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Every day when I return from the barn, driving south back to Richmond, I pass a small house on a hill. No matter what time of day I pass the house, there is a thin, deeply tanned man standing outside in the yard, in exactly the same spot. He is usually, but not always, smoking. He monitors the road intently, and when I pass, he slowly turns his head to watch my car pass.

*****

At the grocery store the other day, a man appeared in the lot carrying an enormous cross. The man was stout, older, with a long gray beard. His clothes seemed to be fashioned from old grain sacks. He carried the cross as though he were Jesus. However, on the bottom of the cross, a small wheel with a rubber tire supported the weight of the whole contraption. The man slowly rolled his cross through the grocery store parking lot, gravely waving at passersby.

*****

I bought socks this week. A lot of socks. The salesclerk who sold me the socks was in a chatty mood and told me about a man who had come in earlier in the day to buy underwear. A bra, apparently. The salesclerk said to him, “What size does she wear?” The man paused, as though searching for the answer, then said: “It’s for me.” Without missing a beat, the sales clerk said: “Okay. What size do you wear?” I can’t remember the answer, but I do remember the sales clerk saying: “He had really good taste, bought the whole outfit: bra, garter, lace tap pants.” And then she shrugged and said: “He told me he’d been kicked out of a couple of other stores. I don’t care what he buys. He’s happy. I’m happy.”

As I write this (9:20 a.m.) Owen, in the back yard, has alerted me that there is more hoopla currently brewing at Richmond High. The Bark-a-Tron is in full alert! Yesterday, the BAT scooped the newspaper and the radio with the first reports of RHS protests. BAT subscribers knew first of the students and adults milling about in the rain, eager to make their statements about the dress code drama unfolding. Later reports would follow from the radio and newspaper outlets in town.

This, from the local newspaper, is a particularly telling comment:

Tenth-grader Karlee Cochran said she was suspended Wednesday, but instructed not to return to school until Friday. She said she wore a low-cut solid-colored white T-shirt, but wore a tank top over it that apparently didn’t pass the dress code.
She stood outside the school, beginning at 7 a.m., to participate in the protests.
“It was kind of exciting,” Cochran said about the attention the protest had received from local and regional media outlets. “Nothing ever happens in this town and this was big excitement.”

Indeed. Big excitement. And there will be more today. Owen, Ace BAT Reporter, will have a full report later.

*******

And, Baxter, Editor-in-chief of the Editorial Bureau, has made his statement by pooping in the living room.

Richmond Community Schools, in its inimitable wisdom, has decreed a dress code this year for all its students. Yesterday, on the first day of classes, 169 high school students were suspended for not adhering to the fairly strict dress code. Today, just before school began on day two, a noisy protest took place in front of the high school (which is also next door to the administration building). Lots of angry kids, parents, and more kids. The pictures tell the best story. As did the noise we could hear on my street, way across the Whitewater River gorge, and several blocks beyond that.

It all seems a rather ridiculous distraction from education, no? Yes. Yes, it does, all of it: the restrictive code itself which disallows stripes and flowers, pictures and words, logos and emblems of any kind; the innumerable violations caught by teachers, who are probably expressing anger at the administration that created the code as much, if not more than, a loyal sense of duty; the hepped up anger of the students and parents out protesting this morning in the rain, showing more enthusiasm today for the “right” to wear clothing of choice than any other issue in recent memory related to our sadsack public school system in Richmond, Indiana.

Yes. It’s much ado about not much at all. Plain clothes will not keep children from being distracted, enable teachers to teach better, lift our struggling city out of the muck that it wallows in. Nor will re-instating the ability to wear clothes that are not restricted by edict, apparently enable self-expression, and may or may not cause envy, horror, outrage, or sartorial disdain.

What will enable our children to learn, our teachers to teach, our families to prosper, our city to stand up that much taller?

Good question.

Today, seven things that undo a funk:

1. My brother is out of the hospital, and (I hope) is finding ways to de-stress his life and be healthy.
2. Baxter is not going to a new home after all, and I am very relieved the little goofball will be staying here.
3. Owen is trying to teach Baxter how to chase squirrels. Baxter thinks Owen is a little nutty. But they are getting along, and the cats are resigned to life with dogs.
4. It’s not as humid. My basement is drying out. The sun is shining.
5. I am still behind in the work that needs to be done for the Fall semester, but incrementally making headway.
6. The ten pounds (no longer 12!) that I’ve been trying to lose is sort of, kind of, starting to budge.
7. and: Kurt, Oliver, Friday.

Which makes nine things, total. So there you are.