Jungle Cruise Kerfuffle

This week there is some discussion here and there about one guy's disgruntlement about changes to the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Or is it Disney World? Do I care? No. The guy's problem is that they took out Trader Sam, one of the characters in the Jungle Cruise that is completely gross, caricatured and racist. He's a head hunter, and along the ride, the Skipper tells equally dumb cannibal jokes, in various quantities, depending on which Skipper is operating your boat. That's what this guy wants to preserve.

I think I've been on this ride 2 or 3 times, and each time my reaction to it was a little different. It was first presented to me by friends as really old and retro. I think that I just thought it was corny, but also wondered how you could still portray people as "natives" that way. This is all done with animatronics, but it's not that far removed from the idea of actual human zoos and carnival sideshows with the carnival ringmaster describing the acts. And that's what I realized on rides 2 and 3.

The guy who complained about the changes at the parks is concerned about his own loss of immersive experience, which he *thinks* will occur in the future when there are changes to the ride he's come to know and love. Changes remind him of reality. Also reminding him of reality: facial hair and tattoos on cast members and changes to Song of the South-related elements in Splash Mountain. Boo hoo, man from Las Vegas! This is, apparently, all about you. Good news, though. New generations of people will grow up going to Disneyland and not have to see Trader Sam. They will have an entirely different memory of the Jungle Cruise, and Trader Sam will become one of a host of Disney secrets of the past that you who got to see it can lord over people who didn't. But when they ask you what was so great about it you'll probably struggle to find an answer.

By the way, a little research shows that there have been a number of changes to the design of the Jungle Cruise over the years. In fact, I was a fly on the wall for a long discussion between two generations of Skippers about how various lines should be delivered. The 70s guy was pretty well known for his superior Skipperdom in the day. The 90s guys were pretty bold with the snark and were not digging 70s man's vibe At All. The Jungle Cruise you know today is not the one you grew up with, and those additional and more subtle changes took place during your time as an aficionado of the Cruise. I bet you probably didn't even notice.

None of us is promised a life unmarred by change. And some change is really good. Accepting change is more likely to bring happiness than fighting against it. You know what's some good change? The end of slavery, the Voting Rights Act, Title IX, taking Andrew Jackson off the ten dollar bill, and not having to see people caricatured, othered and laughed at at the Happiest Place On Earth. Way to go, Parks! Now if only the government would give me my damned Tubmans...

One Pound of Bees

800 years ago, when leathery wings flapped in the sky, I was a Medieval Studies undergrad at an agricultural college. Why? That's what I was into. I didn't even really care where I went to college, except that I needed to get away from my parents and my boyfriend. So I went to the college that smelled like alfalfa (bonus) and contained the fewest people who were like me (not a bonus).

Once I got to the point in my studies where I actually had to write research papers, I combined things that I liked (say, entomology and history) with things that my advisor said I should write about (Norway. I went to college on a Norwegian scholarship). That really led me in some fun directions.

The college itself was at the age in which its 75 years of physical library collections going back to the late 1800s still fit in the library, and I spent many happy hours in the bowels of that library reviewing decades worth of beekeeping journals for a paper on beekeeping and bee-based remedies in the Middle Ages. So fun. I made oxymel (Medieval Persian honey-and-lemon cure-all which we are still using to this day). And I made something (can't recall) that required actual bees. Was it perhaps the poultice for baldness in the beard that called for ground up bees and the excrement of shrew mice? Either of these ingredients could be easily obtained on campus but I only pursued one of them.

I called up the Bee Biology department, and talked to the professor who had given the gripping lecture on bees earlier that quarter to my entomology class. He asked me a stumper of a question: "How many bees do you need?" "I dunno. A pound?" So on a very rainy day I rode my bike out to Bee Biology and met up with the apiologist. He went to his freezer and pulled out a baggie with one pound of frozen bees in it. I guess that's how you dispatch bees. Poor little fellas. I remember toasting the bees on a baking sheet in the oven at our dorm, then grinding them using a hammer and a Dr. Scholl's sandal (who has equipment when they're a sophomore?). We presented our papers at an end-of-quarter open house, and I recall wearing some of my Medieval reenactment clothes. And when I came home for the semester the bees came with me. It seemed wasteful and disrespectful not to do something with them.

Occasionally over the next few years my mom would complain about the bees that lived in a danish cookie tin in her chest freezer. She'd open the tin from time to time thinking that there was something delicious inside, only to find dead bees. At some point we decided the bees needed to go. 

Thank you, bees, for your service.

The February 2021 Recap

February was painful for all, and I didn't want to let this old post go unsaid, since it documents a lot of what was happening. So I finished it, and here you are.

A number of things happened during the time that mom stayed with us. First, I was 100% pissed that after we were trying to get additional caregiving, which was on the slow track due to various things including foot dragging and a refusal to work with a care agency, there was no plan b. I ended up being the plan b.

I had a conversation with my sister in which I yelled at her for approximately 50 minutes. I have never done that before, no matter if she's calling me a bitch or being unkind or letting her emotions get the better of her and then apologizing. In response to this and the deep unhappiness it has caused me and mrguy, and the fact that I'm now in therapy to deal with my family as an almost 60-year-old, I don't yell. But this time I did. Not sorry about the things that I said, just that I yelled.

Mom stayed for almost two weeks, then my sister came out to take over. It's only the two of us siblings available to help now, since my brother is very unwell and my other sister was in the middle of treatment for cancer. When on the phone I referred to myself as the last man standing, my sister countered that there were two of us, and she does a lot. This is one reason that I don't yell. She does a lot. So much. Too much. Everything, really. How can you counter someone who does everything?

Anyhoo, this is a run down of a typical day with the mom during this stay.

9:00 -- medication, coffee, paper, hearing aids. She complains about the weather

9:30 -- looks out at the view and remarks that her two best friends are dead

10:00 -- we get dressed, or we shower (mrguy and I leading mom and her walker down two flights of stairs while she argues with us about which foot should go on a stair next, and whether it should go forwards or backwards. Argues about temperature of shower.  Complains about the portrait of her mother that hangs in the bathroom (every single fucking time). Mrguy helps us get back up the stairs. 

11:30 -- lunch. Glass of water, which is either too warm or too cold or too full ("I can't drink that much!") or too empty ("didn't you think I was thirsty?").

1:00 - 3:30 -- afternoon is spent watching the newspaper, wanting to wander around the house and not wanting to be bothered, while simultaneously doing something that is dangerous, like wearing her belt around her neck fashioned like a noose.

4:00 -- agitation hour. Looks out the window across the bay and complains that her friends who lived there are dead. Insists on the fantasy that she and her caregiver are buying a house "over there" (i.e. Minnesota) to live near my sister (who she also complains about) and taking care of other people. Asks when she's going "home" (in air quotes, because nothing is home since she left our home town). Talks about wanting to buy back her old house. Asks when her caregivers will return. Conversations about why the caregivers are not available.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat

In addition to these topics there are also conversations about how my dad is a bad person. Or "I have a husband out there, somewhere," which leads to an approx. 10-minute conversation about my dad, how and when he died, and how he did not just disappear. Eventually I take a photo of my parents and hide it so I don't have to see my mom give it the death stare as she passes.

7:00 -- dinner, HGTV, cajoling Mom to take her meds, getting her into her jammies, bed

Overnight -- wake up via the motion sensor and care for her when she moves around and leaves her walker in her bedroom when she goes to the john. Make heating pads for her during the night.

After almost two weeks of this, my sister was able to take over for several weeks, get Mom back into her apartment and find us some agency caregiving help. Our caregivers returned, but the flexibility we once had because of the husband who is now dead, is also gone. This has been hard on my sister, and easier on me. 

I feel guilty. And I am no longer ready to kill people, as I was in February. One of those things is pretty good!