Shrug is an Action Verb

What we do is shrug. Honestly now, isn't that true? All we've been through here in the past two years, with each news broadcast bringing the pain of hundreds, thousands, millions right into our homes. We begin to develop an emotional callus, a protection against feeling all that misery.

So, a guy with a gun kills nineteen children in an elementary school. How horrible! Deeply, truly, irrevocably horrible. Where did it happen? Oh, in Texas. That’s when the out-of-state reader or viewer starts to shrug. Of course, such a shooting is terrible, but I and those I love are far away. Safe. And then they move on.

We move on.

Shrugging has become our national answer to disaster. Shrugging followed by prayers.

Is it working?

We Americans, we Texans, pride ourselves on finding practical solutions for big problems. If ever we needed a practical solution for a problem, this is it.

The problem is complex, and our culture has difficulty dealing with complexity.

Faced with complexity, we gravitate toward any argument promising a simple answer. Gun control looks like one, at first. We grab hold of that and hunker down.

We’ve got to do something different, people. What that will be, I don’t know. I don’t have an answer.

But I do think I understand some contributing factors.

It’s all about those calluses.

Visualized violence permeates our culture. Moving images of violent acts are on the television, computer, smart phone, accessible to anyone, anytime. Increasingly realistic video games place our children and young people—whose brains are still developing—at the killing console, vaporizing “enemies.”

Frequency of exposure can develop those calluses. And it’s the calluses that allow us to view torn limbs, squirting blood, explosions, etc., without a scarring revulsion.

Just like frequent exposure to mass shootings can cause us to shrug.

The recent catalogue of threats—terrorism, violent storms, pandemic, mass shootings—has left us feeling so vulnerable. Of course, people who feel vulnerable grab for armor, and arms.

And broadcast media—TV and radio—just wallows in it, escalating whatever fear there is to escalate.

Our fear prevents us from thinking. In fact, it’s caused us to stop believing that we can think these difficulties through and arrive at a plan.

We face problems of a planetary dimension—climate devastation, pandemics—and our brains cannot handle that. There are interrelated, complex systems at work that it takes computer modeling even to begin to understand.

Our fear in the face of all these stresses is logical and rational. But it’s preyed on by people whose motive is only to gain power and wealth in the short terms of their own puny lives. They rely on us to be afraid.

Maybe, for now, simple solutions are the best we can do. Here are a few:

Stop watching TV news; stop trolling the internet to fuel your anger and feel righteous; stop thinking that those who look different are out to harm you.

Look to your home and your children. Where are your guns—are they locked up—can your children find the key? (Most of the time, they can.)

Stop looking for dystopian drama, for end-of-the-world cheap thrills. Boycott the stuff. Read a newspaper, instead.

Get to know your neighbors. Stop feeling that you, in your small wisdom, are smarter and better than anyone else. You are not. Neither am I.

We are a vulnerable species, like every other. But, like every other, we occupy a specific place at a specific time. Know that place, know it in detail. It is everything. 

Leave the “vesper flights” that arc above the Earth’s clouds and confusions to swifts and angels.

Online Dating

This third version of me has to step out a bit.

In my 13^th month alone, now, I have noticed how much I miss talking. With a man. Well, I did notice it sooner. It has taken this long for me to accept it.

There is peace, of course, in silence.

In the songs of birds, insects, the distant rumble of tractors. Peace there, as well.

To a point.

But not a word of conversation.

So where do we find it with a man, outside of hardware stores when buying a new garden hoe?

Newsflash: Fayette County does not seem to bulge with single men over seventy.

In a grief group I had met a solid and successful local citizen who told me he’d joined Match.com. He had lost his wife and was suffering, it seemed to me, much as I was suffering.

If people like this fellow join Match, I thought, it might be worth a shot. I’d been sharing feelings with wonderful women friends who walk ahead of me this labyrinth of widowhood. Maybe, now, I could connect, also, with a male mind over the destabilizing loss of a spouse.

So I joined it, along with a few other sites intended specifically for older people.

I had thought there would be few men of the right age participating on such sites. Apparently, however, a substantial number joined during the pandemic, when normal social life became restricted.

And so did a legion of scammers. We’ve all heard the stories. More about that another day, I think.

Overall, it’s a learning experience. People are classified on these sites according to categories into which the real person disappears. Very few men take the opportunity offered to post a description that might reveal personality.

And, curiously, a number of men don’t even post a photograph. I skip them. A face can tell you much about a person.

I discovered quickly that I have lots of choice if I’m interested in a man who never attended college or stopped after two years; is a born-again Christian; very conservative; likes to travel by RV, hunt and fish.

Go for it, girl!

Choices diminish if you are private about your religious beliefs and attempting to match an educational level of college and above.

In that category, I find mostly engineers, a few retired professors, a retired doctor or two, but zero journalists or writers.  

The pictures are fun. Men on boats, men holding big fish, or standing with a gun and dog beside a fallen deer. Men hugging pretty daughters or granddaughters. Men standing beside prosperous fireplaces, or at the top of a mountain, against a panorama of foreign valleys and towns.

Strangely, many of the men without props are scowling for some reason. Many others display excellent teeth. But no cheekbones. Cheekbones are out. These fellows have upholstery (as do I, in fact). Or the kind of beard that hides expression.

And then there’s me. The immutable fact of myself. I decided on complete honesty in my profiles. Age honest, photo honest, career honest. And I have to report that I have not discovered a groundswell of interest in the land of silver singles for seventy-seven year old female writers.

That should not be surprising.

But after so many years of marriage to a man who never criticized, who treated me as though I were still the “beautiful girl” he had fallen in love with, I had been carrying around an image of my virtues that had become tangible to me. I saw it daily in his eyes.

Welcome to the real world, honey.

The Moon is a Balloon

 Driving through Round Top around nine-thirty the other evening, I was struck by the sense of relaxed holiday ease. It was the first Saturday of the Antique Show and town was crowded. Yes, the weather that day had been fabulous. After all, it doesn’t take an Antiques extravaganza to bring people to our area on a beautiful day.

As night fell, many cars lined the streets. But the cars were still and quiet. Only a few couples strolled around, murmuring. I could hear light cocktail laughter from the tent outside Prost.

I recognized the feeling it evoked. We’ve all felt it—the peaceful pleasure of day’s end following hours of happy activity. I could feel it from inside my car as I paused at a stop sign. Been a long time since I felt that ease, that peace.

Did I mention the moon?

It was the night of the giant orange moon, slowly rising over Henkel Square. Such a moon exalts us. We can’t help it. The golden light sheds grace upon us. Maybe that accounts for the relaxed good nature of this particular evening.

I had attended the PaperCity kickoff party earlier with a friend. I think we were the only ones not wearing Santa Fe Style, or fancy western garb. My tunic had, in fact, been bought in Santa Fe, but there weren’t boots on my feet to proclaim it.

A genial kind of hype prevailed, with many photos taken and jovial conversation among local luminaries enjoying the perfect air and sloping late afternoon sun. Everyone seemed relaxed in the knowledge that they were in costume, and wasn’t it fun to be mingling and laughing in person, again?

Well, it was. Friends, music, food—out of doors so lingering fears of virus transmission could be allowed to drift away. No wonder everyone was in such a good mood.

This night also struck a kind of balance. We all know the virtues of Antiques Showtime. The health of the area’s economy depends on tourism.

City folk have populated the rolling countryside around us for almost seventy years. We know what they’re looking for. Escape. Peace. Charm.

Lately, though, developers from other cities are in hot pursuit. They have plans for us. Condos in pastures, tourist accommodations in a density never before seen around here. Tourists in cars that will spill out onto Highway 237, a road that, with caravans of heavy equipment hurtling past every day, scarcely needs more such spillage.

It’s not why the rest of us live here, is it? More traffic? More junked up roadways? And a Christmas Market to deliver the chaos of the Antique Shows year-round? Why doesn’t someone suggest a Buc-ees on the Square?

That just doesn’t fit, does it?

Round Top is molting, as it has done for decades. Slips out of the skin it has outgrown, tries out the new one, slips out of it after a few years, and so on. A continual, gradual process in which the nature of the place has, somewhat miraculously, retained its fundamental self—appealing, charming. Beloved.

Round Top has always known its brand and how to stop short of ruining things.

Do the powers that operate out of LaGrange understand that?

The hype that has attracted California developers and boosted local real estate prices is founded on aspects of our community that will be damaged, perhaps fatally, by the advent of developments such as the one suggested for 237 and W. Fuchs Rd.

If nothing else bothers you, think of the wells in the area that sucked sand during the last drought.