Post No. 989: Close Observation

 “You give me power in your God’s name.” Cult of Personality, Living Colour

The last time I wrote, wildfires were burning in Canada and this week wildfires are burning in Greece and Algeria. Swaths of the continental US are baking. Ocean water off the coast of Florida hit triple digit temperatures. The world is out of balance, too much taken and too little given back; too much abuse and far too little care. Are you prepared for the reckoning? 

I have a condition in my right thumb -- de Quervains tenosynovitis. It’s painful and inconvenient, slams the breaks on my fitness regimen, makes it harder to do household chores, and, combined with the stabbing pain in my trapezius I often feel when riding my bike, keeps me from cycling to and from work, which I enjoy. I’ve also got some stiffness in my left thumb, probably the same affliction as the right. 

Because of these injuries and aches my fitness regime demands alteration, a shift in focus from strength work to balance, flexibility and mobility, a mish-mash of martial arts, yoga, tai chi. I’ve got a work shift coming up, which means between 12-15 miles of walking; I have to wear a brace to support my thumb. Five days since I had an x-ray at the walk-in clinic. Without my fitness routine I’m not sure I could do my part-time job the way I do it, though I’m always conscious of how I move, bend, and reach. It helps that I’m down to 16 hours a week, usually the early shift on Tuesday and Saturday. I do more than I’m asked and usually feel good when I clock out for the day. 

As far as living is concerned, my life is good, really fortunate, luck holds. My family isn’t struggling or suffering. I spent several hours today reading, on our back patio, under the big market umbrella and towering Bird of Paradise. Finally finished a wonderful work of nonfiction by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. It came out more than ten years ago but is no less relevant now. Americans of European descent forget that Indigenous people existed on this continent for thousands of years. They learned how to survive and the workings of the natural world by close, careful observation, and considered the Earth sacred because it was the source of their survival, a subject, not an object. I’m going to take a run at writing an essay for the California Review of Books about a few of the concepts the book raises, in particular that of collective responsibility. It’s a wise book, full of reverence for how nature provides if properly understood as a living thing, with a spirit. It’s a different and alternative mindset, based on balance and mutual abundance, not scarcity. Suffice to say that it’s a mindset foreign to the majority of Americans. Ask the average American the significance of the term “Honorable Harvest,” and you will receive a blank stare. Huh? Honorable what? Is it on TikTok? 

I’m still keeping one eye on the political scene, in particular indictments of Donald Trump, but I’m doing my best not to fixate and obsess. There’s a lot of political malpractice happening at the moment, by Trump’s allies and lackeys, in Alabama and Georgia, but if I stare at it too long I become angry and anxious, caught up in dire thoughts and worries. 

Has Mark Meadows flipped on Trump or has he decided to lash himself to the Orange Menace and go down with the ship? Pray tell, motherfucker. Trump surrounds himself with a lot of punks, but Mark Meadows is a punk’s punk, not to mention a coward, and I have a tough time believing he’s willing to do prison time for Trump. It’s more likely that faced with evidence of his criminal scheming with Trump’s mad fantasy that he won the 2020 election, Meadows sang to Jack Smith’s investigators, possibly copping to lesser crimes in exchange for his cooperation and testimony against Big Daddy Trump. 

Trump is starting to panic, to rattle, hum, and shudder. You can tell by the increasingly unhinged tone of his public statements. Like the rat that he is, Trump can see the escape routes narrowing, and all he can think to do is stir up his base about his legal predicaments. But this is a tougher sell to the MAGA faithful. “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall!” resonate more than “I did nothing wrong!” and the “Deep State is out to get me!” More indictments can’t come soon enough. Bury the Orange Menace. 

Speaking of menaces. Did Bibi Netanyahu just pull off in Israel what Donald Trump dreams of doing in the US? Place himself and his cronies above and beyond the reach of the law. That’s an autocrat’s passport to top-tier looting of the public treasury and destruction of the rule of law. Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens poured into the streets in protest. In Tel Aviv, authorities dispersed the protestors with water cannons and tear gas. 

The weather app on my phone claims it’s 76 degrees outside; feels more like 80, just after eleven a.m. 

Monkey Business

 “The body is strong, but the world always ends up crushing it.” Aleksandar Hemon

Wildfires in Canada. Floods in Vermont and Pennsylvania. Killer heat across the American southwest. Donald Trump. A summer of threats that residents of the open air asylum that is America will do their best to ignore. America is still a powerful nation, but we’re not a serious one. 

In 1987, Senator Gary Hart was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination when he took an ill-fated boat trip out of Miami with a young woman, not his wife. When the press questioned Hart his initial reaction was to deny the allegation, but there were photographs, and the shamed candidate withdrew from the race to repair his marriage. A few months later Hart attempted to restart his bid for the nomination, but the damage to his reputation was done. The Democrats ran Michael Dukakis against Pappy Bush and lost. 

How far we’ve traveled on the road to normalized corruption. Shame no longer has any influence over powerful people. Look at Trump. He has paid no cost for bragging about grabbing women by their vaginas, for paying hush money to a porn actress, for shaking down the president of Ukraine, for stealing classified information and withholding it from the government for more than a year, for being impeached twice, and for instigating an attempted coup. People have forgotten that Trump’s incompetence caused thousands of unnecessary fatalities during the early days of the Covid pandemic. 

Like a landfill, our collective memory hole is running out of capacity. 

In a normal country, Donald Trump wouldn’t be a candidate for president because people with a functioning moral compass wouldn’t allow it. In a normal country, Trump would be shunned, ignored; his name and image would be synonymous with failure and corruption; if he had the temerity to appear in public he would be jeered and mocked, laughed at, ridiculed. His fact-free word salad speeches would draw boos, not cheers. 

The orange-hued Dragon of Lies cannot be shamed. That’s Trump’s super power. It’s also what makes him a sociopath. 

Who turned the world upside down?

A summer of threats. A summer of dancing and baseball and hot dog eating contests in the courtyard of the open air asylum. Don’t worry inmates, we can consume our way out of any difficulty. Eat, drink, be merry, and pay no attention to the choking smoke, withering heat and rising floodwaters. Don’t worry, be happy. All we need is make-believe and Amazon Prime. 

The boat that left Miami with Gary Hart and the woman not his wife on board was called the Monkey Business. Those were more innocent times. If Donald Trump took a cruise tomorrow with an underage Ivanka look-alike, the corporate media would yawn.

No shame. No honor. No decency. 

Post No. 987: A Good Day to Read Bukowski

 “Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy -- all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

The sun has burned the marine layer off and it’s lovely and bright and warm, and old Neil Young is playing the Bowl down the street. Should be good. Loud, probably. Neil’s always had things to say and a compelling way of saying them. He’s got quiet songs and rocking songs. 

I saw a fair number of tourists on State Street when I was out earlier. Saw a wedding at the Courthouse, Mexican family, heavy young women in tight dresses, coiffed, glammed up head-to-toe for the occasion, men and boys in dark suits, baggy trousers, new shoes. Someone’s big day. The lawn in and around the Sunken Garden is covered with beach towels, blankets of many colors, folding chairs, for the movie that begins when darkness falls. Friday night, SB. 

The mean world is at bay, for the moment, so why not enjoy it to the full? Because it doesn’t sit right, the complete, random dumb luck of being born here, not there, on this side of the line, not that side, on this continent, rather than someplace much meaner and harder than anything I’ve been forced to experience. Lucky, that’s all. In no way better or more deserving, just lucky. And because I have no illusions of permanent security of any kind. Circumstances can change quickly. Health. Money. Housing. Job. Family. 

That’s why it’s a good day to read Bukowski, because he had a take on life, and luck played a significant part in his outlook. Luck with women, luck with wine and booze, luck at the racetrack, luck with the word. Roll of the dice. Snake-eyes, double 6’s. Have gratitude because it won’t last, nothing does. Nothing can, except the earth, and that is uncertain as of this week, when the hottest surface temperatures in recorded history were written into the books. 

Consequences are felt, lives disrupted, the poor and less fortunate, the less lucky, feel the effects first and hardest. How it goes, right? Every time and place, under every social structure, bishop or king, queen or lord, mayor or general, chief or tsar. Some survive the consequences of greed and ego and fear, wars and pogroms and massacres and floods and earthquakes. Luck holds, they have the resources to sidestep pain and loss. Others die or get dispossessed or flee. 

We’re on a planet that’s spinning and we trick ourselves into thinking we’re in complete control. 

Bukowski knew that in America fear is piled atop fear. He wasn’t unaware of law and politics and racism and injustice but never paid it more attention than he thought it deserved. He knew politicians lied, priests buggered young boys, poor people were routinely exploited, women were raped, many of his fellow white people were racist; he’d been on the seamy and ugly side of the street, worked for years in soul-grinding jobs. He knew that in America a man as malignant and awful as Donald Trump would never be assassinated. He saw the knife’s edge and wondered why others couldn’t. 

Bukowski was appreciative but never expectant. 

How deep into the catalog will Neil Young go? Man made some great songs. Nostalgia time for some in the crowd. “I remember…” The old person’s opener. 

How to describe it, gratitude laced with melancholy? Bukowski called that a gin & tonic. 

The King of Babylon

“This is who we are: the richest country on earth, with more poverty than any other advanced democracy.” Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America

Light to dark. I can’t control it or identify a trigger. It just comes, like a blanket of heavy fog.  An otherwise lovely day leaves me flat for some reason, out of sorts, bothered by something nameless. I can’t shake it, drink, or smoke it away. The next morning I feel better. I write. I sit outside on the sunny back patio and read. I see a hummingbird at the feeder while a monarch butterfly flits about. It’s not too noisy, no wailing leaf blowers or hedge trimmers or chain saws or garbage trucks. I realize that I’m happy, rich, the King of Babylon. The upset of the previous afternoon fades. I don’t understand it. 

It’s almost the second anniversary of my retirement from the school district. Next month I will receive my first Social Security check. As I’ve written before, I’m a lucky boy, favored by the Gods. Comfortable. Relatively healthy. With time to sit and think, to read and write, to work a low-paying job that I love precisely because I’m not under any pressure to do it. I like working alongside people, doing what I can to help them without ever being asked; I pitch in because I can, because it gives me pleasure to lighten the load for someone else. Call me crazy. 

For the most part, my co-workers drive old cars, pick-up trucks, many ride bicycles or scooters, some walk or rely on MTD. This is the working-class. Jose in the Meat Department is tired and moving slowly, as if in a trance. He’ll leave the store at 10 and report for his second job at 1:30. “It costs a lot to live here,” he says. 

Eddie in Whole Body looks at me and says, “Brian, I’ve got six hours to go.” Eddie’s tired, too. 

Some of my co-workers limp, some are overweight, diabetic or suffer from arthritis. But they show up, day after day. When I see David out back by the baler machine we compare ailments, his lower back, my shoulder. He’s 65. His father is 91 and suffers from debilitating arthritis.  

There’s a lot of turnover, faces come and go. Two of my favorite people, Octavio and Kevin G, are gone from the Grocery department, lured away by better hours and money. Kids who just graduated high school take their place. The weird white guy with the impressive gym muscles quit after three days. 

Chelly sings, “Goooood Mooorning, Brian.” “Buenos dias, Chelly,” I call back. Her round face and beaming smile give me a lift, restores some of my wavering faith in the human race. 

I begin reading Poverty, By America, by the Pulitzer Prize winner, Matthew Desmond. I interviewed Mr. Desmond a few years ago, and met him when he spoke at UCSB. An unusual man. Scholar. Writer. Activist. He is to poverty in this country what Bryan Stevenson is to injustice. The book is a mirror held to the face of America. Desmond reminds those of us who are comfortable that poverty is hard, grinding, unforgiving. 

It’s likely that my French ancestors in Quebec were farmers. They emigrated to the northeastern United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Maine and Massachusetts and Vermont. They became Franco-Americans, mill workers, laborers, tenement dwellers. Some did alright, but others never ascended the social and economic ladder. The French immigrants were no more welcome than the Irish. My mother grew up in poverty. She was born during the Depression. French was spoken in the home. 

The Bane of Humankind

 

“At the time of the Civil War, the monetary value of the country’s enslaved men, women, and children was greater than that of all of its factories and railroads combined.” Adam Hochschild. New York Review, May 25, 2023

What am I thinking about? Feet of human beings, males and females of the species, old and young, but it’s mostly the older folks I observe, in their sandals, flip-flops, pumps and every now and then completely naked of foot. Feet that have held body weight over many years, walked, who knows? thousands of miles, endured heat and cold and friction, corns, bunions, and blisters. Feet that have felt fine sand between the toes, desert dust, red clay, black loam, coal dust, broken glass, pebbles, stones, thorns. Feet that swim and feet that dance, run, jump. I see them now, mangled, bent, dry, toenails uneven, horned, sharp as blades. Unattractive, I think. And fat ankles. Kankles. Not a fan. Am sometimes startled by the girth of a human ankle. I think of an elephant’s foot. My eye is drawn to the slender ankle, mostly of the female, though my eye can be disappointed if ankle and foot are mismatched. Uncomplimentary. Also unfortunate. My opinion. 

My wife tells me she’s taking me for my first ever pedicure, a father’s day gift. Feet will be encased in wax, massaged with warm oils, scrubbed with pumice stones of various hues, and clipped with sterile instruments. My feet will emerge from all this treatment feeling fantastic. I may wish to wear sandals and show them off. No toenail polish. Not there yet. 

Janky feet, the bane of humankind. 

My daughter and I are in the Honda Accord, driving to the dispensary on a weekday afternoon, discussing various subjects of life, when stopped at a red light at the intersection of a prominent corner, my daughter says the foot massage place near the corner (which will go unnamed to avoid potential legal exposure or other unintended consequences) has to be a front for shady or illegal business because most of the employees are usually in the parking lot in the back, smoking, as if possessed of all the time in the world. Languid smoking, full inhalations and exhalations. Prodigious clouds of smoke. But while they’re smoking, what’s going on inside? This is the mystery. Most businesses cannot afford to have people standing around doing nothing, although I’ve noticed that in many low-wage, shit-job establishments, that’s what many employees do, stand around doing as little as they can get away with. My daughter tells me I can probably get a “happy ending” there and I don’t know what she’s talking about. Daughter is incredulous at my stupidity and lameness. Schitt’s Creek, remember, David, went and got a happy ending? Oh, yeah, sorry. I fucking loved Schitt’s Creek. 

Trump is indicted at long last. Such a long, tortured wait. Rusty wheels of justice. Disheartening. Half the nation cheers; thirty percent says it’s all a lie and the other side wants to murder unborn infants, so there; and twenty or so percent could care less. Aren’t even aware that a historic first in the history of this Republic is happening. The oblivious. Many have given up. They keep their heads down and move on, always moving on. They don’t look to government for anything but stop signs and traffic signals. Self-government requires too much sacrifice for some people, especially people who must, for their survival and that of their families, focus entirely on making enough money to live.

Will be infuriating to watch the Republican Party try to brush off Trump’s 37-count Federal indictment. Has already begun, two days before his arraignment. Grab the narrative. All that matters anymore. Truth in, lies out, citizens lost in between. 

I’m reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, a young woman with all kinds of literary awards to her credit, Ivy League credentials, a popular trilogy, a phenom, shooting meteor-like across the literary skyline. I’ve read 263 pages and still find myself disliking the protagonist, a young female writer, white, who hits the literary and social media big time with her first novel, about Chinese labor battalions in World War I. Unknown history, unusual angle. The book was conceived and sketched out by her friend/nemesis, Athena Liu, who, like R.F. Kuang, is just dazzling in almost every way, a literary prize winner, with well-received books and hefty advance payments, a robust social media machine, good looks, too, and ambition to be the next big literary thing.  The protagonist helps herself to the notes and sketches after Athena’s tragic death, turns them by a measure of diligent labor and talent into a big book, one that can be marketed, packaged, publicized, and sold. It’s the book that puts the protagonist on the literary map, scores her invitations to sit on panels at prestigious writer’s conferences. Speaking engagements at colleges, readings and Q&A’s in upscale bookstores. Soon she’s being interviewed, written about, asked for her thoughts on this and that. Intoxicating. Validating. Is she a thief or just an opportunist? Both. Some strong writing about the publishing industry (brutal and cutthroat), and how quickly a social media audience can turn from adoring to vicious, as well as facing the question of who has the authenticity to write about certain subjects, in this case a white female writing about Chinese people. What does she know about it? No final opinion yet, other than that the pacing seems off. Shouldn’t I feel, by now,  something other than annoyance for the protagonist, more than a desire to encourage her to grow up? Maybe take a minute and think about someone else?

But maybe that’s the intent, to challenge a reader to accept an unlikeable character enough to keep reading. It’s like Succession on HBO, or whatever it’s now called, which I often hated because I found all the characters so grasping and power-mad and striving and controlling and empty, though also recognizing the dark humor, some finely written and acted scenes. Almost a different dialect with all that Finance-Bro speak. I watched until the end. “Fuck Off!”

Books are funny, magical vessels. 

Want to watch something on the political front other than the 24-Hour-Trump-Indictment-Saga? Just pay attention to what red state governors like Abbott down in the Republic of Texas and Ron DeSantis in Floridistan are doing legislatively to cities and counties where blue-minded voters live and work and recreate. Watch how they’re attempting to wrest more and more control over such places. Austin. Parts of Houston. 

It’s another overcast day here on the Platinum Coast, day after day of thick marine layer, a blanket. The old June-gloom. When I was a young boy, the land around the Whole Foods Market where I work part-time as a utility worker (mostly janitor and shopping cart-wrangler and trash-emptier), was orchard, avocado, walnut, and lemon. Hitchcock and State Street. Been here a fair time now, almost my entire life, many summers. Very strange thing life, and time. On my strolls on the lower Riviera, I notice how different the view is from the opposite side of the street I usually take; I see things that had gone unnoticed before. 

Mourinho and Roma Fall Short in Budapest

I feel somewhat gutted for Jose Mourinho and Roma after their Europa League Final against Sevilla ended in defeat on penalties. Mourinho has such an exceptional record in European finals that I gave Roma a slight edge going in, but I also felt that for Roma to win a lot of things had to break just right. One key for me was the fitness of Roma’s talisman, Paulo Dybala. Having seen Roma play a dozen matches this year, I knew Dybala’s fitness was key. How effective would the Argentine be and how long could he play? Even being sidelined by injuries of one sort or another for most of the season, Dybala still scored 17 goals and contributed a bunch of assists in all competitions. 

With Dybala in and out of the lineup, Tammy Abraham misfiring, and Andrea Belotti never finding his goal-scoring stride, Roma struggled for goals and consistency all season in Serie A, which is one reason Roma’s only remaining route into the Champions League was by winning the Europa League. Finishing in the Serie A Top Four had gone by the boards a few weeks before when Roma’s form in the domestic league slumped. 

Mourinho put it all on this match and came up short. 

Losing in a penalty shootout is cruel because getting to a shootout requires at least 120 minutes of play, plus all the stoppage time that gets added on. The path to a penalty shootout is punctuated with physical and emotional suffering. More often than not it doesn’t seem fair or right that one team has to lose. 

It started according to the Mourinho blueprint for Roma, who had their best available eleven on the pitch, with Tammy Abraham up top with Dybala, Rui Patricio in goal. Organized in a tight defensive block anchored by Chris Smalling, Roma forced Sevilla out wide and easily rebuffed Sevilla’s attempt to play vertically, and for most of the first half disrupted Sevilla’s patterns of play. 

When Mancini played a beautiful through ball to Dybala that the Argentine coolly stroked past Bono for the early lead, Jose Mourinho could be seen urging his players to settle down, as if he knew it was going to take more than a goal to win the title. 

By the close of the first half Sevilla had grown in the game, but a 1-0 halftime lead is familiar territory for a Mourinho team in a European Final. What foiled Mou’s plans was the introduction by Sevilla of Suso and Lamela, two attacking players. The impact was immediate. Suddenly Seville was moving the ball like the team that knocked off Manchester United and Juventas to get to Budapest. Suso made them click and Lamela made them sharper, and with more of the ball Sevilla was able to ramp up the pressure on Roma, put dangerous balls into the box, one of which banged off Roma’s Mancini for the equalizer in the 55th minute. 

That changed everything. In a blink the shallowness of Roma’s squad was exposed, not to mention that Matic, Mancini, Pellegrini and Cristante were on yellow cards. The best scenario had been for Roma to grind out -- in typical Mourinho style -- a 1-nil victory. Grab the lead and defend, commit fouls, stop play, work the clock, and keep Sevilla from scoring. Now that was out the window. 

Dybala came off after an hour, after giving more minutes than Roma fans could have hoped for, scoring a beautiful goal and throwing himself around in defense. 

But the longer the game went on the better it seemed for Sevilla, and sure enough they navigated the extra periods and won the shootout with the guile and guts of a 7-time champion. By then Roma’s best attacking players, Dybala, Pellegrini, and Abraham were out of the equation. I think a shootout always favored Sevilla. 

What is it about the Europa League that brings out the very best in Sevilla? The reputation of the entire franchise rests on its extraordinary record in this competition. 

No shame for Roma, they gave everything as expected from a Jose Mourinho coached team in a final. They made a few chances, had a bit of ill-luck, but never looked like losing; it was just that winning in open play, with players cramping and running out of gas, didn’t look like happening either. Penalty shoot-outs turn on the thinnest physical and psychological margins, what players are still available, and what’s the optimum kick taking order. It’s pressure-packed. Part mind game. It can go either way and someone has to lose. 

What’s next for Roma? They have one match remaining in Serie A and with a win and an Atalanta loss or draw could capture 5th place, which would salvage something from the domestic campaign. Would that be enough for Mourinho to stay with the club for another season? 

No. 983 - Message in a Bottle

“He says the news is all lies and the reason it’s so popular is that it sells itself as all truth and people believe it because they’d rather believe in a lie.” San Shepard, “Berlin Wall Piece”

I was thinking the other day that this blog is equivalent to a message in a bottle. Tossed from an iron bridge into a wide, slow moving river, one full of silt and dead trees and jagged rocks. These entries have about the same odds of ever reaching anyone, and that’s fine with me because if I was looking for anything else I would have quit years ago. If I’m honest I think I’ve been searching for some kind of connection and community with like-minded souls, though it hasn’t happened yet and most likely won’t. 

It’s gray and overcast here, a heavy marine layer that will linger until well past noon. Garbage day. Beige-colored Marborg trash trucks pass on Milpas Street, and the sound is loud, but not as loud, or jarring, as the gas-powered hedge trimmer from across the street. I hate that particular sound, the way it winds out, whines and echoes. Hedge trimmer, leaf blower, chainsaw. Drowns out the sound of birds. 

My mother turns 89 this month. A Depression-era baby. The women on her side of the family tend to live well into their 90’s. Stubborn genetics. French-Canadians. Catholics. My grandmother lived at 27 Charter Street in Salem, Massachusetts, in a high-rise building full of elderly people. I went to visit her in the early 1990’s, a surprise for her birthday. She was in her early 90’s then. There was a cemetery near her building with headstones dating back to the late 17th century. My grandmother loved to play bingo. “Beeno,” she called it. She’d win pocket money. I don’t have any notable ancestors, no dukes or cardinals or even Civil War veterans. No wild and crazy uncles. No eccentric aunts. No criminals. As far as I know, nobody wrote a poem or a symphony or a play or a novel or an essay. Ordinary people, forgettable people. 

I’m aging. When I roll out of bed in the morning my body is stiff and my first few steps on the hardwood floors are painful due to neuropathy in my feet. I see floaters in my left eye and have tinnitus in my ears. My hair is wispy and silver and my sex drive is non-existent; only half joking, my wife says I should take Viagra or Cialis or one of the other drugs that inject new gusto in aging cocks and produce magic moments of romance for old married couples.

Parts of my life are a mystery to me, buried deep under layers of time. Almost all the years before I met my wife. Memories are there, but I can’t easily access them; they’re like black and white films with huge gaps. I wouldn’t call them lost years, more like misdirected and wandering. What was I looking for in Tokyo, Honolulu and Seattle, and then for a short time in Irvine? Myself, I guess, an answer to the question, who am I? What am I doing in this life? What am I meant to do? 

Childhood memories are even more difficult to get at. Maybe my parents’ divorce when I was ten affected me more than I realize. Right around the time I began junior high. There’s some reason why I can recall so few memories of early family life, of my father. Was the experience that traumatic? Nothing changed all that much. Even high school is a blur. Mostly what I remember is being shy and feeling awkward, and doing a lot of dumb stuff with my friend David. Borderline juvenile delinquents, rebels without cause or clue or coherence. Driving around Santa Barbara in the late 1970’s in my light blue 1965 VW bug, my first car. At 16 a car is pure freedom. We smoked weed morning, noon and night. I spent many days and nights at David’s house, his parents had also divorced but his mother was cool, and his older brother -- who was the same age as my older brother -- managed a waterbed store, which was there was a king-size waterbed on the patio; David and I slept out there many times, under the stars, and we’d wake up in the morning wet with dew. 

Time takes its toll. Not an original thought, just a fact. I ask myself if what I’m looking for isn’t meaning, but stories. 

Detox

 “If the enemy has no scruples, then the side with scruples is doomed to defeat.” Javier Marias, Berta Isla

After a long overdue decision to quit the daily barrage of political social media that has been my staple diet for several years, I signed out of Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Medium and Facebook. That was three days ago and it already seems quieter inside my head. It’s not a total break from national politics because I read enough periodicals to stay abreast, rather a retreat from the daily torrent of prognostications and analysis of Trump’s latest past-midnight all caps post, the most recent polls showing Trump leading Biden, or the odds that the GOP will deliberately torpedo the economy with its debt-ceiling blackmail.  

Getting off Twitter paid immediate dividends as the platform is simply an outrage machine that never fails to set my blood boiling. 

More than a year ago, after a late summer trip to Oregon to visit my brother, I vowed to reduce and self-regulate my exposure to political news, but I couldn’t do it for more than a few days, and, like a dope fiend, I was back in the deep end of the pool, being reminded every five minutes that my country is in deep shit. I know it is, and an insufficient number of people seem to give a damn. If American voters can’t see by now how dangerous Donald Trump is they must agree with him, don’t care one way or another, or believe the danger of a second Trump term is overstated, which it most certainly isn’t. Trump is far more unhinged in 2023 than he was in 2015, with a firm grip on the GOP, which is even more radical than it was during his disastrous first term. Madness and cruelty reign. Twenty-five years ago any public figure who pulled a smidgeon of the shit Trump has would have been sunk. 

Unfortunately, shame is no longer a moderating influence in politics (just ask George Santos), and I honestly believe that if Trump roofied Ivanka and fucked her in a hottub at Mar-A-Lago while Jared Kushner and a dozen guests sat nearby watching, GOP bigwigs and the corporate media would normalize the transgression. 

Kevin McCarthy: “But what about Democrats who mix cocktails with the blood of aborted babies!”

Lindsey Graham: “Do we know for sure there was penetration? Because if there’s no penetration there’s no incest. Unless you can prove penetration, I don’t see a problem.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Nancy Pelosi roofied her husband all the time and twice when the moon was full.”

And so on and so on and so on until public horror fades and is forgotten. 

I don’t need to be teased several times a day about how close Special Counsel Jack Smith is to completing his investigations into January 6 and Trump’s theft of classified material and other public documents, or the latest from Fani Willis in Georgia. Smith and his team of prosecutors hauled the dim-witted Christian eunuch, Mike “Ever Pious” Pence before a grand jury, but strangely, not Mark Meadows though he was at the center of the effort to monkey-wrench the 2020 election. Even the cadre of pundits on MSNBC are silent about Meadows. I find this very strange and wonder why Meadows has been given a pass. Until Meadows faces a grand jury I’m not getting my hopes up for a DOJ indictment of Trump and his many co-conspirators. 

My hunch is that Trump will be pardoned long before he’s ever convicted. For the good of the Republic, of course. 

There's No Dealing with the Devil (or the GOP)

 https://truthout.org/articles/us-fascism-is-spreading-under-the-guise-of-patriotic-education/

“The real crisis in history is what we forget to remember.” Henry Giroux, Author, Public Intellectual, Educator

The other day I reminded myself that this blog is in its final year of existence. Twenty years or one thousand posts, whichever comes first, is the promise I made to myself. It’s May, and this is Post 981 of my vanity project, a public diary of mostly half-baked political and social commentary, gripes, ill-informed and angry lamentations, predictions, posts about baseball, which I no longer follow, and football (soccer) about which I’m hopelessly addicted. Some of my predictions have been proved by time or trend, but as Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.” 

I remain agitated and annoyed by political happenings in America, the drift toward authoritarianism and single party rule, but also elsewhere in the world. Climate change has been a preoccupation of mine for a long time now because it adheres to no boundaries and each catastrophe affects different people very differently; the wealthy, along with politically and socially connected people usually make out fine, though they may feel some inconvenience. I think about the elites of Germany when the Nazis seized power by force, or Chile and Argentina which fell to authoritarian military dictatorships. For many people, life didn’t change that drastically, and folks with money had what they have in every time and place: Options. Escape routes. Destinations. 

What I sense most is fissure. Splintering. In this age of atomization and social alienation and loneliness the prisons bulge and mentally-ill homeless people walk the streets, live in tents alongside creeks, behind restaurants, beneath freeway overpasses, wherever a person can claim a space and not be immediately rousted, run-off, or arrested. There’s nowhere near enough housing for people who need it -- those of sound mind as well as those of ill and sick and broken mind -- and rents are so high in so many places now, out of reach of most wage earners. Nobody wants low-income or so-called affordable housing on their block, anymore than they want a halfway house or a mental health clinic or a prison, so there’s not enough supply to meet the urgent need, and too many properties are owned by massive, unaccountable hedge funds. 

America has too many billionaires to also have democracy -- the wealthy will never voluntarily share power, and every day the political system slides further away from the people. Extreme views are normalized. Apparently a lot of people approve of this politics of destruction, while many others don’t seem to care if our anemic democracy lives or perishes. Wiser and better educated folks sound the alarm, wave the red flag, but are ignored, shunned, blacklisted. 

I’m no fortunate son waiting for his inheritance. If the House of Representatives in Washington D.C. succeeds in their quest to turn a routine authorization to pay debts ALREADY INCURRED into a war over future spending, most of it for the neediest Americans, children, the elderly (your auntie, grandmother, mother, uncle), Veterans, and the United States defaults on its obligations, the result may be an economic catastrophe as gnarly as the Great Depression. I’m partially retired and will be directly impacted. The last time the GOP played chicken with the debt ceiling, in 2011, when Kevin McCarthy was just a puppy, still learning where and when to lift his leg, the nation lost trillions of dollars in value and thousands of jobs. Average and poor folks suffered the most, as they always do. This time the pain could be even more widespread. The world economy is intertwined, and the crisis McCarthy and the Crazy Caucus seem dead set on precipitating will be felt from Kansas to China. 

This completely manufactured debt ceiling crisis might be America’s Brexit moment, a stunningly stupid self-inflicted wound, all because of one party’s lust for power. 

Something that shows just how far the political system has moved away from the people it purports to represent is this: should the GOP win this cynical joust it’s not hyperbole to say that millions of their own constituents will feel real pain. The Social Security and Veterans rolls are full of dead red, Trump is God, MAGA Forever people who won’t understand until it’s too late that they’ve been used as sacrificial lambs by the party they support, no matter how outrageous, extreme and dangerous that party becomes. McCarthy and Co. don’t care; they’re willing to burn it all down. 

Nothing constructive results when complete fools like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Loren Boebert and cross-dressing George Santos are taken seriously. These people are the GOP’s new breed. They’re Trumpian. Grandiose. Empty-headed. Bigoted. They’re attention whores unfit for any public office. They don’t even go through the motions of pretending to represent the people who elected them; they represent themselves. They’re gambling they can run the bus off the elevated expressway and blame the wreck on Biden and the Democrats. Torpedo the economy, create anxiety and anger and real suffering, even, as I said above, for their own constituents and corporate donors, and then use all their propaganda tools and know-how to convince a gullible public that only the return of Donald J. Trump can save America. 

White America. 

Authoritarian political parties, left or right, bank on their ability to fool masses of people; this is why the GOP attacks public education at every opportunity, why its strategy gurus and data analysts want to prevent college students from exercising their right to vote. Choosing its own voters is the sweet spot for the GOP. They employ every trick in the bag to exclude particular voters from the polls. 

The point of education, as Henry Giroux has argued for years, and does so again in the piece linked above, which I encourage everyone to read, is to teach people to act as citizens in a representative democracy. Critical thinking is the true target of obnoxious people like Trump, DeSantis in Florida, Abbott in Texas, and Kemp in Georgia. 

But don’t take my word for it, read the piece by Henry Giroux and make up your own mind. 

Sons and Mothers

“History is a balm capable of healing America’s deep-seated racial wounds. To do so we must tell a fuller story about our national past to our present selves.” Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction

My mother tells me that she had a very long talk with herself and has decided that her days of worrying about her elevated blood pressure are over. God will know what to do with me, she says. It’s in his hands. I’m not going to take my blood pressure every day, it just makes me more anxious. I’m telling all my doctors to stop pestering me about it. It’s all they want to talk about. But they don’t listen because they’re always typing on the computer! I had a better conversation on the phone with Dr. Pham than I did in person. She hardly even looked at me, and of course she was wearing a mask. She kind of spit this last sentence out, like a person who spent the pandemic watching FOX News, as if it’s somehow offensive that a doctor, working in a hospital setting in the Covid age, would still wear a mask. 

I’m not particularly close to my mother. Except for a few months in my mid-20’s, when I lived with her in a high rise condominium near the Ala Wai canal in Honolulu, I’ve only seen my mother in the flesh a handful of times since the early 1980’s. My wedding, the birth of my son, her first grandchild, for these events she flew from Honolulu, and she may have come five years later when my daughter was born, though I can’t remember for certain. Perhaps there are photographs in one of my wife’s many photo boxes. In those days it was a little uncomfortable with my mother, tense at times; she isn’t an easygoing soul, in fact she’s pretty uptight, stuck in the era in which she came of age, the 1940s and 1950s, and not easy to be around. She can be a little holier-than-thou when it comes to diet and exercise. She thinks there has never been anything on television better than “Dancing with the Stars.” Our relationship was never particularly close, and for long periods of time it was as emotionally distant as the miles between Santa Barbara and Honolulu, limited to birthday and Christmas cards, occasional calls, sometimes a short letter. But she’s 88 years old now, with some hearing loss in one ear, a weak back, and chronically high blood pressure. Around two years ago she had back surgery, but made an amazingly quick recovery with the help of physical therapy. She resumed her routine independent life and was fine for more than a year. Then in late March she aggravated her back walking up two flights of stairs. After a couple of days of painful spasms she took herself to the ER at Kaiser and was later admitted. Her blood pressure was high, her sodium level low, and her lower back screaming. 

Since her back surgery, I’ve had a lot more contact with my mother, talking with her several times a week. I have her power of attorney for financial and medical matters, instructions for her cremation, etc. When she was at Kaiser this time I spoke with one or more of her doctors every day. Within three or four days her pain was being managed with medications and her sodium level had improved, but her blood pressure was still high and she was anxious because her bowel movements were inconsistent. When she was moved to a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation, she complained about the food claiming it was contributing to her constipation. There’s no fresh fruit, she told me. I have fresh fruit every morning!

It has been a long time since I talked about politics with my mother. Several years ago it became evident that she was a consistent viewer of FOX News as well as a consistent listener of right-wing talk radio, and that made talking about politics practically impossible. I assume she voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Every now and then she lets a comment slip that I can tell comes from right-wing media. For example, while she was in the skilled nursing facility we were talking about her finances and she made a disparaging remark about Joe Biden and inflation. At one time I might have challenged her, but to do so now is pointless. I’m somewhat baffled by her conservatism, but if one consumes a steady diet of propaganda like that offered on FOX News, it’s a predictable outcome. 

My mother has enjoyed good health for most of her life, partly because of genetics (several women in her family, including my grandmother, lived well into their 90’s) and because she has taken obsessively good care of herself. She takes vitamins and supplements like garlic and probiotics, but hates taking medications of any kind. She’s of slight and slender build, fastidious about her appearance, eats mostly fruit, vegetables, and fish, walks everywhere, and for many years danced at the Elks Club and Eagles Lodge and on all the hotel dance floors in Waikiki that played “traditional Hawaiian music,” as my mother calls it, always with vocal emphasis on “traditional.” My mother loves kitsch. She was a fan of several local musicians, and followed them as they changed venues. She may have done a competition or two. But to her way of thinking, she was as good as a professional, and dancing was her Fountain of Youth, the thing that kept her body fit, but, strangely, had no effect on making her mind and way of being more flexible. She still sends me checks in the mail, and refuses to use online banking. She has a very simple Jitterbug smartphone that drives her crazy. She needs help with her iPad. She doesn’t do Venmo, Uber, Lyft or even Google. She’s a medium-level Luddite. Other than dancing, I don’t think she ever took an adult ed class or set out to learn a new skill. She’s never been into gardening, and if there are houseplants in her Honolulu studio, they’re probably fake. She most definitely considers herself a Christian, though I don’t think she identifies as a Catholic despite being raised in a French-Canadian Catholic milieu in Salem, MA, and attending parochial school from kindergarten through high school.

My mother’s not matronly, nor is she outwardly maternal. Not cuddly. Not a hugger. 

She believes in positive thinking and prayer. 

I can detect parts of my mother in myself. I have some of her vanity and stubbornness, of which I can’t say I’m proud. I guess we cannot expect to turn out completely different from our parents. Finding traces of my father is a little more difficult because I spent very little time with him; he passed away at 57. Never saw his grandchildren. 

My mother is the kind of person who seems to lack substance, and it doesn’t take much time to exhaust topics of conversation with her. But one thing I admire about her is her willingness to take risks; she convinced my father to move to California in the mid-50’s, just pack up and go, find a town and settle down. In the late 70’s she moved to northern California, Los Gatos, then a few years later to Hawaii. Honolulu. Waikiki. After more than 40 years in residence, she retains the mindset of a tourist. 

Food From Far Away

I read the labels on the cardboard boxes I toss in the baler at the Market. Beef from Yosemite Valley. Bison from the high plains. Tomatoes, avocados, asparagus, and bell peppers from Mexico. Apples and grapes from Chile. Bananas from Ecuador and Guatemala. Crab meat from Vietnam. Shrimp from Thailand. Fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood year round, a miracle of international trade and commerce for those who can afford it. But do we ever pause to consider the human and environmental cost? Where I live we buy vegetables and fruits and seafood at a relatively inexpensive cost because at the start of the chain of growers, middlemen, brokers, distributors, trucking companies and retail stores, stands a supply of cheap, pliable, exploitable labor. The invisible people who plant, harvest and pack tomatoes and mangoes and celery and whatnot, who perform hard manual labor for hours each day. People with families, stories, a past and maybe hope for a future. Immigrants from neighboring countries with few legal rights. Migrants escaping war ravaged countries. Climate refugees waiting for the wheels of the immigration system to turn. The people growing our food are in many instances living the most precarious lives. 

But we don’t want to see them, do we? Out of sight, out of mind, abstract as our own death. Not our fault, it’s globalization, NAFTA, capitalism, the way it is. I didn’t make the rules. It’s life. I can’t help it if I earn a lot of money. Everyone has to pull themselves by their own shoe laces, bootstraps, and Velcro. 

I read all the labels and ask why some of these products can’t be produced domestically. Perhaps they can, but we’d pay more and maybe have access to less, be forced to wait for the seasons to change and certain fruits and vegetables to become available. Would that be the end of the world? Not for me, personally, maybe, but the possibility of a desire being unavailable is unthinkable to many. We’re conditioned from Amazon to Uber to DoorDash to expect immediate fulfillment; it’s a God-inspired right for certain human beings.  

Capitalism fucked up American agriculture as surely as it created virtual monopolies in banking, insurance, technology, telecommunications, airlines, and grocery chains. What are the main cash crops in the American heartland, corn and soybeans? Duo culture. Bad for the soil over time. Uses a lot of scarce water and pesticides, fertilizer.  Big agriculture, large scale, thousands of acres. Corporate-food. 

Because of our peculiar way of seeing the world, it’s not always easy to recognize that climate change is happening. But don’t take my word for it, just pay attention to the number of stories in the media about weather and water, and the locales where never-in-my-lifetime events are happening. Climate and food and humans are intertwined, like lovers.