Symbolic Freedom

Dancing Bears and monkey weddings are all about the news today. Terry Gross interviewing Witold Szabtowski about his Dancing Bears book in which he has compiled true stories of people nostalgic for life under tyranny; the premise being that freedom isn’t really what a lot of us can tolerate if we’ve been effectively socialized.

These Dancing bears who’d had the rings removed from their noses and were set free in an animal refuge, still stood on hind legs and danced whenever they encountered a human.

Next up, on my very long drive to reach the teaching hospital by eleven, I listened to a report of a monkey, once used for medical experiments who had unlatched himself, in the San Antonio airport. He too was on a trip akin to the released Bulgarian gypsy bears—a trip to Born Free Refuge, but he was still stalked, targeted and darted, as it was ascertained he was “dangerous when nervous,” so arrived at "freedom" properly sedated.

Democracy Now covers the royal wedding immediately after an update on the San Antonio School shooting (the monkey’s home state) in which Priya Gopal says she, “…thinks that there were important symbolic iconographic changes.” But, didn’t I hear one of them say there was a woman of the royals who on first meeting Ms. Markle wore a little black Sambo pin and was later required to offer an apology? And that the Queen does have power to veto legislation, but as far as she knows, it's never happened.