RURAL NEWS: Spring is Wild

Spring is always a disappointment.  But only at first.

Wet daffodils, well into May.

April is the cruelest month, breeding

 

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

 

Memory and desire, stirring

 

Dull roots with spring rain.

                                                                

The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot                              

Oh, the cold, the wet!  When will it end!

Then May arrives.   Well, somewhere around the beginning of May, anyway. 

Yesterday afternoon a red fox was dancing about in the field.  He trotted along, stopped, leapt in the air a few times, now and then eyeing his surroundings to make sure he wasn't been checked out by anyone or anything else.  He seemed confident, unperturbed.  At nearly the same time in the same part of the field a porcupine lumbered along, looking back now and then to be really sure dog Skyler was all bark and nothing more.  Soon after two deer tiptoed into the open, but for them, bark was as good as bite, and they fled.  So did a gang of turkeys, making a less graceful exit.

This is exactly what the fox looked like, black tips on his ears, the luxuriant tail.  With Ken's super binoculars–the ones he used to identify the area of the sky he would hone in on with his telescope–I could see him almost as closely as this.

Turkey hunting season is on right now, but it's not the kind of hunting that keeps people out of the woods, like in deer season when you need to wear hunter's neon orange.  Good thing, because there are ramps to be gathered now, those amazing plants that taste like garlic and onion all in one.  I haven't gathered many, to be honest, because it's still fairly muddy.  Walking in the field is all squish, squish.

Every bit of green in sight on this steep hillside is ramps as I saw them last spring.  But this is extraordinary, you are more likely to find groups of ramps here and there, often in the same area as in past years.

Birds are returning, bit by bit.  A pair of Canada geese have taken to dropping by to spend an idle afternoon on the grass or drifting around on the water in the big pond. Occasionally they are joined by a lone male merganser or lone male mallard.  (Have they been cast off?)  Of course Skyler is not that far away on the near side of the pond, but there seems to be mutual agreement that there's no offense taken on either part.

This time I am prepared for the annual visit of barn swallows.  The first sign they have arrived is a wad of mud plastered to the house, somewhere.  Sometimes they fling mud right at the front door while trying to build a nest just under the doorway roof.  That attempt is doomed by the constant opening and closing of the front door, not to mention humans going in and out, sending them in to a panic.  (Such fright behavior is what caused one bird, a chickadee possibly, to fly inside the other day.  I didn't realize what had happened until I found bird droppings and heard fluttering.  The bird flew to the highest possible point in the house. I closed all bedroom doors upstairs, making at least those room out of bounds, and opened a window, then hoped for the best.  Within an hour or so the bird apparently managed to sense where the outside air was, nevermind that it was only a tiny rectangle in an otherwise huge open area.)  This year I decided I was not going to continue my years of dealing with swallow poop, that gray-white mess that coats the floor and the wall around the nest.  I settled on using prayer flags to deter nest building.  It's not as if there aren't plenty of other choice spots available; they could nest in the big shed or the woodshed.  Why not?

I could barely see the bird, way up in the–what do I call it?–the cupola?

The culprits.  Three, of what are most commonly five, fledglings.

From the splatter visible here, you may be able to imagine the total accumulation.

My prayer flag solution.  Will it work?  Additionally, each light fixture below has a small rock on top, in case that seems a convenient nest site–again.  

A snake (harmless garter snake) slides around the side of the patio. It has a particular liking to hang around the stone wall when the sun is out and have a swim in the pool from time to time.

This one is probably one of the larger ones around, but looks bigger in the photo than in real life.

So  much for spring!

Sumer is icomen in

 

Lhude sing cuccu!

                                            Medieval ditty

See?  There isn't really any news here.

THE REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS OF RALPH FARNSWORTH

You wouldn't ordinarily expect to find little boutique museums around here, would you? Not unless it belongs to a nearby college (Middlebury has its Mahaney Arts Center) or is perhaps the collection of a local Historical Society (Middlebury–the town, this time–has its Sheldon Museum).  The Farnsworth museum, that is, Ralph Farnsworth's museum, open by appointment only, is neither.  

Ralph Farnsworth, of the eponymous museum

 

Localized for you!

It is the obsession of one Ralph Farnsworth who lives in my town.  He is a gentleman, I suppose one would say, of the "old school," not being a newcomer in any sense of the world, still living on the same farm he grew up on, taciturn, the kind of person you might picture when someone refers to an "old Vermonter."   I use the word obsession because you would have to call it an obsession when you collect so many old things over a period of many years and amass so much of it that you need to devote an entire building to house it all.  If his collections were disordered, you would considered him a hoarder and the collection a hoard.  But his collection is very much in order.  And ordered.  By shape, size, and category, mostly.

Still, it's a bit of a shock when you first walk in and see all the–well, stuff.  It's as if you walked into an old general store, pharmacy, farm shed, hardware store, gift shop, all in the same space. 

Everything that's fit to keep

Did I say orderly?

Pencils. Why not!  Plus the odd ruler. 

   

Yes, pencils are arranged together with pencils, hasps, knobs and latches together with hasps, knobs, and latches, clocks with clocks, vacuum cleaners with vacuum cleaners, and so on.  I have no idea what the pencils share in terms of history, if any, but they do make for a pleasing design.

Many, maybe most of us, have samples of the above artefacts in our sheds and garages.  But do we
arrange them anywhere near as well?  I don't think so.

The above are merely decoration compared with the collection of old tools and what I would call "pre-appliance" appliances, when the word "appliance" still meant merely applying oneself to something, or was used as a noun to describe a water wheel or other such mechanical device.  What, after all, do you call a vacuum cleaner, sans electricity, when it functions more like some sort of dry suction pump (if there is indeed such a thing)?  You could claim it helped build up your arm muscles while using.  But for the fact that those women who cleaned probably weren't in need of additional exercise.  They would more likely have said the hell with this! Give me a broom!

The "Success" model, made by the Hutchison Mgf. Co. of Wilkinsburg, PA,
its function being demonstrated.  (Mr. Farnsworth hovered, so we weren't
allowed to touch.) 

Or imagine mowing your lawn with the implement below.  The model in the ad suggests it dates to the 1940's or later.  Was this someone's nutty idea, or was this actually on the market?  Since our curator has two of them, we can guarantee they sold more than one.  (Hmm, it says "sold only by mail order.”)

It weighed in at only 8-½ pounds!

Can you see an early Cuisinart in this food chopper?

We were told by Mr. Farnsworth what each piece was supposed to do,
but this one had a tag:  "food chopper" 

In the radio, television, phonograph, telephone, toaster and "other" aisles ("other" is part of every display) there are some beautiful old victrolas and an authenticated (provenance on display) Edison equipment.

Toasters and clocks and telephones and more...

Homage to Thomas Edison

The DVD is foreshadowed!

"The Picture Record"?  How, exactly?

And the tape recorder...?

I forget what this was, but it seemed a pretty amazing invention for the time.  No! Not a stove!

Evolution of the light bulb, sort of.

There is what I would call a memories section, labels and advertisements, comic books, and huge stashes of old newspapers.  Nevermind that old newspapers can be found via microfiche.  A few examples below.

Mementos of places visited, events and people remembered, a kind of bulletin board of the past. I
wonder what it was like at "The Tops" back in the 1920's.  Intriguing.

From the stone age, before Siri began telling us how to get there from here.

Collectibles.  Shocking–to me–that these 'ancient' calendars are only from the 1960's.

As we wound our way through the crowded aisles of things and more things, we came to the Coca Cola section of which there was quite a lot of material, considering it is just one brand.  Why so much about Coke?  "I like Coca Cola," said Ralph.  There you have it.

Toy trains and Matchbox cars join the endless Coca Cola logos.

The Coca Cola area was the last major section of our museum tour.  By this time we were glassy-eyed.  Throughout our wanderings through his collections Mr. Farnsworth dogged our steps, perhaps fearing our fingers might be a tad too nimble.

THE VAST OF DAY*

 

 

Time, time time.

I have to admit, the year is turning.  I experienced this fact one afternoon when the sky was bright blue, the sun almost blinding, and it didn't set until nearly 5 o’clock.  After a streak of dim cloudy days, this came as a huge surprise. To me, anyway. When, exactly, did this happen?  

 

No one–it's not just me–seem to have a good handle on exactly when anything happened over the past year.  Time has felt miss-shapen––both short and long, simultaneously.  I know time is in fact actually malleable.  Science tells us this, that what we experience and measure with clocks is only our human need to organize the world. But this year every day has blended into the next, broken up only by activities like Zoom meetings, food shopping, the occasional visit to the dentist, and whatever outdoor activities we can manage.  

When quarantine got serious here, mid-March 2020, was when this time confusion began.  I can date it exactly.  On Saturday March 7th I went to a concert.  The guitarist was Italian, had come here from Italy.  I remember wondering:  When, exactly did he come from Italy?  Did he bring that virus with him?  (Italy, we had heard on the news, had suddenly become a hotbed of this strange new illness.)  I remember feeling grateful to be seated way in the back of the audience.  On the following Wednesday night I went to a concert at St. Stephens church in Middlebury.  Oddly, the singers were scattered in difference parts of the church. Guests in the pews sat isolated from one another.  This was my introduction to social distancing. At the end of the concert I wanted to say hello to one or two people I knew, but no one seemed to be interacting. I felt on edge.  I think everyone did.  It was the official beginning of a strange time.

Without calendar signposts like a taking off a week or two to somewhere distant, going to a festival or a graduation, or having some other special event to attend, the months became indistinguishable.  Did this happen last week?  Or was it a month ago?  The weeks drag on with a sameness that make them hard to differentiate, while simultaneously that mini-event, that trip to the dentist maybe, feels as if it happened months ago, or wait–was it last week?  Time slithers by and there’s nothing to hold onto.

 

Hardly anyone I know has gone out at night since last March. What’s to go to?  Night is when we used to go to parties, see plays, attend concerts, go to meetings.  Actual meetings. I watch too much TV.  When I chat with friends we talk about Netflix movies we’ve seen.  I read a lot.  But then I always did.  It’s the TV watching that feels different. 

But it's only us humans...

 

Time has its usual shape (or space, or moment, or whatever) to all those creatures who live outside. For them, time is neither slow nor fast. It just sort of is. Nothing has really changed. (I'm not including our pets, since they have been having a pretty decent time of it, what with their keepers being around nearly 100% of their time.)  Because there has been snow on the ground most of January, and February began with snow and more snow, it's easy to see what our wildlife has been up to. 

Unlike the indoors, the outdoors is a busy place.  

Under an apple tree, mouse tracks.  Hundreds of them!

What kind of bird?

Rabbit tracks, coming toward the camera.

Yesterday morning my next door family heard two shots.  The sounds apparently came from south of my house. (I wasn't home to hear.)  What’s to hunt at this time of year?  

Skiing in the fields across the road. 

Startled turkeys take off from Otter Creek. 

Only a few days ago while skiing in the fields across the road I had noticed a hunting chair at the edge of a field across the road, and footprints (human, that is) leading to the same farmhouse to which a year or so ago I tracked clear prints of a deer killed post-season.  So what was it that was shot at, or, more likely, killed this time? A turkey? A coyote, would be my guess. You have to keep in mind that quite a number of people here are still shooting coyotes and bobcats for fun, not to mention trapping foxes, orhunting bears with hounds, as if it was still 1821. Add "shooting stuff for fun" to the list of things to do to fill the days.

*with apologies to the film "The Vast of Night"

WHAT THE HECK AM I SEEING?

 

HOW MUCH DO THEY MATTER?  

There are some ugly truths.

I was out skiing in the woods behind my house around one o'clock on January 6th.  It is 2021, the new, better year. A lovely day, the snow perfect.  It wasn't until 2 o'clock or so when I came inside that I picked up on the string of notifications that had been piling up on my phone.  The Capitol Building had been breached by Trump supporters.  

Like a lot of people, I was shocked, yeah, but not surprised.  

You don't live through a couple of years' worth of demonstrations with people carrying Trump flags (Flags? With the President's name? Really?), reading about fantasies of pedophilia rings in the government and Trump portrayed as the pedophile slayer (Q-Anon wackiness), and Proud Boys and the like marching here and there with anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Black shouts, without knowing something is afoot.  No presidents, none of them–ever–have been postered against all reason as some sort of cartoon-like Messiah/Terminator/Action Figure as has this elderly, overweight, jowled, pissed-off-looking narcissistic individual–you know the one–the one with the comb-over to beat all comb-overs.

This is what took me aback:  I stared into CNN's coverage the rest of that crazy afternoon.  I watched as the mob broke windows, wandered around inside of the building, entered offices and the House chamber, massed on the steps and on the plaza.  I saw the occasional Confederate flag.  I could pick out police here and there, small groups, vastly outnumbered, trying, mostly without success, to hold the line on the plaza and later, at the doors, and still later, in the halls.  CNN voices kept announcing that they had had word that reinforcements were en route from several different counties, and the National Guard was on its way.  I kept watching, but nothing changed.  I still saw only ineffectual groups of police. It was hard even to spot them amidst the mob. What the hell?  Where was all this security?  C'mon, this is our Capitol!

Now and then a camera panned to lines of fresh police, standing somewhere, waiting.  Another camera showed what I thought might be National Guard troops positioned somewhere else.  Maybe they were martial types in camo. When it came on six o'clock, after curfew time was announced, police who had been standing for as much as an hour apparently waiting for orders finally, leisurely, walked in and firmly but gently pressed the crowd back, away from the steps, and eventually away from the plaza.  No bullhorns, no batons, no big pressure.  Take it easy, folks. 

I'm old enough to have been to several protest Marches on Washington (not including, unfortunately, the most famous one when Martin Luther King spoke), all mostly peaceful. I was involved in a protest on the Lexington Battle Green in 1971 (only locally famous) when over 450 of us from the town, including some 100 Vietnam Veterans Against the War, were arrested.  The police, summoned to do this by the Lexington Selectmen, arrived at about 3 AM in full riot gear, although almost all of us were by this time simply sleeping–or trying to–on the Green. (That was actually our offense.)  The police were polite, even smiling, some of them, because they weren't really crazy about arresting their fellow townspeople, much less war veterans, some of whom were disabled. They knew us. They didn't fear us. We were like them.

Fear of "the other," that is at the heart of this. Masha Gessen in The New Yorker said this of the Capitol police actions: 

"Black Lives Matter protesters are other to the Capitol Police. So are survivors of sexual assault or women who protest for the right to choose. But an armed mob storming the Capitol, and their Instigator-in-Chief, are, apparently, familiar enough to be dismissed as clowns. (Some of them, in their face paint and strange headgear, even seemed to embrace their identification as clowns.) The invaders may be full of contempt for a system that they think doesn’t represent them, but on Wednesday they managed to prove that it does. The system, which shrugged off their violence like it had been a toddler’s tantrum, represents them. It’s the rest of us it’s failing to protect."

This has already been pointed out by many observers. Following nearly every police shooting of a Black person, there have been, predictably, demonstrations.  These protests tended to attract plenty of police fitted out with riot gear, pepper spray, tear gas, and occasionally rubber bullets. Protective barriers were often set up well before even the threat of a protest. This level of security was on full display when Trump took his infamous walk from the White house to St. John's church to wave a prop Bible around. The crowd had been peaceful.

Pro-Trumpers don't threaten white people very much.  Many white people have friends or relatives who are Trumpers, and Trumpers live among us in mostly white communities.  What's to fear?  A few paramilitary right-wing types seem scary, but not your run of the mill Trumper. Some of us may find them annoying, aggravating even, but for the most part we don't feel endangered by them.  We're white, after all.  I don't feel physically threatened by any local Trumper because I know they would see me as just another misled white person.  On the wrong side, but, hey, I'm white! 

A thought experiment:  Imagine the Trump mob in Washington (or maybe the one in front of your own State Capitol) as a group of Black Lives Matter protestors.  Pretend the protestors are mostly Black. Picture them angry.  Maybe they have weapons.  Picture the security: Is it mostly white people?  When the protestors try to storm the building, picture the results.

As to the above question, the answer is not enough.

WHAT ABOUT THE 74-PLUS MILLION?  

Over 74 million people voted for Trump. In any democracy there must always be a viable opposition.  At times that opposition can be particularly fierce.  But in this case many, or maybe most, of these 74 million live intellectually and emotionally in an entirely difference universe than the other millions.  This is something new and different. Social media has helped create that parallel universe.  Pro-Trumpers are securely represented in our government too, as the well over one hundred Congresspeople who bought into Trump's lie of a stolen election will attest.  Many of these elected officials, I would hope, know better, but are thinking, cravenly, of their constituents.  For these constituents anyone holding a view unlike their belief in Trump risks not getting their vote.  

I suppose representatives should reflect their constituents' views, but what about educating them?  What about leadership?  What about moral responsibility?  If no one was able to lead others to better ways of thinking, wouldn't we still have slavery?   

As for those members of Trump's party who have decided it's time to disassociate themselves, what's there to say?  How brave are they?

“Resigning with two weeks left feels less like some moral stand and more like leaving early to beat traffic.” Jimmy Fallon

 

 “It’s very brave of Republicans to start speaking out against Trump only 99.9 percent of the way through his term in office. You know, not to quibble about this, but for someone to ‘lose it,’ first they must ‘possess it,’ mustn’t they?’ James Corden

On PBS there I saw a documentary called "A Thousand Cuts" about the rise and rule of populist Philippines President Duterte.  A struggling democracy, the Philippines is one of the world's poorest countries, its people widely invested in social media. Duterte's reign is like a fun house mirror of what has happened in this country.  There was no coup, no grand takeover, but rather a chipping away, bit by bit, cut by cut, of democratic values.  Duterte lies regularly, and uses social media and social media stars to amplify his lies; he is explicitly mysogynistic, rewards his cronies, calls the press his enemy, and he is feared. The result is a democracy divided, a population living in two parallel universes. The majority of the population has absorbed the lies, no longer believing in or supporting a free press, and has learned to look away, or tolerate, or even admire "wiping out drugs and criminals" by his sanctioned policy of murdering them. When first elected, Duterte admitted in a TV interview to having personally killed "about three people."  In a chatty telephone call with Duterte in May 2017 Trump said this:  

"I just want to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.  Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that."  Confidential transcript of telephone conversation (Washington Post)

"You are a good man....If you want to come to the Oval Office, I will love to have you in [the] Oval Office. Anytime you want to come."  Confidential transcript of telephone conversation (Washington Post)

During a personal meeting with Duterte in November 2017, Trump shared a laugh about journalists, "...you guys," said Duarte, you are the spies, you are." Ha ha.

 

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

 

Kamala Harris is our new Vice President.  This may hold even more promise for the future than Joe Biden being our new President.  True, we already had a Black man as President, but it's almost as if that was a really good first try, an attempt to raise the country to a higher plane and blur that ancient racial divide.  The real division before 2016 was only beginning to become an abyss. Social media was already feeding conspiracies. Still, few of us knew how far this would go.  Or what would happen when the electorate threw a metaphorical bomb at our government, embodied by Donald J. Trump–someone who would say and do all the things many white people had thought, but long suppressed.  

Well, now we know.

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE RAIN IS GONE

Even since that Saturday, the afternoon presidential election was declared for Biden, this Jimmy Cliff song, with that cool reggae beat, has been going around in my brain...

 

I can see clearly now the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Oh, yes I can make it now the pain is gone

All of the bad feelings have disappeared

Here is that rainbow I've been praying for

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) sunshiny day

 

Truthfully, realistically, the odds are not exactly good for a bright sunshiny day most days in November, in Vermont, anyway.  But it is nice to feel that a weight has been lifted.  A weight that's been hanging overhead since November of 2016, and that year most certainly wasn't a good one.  In that January, Ken and I had spent a few days in to New York City.  He tired more easily by that time, but yet we managed museums, walking, eating out.  He was more or less okay.  A few months later, in the spring, we visited a good friend who was living in Seville for a few months, a trip that had its complications, although it had a number of lighter moments, some fun, even.  (See "The Rain in Spain" post of 5/23/16)  It would be our last trip together.  After a dismal month or two, Ken died, just days before the election, having cast his final vote for Hillary Clinton.  He never knew Trump would become President. Had he known he would have been as astonished as everyone.  

But this year, this strange year, surpasses any I've known for sheer all around horribleness.  It's possible to see more clearly now much of what was hiding behind the curtain of daily Trump outrages.  The oh-my-God news that happened almost hourly, overkill insanities, sapped our mental and emotional energy.  Laid bare now, with that constant assault out of the way, are the issues we should have been seeing.  Issues like our changing climate, the alienation of our former allies, our global pandemic, our national pandemic, myriad humanitarian concerns across the globe, institutional racism, poverty here and elsewhere, student debt, cyber security... I could go on, but I have already overwhelmed myself. All this doesn't exactly promise a sunshiny day.

Yet...

There are sunny days, but clouds demand one's attention at this time of year.

It is literally clearer here now, too, for it's easy to see things with the foliage out of the way.  Not prettier, but more transparent.  I don't really dislike the change, partly because it is a change, although hunting season discourages me from venturing into the woods, even wearing hunter's orange, and that is disappointing because that openness is so inviting.  It doesn't help that there's a family further up the road that doesn't pay enough attention to hunting regulations.  Last year, on one day after the end of hunting season, when the previous night had laid down a thin layer of snow, the path we made, Skyler and me, were the only prints to be seen. Until we came upon some very disturbed snow behind this particular family's land.  There were streaks of blood on top of the snow and drag marks showing something heavy had been pulled to a place where there were tractor marks that led directly to their house.  Skylers sniffed out a pile of entrails right nearby where an animal had been gutted.  Such evidence of a deer shot after the end of the season may be circumstantial, but it is damning, like what Henry Thoreau called "finding a trout in the milk."  After the end of the current rifle season rifle shots have been heard coming from the same direction once again.  So, I'm not going into the woods just yet, clear and inviting as they are.

Three does came to visit very early one morning, days before hunting season began. 

This extra visual clarity allows me to see the rocky hills behind the field, as if a green curtain has suddently been removed.  It helps to a degree with deer hunting, except that everything looks some shade of brown or beige, so it's more likely a rustling sound that you listen for.  More often than not, that turns out to be squirrels messing around in the dry leaves.  Also newly visible this time of year, or possibly newly created, is the line Skyler makes in the grass, the line that Skyler believes limits his area.  Why it only appears in the fall is a bit of a mystery.  Skyler's line is actually off by several feet from the "dangerous edge," but he's taking no chances. It's an electric fence, but I don't even put his collar on any more, so nothing would happen if he crossed over.  (Don't tell him that, though.)

The ridge that summer hides.

Why Skyler creates the exact same path is a bit puzzling.

The lack of rain in late summer and early fall exposed things, too.  A few weeks ago I took a walk that led to Bittersweet Falls, a secluded den where a broad waterfall normally cascades.  But sans rainwater, there was only a mossy cliff.

A dried up Bittersweet Falls, although a recent rain may have helped.()

Sometimes looking back makes events look clearer, too.  I recently watched a documentary about Ronald Reagan.  I remember his presidency so I thought I already knew everything there was to know about him. What I didn't know was that "Make America Great Again" was his 1980 campaign slogan.  That message was accompanied by many of the same racial dog whistles.  Not exactly original, DJT.  And–this one I did remember–Reagan selected cabinet members who were put in charge of organizations they would aim to destroy. Probably the worst of a bad lot was James Watt, Interior Secretary: anti-conservation, anti-wilderness, anti-environment–you name it.  Not exactly original, DJT.  Deregulation, too, "getting "government off the backs of the people."  You rode that as well, DJT.  To top it off,  Reagan was also the first media persona (B-movie star, TV host, etc.) to become President.  Not the first, DJT.  A fervent but probably vain hope I have is that he be the last. 

We can always look beyond the clouds and hope for better things, right?

THE ILLUMINATI ARE COMING FOR YOU!

They're coming to get you!  

It's not BLACK LIVES MATTER that's coming to get you (although maybe they should be), but plain old white folks who are out to get the mobs (meaning protesters), and the looters (meaning protesters), and the violent (meaning protesters, the angry ones, or maybe other groups) and thereby save us all (meaning us white folks. Who else could it be?).  

Paranoia, merely paranoia.  But, oh, paranoia can do a lot of damage.  And paranoia goes way back.  In truth, it has never been absent.  

In the 1980's there was a national mass hysteria about Satanic ritual abuse.  Are any of us old enough to remember?  It was widely believed that young children, preschoolers, were being subjected to ritual abuse.  It began in California, in the McMartin Preschool.  It was believed that the teachers had tortured and raped children, killed them and drank their blood, and so on and so on.  You don't want to know the ways.  (Toddlers were interviewed by therapists, for those who do not know the stories.)  Or maybe it began earlier with a supposedly autobiographical book (one that I'd never heard of at the time) about discovering abuse through "recovered memories," memories that weren't, until they suddenly were.  The hysteria became a fever.  It was fed by talk shows (even Oprah), articles, books, lectures–it was everywhere.  It grew gravitas.  It became an international conspiracy–the elite were said to be abducting children world-wide for Satanic purposes.  People were prosecuted.

Every conspiratorial notion forms from a tiny grain of truth, like an oyster its pearl.

I remember a case that arose when I lived in Boston in 1984 as this hysteria was well underway, when teacher after teacher at the Fells Acres Preschool was accused of raping the children in their care in a variety of fanciful ways that seemed to me, even then, highly improbable. The stories were weird, and involved secret rooms, a clown, trees, and, I think, animals. Several teachers were sent to prison with lengthy sentences.  One was not released until 2004, another died in prison.  

That was before everyone started forwarding messages on the internet.

Therapists played an important role spreading the "recovered memory" theory of memory.  Until they didn't.  

Debunked.  Conspiracies.  All of it.  People learned from this.  

You would think.

This is an actual poster that I first saw in the background of a photo of a Trump supporter.  Conspiracies lie beneath.

Laughable, maybe. (That head, that body!) But I wonder. What might someone be thinking or feeling about the country, or our government, to exhibit this kind of adulation?  I read that some of those who kept vigil outside Walter Reed Hospital had signs that said Trump was a gift from God.  This is adulation to the power of ten.  What is he is supposed to be fighting?  It's more than just the usual political issues.  There's hellfire here.  Religiosity. We know that some believers identify a major evil that reads a lot like Satanic ritual abuse of children. All too familiar.  (Thank the Qnon faction for throwing in that idea.)  

What is it that is so compelling that it elevates Trump to this insane level?  I have trouble putting myself in that place.  What is that place?  What does it look like?

Many of us (I include myself here) feel strongly about the role of government; we want it to support public education, the nation's health, our environment, and we expect it to keep us safe vis à via infrastructure, a sensible foreign policy (arguable, precisely what that is), equitable policing to keep us safe (more of a wish, unfortunately; see Black Lives Matter), and you can imagine the rest. 

But I don't see a god anywhere.  

So what is it, this missing element that looks to Trump so worshipfully?

Is it fear? Fear of what?

I think of the fears of the white slaveowners when emancipation turned their world upside down, when it came about that the people they oppressed were now to be equal to them.  Many just gritted their teeth, hating it, silently. Many couldn't bear it, and needed to conspire, to act.  Bitter and smug in their imagined superiority, men formed secret societies to attempt to return the world to what it was before. We know that they failed, but their failure was an incomplete one. People still fear the protests of Black Lives Matter. 

Among other fears. There must be many.

I come to the Illuminati.  I suppose they come to mind because I wrote a paper about them in graduate school, probably after reading historian Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," published in 1964, that I remember reading in the 1970's.

The Illuminati were the USA's first off-the-wall hysteria.  (The Salem witch business happened in the 1600's before we were a nation, so I'm not counting that.)  The full name of the group was the Bavarian Illuminati, Bavaria being in southern Germany, because they originated in Europe in the late 1770's as a secret society formed to combat superstition, abuses of state power and the like.  They were essentially a by-product of the Enlightenment.  Secret organizations, like Freemasons, were a thing for like-thinking groups of men. And not only then.  George Washington was a Freemason.  So was my father, for that matter. 

Secret societies are like catnip for conspiracy lovers.  Starting from the pulpits of Massachusetts the Illuminati were pilloried, atheists that they were assumed to be, accused of conspiring to abolish Christianity and overturn the government and–again, there was that sexual element–it was preached that they advocated sensual pleasure and promiscuity. Unclean!  Save the children!

It was unlikely, at best, that any actual "Bavarian Illuminati" ever set foot in this country.  Nonetheless, the complete lack of evidence failed to slow the fear until the early 1800's when the failure of a Christian demise or lack of a government coup wore down the Illuminati fear factor.  

Well, that's not really true.  There is a film called "American Illuminati" (2017) that purports to tell the "real history of America as you've never known it.  The shocking truth of how America was engineered and controlled by a secret organization that has infiltrated religious groups, political parties, universities and corporations."  You can get it on Amazon Prime.  Although it told me it is "currently unavailable to watch in your location" (what's wrong with my location?), I'm told that if I watched this item I would also like "Prison On Earth, Beyond the New World Order," "Shadow Government," "Unsealed Conspiracy Files," "God Kings, the Descendents of Jesus," and "Alien Agenda." 

I demurred.

Here is a happier note.  For a bit of balance, I would argue that it's always fun to see some enthusiasm, maybe even adulation, on the other side.  Herewith:

 The house, by the way, is not really crooked, the street is slanted, but I decided to leave it this way.