Heartly

One of the grand kids left her stuffed toy dog Heartly here after a visit...right outside the back door in a little toy shopping cart that she uses to push it around in. Traveling anywhere with her and her sister requires her mother to be part moving van operator and hoarder.

The grand daughter is concerned about Heartly's welfare and now three days into its exile the angst continues in spite of repeated assurances that all is OK we keep Heartly well fed and watered - even taking it out so it can pee....I mean what more can we do.

I watched Mitt Romney announce for the presidency the other day and his scene for some reason resonates with the stuffed toy dog above.  No. I'm not calling Mitt a stuffed toy dog (tempting as it might be) although I did grow up in Michigan where Mitt's dad, George, was Governor and let me tell you that he was no great lake...more a shallow puddle but he was also an automobile exec and you know what ilk that is.  I also ask everyone to beware any fellow who goes to great lengths to display silver fox hair (see Edwards, J.R.) and uses the American flag as a constant backdrop.

No, I think about Mitt and the stuffed dog because of the insecurity issue.  Abby, the grand daughter in question is a gorgeous kid with great parents who have taught her or are teaching her to be responsible for things - pets (stuffed or not) being one of them. In a kid's eye, they are the lesser among and in their lives - the only spirits in their universe for whom they are responsible.  Abby knows that these lesser beings need food and water and a place to sleep.  As a population we can see the poor folks in Joplin or Tuscaloosa need those things and in venues everywhere in the world, through war and disaster, people - and not necessarily the lesser among us - need food and water and a roof over their head.

Mitt and his fellow character actors don't seem to see it that way. They believe in some equally magic world where when folks are faced with being without food and water and a roof over their heads that the experience will make them better for it...just tough it out....starving will make you stronger.  That is an extreme painting with a broad brush but it seems to me the silver spoon folks often take that road - not for nothing that they, as the motto goes, "made their money the old fashion way - by parlaying the family fortune into even more money".  Abby cares more about her stuffed dog than the Mitts of this world seem to care about real people.

What is worse is that there seems to be a whole lot of humanity missing in some of them because their world rests in some sort of fear driven ethos. They are afraid for the stuffed dog in that if we feed it and water it, let it sleep at the foot of the bed and take it out to pee that it won't be beholden to the owner but to us.  The Mitts of the world are sure that they will become dependent on us and will thus lack the motivation to want to be that sturdy, "learn from hardships", stuffed dog that will run back to them.  Abby is concerned about welfare. Mitt is concerned about being beholden and is trying to make us all afraid of compassion.... something for which there is no room in his little toy shopping cart.

A stuffed dog knows none of this.  It has its own issues whatever those may be. It may know, if it has a spirit and I suspect Heartly has one, that a little girl misses it and wants to carry it around, talk to it and care for it while there lurks a slightly darker side who, if Heartly starts to lose its stuffing, would scold the little girl for comforting it and at the first opportunity cast it aside and buy another.