These crowns are made from paper with printed jewels on the side. They adjust to fit all heads and there are plenty to go around. Customers can take them for free and kids are not the only ones that wear them.
Kings used to be in short supply, one to a country. In this age of mass merchandising, mass consumption, collective thought and identity politics, kings are no longer protected or worshiped. Now,with social justice warriors on the warpath, we must all be kings.
If you were King for a Day, what edict would you have your scribes put on a scroll and tack to telephone poles around town? Would you start a new holiday? Would you erase everyone’s debts? Would you let everyone out of prison? Would you throw a party? Would you ride the streets in a carriage and wave at your adoring subjects? Would you open your palace doors to the common folk?
Even with our lofty rhetoric, America is still run by royalty.
Congress will never take their crowns off and our President will never be allowed to put his on.
These days the only reality and royalty we follow lives in Beverly Hills.
Some photographs resonate.
This photo, hanging on a restaurant wall in an Albuquerque Olive Garden, resonates. It is a black, white, and gray ode to old age.
These three old men have seen history and are sitting on a bench watching life pass them by. Old men often have histories that are burnished and worn like rocks going through a rock shop tumbler. Their rough edges have been smoothed and now they lean on each other as they watch glorious young women flaunting the latest designer clothes, their trim bodies moving against skirts and blouses that can barely contain their curves.
These old men sit and their conversation moves from wars,to divorces,to children,to politics,to sex, to money.
Growing old is unavoidable but sitting on the right bench, in the right place, with the right people, is, in my mind, still a few years off for me.
Fooling myself,however, is something I have experience with.
This fountain stands in a plaza in Albuquerque’s Old Town and this morning, while Alan and I walk the square, local birds play and preen in its cool waters.
Birds enjoy showers and they don’t need soap, soap dishes, or towels.
From their songs, I don’t think they have a care in the world, and, at the moment, neither do we..
If I could sing like these birds, I would sing opera and clean up several times a day when it gets hot just because I could.
This morning, I enjoy the fountain, the birds and my brother’s company. I whistle ” Bye Bye Blackbird ” softly, and plan on coming back soon. Our family used to come to Old Town once a month to eat at La Placita and browse the shops around the square.
Life, I have heard people say, is ” for the birds.”
I don’t, for a moment, believe a word of it.
Sometime last night this homeless statistic rolled her shopping cart onto Ronald McDonald’s premises and parked it.
The Albuquerque homeless problem is ubiquitous even if un-employment is low and jobs are rumored to be everywhere. Most intersections in the better parts of town have panhandlers holding ” I’m Hungry ” signs right under City Hall notices that tell you not to give them a dime.
When McDonald’s opens at five this morning, Javier will come out and shoo this squatter off but she will be back tomorrow unless she finds a better place under a freeway overpass where homeless people’s cell phones, at night, look like bedroom night lights as they lean against overpass stanchions and surf the net.
This country has wealth but people are evenly divided on whether we should steal from the rich to take care of those who have and give nothing, or whether people are entitled to keep what they have worked for if they have broken no laws to earn it.
This cold morning, our squatter will come into McDonald’s and slump in a booth. We will buy him,her, or he/she a coffee and burrito. Even though we talk tough about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, we know bootstraps are not always handy.
Using band aids to treat cancer isn’t the best strategy but to leave a homeless hungry, with change in our pockets, would be criminal.
Halloween has crawled out of the grave for another year.
At a local Starbucks, Freddie doesn’t have to bone up on store policy, customer relations, or how to work the register. He hands out coffee and keeps his mouth shut because he rattles when he talks. This morning his fellow employees have a close hold on him and their cell phones, and, right now, are as dead to their employer as he is.
Mostly, these days, people are hooked up with their cell phones, deader to the world than even Freddie,and you can’t communicate with them unless you call them.
The boneyard, I glean from this morning’s Starbuck’s experience, is closer than I’d like to be and Halloween is definitely here.
Rubbing elbows with skeletons is not my usual cup of tea, but, in here, we don’t get to choose who we have drinks with.
What I really want to know is whether Freddy drinks Starbuck’s coffee, who is he dating in here, and what kind of golfer he is?
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