Editorial 12.1, January 2010, by Deirdre Helfferich Weenies & Wackos & Freedom Weenie of the North T-shirt weather. For most of the United States, this means temperatures of, oh, 60˚ to 90˚F. Not for Alaskans. T-shirt weather is more like 10˚—after a cold snap of -20˚ or -30˚. Or perhaps when it's a balmy -2˚ after it’s been -40˚ or -50˚ for a week or two. Every winter I can feel the adjustments my body makes to the cold weather. For a while, 10 above seems freaking cold. Then suddenly, it’s zero degrees that seems cold, and ten above is comfortable. The inversion layer between the knob our house sits on and the Golden Eagle Saloon creates a twenty-degree difference in temperature; another ten to twenty-degree drop between the Eagle and the Republic office. The difference between them is decidedly noticeable, and too fast a shift for me to adjust. As I write, it’s around 40 below, and I am once again faced with the jarring recognition that I really don’t like being outdoors in the winter. I don’t even handle the drafty corners in our house very well. Ever since I was a child, my winter camping spot was me under a blanket over the hot air vent. Now I spend most of my evenings standing in front of the blowing Toyo. Yep, this born-and-bred Alaskan is a weather weenie. I’ve never liked winter sports—well, mostly I like the sports, but not the winter part. Learning to ski back in grammar school was hellish. I can do cross-country skiing, but it’s more a survival skill than anything else, and downhill seems reckless. I’ve never quite understood all these people I know and work with who go skiing on their lunch hour—for fun! I like sledding, yet somehow, I never manage to get the sled out and go rocketing down a slope for some good clean stuck-up-to-your-eyebrows-in-a-snowbank fun. I’ve enjoyed the few Ester Hockey League or Ester Football League games I’ve played—but it’s cold out there. I suppose I was permanently warped by my ninth winter—the family lived in Hawaii that year, on the Big Island. It was warm and sunny. And it was winter! Amazing. Still, although I can understand all those snowbirds migrating south, I couldn’t live anywhere else in the United States. It just gets too hot in the summer—even Seattle. I’d rather face the cold than the heat. And besides, there’s just too many people Outside. That’s one great thing about the frozen dark—it keeps the real weenies away. Me, I just confine myself inside and get cabin fever until spring, when the warmth and light are sufficient that I feel free to run around and play outdoors. Until then, my t-shirt is just one of many layers I don for warmth. Wacko of the South Pat Robertson has once again embarrassed himself, although he doesn’t seem to realize that declaring victims of natural disasters “cursed” because their ancestors ostensibly “made a pact with the devil” is an embarrassingly callous, untruthful, and stupid thing to say. But Robertson has a history of blaming victims for their circumstances, so we shouldn’t be surprised. In a moving essay on Politics Daily, professor C.S. Manegold turns the pity and the blame on its head: “Brave nation,” she declares. Haiti was one of many Caribbean nations where slave rebellions arose in the 1700s. Most were brutally put down. The rebellion in Haiti, begun in 17891, took twelve long, hard, and bloody years to succeed, and at least 100,000 blacks and 24,000 whites died in the war. The countries of France, Great Britain, and Spain went to war with each other in the colony as a result, siding with or fighting against the former slaves. Robertson’s so-called “devil pact” was the catalytic vodoun ceremony performed by houngan Dutty Boukman and an African-born priestess at the Bois Caïman, in the northern mountains of Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) on August 14, 1791. During the ceremony, the two exhorted the attendees to rebel, and predicted the revolution’s success. (Robertson, with characteristic woodenheadedness, cannot, apparently, distinguish between a non-Christian religion and devil worship. It probably is made harder for him by the fact that Vodou includes animal sacrifice in some of its ceremonies—in this historically important instance, a pig—and here was influenced by Roman Catholicism, which had been forced on the Haitian slaves.) The rebellion that arose from this religious ceremony disrupted the flow of money from the lucrative sugar industry to French coffers, led Napoleon to give up on French assets in the West as a bad job and unload them (for example, the Louisiana Territory), and inspired other slave rebellions throughout the Caribbean and contributed to the abolition of slavery in Britain, France, Spain, and eventually their colonies. As Manegold points out, Haitians as a people have long shown immense courage against institutionalized evil; Robertson’s thoughtless comment displays ignorance and the supercilious, colonial attitude the West has historically shown toward this nation. Right now, Haitians need help, not condemnation, pity, or contempt for their history and culture. “Haiti: Freedom and the Devil’s Pact?” by C.S. Manegold, Politics Daily, January 15, 2010. Available on line at www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/15/freedom-and-the-devil-s-pact/. | ||
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