(Photo: My World, Bathroom light, Iphone photo)

Surgeon Day, Foot Check

Today is a calendar day, a  turning point day today. I have an appointment this afternoon with Dr. Daly, the podiatric surgeon; she will be getting her first look at the incision she made and remove and change the bandage. I think she will want another week in the surgical shoe and another week of keeping the wound dry and staying off the foot.

Maria has been banned from caretaking work today because of borscht soup (I’ll write about it later) but she has to drive me to Saratoga as I can’t drive yet.

I’m no doctor but it feels perfect; there is no pain, swelling, or throbbing; that’s good news for just five days out. I also continue to be pleased and surprised by the impact those sleep apnea masks have on my sleep and energy.

According to my mask manager, I slept for over 6 hours last night. This might well be a lifetime record, and I feel the difference in almost every part of my body. I’m eager to get up,  have shed the bouts of drowsiness I attributed to aging (almost always a mistake).

The breakthrough last night was when I woke up at 2 a.m., took the mask off for a half-hour or so (I was sneezing), then put it back on. I woke up several hours later, and for the first time at night, I didn’t realize that the mask was even on. I feel strong and clear and am raring to return to life. Good news.

 Part Two: Crazy Horse Day, Life In A Country Gone Mad

I was intrigued when I ran into a very liberal (and lonely) musician in town Saturday – I was riding shotgun while Maria shopped – and he wished me a Happy Indigenous Day.  This startled me.

Then I read that President Biden referred to Columbus Day (or what used to be Columbus Day) as “Indigenous People’s Day.” Up here, where I live, it is still called Columbus Day, and I suspect it will remain that way for some time. Folks up here are not looking for Washington elitists to tell them what to say.

I’m not sure I’m brave enough to wish my neighbors “Happy Indigenous People’s Day,” yet when I think about it, I can’t think of a more deserved holiday for Native American People. They paid for this in blood and tears. I’m sorry the name Indigenous People’s Day sounds like a Saturday Night Live spoof.

I’m not a huge fan of political correctness, and I imagine Indigenous People’s Day has Fox News and their aging and angry white “commentators” in an orgiastic frenzy. But the fight over the tribe logo reminded me why I dislike the left and the right so much. Harold Bloom was right, they signal the end of the American Mind.  How hard do we have to dog to feel aggrieved and misunderstood yet again?

I wish the people who want to change the holiday had come up with a less clunky name than Indigenous People’s Day, like Tecumseh or Red Cloud or Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull or Geronimo Day. Even the Macho Men in their pickups might go for that.

A better name – recognizing genuine heroes –  would sure get a lot of media, and imagine the debate in Congress. Marjorie Taylor Green would blow some blood vessels; she and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could mud wrestle on the Capital lawn. (Things have gone too far, I’d miss Rep. Green if she went away, she is once-in-a-lifetime unique.)

Each of those men listed above was a Native American hero, and people relate to people much more quickly than politically correct slogans. I’d vote for Crazy Horse Day, nobody would forget that, and he is a remarkable figure in our history.

My town has just gone through an agonizingly, expensive, pointless, and very ugly brawl (you know, the guys in their pickups with the big flags, the screaming at school board members) over the high school football logo, which featured a Native American chief as a symbol.

I admit I couldn’t relate to this fight in either way. Kids and teachers should choose whatever symbol they want, and if it turns out to offend a lot of people, they should choose one that doesn’t. It doesn’t seem all that hard to me

The angry mob bullied a traumatized school board into keeping the symbol, and then the state came in and banned schools from using Native American figures as sports symbols altogether. Here we go again, more thousands of dollars wasted, more rallies around town, more flags on even bigger pickups, no one even thinks about education.

And not one student has gotten one thing they might need. I was fantasizing that if the people who rallied for the logo ever fought that hard for the school budget, we’d have the best high school in America. I’m not holding my breath.

The true legacy of this fight over the football team’s logo was thousands of ugly signs spouting up like ragweed all over pretty town urging people to “protect the pride.” I’ll sign any petition if they don’t put those signs up again or, God forbid, make new ones. It seemed in our town, pride in high school had nothing to do with learning, but everything to do with the contrived culture wars ripping America apart.

I’m not proud of that.

I wonder if a single one of these protestors will ever come to a school board meeting again, and also who will pick up all those awful signs, many of which are still rotting on green lawns? I also wondered if this fight would improve the schools in any measurable way.

Perhaps the real problem in the country is that white men don’t have enough to keep them occupied. And if the angry white men of Cambridge are so eager to keep a Native American Chief as their football team symbol, why not go all the way and embrace “Indigenous People’s Day.” That would shut up all those liberal elitists in a hurry.

I think the logo supporters might relate to Geronimo a lot more than Christopher Columbus, who didn’t even know where he had landed. The defenders of the tribe have a lot more in common with Geronimo than the hapless Columbus.

I try to avoid left-right cultural battles,  they turn my stomach, but every time I read anything about our history with the Native Americans, I feel deep shame. They are entitled to anything they want, for our sake as well as theirs.

I was asked to get involved in the town “tribe” battle, but politics are a poison now, and I have no interest in jumping into a cesspool like that. There are no winners in a fight like that, only more losers.

The primary function of politics for me is the occasional chance to write about it; there is nothing like it.

Happy Peace And Compassion Day.