Yes, I am a coot. I became a coot in 2014 when I retired. I have the hair in the ears to prove it. I sometimes forget to wear pants. The dog is learning to hide from me on days when my arthritis makes me cranky.
So I am a practicer of the ancient art of being a cranky old coot. I have opinions. I share them with others foolishly. And I am summarily told to, “Shut up, you danged old coot!” And, of course, I don’t shut up because that would be a violation of number five in the by-laws of cootism. Obnoxiousness is our only reason for still being alive.
Lately, my group of coots on Facebook (who call themselves a “pack” like wolves, but, in truth, a group of coots is called an “idiocy”) are talking about politics… very loudly salted with firmly held opinions, beliefs, and bad words in several languages. I mean, it’s texting each other on memes we disagree about, but we do it LOUDLY, like that, in all caps. We also do it in such an infuriating manner because, if no one ever bothers to tell us to “Shut the hell up!” we will begin to suspect we have actually died and gone to purgatory where we are still being obnoxious, but nobody knows we are doing it. That is rubbing coot fur in the wrong direction.
The radical right (otherwise known as coot paradise) have been cooting up a storm about school shootings and gun control of late. They have more or less turned their ire on me because, knowing I was a school teacher, they have seized on the Coot in Chief’s notion of arming teachers to protect schools. Obviously a majority of old coots agree that requiring a few “volunteer” teachers to conceal carry and learn how to handle a school shooter crisis situation with a gun instead of the way teachers are actually trained and practiced on handling such a situation, is the only economical way to defend schools from crazed lunatics with assault weapons. Of course, it is definitely more economical than hiring full time police officers to handle security because “volunteer” teachers does not mean that they are necessarily willing to do it, but rather that they are doing it without pay. And of course they shout at me things like, “Why don’t you just admit that you are too scared and unpatriotic to carry a gun as a teacher, and cowardly allow some female teacher with a big pistol to step in and do the job for you?” That is a very coot thing to say, and is hard to adequately counter, because if you try to argue using logic other than coot-logic, like the notion that since a majority of teachers in this country are female, you are asking women who are fierce enough to do the job (and I have known more than a few who would take it on no matter how hopeless their prospects) to take a handgun that the principal bought at Walmart with money from the Coke machine in the hall and face down a suicidal maniac with an assault rifle, you will not even be heard over the cacophony of coot braying and chest-thumping, let alone be understood.
And, for some reason, coots love Trump. Maybe because they feel he is truly one of them. He is older than dirt. He has an epicly bad comb-over to hide his bald spot. He says bad words very loudly in front of women, children, and everybody. He says, “Believe me,” a lot, especially when telling lies. And he’s not afraid to fart in public and blame it on the dog. I admit to insulting Trump in front of them only because I like to see coot faces fold up in extra wrinkles, and coot heads turn various shades of angry red and apoplectic purple.
So, yes. I am a coot. Not proud to be one… that I can remember, but a coot never-the-less.
But my greatest challenge as a butterfly hunter was the tiger swallowtail butterfly. They are rare. They are tricky. And one summer I dueled with one, trying with all my might to catch him. He was in my own back yard the first time I saw him. I ran to get the butterfly net, and by the time I got back, he was flitting high in the trees out of reach. I must’ve watched him for half an hour before I finally lost sight of him. About five other times I had encounters with him in the yard or in the neighborhood. I learned the hard way that some butterflies are acrobatic flyers and can actually maneuver to avoid being caught. He frustrated me.
Catch a Falling Star 
Black Panther
I have been a comic book lover for practically all of my life. In childhood in the 1960’s I became a Black Panther fan in the barbershop in Rowan, Iowa. While waiting for the inevitable butch haircut which I didn’t actually want, I picked up the issue of the Avengers comic book that featured the original encounter with the Vision. And at that point, the Panther was already a member of the Avengers, battling against the threat of Ultron. He had previously entered the Marvel Comics world in an issue of the Fantastic Four which I had never read, and I hadn’t ever encountered the character in my comic book reading before that barbershop reading session. I spent an hour waiting for farmer haircuts reading and rereading that comic book.
I was thrilled to have Marvel make a movie about one of my all-time favorite Avengers. I would’ve loved the movie even if Wesley Snipes had succeeded in making it in the 1990’s. I was predestined, as the uncritical critic, to love this movie no matter what.
But then they made a movie that was so far beyond my expectations that I couldn’t help but fall in love with the hero all over again. It was simply the best movie Marvel has made so far in the Super Hero genre. I know I said this about other movies they have made, but they keep doing better and better. It was the best example of character development and powerful story-telling that they have done so far.
The villain Killmonger is the most finely developed villain Marvel has created to date. The portrayal was sensitive, sympathetic, and totally gut-twisting while you grudgingly had to condemn the villain because he was obviously threatening to destroy everything that was good as a reaction to the wrong that was done to him.
Of course, you expect a total love-gush of a movie review from an uncritical movie critic like me. I don’t review movies I didn’t love. But there are definitely people out there who don’t like this movie (in spite of a 100% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes). Some point out that the government of Wakanda has no banks or colleges or research centers (other than the king’s sister’s own) to support the science they are supposedly using. The science is portrayed as being just as miraculous and magical as that in Dr. Strange. Some rather wrong-headed people have criticized the movie for being racially charged and political. But how is an overwhelmingly black cast and production racially charged if both heroes and villains in the story are the same race? Surely Bilbo Baggins and Gollum don’t turn the tide against this movie. Not only are they in the minority, but they are balanced. One good, one evil. So I am willing to summarily dismiss any objections others have to this wonderful movie. I don’t even need to think about that.
I saw the Black Panther movie this weekend. I loved it. I knew I would since the moment they first announced they would make it. Now I can’t wait for the next one.
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