SHUT OUT
By: Mary Strachan Scriver
Tags: Being A Loner, Covid, Mary Scriver Writing

Some time in the past — I suppose I could look it up — NPR and PBS seemed like the most logical and wonderful phenomena in the communication world. Then time passed. The culture changed. When I had moved to a new place, I had always tuned the radio to NPR. Then it went from music to talk. Then gradually I realized what a middle-class enforcer these people were. Not maliciously — they were just being themselves and somehow thought that was a good thing that everyone would appreciate. NOT.

More recently, I realized that the better narrative videos on PBS, the Masterpiece Theatre shows, were only affordable in big states with lots of subscribers. So I ignored Montana and jumped to Minnesota where I finally bought a “passport” and got to watch “The Tunnel” all the way through. Just in time. Anyway, the best stories in my view were at least BBC and possibly Scandinavian.

Over this Labor Day everything changed. I’m locked out of Tri-Cities in Minnesota, but my Montana PBS doesn’t really work either. All pleas for help are ignored. I’m pushed to join the social media giants as access. I won’t. So I’m getting a lot of reading done, which is probably a good thing. I don’t have to sit here with “twitchy Judy” saying “in the few seconds we have left, would you sum up the war?” Or moaning “so sad” over some death and destruction somewhere. Or fawning over her favorite people. Very state university sorority.

Where did the news get the idea that being media meant being “even-handed”, and “fair” meant always presenting adversaries and giving them equal time, even if one side is murderous, uncontrolled and doing damage? They seem to think there is no way to tell the difference.

The same problem exists in the public sphere as a whole where no one dares say that not getting vaccinated is irresponsible, careless of the health of others, and possibly suicidal. But it is expected that this global threat will be met with respect for private decision making though it is not a private decision to kill people at random.

Today I asked two respectable, active, intelligent women whether they were vaccinated and they acted as though I were asking whether they were properly married, as though it were ME who was out of step, ignorant, and balky. They solved the problem of stories showing people dying in a tangle of tubes by claiming they were too busy to watch the news. Or the persons in plastic were just actors.

I’m flabbergasted and I don’t think I’m alone. They were inventing science as we talked. I asked one whether she had been vaccinated for measles and she said yes, but that measles have always been part of the human genome. Huh? I asked who told her that. She said everyone knows it. At least no one dragged God into the discussion — we’ve all been taught it’s not polite to do that. But it seems faux science is the new God, the ultimate authority wearing a white lab coat. It’s scary. These people in this little town are volunteer fire fighters and EMT’s. We’re putting our lives in their hands. We thought they were realistic, informed.

I’ve always said that if existence gets too painful, I could just quit. But now here are all these others hustling past me on the way to death. I hate joining crowds. It’s as though we were approaching a buffalo jump but we were the buffalo.

Unitarians, who often include renegades, are known to defend suicide in extreme circumstances. One congregation had a suicide just before I got there and another one just after I left. They were older, educated, respected women. My biggest mistake was always disengagement — not paying attention, not realizing how serious it was. Partly because of defending my own choice to stop.

In fact, my most basic world-frame is somehow that of being a loner, left or forced out, ignored and turned away, even in a near universal epidemic. It has become a choice. This has been discussed with counselors. Once was the first day of first grade where I came home for lunch, though I had it with me in a sack, because I misunderstood the teacher. My mother and the boys had gone somewhere, so I was “home alone.” I had a big ripe tomato in my sack which I managed to smash onto my face, so that when the family car pulled up, it looked as though I’d been murdered. It was a double impact, horror and laughter.

Another time the counselor was the one who pulled up in her car after forgetting our appointment. I sat on the porch, waiting with no tomato but mixed feelings.

The last time was when I was fired from Heart Butte and called my mother to see whether I could stay with her until I found new job. She said no. This was the second time it happened. The first time my old drama teacher offered to take me in, so my mother changed her mind. The second time she finally allowed me in. This is not like the shows on TV.

Of course, it was her bequest that bought this house where I can never be forbidden to come. A town that I knew was firmly rooted in the past century was never going to be welcoming, esp. now that they’ve forgotten my famous husband. I went by his place yesterday, the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife. It is wrecked and the giant statue of “An Honest Try”, the bucking bull, is discolored. A few years ago I tried to knock on the door of the house and the occupant came out to drive me off with a broom! That was before the terror of people infected and dying.

Time has left me outside. Like so many buildings in Browning — still there but uninhabitable. I can’t inhabit my time, which was decades ago. But it lives in me: stories, photos. I don’t ask “who’s your mom?” anymore. Now I ask, “Who’s your great-grand?” And he or she will be my age. But dozens of all ages will have died of Covid.

The rez is not like this small town. The Blackfeet have not cringed away when it comes to vaccination. They remember smallpox. They don’t do the bland, blank, don’t-take-sides stuff unless whites are around, esp. if they are PBS reporters. Because the middle class is secretly predatory and they know that. The irony is that because I am left alone, I can tell the truth even if it’s horrifying.