by Mary Odden
We go crazy when we see any control of firearms proposed, leaving behind our also famous rural skepticism expressed as: “believe nothing that you hear, and only half of what you see,” still good advice if only we could follow it.
I spent several hours this week chasing down an “Ammunition Accountability Act,” a.k.a “The Blair Holt Bill,” controversial proposed legislation that has been coming up on email since 2007 and around our kitchen table as recently as Christmas, as a measure that (various inflammatory emails now say) requires coded ammunition by June 30 of 2009.
Most of the first several hundred of the 10,400 hits I got on Google on the AAA were variations on the same email: “Remember how Obama said he wasn’t going to take your guns? Well it seems that his minions and allies in the anti-gun control world have no problem with taking your ammo,” and so on.
In fact, the AAA never made it to the floor in Congress, but coded ammo came up in 18 states without becoming law anywhere. Factcheck.org says, “Such a proposal is being pushed by a company that holds a patent on bullet-coding technology. But none of the 31 bills introduced last year ever made it out of committee.”
Ah, it’s those free enterprise guys again, trying to take away my guns.
And then someone forwarded me the text-only of U.S. HB 45, the actual proposed AAA, and when I went to investigate its status in Congress on the internet, I ran into the same wall of fear and repeated internet stories without any helpful information about whether or not this bill poses a real threat to possession of firearms.
Our politicians, bless their hearts, do not always help us distinguish between real threats and threats that can be used to make political hay to get themselves re-elected.
In my perfect world, which does not exist, here is how my legislator would respond to me when I contact her or him after someone sends me a copy of a piece of federal gun legislation with no surrounding documentation that makes me fearful as a hunter, a gun owner, and a somewhat free citizen in the fiercely independent state of Alaska.
I would deeply appreciate it if he or she would say:
“Mary, this bill has just been introduced. It would, as you suggest, do a lot of bad things including 1) discourage gun ownership in a whole class of citizens outside the criminals with semi-automatic weapons it is trying to target, 2) prevent our children from proper gun and hunting education, 3) stomp on states’ rights, and 4) drive the Attorney General of the United States stark raving mad because it makes his office directly responsible for repeatedly (every 5 years) handling the registrations of every single one of these firearms owned by every single person in the country.
“But Mary, I am not going to defame the character of Representative Bobby L. Rush of the 1st Congressional District of Illinois, a guy who started the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers more than 40 years ago in 1967 and in fact once spent 6 months in prison in 1972 on weapons charges.
“I wouldn’t tell you those details without also telling you that Representative Rush ran the free breakfast for school children program and started a medical clinic while he was a Black Panther, but left the group when they ‘started glorifying thuggery and drugs.’ He holds two masters degrees, is a Baptist minister, and has been a U.S. Congressman since 1992.
“Since 1999, the year his young son was murdered, he has sponsored 30 pieces of gun control legislation.
“He was moved to write HR45, which is a rewrite of the also misguided HR2666 which he introduced in 2007, by the deaths of 31 Chicago school children in gun violence in that year, including Blair Holt, the namesake of the bill, who was shot while trying to shield a friend from a gunman’s bullet.
“But before you get mad at Rep. Rush for being a gun-hating creep, take a deep breath and think what an amazing thing it is that a person who formerly associated himself with a radical group that sometimes encouraged violent political protest is now—a mere four decades later—an elected representative of his district.
“That is a political version of beating a sword into a plowshare, and a fulfillment of the promise of our democracy.
“He is a federal legislator who submits his ideas and those of his constituents at the ground level of the American political process and trusts that, if that idea is well-enough supported in the society through its elected officials, it may become a law of the land.
“I will not attack the character of Representative Rush by letting mention of his long-ago gun conviction just hang out there by itself and thereby imply that he is still a thug. As a congressman, he apparently believes he is representing the interests of his constituents, though he also apparently does not know enough about the lives and livelihoods of people who live outside his inner city universe.
“And Mary, since my staff and I have researched this bill carefully, keeping a vigilant eye out as always for threats to the security and rights and cultural identities of Alaskans, we are happy to tell you that this legislation has not a snowballs’ chance in Hades of advancing to law.
“In the month since it was introduced, it has not attracted a single co-sponsor, which it must have to even advance through committee. And because this piece of legislation perfectly combines elements which make many citizens fearful—gun control, a radical connection, a person of color who can be objectified to one of ‘them,’ and not to mention a Democrat—I want to reassure you and anyone else who wants to polarize Americans by blowing this out of proportion, that the resistance to this asinine piece of legislation is bi-partisan.
“In short (although it is too late for that), Mary, these bills are introduced very often, and not just lately since you-know-who got into office.
“So although the Senate and House Joint Resolutions we are introducing in opposition to this U.S. House Bill 45 confirm our responsiveness to the concerns of our constituents and will be remembered by the most ardent of our gun owners and sportsmen when they later see our Congressman’s name on the election ballot, you could justifiably view these Joint Resolutions as an overreaction, a bit of grandstanding, and a waste of political energy and everybody’s time in our short 90-day session.”
Alas, my legislator made no such explanation about U.S. HB 45.
When I called US Congressman Don Young’s office, though, Press Secretary Meredith Kenny described the status of the bill as above, and for all the reasons listed above, as a “non-starter” and nothing to worry about.
That hadn’t stopped her boss from making a little political hay with it however.
HOME GROUND
TOOTHBRUSHES
It’s pretty quiet around here—quieter than it has been in 18 years, as a matter of fact. Emergency 80-mile round-trip transports of a math book or pair of gym shoes are way down, as are 10 pm notifications that cup cakes have to be produced for a next-morning bake sale. We haven’t had a good water fight or wrestling match in months, which means all the pictures are hanging straight on the walls.
The biggest physical difference in our environment is in the bathroom. Nobody lives in there these days, whereas in the last few years with our teenage daughter we had taken to scratching on the door like the dog and whining, “please could I come in?”
Now we go into the bathroom any time we want, but it’s changed. Just a few weeks ago, there were so many hair irons, straighteners and blowers laying around in the drawer with all their cords that it was like getting through a Chinese string game just to find a comb. Now that she is away at college, the bottles of twelve kinds of unknown gel have left a row of rings where they sat along the tub, mysterious as crop circles, with a lonely bar of soap the only surviving witness.
She didn’t take the toothbrushes, though. For as long as anyone can remember, no one has been able to figure out why three (sometimes four when a favorite rent-a-daughter was living with us) people have 17 toothbrushes. When I ask Jim, he says, “I dunno. I keep mine in the cupboard so I can find it.”
My best guess is that every time a sleepover buddy forgot a toothbrush, our young hostess hit up
the Costco stash. Some friends were kind enough to apply their names to the brushes which continue to live at our house. Others were issued a new one at each visit, which also remain. These look festive together, sticking out of the jar like a flower arrangement that never wilts.
My mom-in-law Lois got great amusement out of what we all said about our siblings who had kids first. We said stupid stuff like, “I would never let my child run around screaming,” and “There will never be a peanut butter sandwich in OUR video player.”
Of course we soon had our own kids and gave up the senseless quest for order and control over our possessions. We learned to ask questions like, “Will it hurt her? Will she hurt it?” If the answers were “no,” then we let the activity proceed and cleaned up afterwards.
Our rules as parents lived around those questions (still do), and seldom got down to the nitty gritty of who was supposed to take out the trash. Not much predictability around here, but we had the privilege of our child’s company, and her friends’ company, in making late night pizza, or homemade soap, or art, or some other messy thing, and we found out that we feel pretty good about the next people who get to try their hands at the world.
From dress up clothes to Christmas ornaments and origami cranes, it’s the time spent with other people that makes a difference in their lives, and ours. The more the merrier, I say.
Of course I really like order, and quiet—and those are at constant odds with other people’s active lives. Deep down I always longed for the three of us to be able to get somewhere together on time, to sit down before the meeting or the play started just once, or to learn a whole song by myself, or be able to retrieve my coat that was handed out to a schoolmate of my daughter’s on some snowy night never to reappear. I always thought I wanted to see a counter with nothing on it, in clean gleaming splendor interrupted by not even a toothbrush.
The compensation for the uncontrolled chaos of living with other people, especially younger people who are a biologically distinct species—you can tell by the music—is that we have been pounded malleable and poked porous enough to survive the next twenty or thirty years of our lives, should we be so lucky as to have them.
We have a little more order and quiet here now, but it doesn’t seem quite as important as it used to, and I hope I know better than to let it get the upper hand.
I’ll scrub the tub, but I’m not getting rid of those toothbrushes.
SPRUNG
What our neighbor’s children used to call the “white time” is nearly over, soon to be followed by Alaska’s other season, the “green time.”
I’m a bit sad about it, as I put the skis away. Every year by the end of January I can’t wait for spring, then with the sun coming back Jim grooms a couple of miles of ski trails around the place and on the frequent blue sky days that follow, there isn’t any beach or mango patch warm or sweet enough to get me away from here.
It’s not that I’m such a great skier. A gymnastic coach observed long ago, on the occasion of my first and last “flip” over the mats, that my form resembled a fistful of straw tossed into the wind. I try to ski out of sight, lest my straining forward confuse passing motorists who will suddenly become convinced that they are going uphill, causing them to experience vertigo and crash.
My daughter the wickedly fine cartoonist is also banned from even thinking about her mother on skis. But the dogs are good and willing companions. They run ahead in loopy circles as I puff and glide.
So I was sad a few days ago when the hot 40 degree days and 10 degree nights put me out of the skiing business. In the morning, my tracks were all hardened into ice. I had no traction, the “no wax” skis sounded like zippers, and, attempting to turn onto a right-angle seismic line trail from a little downhill slope, I had to perform a partially aerial maneuver.
Afterward, I took the skis and poles to the shed for the summer. Having noted the bare patches of ground here and there in the softening snow, I took an inevitable step toward the warm season and threw the bunny boots onto the ski boots in the winter boot pile.
This morning, a little morose, I let the dogs take me on a walk and felt the strangeness of being conveyed by my feet. The April footgear of choice, post-skiing, is running shoes.
It took about 200 yards to become enthused about being dragged outside. The first thing I noticed was that I hadn’t bothered to put a coat on but didn’t feel cold.
When I looked up, far ahead, the Labrador Retriever who isn’t supposed to know how to point was pointing a flock of snow buntings. These are the male birds, scouting ahead for good nesting spots. Still dressed in white, they let me walk very near before the cloud of them whirled up into the spruce branches along the road. The tracks scratched into the snow from their mass explosion were parallel curvy lines, inscription of some crazy musical score interrupted with bird tracks like drum beats.
A raven swooped overhead and said, “Coke,” an abrupt commercial message only northerners would understand.
“Coke,” I said back at him, then tried out the “Ggwwwrrgh!” that sometimes keeps a raven within a few trees of us in pure linguistic puzzlement. This one did a slight wing dip and swung away through the trees, muttering “imposter.”
Communication with the boreal owls at the end of the runway was more coherent. They have nestlings in that bunch of trees almost every year. I wasn’t thinking of them until an angry little owl body came whistling overhead, and I looked up to see his or her underside, belly of a tiny fighter jet a few feet above the ground on final approach.
The owl scolding was a combination of chirping and purring at an audibly irritated level even a dumb human could understand. “Get out of here and take those dogs with you!”
The little owl missile pulled up to land beside its mate on a branch 30 yards away. The dogs and I responded to their glowering by heading back to the house. It’s time to give nature a little privacy.
WORD THIS CAREFULLY
Who needs to travel when every single season is like getting shipwrecked on the shores of a new country? One day everything was white and I was tunneling into the huge mountain of boots in the junk room to find the rubber knee-highs, anticipating the mud of breakup. By the time I finally located both of my boots, I didn’t need them anymore.
It was like the earth around here drew a big breath and all the snow melt got sucked into the ground. I went from bunny boots to raggedy running shoes in three days flat. People in other climes get to ease into the idea of spring, but around here it is electroshock therapy.
The first thing that comes into view when the snow is gone is the lumber pile. And then you can hear those four words that make mates of any gender cringe: “I have been thinking.”
In an extremely scientific survey conducted yesterday, while walking around the yards of several suddenly wild-eyed neighbors, the following home improvement intentions were revealed: till the garden, put in those windows, tear out that wall, get rid of that blue tarp, finish the sauna, order more lumber, put the cap on the chimney, take that stuff to the dump, till the garden, go see what other people have been taking to the dump, thin those trees, plant those trees, get new dirt in the greenhouse, build flower boxes, get rid of that blue tarp—and till the garden.
Not once did I hear the words “new couch” or “entertainment center.” Those are words from the foreign language and continent of October. The days are gone when all was grey and the most colorful things in the house were red and white Netflix envelopes. As the geraniums take over the viewshed and ambient light grows outside, we stop watching movies. Even “Avatar” and “Invictus” will lay around unopened and unwatched, until the salmon stop running and the cabbages are big.
All this happens at different levels, of course. There are actual lawns or acres of broccoli and carrots in process at some latitudes far south of this one. There are people building foundations and raising walls, placing pots of fully grown brilliant pansies on their front steps. Those days are coming for us.
Fo
r now, I have been trying to slow the seasonal rush of oxygen and ideas to my cerebral cortex, especially before these get to my lips in the form of, “I have been thinking.” I do not wish to scare the liver out of the person I live with.
I am thinking greenhouse and sauna and garden fence, and I bought six bags of steer manure on the first day the thermometer registered 50F for a few seconds, but I’m choosing my words carefully. I say, “How wide do you think we should make the new garden?” instead of, “I have been thinking about a new garden.”
He’s a little absent minded because his own spring projects sprang into view when the last snogo trail evaporated—last week. He doesn’t like to see winter disappear. When he stops sobbing, he may want to work on the hangar building, or some of the freeze-weary machines. This over-lapping of seasonal intentions, his and mine, will have to be cultivated as carefully as a new bed of strawberries.
SAINT COSTCO OF DIMOND
Yes, there’s one on DeBarr and it is closer to Nelchina. But when we tried to shop there, they had ketchup in the oil drum size, not our preferred half-gallons. Every aisle was in the wrong place and we were lost, driving our big carts around like Cajuns in the wrong bayou.
We have come to understand that we have a “home” Costco, where we recognize the checkers and greeters, see old friends from around the state. We stop traffic in an aisle for a few minutes to talk with them, just as we would have in the aisles of the Alaska Commercial Company store in McGrath twenty years ago.
Lots of current neighbors are at Costco, too, buying toilet paper and croissants. No moose this year? No problem—buy a case of chuck roast to take home for the freezer. Other people just buy a package of meat—but moose-less hunters buy in large animal sizes that make them feel like they are hauling an entire creature home to butcher. We’ll laugh about that with our neighbors, how we are subsistence shopping, while we lean on the stacks of oranges and onions. There are small rural reunions taking place everywhere in the store, with irritated Anchorage shoppers trying to maneuver their groceries around our bottlenecks.