Dreams of the Worm Turning

Remarks at Prescott Park, Fall, 2017

Jumbotron shows images of adorable immigrant children coming in at Ellis Island mixed with more recent children at the detention centers for women and children in Texas, mixed with images of the wall along the Texas border and the Statue of Liberty.

Leftist Marching Band and Revolutionary Rhythm Section play under a flag:  Liberty League, Indivisible They are playing “With a Little Help from My Friends,” then “I Can See Clearly Now.”

Old man walks on stage and sings, acapella , to the tune “Oh, Death.”

Ooh Trump!

Whooooah Trump

Won’t you build me a wall right away?

Well, what is that I can’t see

With no Trumpcare taking care of me.

Well I am Trump none can excel

I’ll open the door to heaven or Hell

Whoa Trump someone would say

Could you build me a wall right away?

The children prayed the preacher preached

Time and mercy is out of your reach

I’ll fix your  eyes so you can’t blink

I’ll fix your brain so you can’t think

I’ll close your eyes so you can’t see

This very hour come and go with me

Trump has come to take your soul

Leave your body and leave it cold.

Old man leaves stage handing microphone to MC, who wears a hat “Qui Tacit Consentit”

MC:  Wow! Will you look at this crowd!  Biggest crowd since…well ever. 

And the lines of people still trying to get in!  Thousands out there. Stretched all the way back to the Maine border, which is, I admit, just the Piscataqua River, but really incredible. 

I heard this is even bigger than the crowd at the Inauguration! Which, I don’t know, may be true. Lady in the parking lot told me. Same lady who told me vaccines cause mental problems. So incredible. Really. All the way to the border.

And I heard Paul LePage is building a wall on his side of the border. You know Paul Le Page: He's the first coming. Now we've had the second coming of the Mesiah. But Paul was the first. And he’s building this wall and he's making New Hampshire pay for it, because, you know, Maine is open for business. And you know what that means.  Do you know what that means?  Tell me, what does that mean? I never could figure that one.

So you’re probably wondering why I invited you all here today.

I’m asking myself the same thing. Really, I think it’s group therapy.

Not like a group hug. I’ am so  through with hugs, man, really had enough of that. Time is over for talking about how scary life is, how mean, how uncaring--had enough of that.

So what do we do?  Well, we are here in a pretty small state, so what can we do? We are not the smallest state by population. There’s Rhode Island, and Wyoming. Is Wyoming actually a state?  They have two Senators,  must be a state.  Then again, Kentucky has two senators and looking at that as a indicator of statehood, well, the bar for statedom has got to be pretty low. What, really, is a state? One thing is it has got to have borders. Walls, not so much, but that may be coming. Personally, I think if they extended that wall down in Texas all the way around that state, we might all be better off. Keep those Texans behind that wall. Like crating Fido, you know? But that's not really why we're here.

I digress. I do that a lot. It’s better than smoking pot and it’s just as diversionary.

Even, small as we are, people pay attention to us. For about two weeks in January, every four years, they pay attention to us and then they move on.  It’s like “Will you still love me tomorrow?” And they never do. Talk about a one night stand.  And we fall for it every time.  

But for those two weeks, it’s really fun.  And then, about seven, eight months later, that’s the typical gestation period, we find out what we got.

So, I had this idea:  Maybe we could actually have a conversation. You know, not just wham bang, thank you New Hampshire, but maybe we could actually say something that mattered.

Did you know that when one of George Washington’s slaves escaped, Ona Judge, she somehow got all the way from Philadelphia to New Hampshire—man, she must have really not liked Washington—and Washington, well, he was a nice guy in a lot of ways I guess, but he apparently got pretty worked up about his property getting up and leaving, so he told the governor of New Hampshire he wanted his property returned to him—and this was before the fugitive slave act—and the governor of New Hampshire said, “Well, actually, what you are calling your property, is a human being, and this particular human being says she does not want to be owned by you, or anyone else.”

“But you can’t listen to that. That’s my property. She doesn’t have any rights.”

And this was way before Dred Scott, right?

And the governor said, “Well, maybe she doesn’t have any rights in Mount Vernon, but up here in Portsmouth, she is a human being and human beings have rights.”

Now, of course, I wasn’t around at the time. And in the 18^th century, there were no recordings or TV or youtube, but I like the story the way I told it. Sort of alternative facts, or alternative history. And, any way, the essentials must be pretty close, because Washington never did get his slave back. 

She was the winner, in that one. She was a refugee who got across the border and was free.  And, far as I know, people around here are happy she did.

So, we've said and done important things before. No reason we can't do that again.