Rico's rants: May for the day

04 May 2012

May for the day

The LawDog has this about May Day:

In the Wheel of the Year, 1 May is fairly important.
To some, it is Beltane, when the bonfires should be lit on hilltops to drive away the remnants of Winter, to welcome Summer and to recharge the hearth-fires.
To others, it is Walpurgis Nacht, a time to have one rollicking party around a bonfire: dancing, drinking, laughing, doing the other inevitable stuff what happens when you combine drink, dancing, mixed company, and a bloody huge fire.
In Finland and Sweden, they do the same (only more partying) and they call their fire-festivals Vappu and Valborg.
1 May is also a fertility festival, involving picnics, (ahem) Maypoles and the dancing around same (nudge nudge wink wink), general dancing, placing of roses by maidens, choosing and crowning a May Queen, Morris dancing, and for Catholics out there, the acknowledgement of Mary as the Queen of Heaven and the Mother of God, usually involving adorning an image of Mary with flowers.
Since most of the homelands of our ancestors celebrate 1 May with fire, flowers, fire, dancing, fire, drinking, fire, badly-camouflaged fertility rites, and fire, of course the stodgy, Puritan United States has Loyalty Day.
Public Law 85-529, found in Title 36, Chapter 1, paragraph 115, penned by the Congress of the United States on 18 July 1958; and signed into law by President Eisenhower, who then issued the first proclamation designating 1 May 1959 as the first Loyalty Day.
Every sitting President since that day, following the mandate of Public law 85-529, has, on each year, proclaimed 1 May to be Loyalty Day.
Personally, I think Loyalty Day should follow in the footsteps of our ancestors and involve fire. A Big Fire. A Big Fire in front of various State and Federal Capitals, and involving the ceremonial burning of effigies. Dancing and flowers mandatory; drinking and partying encouraged; and fertility rites optional.
To my mind I'm thinking that watching papier maiche versions of themselves burned at the stake every year would go a nice way towards reminding various political critters of where their loyalties better damn-well stay.
But that's just me.

Lest anyone think that the NRA Convention was all roses and kittens, there were a couple of flies in the ointment.
On Saturday, Thirdpower from Days of Our Trailers casually made mention of a planned protest. "Hullo," sez I, "Protest?" Turns out that some anti-gun types had purchased a Permit to Protest for 1300 hours. I trundled out just prior to the designated time: Nada. Nuffin'.
Bloody hippies. No discipline.
On more serious matters I had run into Old NFO in the press room, where he was monumentally cheesed off at El Paso Saddlery for fielding a couple of reps whose Give-A-Damn engine was apparently stuck in neutral.
I have an El Paso Saddlery "Street Combat" holster which I am fond of, so as soon as I could I popped over to El Paso Saddlery's booth where, I am sorry to report, Old NFO was correct. I'm going to guess that the NRA Convention was an onerous burden to those folks -- but that's just a guess, since I couldn't get anyone to talk to me.
Oh, well. If El Paso Saddlery doesn't want anyone's business, I'm sure that Mike or Dennis will be happy to pick up the slack.
One of the things that I kept noticing, and that everyone commented upon, was how polite everyone was at the NRA Convention. As crowded as the convention floor was, it was inevitable that folks were bumping into each other, stepping on toes and spoiling camera shots. Each interaction of this sort that I witnessed was marked by courtesy on the part of both parties. I was quite refreshing to hear all of the "Yes, sir", "No, Ma'am", "Please", "Thank You", and "You're welcome" that drifted around the convention center.
Just out of curiosity, and because the lads and lasses in the service industry have all the good dirt and juicy gossip, I asked some of the behind-the-scenes folks how this convention stacked up compared to others they'd worked. A janitor, who had worked, "a lot of these things" thought about my question for a moment, then replied: "You know what? Ain't nobody puked in a corner, shit in a bottle and left it in a corner, or done anything else nasty in a corner for me to find. In my book, that's a good one."
Mental note: In future, non-NRA conventions, stay away from the corners.
The America's Centre was crawling in security, both security officers and St. Louis PD. While I couldn't get a SLPD officer to say anything other than a courteous "No comment", I did get one security officer to talk to me, off the record. According to this security officer, it's not unusual for tempers to flare at conventions. The officer explained that too many people in a small area, long delays and lines for scheduled events, and just plain "People being people away from home" results in the occasional screaming fit, or drama, and that minor vandalism, intoxication issues, and "strangers getting a hook-up in the bathrooms" and building maintenance areas were a constant at conventions.
He then went on to state that, as of Saturday afternoon, the NRA Convention had been a "nice, quiet, boring" job. And he seemed fairly happy about it.
The last person I talked to was one of the people who stocked the snacks and drinks in the Media Room. When asked, this person smiled gently and remarked that everyone he had met so far had been, "Happy and laid-back." I remarked that surely there had been a complaint or two, and the response was: "Nah. Too busy talking and laughing."
I would say that I'm surprised, but I'm not.
Robert Heinlein is often quoted as saying: "An armed society is a polite society."
In my experience, nowhere has this been as apparent as this convention. Everyone, from the NRA Media staff to 99% of the vendors to the people wandering the aisles, has been as courteous and accommodating as they can be.
Well, for the most part. Several bloggers, friends both old and new, have taken over a table in the corner of the Media Room as base camp for our perambulations throughout the convention, and as I sit here, I can look over to the long table occupied by traditional media, and the disdain of not only the traditional media, but the traditional gun media, for us lowly, plebian bloggers is palpable.
I'm not sure why. Not sure I care why, to tell the truth.
However, this disdain does not extend to the vendors. There is no readily-accessible second-level OP that would allow me to take a panoramic picture of the convention floor, so I looked around and the Lone Wolf display had a second story that the Lone Wolf folks were using as an office.
So, I wandered up and asked if I could climb up to the top and use it to take a picture. They gave my Media pass a bit of the old hairy eye-ball, until I mentioned that I was "just" a blogger. Next thing I know, I'm given a friendly and cheerful escort to the roof and encouraged to take what pictures I wanted.
To my surprise, this wasn't unusual. I wanted to talk to FN about both their new FN-FNS pistol and the 303P Less-Lethal pistol. When they saw the Media pass, they asked which outlet I was with as they steered me towards their Media/PR expert. When I told them I was a blogger, we stopped, they asked if I was "Going to blog this?" and when I answered yes, I got to talk to the engineers, the manager and the training gentleman.
Wow.
Does anyone else find it a bit incongruous that there's a note at the bottom of the NRA Annual Meeting page that states: "The city of St. Louis prohibits the carrying of firearms at the America's Center Convention Complex".
Not "prohibits the carrying of concealed firearms", or "prohibits the unlawful carrying of firearms", just "carrying firearms verboten". At a meeting of the National Rifle Association. At a convention center named "America's Center Convention Complex".
So far to go.