Scrupulating

McPherson Square, DC

[Subtlety Alert: You might have to read all the way to the end of this post to get the message I was aiming for. I fear I bloviated, despite my best intentions.]

We've been home from our trip to Virginia and DC for over twenty-four hours and I'm only now touching my keyboard. I've been busy unpacking, watering plants, and scrupulating. No point in looking that last word up; I coined it from scruple (to hesitate, dither, have second thoughts and thirds and fourths). I haven't been able to figure out how to write honestly about our visit to McPherson Square, location of the Occupy DC protest.



While I scrupulated, and from that same mindset but with less ambivalating (yep, coined), I cleaned all the advertisements from this page. That decision was comparatively easy. It did mean giving up on my 2009-era, brand new blogger's fantasy of making a little easy money by bloviating (real word). I've always dreamed of being paid for doing something I can't help. It hasn't worked out and it's high time I got real about it. I had ads placed through the BlogHer publishing network which paid me enough in the last two years to buy a pair of good athletic shoes, which have come in handy as I've attempted to walk off Blogger Butt. Bet you can't even remember any of those BlogHer ads now that they're gone. I also had ads from Google, which you may find easier to recall for the occasional jarring incongruity created by some particular ad's presence on a post I'd scrupulated over--the birther message on a piece praising the POTUS, for example. In over two years of ads, I'd accumulated exactly $29.40 worth of "clicks." Google doesn't start paying its bloggers until they reach $100.00 in clicks...at least four more years of bloviating. That particular American Dream is deader'n 9-9-9.

Since the start of the recession, I've got a backlog of much bigger, more dearly-held notions that I've been needing to give up on, so this was an opportunity to practice on something small. Going ad-free is no big loss. BlogHer insisted that I publish two blog posts a week. I don't have two decent ideas a week and the strain was starting to show. And Google's ad-bot is the essence of impersonal, Republican-ish amorality. We've been spared, reader.

And I can think of nary another distractor, so...to McPherson Square and Occupy DC. There is a dearth of old-fashioned, straight reporting in the media today. Americans used to respect that kind of journalism. Whether they actually ever experienced any of it is moot now; we like thinking we had it and we miss it. If I can't figure out how to gild this lily, I can at least scrupulate more and bloviate less about it.

It was Friday afternoon, October 21st, 2011, McPherson Square, Washington, District of Columbia. McPherson is a small park bounded by K Street, Vermont Ave, 15th, and Eye, about four blocks NE of the White House. There are some trees, sidewalks that outline the perimeter and criss-cross the square, some park benches. The square is named for the monument to a Union general. On this Friday afternoon, there were maybe fifty small dome tents, and there were no more than fifty demonstrators present, counting children. They weren't demonstrating; they were occupying the ground, living there. Most were young-ish. Many looked tired and more than a little scruffy. There were a few signs, mostly propped against a tent or lying flat on the grass, and none were clever enough to photograph. There were pigeons. Some of the older denizens looked like homeless people who had "belonged to" the park before the Occupation and found their new neighbors diverting, at least. See how easy it is to editorialize?

The sidewalks were kept clear and business persons were crossing the square briskly from time-to-time, carrying briefcases, possibly on their way to and from the Metro stop nearby. A food tent dispensed pizza to the new residents. There was a small drum circle with a couple of listless, dreadlocked drummers brushing exhaustedly at their bongos. There was a man in ethnic robes and a small, round cap holding forth to a group that sat on the grass at his feet, nodding in respectful attention. Mr. Mature ventured over to listen in and said that, to the best of his understanding, the man was telling his memoirs, but they didn't seem particularly relevant to Wall Street or the grand theft of the American Dream or anything to do with The 99%.

We were at a loss, underwhelmed. It didn't even feel right to take pictures.

Most of the benches were being used as cupboards for rough bundles of belongings. Suddenly the reluctant elitist, I found myself being overly dainty, gingerly shoving a batch of blankets over three inches so I could occupy something, dammit. I won't lie; I was thinking of lice and bedbugs and I'm sure my nose wrinkled. I fear my lip tried to curl. Any fantasies I had of standing shoulder to shoulder with The 99%, standing up en masse to The Man, were deflated entirely when I had the urge to dig for my sanitizer gel. I was badly flunking Occupy Everywhere.

There was one other alien present: A distinguished looking, well-groomed, lone man in matching REI wear was sitting on an empty park bench, eyes closed but, by his posture, clearly alert. (I will now give myself over entirely to assumption and the story in my head.) He, too, was occupying. I would swear that he, too, was at a loss. He'd decided to sit down and consciously focus on the reasons he'd come, on the sympathy he felt with those who'd lost their homes and their jobs. He was struggling with his own mental fastidiousnesses. I imagined engaging him in conversation. We could lament the absence in McPherson Square of "our own kind." I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. I had more than flunked; I expelled myself.

Okay, here's what I think and, if any one of you comments that you told me so, I'll delete it. When I first heard of the Occupy movement a few weeks ago, I commented to my friend Jack-of-all-thumbs (we're FOR this movement and we want it to matter) that I wondered if anyone would show up other than The Rainbow Family. They are born occupiers, dedicated to leaderless mass gatherings in public parks. Non-entities of non-movements with indefinable objectives; does it get more grass roots than that?

After taking the VRE back to our friends' historic colonial in lovely Fredericksburg, I borrowed a pc and googled "Occupy DC and Rainbow Family" and "leaderless tent gatherings" and found I was not the first to notice their trademarked ambivalating about defined purpose, their insistence on remaining minimally organized, their drum circles and thrift shop finery. Is that all this is, the Rainbow Family has left the national parks and come downtown? Where the hell is the MOVEment I was promised that would make this old protester feel young again? Never mind that I was scared of the underground Metro and squeamish about a pile of quilts. I was a sympathizer. I identified.

And I had to struggle with myself. I had to remind myself that someone has to be able to throw up a tent and stay put between visits from union organizers and celebrity pundits and whatever you'd call Michael Moore, bless him. Somebody has to be there to hold ground and provide the seed around which "our own kind" can gather on weekends to flex our equality and show off our clever signs. Somebody has to do the hard part on the hard ground, especially now that the nights are getting cold. Somebody has to know all about how permits work. Somebody has to know that freedom is another word for nothing left to lose. Somebody has to be a lot less intimidated by people like me than I am.

Thanks, Rainbow Family.

[And, as I finish this post, I find in The Washington Post, Tim Craig's "Occupy DC Protesters Welcomed by Local Homeless." I've got a lot to learn about being among The 99%.]