THE DAY BEFORE

 A little over 24 hours left in the Trump Presidency. Can we relax? Ha! Have you learned nothing? Like hunting on a rainy day, my head is on a swivel. Promised crooked pardons are coming. Executive orders are being signed at a frantic pace. MORE SHARPIES! And I think there is one more individual on Federal Death Row awaiting his lethal shot. Don't mix it up with that Covid vaccine. Which one comes first? All these details and fears are difficult to keep track of. So, on Trump's last full day in office I want to look back at something that happened close to home this past summer. It was a harbinger of what was to come; a taste of the insurrection of idiocy.

   The little town of Mountain Dale sits just off the beaten path, about five miles from my house. My neighbor RNButch basically owns most of the main street and surrounding rental properties. A few years back Butch realized he didn't have the vision required to promote the town as a mercantile oasis, similar to a few other thriving Catskill villages like Livingston Manor or Narrowsburg. So he hired magazine publisher and restaurateur Nhi Mundy and mined the CLGM congregation for bodies in order to promote hipster retail outlets. It worked......for a time.

   Nhi was a good choice. She opened a little Vietnamese restaurant and promoted the town on social media, as well as in her magazine DV8. Butch offered a year's free rent to prime the pump. I had no interest in retail, but secured an empty lot for my Social Sculpture Park. From day one my combine sculptures and billboards exclaiming messages like God Loves Dykes were met with mixed reviews. Some people liked them. Other people couldn't wait to spray paint or dump piles of snow on them. This was not unusual. Unlike showing within art institutions, working in public is not always a welcoming context. I hung in there and continued to curate my grassy knoll.

    Then one day a young woman in a loud Jeep roared by the Social Sculpture Park flying the Confederate flag. In the midst of BLM protest and a raging pandemic, this racist display seemed a bit much. So I went about conducting an informal poll of the town merchants regarding the flag. To my surprise nobody seemed to care. "They [the racists] were here before I got here. They'll still be here after I'm gone." was the immigrant Ms. Mundy's tepid response. Others shrugged and dismissed the flag as "just kids looking for attention." or excused the girl, hoping to shower her with understanding. My old white man's outrage seemed as out of place and dismissed as the flag.

   In those long ago languid days of summer I was still on social media. Through a way too large, group email and social media posts I drummed up enough support for a Love Parade that would offer a counter protest to this cracker enabling. We went on the attack. The day before the parade Butch sent me an email with a photo of the Jeep in question. This woman had finally relented and replaced the stars and bars with the thin blue line of a "Blue Lives Matter" banner on her Jeep. Victory.... sort of. 

    In my new role as a "parade organizer" I learned many things. One of the saddest was the apathetic disinterest in confrontation that a community held when racist imagery was paraded before their eyes. Even the Jeep girl was surprised at my outrage. "What's the big fucking deal?" this Trump supporter asked me when I confronted her, "I've been flying this flag for over a year." That said it all. 

   My interest in Mountain Dale has steadily diminished. Nhi, and some of the people she brought on board like Morgan Puitt, have now closed shop and are gone. Nhi's words were prophetic. You were right Nhi. You are gone. The crackers remain. Late in the summer my Social Sculpture Park was overrun (without permission) by vendors hawking feathered ear rings and bad pottery. This flea market of cheesy consumerism was invited, charged and promoted by the very merchants who had excused the flying of the Confederate flag simply as "misdirected energy." When I confronted these merchants with their trespasses  they apologized to Butch, never acknowledging that the park was in fact MY space. I was fighting a losing battle. My park remains. For how long? I fear my days are numbered. 

   Will the world change tomorrow? In some ways yes. In many more ways, no. How many tiny Northern towns are sitting silently by as Confederate, Blue Lives, or Trump flags fly off the back of pick up trucks? This racist, delusional mind set, that in other eras was more contained by region has now metastasized across the entire country. The "Lost Cause"  is now a battle cry for half the U.S. It is not limited by sex, education or class. It permeates the body politic and all our institutions- police, municipal and fire departments included. We are in a precarious state that requires constant vigilance. Keep your head on a swivel. You won't hear them coming.