Copper Over Navy (bonus content)

Copper Over Navy
(January 2025)

When the last U.S. president was ushered in, on January 20th, 2021, two weeks after a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, I painted our living room wall. I sponged on a few different shades of blue—cornflower, cerulean, just a hint of turquoise. At the end I brushed in some metallic gold.  I was aiming for a rich, textured effect, not just a flat monotone.

That was our family’s backdrop as we inched out of the pandemic. And as a new president worked on boring legislation to help consumers and college students, to mend international alliances the previous president had destroyed, and to invest in science and medial research and roads, bridges and high speed internet. His “climate bill” was short on ecology reform. But thousands of people got green tech and manufacturing jobs, especially in Southern States.

The bright blue living room wall was a wave of calm. A reminder of how things had settled after the prior orange-tinted guy had incited a riot to try to stay in power; and how he’d appeared in news feeds with his signature tangerine tan telling us to inject ourselves with bleach if we got sick. That was before he seeped back onto the canvas and staked his claim to once again make America great again by deporting immigrants, and dismantling health care and education. He also pledged to discontinue the green energy program that had created all those jobs in Southern states.

Almost 60% of South Carolinians voted for him, over 65% in Edgefield County. That’s the birthplace of Strom Thurmond, the white supremacist segregationist who, at the age of 22, had a child with 16 year old Carrie Butler, one of his parents’ African American servants.

Two hours down the road, in Yemassee, South Carolina, he also received tremendous support. That’s the home of Alpha Gen, an enormous primate research facility that supplies test trials and research projects with marmosets, macaques, African Greens, and several New World species. Lots of moving parts, including a group of 50 young female rhesus monkeys.

The day after America elected a president who’d been found liable for sexual assault, 43 of those 50 female monkeys walked out a door that the caretaker had forgotten to secure. Seven stuck with the system that promised them treats and toys. That’s 14% of primate voters.

The escaped monkeys eluded capture for days. They taunted their jailers, just a few yards from the property. They jumped around the outside fence. It took time and peanut butter sandwich bribes to recapture most of the monkeys. But four remained on the loose.

Then on November 25th, 22 inmates from a different group of long-tailed macaques suffocated in the building after a diesel heater malfunctioned.

The final four fugitives remained on the lam through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. They stuck it out til January 24th, after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Inauguration Day; and after Alpha Gen filed their quarterly taxes. They received 19 million dollars in taxpayer funding that year, even though they don’t follow regulations for public safety or animal welfare.

When the monkeys burned up, and when Alpha Gen’s CEO told animal rights activists to “go f**k themselves,” and when the reinstated orange president spoke of his plans to downsize the Health Institutes and promote directors who have been critical of restrictions and safety protocols, I looked at that bright blue, hopeful wall. And then I covered it with a much deeper hue. Something that doesn’t run completely counter to the current mood. Something to mark this new, darker chapter. I went with a rich navy, the traditional, conventional color of authority. I swirled in copper accents for balance.

It all looks great by candlelight. So my family can weather a few chilly seasons with this regal background. We’ll play some board games and eat some peanut butter sandwiches, and the seasons will continue to turn.