The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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This morning in our fishwrapper paper there was a letter to the editor asking if all us citizens would rather see low taxes or would we prefer libraries and parks and concerts and art in our lives. She obviously wanted to raise taxes to support all those amenities that make life more ‘meaningful and aesthetic’. Being a so-called artist, and particularly one who makes his living from taxes that fund public art like mine, you bet your buttsky I want to raise everybody’s taxes. Even mine.

But I have to question the timing of this call to arms, you know, given that the Pandemic has wrecked the economy. It just feels a bit, oh, I don’t know, a little tone deaf asking for more money to fund my favorite things when folks are being laid off, quarantined, kids at home from their furloughed schools, health care no longer covered, worrying about paying next month’s rent or even the damn credit card minimum. I sure don’t want to Scrooge them, they got all the misery they can handle right now.

Anyone who thinks this post-Pandemic is going to be quick and painless needs to pinch themselves with a vise-grip. Hard. Wake up, the world is going to be a lot more dog eat dog than it was a few short months ago. People are scared, can’t you see that? They’re stocking up a lot more than toilet paper, let me tell you. They’re buying freezers and filling them with locker meat. They’re hoarding yeast and flour in case bread disappears on the grocery shelves. They’re buying guns down at the pawn shops and gun stores. They’re expecting something a little different than concerts in the parks or poetry readings down at the library. Despite the sunny assurances of their rich President that the economy will come roaring back soon, that the plague will end before you know it, that the good times are right around the corner, they can see this will be a grueling haul back to anything resembling normal.

Raise their taxes? Sweetheart, the government is throwing money at these people the way GI’s threw candy to the kids from jeeps and tanks in liberated cities during World War 2. Normal? In your dreams…. Meanwhile, let’s clean up the rubble.

The fallout from this little experiment in socialism to mitigate the plague’s disruption of lives and businesses, well, hold onto your hats, you haven’t seen nothin yet. I watched my public art dry up for years after the Great Recession when legislatures went into budget slashing mode so I can hardly wait to see what this Depression will do for the future of parks and libraries and arts. We’re going to find out what folks think is essential all over again. Somehow I doubt it will be me and my art. Unless I start making movies for Netflix….

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