Slander

The winters are not what they used to be either. I don't remember when we covered ourselves with a quilt until the end of May.

* * *

Already a year since corona, already revaccination, already June, already summer, already this little one is starting school, already winter wardrobe, already decorating the Christmas tree, already Christmas, already violets, already beating eggs, already heat and so on, we are escaping as time flies passes. But it's as if it doesn't touch us, as if it has nothing to do with us, we're just amazed, as if the seconds aren't ticking even while we're saying it. We don't do anything to slow down time, to design it, to control it and not us. We have entered a rut from which, despite the occasional bump, there is no way out. We surrender to her without much resistance.

And time is running out...

* * *

A female teacher often returns beaming from her workplace at school: "My God, there are so many smart, hard-working and well-mannered children!" And that is undoubtedly true, the vast majority are good children. It's just that the other ones come to the fore more easily.

Recently, some young people cleaned the most beautiful promenade in Bar, from the marina to the Little Lighthouse. In two hours, they collected a hundred large utility bags. One of them, Aleksandar Capa, says that two garbage trucks have been filled and there is still more to clean. And he can't understand who throws it, mostly plastic and glass bottles, and from what impulse.

Although I saw mostly teenagers with bottles in their hands on that stretch, maybe it's not only them who leave trash behind, but also a little older... But, regardless of the cleaning action, two trucks and media support, somehow the "effect" of those who they throw away garbage from those who collect it.

* * *

Montenegro will go into the 22nd century, and into the 23rd and all the following ones, but with it will arrive our mentality, which has not changed for centuries and which, from time to time, shows its true face, as recently on the square in Podgorica when those flower pots were looted.

It seems that we all felt humiliated except for those who were fighting over the pots.

* * *

I, too, am slowly losing my optimism that this country will settle down in the near future. The difference between the two Montenegros, I'm afraid, is getting bigger, roughly like between the former lithium and current car convoys.

* * *

The Latin proverb says: Fama volat - Voice flies, but never has voice flown as fast as in this age, both good and bad. No one pays particular attention to a good voice, but a bad one is remembered, multiplied, supplemented... Especially if it is untrue. Today, anyone can slander everyone, every scoundrel can strike at human rights, Njegoš's saying no longer applies: "Is a traitor better than a knight?" In vain, the accused defends that it is not true, that it was taken out of context or that it was not said at all or did not happen. The slander sticks to him wherever he goes and whatever he does, and he cannot shake it off. Most people are not interested in his denials, his cries, they have created an image based on slander and there is no such obviousness that can force them to change it. And they don't want to.

* * *

Dr. Milenko Mimo Vukotić, a favorite children's dentist, long-time president of the "Mornar" Athletic Club and former talented track and field athlete, was buried at the Gvozden Brijeg city cemetery. He died in Belgrade, at the age of eighty-two.

He was the epitome of the urban Bar, an excellent and unobtrusive intellectual, with a pale, spiritual face and gentlemanly manners.

He possessed encyclopedic knowledge. For any doubt, especially in the field of sports and culture, many Barians consulted him, he was their "Google" before the Internet era. Eyewitnesses said that an experienced guide of a group of Yugoslav tourists at the "Prado" museum asked him to take over his job after realizing that the Bar dentist knew much more about the famous Madrid museum and its exhibits.

He was, as Dr. Ljubo Živković wrote, a great son of a great father. His father, Stevo, was one of the most beloved professors in the century-long history of Bar High School.

If you can leave this world peacefully, Mimo Vukotić certainly did it. In my thoughts with his wife who adored him all his life and protected him from all troubles and who, as she said over his bier, would have breathed in his place, if she could, during those last, difficult days in the Zemun covid hospital, and with four to all of the exemplary children, who fulfilled their father's never-said vow - to, above all, be good people.

At the request of Dr. Mim, in addition to his wife, the trumpeter also said goodbye to him, playing the legendary composition "Silence" ("Il Silenzio"). The sounds of the trumpet that spilled over Gvozden Brijeg were followed by an unreal silence as the last act of elegance of the good doctor that makes it so good to be Baranin.