Of Village Pride, Drag Queens, a Lake Erie Medium, and Folklore
On Saturday Wortley Village held its second-ever Pride event. We missed the first one, last year. It was marred by a protester who became aggressive. An old friend was at ground zero of that, with her toddler son.
We decided to go this year, have breakfast in one of my old haunts and then tour the Green. They have a Village Green that hosts a range of events throughout the year. The old Normal School occupies the land next to it, a High Victorian edifice worthy of Disneyland or Scooby-Doo. Its main tower, with its open belfry, can be seen from a considerable distance. It has been, over the years, a Junior High and a head office for the Board of Education. It now serves as the local YMCA.
On the patio of the Roadhouse near the Green, a real local spot (I know from having been, for a few years, a real local, back before the Roadhouse had a patio), we brunched. A large group had arrived before us and pushed their tables together. They were in their 60s and 70s, and resembled an ageing version of the Last Supper. From what we could glean they were of varying opinions about the queering of the Green that day. One man looked disgruntled every time a rainbow walked by. But then there was the matter of the pride flag that had been raised at a local high school on June 1. A group of students tore it down with malicious glee and threw it in the garbage. The video was posted on Tik Tok. They’d been able to reach it because one day it flew at half-mast, to commemorate the killing two years ago of a Muslim family in what appears to be a directed, hate-motivated crime that made international news (the driver’s trial starts shortly). Some of the kids in the video belong to a group who have faced discrimination. And so they take advantage of a severe hate crime to commit a lesser one. Someone at the big table raised the flag incident while we waited for our breakfast.
"Well now," said the one man. "That's destruction of property. I can't abide that." Whatever he might feel about the queer communities, it strikes me they might do okay with that guy.
We toured the Green for about an hour, while the crowd was still small. We spoke briefly with a local poet. Pre-pandemic, she ran a monthly reading night at the Music Club that often drew bigger crowds than the live bands. She’s out of the writing business for now; she and her partner have two children, one still a babe-in-arms. From the stage, a rotating selection of performers sang show tunes, played the ukulele, and rocked out. That afternoon, after we'd left, one of them would read a children’s book while resplendent in a fairy-tale-princess dress. That made the event a Drag Story Time, currently the target in a culture war.*
The week before, persons unknown had circulated fake flyers. The flyers promoted the Drag Queen Reading, listing one price to sit on a Drag Queen's lap and another for a lap dance. The committee did their best to let people know these were a harmful hoax.
The protestors stood in one corner of the Green, on the street side of some trees, and could barely be heard, certainly not discernibly. The occasional horn-honking might have been passing cars. The angry woman with the megaphone was unintelligible at any reasonable distance, which most reasonable people would keep. One man held a sign with a Trans flag, indicating that, when one sees that flag, one should call the police. I had to imagine the police have better things to do. Unfortunately, they did that day. The group numbered about a half-dozen when we left. That number doubled over the course of the afternoon, leading to an altercation that the police had to separate.
Whether the protestors had read and believed** the libelous flyers remains unknown; certainly, much in global politics right now emboldens false views and misleading narratives. These owe much to dusty old damaging frauds. QAnon borrows, as others have before it, from the Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion. Their belief that Teh Elite extract endocrine from children may owe much to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it pretty blatantly revisits the vile folklore of Blood Libel. This is United States calling. Are we reaching you?
The assembled protestors fell far short of the sixty people they claimed would turn up. Perhaps the other fifty people, like the police, had better things to do.
Appropriate to these times, my current projects involve folklore. A Confusion of Gnus, currently before a publisher, has some dealings with the darker side of folkloric beliefs. My collaboration currently in progress concerns– well, mostly– the folkloric lighter side, lesser-known cryptids and small-town mysteries, tales to tell 'round a campfire, if campfires are an option in this dry, blazing era.
Belief and storytelling.
On Sunday we headed out to Port Stanley. We'd been invited to turn up at another Victorian edifice, a largish house that now functions as a writer and artists retreat. We had not signed up for any programs. The woman running it had a few clients staying there that weekend, and she invited some local colour to participate in a discussion Sunday.
The hostess has also been researching the history of the house and its occupants. The fact had been covered in the Spring issue of the local periodical.
One of the guests passed on contributing much. She had a small injury on her head, the result of an odd and, she said, unexplained nocturnal collision with the four-poster bed in which she'd slept. As the session was nearing a close, informed us that she felt a "download".” I initially thought she meant inspiration but, no, she claims to be a medium and she had received a message that she needed to share. Her injury in the night and her sense of a presence now had a name. There were sisters who lived in the house. One of them died young. The girl's name, she said, was "Charlotte."
Our hostess’s mouth dropped to an o. Yes, she said, looking through her notes. The girl who had died young in the 1800s was named Charlotte. But she had not mentioned that part of the family history to anyone or, at least, not named Charlotte. There it is in her notes, though. Charlotte.
I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I find it unlikely she has actual powers. Occam's Razor, right? The name Charlotte was in the hostess's research notes, and can be discovered with a little research in any case. How far fetched, then, that she had encountered the name Charlotte and, let us say, charitably, forgot where she'd heard it? They had already established they'd been drinking and talking Saturday night-- one woman appeared to be hung over.
My wife raised a less charitable possibility, once we were in our car. A performer herself, a singer, she said that the "downloading" and its backstory felt rehearsed. The report on our hostess's research had been out for a month. People who can afford to attend an artist/writer retreat have at least some disposable income. She smelled a charlatan, and even identified her possible mark.
Other possibilities exist, of course. We are only speculating. It all feels rather Agatha Christie, and would make a good story if it hadn't been told so many times before.
*Amusing footnote: in Parkhill, also a short drive away, a group of female bikers recently stepped in to protect a Drag Queen from protestors.
**Some people have claimed that one of the protestors, also involved in the Parkhill incident, created the flyers. That is possible, but I have not seen evidence. The individual in question is a proverbial piece of work, a frequent protestor who focuses on drag queens. Meanwhile, he has faced a number of charges related to sex offences, and as of this update was involved in a bizarre incident of intimidation. He claims his actions in that case were taken out of context, but that incident and others that led to it have resulted in criminal charges.