Our Governor Sucks

But we don't have to

I'm sitting at my desk trying to make the dregs of my morning coffee allotment last. It's a flat, pale gray outside. The wind of the last couple days that blasted all but the most-determined leaves from the skeletal cherry tree just beyond my window seems to have died down. The tree is full of birds. There are three feeders in its immediate vicinity and they are swarming with them too. I've been more diligent than usual in keeping them full because I love these neighbors and they require vittles to stay warm. There isn't that much snow, but where it hasn't been plowed away it is wind-shaped into the most gorgeous of smooth, whorled surfaces, like the icing on a cake.

I love this blast of winter weather that has descended on us. It's frigid outside but by early next week it will be gone. That makes me a little sad. I love the preparations inclement weather forces us to make, the disruption to routine. The way it reminds us that yes, we are part of a natural world that doesn't really care to kowtow to our every convenience. It's February. This is how February is supposed to be. Not for the first, and certainly not the last, time I wish I had a wood stove to feed, wood to carry after having split it all during the fall, etc. That was part of growing up, when winters were longer and weather like this was more frequent, and I miss it.

It's cold but it's really not that cold, not in Missoula anyway, contrary to the abundance of weather app screenshots you'll find all over social media. Cold is locked-in up on the Hi Line in places like Browning and Great Falls. So suck it up you candy-ass Missoulians. If you aren't living out on the streets like a growing number of our fellow citizens are, then you really aren't suffering. This is why the rest of the state thinks you are all a bunch of whiners. HTFU.

The real winter apocalypse in Montana is happening in Helena with our current Republican-dominated legislature where our governor—heralded just yesterday as evidence against the defense in Trump's impeachment case related to his despicable and embarrassing bodyslam of a reporter a couple years ago (a much smaller man, it should be pointed out, typical of all bullies who never pick on anyone their own size)—leads a cadre of evil goons out to make the rich richer, privatize (stolen) public land, bully Trans children, gather women back under the auspices of their own (imagined) iron fists, and give every knucklehead a gun to take to school, church, or anywhere else their dark little hearts desire.

Also in Helena, this from NPR:

Drenda Neimann, the county’s health officer, wrote a letter to legislative leaders this week. In it, she said businesses have reported that lawmakers are not wearing face coverings indoors and are disregarding requests to don masks per state directive and local rule.

What a bunch of pompous assholes. I never really understood what “bag of dicks” meant until recent history. Is there really any part of our human community less deserving of respect than the elected official? I know that's a generalization but it seems apparent to me. And the higher the office, the worse it gets. The impeachment trial, which will likely fail, despite overwhelming evidence that our former president and all of his sycophantic, gutless supporters and enablers, is, as they say in court, guilty as fuck, is a prime example. I wish we could put all these people in one of Elon Musk's rockets—Musk among them of course—and shoot them into space. It would be so easy to forget about them, in the same way that Trump's banning from everything public has muzzled him. Think of the happy sigh you would have every time you looked at the night sky and knew that Cruz, Daines, Hawley, Rosendale, the entire Trump family, Gianforte, etc. were out there, somewhere, orbiting in a state of constant terror, and were never ever coming back.

This past Wednesday our blockhead governor also announced he'd be rolling back statewide mask restrictions. This came the same day the CDC recommended we wear two masks. I have yet to be able to get my head around the idea that wearing a mask is any kind of major hassle worth getting up in arms about. It is a simple act of compassion for the members of one's community and I will never understand how that is a bad thing.

I love my community, which includes the birds out my window and the vast majority of people I encounter, whether I know them or not. On a tip from a person I wouldn't recognize on the street who sent me a private message on Twitter I was able to secure not only a vaccine appointment for myself but also for my mom. It wasn’t privileged insider information either, it was just a fact obliterated in all the noise over how impossible getting an appointment is. What a gift this was; an act of supreme kindness and an example of how we are supposed to treat each other. I paid it forward by letting my tribal chairman know, and he posted to the Little Shell page on Facebook that Missoula-area LST members could follow the same trail I did. This is what Mutual Aid looks like, a concept I think I am going to write more about in the future.

I got my shot Wednesday. I don't consider myself a patriot at all (except for when it comes time to cheer for the US Women’s National Team in soccer)(the US men lost my support when they didn't rally to the women's cause for equal pay) but showing up to get my shot felt like a patriotic act. In fact I almost got a little verklempt. I showed up on time, checked in, waited less than two minutes, then I was at a table answering a few questions. I took a needle in the arm and was directed to a chair in a large room scattered with other people to wait fifteen minutes to make sure I didn't keel over from a reaction. All in all I was there maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes.

I still haven't keeled over.

These committed healthcare people are doing work that is clearly unappreciated by the powers-that-be, no matter the horseshit praise these "officials" may gas out of the sides of their mouths. The fact that healthcare professionals have had to work upstream of them for a year is a travesty. Sadly, some people are never going to get it.

Me, I'm just going to try and stay grateful, because right now, as long as I don't pay attention to anything much beyond the birds out my window and the handful of genuinely wonderful people I actually interact with, I am grateful.