Politics, Picasso and Me

Painting by Pablo Picasso

We used to have a lot of friends in our neighborhood. We'd have couples over for dinner and they reciprocated. Or I'd meet one of the other women for lunch in Portland. We threw holiday parties or attended them. It was all quite fun and 1950s.

That's all over now. Hardly anyone speaks to us since a couple of years ago when we put a sign in support of Senator Susan Collins out on our front lawn. Immediately a neighbor who always invited us to his annual 4th of July, SuperBowl and New Year's Eve parties drove by, stopped in front of our house while I was outside doing yard work, and said, "So -- you're a Trumpie?" I wasn't, I was a "Collinsie," but no matter -- Republican was all he needed to know. No more party invitations.

Same with a woman who I considered a good friend. We'd have dinner out with the husbands or lunch together in town. That all stopped when the Collins sign went up. And then there's this blog, which continually outs me, to anyone who reads it, as anti-Democrat and unawake. Recently it caused a rift between us and our very best friends here.

So now that politics has poisoned all my neighborhood friendships with hard-core, rigid, immovable Democrats, and my closest friends all live in distant states, I'm pretty much alone most of the time. I have a cat but that hardly counts in the togetherness department, as any cat owner will tell you. I'd love to get a dog but I simply can't stand the heartbreak involved.

So I paint. Since the friend blackout, my work has really improved. I wonder, did Picasso ever talk politics? Did he have any friends?