The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A couple years ago we stayed with some friends for a couple days in Sedona, Arizona who had a house rented for a month. Sedona is a tony little burg nestled in the red hills beneath a vertiginous climb on its northern border where tourists come in droves in search of palm readers, gorgeous scenery, high end shopping, crystal therapies, woo-woo healers and various dream-catcher shysters. Prices are astronomical, needless to say, so much so that the folks who work minimum wage jobs to service the rich cannot possibly afford rents in the village or nearby environs since most apartments and houses are lodging for the Airbnb vacation industry.

What to do? Well, the good people of Sedona are floating the idea of offering these indentured servants use of a municipal parking lot to sleep in their cars between shifts. This, as you would probably agree, is wildly big hearted of the city fathers. Free parking! Their generosity is overwhelming. Of course, given these bitter partisan times, there are those who cry foul, who worry that their city parking lot will become a tent city that draws the homeless from Phoenix and Yuma, making their idyllic boutiquey village an attractive ghetto for more impoverished workers who couldn’t possibly make a living wage.

Welcome to the Land of the Privileged. Welcome to America. Even here on the South End the possibility of finding affordable rents for those willing to drive long distances to places of employment is daunting. Our food bank in Stanwoodopolis is crowded, the homeless are sleeping in town doorways or in the parks while, maybe you heard, the rich are getting richer. God forbid we tax the corporate wealthy or the billionaire ruling class to narrow the income inequity. After all, we might become them someday and after all our hard work to make that first billion, how unfair to take a bigger slice to use to solve problems like homelessness. No, let them eat cake, these impoverished losers. And in Sedona, let them live in their cars. Just park outside the city limits….

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