Lawson

 This morning I woke up around 6:15, and the first thing that came to my mind was, "Oh no. I forgot Lawson!"

Lawson is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who is buried in the nearby cemetery in Lawnside, New Jersey. He was long deceased when he received his award -- the commendation came around 130 years after he pulled a dozen fellow soldiers out of the bottom of a burning ship during the Civil War. See, Lawson was African American. To me it's a miracle he ever got the citation at all.

Lawnside is an African American community. During the Civil War, Black soldiers were not buried in official government cemeteries. So the community of Lawnside agreed to take any soldier of color who needed a respectful place to rest. There are well over 100 Civil War soldiers buried in the Lawnside cemetery. The exact number is unknown because every time the community clears more brush, they find more stones.

America, picture Arlington in your head, and then look at how this veteran of color is remembered.

Kind of sums up our nation in a nutshell.

That is not Lawson's grave in the photo, but this pictured stone is close to Lawson's. 

Every year, prior to Memorial Day, I take a bouquet of silk flowers -- red, white, and blue -- to Lawson's stone. I respectfully acknowledge to the other soldiers there that the bouquet is for them as well. I do this anonymously, in time for the services that the community performs in the cemetery.

This year I made it in the nick of time, about 9:00 a.m. Usually I do this the day before, or even earlier.

I forgot Lawson this year because I am heartsick. It's all well and good to live in the Independent Republic of Johnsonia, but I still see and hear what's happening in the USA. It's tragic. 

I was able to soldier on until the president started targeting Harvard. That was the final straw. I guess it's because I attended a similar elite university. Yes, there are many foreign students at our top universities. Some of them can't even speak much English. But they are the creme de la creme of their nations, intellectually. They come to study at the best universities in the USA, and then they either return home to become the leaders of the future, or they stay and become part of the nation's brain trust. If that process ends, it will be the nail that seals the coffin of America's future.

I don't find it a reach to think that this is because the president's son wasn't accepted to Harvard. Or the president himself. It's also a performance for his uneducated base, the ultimate owning of the libs. Whatever. It's a self sabotage ... the likes of which no one has ever seen before. 

This Memorial Day, my mind wasn't on Lawson. It was on the ravages of the New Gilded Age. 

In today's baseball standings, the Baltimore Orioles are 18-34, buried in the basement of their division. There is no port in the storm.

My Neighbor Channels His Inner Trump

 Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" New pope? Just say nope! Choose a deity who won't be hitting you up for tithes so his priests can wear expensive dresses.

Different topic: We're quite upset here in Johnsonia. I guess it's bound to happen when houses are built too close together. In short, despite the five Harris signs he put on his lawn last fall, my neighbor is straight up a Trump wannabe.

Look at how he has marked the boundary between his regular old New Jersey property and the Independent Republic of Johnsonia!

EXHIBIT A: THE BIG, BEAUTIFUL WALL

A few weeks ago, our next door neighbor told Mr. J that a fence update was in the works. Previously, the fence was a little picket unit, about up to my navel. You know the type. Well, look at what replaced that little picket fence! On the neighbor's side it has decorative planks. On ours, zilch. Neighbor didn't even ask the construction worker to inquire if we wanted decorative planks on our side.

Admittedly, Johnsonia has allowed some emigration. Specimens of common milkweed, for instance. It's native to New Jersey, and it will grow even amongst grass in the lawn (especially if you don't mow your lawn but once a summer, as this neighbor has done in the past). And granted, we have seen mint crossing the border, but come on. Mint! Put it in your iced tea! It's a gift.

About ten years ago, when some kind of critter took my first ripe tomato, snapped a bite out of it, and discarded it, I gave up on gardening. Instead I sowed the garden patch with native plants, like milkweed, goldenrod, and asters. The patch doesn't get a great deal of sun, so these natives do flourish, but they grow tall and rangy. They aren't well-groomed shrubbery.

But when Mr. J apologized to the neighbor for the wildness of our yard, the neighbor said he didn't care about that, it didn't bother him. Why, then, did he pay someone to construct such a monstrosity?

To clarify, fence zoning in Haterfield says that he who fences first fences last. When Mr. J and I moved into Johnsonia, we had fencing on every side, none of it in our control. It's still like that. We can't put up a fence because our neighbors already did, before we even moved in, closing in on 40 years ago.

Who builds a 7-foot wall between themselves and their neighbors, knowing what it will look like on the neighbor's side? My daughter The Fair says she thinks the neighbor is trying to hide something. I'm not going to argue the point. This family used to be sweet and friendly, and we socialized from porch to porch with them. But the dude in particular has gone from chummy to peculiar. The wall is the result.

In contrast, Johnsonia's neighbors on the other side worked with us when they updated their fence.  We even offered to help them pay for it (they never billed us). It looks the same on both sides. Pretty.

EXHIBIT B: JOHNSONIA'S OTHER BORDER

That is also a tall fence, but it's civilized. Neighborly. And yeah, that green mess is what passes for a garden in Johnsonia. I can't bring myself to try to eradicate the wisteria. It was here when I got here. Like the fences.

Reader, I do actually feel like Canada or Mexico. I feel like my next door neighbor has acted in bad faith.

But time is on my side.

This wall is going to look like the rim of Hell for about two years. After that, the abundant Virginia creeper that swathes everything it can crawl onto will have a field day (!) with it. Virginia creeper is also native. I'm constantly pulling it off the sides of Johnsonia's garage. Well, I won't have to pull it off the wall! It will be an improvement.

I do honestly want to hear your opinion on this matter. Why did my neighbor do this? He who has a Pride flag by his door? I don't get it.

The Accidental Tourist Ex Patriate

 What a mouthful of a title! You'll just have to follow along to see how it applies.

This is a "Gods Are Bored" entry on how I am keeping myself sane in these troubled times. And right now, more than sea glass, and Mummers, and especially the Baltimore Orioles, this is the anesthesia of absolute preference.

Nerds, rejoice! My anesthesia of choice is LARP.

So, for those of you with the wits in your head not to do LARP, the acronym stands for Live Action Role Play. It is an immersive game that you play in the woods or on a campground with other humans. In my case I play two different LARPs on a private property near the Pine Barrens. Although the setting is the same and many of the people overlap, my two LARPs are very different. I'll get into that, probably, in a later installment.

"Anne," you're asking. "How did you ever get involved in LARP? You don't mention a word about it in the entire Gods Are Bored archives until about 2024."

It's a funny story, actually.

Well, if you're an old-timer in this silly space, you know that I have gorged on fairy festivals since the turn of the century. It was through a fairy festival that I met Otter, and he was my catalyst to get into LARP. (Catalysts are a big deal in LARP.)

EXHIBIT A: ANNE AND OTTER, 2011

Just before the pandemic, say 2019, Otter started posting photos of himself and his buddies at some event that required fairy festival clothing. When I asked him where he was, and he named a municipality not far from my own, I decided to look into joining him in whatever he was doing down there. He told me the name of the game and the address, and that was all. He didn't encourage me to come, and that should have been a red flag, because we are pretty tight.

So I dressed in my fairy clothes and found the place, and the gate personnel eyeballed me up and down and said I looked the part, what did I know about the game?

Answer: nothing.

What did I know about LARP?

Answer: again, nothing.

It was game day, so no one had time to sit down and teach me. They just kind of shrugged, took my entrance fee, had me sign a waiver, and pointed me in the direction of "town."

"Town" turned out to be about two dozen makeshift buildings with tarp roofs. In and around these buildings were people dressed in armor, with horns and face paint and various other costuming, all very busy preparing for the next incursion of monsters and the next plot-driven quest.

I saw someone I knew from Otter's inner circle, and he greeted me warmly. I just couldn't understand why he couldn't sit down and have a nice long chat with me. Nor could anyone. They were busy speaking another language (rules jargon, plot twists) and going about their role play. I did not understand this at all. I tried pulling people off task to chat about anything but what was going on. And if you do LARP, you will know that this is the ABSOLUTE NO of the game.

Eventually I found someone who was pulled off task long enough for a talk, and she was very nice. Otherwise I was completely adrift, and Otter wasn't there to explain things to me. So I just kind of stood around in the way, and when the battle started, my first thought was, "Oh this ain't for me."

To this day I don't know why I went back a second time. But I did, and it was absolutely the same as the first time. People were nice, but distant. It was clear I had no idea what was going on, and the game was so doggone complicated that no one had time to take in a newbie, especially one who didn't even know what an NPC is.

On this second occasion, however, Otter was there, and when he wasn't swashbuckling, he was perfectly content to sit and gab "out of game." So I had a better time, and some of the players even began prompting me to take baby steps and learn how to do this thing. Still, I felt like I was an American tourist in a foreign country. Nothing made sense, and the monster attacks were seriously scary.

One winter morning in early 2020, just before the pandemic began, I found myself once again driving to the LARP, wondering what the fuck I was even doing it for. I still didn't understand the first thing about it, except that I couldn't just sit and gab. I felt like the people were barely tolerating me. It literally felt like I was about to enter that foreign country again, and the natives don't like tourists.

Then I passed a road sign that said ATLANTIC CITY  36.

Thirty-six miles from the hobby that I excelled at -- sea glassing! And it was a bright sunny day! Never mind that it was winter. I'm an idiot. I wade in the briny Atlantic in every season, if there's a shard of sea glass burbling in the surf. Ah, sea glassing. That was it. I should just breeze right by the turnoff for the LARP and make my way to AC.

That was actually a turning point in my life, right there. If I had gone on to Atlantic City, instead of taking the turnoff and braving the challenges of LARP, I would have sealed my fate as an old white lady content to lumber up and down a beach. But I made the turn. You see, LARP is populated by people young enough to be my children. There are a few others my age, but there are way more who are teen, twenty-somethings, and up from there. I just wasn't ready to walk away from the chance to be around younger people for a solitary and, frankly, monotonous hobby.

I stretched. I learned. They patiently corrected me when I said or did something the wrong way. I created a character and inhabited that character and forged friendships with other characters. And when I felt overwhelmed, I strolled off into the pines. (It's a 14 acre property, with a small Christmas tree farm and lots of woods.)

We just finished a campaign called "Caravan," in which I played a character named Feather. I thought it was an appropriate name for a LARP lightweight.

Our next campaign begins (for me) in June. It's called "Outpost" and is set at a new research facility in the fantasy world we inhabit. So this time, in a bold stroke of hubris, I created a character who is a serious scientist, a savant. Now is the time for me to understand this foreign country called LARP. My character is intensely interested in everything, including all the minute rules and regs.

The girl who runs this thing tells me that everyone loves me. They think I'm cute, and they appreciate how I keep trying even when I'm hopelessly flailing. And like a good expatriate American, I'm starting to fit into the culture and the language and the lore. I'm a regular LARP Emma Goldman.

EXHIBIT B: HAS ANNE FOUND HER PEOPLE?

This is a happy little photo from about a year ago. There I am, a slightly-past-prime monster, on the far right in the rear.

LARP aggressively removes itself from the here-and-now. I think all these people need a break from politics, and bills, and tough jobs, and emotional ups and downs. It sure helps me to disentangle myself from the CHAOS. And for that I am eternally grateful.

Pep Rally

 Ugh, have you ever had to suffer through a pep rally? I don't mean a fun one, like when your NFL team is in the playoffs. I mean a high school one.

For those of you who need a refresher course, high school pep rallies are held to celebrate the sports teams. Twice a year (fall and spring), the entire student body files out and sits on the bleachers to scream and shout for the jocks.

To make an already dreadful celebration worse, students are seated together by grade level. At my school, each grade has a different color, and classes get points based on how many kids wear that color to school on pep rally day.

Then some admin or teacher grabs a mic and whips the students up by grade level, seeing which grade can scream the loudest.

Then the coaches of each sport stand up and introduce every member of every team. This afternoon my school had baseball, softball, boy's volleyball, robotics, and esports. Well, being a nerd who hates noise, I could get behind the robotics and esports clubs. Still, a lot of shy people got introduced for (in my opinion) no good reason.

Then more screaming, because the first time wasn't enough.

Then there are games that pit one grade level against another, again for points. Stuff like tug of war and musical chairs and water balloon toss. Stuff involving a small number of students from each grade, and even then they have to beg ten seniors to participate.

This riveting spectacle invariably falls on an unseasonably hot and humid afternoon when everyone (including the jocks) would rather be inside dozing through the final class period of the day.

Having endured pep rallies as an alienated teenager back in the 1970s, I can't tell you how positively soul-sucking it is to be sitting through two of these things a year at my current age. As a teen I only had to slog through eight of them, total. Now they just stretch into the distance, almost to the horizon. Pep rallies, pep rallies, rah rah rah.

What is it about our species, that we want to be separated into tribes that compete against other tribes, and we want to celebrate our warrior men and women? Why is screaming and stomping on aluminum bleachers more appealing than, say, making a nice craft at a table, in the shade?

It seems to me that the human race spends much too much time screaming and stomping and forming ridiculous tribes.

I can't end this rant without admitting that I, too, am in a tribe -- the Radical Lunatic Left, and we do get together in big groups from time to time. Looks like I'll be joining some peppy little protests in the weeks to come. But to be completely honest here, I'm ready to pivot. I want my craft table in the shade. I want to sit in a circle and talk about my feelings.

*Sigh* Guess I shouldn't sit down to write a blog post an hour after a high school pep rally. Don't worry, though. I'll bounce back. I'm always ready to MAKE. SOME. NOISE.