{"id":5909,"date":"2011-06-10T08:56:04","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T15:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=5909"},"modified":"2011-06-10T08:56:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T15:56:04","slug":"tales-and-tails-from-the-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/10\/tales-and-tails-from-the-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales (and tails) from the fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Took me a while, but I said I’d have tales (and tails) from the Mother Earth News Fair. So here are a couple.<\/p>\n

The young lady with the radiant smile is — you can tell! — a member of the furry community<\/a>. She wears her tail happily and presented me with a bushy faux wolf tail of my very own.<\/p>\n

Furry folk<\/a> are much misunderstood<\/a> and (you won’t be surprised) sometimes discriminated against<\/a> for their playful self-expression. (The example at the last link happened on private property, so the security guards in question were probably within their rights — which doesn’t make them any less bigoted or stupid.)<\/p>\n

This<\/i> young lady had the guts to wear her tail while flying. Heroically alert TSAgents — who astutely realized that tail-wearing was Suspicious Behavior (exactly the sort of thing a terrorist might do to avoid calling attention to his Nefarious Plans!) — put her through two rounds of extra screening — and made her put her tail into a bin to be checked for traces of explosives. They just knew<\/i> she had to be Up To Something. But what, they never figured.<\/p>\n

She was laughing about it. Not sure I could — although when you’ve got the panache to wear a furry tail, I suppose you’re prepared to smile at the world’s silliness.<\/p>\n

She also pulled from her bag the most dog-eared copy of The Freedom Outlaws Handbook<\/i> I’ve ever seen. Dog-eared is good. Dog-eared is wonderful. It says: well-used and appreciated.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

A sadder tale came from a hospital admissions clerk who stopped by the BHM booth several times and spent a long time talking with us. <\/p>\n

Sigh. It seems as if the most discouraging workplace experiences come out of the medical profession these days — though part of hers could have come from any corporatized workplace.<\/p>\n

She told me she works in a small hospital known for its excellent customer service. They’ve received many compliments not only on the quality of their care but the friendliness of their staff. <\/p>\n

Management, deciding that friendliness is A Good Thing, demanded that everybody in the place attend classes on how to give cheerful, smiling customer service. Then they instituted a policy encouraging employees to report each other for any breach of cheerfulness.<\/p>\n

Now, she says, she observes her fellow workers walking across the parking lot looking glum or blank or merely preoccupied, but the moment they cross the threshold — slap! — on goes the artificial smile. And eyes dart here and there in case Big Brother is looking.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Along with politically correct cheerfulness goes a fading regard for the real individuals. As she talked about one incident, this medical worker (who, like so many, wants desperately to get out of her profession but doesn’t yet know how) started to cry. At the time, I didn’t understand the real reason for the tears, though what she described was awful on several levels.<\/p>\n

Her small, rural hospital was overwhelmed one night when victims of a horrific industrial accident were rushed in. Everybody on late-night duty — receptionists, nurses, doctors — performed heroic work, struggling to stabilize gruesomely injured men and women and keep them alive for airlifts to a larger hospital.<\/p>\n

Later, her boss showed appreciation by emailing a generic thank you “to all who were on duty that night.” There were only a handful on duty. They have names. The managers knew them. I thought the woman was crying from indignation at the slight.<\/p>\n

When she came back to buy more BHM books she told us one of the victims had been her daughter-in-law. Who didn’t survive. Managers knew that, too.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

I may have more cheerful stories from the fair later. There were many of those. The fair itself was great, as Dave and I already mentioned, and it was a chance for several meetings with warm, encouraging “friends I’ve never met.” Dave could tell some tales — about what a hit BHM is on (of all places) Long Island — about the couple who showed up toting a copy of BHM issue #1.<\/p>\n

But the stories of these two booth visitors cried out to be shared, while other encounters were more personal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Took me a while, but I said I’d have tales (and tails) from the Mother Earth News Fair. So here are a couple. The young lady with the radiant smile is — you can tell! — a member of the furry community. She wears her tail happily and presented me with a bushy faux wolf tail of my very own. Furry folk are much misunderstood and (you won’t be surprised) sometimes discriminated against for their playful self-expression. (The example at the last link happened on private property, so the security guards in question were probably within their rights — which…<\/p>\n

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