A Whisper in the Ear

How do we reach the ones who look longingly toward the joy?

As I’ve been knee-deep in the hoopla that is the Minnesota State Fair for the last few weeks, I’ve missed you Picklers! But it’s been interesting, and not just in the MN sense of “oh, that’s interesting”.

It started on the Mississippi River.

Our flock of broads were headed out on the water for the annual end-of-summer boat trip. It was a mixed flock, some regular attendees were unable to make it this year, some brought new friends into the fold. There were libations, I brought pickle dip, it was a perfect sunny Saturday on the Mighty Mississip.

As we tooled up and down the river, we passed a few boats with Trump flags. One of our lawyerly kind voiced her assumptions about the size of the boat owner’s “dingy” and we giggled along. A few more flags, a few more boats full of dudes eyeing up our mid-age party barge, but more than a few of us remarked that we had actually expected more. Stillwater Township is a known to be a bit of a red spot on the map of our blue state.

We chatted about the Harris-Walz ticket, the strategies they could/should be using, and how nice it was to feel good about putting your vote not just against Project 2025, but for a team that might have strong feelings about feeding kids and protecting women’s rights. It was comfortable light cocktail banter peppered with cheeky jokes at best.

Post-boat, we usually clean up and head out to P.D. Pappy’s, a local roadhouse with a live band. The bar was packed, the dance floor jamming, and the horn section of the band particularly loud. As some of our crew made their way to the dance floor, I hung back at the table with a few others, one was a newbie to the flock: MandyJo (who gave me permission to write this, though I’ve changed her name).

I’d only met her that morning on the boat, as she was a first-timer to the group hang. She’s a smart and vibrant blonde woman who is kicking ass in her tech field, and recently moved from Minnesota to Atlanta for work. We were just chatting and getting to know each other in the bar, when somehow the conversation turned in a new direction. As it was so loud in the bar, we had to kind of bend toward each other and shout in each other’s ear.

“I should probably tell you that I voted for Trump,” she said.

“OH!” I said, suddenly thinking back over all the quips and digs doled out over the afternoon. “That surprises me!”

“Yeah, I didn’t really want to bring it up today, I didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.”

“Got it. Can I ask why you voted for him? Do you still support him?”

MandyJo told me about how, during the pandemic, she had been undergoing a treatment for cancer. She had been unable to take the vaccine, and was subsequently met with derision and hatred. “Before I could even explain to most people, when they realized I was unvaccinated they’d tell me I was selfish and murdering innocent people. I was fighting for my own life, and nobody seemed to care about that. Just that I was not doing the ‘right thing.’ I don’t know if I’ll ever forget this one guy’s look of disgust toward me.” And then her mother died, and MandyJo was not allowed to go see her in her final moments.

Woof. That’s a lot to yell into someone’s ear in a bar. That’s some powerful trauma that didn’t just go away when the pandemic restrictions lifted. And I could see that she was still feeling like an outsider.

She asked me why I was supporting Biden. (We were pretty fresh into the Harris-Walz moment, so I gave her a pass … that time.)

I told her that as a woman, I can’t possibly support the evangelical vision seeping into the Republican platform. But more importantly, as a mom to a gay son, I would fight to the bitter end for his right to be a typical boring married member of the United States citizenry. And I’ll be damned, after all the years of raising those kids, if I’m going to let anyone tell me that a thin biology is the only thing that defines a family.

MandyJo got it. She told me she totally supports gay marriage and doesn’t want to get in the way of other people’s choices. She said she didn’t want to judge as she’d been judged.

We went back and forth for a while, sort of questioning and challenging. She said she could never have an abortion, I asked if that meant that no one should be able to. She had concerns about the economy, I noted that the restaurant industry would cease to exist without immigrants. It was a discussion that could not possibly get louder than the room already was, so it evolved into whispers.

MandyJo told me she was undecided on who she would vote for this fall. I tried again to tell her that the people she gave her vote to in the last election, have decided that maybe they should unwind the idea that men and women are equal under the law, and that maybe as a single, childless woman she might want to consider how they really feel about her.

“Thank you for this talk,” she said, “I never get to have these kinds of discussions.” And when I thought about it, neither did I.

We both whipped onto the dance floor to join our group and we danced our faces off. As the bar closed, some of the others left while MandyJo and I stayed with one other friend to jam the last jam. We whirled and laughed, and at one point she grabbed me in a hug and said “I love that you stayed for the last dance! That’s it. I’m voting for Biden!”

I’ll take that.

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The MandyJo Incident has changed the way I look at these remaining 60 days. I’ve come to think of it as a whisper mission.

Look, I’m not out to change anyone who is flying mad Trump flags and talking about DJT + Jesus = buds4evah. And if there’s someone with real hatred in their voice, they are lost to me.

But there are others who are holding on to something, maybe it’s a bit of personal trauma, or misinformation that feels right to them, something they’ve been taught to believe that they don’t know how to lay down: I think they are reachable, if they feel heard.

Shaming does not work. No one welcomes new ideas because you’ve shamed them into it. If you offer the respect of a thoughtful discussion, you might find doors clicking open. I think about how the gays won over a generation, it wasn’t by screaming and throwing glitter bombs, it was by sitting with their neighbors and debunking the myths that can only thrive in darkness. Or in online comment sections.

The whisper mission includes letting go of some assumptions. At the beginning of the State Fair, we all girded our loins against what we thought would be an onslaught of anti-Walz slogans in the t-shirt wars. People in the city tend to believe that the outstaters who come in to show their animals are all red.

But all you have to do is watch one 4H Musical (in which farm kids perform musical theater at the fair) to know that’s not true. If you drive outstate you’ll find corn and cows, but also windmills, solar panels, and regenerative farmers. Besides the Tampon Tim booth, which was hilarious and ill-prepared for the tech kids, I saw maybe a few handfuls of right-wing t-shirts. And I was there 8 days out of 12, with the other 1.9 million souls.

The next two months, for me at least, isn’t as simple as going low or high. It’s about inviting people, within this unique turn of the universe, to reconsider. Respect, a bit of time, a reasoned discussion, and an ear is not too high a price for me to pay for my son’s, daughter’s and grandsugars’s future. LFG.

For you out of staters, this is the Crop Art competition at the State Fair. It’s all made with seeds, and tends to be a bit activist each year.