Lots To Talk About

I've got lots to talk about today, so bear with me, OK?  

First of all, let me catch you up on my knitting progress.  I didn't really do much over the weekend but knit, mainly because I'm in the middle of a plantar fasciitis flare up.  It started Friday at work, and though I looked all over the house when I got home, I could not find my arch supports anywhere.  By yesterday afternoon, I was in so much pain, I was seriously wondering how I'd even make it through work today. 

Finally, right as I was crawling into bed last night, I remembered that I had some of that sticky, stretchy bandage stuff I'd bought years ago.  This morning, I wrapped my foot with it, and oh, my.  Even that little bit of support made such a difference.  Within just a few hours, my foot felt so much better.  Oh, it's still a bit sore...OK, a lot sore... but the inflammation type pain is much less.  Now it just feels like a bad bruise.  

After work, I had to run into town to pay the bills I forgot to pay Friday, because I forgot to bring them with me Friday, because apparently I forgot it was Friday.  While I was in town, I ran by the store and bought some new arch supports.  And a rotisserie chicken.  Which has absolutely nothing to do with my plantar fasciitis.  I just wanted one. 

All that to say, I didn't do much this weekend other than knit.  And what did I knit?  I finally finished this hat.

This one is a watch cap, usually worn with the brim turned up.  

I like the way this one turned out.  I think next time I'll knit the beanie pattern with this yarn.  

Once I'd finished, I knit a couple of rounds on the orange hat, then cast on another Calorimetry. 

This is some of the Red Heart I bought Friday.  The colorway is Wildflower.   I used a size 9 needle, and the finished product still ended up being much shorter than the pattern calls for.  Even so, it felt huge on my head.  

This morning, another one of my coworkers slipped me a few dollars and told me to buy myself some more yarn.  I told her it wasn't necessary, but I thanked her anyway.  I'm going to have to wait, though, because our local Walmart hardly has any yarn in stock right now.  I might order me some size 8 interchangeable tips from Knit Picks. I thought I had some, but can't find them anywhere.  They're probably in a WIP somewhere...

The other thing I wanted to talk about today is this.  Back in 2018, my small town in Mississippi voted to raise taxes on themselves to build a fourth sports complex here.  Because apparently, three wasn't enough.  I even blogged about it:  

Congratulations!

Congratulations, Grenada!

You just voted to raise taxes on yourself to build a new sports complex.  Because I guess the one...

Sports Complex on Jackson Ave. Extension

two...

Sports Complex on Jasper Neely Dr.

three...

Sports Complex at Grenada Lake (This one has tennis and basketball courts as well)

sports complexes in this town with a population of only 13,000 just aren't enough for you.  So, go ahead!  Play ball!

After the game, you can drive home

dodging the potholes in our crumbling infrastructure,

skirting the garbage piled at the end of your driveway, which may or may not get picked up on time -- or at all,

and bathe your kid in the brown water that comes out of your tap,

(Actual photo of city water, taken from a Facebook page)

so you can put him to bed, because he needs a good night's sleep before you get him up in the morning to send him to a below average school,

from which he will eventually graduate and spend the rest of his life working at a low paying factory job, whereupon he will have a heart attack at age 50,

and die in the waiting room of our underfunded and understaffed hospital, which was recently given the only failing grade of all the hospitals in the state.

As the breath leaves his body, and the light fades from his eyes, I'm sure his last thoughts will be, "Boy, I'm glad my parents voted for that fourth sports complex, instead of caring about the things that really mattered."

Because, you know, I'd hate to live in a town that only has three.


*Images courtesy of Google Earth.

Now, back before this was even voted on, there was a lot of discussion about it in some of the Facebook groups, and I was one of the few who argued vehemently against this, even though I would not be allowed to vote on it because I live outside city limits.  The whole argument the pro sports complex side was making was that we needed to do away with having segregated little leagues and begin the healing process.  

OK, by way of explanation, the Little League isn't technically segregated.  It's just that there's a public league run by the city parks and rec department.  Anyone is welcome to join that league.  There is also a private league which is also open to anyone who wants to join, but it's much much more expensive.  Though it's not legally segregated, it's long held tradition -- from long before I moved here -- that black kids play in the public league and white kids play in the private league.  I didn't make these rules, nor do I agree with them.  Honestly, I'd never even heard of segregated little league until I moved here.   

So, yesterday I ran across a poll on the local paper's website which read:

Should local baseball/softball teams be allowed to use the new sports complex?  

What?  Isn't that what it was built for?  Apparently not, because now they're saying it's only intended for travel ball tournaments.  Fancy that.  We're being taxed for a sports complex our own kids won't even be able to use.  That's not the story they told us when we were pushing this thing on us.  We were led to believe it would be for our kids to use.  For our little league games.  That whole desegregating the leagues so we can heal the past thing, you know.  I'd even argued that we could desegregate the league and use the existing facilities, but was quickly shot down.  

"No!"  They said.  "We need a fresh start.  A new beginning, and for that we need a fresh, new sports complex."  And had I seen the old complexes?  The parking is terrible!  We need this to attract new industries to the area!  Which begs the question now, what will these new industries think when they realize their kids won't be able to even use the sports complex?  

Now the one guy who was pushing this -- to attract tourism dollars, he now says-- is claiming he never said any of that.  Even if he didn't actually say it, he was reading the posts and the comments and never, ever contradicted any of it.  He knew people were thinking this would be for our kids, and never disabused anyone of that notion.  He deliberately let people go on thinking this would be for us, for our kids.  

Now that it's all but built, he's saying that eventually, they hope the public Little League will be able to use it, but Grenada Youth will never have access to it.  The great irony in all of that is, back when we were still discussing it, the ones most passionate about getting it built were....the Grenada Youth League.  Now they're not even going to have access to the sports complex they fought so hard for and their tax dollars are doing the bulk of the financing of.  

I wish now I could go back into the group and find all those old messages and reply with just one phrase.  And that phrase would be....

Gotcha sucker!  

Heh, maybe I will....