America is a beautiful thing…
I wrote about Ashley the other day, her tears and fury over the SCOTUS Roe decision in the parking lot of the Edelweiss. What I’ve been thinking is that a 15 year old child made a decision to keep a fetus and continue her pregnancy and that the cost was her life. (Sure, she can still go to medical school and became an astronaut and travel the earth and write novels, but how much are we going to ask of this woman?).
It was the visceral nature of her rage that I think about. The sense that for her, the SCOTUS decision was intensely personal, that the court was denying her her choice and her sacrifice. The decision that set the course of the rest of her life had been hers, nothing abstract about it. She wasn’t expressing pride or regret, but ownership and autonomy. And now this feckless enterprise was taking that decision away from her and making it theirs.
For me, an old white guy accustomed to having the world my way and viewing oppression safely through the filter of my media, to see that rage up close and in person was frightening. And inspiring. And worth writing about.
I stopped at Toad Suck Harley Davidson in Conway, Arkansas for a quart of oil. The service manager, Cameron, confided that he would rather ride a sport bike than a Harley (sacrilege in that part of the world, particularly for a guy who works in a Harley shop). He wants an Aprillia. The young guy washing bikes, Chandler, has a liberal girlfriend and he’s going to school to become social worker. Fellow customer, David McClellen, grunted when I told him I was a commie, but he talked to me for another 45 minutes.
The photo below, from the left, Cameron, Chandler, me and David. The t-shirt cost $43.00.
Pro tip: when possible, stay at locally owned motels instead of the chains; the money stays local, and they’re a lot more interesting.