We rose just before the light and prepped for a morning walk. Out the door and it’s hot and muggy, already 75 degrees, and humidity through the roof as we start. We like walking downtown at dawn, especially on a Sunday morning when the streets are empty and we don’t even need to do more than look both ways at the crosswalks. The weeds are high everywhere they can grow, and the trench draining water toward the bayou is running with water.
To the east, the clouds glow orange and red as the sun comes up and we’re talking about how the lake is nearly full again. I wonder in my head again why Brownwood has never taken advantage of this floodplain ditch drainage to put in a riverwalk. It would be a massive project, but perfect, and it would make Brownwood the absolute center of tourism and travel in Central Texas. But that’s just my opinion. Early is building a Town Center project that will have a lakefront feel to it, I guess.
As we walk by the Manor, I see Nico sitting out front. He’s stimming – rocking forward and back – and barely sees us. We wave at him and he barely waves back.
Nico is a friend of mine who lives in the Brownwood Manor. I’ll write more about him soon. He is heavily on the spectrum, but he likes to come over and we give him a Dr. Pepper Zero that we keep on hand just for him (since we don’t drink sodas) and Nico likes to come sit at the apartment during our poker games too. He asks me if he can take out the trash to help out. He looks up the weather on his phone for places he’s been to in his life, and he likes to check the sports scores and talk about sports. He’s pretty known around downtown and he has a circuit of places he likes to stop and talk to people. Some people treat him well, and others not so much. He’s my neighbor so I do what I can to be a friend to him.
I asked Nico what he thought about the news going on and he just said “Oh Lord,” and then changed the subject.
It’s been an interesting week, and no matter how you stand on the news of the day, no one can say that we’re closer together as a culture and society, so my constant harping on local buying/economy/empathy is even more important than it was before. A new movie about a Civil War is at the theaters and most people are just shrugging and looking at their watches wondering what’s taking so long.
Loving Thy Neighbor is a forever command, but it seems doubly important right now. If there is a conflict between the smug and powerful and the people who have come to believe that we have a multi-level justice system, I’d rather be able to look at my neighbor and not worry about them seeing me as an enemy.
No one is above the law except if you are on Epstein’s list, or are named Weinstein or P Diddy, or if you invaded a country under false pretenses, or created the crack cocaine industry to finance wars in Central America, or launched missiles at kids and weddings, or sold thousand dollar hammers to the defense department, or sold airline stock the day before 9/11, or had cocaine in the White House, or created a virus that killed millions, or forced people to get vaccinated, or locked down and destroyed businesses, or made billions on the S&L crisis or the housing crisis, or crashed the economy and bailed out the banks. How many people went to jail for the 2008 economic crash that was caused by housing loan scams? 1? 0? I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure that there are people who are above the law – and most of them are in elected office or are hired by elected officials to forever jobs in permanent government. Only a fool would say that no one is above the law. The poor like me have always existed in a different legal system than the powerful.
My point is that there is only so much I can do, and only so much I can care about, and I’d rather spend my time doing good for my neighbors – because things are going to get ugly, maybe this summer, and I’d like to see some stability at some level. Maybe we dodge a bullet or walk between the raindrops, and it all works out, but as a time traveler and a student of history, I’m not placing bets on “can’t we all get along?”
Fear and loathing and anger and division are not “bugs” in the system, they are features and the people in power stay in power because of fear and anger.
Solzhenitsyn said “One word of truth outweighs the whole world,” and today’s truth for you is that you enable the power structure with every minute and dollar you spend, and where you spend it, produces the world you see around you. You get (as they say) what you pay for.
I’m going to step over to the fridge and see if we have a couple of Dr. Pepper Zero in there even though I would never drink one.
Just a thought for the day.
***
Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.
