How Will We Know When It's Really Over?

Much water has passed over the proverbial dam since Trump was impeached. More than 300 cases have been filed against participants in the January 6th insurrection, and one against Trump. Trump may be the only one who’s able to escape justice, as the carelessness, indifference, and the self-serving need to promote themselves on social media have taken center stage for many of those who are facing court dates.

Seven GOP senators (out of fifty), voted to convict Donald Trump. The evidence against “the former guy” was overwhelming, and his meager defense was meaningless, except that even if his attorneys had simply recited the lyrics to “Surfin’ Bird” it would have been enough.

But what about those seven? Richard Burr, a senator from North Carolina, was censured immediately by the Republican Party of his state. The chairman called his vote, “shocking and disappointing.” Despite the fact that the constitutionality of the trial was established, the GOP claimed otherwise.

Bill Cassidy of Louisiana added that “it was clear that Trump wished lawmakers to be intimidated” while they counted electoral votes, and that Trump did nothing to dissuade the violent mob. His GOP? “Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and President Trump has been acquitted of the impeachment charge filed against him.” He, too, was censured.

Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska bucked their local GOP chapters because, well, they could. Collins just won a six year term, and Murkowski will face an election with rank choice voting, which puts her in a good enough position. Neither was in jeopardy.

Mitt Romney was the only member of the GOP to vote to convict Trump last year. His vote was no surprise, and his constituents won’t bend because he did it again.

Ben Sasse of Nebraska cited Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been rigged against him. Sasse, preempted a potential censure by releasing a video in which he maintained that “politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude.”

And then Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. "As a result of President Trump's actions, for the first time in American history, the transfer of presidential power was not peaceful," he said. "A lawless attempt to retain power by a president was one of the founders' greatest fears motivating the inclusion of the impeachment authorities in the U.S. Constitution." And the response? The GOP said that he shared “the disappointment of our grassroots leaders and volunteers” over his vote.

But there’s more. And this is where this is leading. “We did not send him there to vote his conscience,” Ball said on Monday. “We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us.”

From the Washington Post, ”The first half of this comment is generating headlines. After all, the unvarnished expression of the idea that Toomey’s proper role was to side with Trump, rather than do what his conscience dictates, is unintentionally revealing

But the second half — the notion that representing Republican voters required this of Toomey — is also telling, and suggests the ongoing GOP war over Trump’s legacy may well lead to a very dark place.

That’s because this sentiment is an increasingly widespread one. We’re hearing again and again that the obligation to represent Republican voters is what requires elected GOP officials to refrain from holding Trump accountable for inciting a violent effort to overthrow U.S. democracy.” Liz Cheney was censured for "voting her conscience.” Josh Hawley claimed that he was “representing his constituents”, even though their constituents were fed and believed a big lie.

So what’s ahead? The extreme right wing of the GOP is too big to fail. Idiots like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, believers in QAnon and a host of other stupid conspiracy theories, are enjoying support from so many other know-nothings in the GOP. They’re getting the press, but perhaps those more sane among us will get the votes. Too early to know how full the glass is.

Manzanar

First, the Wikipedia stuff…

Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from March 1942 to November 1945. It is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California's Owens Valley, between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles. Manzanar means "apple orchard" in Spanish. The Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States, was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the ten former camp sites.

Since the last of those incarcerated left in 1945, former detainees and others have worked to protect Manzanar and to establish it as a National Historic Site to ensure that the history of the site, along with the stories of those who were incarcerated there, is recorded for current and future generations. The primary focus is the Japanese American incarceration era, as specified in the legislation that created the Manzanar National Historic Site. The site also interprets the former town of Manzanar, the ranch days, the settlement by the Owens Valley Paiute, and the role that water played in shaping the history of the Owens Valley.

My turn. At the beginning of a circuitous road trip that Jadyne and I took to Colorado, we dipped down #395 on the eastern side of the Sierrra Nevada mountains, stopping at Manzanar. Although the barracks are gone, foundations remain. It is easy to imagine what it must have looked like seventy-eight years ago. The views looking west are spectacular.

Inside one of the remaining buildings mementos, maps, and photos give testimony to the thousands who were imprisoned there, victims of American racism. A locked glass cabinet holds letters, teddy bears, and jewelry from the residents. Jadyne walked over to look.

The cabinet.

OMG! She exclaimed. There’s one of your photos! In the second shelf to the far right, a boy had addressed a letter to one of the former residents, his grandfather, a man he’d never met.

Evan’s letter and a wallet photograph from Montgomery High School’s Prom.

Although the text was difficult to read from my photo, I have been able to transcribe it. It is as follows,

“Although we never met, never talked, never saw each other, it is you that I have to thank for all I have now.  My happiness through life I hold dear would not have happened had it not been for you.  It is here in Manzanar that I realize how different your life is from mine and how truly blessed I am.  Thank you for your sacrifices and for giving me the life I now appreciate so much more.  May heaven hold as much good for you as it has already given me.” Evan

A Day of Infamy (Part II)

I sent an email to my cousin Donald (no relation to the POS in the White House), congratulating him on his 75th birthday, adding it to the other auspicious events of the day—the feast of Epiphany, Warnock’s win in Georgia and the expected official announcement of Biden’s election. Little did I (or anyone) know that at a rally organized by disgruntled Trump supporters in DC, that Trump would encourage them to march to the Capitol and “stay strong,” and that after claiming that he would lead them, slip unnoticed back to the White House and gleefully watch as…

The Disgruntled

Disgruntles must know that it would have been easier to go up the stairs.

A Disgruntle carts away his estate sale purchase.

Capitol police try to dissuade a Disgruntle from entering the senate chambers.

Nancy Pelosi relinquishes her office to a Disgruntle who sends her a personal message, “We will not back down”, then is seen and photographed later carrying a letter addressed to her.

Lawmakers take naps in the midst of lengthy negotiations.

A Disgruntle proudly displays what the election of 2016 had already revealed—that Trump is his president. Thanks for the reminder.

The Flag Store ran out of American flags, so this Disgruntle carried this one instead.

Fortunately, enough of the lawmakers were gruntled, but not this one. He is Senator Josh Hawley, whose hometown paper reported, “Sen. Josh Hawley has blood on his hands in a Capitol coup attempt” I guess he’s one of the Disgruntled, too. He wrote a book that Simon & Schuster were planning to publish. Note the word “were.”

Not all the Disgruntlers were there to party. This lovely shirt is emblazoned with “6MWE”, referring to the six million Jews killed in WW II, and the letters mean, “Weren’t Enough.”

Christians and Evangelicals sympathize with a praying Disgruntle, recognizing how oppressed she is because of her love for Trump, her whiteness, and her fear of democracy,

Later, Princess Handbag, she of the unfairly maligned and oppressed Family Trump, referred to the disgruntled as “patriots”. The POS in the White House tweeted, "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!" He added, “We love you. You’re very special.”

Meanwhile…Jon Ossoff defeated crooked David Perdue, joining Raphael Warnock, as the second of Georgia’s senators, effectively giving the senate back to the Democrats. And the rats in the administration have begun to leave the sinking USS Trump. The role of the failed capitol police has been questioned, as they did nothing to prevent the rioters, even taking selfies with some of them. Oh yes, one shot and killed a woman in the neck. (Three other Disgruntles succumbed in medical emergencies.). Two days later. An officer has died.

And as a parting P.S. to yesterday’s Washington rave-a-thon…

The armed forces at the Capitol during BLM protests. They were on sabbatical yesterday.

And a very late P.S.S. Of the five who died on Wednesday our attention and sympathies turn towards one of those deceased, Kevin Greeson, who I’d like to honor in my blog.

R.I.P. dear Kevin

2020 The Year That Wasn't

Five hours and forty minutes. Could any year be worse than this one? Historians rate it down to about eighth in US history, giving 1862 with the thousands that died in the Civil War a reason to lay claim, bringing the USA close to an end, 1968 with the political upheaval, the Vietnam war, and the assassinations, 2001, and the fall of the twin towers, and who could forget 1929 with the stock market crash, bread lines and the depression?

But 2020 is a worthy competitor. The pandemic, social unrest, election chaos, the rise of right-wing militant groups, and the mere presence of Donald J Trump alive and in office, gives reason to consider it. In fact, the four years that Trump has been president, if taken together, represent a sad time in American history, coalescing in one horrendous four-year year.

2020 began with very little fanfare, a year like any other year, that is, unless you consider that Trump was apprised of the danger of Covid-19 in that first month. Even though he knew how deadly it was, he said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” Instead of acting on the knowledge that he had been given, he called it a hoax perpetuated by Democrats who want to bring him down. That “one person” has metastasized into twenty million cases and three hundred and forty-four thousand unnecessary deaths. Not a year later, but in only ten months. One of a huge number of failures for the sociopath, the moron who for the next nineteen days, calls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue “home.”

In February Trump was impeached by the house, but acquitted by the Senate. The Republican party, once a collection of conservative voices who loved America, became cultists, pledging allegiance and fealty to an autocratic man-child, the wannabe dictator who ruled them with criticism and threats.

By March stay-at-home orders were in place. The country shut down. In June Trump staged his infamous plea to evangelicals, clearing peaceful protestors from a church in Washington DC, then holding a Bible upside-down to show his religious convictions. It became a meme to hold a book that you’ve never read in front of a place you’ve never been.

In the summer twelve named storms hit the southern US. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the “notorious RBG” passed away, leaving Trump and the Republicans an opportunity to select a conservative inexperienced justice to take the place of the liberal icon, that sadly, stayed too long.

In October Trump got Covid. We prayed that he would find himself on a ventilator, but a zillion doctors, the best medical care in America, experimental drugs conspired to save the tyrant, who upon his release, returned to the White House, and in a theatrical display, threw off his mask, encouraging seventy million sheep (what a lot of cotton!) to do the same. They did, then they died.

The vaccine arrived in December, but the country, so ill-prepared for testing, for caring for the afflicted, for knowing what to do next, is now ill-prepared to administer the vaccine. It sits in warehouses, and nmore people die.

Christmas 2020

The lights didn’’t make Christmas “Christmas.” What’s behind them did. I applaud those who put up such luminous masterpieces, like this:

Or this:

But lights don’t make Christmas “Christmas.” And presents don’t, either. And big trees aren’t any better than small trees. We had a friend who befriended outcasts. She went to a Christmas tree lot and asked for the smallest, most pathetic tree on the lot. Amazed, the man who sold her the tree said, “I’ve never had anyone ever ask for that before.” So of course, we questioned her about where she bought it, and we asked him the same thing. Made his Christmas.

People used to wait until after Thanksgiving to put up lights, but someone we know put them up after Halloween. Same with Christmas trees. Many were up the day after Thanksgiving. Tree farms were low on inventory. Lines were long. We don’t always send out Christmas cards, but this year we knew we should.

Our three kids live nearby. We always have one day, not on Christmas itself, when we celebrate together. We did it this year, too. On Zoom.

Facing Christmas head-on this year brought out pluck, determination, and ingenuity. At the end of one of the most troubling years in our lives, we were determined to bring joy back into our lives first by ignoring the caterwauling from the White House. Then, by sending and sharing love and sympathy to all those who are affected by Covid-19. knowing that the empty chairs at Christmas dinner symbolize the unspeakable pain and sorrow that so many suffer. And third, we recognize the injustices that blacks and Latinos face in both the political arena and in the courts. And now we see these injustices mirrored in the pandemic, recognizing that people of color are not only more likely to become infected but to die from it at younger ages. We commit ourselves to doing more than just acknowledging the pain and suffering by providing support as we can.

This is where the lights come in. This is where the poinsettias, the fruitcakes, the amaryllis, the wreaths, the gifts from neighbor to neighbor, the tiny trees in apartment windows, the caroling at six foot intervals, the Zoom family gatherings, Jadyne’s armband lights for running in the dark, my PurpleAir sensor and Magic hoses, and last the resolutions, even before the New Year, that there is work we can do to supplant despair and depression.

It’s now been four days since the winter solstice. The days are getting longer. The new year is upon us. The vaccine has arrived. Hope, love, kindness, friendship, empathy, defiance, resistance, are an unquenchable part of the human spirit. At the end of 2020, after so many losses from Trump, to Covid, to smoky skies, we look forward to the challenges that face us this new year with conviction, love, and optimism.

Kensington Cotillion

Kensington...

Is a small unincorporated village in the East Bay hills with streets so narrow that two-way traffic is impossible. This is our street, Rugby Avenue, which is wider than many of the streets in our neighborhood. Although California law dictates that the car going downhill has to yield to the car going uphill there is an unwritten law in these hills that supersedes that. Regardless of the incline, the car traveling on the side of the street that permits parking always yields to the cars on the no-parking side. It is also an unwritten law that the driver on the side of the street with free travel waves to the driver who pulled into a space on the other side. He, in turn, waves back. Same is true for pedestrians. While crossing a street yesterday I waved to a woman who waited while I crossed. She smiled and waved back. And that folks, is the extent of outside human contact in the Bay Area in December in the year of our Lord 2020.

Election P.S.

Two hundred and twenty-four years ago George Washington retired with these words, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge … is itself a frightful despotism,” Washington warned. And, “sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” He warned against political parties becoming “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.”

That was then,.

This is now, words taken straight from the current president:

“This election was a fraud. A total fraud. It was a fraudulent election. This was a massive fraud. This fraud has taken place. You have a fraudulent system. Fraudulent voting and fraudulent votes. There’s tremendous fraud here. There’s fraud all over the place. Massive fraud has been found.

We’re like a Third World country. We will find tens of thousands of fraudulent and illegal votes. You’re gonna find fraud of hundreds of thousands of votes per state. They used covid in order to defraud the people of this country. Biden can only enter the White House as president if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. I just don’t see Americans rolling over for this election fraud. Our big lawsuit, which spells out in great detail all of the ballot fraud and more, will soon be filled (sic).

RIGGED ELECTION! This Election was RIGGED. This, it was a rigged election. Very sad to say it, this election was rigged. This was a 100% RIGGED ELECTION They know it was a rigged election. At the highest level it was a rigged election. This election was a rigged election.

This was an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. In Georgia, I won by a lot. I won that by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way Trump didn’t win Pennsylvania because the energy industry was all for him. No, we won by a lot. We were robbed. We got many votes more than Ronald Reagan.

This election was lost by the Democrats. They cheated. They flooded everybody with ballots. They’re horrible people, and they’re people that don’t love our country.

Horrible things went on. Many other things were happening that were horrible. Just horrible. This is horrible what’s taking place. All of the horrible things that happened to poll watchers. If you were a Republican poll watcher you were treated like a dog.

Dead people were requesting ballots. Not only were they coming in and putting in a ballot, but dead people were requesting ballots, and they were dead for years. Dead people voting all over the place.”

There is no justice if this man isn’t charged, convicted, and sentenced.

Aquatic Park

It really doesn’t look like much. From Wikipedia: “Aquatic Park is a public park in Berkeley, located just east of the Eastshore Freeway (Interstate 80) between Ashby and University Avenues. The Works Progress Administration created the park in the 1930s simultaneously with the nearby Berkeley Yacht Harbor.[1] Its centerpiece is an artificial mile-long lagoon that was cut off from San Francisco Bay by the creation of a causeway for the Eastshore Highway, during the construction of the approaches to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, also in the 1930s. The east shoreline of the lagoon used to be the original shoreline of San Francisco Bay.”

Aquatic Park. Looking north

I’ve spent many hours there, walking from the Animal Shelter at the north end, then continuing counter-clockwise to the south, then east, then north again along a paved bike and pedestrian trail, through a frisbee golf course, a number of cyclists, and people out enjoying a modest walk around the lagoon.

I spent a little more than an hour there today, meeting friends, some familiar, some new. I never know what to expect. The following ten images were taken in about an hour in a smaller unnamed lagoon, adjacent to Aquatic Park, no more than fifty feet away. And yesterday, that was where the action was.

The whole family came out to watch Junior’s first flight:

His landing, safe, but a bit awkward.

More friends.

Cormorants are the Ferraris of Aquatic Park.

The drama queens like to show off, wings raised and spread, heading into the shadows.

I have enough trouble understanding people who speak English as a second language, but listening to herons is a real challenge. I just usually nod and smile. And after a while they just fly away.

Cormorants are faster, but a low altitude pelican is a sight, too. Their wingtips never touch the water.

Four in the air, six taxiing.

This is a friend. She came by just to see what I was doing.

They’re used to me…

Other images from other days…

The road between the lagoon and I-80.

I watched the heron wandering around the weeds. Until he made a quick dive into the grasses did I realize that he was looking for lunch.

A tern for the better.

The end.

Two Ships

Longfellow’s quote encapsulates so much in my life right now. Yesterday thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington DC to express their contempt for the election results, which, from the words of their lord and god, were “rigged”, a word he’s come to use now, having replaced “fraud.”

From the Washington Post, “President Trump’s supporters had celebrated for hours on Saturday, waving their MAGA flags and blaring “God Bless the U.S.A.” as they gathered in Washington to falsely claim that the election had been stolen from the man they adore. The crowd had even reveled in a personal visit from Trump, who passed by in his motorcade, smiling and waving. ‘He drove right past me. I saw him. He waved right past me,’ one man said as he tried to collect himself.” On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact.

Two very large ships. One, 73,107,108, the largest vote for a President in history, was swamped by more than five million more passengers on the challenger, 78,662,259. And it’s not over yet. The ships pass, and “then darkness again and silence.” That’s where we take leave of the quote, for as long as Trump continues his tweets, claiming that the election was either rigged, rife with fraud, or stolen, the remaining “silence” will be both destructive and deafening. ************************************************************************************************************************** Last week I tried to have a conversation with Hawthorn. Knowing that he’s dealing with difficult issues—a breakup of his family, a forced transition between his home on Elm Court and ours, a stream of complaints shared to him by his mother about his father, he is confused, distraught, unhappy and vulnerable. One ship (me) tried to pass on advice that I had received years ago in a Mindfulness class, that “although we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we respond.” Unfortunately this first ship added that Jadyne and I hadn’t signed up for this, we hadn’t chosen to share our retirement years this way, that this was something we couldn’t control, but how we responded was something we could control. Ship #2 ran downstairs, called his mother, and told her he wanted to go back to Elm Court. He interpreted what I said to mean that we didn’t want him and Hazel to come up, that we didn’t care about them, and in a text passed to Jason by his mother, “we didn’t care if he died.” Unwilling to come up for his three days this weekend, we thought we wouldn’t see him at all. Then, knowing that his friend Jake would be here, he came up Saturday night, and the two played in the open garage (because of Covid-19), a heater, lamp and muslin spread on the floor to give them some comfort, and then went to bed. He’s downstairs now, asleep, and we’ll find out later whether the rest is silence. Once the ships have passed, they’re still sailing, and course corrections are still possible. **************************************************************************************************************************Sometimes the ships don’t pass. Titanic, meet Iceberg. For the last several weeks I was the captain of a ship with a very long name—”I can’t talk to anyone about anything else but the election and how much I hate Donald Trump.” I recognize that there are a lot of people on this ship, but I was clearly the captain. And as blind as the captain was on the real Titanic, this captain failed to recognize the named Iceberg ahead, “Jadyne.” Jadyne was actually piloting the iceberg, which had a name, too. “I’m sick and tired of all the complaining that you do…you can’t talk about anything else…you aren’t any fun to be around, and if you’re angry because I’m criticizing you so much, it’s because I can’t take it anymore.” Wow! The whole iceberg was covered in paint. Fortunately, Jadyne climbed off the iceberg, brought along some Gorilla Glue, and patched up the ol’ Titanic clone, climbed on board and took control. The “ICTTAAAAEBTEAHMIHDT” (for short), has steamed on. The waters have calmed. The iceberg has melted.. **************************************************************************************************************************I have a friend named Anne Renfree. Her husband, a Santa Rosa obstetrician, would have delivered Jennifer had he been available when she made her appearance. He waived all his fees, as I taught his kids at Cardinal Newman HS, and he knew how poorly compensated we were. When Anne and John’s son Kevin was married in New Orleans John not only paid me to photograph the wedding, but he paid for Jadyne and me to fly to New Orleans, stay for a week, and join him and his friends for social events and dinners. Thirty-two years later, when Anne commented favorably on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I knew I was in unfamiliar territory. Later I posted on FB a faux photo of a Trump tower in a prison, and she replied,

Concerned that I was losing a valuable friendship because of politics I wrote to one of her daughters who replied,

“David - Thank you for reaching out. First and foremost, I know that I speak for the entire Renfree family when I say that we hold you and Jadyne in the highest regard. Unfortunately, the political environment has become very polarized and there is no escape. You cannot turn on the tv, open a newspaper or participate in social media without being bombarded by strong, and often nasty, political attacks. We had two dogs in this race and had to hold our noses to vote for one of them. As for my mom, it did not turn out the way she had hoped. All I can ask is that you not take it personally and understand where the negativity comes from. I continue to wish you and your family peace and good health.”

There is a harbor to be reached.

Election Day...and then some

9:07 P.S.T. Polls in the East close in less than seven hours. We dropped our ballot off a couple of weeks ago at the Kensington Library. Close to a hundred million other people either mailed, dropped their ballots off, or stood in lines that stretched several city blocks long, and waited as long as eleven hours to vote in person. For once there is no hyperbole in saying that this “is the most important election of our lifetimes.” It is. It’s not the difference between different thoughts and methods, differing ways and means of engaging in a democracy, but more accurately, an election between someone who believes in America and a man who, along with his cult followers, wants to destroy it. Oh, perhaps “wants to destroy it” is hyperbole, but a narcissist who is indifferent to the deaths of a quarter of a million countrymen, a man whose policies have brought about many of those deaths, a reality TV host who had never governed, who had sex with a porn star while his wife was giving birth to his baby, who has declared bankruptcy six times and owes hundreds of millions of dollars to unknown people in unknown countries, is, because he’s a con artist, a billionaire who paid $750 in federal income tax, a man ignorant of the subtleties of virtually everything, bent on plundering a country that has given him so much, a country that had asked him so little in return. And people love him. Lemmings will never become extinct. Stupidity and Ignorance are in vogue in many parts of America. I appropriated one of the con man’s favorite tweets, “Sad.”

And in the days and weeks before Election Day…

He won’t go down without a fight. Despite the fact that his recent “rallies” have brought about an estimated 30,000 cases of Covid-19 and 700 deaths, this “law and order” President continued to bask in the limelight of his adoring followers. Many of them, ignoring the “law and order” part, engaged in driving “parades”, shutting down freeways and bridges, and in one case, driving into Marin City, a largely black community in Marin County, shouting epithets at the black residents. Here they are, spreading “love” and “law and order” while creating chaos.

A pickup truck heading into Marin City. The flag reads “No More Bullshit”, ironically in support of a man who has spoon fed his followers four years of bullshit, lying over 20,000 times during his “presidency,”

Pretending to be Americans

Not content with cars, Trump followers in coastal communities engaged in Trump boat parades. In this one, the wakes of several boats created waves that sunk seven boats. I love irony, especially when it’s combined with karma.

Three years ago, when Trump was the president-elect and had yet to take the oath of office, someone wrote to a Buddhist spiritual adviser, asking for clarity. The response:

“Trump is not an alien who came from another planet. We produced Trump, so we are co-responsible. Our culture, our society, made him. We love to pick somebody and make him the object. But it’s deeper than that. We have to see him inside of us. We are afraid to engage, but you can dialogue and debate. It requires a lot of practice to sit there and listen, and not judge so you can understand. You cannot end discrimination by calling the other names. All the people who voted for him are not bigots and racists and women haters. We are all judgmental, sometimes even a bit racist. What’s in my heart is that people find the patience and clarity to listen before they start to blame and criticize.”

Not me. If you haven’t figured out yet that Trump is an alien presence, that his psychological profile is that of a sociopath, then you’re a fucking moron, and not a passive fucking moron, but one whose active allegiance to a cult leader will spread, like Covid-19, into the minds of the weak, vulnerable, unsuspecting, evil, and terminally and hopelessly stupid. Wanna have a party with more friends like you? Mind you, not all Trump supporters look like these good folks; some are actually even more disreputable.

Twenty-four hours later…

The blue wave didn’t get anyone wet. The presidential election is too close to call, Republicans held the Senate, and the Democrats didn’t make headway in the House. Why? Polling is an inexact science. Although mail-in ballots favored the Democrats, in-person voting yesterday was decidedly red. Still, but why? White people are scared to death, and Trump is the last great white hope. Even discounting his lies. his ignorance, and his mismanagement of the Covid virus, one writer marveled, “More than 230,000 Americans died of coronavirus under the president's watch. Americans in hard-hit counties voted for him anyway.” Why? Why, indeed. Another writer had this to say, “Trump makes an explicit and consistent appeal to white supremacy & its cousins patriarchy and xenophobia. White supremacy is a serious drug & Trump is the first president since Reagan to offer it clean, uncut and non-diluted. White America is not about to kick that narcotic”

Charles Blow, a writer for the NY Times, said in an OpEd, that even though Trump is the most-anti-gay president ever, that ten percent of American gay men "do not support Trump at all, but will vote for him nonetheless,” that blacks voted for him in increasing numbers despite his blatant racism, and that a plurality of white women voted for him, too, despite that he denigrates women. He concludes, “All of this to me points to the power of the white patriarchy and the coattail it has of those who depend on it or aspire to it. It reaches across gender and sexual orientation and even race, Trump’s brash, privileged chest thumping and alpha-male dismissiveness and in-your-face rudeness are aspirational to some men and appealing to some women, Some people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors, and will aspire to power by proximity.”

It’s a return to the caves. Trump holds the biggest club. People love that shit. Forget policies, character, honesty, he can swing his club on the noggins of the unsuspecting.

It’s Over.

Sometime this morning Pennsylvania catapulted Biden from 253 to 273, and the long national nightmare ended.

In the New York Times writer Roxane Gay wrote,

“The United States is not at all united. We live in two countries. In one, people are willing to grapple with racism and bigotry. We acknowledge that women have a right to bodily autonomy, that every American has a right to vote and the right to health care and the right to a fair living wage. We understand that this is a country of abundance and that the only reason economic disparity exists is because of a continued government refusal to tax the wealthy proportionally.

The other United States is committed to defending white supremacy and patriarchy at all costs. Its citizens are the people who believe in QAnon conspiracy theories and take Mr. Trump’s misinformation as gospel. They see America as a country of scarcity, where there will never be enough of anything to go around, so it is every man and woman for themselves.

They are not concerned with the collective, because they believe any success they achieve by virtue of their white privilege is achieved by virtue of merit. They see equity as oppression. They are so terrified, in fact, that as the final votes were counted in Detroit, a group of them swarmed the venue shouting, “Stop the count.” In Arizona, others swarmed a venue shouting, “Count the votes.” The citizens of this version of America only believe in democracy that serves their interests.”

Trump’s first tweet after the election was called for Biden:

“I WON THE ELECTION, BY A LOT!”

Election Day +19

In the last sixteen days the Narcissist-in-Chief has filed over thirty lawsuits, claiming among other things, massive fraud, a stolen election, and the questionable belief that he has actually won the election. His record so far 1-29.

Today he posted these tweets:

He’s right. Indeed, the world is watching…and laughing…and sending condolences to Americans who are both humiliated and embarrassed by the antics of the insane resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He won’t concede, nor will he ever believe that he lost. In this layperson’s opinion, he is insane. Insanity, meet reality. The former will have a breakdown. Asylum, meet your new friend.

November 24, 2020

After Attorney Sydney Powell and Rudolph Guliani (he with the hair dye running down both cheeks) embarrassed themselves and Trump at separate press conferences (something that Chris Christie called a “national embarrassment.”} and Powell was dismissed, Trump dismissed the whole team. Emily Murphy, the administrator who is in charge of the funds and services provided to the President-Elect, sat on the money, the briefings, and the services for sixteen days, cowed by Trump and the Republican cowards.

But that’s all over now. She authorized the transition. Biden will receive briefings, funds, and he and Kamala are hitting the ground running, despite Republican efforts to trip them up. This whole sorry tale, this sad chapter of American history, this pathetic president who lost the popular vote twice and was impeached, will come to its inglorious end.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday, in their respective Thanksgiving messages, President Trump and President-Elect Biden spoke. Biden expressed gratitude, compassion, the need for unity, and an optimistic look to the future. Trump, well, Trump said this:

“This is an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot — big energy,” Trump said via the phone’s scratchy speaker. “This election was rigged, and we can’t let that happen. We can’t let it happen for our country. This election has to be turned around.”

And so it went. And so it goes.

"Old Friends...

…sat on the park bench like bookends”, sang Paul Simons. Bookends, my ass. Many of us are Type A, and we don’t sit. We're out jogging, taking care of our grandchildren, cutting the lawn, going to book clubs, writing letters to encourage people to vote, driving for Meals on Wheels, or making the perfect frozen Margaritas. And we “old folks” have friends who are “old folks”, too, and until this damned pandemic struck you would as likely find all of us in Italy, Russia, China, or the Galapagos, snorkeling with dolphins. Here are six old folks who would be in some other country right now if they thought that traveling wouldn’t make us all candidates for ventilators.

Two of Jadyne’s college friends married before we did. We’ve all become good friends, both husbands and wives. The six of us have known each other for four or five decades. We have dinner together at least three times a year, going between Oakland, San Francisco, and Kensington.

Last night Mary and John hosted us at their home in Oakland. It looks “lived in”, but not the way that most houses look “lived in,” as twenty-nine years ago they told their kids, “There’s threat of fire. We need to evacuate. Take your homework.” And their house was one of 2,843 that was burned to the ground. They lost everything. Everything,

Mary Brutacao-Kemp and John Kemp

Both Kemps are retired attorneys. Mary’s practice was family law; John’s was taxes. They have two daughters and a son. Once upon a time they looked like this:

From an undated color slide. Our youngest is forty-two, so Jadyne’s pregnancy dates this closer to five decades ago.

John and Mary’s oldest, Jessica, is close in age to Jennifer. Here’s a photograph of Jessica and Jennifer, one of my favorites.

Jennifer is on the left, Jessica on the right. Rawlins, Wyoming and Dillon, Montana look on, wishing to be part of the hijinks.

As far as we know money has never been an issue with the Kemps. In 1984 we came to visit them for a weekend, and I suggested that we go to a Toyota dealer to look at the new Toyota van, which had just been introduced. The dealer had one in stock. John asked me, “Are you going to buy this?” I said, “Not this one. I like the silver better.” John said, “Good, because I am.” When the salesman asked John to fill out his salary figures John returned the document to the salesman who replied, “Not your yearly salary, but your monthly one.” John smiled, “I know,” he replied. We’ve traveled together, shared much, drunk as much as we’ve shared, and consider each other lifetime friends.

When Teeny was killed in an avalanche in 1988 John and Mary drove to Santa Rosa that night.

And so it is with Tracy and Al.

Al and Tracy

Al was an Alameda Public Defender, and Tracy taught school. Al’s Italian ancestors lived in San Francicso, and so do Tracy and Al. Their home in the Marina District of San Francisco, a couple of blocks from the bay, is built on fill. During the Loma Prieta in 1989 it sustained, as I remember, damage in the neighborhood of $40,000. Al took off work and did the work himself. Al is good at stuff like that. I’m not. But then again, I think that Al remodeled a bedroom and bathrroom at their house for Becky, finishing it just as she was leaving for college. They still have a VW that, because it’s about two hundred years old, is worth five or six times more than what they paid for it.

Tracy and Al are sharing an experience with us that none of us signed up for—contentious divorce in the marriage of our first born children. Not going there. In this photograph Al is holding their second child, Mark.

Mark and Al. Mark is the one without the beard.

Jadyne

There are countless anecdotes from our time together, most of which we can look back on with amusement, anecdotes that we remember, experiences that we share. Marlene Dietrich once said, “It’s the friends you can call at 4 am that matter.” It’s a lovely sentiment, but after last night’s six or seven bottles of wine I don’t think that John would have answered.

Tahoe 2020

Our three day weekend at Tahoe with John, Kim, and family didn’t start out as we had hoped. We spent Friday morning pacing, anxiously waiting almost four hours while Jason and Rachel’s custody hearing went before a judge. We didn’t know that the judge had four other cases to decide, and Jason’s and Rachel’s was last.

By noon it was over. But this isn’t about that. It’s about arriving at Tahoe three hours later at which time I realized that the sandals, shorts, and t-shirt that I was wearing were all that I had brought to Tahoe. Oh yes, I had two cameras, four lenses and my guitar, just no clothes or toiletries, no meds, no nothing.

I called Jennifer. “Jennifer,” I asked in a plaintive voice, “How much do you love me?” Enough, as it turned out, that she would drive to Rugby, pick up my suitcase, then leave the next morning in time to meet me in Rocklin at 6;45 am, a hundred miles away for each of us and make the exchange. I returned with suitcase in hand by 9:00, enough time to charge the car, then meet everyone at Granlibakken Treetop Adventure Park

We had no idea what to expect. A half hour orientation with masks, harnesses, and we were off. Taking cues from ski slope designations, we found ourselves facing three different levels, green, blue, and black diamond. We began with green, then to blue. The Weller Way family loved the black diamonds.

John, Kim, Kennedy, and Lilly

Kennedy

Lilly

Kim on a zip line

Anyone who knows about Jadyne’s adventure on the Shooting Star in 1970 would be impressed with her fearless performance at Granlibakken.

An overview of one of the 12 courses. Noting my own age I asked one of the “counselors” about the oldest adventurer. “One man celebrated his eightieth birthday here,” they said. Five and a half years from now for me. Get your harnesses ready, folks.

Making friends along a trail at Tahoe City.

I didn’t wait to see the look on the tourists’ faces below.

October at Tahoe reminds me of Autumn in Ohio.

Because six grandchildren weren’t running around playing I had some alone time with two I don’t see very often—Lilly and Kennedy. In my favorite images of people their faces are “in repose”. The whole of who they are is revealed through their eyes and their expressions. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

Lillian

Kennedy

Oh yes. Tahoe. Something about a lake.

"I'm a Travelin' Man...Made a lot of Stops"

Not only has my life been enriched by the many places that Jadyne and I have been able to visit, but we’ve met some wonderful people in those places. They are friends of friends, students we’d befriended who were studying at UCB who’ve returned home, business associates related to Dozens of Muslins, and families of former romantic partners of our offspring. We’ve been sheltered at their homes, protected*, (I’ll get to that), shown beautiful national parks, gifted with meals and hotel expenses, by people who have shown us kindness that we could never repay.

When John was nineteen he played rugby for an American team that traveled to New Zealand, He stayed with Ellen and Paul Gavin, whose daughter Michelle fell in love with John, (even moving in with him while he was in law school). Even though that affair ended we fell in love with Michelle, too, often hosting her and later, her sister. When we traveled to New Zealand we stayed with the Gavins in tiny Whakatane on the North Island.

Ellen and Paul Gavin

Downtown Whakatane. In the distance is White Island, a favorite tourist spot, that is, until December, 2019, when the volcano, driven by steam, erupted, killing sixteen tourists.

Our neighbors in Kensington at the time, Glenn and Sally Flinchbaugh, knew Denis and Anne McLean, who lived in Wellington. Denis was the ambassador to the United States for New Zealand when Kennedy and George Bush were President. They welcomed us in Wellington, which is located on the southern side of the North Island. Denis was still active in politics, finishing a book as we visited. Anne took us all over Wellington, first to visit her gallery-owning friend (with the sculpture of toast on the wall behind their heads)…

Denis McClean in his house filled with wonderful art.

Anne McClean and her gallery-owning friend

…and then to the National Tattoo Museum…

At the time we were still renting backgrounds. Film was still king, and digital was the new kid on the block. Our website, dozensofmuslins.com, was the go-to site for photographers whose work centered around high schools.

Uttiya Misra was the owner of AAvant backgrounds, in Delhi, India. His team of artists painted small backgrounds, such as those that we rented, and large theater muslins and canvasses, filling whole ballrooms and stages with hand-painted pieces. He knew of us through the internet, and he saw an opening. We began to contract for his services, were pleased with the quality of the work that Aavant produced, and twelve years ago when we visited Jennifer and Andrew in Kathmandu, we took a side trip to India, to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, to Varanasi for the Ganges, and of course to Delhi to see Uttiya and Aavant.

Aavant artists and our New Orleans background. I took this particular image to show Jennifer, as she has been so involved with human rights, especially those of children, that she thought that I would find children among the artists. I did not.

Another from Aavant. Three stories high, perhaps fifty feet long.

Now the part about being “protected.”*

Jadyne and I stopped into a nearby coffee shop in Delhi. Before we left I went online and looked at the New York Times, only to discover that in Mumbai over 100 people had been slaughtered by a terrorist group. Americans were targeted. No one knew at the time who was behind the attacks or whether other cities would experience a similar horror. We returned to our hotel quickly. Uttiya advised us to stay put until he could pick us up. And so, yes, he protected us.

Loving India as much as we did, we were able to return for a longer visit in 2016. One of our first stops was Neemrana where we met volunteer tour guide Balwant Soni who led us through the streets of Neemrana. Educated in England, Balwani spoke fluent English. His family are all craftsmen, and they sell beautiful silver jewelry. We became fast friends, both during our time in Neemrana, and later, through Facebook. I was moved by his post a week or so ago pictured below: “The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.” I began to think of all the people I’ve met in our travels whose kindness and love have resonated with me. And so I began this blog entry.

Balwant Soni

Balwant took us to the elementary school in Neemrana…

…and to meet his guru (center), and other locals in and around Neemrana, (below)

In October, 2019 we visited China for the second time. Jadyne and I had made friends with two visiting scholars, Celia and Zhongbing, both of whom had returned to China. Celia paid our hotel bill before we even arrived, and Zhong invited us to travel to a distant park, showing us places we otherwise would have never seen. First the terracotta warriors, then Celia’s husband Danesh drove us through Xi’an at night. This is the bell tower in Xi’an.

Celia gave birth while she was visiting Berkeley. This is her second daughter, Ashley, an American citizen.

Zhongbing, his wife, and their twins. Zhong is a member of the Chinese Communist party. He pays $2.50 a month for dues. Years ago when he joined he thought that it would be a good idea. He doesn’t think that anymore, but it’s not easy to leave. Dining in their tiny apartment with Zhong’s family, his mother and father, made me realize how challenging it was when Covid-19 struck China, Zhong’s university closed, and leaving the apartment was perilous. We were there months before the virus struck, and Zhong took us to, well, look at the photo below.

Zhangjiiajie National Forest Park, a twelve thousand acre park, a four hour drive from Zhong’s home in Changsha, a small town of four and a half million people in the south of China.

We spent two days in and around what is often referred to as “the most beautiful place in China”, known now as the “Avatar Mountains” for the movie that was filmed here. Besides it’s much easier to pronounce than “Zhangjiajie.”

When I mentioned that I was writing this in my blog Jadyne reminded me that “what goes ‘round comes ‘round, ” that, especially with the New Zealand Gavins, the Chinese scholars, and Uttiya in Delhi, we extended ourselves to them first, that we opened a welcome mat, showing them hospitality and the other side of the “ugly American.” For Uttiya, our relationship began with business, and though we no longer have new backgrounds made by Aavant, we’re on Facebook together, learning about each other and each other’s culture, too. And yes, every Christmas Uttiya sends us an edible gift pack of nuts, cookies, and other goodies. Still.

Oxymoron

I don’t remember the first time I came across the name “Donald Trump.” From the get-go, though, what I learned offended me. From Annie Leibovitz’s iconic image of him and Melania,..

…to his Mussolini pose on the Truman balcony two nights ago…

the insanity, the insecurity, the weakness, the narcissism, the petulance, the childishness, the corruption, the criminality, absence of empathy and sensitivity, and the overwhelming stupidity has brought the United States of America to a low unimaginable four years ago.

The list of sins is endless. So is the list of superlatives describing those sins. Moments before the photo above was taken, Trump, in a very theatrical display, removed his mask, causing MSNBC anchor Joy Reid to say, “I am speechless. I am stunned. I have to be honest with you, I’m disgusted by what I just saw. This man is contagious,” she added. Trump, Reid pointed out, “just exposed his Secret Service agents,” who she described as “true professionals” who would “in every moment of their job would take a bullet for the president, not take one from the president. There are moments in this job when you realize that you are witnessing some of the great horrors of history,” Reid said on the show, adding: “This is the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen a president do.”

Trump, a long-time critic of science’s contention that masks save lives, even after his own diagnosis, refused to wear a mask, returned to the White House and exposed his staff to his infection. What a man! “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he wrote. “Don’t let it dominate your life.” Tell that to survivors of the 210,000 Americans who have died because of this deadly disease.

And the oxymoron? His imminent defeat and downfall in twenty-seven days, when he is utterly humiliated, chewed up, and spit out by the American public, will bring unfathomable joy and happiness to the countless millions who despise him, one of whom is typing these words. Down for him and his family of grifters is up for millions who have suffered under his corrupt and malignant administration.

****************************************************************************************************************

Eleanor and me

In No Ordinary Time, Doris Goodwin’s opus about the Roosevelts, she concludes, “In these first months on her own, Eleanor derived constant comfort from a little verse sent to her by a friend. ‘They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind. In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.’”

John Vincent and Elsie Oberhelman

By age seventy-four I have lost so many whose lives have touched me, whose lessons live through me, whose presence in my life continues to shape the person I am, even as my life shapes those who follow—my children, my grandchildren, and others whose lives I may have touched. In no particular order, Jim and Betty Carns, our next door neighbors on Grand Vista Avenue. My father died six weeks after I was born, and Jim Carns , along with my grandfather John Vincent Kennedy, were the first males in my life. “Uncle Jim” and “Aunt Betty” continued to look after me even through my college years at UC, and they often invited me for dinner, even naming (they claimed), one of their children after me. I knew my grandfather for such a short time, and I was so young. I remember cigars and limburger cheese, but John and Elsie, my grandmother, made their home mine, my brother Jack’s, and my mother’s until I was about seven, when my mother married the man I learned to call “Dad.” But “Dad” was fourth on the male list. We’ll get to him later.

Third was my Uncle Rowland, a lifelong bachelor (was he in the closet?), whose eulogy I delivered in the summer of 2000. Rowland’s presence looms large—a kind, generous, politically conservative, strongly opinionated, loving, prejudiced, and extraordinarily human sort of person who recognized his own failings and stumbled through mishandled apologies to rectify them as best he could. He was racially and religiously intolerant and did his best to dissuade me from marrying a Chinese Catholic girl, then accepted that Chinese Catholic girl with warmth and love. Family meant so much to him. After he said in front of my friend with dirty boots, “Don’t let that boy into the house!” he posted a letter of apology on the wall. He blessed me with his knowing that when he was wrong he didn’t shy away from facing it. He also had exquisite taste in design, and to this day I’m mindful of his presence when I see Apple packaging, Bang & Olufsen products, and well-designed anythings.

Rowland Hopple

Teeny and Alyce Jeung

Song and Charles (Booboo)

Good-hearted Al, who loved Alyce even when she was the most unlovable, providing for her after his death.

I was blessed with Teeny’s unconditional love, no prerequisites, no qualifications, no tests. If you were in her life she loved you. She was absent ”sophistication” and status, preferring people who presented themselves as they were, with no pretensions.

I was blessed with Pau and Gung, Jadyne’s grandparents who accepted me as the father of their grandchildren, who rejoiced in front of me one night when I finally finished every grain in my bowl of rice., and who, like Uncle Rowland, were completely human, letting their complaints air only to each other in Cantonese.

And with Jadyne’s godparents, Song and “Booboo”, whose collective hearts were broken when I told them that their goddaughter had died. Booboo said “I have no reason to live anymore”, and he died the next week.

I was blessed by experiencing unfathomable sorrow, mine, yes, but Jadyne’s, our kids, and Alyce’s, in losing Teeny. It was up to me to tell everyone. I told Jadyne. I told our three children. I had to tell Alyce. In happier times she expressed unrestrained joy for a man she didn’t know who was asking for her daughter’s hand. Alyce was loving, prejudiced, confused, and both tolerant and intolerant. I was blessed in learning and respecting in her the strength to raise three wonderful children whose qualities so outnumber their deficiencies that I love and respect her for her influence on them.

Gung, Pau, and a doll?.

Jim and Betty Yee. Jim was a Peace Corps friend, who with his wife Betty, adopted two children from China, brought them back to Oakland, then Jim died soon after from cancer. When Jim was dying Betty nursed him with patience and love, although she knew that her metastatic breast cancer was killing her even as she was nursing Jim.. She didn’t tell Jim, and she didn’t tell us. We saw her obituary soon after Jim died.. Only then did we realize the secret of her own mortality, which she kept from everyone.

And my biological father Carl, who died at thirty-three. In my early childhood he was mostly a statistic, a healthy young man who passed too soon, that’s all, until I read his letters. In his expressions of love for my mother he came to life, a person having emotions and feelings, not a statistic.

I was blessed, too, by my mother and my stepfather, two people whose lives echoed the notorious RBG’s comment,

“I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability”

In the photo above, this Midwest senior citizen tried her first chicken burrito at Antonio’s taco truck to the amazement of Antonio’s wife who had never seen a Midwest senior citizen.

My mother passed on her sensitivity to criticism, her love for her family; her devotion to causes greater than herself, her courage, sense of adventure; my father passed on his honesty, his hatred for war, the satisfaction he felt just being useful to others, his indifference to wealth and the trappings of consumerism, The two were sympatico because he never criticized her, and she loved him for that. Sometimes we’re blessed, too, by their failings, and in recognizing them we sympathize, knowing that those failings are a part of the whole human package, and recognizing that if we don’t have those failings, we have our own.

Me, Jason, and Dad

My father lamented that he never experienced joy; my mother, despite her many intellectual gifts, often felt insecure and unsure of herself. They both did the best they could with whatever talent they had. It’s all we could have ever asked from those who have passed, and all we can ask of ourselves. We are blessed by the lives they left behind.

My Affair With Memory

Dot took a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup, added a little whole milk, then followed it with Velveeta “cheese”, put it on low heat, and created a sludge similar to that of 10-30 motor oil that should have been changed five years earlier.  This exquisite culinary concoction was mostly a dappled pale red, with streaks of coagulated melted orange and yellow running through it.  It can’t be poured.  It had to be ladled.  We toasted three or four pieces of white bread, margarined them before cutting them into little squares, then placed them in a plate with raised sidewalls so the sludge wouldn’t escape.  We called it, “Tomato and Cheese on Toast”, though the toast was the only ingredient in the name that arrived as promised.  For short, we used the first letters—T.A.C.O.T., and I haven’t been feted with it in dozens of years, but when someone asks me about “comfort food,” it’s the only thing that comes to mind.

Jadyne’s comfort food reflects her background.  She’ll take leftover white rice, fry an egg, then add it to the rice, occasionally adding a little soy or oyster sauce to the mix, her comfort food.  She has it as often as once a week.  We always have rice.  We always have eggs.

 “Comfort food” inevitably conjures up the past and reawakens it in our current imaginations.  We were warm.  We were happy.  We were full.  We were loved.  We were with others who were eating the same thing and loving it, too. We remember what we ate, and in the remembering we found comfort and companionship.  We seek that comfort today in the foods that we remember loving from our childhood.  But the past didn’t really happen as we remember it.  The memory is a clever salesman. Tomato and cheese on toast wasn’t any tastier then than it sounds as I describe it today; and a fried egg over rice is, well, a fried egg over rice.  But for many of us of a certain age, the past is a magical amusement park, and our memories are the vehicles we ride to journey there.

 Old folks like me reminisce about ordering a Big Boy, fries, a coke, and paying for it all with a dollar, leaving a dime for the waitress at the counter.  These times were real, but in remembering them today the danger is that we find ourselves swimming in sludge, thinking that those foods, those memories, brought us as much pleasure then as we they do now.  They didn’t. They’re not even an E ticket ride.

 Trump’s appeal to voters is tied to memories of the past.  “Make America Great Again” resonates with those who never accepted a black man as President, whose racial prejudices can now be flaunted, who find comfort and solace in the call of the right, “Jews will not replace us!” and support from a President who said, “There are fine people on both sides!” The ideological support of Trump’s most fervent followers is rooted in the memory of a made-up world, one populated with Aunt Jemimas, Ozzies and Harriets, and Fathers Know Best.  That world provides his base with all the comfort and support that for their hate-based behavior, the belief that this fictional world was real, and in the remembering it wasn’t the world of Birmingham bombers, lunch counter sit-ins, just happy white families having dinner together, calling on their black maids to bring in dessert.  And of course, it wasn’t real.  Except for them.

 It is in the cultivating of such memories, however misplaced, that brings comfort to those who choose to deny the flaws and inaccuracies.  In Doris Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time,” she recounts a time when Eleanor Roosevelt visited the South.  “Anyone who hears Delta Negroes singing at their work,” a cotton trade journal in Tennessee intoned, “Who sees them dancing in the streets, who listens to their rich laughter, knows that the Southern Negro is not mistreated.  He has a carefree childlike mentality and looks to the white man to solve his problems and take care of him.”  FDR received this letter, “So see Mr. President if you can’t put a stop to Mrs. Roosevelt stirring up trouble down here telling these people they are as good as white people.”

This was a time when America was great?  Really? 

Every December (and even in late summer) merchants put a call in to our memories, too. Christmas brings about feelings of nostalgia—the traditions, memories, music and more.  A lot of this has to do with the very human need to belong. Traditions connect us with our childhood, and when we become parents we want to pass that feeling on to our children, giving them a “future nostalgia” while at the same time reliving our own nostalgia,” according to Cathy Cassata, a contributor to Healthline.  She adds, “Emotionality has to do with how intensely a person feels an emotion.  Nostalgic people have a great capacity for emotions.  When they’re sad they feel quite sad and when they’re happy, they are quite happy.”  (No doubt she was thinking of me when she wrote that).  It’s why we never tire of Christmas.  We’re reliving happy moments in our lives brought back by our memories.

 “When you’re nostalgic it can help combat that loneliness and reinstate your sense of connectedness to people you miss.  So through memories you can relive a lot of the sense of being connected to them.”  Other research suggests that nostalgia is “far from being a feeble escape from the present, but rather a source of strength, enabling the individual to face the future.”

A sixty year old friend reminded me that I often refer to the past in my correspondence with her. I fell in love with her fifty-two years ago when I was a twenty-one year old college student, and this sixty year old matron was eight.  My girlfriend at the time was perhaps the most sought-after female in the entire University, Marianne Mesloh, the Homecoming Queen, a model for Procter and Gamble, a girl who loved me and was looking forward to finishing school then marrying me.  But fifty years later my memories aren’t of the Homecoming Queen; they’re of the eight-year old girl.  I never wrote a poem to the Homecoming Queen. I wrote one to the little girl.  I clearly remember thinking then how peculiar this relationship was, and yet never once did I harbor a lascivious thought.  I thought of her in the same way that I thought of tomato and cheese on toast, a person, not a food, whose memory then and now keeps me warm, happy, full, and most important, loved. 

 My memory of Jadyne turns back to one night in early 1970.  That I spent the night with Jadyne before my flight left Molokai is a well-known story.  When I remember that night my memory fogs.  Where did we go?  What did we say to each other?  The details are lost.   I learned everything I needed to know about my life’s companion for the last fifty years, only I didn’t know I knew it then.  And when memory serves up that one night it doesn’t focus on the facts, only the intuitive part that clarified who she was and what she meant to me and what she means to me. I’ve often said about my photography business that “had I known how little I knew I wouldn’t have even tried.”  I succeeded despite my lack of knowledge; I asked Jadyne to marry me despite my lack of knowledge.  How we know things sometimes takes a circuitous route, often bypassing the brain altogether.  And maybe the brain never knows and doesn’t need to know.  And what is the role of memory in this?  When I think back to that one night on Molokai, despite my utter depression of having been expunged from the Peace Corps, the knowledge that the Vietnam war was in full swing, that I would be reclassified 1-A, that my immediate future looked bleak, I think back to that night the way I look at tomato and cheese on toast with a feeling that ignores the sludge, the white bread toast with margarine, all the obvious yucky parts, and focus on what kept me warm, happy, full, and most important, loved.

Voting For Trump

Puzzled how anyone could cast his vote for the Orange Menace I came across three pieces of information yesterday that spell out the very real and practical reasons why people might cast their ballots in the red. The first is an OpEd published in the Washington Post by Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at a conservative think tank; the second, a letter signed by 235 retired military leaders who support Trump, and last, a letter from a woman who lives in Southern Missouri.

The first. Pletka fears that Biden would run a presidency “with the words drafted by hard-left idealogues”, that new seats in the Supreme Court would “ensure a liberal supermajority”, that the “Green New Deal” and nationalized health care would “wreck an economy still recovering from the pandemic shutdown.”

She adds, “I fear the grip of Manhattan-San Francisco progressive mores that increasingly permeate my daily newspapers, my children’s curriculums and my local government. I fear the virtue-signaling bullies who increasingly try to dominate or silence public discourse — and encourage my children to think that their being White is intrinsically evil, that America’s founding is akin to original sin. I fear the growing self-censorship that guides many people’s every utterance, and the leftist vigilantes who view every personal choice — from recipes to hairdos — through their twisted prisms of politics and culture. An entirely Democratic-run Washington, urged on by progressives’ media allies, would no doubt only accelerate these trends.” And there's more. Fears of slashing defense spending, hostility to Israel, and a renewal of accepting Iran are on her list. To be sure, she’s found much to dislike about Trump, too, but maybe not enough.

Retired Army and Air Force generals and Navy admirals believe that the Democratic party welcomes “socialists and Marxists”, adding, “after years of neglect from Obama-Biden, our service members and veterans have finally found a strong advocate in President Trump….We believe that President Donald Trump is committed to a strong America,” the letter continued, “As president he will continue to secure our borders, defeat our adversaries, and restore law and order domestically".

On the other hand, the letter from the Ozarks clearly identifies Trump voters of a very different stripe.

“You all don't get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don't give a shit what he does. He's just something to rally around and hate liberals, that's it, period.  He absolutely realizes that and plays it up. They love it. He knows they love it.

 The fact that people act like it's anything other than that proves to them that liberals are idiots.  If you keep getting caught up in "why do they not realize this problem" and "how can they still back Trump after this scandal," then you do not understand what the underlying motivating factor of his support is. It's fuck liberals.

 Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable, and they'll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense?   Because they're not even keeping track of any coherent narrative, it's irrelevant. Fuck liberals is the only relevant thing.

 That's why they just laugh at it all because you all don't even realize they truly don't give a fuck about whatever the conversation is about. That's all just trivial details - the economy, health care, whatever.

 Fuck liberals.

 Look at the issue with not wearing the masks. It's about exposing fear. They're playing chicken with nature, and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal. One core value that they hold above all others is hatred for what they consider weakness because that's what they believe strength is­—hatred of weakness. And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred. That’s what proves they're strong.  Sometimes they will lump vulnerability in with weakness. People humbling themselves when they're in some compromising or overwhelming circumstance, is to them, weak.

 Kindness = weakness.

Honesty = weakness.

Compromise = weakness.

 They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn't hate weakness as much as they do. They consider liberals to be weak people that are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it's that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.”

Welcome to the United States of America in the late summer of the year two thousand two hundred and twenty Anno Domini, a year that one cartoon illustrated is like an ice cream truck that has chosen to sell liver and onions over ice cream.

Pandemic IX

Could things get any worse? Of course they can. And of course, they are. Let’s start with the pandemic . Current figures: Since the first reported deaths in early March more than 190,000 Americans have died. It is predicted that as many as 400,000 will have died by New Year’s Day.

Trump revealed that he knew all about the dangers of Covid-19 earlier in the year, but he downplayed it because he claims he didn’t want people to panic. He pretended that it was a hoax, even though he knew people would die. He didn’t care. “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” A real leader would have been able to avoid a panic by telling the truth, wearing a mask, and asking that we follow his lead. No panic. No deaths. Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward, brought down Richard Nixon, “Thousands and thousands and thousands of people died" because Trump is "putting his own re-election before the safety, health, and well-being of the people of the United States. We've never had a president who's done anything like this before," Bernstein said.

Woodward has Trump’s words on tape. Trump agreed to 18 interviews with Woodward, and Woodward captured the essence of a man without a soul, without a heart, a man who can’t differentiate between truth and fiction. a man who cares about nothing but himself. Woodward has promised to release more of the tapes, more damning information about a man without a heart.

The week began as badly as it finished.

The beginning. Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic, had this to say: “President Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 was because he did not want to get his hair wet and felt it wasn’t important to honor those buried there, saying the cemetery was “filled with losers.” Goldberg also reports that on the same trip, Trump called U.S. marines who died in the World War I battle at Belleau Wood “suckers.”

The Washington Post and even FOX news backed up this story, claiming that although the sources preferred to remain anonymous for fear of Trump’s expected derisive tweets, they were unimpeachable. So we now have a man who is worse than indifferent to the deaths for which he is responsible and derides those who died for the country. “I don’t get it,” Trump said to General Kelley, standing by Kelley’s son’s grave at Arlington Cemetery, “What was in it for him?”

And here, in sunny CA, we’re reliving our own Apocalypse, the horrendous fires throughout the state that have left our air the worst on the planet, kept us housebound, killed dozens, and continue unabated.

My mantra now is “This, too, will pass.” It’s really all that’s left.

Apocalypse, September 9th

It’s Wednesday, an all-out exercise day. Ted comes up at 6:30, we walk up the middle of Rugby, Yale, and Beloit (no traffic) to Grizzly Peak, down through the Olde School trail and up over the hills past the Boy Scout Camp, then down and back through Hilltop School and home, a little more than five miles. It takes us about an hour and a half, and we walk and talk together every Wednesday. We headed up Beloit this morning waiting for the darkness to melt away and the smoky sun to emerge, but lo, it got darker. Ted suggested that we walk downhill towards his house, where he assured me, “the air is clearer.” We did. It wasn’t. We headed home after an hour, and it was darker forty minutes after the sun rose than when we left. Winds had blown the smoke from northern California fires to the Bay Area. Once here the winds were tired, took a lunch break, lay down for a nap, and abandoned us with these skies.

Our deck at 8:50. Unretouched.

I walked the half mile from 330 Rugby to Upper Kensington, the little village where we can find groceries, gas, imported cheese, wine, and deposit money. In the one and one-half hours between these two images the sky darkened.

Kensington’s Exxon station at 10:15 am. 10:15 am!!!!!

The air is cleaner than the sky. The smoke had settled high overhead, and the air was actually acceptable, if not pure. I brought my tripod down to our little village of Kensington and took the following four images:

Arlington Avenue, looking north.

Arlington Avenue again. And yes, it’s a red flag day, which means that we have to prepare ourselves for immediate evacuation because of extreme fire hazard.

Drew, taking a takeout order at the Inn Kensington. His business is down 75%, and the Inn, which has been a Kensington Institution since long before we moved here, is “barely hanging on.” Jadyne and I ordered lamb and jambalaya for dinner tonight, planning to wash dinner down with a bottle of Oxford Landing, our favorite cheap-o Chardonnay.

Looking down Yale Avenue past the Ace Hardware Shop, the Exxon Station, and straight into the fires of Hell.

The sky has turned from the morning glow of orange into a muddy yellow, the color of baby shit. And it’s 3:30. Can’t wait for tomorrow.

2nd Grade Education 2020/The Pod

So here we are, August 19, 2020, in the midst of the worst global pandemic in one hundred years. Some schools have reopened for students; most haven’t. Madera elementary, where in a normal year, Isla and Ella would be in class today. But today, they’re here. In PauPau and Granddads’s pod. We set up a card table with their names on it to make them feel welcome. Here’s Isla arriving for the first class of the day.

Paupau is a Chinese word for “grandmother.” And the pod consists of Isla and her friend Ella.

Jadyne, of course, made name tags. And added stickers.

And so it began. Or, so we thought. Jadyne and I stayed, waiting for them to connect to Ms. Reyes, their teacher.

From 10:00 to 10:25 was roll call, that is, if you knew or remembered how to connect.

They didn’t. We didn’t either. We missed Roll Call, frantically trying to find out why the gear icon was spinning and the message appeared, “your meeting will start in a few seconds”, all accompanied by the spinning gear. Once Ella figured it out we connected and were off to the races. Jadyne and I were amazed that these were the first vocabulary words for the day. Remember, these are second graders.

Synchronous: happening at the same time. They are learning synchronously when all the Chromebook cameras are on, all twenty-five reside in a virtual classroom. Photos of students surround the text.

Asynchronous: one-on-one communication between student and teacher.

The next half hour the teacher explained all the apps and icons that the students needed to understand. Those of us who use Word and Photoshop shouldn’t have any trouble with Zoom, Flipgrid, Epic, Clever, and Raz Kids, but we did.

It’s 12:46. Lunch is over. Before reading aloud time, Ms Reyes led them into “mindful moments.” (I was in my sixties before I ever experienced a mindful moment.)

I caught Ella at the moment when she and the mindful moment parted company. Isla stayed a mindful moment longer.

It’s now 1:30. They’re reading quietly. At 2:00 we’ll listen for the school bell. It rang. Everybody in their class said “Goodbye!” Or were told to.

School’s out.

No more pencils, No more books, No more teachers’ dirty looks. Or any looks, except through a Chromebook camera. Sad.