Meandering diary tonight so stick with me...
Son went on a field trip today and saw a play. Johnny Appleseed VS. Paul Bunyan. Somehow I imagined it was a play where the two duke it out to see who's the biggest legend. But as it turns out, Paul Bunyan was the villain, and Johnny Appleseed was the Hero.
Cuz, Paul Bunyan cut down trees.
Get it? It was the guy working as a lumberjack that was the villain. Not the company doing it.
Now I'm as tree hugging as the next guy, and I've written a little about Michigan's past deforestation. I feel I've earned my green street cred. But somehow a portrayal of Paul Bunyan as a villain seems a bit on the...what's the word...silly side to me.
Say what you will about the origins of the Paul Bunyan stories, but in the end Paul Bunyan was a depiction of a massive and epic working class hero.
He worked with his hands and labored alongside other working men to create this nation, he carved out the Grand Canyon, he built Mount Hood, and he dug the Great Lakes as a watering trough for Babe...his massive blue ox.
I mean...do we even HAVE stories like that coming out anymore? Epic working class people depicted as defining forces in American history? Where are our Rosie the Riveters, our John Henries and our Paul Bunyans and Pecos Bills? Where are the stories of the working class heros?
They're villains now. Or worse...they're being erased from history by people like Main's governor Paul Lepage who recently removed an artistic murals depicting working class struggles and victories and REAL working class heroes...removed it from the State Capitol building.
Reuters Life!) - Waves of criticism have followed the removal of a mural depicting workers' history in Maine, including the iconic "Rosie the Riveter," from government offices in the state capital Augusta.
Governor Paul LePage, a Republican, has said through spokesmen that he received complaints about the artwork in the Department of Labor offices from business owners because it was too pro-labor.
Where are the depictions of the massive lumberjacks and cattle hands that built our world as workers, not as powerful men of means in high towers, but as people who worked with their hands?
They're villains now.
Greedy.
Destructive.
Foolish.
Don't get me wrong...Paul Bunyan couldn't have faced a more worthy opponent, Johhny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed, famous for dispersing apple trees as a way to cheaply produce apple jack. I mean, who could possibly go up against the Drunken Master and expect to win? Except maybe Paul Bunyan.