The Sojourner's Rainbow

Guest post from our old friend, the long missing Elueutheros.  Enjoy!


Ben Kingsley's Gandhi opens with the placid Gandhi sitting in a railroad parlor car when the door opens and a stiff British gentleman glances at Gandhi wide eyed, nods a curt acknowledgment, mumbles a leave and closes the door. Moments later he returns with the conductor demanding to know why there is a “black” man in first class. Gandhi shows the conductor his first class ticket but is none the less forcibly conducted to the third class section reserved for “his kind.”

The outrage! “Why,” says the cosmopolitan modern, “if I'd been there I'd have given that conductor a piece of my mind!” I hear this sort of thing often from our sojourners here in our mountains who are quick to tell us all that the one thing they will not tolerate is intolerant people.

Ah …. well if you don't tolerate them, aren't you ..?... Never mind, that's a topic for another day.

Back to this bullying of the common folk by the privileged. It's so much like the opening of every telling of the story of Robin Hood. The poor peasant forced to hunt deer in order to feed his impoverished family only to be caught by the prince's foresters and face some horrible punishment for the audacity of hunting the prince's deer. And how can you tell which are the prince's deer? Why, they all are! Only the prince gets to hunt deer. If you are just a peasant, no matter how hungry you are, you don't get to hunt deer, well, just because you are a peasant and not a prince. The deer are mine, you don't get any.

The Cosmopolitan Sojourner would never let that pass, would she? No sir, she'd tell that prince what for. I mean the very intolerance! It upsets the Sojourner so much that she often take solace by transporting her horses to the mountains and riding the trails there. The peace, the tranquility, the …. what's this!? Who are all these dirty hippies camped along MY trail! Someone ought to clear them out!

Why?

Well, they are destroying the environment, I just bet there's trash all over the place and they are doing unnatural things in the streams and all.

But they've been having these gatherings for 40 years and have a solid reputation for leaving an area better cared for, better cleaned, and better restored than when they came.

I don't care, they shouldn't be allowed to be here.

The forest belongs to everyone and they have a Constitutional right to be there.

Constitution schmostitution!   

(No, they are not even very good with the rhyming thing.)  

It doesn't matter. If you don't have enough money to own a horse and the truck and trailer to haul it in, you shouldn't be here in MY forest. After all I paid all this money with the understanding that there would be no “blacks” ….eh, I mean hippies, I mean anyone who doesn't have a lot of money, here in my parlor car … eh I mean forest. So get those peasants …. eh, hippies.... out of here, off with their heads if that's what it takes. God! You see why I get so upset and need this forest for my exclusive use.

Sometimes it's more than a Sojourner can ….... tolerate.

Now the racetrack, that was built with MONEY, that's ok.  MONEY is what makes me more powerful than you and these people live without MONEY, or without very much of it anyway (and that's probably WELFARE money, which, if you work for me you will qualify for but don't you dare call that a subsidy, another form of welfare!), and they are nice to each other without reference to money and, oh my, I'm about to faint now.