and sardines, getting drunk on palm wine and fermented cassava and sleeping it off through the heat of the day. 

No one cared about chickens, development, improvement, or betterment.  The villagers were an intellectually destitute, morally absent crew; and Henry wondered what exactly was the point of his tenure. 

'Cheer up, bro'', said Pharoah Jones, his Bamako-based Peace Corps handler, formerly from Anacostia, Washington DC's most pestilential slum, chosen in an international DEI program to 'add diversity' to a classically all-white cadre. 'It's all up from here'. 

Pharoah, true to his pimping, hustling ghetto roots, knew what was what; and had already made his way on the Dark Continent.  He had never bothered with 'that cracker thang', the traditional Peace Corps experience in the village, and had managed a city sinecure - Fulani mistresses, Brittany oysters, and a suite at the Independence. 'Stick with me', he said. 

At first Henry was hesitant - where was this man's dedication to the poor, the very ethos of the Peace Corps - but he soon realized that there was no way he could survive two hot, dry, senseless years in the misery of the sub-Saharan wasteland. 

'Ebony and Ivory', he said to Pharoah as he agreed to join him in his sybaritic life, two of a kind, both American to the core, just not the long haul Greyhound drivers the Peace Corps had envisioned.  There was a way, Pharoah said, into the USAID treasury, a goldmine of unaccountable resources without lock and key available to all with a bit of savvy and street sense. 

Pharoah had charmed and bedded Alicia De Nero Barton, USAID Health Officer whose portfolio was in the millions.  She was chary of African lovers, but was delighted by the attentions of an African diasporite, close enough to the Motherland to count for something, and she granted him inestimable favors. 

'Nose wide open', said Pharoah to Henry.  'She never saw it coming', and with that and her favors, he and Henry set up their own NGO, a small non-profit designed to help poor women take charge of their lives. 

It was beautiful - the USAID money came with no strings attached, so linked as it was to rural African women, ipso facto deserving beneficiaries.  The Peace Corps was happy to have such a multi-sectoral American partnership, and the two boys - Pharoah and Henry - made thousands, enough to keep them in the manner to which they had become quickly accustomed. 

The shell had to have some warm bodies, and so one of Pharoah's Fulani mistresses agreed to show up every Friday before evening prayers at the Center for Malian Women, sign a few papers, and go home to her nearby village while awaiting Pharoah's call.  

Partnership in Pharoah's eyes was sacred, share and share alike, so when Henry asked, quite demurely and respectfully if he might 'see' Usha, the Fulani beauty, Pharoah immediately agreed.  'What's mine is yours, bro'', he said and the delightful affair began

Now for the Jesus part, something long brewing in the mind of the simple man from Massachusetts. Here he was in the land of his dreams, living the life of the Arabian Nights, lying by the side of a miraculously beautiful woman, as sumptuously treated as a pasha, and he was giving nothing back, not a penny, lira, or dollar. He was living in the lap of luxury, fulfilling his childhood dreams, and offering nothing but empty pockets.  He owed something, and he would pay. 

'Jesus comes to those who wait' he had always been told, but the debt was coming due.  Was it to be paid to Allah, God of Islam, religion of peace now fueling the bloody ISIS terrorists to the north? To the totemic gods of native Africans - trees, mountains, crows, and crocodiles? Or to Jesus who seemed very distant indeed.  The nostrums of his old Methodist faith seemed watery and indifferent at best; but he had promised, and so he prayed for a visitation. 

No apparition occurred and after each session on his prayer mat he remained empty of God and faith.  What was he to do?

The Africans in nearby villages were still worshipping trees - red smudges on eucalyptus passed for an altar to God - so there was no hope for spiritual reconciliation there; and the chances of Jesus visiting him as had happened to many in his charismatic church back in Worcester, were nil. 

'What the fuck, man?' said Pharoah when he saw his friend's frustration. 'Armageddon will come soon enough' and with that fired up a Jamaican-sixed spliff, took a drink of his Courvoisier Five Star, and beckoned to his Fulani darling to come to him. 

So the trifecta - sex, fairy tale adventure, and doing good - was won in a penthouse suite in Bamako, Mali, and Henry Dodd was a happy man.  How many men can realize their adolescent dreams?

Finding The Holy Grail - The Second Coming of Jesus On A Bike Lane

Henry Dodd was not just a bike enthusiast, he was a bike believer - a man who believed that bicycles would save the planet.  He spent hours lobbying for dedicated bike lanes, online rental bikes, rails-to-trails, and laws to protect the cyclist from careless drivers.  If it were up to him the city would be car-free. 

Few people agreed with him and most thought that cyclists were a nuisance at best - an arrogant, protected species whose idea of rules of the road were 'pedestrian when it suits, vehicle when it doesn't'.  Cyclists routinely ignore stop signs, red lights, No Turn on Red, all to keep up momentum and take advantage of their privileged place on the road.  

‘I'm walkin' here!', the famous line yelled to cars by Ratso Rizzo, a main character in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy as he's crossing a busy Manhattan street, has an avatar - the cyclist, entitled, righteous, and angry. 

Millions of dollars have been spent on dedicated bike lanes that no cyclist ever uses, roads to nowhere, boondoggles and municipal scams all fueled by cant, presumption, and fading notions of climate change and inclusivity.  

There is either no logic to the dedication - lanes dead-ending in busy highways or far from park bike paths - or simply flying the green flag.  Bikes have every right to K Street (one of Washington DC's major thoroughfares) as cars, advocates say, but the willy-nilly turn lanes, merges, and crossings have only added to congestion and traffic accidents. 

The laws passed are punitive at best.  The driver is always at fault, ipso facto, a priori whenever in an accident with a bike. 

Henry of course took no notice.  Bikes for him were the Holy Grail, the existential answer, his raison d'etre.  Every waking hour was either riding his bike, fixing it, lobbying, volunteering, marching, or protesting for more visibility, protection, and space. 

Of course he used his car for errands, shopping, visiting the grandchildren, Sunday drives, restaurants and coffee shops. If appointments were at peak parking times, he took Uber. Although he lobbied for equal access for bikes leading to an eventual replacement of cars, his bike stayed up on the rack in the garage until the weekend and only if the weather was fine. 

Now, Henry was no wind-in-your-hair rider, no fancy Lycra-and-Velcro tight-fitting professional racing outfit, no head of the peloton, cranking out 50-milers; nor was he a romantic, pedaling slowly up and down the winding roads of the Shenandoah, taking in the beauty of the hills and the vistas of the valleys below.  For him it was all gear ratios and brake linings. 

Yet when he got into the saddle, mounted up and ready to go, he felt one with his bike.  He and it were joined in a mystical union.  They were the perfect pair.  The wheels, pedals, and spokes were extensions of him, parts of him, indistinguishable from flesh and blood. It was no surprise that bikes and bike-riding were epiphanic, holy, and spiritual. 

Where did this sanctity come from?  Was it just a holdover from the usual American boyhood, riding balloon-tired Schwinns to the baseball diamond and to Avery's afterwards for a soda? A distaste for walking when speed and accessibility were right in the garage? 

It was more than that, for bike reverence was part of his dedication to the progressive canon - a litany of changes that would save the planet, revive the nation's communal spirit, open the doors to a new age of sexuality, race, and ethnicity, and move everyone towards a better, more peaceful, verdant world. 

Despite the holes in Henry's world view - driving gas-powered cars everywhere, even down and back to the corner CVS - he was a true believer in the progressive vision.  It mattered to him to do the right thing, to protest racism, misogyny and Wall Street greed; to be always on the front lines of compassion, consideration, and good will.  

If he could do his part by promoting two-wheel, human-powered transportation, as desultory and inconsistent as he was, then he would be welcomed into the community of good. 

Henry was consistent, a good soldier, an unerring partisan, a steady holder of the flame.  He believed in high taxes for the wealthy, even as he watched them flow down the drain to entitled, privileged, dysfunctional inner city communities.  

He was all for defunding the police although he was the first to call 911 when suspicious black men were seen on his street.  He was all for affirmative action and DEI long after it was dismantled despite the obvious and growing evidence that it was one of the most divisive, corrosive, social action programs ever devised.  And more, much more.  Name a progressive cause, and Henry’s name was on the list. 

So to be fair, he came by the bike thing honestly. 

Yet one still had to ask, how did he come by such true belief? The tossing over the side of reason, objectivity, exegesis, and thought?  He came from a small working class family in a Massachusetts mill town, a family without pretentions, airs, or unfounded expectations.  They were hardworking, patriotic, and religious. 

Somewhere along the line, Henry took a detour.  Perhaps it was the Sixties or the Seventies, or campus agitation, but it took, and his road to doing good began.  Civil rights, the plight of the black man, Jim Crow, racial oppression followed by all the rest.  Henry went up and down the major rivers, tributaries, creeks and streams of the movement, more convinced of its rightness with each stroke of the oar. 

He was simply credulous, easily swayed by the nostrums preached from every secular pulpit. He came to accept and believe with all his heart and soul what he was told, and before long he was a soldier marching in the armies of progress. 

 

Although he was a supporter of the black man, the transgender, the gay, and the lesbian; and although he fought tooth and nail for the distribution of wealth and a more equal society, it was cycling that was closest to his heart.  

The black man would come and go, the transgender would fold back into the mainstream, but the climate? That was the be-all and end-all of existence, the one unifying, absorbing, encompassing feature of the universe.  The climate was with us forever, but it was now warming beyond control, and something must be done to stop it. 

Yes, bike lanes were a drop in the bucket, but many drops make an ocean; and if everyone did their part…  Not only that, he and his bike were friends, intimate companions, joined at the hip.  No human relationship could give such satisfaction, such joy, such pleasure.  It was to bikes that he would always return. 

So he told his handlers that it was time to focus on his little piece of turf, and that he would be at their beck and call when it came to promoting the cause of bikes, cycling, and the two-wheeled millennium.

Henry was not an animated man, and was never comfortable before crowds; so when standing before an enthusiastic group of bicycle enthusiasts - say at 'Spokes and Wheels', the Montgomery County bike club for older Marylanders - he mumbled and swallowed his words; but his sound and light show did the trick.  Images of dedicated bike lanes, dutifully respectful vehicular traffic, and a diverse set of riders said all there was to say, and he always left to a round of applause. 

As he got older, he affixed a set of adult training wheels to his bike.  Specially designed for stability and the least drag possible, they were a godsend to older bikers.  Pride goeth before a fall, both literally and figuratively, so Henry had no second thoughts when pedaling around the neighborhood with an extra set of rubber. 

Henry bore the flag of cycling and dedicated lanes to the very end when he turned over - or rather tried to turn over - his wings to the younger generation; but they had moved beyond bikes, climate change, and social reform.  Enough furrows, plows, and plodding along behind the ass of a mule. 

Henry wondered what the world was coming to, and befuddled but somehow sedated by the sound of the turning tide, he woke every morning not quite sure where he was, but happier than he had ever been.