On a street known as Artifact Row, in the historic district of Langford, D&D Antiques offered vintage collectibles. The owners, Dale and Doris, lived in the small apartment above the shop. 
Per the rules of the town’s preservation committee, the shops and cafés of Artifact Row were required to maintain their 19th century façades. During the summer months, the lattice ironwork of the display windows and the frame of the double doors into D&Ds were coated with layers of black paint to keep them from oxidizing. Next to D&Ds, the Reitz Artifact Gallery, specializing in graphic arts, antiquarian maps and atlases, repainted its ironwork verdigris green and installed a new awning. On the other side of D&Ds, the wood framed windows and door of Dunwoody’s Furniture Restoration were repainted with a fresh coat of terra beige and brown.
Above D&D’s recessed doors were two transoms which, when lowered, gave the appearance with the doors of being the door’s black eyebrows. And above the transoms was a weathered green signboard with gold letters:
D&D Antiques
Things both Excellent and Rare
The shop’s windows displayed objects collected by Doris from estate sales. On exhibit, a menagerie of items passed down through generations of families including pottery, porcelains, vases, silver platters, a Tiffany lamp, jewelry, spelter candlesticks, figurines, watch fobs and watches, photographs and, postcards. A small banner with a gold star on a red and white field hung in the recessed window next to the door. Above it, a sign posting the shop’s hours. Beneath, a detachment of smartly uniformed nutcrackers that appeared to be standing guard at the door.
The shop now offered consignment, as Things both Excellent and Rare were no longer collected by Doris. A gaunt figure in her eighties, called a flower with a delicate stem by Dale, Doris could no longer attend estate sales. Her knees had become feeble, her gait wobbly, her strength gone. Dale noticed, too, that her mind had become wobbly. Doris no longer knew who he was. So, for a time, she remained with Dale in the shop.
During her days in the shop, Doris would sit listless in the spool-turned rocker. At times she would get up, hobble around and pick up pieces on display. She held them to her ear, as one would do with a sea shell at the beach. A dulcet smile would then appear on her face.
During fifty-five years of marriage, the two had worked hand in hand. Yet a time came to keep Doris upstairs. No longer active, Doris had grown weaker. Dale, also in his eighties, frail and hunched-over, could no longer help his wife up and down the apartment stairs. In the days that followed and at regular intervals, Dale would hang a “BACK IN TEN MINUTES” sign on his door. He would head up the shop’s adjoining stairs to their apartment to care for Doris, where she sat in her arm chair with a vacant stare.
On any given day, except on Mondays when the shop was closed, D&Ds was visited by women poring over each item and husbands who listened to Dale as he regaled them with his stories from his time in the Navy. The children who came along were directed to a corner of the store. There, Dale had set a small table, two chairs and a globe. On the table, Dale’s loose-leafed stamp albums. The children were enchanted by the colorful stamps Dale had collected from around the world. At Dale’s suggestion, they swirled the globe looking for each stamp’s country of origination.
It was now Sunday evening. The ageless sounding chimes of the grandfather clock and the sudden “koo-koo” of the Black Forest clock announced six-o’clock. It was time to close the shop. As was his habit, Dale placed the cash drawer and the antique jewelry in a safe. The coffee was shut off. The back door checked. The model train was shut off. The three weights of the grandfather clock were rehung. And, the two streetside lamps that shown down on the face of the shop were switched on.
After one last look around, Dale turned the door sign from “OPEN” TO “CLOSED” and stepped outside into stifling heat of the August night. As he turned the key in the lock, he noticed a thunderous commotion behind him. He looked around. Up and down the Row passersby stopped at window displays. Shoppers walked out of the closing shops. The tremendous clamor, clashes of curses and bellowing voices, seemed to come from the next street east. “Something is in the offing,” Dale thought. “There must be some confusion about the hour.” Tired, Dale trudged up the adjoining stairs.
11:10 and the shop was still. The inconsonant tickticktick of three mantel clocks the only sound.
11:11. The grandfather clock began a sonorous toll. The cuckoo exited with loud rousing “koo-koos”. The conversation began again.
“Let us use our time wisely,” came the booming voice of the grandfather clock.
“Here one minute. Gone the next,” chirped the cuckoo.
“What? We sit here, day after day. Nothing changes,” moaned the mantel clock.
“I do have my ups and downs,” noted the barometer.
“It’s all the same,” sighed the depression glass.
“But we’re not the same,” countered the silver chalice. “Some of us have a higher station in life.”
“I was tops in my class,” said masthead light.
“But I summoned the attention of all,” said the ship’s bell.
“No. It was I,” said the bosun’s pipe.
“I held the compass,” said the binnacle proudly.
“But you are not me,” said the compass. “I gave directions.”
“I was the admiral’s go to,” said the brass ship’s wheel.
“You couldn’t go anywhere without me,” replied the rudder.
“You don’t know the time of day,” replied the ship’s clock.
“I’m getting sea sick,” growled the gyroscope.
“Boys. Boys. Don’t make waves,” admonished the sextant. “Know your place.”
“It’s all the same. Night after night.” groaned the glass.
“But we aren’t!” said the painting pointedly.
“We are!” declared the silverware.
“We aren’t”, squealed the Chantilly porcelain terrine.
“We are. We aren’t,” the rocker hemmed and hawed.
“Things are heating up again,” the fireplace poker jabbed. “Just the way I like it.”
“You’re always stirring things up,” jabbed the ivory letter opener.
“Can’t we all just get along,” the fine china clattered.
“Let’s have a party,” the silver platter prompted.
“Yes, let’s!” shouted the silverware.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“The same. Not the same. The same. Not the same,” choo-choo-ed the tinplate model train.
“At least I don’t go around in circles all day,” remarked the rubber stamp.
“No. You just sit there with ink on your face,” countered the train.
“Don’t rub it in,” the stamp came back.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” pounced the Murano glass paperweight.
“Look who’s talking,” remarked the art nouveau hand mirror.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
“The same, Not the same. The same. Not the same.”
“I could shed some light on this,” laughed the Tiffany lamp.
“You’re not plugged in,” the flat iron spoke frankly.
“And neither are you,” countered the candlestick holder.
“You can’t hold a candle to me,” bragged the wash basin
“Keep a lid on it,” the tea pot protested.
“I’m with her,” tittered the tea cup
“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” snorted the spittoon.
“Have you no taste? I am fine china!”
“Have some decorum,” pleaded the painting.
Tickticktick Tickticktick Tickticktick.
“Bor…ring. I’ve more important things to do,” brayed the brass bugle.
“He’s always blowing his own horn,” a nutcracker noted.
“It’s all the same.”
“You need to change your worldview,” the globe giggled.
“Get a hobby,” snickered the stamp album.
“The same, Not the same. The same. Not the same.”
“Let’s change the subject,” broached the book. “I am a first edition.”
“But I was here first!” shouted the Louis the XVI chair.
“And consigned to the dust bin of history,” scoffed the newly arrived brooch.
“I did not know you had come, and I shall not miss you when you go away,” replied the chair.
“I have served wine to kings and queens,” said the goblet. “I deserve better company.”
“Mais oui, bien sûr,“ came back the chair. “As do I.”
“Those two are broken records,” the gramophone pointed out.
“I am above all that,” said the annoyed candelabra. “I have looked down on royalty and heads of state.”
Not to be overlooked, the Victorian sewing table said proudly, “Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom.”
“Let’s face it. It’s all about me,” the cameo came back.
“You’re just another face in the crowd,” the mirror mocked.
“The lady picked me up. Held me to her ear.”
“And what did you tell her?” queried the quartz watch.
“If it’s true it’s not new.”
“Are you a philosopher now?” wondered the Wedgewood vase.
“Though Truth and Falsehood be Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is,” recited the limited-edition poetry book with a flourish.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
“Well, you are all waiting,” remarked the rubber stamp.
“Waiting for what?” asked the tintype.
“Waiting to be taken to a home,” cooed the wood doll.
“Home is where the heart is,” replied the postcard.
“You’re just ephemera. Here today. Gone tomorrow,” tut-ted the dressing table.
“You have no utility,” snarked the silver platter.
“I’m a keepsake. A reminder of times past,” the postcard said proudly.
“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now,” exhorted the jade Buddha.
“Right on!” shouted the mantel clock.
“Progress!” The cuckoo poked his head out.
“Revolution!” fired off the fireplace poker.
“Diversity!” yelled the stamp album.
“Equality!” exclaimed the stamps in unison.
“Solidarity!” cried the flat iron.
“Can’t we all get along?” pleaded the fine china. “We can all serve humanity.”
“Hear! Hear! Shouted the silverware.
“Keep it together,” begged the bookends.
“It’s all the same.”
“We’re not the same.”
“We are. We aren’t.”
Tickticktick Tickticktick Tickticktick.
2 AM. Grandfather tolled and the cuckoo called. A loud crash.
“What was that?” questioned the quilt.
“A torch,” said one of the nutcrackers.
“I’ve seen this before,” said the fireplace poker.
“What’s it for?” wondered the watch.
“A torch is for light,” said the candlestick holder.
“But why is it on the floor?” asked the Oriental rug anxiously.
“Perhaps it is to be sold,” speculated the rubber stamp.
“I’ve read about this sort of thing,” stated the first edition. “It doesn’t bode well.”
“Some say the world will end in fire … Some say in ice,” warned the poetry book.
“The fire is coming closer,” fretted the lute.
“Shouldn’t it be on a candleholder where it belongs,” asked the candlestick holder.
“Fire goes where it goes,” replied the fireplace poker.
“It’s going up my leg,” said the Louis the XVI chair.
“How does it feel Mr. High and Mighty?” asked the rubber stamp.
“It feels … ohhhhh …familiar, …! …. like searing passion and raging anger.” The chair tried to maintain composed, but, “… now, ow! Ow! OW! …je suis d’histoire!. Aurevoir à mes amis.” The chair toppled down.
“What shall we do?” roared the rocker engulfed in flames.
“Maybe the shopkeeper will come,” said the cameo.
“Bugle do something,” shouted a nutcracker, his ranks now diminished.
The bugle, overcome by smoke, sputtered and coughed, “splurrrrtttt ….cuh cuh ….cuh cuh …someone get me some AIRrrrrrr …!”
“If I only had water,” said the basin.
“If only someone had taken us home,” cried the postcard.
The mirror, enamored by its reflection, proudly stated, “Look at the light I am reflecting. The whole room is lit up.”
“Don’t you see what is happening?” rasped the rocker. “We are being consumed!”
“I’ve done my job,” replied the mirror.
“I want out!” cried the postcard, the flames edging up his sides.
“We’re all in this together,” wheezed the stamp album with its last breath. The conversation ended.
3 AM. There was no ageless sounding toll and no sudden “koo-koo”. The second story had collapsed.
© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2020, All Rights Reserved
(aka, Lena de Vries)
Cindy Wity 
20/20 Observations
October 11, 2020 Leave a comment
The following are some brief observations to consider for this election cycle. I offer my observations followed by observations (in bold) made by black American economist Thomas Sowell. Sowell, who turned 90 this past June, has had a lifetime to reflect and comment on issues economic, social and, political. I introduced this prolific author in a recent post Perspectives on Race Relations.
Consider white suburban women. They sit on their patios sipping chardonnay while watching illegal immigrants landscape their property. They chat each other up about yoga class, manicures and, vacationing in Cozumel. They prattle on about how proud they are of their children becoming socially aware in school and about how uncaring people are when it comes to climate change, immigration, gender issues, income inequality and, black lives. The dilettante’s conversation turns to their voting for Obama’s handmaiden – the Progressive black faux-nurse who never had a patient or held a full-time job in her life. They voted for her because the nurse-in-the-political-theater-sense-only wants healthcare for all and everyone should suck on government teat. For the onus to make the world a better place should be on everyone and not just on them. Like their candidate, they do not have the ‘patients’. They have yard signs and votes and garden parties.
These woke women want you to notice that they are riding the wave of wokeness:
That sign and the Lauren Underwood For Congress sign on their front yard confirms how much these champagne socialists care.
Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.
Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion,’ the big agenda on the left is dependency.
Liberals love to say things like, “We’re just asking everyone to pay their fair share.” But government is not about asking. It is about telling. The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and being raped, between working for a living and being a slave. The Internal Revenue service is not asking anybody to do anything. It confiscates your assets and puts you behind bars if you don’t pay.
Consider the college professors ensconced in their ivory towers. They dole out ad nauseum their ideology – Marxism, anti-capitalism, gender theory, critical race theory, etc.- and suffer none of the consequences for what they dole out.
Apparently, there are enough sheep-like parents these days to let “experts” take control of their children at a critical juncture in their lives. But these “experts” suffer no consequences if their bright ideas lead some young person into disaster. It is the parent who will be left to pick up the pieces.
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-colored buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.
Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.
Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of ‘race, class and gender.’
Intellect is not wisdom.
Consider the Democrat politicians and their apparatchiks. These demagogues assume a moral monopoly where one is either in or out of that monopoly. For them, there is no marketplace of ideas, only the sound of their voice, as in “We have to do the work!”
They invoke the conjuring word “science” with any descriptor to produce hysteria and conformity to their demands. “Medical science” is used to produce fealty to the Democrat governors and mayors and their “public health crisis” mandates. Consider the mandates a social experiment in controlling the population.
“Climate science” was used by apparatchik Ocasio-Cortez. She has informed us that “the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”. Another apparatchik, a Democrat governor, invoked “social science” by declaring “racism” a public health crisis. She has mandated that all state employees undergo “implicit bias training,” in order to “eradicate and prevent discrimination and racial inequity” because the “Implicit, unconscious bias exists within each of us”. The Democrat politicians and their apparatchiks have no problem projecting bad motives onto others, thereby giving their halos renewed luster.
The voice of the party, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fresh from a maskless blowout during an illegal salon visit, has no problem upbraiding the president after his COVID diagnosis, calling his behavior a “brazen invitation for something like this to happen”. No hypocrisy here. She is a Democrat, after all. And besides, she is on the side of “science”: “Simple Science says “Do what I say! (Not what I do!)”
To wipe away any tarnishing responsibility clinging to their hoary haloes and hacked hard drives, Democrats obfuscate and deflect: “People will do what they do” and “What difference at this point does it make?” They assume no responsibility or complicity for their actions; they receive no consequences for their actions.
Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Yet that is what at least half of the bright ideas of the political left amount to.
It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.
So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create ‘social justice’ is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity.
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”
All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting ‘the rich’ to pay ‘their fair share’ is part of a big charade. This is not about economics; it is about politics.
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.
Whether Barack Obama is simply incompetent as president or has some hidden agenda to undermine this country, at home and abroad, he has nearly everything he needs to ruin America, including a fool for a vice president.
Consider the celebrity: “I just think COVID is God’s gift to the left,” the Academy Award winner [Jane Fonda] said, laughing after she made the remark.
No response required.
Consider the millennial Messiahs – the perpetual student, the Woke graduate student, those that fail to launch, the whiners, the “safe space” denizens, the SJWs and, the societal parasites. Each, having arrived on the scene less than forty years ago, presume to tell us how to save the world. But first, they must save themselves by avoiding responsibility through socialism. Their revolutionary zeal is stoked by Starbucks, their hubris by social media. (How did the world ever function without them?)
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.
There is much discussion of the haves and the have-nots, but very little discussion of the doers and the do-nots, those who contribute and those who merely take.
Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.
The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily “socially constructed” notions, then all that is left is consensus–more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.
Consider the main-stream media, the “if it bleeds it leads” media, with its ego-centric talking heads who blather on with their fellow traveler talking points. These bloviating oracles relay what the Leftist gods want you to know and to believe. Just give them your palm (with the remote) and they will tell how to think and feel and who are the victims and who are the oppressors and, who to love and who to hate.
They will tell you that China has no ill intent towards the U.S. (especially with regard to basketball sneakers) as they salivate over China’s social behavior monitoring. They will tell you “Orange Man bad”; “Orange Man” is responsible for the wildfires and climate change; “Orange Man” is responsible for the rioting in Portland, Seattle and, elsewhere; “Orange Man” is responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. (absolving China of any complicity in spread of the Wuhan Red Death). They want you to fear Orange Man. In their political math (2 + 2 = 5) They will pronounce judgement on the “Orange Man” as “complicit” in a kidnapping attempt. Lies, hyperbole and sensationalism are the motivators they use to keep you coming back.
Out of their crystal toilet bowls come dire warnings: “Racism is a public health crisis”, “Climate change is a public health crisis”, (and next week?) “Gun owners are a public health crisis” (and, the following week) “Christians and Jews are a public health crisis.”
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
There are few modest talents so richly rewarded — especially in politics and the media — as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidize those who refuse to produce, and canonize those who complain.
The New York Times’ long-standing motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” should be changed to reflect today’s reality: “Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.
Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.
If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
Are you OK with the ends-justifying-the-means politicians? Are you OK with truth being whatever serves the revolution, as calling the rioting in Portland and Seattle “mostly peaceful protests”? Are you OK with injustice – lawlessness, releasing violent predatory criminals, the burning and looting and razing – thinking that the mythical phoenix of Justice will rise from the ashes? Are you OK with abortion and human beings being disposed of? Are you OK with class wars and race wars and constant societal division and unrest? Are you OK with people telling what to do and how to live? If so, then you will vote for Democrats and for the devils you think you know.
Observe:
“Where I come out as a businessman, I will take the devil I know over the devil I don’t know anytime of the week,” BET founder Robert Johnson said of the presidential race.
“I know what President Trump has done and what he’s said he will do. I don’t know what Vice President Biden has said he will do other than masks, listen to the scientists,” the 74-year-old Johnson said. He suggested the coronavirus response should weigh the tradeoffs of “pandemic safety” versus “economy growth.”
“I would rather know who I’m going to deal with in the White House. I’m going to know what regulatory decisions they’re going to make. What fiscal policy decisions, what monetary policies they’re going to make than to be taking a chance, particularly when you have the turbulence of a pandemic,” said Johnson, who in the past has been complimentary of Trump’s business-centric policies.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. ~Abraham Lincoln~
Added 10-13-20:
Added 10-15-20:
“I am a left-leaning New York City public defender who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries and Hillary Clinton in the general election. I have never voted for a Republican candidate. I chose my career because I wanted to help those most defenseless in our society: indigent people accused and convicted of crimes and facing the awesome power of the state.
Until I saw the catastrophic effects that the lockdowns were having on the very people I sought to help…”
Lockdowners Speak with Privilege, and Contempt for the Poor and the Working Class.
In a radio interview discussing her article, Ms. Younes, a lifelong Democrat, said she is voting for Trump based on the COVID-19 restrictions the Biden/Harris ticket would impose if elected.
Rate this:
Filed under 2020 current events, 2020 election, cultural Marxism, Culture, Current Events 2020, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Progressivism, Short Story, social commentary Tagged with 202o election, COVID-19, Democrats. Millennials, Lauren Underwood, main stream media, political commentary, progressivism