Showing posts with label Vermont. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vermont. Show all posts
Ella 7 mos.
This is as close to *scowling* as anthropomorphism allows. I woke her for this mandatory annual pet picture.
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Vermont Car Show (people watching)
"What's class number twenty-six?" asked the man who had just read the official 66th Annual Vermont Antique Car Show document, displayed on the dash of my 2015 smart fortwo. (The card read: Class #26: Display Only, special interest groups 1989-2023, not judged.) I did not stand up from my lounge chair to greet him. Instead, I merely said, 'not judged' from the comfort of the portable screened gazebo I'd put in the back of my stall, behind the tiny car.
He walked with a stiff posture, carried around some permanently crinkled face muscles, and talked with a bully's 'searching-for-someone-who-deserves-it' demeanor. "What's with this snapperhead?" he indicated towards my license plate.
"That's related to my artwork."
His sneer-scoff was just noticeable as a nose-twitch-lip-curl as he came towards the gazebo's zipper-door and said, "You're an artist. What kind of art do you do?"
I got up and said, "Like this image." As I exited the shade, patting my chest, he stared at me too long because (I think) he couldn't tell if I was holding eye-contact, because I was wearing ultra-dark mountaineering sunglasses with side-shields (which relaxed my Asperger-desire to look away from faces). He could, however, read my smile, easy attitude, close-trimmed full-white beard, and colorful hat.
He glanced longer than necessary at the abstract splash-type of shape (the color of faded-blood) on my hoodie. "Some weird shit. Don't get it. I guess it's not..."
I intentionally cut him off: "New England. It's the outline of New England."
"Bullshit." He batted my statement down with a waist-level flap of wrist.
I tipped my head to the left and said, "Not everyone can see it."
"Oh, I see it. It's just. That's not art."
"Not everyone likes what I create. That's their prerogative." I said, turning and zipping myself back inside my bug-free shade.
፨ ፨ ፨
"I would like to thank you so much for being here today. I love-love-love that you've displayed it all. And done it this way. I love it so much! It looks almost like the car might fit inside the pop-up? Is it one of those tents that goes up in seconds?" The energetic lady, comfortably dressed, comfortable in her middle-age, asked as she took out a phone and photographed the black-on-grey trademark logo [Quick-Set by Clam].
"Thank you. Yes, it does only take a couple minutes to put up. The car might fit inside, but the front-end will stick out a foot or so because this is the six-foot gazebo." As I talked she leaned inside the top-down convertible and said/asked what everyone says/asks: ...Didn't know they made a convertible; more room inside than imagined; thought all smart cars were electric; are highway-speeds safe; how much would a used one cost; is winter driving feasible... et cetera. I answered questions and thought I recognized a fellow-Asperger's by her obvious non-conformist streak.
፨ ፨ ፨
Not all of "us" are intentionally non-conformists. Some of "us" are unaware of certain types of "unspoken" societal or cultural norms (pertaining to behaviors, dress, attitudes, or appearance). "We" can't choose to intentionally not conform with something in "our" blindxpot.
As an example: I was in the National Gallery of Art in DC when a distinguished professor (whom I had previously recognized as one of "us") laid down on the floor next to a series of Giacometti sculptures being displayed on several large, shin-to-knee, coffee table level pedestals. He then raised his voice to a shout, proclaiming that the curators were idiots to have made it impossible to see these tiny, thin, bronze artworks without sitting or lying on the floor. Docents descended on the shouting man dressed in crumpled disheveled as if he were a member of the unhoused-population. He calmly explained himself and was steered towards a suggestion box. Professor Carmody's protest was not rude non-conformity; it was just that: "how to behave in a museum" occupied a blindxpot.
፨ ፨ ፨
Before displaying my smart subcompact vehicle at a car show, which predominantly contained trucks, muscle cars, racers, hot-rods, and museum showpieces, I thought it would be admired as something very few people here, in Vermont, were familiar with. I was parked not far from a pristine '91 Nissan Figaro (also a class #26; even though it looks like it's from the 1950s). My blindxpot: I had no idea there were so many people (predominantly male) who hate the idea my subcompact car suggests by its existence.
I was booed with thumbs-down and middle-fingers up. More than one person exclaimed they thought it was visually ugly. A man my age (red hat with four white letters) shouted as close to my face as tent-screen permitted, "WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY!!" (confusing; maybe he meant 20th). It was referred to as a "nostalgia buzz-kill." A child said, "we don't like this, do we Daddy?" I received more than a handful of: "Well, don't you look comfy?" (oddly demeaning, but I was very comfy). Another said in my direction (while pretending they were talking to the person they were with): "...more like a seedling-hugger, 'cause it's too small to hug a whole tree!"
That last one was so good I intend to print a version of it on next year's hoodie. Because (as regular readers don't need reminding) I am an intentional non-conformist. While I enjoy exchanging ideas with the intellectually curious, I'm especially proud when my lack of conformity hits a nerve in conformists and their incurious comrades.
Don't get too comfy:
Mark The Date: Monday, 8 April 2024
"Be somewhere in the path of totality with me."
The next total solar eclipse is going to be almost 4 minutes in duration (according to NASA). It will possibly be witness-able, in the afternoon of April 8th, during next year Vermont's Mud Season. This means it has about a 50% chance of being hidden by clouds and/or rain here.
This is something I would travel to witness. It was so overwhelming in 2017, I am willing to travel to see it unobstructed; if weather forecasts, as the date approaches, indicate it would be more-probable to see in: Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, or Indianapolis.
For Consideration:
News from Vermont (history repeats, 2023 chapter)
Hey, hey . . . national news keeps "wringing" the Vermont is Flooding bells on-the-hour. Erm howz things?
Kinda nice. It feels like watching the walls creeping in on the crew of Jedi's after they jumped into the trash compactor . . . only the walls a closing at about four inches an hour. Same trash compactor from 2011 and same Jedi's who are now a dozen years older but no smarter.
You're not under water, tho? Right?
Our apartment didn't get water damaged after Hurricane Irene in 2011, but the basement flooded, the streets flooded, and nobody could travel for days. Clean-up lasted months and years all around the town and state. No way to know if tomorrow or the next week will be worse or better.
What causes it to happen in Vermont of all places?
Mountains. A state of mountains is a state of valleys. Every valley contains a river fed by the creeks and streams coming off the mountains.
Well . . . stay dry!
Will do. Does it sound wrong to say I'm not worried about this in any way? Am I supposed to be expressing alarm or concern or "well wishes" to those around me who are expressing their worry or self-concern? I can't get that pump going in myself, not when I own a pair of boots, a raincoat, and know how to walk or wade to a higher elevation.
Here's my best-opportunity to leave a composite of my own previous images, not because I don't have new images (and videos) but because . . . watching the trash compactor walls creep in at four inches an hour [listen to the downpour which hasn't stopped in days] is kinda not scary at all. Especially not for a Jedi [artist who owns raingear and lives within the shadow of higher elevation].
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| they might be freaking |
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| my perspective floats the surface calmly |
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| from either perspective: head or snapper, it feels tame |
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| our town high-water marker now looks like my childhood door-frame |
Thinking of you and yours. We're not doing anything different than you'd be doing if the trash compactor around you was closing at 4"/hr. - having coffee and watching it happen!
Why Conscientious Vermonter's Have Five Seasons
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Starlings are aggressively-assertive or assertively-aggressive bullies, and are—relative to most other songbirds—unattractive, in their tweedy speckled brown; but their unique quality of songs and calls are both distinct and wonderfully melodious.
Grackles proudly glide thru branches to gracefully wait their turn, and they are beautifully sleek with iridescent blue-to-black sheen (visible close-up in direct sunlight); but they only possess a limited and unimaginative volley of calls without melody.
Vermont's Stick Season begins after all the colorful leaves have fallen and ends with the first Autumnal snowfall (usually between mid-October and early December). Snow-melt combined with Spring rains causes Mud Season, which ends when Spring's flowers begin to bud; timing varies with ground thaw, but usually it begins late-February or March and ends mid-April (occasionally as late as May).
The reason for the regional seasonal distinctions are simple: In the mind of many Vermonters—Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring are all beautiful—however, Mud Season and Stick Season are less-so or not at all.
I take down bird and critter feeders after Mud Season and put them back up when Stick Season arrives as the seeds, bugs, and natural food sources become scarce. The exception is a Hummingbird feeder, which goes out after the last night-freeze of Spring and comes down before the first night-freeze of Autumn.
In a similar-but-different routine: I remove the MEDITATION sign from my front door after I finish. Although—because of headphones—I wouldn't hear a Grackle ring the bell or a Starling shout, pound, and rattle the knob. I do it to be conscientious of those who might-possibly, "see a car, know I'm home, don't find me in the yard with the cats, and become unnecessarily concerned".
more:
Can pareidolia be taught?
vaguely misplaced tin
brush painted red, twenty-three
hike hike hikin me
pairs of chromosomes, they see
like like likin thee
tip my head and grin
cowgirlin th' three
tappin into a similar sap:
Silhouette of New England
The silhouette of New England is never confused with the actual land that is occupied (at time-of-writing) by six regional legal-social-cultural human jurisdictions (referred to as 'states') in the northeastern-most portion of the nation currently referred to with the name "United States of America".
After the collection of humans with the worst agenda score [FFFFFA] eradicated and conquered the indigenous tribes who—even when foolishly considering their multiple tribal-nations as a conglomerate—possessed better agenda scores on-average [CDCCBC], the FFFFFA-ing humans then decided to "brand" their nascent country with a name starting with an ironic adjective!
The FFFFFA never considered their name-brand might be interpreted to mean: 'linked-in-a-contiguous-manner'. No. Instead, they wanted all current and future enemies to realize: "Those genocidal maniacs are united in their desire to keep killing and enslaving other human beings."
Those horrible motherfuckers were planning on going the distance. They immigrated, to this part of the American continent, with the best butcher-murder tools strapped to their luggage. Most of the FFFFFA-agenda-possessing humans were fringe-level religious zealots; outcasts in their home countries for (mostly) legitimate reasons. These FFFFFA-hate-mongers wanted a place where they could play all-grown-up make-believe and kill any and every human who might attempt to prevent or even condemn their fervently-believed (imaginary) dogmatically-based activities.
They were actively planning (and eagerly hoping) to engage in a genocide (Even as they began to sail against the storms across the Atlantic ocean.) By the 18th century the survivors were 90-95% successful. And they all thought of themselves as: The 'best and most-honorable' in the 100% successful Indian Wars. (Just as if Adolf Hitler's Third Reich had won, the German Aryan Nation would consider that they won the Jew War.)
Call a genocide "a war" and your ancestors will be fooled into thinking *there were bad people behaving badly on both sides*—and this is why the European-descendants of the pilgrims (Calvinists, Quakers, Amish, Mennonites, et cetera) might choose to not think badly of their not-so-great grandparents from centuries past. Your ancestors (and mine) were all the worst-of-the-worst.
But, this is not a chapter in the "Wake The Fuck Up America" textbook. Nor is this a preface to the horrible truths of our ancestral-FFFFFA-swamp, (where most present-day Caucasian's DNA originated).
My intent is to drive-hard on the point I made at the beginning: The silhouette of New England is never confused with the land itself. Nor is it confused with the people who currently inhabit (or previously inhabited) the land. Nor is it ever considered to be synonymous with: birds, beetles, trees, titmice, dinosaurs, deli-groceries, or anything tangible on the portion of current-epoch Earth, which the silhouette artwork might communicate when glanced at.
That is all an artwork of this type requires: A GLANCE.
In that glance, the viewer either recognizes the shadow-image traced on construction paper (which is why long hair is gathered) or the viewer does not recognize the profile. Nonetheless, the glance is never considered to be anything more than an attempt to capture a "simple outline".
Your Self is a complex collection of memories, beliefs, fantasy-imaginary futures, assumptions, day-dreams, nightmares, emotionally-connected experiences, and programmed behaviors. It is something you GLANCE at, when asked to, "describe yourself" (by a potential employer, potential friend, potential partner, et cetera). If you take the agenda test, you will spend some time considering your current behaviors/experiences/beliefs and decide which collection of six-letters is yours for today. Tomorrow, your letters could be different. Yesterday, your letters could have been different.
You would never confuse the silhouette of yourself with your actual Self. You know the map is not the terrain. A silhouette of a map is not even a useful map (but it might be nice to take out at parties).
Knowing where you fall on each of the six scales [Benevolent - Avaricious; Candor - Guile; Anmity - Enmity; Integrity - Nefariousness; Pragmatic - Dogmatic; and Certainty - Ambivalence] requires you to engage your Self to think about (and become-aware of) where-you-wish-you-were compared with where-you-realize-you-actually-are. That is (almost always) comparing who the future-you might be with who the past-you has been (up to now).
Now you, is never the you that you think of when thinking of your self. Your Self was (and your memories confirm that) and your Self might be (and your dreams, plans, and hopes confirm that).
Time makes us think in broad generalities. The gap between who you were when you began to read this article and who you will be when you finish it, is merely a vague memory of: "I read an article wherein Veach described some things he believed to be true about some of his ancestors (FFFFFA immigrants from England and Wales) and some of his partner's ancestors (CBCCDC natives from before the genocide)."
Your Self may or may-not choose to incorporate some of my beliefs. That is your Self at work. Helping you to survive. That is your Self's only real job. And, if anything-I-related caused you to experience a feeling of discomfort/unease/anger that was your Self telling you "This Information Conflicts With Data Previously Stored".
Then—depending on how much dogmatic-devotion you currently correlate with the person (teacher, parent, spouse, pastor, et cetera) or the organization (church, school, club, friend-group, et cetera) who told you the Previously Stored Data—your Self will either replace the Previously Stored Data with this New Data - or - it will discard the stupid-Veach-beliefs and, soon, forget about them altogether.
My Self has learned to trust the truthfulness and truth-fullness it experiences when my Self pauses its thoughts about the past and, at-the-same-time, pauses its thoughts about the future. Only allowing the current unfolding of time to pass along one-second a second . . . without ever allowing the experience of Being to Be anything contemplated relative to my Self's associations. No past. No future. Only conscious of the gap between the past and future. Only the gap. Nothing related to memories. Nothing related to plans. Being conscious of Being In Now, with no Self interpreting, is (as far as I can tell after only a few weeks) becoming aware—in a glance—of the AAAAAA which resides inside every.
For those who finished this article unscathed, I offer this parting gift:
- Scroll to the top of this article; tip your head, right-ear toward right-shoulder; examine the silhouette of New England (not the snapperhead logo and not my inner feminine silhouette).
- It looks like a Scottish Terrier. In mid-bark!
- If I meet a Scottish Terrier named New(t) England, at any time in my Self's future, I will assume that Scottie dog's owner either read this article - or - already noticed the resemblance before (or after) I did, and is as fluently-capable of pareidolia as I.
Go On, Get Satiated:
Addendum to The Silver Fox Story
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| rechargeable LED pet collar |
Left out in my yard for squirrels and birds
My weak flashlight-torch combined with my
Ignorance (silver fox are very different from grey fox)
Last night my cat, Cecil, and I watched for
More bats and fireflies in almost-complete darkness
While in my lap, I extinguished his collar
Silent minutes passed until Cecil slowly turned to
Stare below-back-down-behind the lawn-chair we were in
My light revealed a nose-to-tail-black fox (with just a slight dusting of silver-ash)
She dashed under my neighbor's fence without learning if there were any snacks left out
There were not. Not that night.
Silver Grey Fox on Picnic Table
grey fox on picnic table
silver fox on picnic table
Evenings in late spring
When temperatures are newly short sleeved and sweaters are no longer
With daylight taking slightly longer to recede and the last of the Swifts
(or Turns, I don't know how to tell the difference)
Bank and scree above the tree tops until they are all gone for their nests
Then the first firefly of this year blinks his bold availability cross the yard
While a hummingbird sneaks a nightcap before whirring to her branch
And all bird and insect and reptile sounds echo away to near quietude
I take refuge from the mosquitoes on my screened-in back porch
As the occasional bat dips and dives for those it can sense in the shadows
My attention is focus-snagged on a relatively-loud and very distinct sound
Smacky chew-crunching like that of a dog (obviously nearby) and I recall
There were still portions of leftover stale bread crusts on my picnic table
My light reveals a grey silver fox (with a smaller head than I'd have imagined)
Finishing what was too-stale by the previous day's corvids and squirrels
It came back ten nights later to insure I got a better look
Now, I know the difference (and rarity) between a silver and a grey fox
similar:
Our holiday weekend (NOAA graphics)
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I recommend their flavored tinctures. You should experiment with your personal dosage (beginning at less than 15mg or ¼ dropper). Whether you frequently micro-dose less than ten milligrams at-a-time to keep the aches away or need an entire dropper (≅65mg) to sleep thru the night in comfort, knowing you're consuming a compound found in nature which your brain and body have evolved specific receptors for, is reason enough to choose hemp CBD.
other recommends:
A Comparitive View on the Varied Hue of Southern vs Northern Racism
When an average guy
(someone with a Y chromosome) possessing a vanilla tapioca mayo on wonder
bread lack-of-cultural-heritage, decides to open his mouth and express an
opinion about something he read about, or learned from others, or maybe
witnessed—but which he could never have experienced (and will
never live-thru)—because he was never a woman, or obese, or
transsexual, or suffered from depression, nor was he ever homeless, or
Black, or Native American, or in constant fear of being a victim of state
violence (etcetra) . . . I want to tell that fucker to keep his opinion to
himself. And when that fucker is me, I tend to follow my own
advice. Not always.
Statistics about
racial populations and political tendencies are (in this white guy's mind)
insufficient to explain why I'd never-again live in Alabama or Georgia or
Kentucky or Indiana, nor why I am (relative-to-my-own-past) content living in Vermont.
In the US South, the entire society which
comprises The System (controlled by white people) is waaay beyond
casually racist. If you, dear reader, happen to be Mr or Mrs
Mayo Wonderbread who lives in the South and thinks ‘beyond
casually racist’ is not an accurate description of you? Re-read my statement before you take umbrage.
The system is. Not all people are. (You might-could-just be casually racist and
not waaay beyond).
Racism is so routine-normal in the South
that white strangers assume everyone who looks like they do, thinks like they do,
and they'll freely talk about their KKK opinions. The reason Trump was
(and still is) so popular with white conservatives (from every state) is not because
he accomplished things they wanted the President to accomplish, or that he
fooled them (I met some intelligent people in the six years I lived in the
US South), the reason is: he's as extremely, hatefully, intentionally
racist as they are.
Vermont is more
Caucasian than Oregon, but the few racists in Vermont who I've talked to are careful in their probing conversations. They know they're a small
minority of the population here and they don't like getting scolded or
ridiculed for letting an errant word slip out of their mouth.
The week we
moved here, I met a neighbor from the next building. He'd seen our
license tags and said, “Where in Oregon are you from?” I told him and
he replied, “I heard Portland was a really liberal city, but I guess that's
something that can be beat outta somebody.” “Sounds like a threat,” I
said. He got all apologetic-giggly and denied it with, “just jokin,
not my intention, sorry sorry.”
In Georgia that
guy never would have backed down. He would have known 90 strangers out
of a 100 (including most cops) would back him up in an argument, or a fight,
or maybe even in a late-nite follow-up lynching. In Georgia, that probing conversation
would have quickly switched to fighting-words. And I
would have been the one backing down when he took out a weapon.
Here in
Vermont, the hate-filled Republicans might risk getting recorded on your
security camera sneaking into your yard to take your
Black Lives Matter sign, or your We Stand With: sign,
or your rainbow pride flag but they don't call attention to
themselves. Everyone here knows that 60% of the state is progressive
(Bernie lovers) and 25% are a strange type of Northern Libertarian (love
their weed, hate VT's high taxes, rarely leave New England).
The best way to
describe Vermont is to say that the entire society which comprises
The System doesn't tolerate people who are unwelcoming of people with
differences.
similar opinions:
Tire Rule of Thumb (for travelling to Vermont)
all-weather after
Mother's Day always snow-tires
before Halloween
more Vermontisms:
Good Times {my last temp job}
In late 2019
(before Covid19) I was hired as an administrative clerk with the 2020 US
Census Bureau in Burlington, Vermont. At first, there were only 6-8 of
us. It was nice meeting new people. It was helpful to learn local
lore. Then Gloria started working there.
Gloria was pleasant to talk to, in her 70s,
and seemed to especially enjoy detailing all of her various mental and
physical afflictions and ailments. Although she needed wrist-crutches to
walk, she always had a smile on her face and a kind word to share. One
thing Gloria did not talk about was that she was excessively obese and a
consequence of that was—she did not bathe adequately. Her solution was
to heavily douse the parts of herself she could reach in mind-numbingly strong
lotion-deodorizer and hobble to work. Picture the gluttony guy, from the
movie Se7en, combined with the sloth guy's smell (don't forget the thousands of
little cardboard pine air fresheners).
One of my Asperger's traits happens to be
an extreme sensitivity to odor. It's rarely an issue anymore. Sure
my friends have to lose their habit of wearing cologne or perfume if they want
to sit with me indoors. But except for the occasional requirement to
move my airplane or theater seat when someone like Gloria is nearby—I rarely
have any anger issue. That's my emotional response: if a terribly strong
smell arrives, which I can't escape from, anger is locked and loaded.
Important note: "angry smells" do not make me angry. I need a
trigger. [Metaphor: a epileptic may be prone to seizures, but needs a
flashing light.]
I moved my desk so I
could sit as distant from Gloria as possible. We talked from a
distance. I breathed thru my mouth when anger smells made me start to
feel "snarky". This lasted a month until a new internal "team" was
scheduled to be formed. Six of us, including Gloria and I, were supposed
to train together and then sit together and work on the same project.
Immediately, I sat down in private with the
new team's manager, explained where my individual Asperger's fit into the
broader spectrum, and told him I needed to be de-selected from his new
team. I learned he was nose-blind, had never wondered why no one sat
next to Gloria, and that he was set in his ways (a polite way to
describe an outdated old coot who thought reading aloud was teaching;
kicking the can down the road was managing; and considered
outdated to be a pejorative.) Nose-blind decided I was either
exaggerating or lying and his fix was to keep a few desks between Gloria and
me.
The supervisor
selected to oversee Nose-blind's new team was my trigger. His name was
Fuck. Nose-blind was also clueless as fuck to the irritating,
cringe-awful, personality of Fuck. In our first days of training (as I
listened for hours to Fuck and Nose-blind take turns reading from the manual,
trapped in the training room with glorious sloth-gluttony) it became clear
that Nose-blind had not mentioned to Fuck that he should avoid flashing his
strobe light in my eyes when I'm forced to sit near Gloria.
This is how I
made it almost a full week: I never sat with the team and I constantly
reminded Fuck to stop hovering/irritating/talking/lying/manipulating and
bragging about himself (although he never stopped, he did focus it less in my
direction).
Then . . . as a combination of
feces-urine-sweat mixed with Pinesol-flavored powdered roses and
yeast-infection, linked up with the humidity in my sinus cavity . . . Fuck
decided it was time to kneel on the floor so we could be eye-to-eye and
petulanty insist that I do it the way he told me to do it! Not because
it's logical or correct or in the manual (it's not) but because . . .
I'm your supervisor. And I exploded.
I brought the entire
room of twenty phone-calls and conversations to a halt with my "why are you being such a fucking asshole" question. I asked him several times, in a gradually increasing volume,
until Nose-blind escorted me into the conference room. (Fuck never
stopped chattering into the manual about how I was wrong and he was right.)
Nose-blind was
soon accompanied by the arm (Assistant Regional Manager). The arm was in her
mid-20's, on some form of mood-speed, said like, like, a few too many times,
like in every sentence, and framed her questions in a way that made one thing
very clear: Nose-blind never gave her a head's up about the precarious
conjunction of Gloria, Veach's Asperger's, and Fuck's fuckatude. So as I caught the arm
up to speed, I answered her questions-clumsily-phrased-as-statements and learned she
thought Fuck was fantastic at his job and that Nose-blind's idea to keep "kicking the can down the road"
was the correct course of action. Every time I used the phrase,
Nose-blind got more agitated. (Consequently, I found ways to repeat it.) You say you've no intention of kicking the can down the road, but we are
sitting in the same place we sat weeks ago when I explained my Asperger's the
first time. This is exactly what kicking the can down the road looks
like.) I apologized for my angry outburst. They
told me to take lunch, cool off, and return to work. Instead, I left and
went home.
From home, I
compiled and e-mailed a memorandum detailing everything in professional, legal
verbiage. I used many phrases like:
or words to that effect, and, on or about the time/date, and,
requested accommodation for my disability. The following day I
called Nose-blind about the memo and asked about being reassigned. He
acted indignant, put-out and whined, "Veach, it's only been one day!"
The next day:
"Veach it's only been two days!" So I told him, "Weeks ago, when I
requested you not re-assign me,
that was a
clear and reasonable request for an accommodation for my disability. When I did that, I fully complied with EEO guidelines. Now, I
expect you to un-reassign me in accordance with those same Equal Employment
Opportunity Anti-Discrimination Against the Disabled Guidelines." I also
told him that if I didn't hear from him before the weekend, I would make a
formal complaint to the EEO office in Boston. I ended our conversation
with, "It may take months for them to investigate, but I suspect—in the
end—they'll award me back pay, and, their investigation might be uncomfortable
for you and for every highly paid manager (which I said with sardonic emphasis
so, to his ear, it sounded like "Man-ager") who thinks kicking the can
down the road is the proper course of action."
The regional manager
informed me the next day I'd be re-reassigned to admin/clerk duties, and
(so-as-to-avoid Fuck-n-Grace) asked if I could work weekday evenings and full
12-hour days on weekends?
...Good Times...
That was my schedule until covid19
quarantine closed the office. Then
I caught it. When they reopened, I decided not to return. I was afraid the
symptoms might be worse if I were re-infected or, if I was still
contagious but asymptomatic, that I might unknowingly infect others.
After all this unfolded, I became aware of
an odd correlation:
When I talked with people on the phone, informing them
I'd been infected by covid19, everyone who'd gone through life with
a conservative mindset asked initial questions framed with skepticism and
doubt:
Did you get tested? How do you know it wasn't just the flu, if you
haven't been tested?
You didn't have a serious cough? Couldn't have been Covid then,
because I've heard it infects the lungs and everyone gets a cough.
While everyone who'd gone through life with a liberal mindset asked initial questions framed with
concern and recovery wishes:
How are you feeling? What were your symptoms? Any lingering
side-effects?
How long were you bed-ridden? What are your work plans? How's
your wife?
My observations are, obviously,
anecdotal. But they can be succinctly described:
Liberals lovingly
Lavish levelheadedness
Listening, learning.
Careless contemptful
Conservatives constantly
Cause consternation.
Embrace empathy
Encourage, espouse, extol!
Eschew egotists.
Related side-note: When I started
work, I learned Vermont's total population had
been slightly less than 626,000 (in 2010's census). Recently, I learned the 2020 census
identified a slight increase of about 1,250 people (two of
whom were my wife and I). The US death toll from Covid19 will surpass
the entire population of Vermont this summer (two
months from now).
Get a vaccine and wear a mask! The reason you are such a fucking asshole is you lack empathy. It's your fault and it's killing people you egotistical, careless, contemptful, Nose-blind, Fuck.
additional Asperger's:
Bernie Jolly Roger
This is my contribution to the Internet's meme of the week. You can now put Bernie with his bespoke mittens in front of your house using google maps. There's an ever-growing list of him in hundreds of different locations and artwork, and, now he's the less-than-jolly roger.
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