Let’s start with another dream (bear with me). I am attending some sort of conference or retreat. I think I know most of the people, but I can’t give any of them real-life identity. We are staying at some sort of facility, it is early morning, and time for breakfast. I am in the dining room of the facility and, even though I am not with strangers, I am sitting at a table by myself, next to a wall. (By the way, nothing on the menu interests me, the waiter suggests I try the “corn bread” and I agree – when it comes, it looks like one piece of Wonder Bread and I don’t eat it…..but this is irrelevant to my story.)

One the wall next to the table is a grated duct of some sort. Nothing is blowing out of it, and I am not sure where it leads or what is its purpose. But I hear a constant buzzing from inside the duct and I look and see a small insect flying around, just too large to be able to exit through the holes in the grating. I see that I can pry off the grating, which I do to let the insect out, and after he leaves, I put the grating back.

The insect, too small and two brownish to be a fly, seems to panic. It flies in circles. It does loops and double loops. It swoops down on me. Its speed doubles, triples. It is clearly having a panic attack.

I reopen the duct. The insect flies back into the duct. I put the grating back on. The insect seems pleased. Its panic subsides.

(The dream goes on with the story of my insect going viral within my group. Everyone tries to open duct gratings to allow insects to fly in. None do. Some even capture flying bugs and put them in ducts. The insects’ reactions are far from positive. But again….that isn’t part of my story.)

The dream made me think about a flea circus. What is a flea circus anyway? Were they real? Can you train fleas? It seems that the flea circuses were very real and were popular from about 1830 to the mid twentieth century. And, no, it does not look like you can train fleas. What you can do, if you are a crafty miniaturist, is make items that are almost as small as fleas – little carts or wagons or whatever. And then you can take thin threads and tie one end of them to the leg of a flea (don’t ask me how; I just read Flea Circus 101) and the other end to your little wagon. The flea will fly and by flying, since fleas are apparently quite strong, will pull the wagon. You have sufficient numbers of fleas doing a variety of things and, lo, you have a flea circus.

Apparently, we don’t have flea circuses today. How can they compete with video games? But, in thinking about flea circuses, I thought about other types of animal life – animals that were not always thinking the best, but had no problem pulling things that others attach to them, believing that they had no choice and that it was a matter of self-preservation. These animals are known as Republicans.

Republicans now seem to be flying everywhere. They are increasing in number and visibility and, yes, certainly in annoyance. If only we could find a grated duct that we could put them behind for a while. Things would be better.

But, no, that won’t happen. In fact, it is the Republicans who seem to be in control of the grated ducts these days and, if we are not careful (and we so often are not), we will be sitting behind those gratings, waiting for the day when we can free ourselves.

End of story.