Republican state legislators are mad at state Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) because he declined to lead them in the Pledge of Allegiance last week. I see where Jones is coming from on this. If you stand in a group of dishonorable people who are all about to lie their socks off and invoke God while doing it, you don’t go along with it. You don’t give your tacit approval to people lying to God by leading them in the lie. We’re supposed to believe that Tennessee Republicans are all for the republic?
Y’all, Gov. Bill Lee went to Texas to thumb his nose at the republic. The state legislature’s rules for who can visit the Capitol and what they can do there are like the rules of Calvinball, except people with guns enforce them. Cutting people off from government with arbitrary unstated rules isn’t granting them liberty or justice. Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) is out here trying to undermine the power of the judiciary to act as a co-equal part of the state government. And Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) — who, let me remind you, tried to pull down the pants of another adult he was mad at — is all, “If you do not respect our nation, its flag, and all of those who have sacrificed for them, then you should not hold public office.”
No shit. Tell that to Gov. Lee, who went to Texas to disrespect our nation. He’ll let Tennesseans die of COVID. He’ll do nothing to ensure that no one else is killed by guns like his friend was. But by God, he will be there to ensure that no one makes unauthorized entry into the United States through a park in Texas. What a leader.
That being said, do you know who Sally Wells is? Exactly. The spotlight slid right off her and onto legislative squabbling instead. Jones invited Wells, a Choctaw artist from West Tennessee, to open the legislative day with a prayer. She was even honored as Chaplain of the Day. One of Wells’ primary passions is teaching young people traditional Choctaw beadwork, for which she earned one of the Tennessee Folklife Heritage Awards in 2019. The press release the state put out about it is full of her other accomplishments.
I’ve done some beadwork in the past, and I follow Kate Madeira on Instagram, so I am somewhat qualified to tell you that shit is hard. I made this necklace from green beads and barbed wire. (I wear it when I want to subtly indicate that I dislike someone I will be spending time with and I hope their interactions with me are painful.) Things I failed at: getting the beads evenly spaced, getting the barbed wire to lay how I wanted it, keeping the clasp on the necklace. I also made a blue necklace for my mom. It lasted about a week and then came apart all over the inside of her car. And please note that these are both just variations on the kind of necklace you might make in kindergarten — put the bead on the string, put another bead on the string. In theory, they seem impossible to screw up. In practice? You’re looking at two strings of screw-ups.
Sally Wells is doing just banana-pants levels of intricate beading. In the picture accompanying this article in the Daily Journal about her residency at the Discovery Center in Murfreesboro, you can get a pretty good look at what she’s capable of. That red necklace/collar in the lower left corner is blowing my mind. I think my fingers just spontaneously sprouted tiny holes in them in anticipation of all the times I’d stab myself with a needle trying and failing to do that.
State leaders return to Nashville to consider laws related to abortion, education and the ongoing culture wars
And, like, the part that makes me a little teary-eyed to think about it is that she has these skills that she learned from her own mother, going back generations, and she can make this jewelry that, if fairly priced, none of us would be able to afford. She could just hoard that knowledge and let it benefit only herself. That would be her right. But every news article and press release I found on Sally Wells, all the YouTube videos I watched, they all focus on how she is working to teach her skills to others.
Frankly, this is exactly the kind of thing I would love for our state legislature to take to heart. Imagine what it would be like if lawmakers saw their work as empowering people in the state to learn new skills and to embrace wisdom.
Maybe this is just me being cynical, but I suspect that fighting about the Pledge of Allegiance is a lot less challenging to people’s concept of self than contemplating the message by example Chaplain Wells brought into the state Capitol. So it’s not surprising, I guess, that this is what we got. But it is a shame.
