I went to a rain barrel making workshop this morning and I got this super awesome rain barrel made for us to use here at Monkey Central. The event was organized by my friend and neighbor Shameless Domestic Hussy and it was held at the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethton, which is pastored by my friend,the man most Christian ministers love to hate, John Shuck.
My friend and partner in protesting, Snad, picked me up Tuesday afternoon and we hit our target area, one of the busiest intersections in town. 
The weather was perfect and about 3o some other health care reform supporters showed up and we waved and held up our signs for all the folks to see for about two hours. Besides Snad, Shuck, and myself, there were a bunch of other great folks who stuck their necks out to show the area that there are indeed people who want health care reform and who support everything from Medicare for all to the public option to single payer national health insurance for all. Some of these fine folks got their picture on the website of the local conservative daily paper:
And this gal who works for this organization was there was well:
And these folks were with the local media or the Department of Homeland Security, or maybe both, were there:
Also in attendance was the blogger Southern Female Lawyer, who is not only a lawyer with liberal political leanings, she's also a damn fine cook and singer as well. It turns out Snad knows her and she pointed her out to me. After getting the courage up to go introduce myself to her I began to cross the busy street only to see her and her son walking towards their car. Curse my bad timing! However I did get a chance to shout at her as she sat in traffic, "I'm Dr. Monkey!" I'm pretty sure she flinched and threw a protective arm around her young son, but when she saw how human I looked she waved and said something that I couldn't make out. One day perhaps our paths will cross again and I'll be able to introduce myself properly, and to perhaps beg her to cook something for me. 
Until last Friday that is.
2) While I disagree with everything she says, I do not hate her nor do I wish that she suffer any injury or a slow painful death. I don't want to shut her up. I've grown fond of the degree of free speech we still have in this country so I'll gladly let her have her say, just so long as I get to do the same. I'm not about shutting anyone up, even Ann, I'm all about getting more voices into the mix.
So, my answer to your question John is, my favorite Ann Coulter fantasy would be that she would wake up today and have a civil tone to her rhetoric. In my fantasy she tones down her outrageous statements that she makes just to get attention and she begins to have more intelligent cogent points to back up her arguments. Then as other pundits notice how much nicer, though not any different politically, she has become, they all start to become nicer too and as a result our national political debate stops being so shrill and divisive and it starts to bring people together.
This above all: to thine own Dr. Monkey be true.
Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?
Reverend John is one of the few good guys we know in religious circles and we have shopped at the 10,000 Villages store in Asheville, NC many times so it was a no brainer for us to ride over and drop in on the sale. Unfortunately for us the good Reverend was nowhere in sight and neither were monkey pals Bobby, Donna, and Susie, but somehow we managed to contain our sadness and we took in all the sale had to offer.
We saw items like this cool cat purse and wooden snakes. Oddly enough no one wanted to handle the snakes so I picked one up and I began speaking in tongues. Well, not really, I didn't speak in tongues but I did pick one up and threaten to speak in tongues, but since Sparky told me I'd be walking back to Johnson City if I did, I decided not to.
We dug these toys made in Kenya but since we already have a wire dude on a wire bicycle that we bought from 10,000 Villages in Asheville years ago we didn't buy one of these.
There were many hand carved items for sale, like these turtles. However all the items were not benign, it turns out that First Pres. may be on the wrong side of the war on Christmas! You want further proof? Check this out:
Egads! How unseemly! A "Christian" church selling Christmas cards without the word "Christ" on them! Alert the baby Jesus, call FOX, get Bill O'Reilly down here STAT!
As we looked around at the rest of the items for sale I invented a new game. I call it "Basket or Hat?" The way we play is I show you a picture and you tell me if the object is a basket or a hat. Ready? Good! Here we go:
Basket or hat?
Basket or hat?
Basket or hat?
Ok, I admit that my game sucks, but trust me if Sparky had consented to my numerous pleas to put a basket on her head and wear it like a hat this game would have a lot more fun. Or if she had taken my picture wearing a basket as a hat then the fun would have never stopped!
We ended up buying some neat stuff, mostly Christmas decorations and ornaments, and we're glad we went. Maybe one day we might actually go to John's church on a Sunday and attend services, but don't hold your breath kids. It does my heart good to see that someone like John is the pastor at such a lovely church and I hope he continues his progressive ministry there for many years to come.
For the better part of the next four hours we wandered around in the many antique shops of downtown Elizabethton and in one of those shops I purchased this:
It's a Good Housekeeping magazine from 1955. I paid $1.37 for it. I'll be scanning in various articles and ads very soon and I'll share them with you here and on my other blog. I also saw this great item in one of those shops:
However I did not purchase them.
I did come across a store downtown that I know I'll be spending more time at very soon. It's a kitschy pop culture shop called "TV Memories." It sells all kinds of crazy old action figures, magazines, record albums, cereal boxes, and other bits of pop culture ephemera from the late 60's through today. It's my kind of shop but Sparky could barely stand to be in there for very long so I'll be going back soon to see the rest of their magical offerings. I'm not sure but I think I may want some of my ashes spread there after I get cremated.
...you can go read what Rev. John Shuck had to say at our anti war march and rally this past Staurday here. The batteries in my camera ran down before I could get a good photo of John speaking. If you look at the above picture, that's him on the far right, sorry to have put you on the far right John, please forgive me, dressed in blue with his arm up. I have no idea what he was doing with his arm up maybe you can ask him in the comments page on his blog. Go on, ask, he won't bite, he's not that kind of Christian.
