Irony Is Not Dead Dep't

So where’s the irony? RBG, loved by so many, who spoke so eloquently about freedom and women’s rights, is the one person who took them away.

That she didn’t retire during Obama’s presidency, which would have meant that a freedom-loving liberal justice replace her, instead stayed the course and died during Trump’s turn at the wheel, allowing him to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the bench, turning the Supreme Court into a Conservative rubber stamp for the right wing. Kavanaugh, or course, and Amy Barrett have claimed that the Supreme Court was apolitical, have, through their votes, confirmed that it isn’t.

Here’s milquetoast Senator Susan Collins: "What Judge Kavanaugh told me — and he's the first Supreme Court nominee that I've interviewed, out of six, who has told me this — is that he views precedent not just as a legal doctrine, but as rooted in our Constitution," Collins says. As he said during his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh reiterated to Collins that Roe v. Wade, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in a 1992 case, is "a precedent on a precedent."

In 2017, Gorsuch, too, referred to Roe as precedent. "A good judge will consider it as precedent of the United States Supreme Court, worthy of treatment as precedent, like any other," Gorsuch said at the time.

To reiterate a quote from the former guy: “Sad.”

And adding to that sadness is the myopic approach of the so-called Right to Lifers. What do I do to counteract the faux Christian polices of same? #6.

Metamorphosis

I fell and broke my ankle. I’m wearing a boot. Dr. Ford said to walk as little as possible. I spend my days sitting, either reading, playing guitar, or when the Giants are playing, combining the latter with watching TV.

We’ve rented a folding wheelchair. Every day Jadyne and I are planning “trips.” (Not to be confused with the trip that caused my ankle to break). It’s $85 for one month. I intend to get $3 a day worth out of it.

I”m going to use this space in my blog to keep track of my days, what I do, see, and what I learn. The metamorphosis, I hope, will be more than just stronger abs.

April 15th. Oakland Hospital. Jadyne was the photographer.

Dr. Ford said I had to sleep in this thing. I can. Teeny used to say, “Don’t burn daylight.” Metaphorically, I will look for it wherever I can find it.

April 16th. Saturday. Twenty-four hours later. We went to Johnson Hospital supplies in the morning and picked up the wheelchair. The store is in Emeryville.

So is Guitar Center. I revisited my childhood, buying a Fender Stratocaster, that on the surface looks just like the one I bought from Howard Early’s Music Store in Kennedy Heights in 1961. It may look like that, but it isn’t. We also bought a two-neck guitar stand. You can never have too many guitars.

So that took a good part of Saturday. In the afternoon Jadyne wheeled me to Isla’s soccer game, and I managed to squeeze off a few shots of the little striker, as the Spurs unhappily faced a stronger and bigger team.

I would have made this smaller if I knew how.

Isla always wears a mask. I think it keeps her warm.

Sunday, April 17th. Back to the Guitar Center to trade in the single neck guitar stand for a double. Lunch at Minnie Bell’s in the Public Market, then a ride around Emeryville in the wheelchair. Home to watch the Giants defeat the Cleveland Guardians 8-1, then off to Delhi Diner. Jennifer had taken both Susanto and Isla to Palisades Ski Area (formerly known as Squaw Valley) for the day, then returned in time to celebrate Easter with the Indians. Krishna, the hostess of Delhi Diner, is a legitimate Indian, even if the Cleveland Guardians (formerly known as the Cleveland Indians) aren’t.

Monday, April 18th. Ab crunches in the morning, then a trip to R.E.I. for rubber tips for my hiking poles, giving me more stability when walking. A pound of fresh salmon for dinner, then a wheelchair ride down San Pablo Avenue where we met this gentleman.

“Can I take your photo? I asked. “Yes,” he replied, peeking out from beneath the plastic tarp. I give money to people who need it, but I didn’t want him to think that I was buying his permission to take his photo. Since he agreed first, it was easy for me to say, “I want you to have this,” as I handed him the bill. “Are you sure"?, he responded, “Can you afford this?” I thought about the irony of it all, that he was lying between the sidewalk and the street under a blue tarp, and seeing me in a wheelchair, what it was in him that moved him to ask. We turned around, went back to R.E.I. climbed in the car, and headed back to a warm house, a new guitar, Loch Duarte salmon, a glass of Chardonnay, a loving wife, you know, everyday stuff like that.

April 19th, Tuesday. .3” of rain last night. More expected Thursday. And that should wrap up the “rainy season” which wasn’t rainy at all. All of this leads into the “fire season”, which we’ll enter with fingers crossed. No Princess Summerfall Winterspring in California. Only “Rainy”and “Fire.”

This morning we did the doughnut run. Every Tuesday we pick up 70 lbs. of day old donuts and distribute them to three places—the men’s shelter in Berkeley, the student store at UCB, and the line of RV’s parked alongside Costco.

Homes for so many.

Jadyne, after picking up 70 lbs. of donuts

Jogger on the Bay Trail.

Passing out the goodies

Jadyne, the chauffeur, and my limo.

We got our $3 a day worth, walking along the Bay Trail north of Cesar Chavez Park on a cool, cloudy day.

San Francisco from the Bay Trail.

April 20th, Wednesday. There are worse places to convalesce. Spring on Rugby Avenue.

Japanese maple. I think it’s carnivorous. By 2023 it will be in our bedroom. In the back are redwoods, including two rare deciduous dawn redwoods, The closer tree is a cedar.

Down the path. Japanese maples in front and at back. Hellebores and flamingos to the bottom left. Behind the fence is a creek that divides Contra Costa County from Alameda County, or Kensington from Berkeley.

The backyard. Jerusalem sage flowering.

Backyard from the deck. The landscapers predicted that we would spend a lot time on the chaise lounges in front of the fountain. Maybe once in fourteen years.

Vegetable garden. Tomatoes, lettuce, pole bean, squash, basil, strawberries.

An afternoon visitor

23rd st, Richmond. “Little Mexico”. This gentleman sells Tejuino. A cup of tejuino with shaved ice in it. Tejuíno is a cold beverage made from fermented corn and popularly consumed in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Chihuahua.

Used cars of all shapes and sizes..

The taco trucks are a permanent fixture, hosting tables, chairs, umbrellas, and of course, music.

April 21, Thursday. Woke up to .3” of rain, perhaps the last of the season. Afternoon walk down 4th Street in Berkeley, a tony shopping area not longer than a block and a half. Met Rick Auerbach, a photographer who has leased space to sell his framed images.

Rick shoots mostly landscapes with a 35mm camera, has them printed at Bay Color Labs on aluminum, then hangs them in this space. We chatted for about twenty minutes, the usual boring stuff that photographers talk about.

An almost deserted parking lot,

Some said the land where the parking lot is now should be purchased by the city and turned into a park to honor the history and culture of the Ohlone. The property at 1900 Fourth is a city landmark, dating back to 2000, within the potential boundaries of the West Berkeley shellmound. The exact location of the shellmound is unknown and has been a matter of much debate. It’s slated for a mixed-use development, which when it’s completed, will surely require Michala Downs, the owner of the pink Porsche to move her car. Her name was plastered on several door panels, so Jadyne went to Facebook and discovered that she is quite the fashionista.

Oh, that I had waited until she returned to her pink Porsche Cayenne. To quote G. B. Shaw, “Youth is the most precious thing in life; it is too bad it has to be wasted on young folks.”

April 22, Friday. Watched MTG under cross-examination. She is hoping to keep her name on the ballot. Supporters of the 14th Amendment want to remove it. They will be right, but they will lose.

Errands this morning, first to the Apple Store, for the geniuses to reset my phone. Waited with a happy customer there, too. A Rivian pickup truck was parked out front, the first of what I suspect will be many.

Happy customer

Geniuses at work

Rivian. Starts at around 70k. Good luck in getting one.

I’m 25% of the way to my next appointment, an x-ray that will reveal how much I’ve healed. In a best case scenario the boot will be gone. I’ve been in a good state of mind, accepting that this is what is, that negative thoughts and impatience will produce negative results. A lot of reading, time on the guitar, and more hummingbirds to focus on.

April 23rd, Saturday. A ninety mile trip to watch Kennedy, my eight year old grandson, a member of the Tin Cups, play baseball.

He pitches. A Southpaw

He catches

An RBI with a mighty blast to right field, as the catcher winces in disappointment.

His six-year old teammate has struck out. He will remain name and numberless.

Granddaughter Lillian Jadyne, age 10

Broken humerus and fibula. Both adorned with plumerias. Two broken bones.

April 24th, Sunday. Another day with kid sports. An 8:15 am game of “footie” with twelve year old grandson, Susanto.

A happy couple along the path.

The tree grabber thingy.

At the end of the road leading to the Marina. The threesome in front of us were holding on to their hats while a local Marina denizen looks for whatever food they might be willing to give him.

My new Fender Stratocaster had a buzzing in the top strings. John Livingston, the Guitar C Center technician, also thought that the tenth fret might be a little too high, so I was able to exchange it for another. Thanks to the EXPERT Elvis, pictured on the left.

April 25th, Monday. Sports are over. The Tin Caps fought to a tie on Saturday; the Spurs won on Sunday.

Jadyne took me to the Berkeley Marina on a one mile plus walk (ride) in a transport wheelchair (plastic wheels) on a path that circumnavigates the Marina hills in a roaring wind off the Bay. We were both cold, but she was energized by the efforts she made just keeping the wheelchair upright.

Before we started we watched a crew cutting down dead trees by the Marina in a way that would make arborists jealous. While one man cut through the base of the tree, another directed a robot controlled arm to grab the entire tree, lift it, then drop it in a pile in the parking lot.

April 26th, Tuesday.

A Costco run. How could life be any better? I’m going to make a point of using this sucker after my boot is off!

So much to love in Costco.

Rosie the Riveter Monument.

Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon of World War II, representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies.[1][2] These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. Rosie the Riveter is used as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic advantage.[3] Wikipedia

The four Richmond Kaiser Shipyards built 747 ships during World War II, a rate never equaled. Compared to the average ship built elsewhere, Richmond ships were completed in two-thirds the time and at a quarter of the cost. The Liberty ship SS Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a competition among shipyards.

The monument itself stretches the length of a typical ship. In the sidewalk are engravings indicating the progress of the war itself. At the stern is the statement below.

“You must tell your children, putting all modesty aside, without women there would be no Spring in 1945”

April 27th, Wednesday

bún thịt nướng at Houng Tra. When I was a boy a Frisch’s Big Boy hamburger, french fries, and a Coke was the greatest meal I could ever imagine. Now, it’s Bun. You can look up the recipe, but really, nothing beats bun.

So my day began at lunch. We followed it up with a trip to replace the ratty Patagonia fleece that I’m wearing right now, then to Tokyo Fish Market for more Loch Duarte salmon.

The epicenter of wonderful fish in Berkeley.

I said “salmon!” not “octopus!”

April 28th, Thursday. Two weeks. After a $525 morning plumbing miscue, I piled into the wheelchair and Jadyne pushed me down Shattuck Avenue through central Berkeley. As is the nature of adventures, “unexpected” becomes the word of choice. Here, for your pleasure is my encounter with “Ralph Luuren.”

I’m trying to jump out of my wheelchair. I asked her to sit on my lap, but she was afraid she’d break it. My leg. Or the wheelchair.

And here she is again. "You worked for Tesla?” we asked. “I’m between jobs right now,” Ralph answered, “I’m now at Target.”

The Street Spirit. We bought a copy. The headline reads, “Housing is a Human Right.”

“Looking for human kindness.”

A mailman older than I am. Maybe.

April 29th, Friday. Morning two and a half mile trek on a recently completed extension of the Bay Trail. A trek for Jadyne, that is, and a ride for me.

Jadyne removes the wheelchair from the trunk and brings it over for the Infirm.

This kind lady saw how Jadyne was struggling on the incline. She turned around and helped push me.

The maximum water temperature of SF Bay is 53.7 degrees in April.

Golden Gate Bridge with an unusual foreground.

San Francisco shortly after sunrise.

Ted

Lunch with Ted.

When we first moved to Kensington I went to a local community meeting that Ted chaired. “How do you get on the committee?” I asked him. “Come to the next meeting,” he replied, “and you’ll be a member.” That was my last meeting.

A year or two later we saw each other an an orientation for the Writers Workshop, an organization whose members volunteer in schools and work with students struggling with their writing. For several years we both worked in Albany Middle School, helping eighth graders. Ted stayed with the program during Covid. I couldn’t imagine trying to help via Zoom, so I withdrew and began working at the Men’s Shelter in downtown Berkeley.

At the time Ted was working for AmNav, a tugboat company. He secured contracts with the huge Japanese and Chinese shipping companies who brought over goods from overseas, docking in the East Bay. We took several rides on the tugs, and it provided me with limitless photographic opportunities, including the America’s Cup Race, the Blue Angels, and the fireworks celebrating the anniversary of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.

More than that. We’ve been friends for years. He visited me in the hospital when I had hip replacement surgery; it was our turn when he and his wife Caroline lost their daughter. Ted got a new hip a month or so ago; I broke my ankle. We are two old men, lusting after young women, neither of us able to walk without difficulty, sharing stories over a bowl of egg flower soup at Little Hong Kong, a luncheon date we make every Friday because neither one of us can do much else.

Finished off the day with a Rugby Avenue party,

5:00 Happy Hour for the whole street.

When we moved to Rugby Avenue there were only two or three kids. Now they outnumber us fogies.

Inez, who lives behind us, the only adult (among five) in her house who isn’t sick.

April 30th, Saturday. My brother Bill’s 79th birthday. I’ve reached the halfway point between the breaking of the ankle and the next x-ray. It’s healing. I’m still patient. Wednesday on the Mickey Mouse Club: “Today is the day that is filled with surprises. You never know what’s going to happen.” And so it was to be..

Loved watching Isla play soccer. She’s gained so much in both confidence in herself and skill as a player.

Just finished a burger at Al’s. “I feel funny in my arms,” I said to Jadyne, and I’m not sure if I can lift them.” I felt hot, flushed, pale, sweaty. Al called 9-1-1, and I was off to Kaiser’s Oakland Hospital. Ten blood tests. All good. Heart perfect. No explanation from the doctor. I made it just in time to Gilman to see Susanto’s soccer game at 3:45.

“You never know what’s going to happen.”

Room C-6. My friend and neighbor Chris Anderson, who years ago introduced me to the term “new normal,” now calls it “check engine light.” We checked it. It’s off now.

The diagnosis? I was treated for Near Syncope. “No worrisome findings on esxamination/evaluation that would suggest heart attack or acute cardiac condition. Fainting syncope) is a temporary loss of consciousness (passing out). It happens when blood flow to the brain is reduc e. Near-fainting is like fainting, but you don’t fully pass out. OInstead, uyou feel like you are going to pass out, but don’t actually lose consciousness.”

May 1, 2022. A Sunday stroll (ride) through Berkeley, then over the pedestrian bridge from west to east, where I met Carrie, this gracious lady who, after consenting to let me take her photo, asked for my card. I actually carry one. Only one.

Over the bridge we met the unvaccinated, hanging signs advocating that children don’t need it either. I stopped to talk, or rather to listen to one of them. I thanked them. We moved on

Last on the list was this one man drummer and sax player. Love Berkeley diversity.

May 2, 2022. Monday. Morning on the Bay Trail.

Got a Honda? This is how it came from Japan to you. These car carriers arrive daily in Richmond. The cars are driven to waiting train cars, then shipped hither and yon, wherever that is.

Tom and Cindy. Cindy had knee replacement three days after I fell. They live in a beautiful Victorian home in Petaluma with the most magnificent yellow roses that line their front sidewalk.

Lunch with Henry and Kathleen. We’ve known both of them for forty years or more. Like Cindy, Henry had knee replacement surgery, which morphed into much more than that. In fact, recovering from his knee surgery was the least of the issues. A list of subsequent misfortunes would exhaust the space that Squarespace has allotted me for my blog.

I first met Henry when I began my career as a photographer. He framed art. He was single at the time, and Jadyne and I invited him for dinner. “I can’t,” Henry said, “I have to practice carrier landings off Morro Bay.” Jaw drop. Kathleen was a friend of Teeny’s, a kindergarten teacher. We were unaware that they knew each other, much less that they were engaged to be married. Two old white guys with loving supportive Chinese wives.

May 3, 2022. Spent a half hour in Richmond at the dog park. This was the product of twenty minutes in a wheelchair and the new friends we made, all without leashes, all excited to explore freely in a mostly urban environment.

May 4, Wednesday. Taking my brother Jack along 23rd Street in Richmond, our second venture into the businesses largely owned and supported by the immense Latino population in the Bay Area.

Hunting for a murderer, taco trucks, a wheel from a 1970 Thunderbird, a hair salon, lottery buyers hoping for bonus money, brooms, markets, restaurants, and mannequins. Then errands around town, another day.

May 5 and May 6. Thursday and Friday. A walk/push around the Berkeley Marina. First on the list are the Berkeley Marina ground squirrels.

From a 2001 article.

Rodents Romeos / Berkeley Marina's fecund ground squirrels have a date with the birth-control man

Needless to say. the birth-control man was stood up. Twenty-one years later, They’re everywhere.

Another of the Marina regulars. A red-wing blackbird. They have their own area.

An unusually cool and foggy Friday.

Sickly pink dogwood

José removing stump

New pink dogwood

May 7, Saturday. A cold walk along the Bay beginning at Chevy’s in Emeryville.

When Jadyne wheeled me too close to him and his four siblings, his mother took exception to my presence. Got away just in time.

Drama: vulture

Undrama: pigeon

The Red Baron, one of the remaining sculptures that formerly graced the Emeryville shoreline.

Night heron, waiting for Chevy’s Tex-Mex to open.

At Isla’s soccer game…

May 8, Sunday. Mother’s Day. “Mother” is outside digging up grasses that were planted fourteen years ago and have given up the ghost. We’re expecting a visit from Jason this afternoon, but it’s an unusually cool May morning. Even a shower or two could show up.

In reading about my boot I saw this article.

Ankle Fractures Can Be Death Sentences For Seniors

I had to read that!. Second reading discussed compound ankle fractures generated from low impact activities, not mine. 27% of those who suffered that kind of fracture died within two months. Beating the odds, just like Rich Strike, the horse that won the Kentucky Derby at 80-1 odds.

Enough of that. Off to Oakland’s Jack London Square, where the trains come down the middle of the street.

Freight car graffiti

Jack London Square, the main port for the container ships that sail from China and Japan. The white structures in the back unload the containers.

The Potomac. FDR’s presidential yacht. While relaxing on board, the president fished, read detective stories, and worked on his stamp collection. On Sundays, a sea plane would often land alongside the ship to deliver newspapers, mail and anything requiring the president's signature.

As we left this young man wished Jadyne a Happy Mother’s Day. He was calling his mother to wish her the same in New Orleans.

May 9, 10th. Monday Tuesday. Mostly “walks” along the Bay, downtown Berkeley. On Monday we bought a new wheelchair in Novato that was advertised on Craigslist. It has bigger wheels and is designed for the outside. My next x-ray is in five days. Hoping to rid myself of the dreaded boot. Meanwhile, we’ve seen our share of Berkeley and Emeryville.

Berkeley resident #1

Berkeley resident #2

Silhouetted driver doing what everyone else is doing all the time.

Golden Gate Fields. A $250,000 race was held here last weekend. It’s fenced in. No photographers allowed.

Abstract. Construction on a pedestrian freeway overpass.

May 11, 2022. Wednesday. Visit to Annie’s Annuals today for succulents to replace dead grasses in the back yard.

A belated Mother’s Day dinner at the Dead Fish. It isn’t often that the original five are together. Treasured time.

May 15, Sunday. I ran out of gas. Greg and Sean, Jadyne’s brother and sister-in-law arrived for a week’s visit, having driven a thousand miles from No Name. Colorado, their first visit since Greg’s near fatal illness two years ago.

On Friday I went to Kaiser for the x-ray that will be interpreted to me tomorrow when I see Dr. Ford, thirty-two days after my mishap. It’s a beautiful sunny May Sunday morning, and Sean and Jadyne are out for a three mile walk/hike, and I’m sitting at my computer, trying—and I’m not succeeding—not to feel bad, knowing that the boot will be staying on for some time to come.

Musician at the Pirate Barbecue in Point Molate. Had a wonderful dinner with Sean and Greg.

May 16th and 17th, Monday and Tuesday. No amazing photos, but some very good news. Saw DPM Dr. Ford, who examined my x-rays and was pleased in the healing that had taken place over the previous 32 days. He added, “no need to sleep with it anymore”, and “in two weeks you can take it off and begin walking.” It will be months before I’m healed, but next Friday, May 27th, I’ll be boot free and can begin reclaiming the old me.

We’ve been entertaining company for the past week, Sean and Greg, who I photographed in Emeryville last night, after having consumed ten dim sum dishes.

Greg is ten years younger than Jadyne. Sean is two or three years older than Greg. They were married twenty-eight years ago. No two people love each other more than they do.

The Tuesday doughnut run

BART train along the Ohlone Greenway

Graffiti and painted fences along the greenway.

May 18th, Wednesday. Jadyne is building her strength, wheeling me along the bay on these beautiful, warm, and sunny spring days.

Typical summer pattern

We are not alone. He drives a semi-truck. And that’s his right foot!

It’s a job.

May 19th, 20th. Thursday, Friday. The big doin’ on Thursday was a trip to Kaiser for the second booster shot, a decision based on the rising numbers of the current outbreak. No walk today, no photos, no nothing.

Friday was a different story. A Costco run. We bought flowers. Our friends John and Mary discovered that their middle child, Erica, has stage four cancer. She’s forty-two. She began feeling bad in March, checked into the hospital in April, has had two chemotherapy sessions. A third was scheduled for today. Almost thirty-four years ago we lost Teeny. John and Mary drove to Santa Rosa to provide comfort. That’s what we do.

Erica’s dog. She knows something’s not right..

May 21, Saturday. Another trip to Sacramento. Kennedy’s last baseball game.

The end is near. No new wheelchair trips these last two days. Jadyne’s arm is still sore from booster #2. The CDC, in light of the latest Covid outbreak, has now strongly recommended the second booster. I’m fine, that is, except for a careless finger cut last night.

I spend more of the day bootless, doing ab crunches with the boots off, stretching my ankle and rotating it to strengthen it. It’s a Saturday. By Thursday I’m planning on removing it altogether, returning to the Shelter for breakfast, and beginning a walking program that will eventually return me to the physical shape I was in before April 15th.

In the last five weeks the Russians have continued their relentless attacks against Ukraine, the Supreme Court’s leaked opinion has revealed its intention to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the wife of a Supreme Court justice is a traitor, Madison Cawthorn’ ws fired, the Jan 6th Committee has set dates for its hearings in June which promise to be “agonizing and riveting.” Jamie Raskin, a prominent Democrat on the committee had this to say: “This was a coup organized by the president against the vice-president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Roger Angell died, Sean and Greg visited for a week, Jack, for three days, the garden flourishes, I read several books, including Maximum Harm, the story of the Boston Marathon bombers.

It’s grandchild sports day. Kennedy’s last game with the Tin Caps, and Susanto’s effort in soccer. It’s what we do.

The Southpaw delivers a strike.

The coach, the catcher, the son, the grandson.

Susanto’s last game, too….until tomorrow, maybe.

May 22, Sunday. Beautiful morning. A wheelchair along the bay.

A proud American!

Sunday afternoon. Susanto’s piano recital. I met his teacher today. He was wonderful with all the kids.

Susanto’s piano teacher with a very young student.

We heard Eloise play the sax. We didn’t stay for the piano.

And with the Padres’ sweep of the Giants, the last game 10-1 and Susanto’s piano recital coming to an end, this wheelchair boy is signing off on Sunday.

May 23rd, Monday. After showering this morning I put the dreaded boot back on. Yes, I know I can take it off for good on Thursday, but it’s still an albatross. I discovered that yesterday when I walked up the hill to Susanto’s recital. Up is hard. But thoughts have turned away from the boot. Larry Johnson has begun new chemotherapy treatments; the Kemps are still dealing with a daughter with stage four cancer. Whatever comes my way comes.

An afternoon stroll though downtown Berkeley

Not Paul Butterfield, but hey, he'‘s doing what he can.

People passing by my wheelchair.

May 24, Tuesday, It was another doughnut delivery day, this time to Richmond and Oakland. Along a several blocks long homeless encampment in Oakland signs read, “100% Affordable Housing.”

An afternoon stroll along the bay trail by the Emeryville Marina. A place to paint.

Would the cranes have made a more photogenic background

Worse places to ride a bike and set up a hammock.

Little footnote. I have dreamt twice of being in a wheelchair, once with a broken ankle. Our real lives include our dreams.

May 25th, Wednesday. No celebration in taking the boot off. Nineteen children and three adults were shot to death in Texas yesterday. The title of this little post is “Metamorphosis”, which implies change. Nothing is changing in America.

Good luck with that “thoughts and prayers” bullshit.

Herein lies the problem. Shit-for-brains congressmen, senators, governors , and other elected officials have put those of us who value lives on notice. We’re the problem. We choose life over guns. How un-American.

Governor Abbot’s press conference today. Solemnity and caring were the mots de jour, and “mental health:, (or course). Beto O-Rourke interrupted and protested the press conference, claiming that the responsibility for the childrens’ deaths is on Abbot. Beto was vilified by the “speakers”, but I suspect that non gun-loving Americans are firmly in his corner. The speakers? Blah blah blah.

This is the new America.

May 26, Thursday. The end of this blog entry. The boot is off.

42 days later. Yes, I still have toenail fungus

My first day being somewhat useful. I returned to the Dorothy Day Center and helped prepare breakfast for the homeless.

When I started this blog entry I wanted to measure the changes that I anticipated might take place in the six weeks of my convalescence.

1. I have a greater appreciation for the challenges that face the disabled, especially those in wheelchairs.

2. I hated being so dependent on others, especially Jadyne, who pushed me everywhere in my wheelchair and who did all the housework.

3. I hated not driving.

4. I lamented the loss of some of the meaning in my day, the absence of volunteer activities especially.

5. I sorely missed walking.

6. I have gained weight, eating as much as I did before my accident, though without the exercise.

7. “I’ve been hard to live with, haven’t I” I asked Jadyne. “Yes,” she answered quickly. Maybe that’s not such a change.

8. My abs are stronger.

But as far as real changes go, here’s one that’s missing. From The Onion…

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Yesterday 9:00AM

Alerts

UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 21 individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Saturday, June 11th. Eight weeks and a day. I’ve been averaging 10,000 steps a day, gaining my endurance back, working in the yard. Eight weeks ago I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and as days turned into weeks the light grew brighter. For two friends, though, Larry Johnson and Henry Crigler, the light may or may not be there. They’re faced with the uncertainty of knowing whether their physical issues are metastasizing.

Negative thoughts

What I believe…

 A friend of mine was volunteering to caddy for a golfer in a minor league tournament.  He knew the Windsor course.  His pro didn’t.  When my friend told the pro where the trouble was (trees, sand bunkers, water) , the pro responded, “Don’t tell me where the trouble is.  I only want to know where I should hit it.” I was impressed with that, and not just for my golf game.

Later I was playing golf with friends. I was teasing one of them by telling him about that conversation.   To illustrate I saw a lake by the tee that only the worst shot in the world would find a ball.  I said, “For example, it wouldn’t be possible for you to hit your ball into that water, would it?  It’s not even close to the tee.”  And of course he did.  And everyone laughed.  He teed up another ball and said, “David, your thought about thinking where you want to hit it didn’t work.”  I asked him, “How so?”.  He said, “I wanted to drive this ball up your ass!”  Again, more laughter.

When I left Cardinal Newman teachers asked me, “Why don’t you take a leave of absence?  That way you’ll have something to fall back on.”  I replied, “If I did I would introduce the possibility that I might fail.  I can’t allow that.” Just introducing the thought that things won’t work out the way I would have wanted would have diluted and sapped the energy I needed to succeed.. 

When I left Cardinal Newman, Bob Moratto, the father of one of my students, a man who liked and respected me, offered to buy David Buchholz Photography and subsidize Jadyne and me by paying our salaries for five years, at which time the business would be evaluated and we would be able to buy his 50% share for whatever the business was worth then.  My family was relieved. My attorney friend John drew up a very long partnership agreement that I had planned to sign.  I took it over to Bob and said, “I have both good and bad news.  I have the agreement, but I can’t sign it.  I need to know that I can succeed on my own.”  My parents believed I had made a mistake. 

Failure is always a possibility.  However, the less time, energy, or thought you give to it the more likely you will succeed.  The “what ifs”, the accommodation of its presence in your thinking, weakens you.  Don’t let it in..  And like computer malware, once in it will infect you.  You’ve diminished your chances of succeeding. “What would we do if things don’t work out” means that you have introduced that possibility into your thinking. 

The golfer can put the ball into the lake.  Then what would he do?  He’d drop another ball and move on.  He needs to think of only one thing—hitting the ball where he wants to hit it.  You must think that you will succeed.   And if you don’t, well, that’s the only time to consider what you would do next, when you have to and not a second before then.  Not a second.

 I needed to know that I absolutely had to succeed in my photography and not imagine that I might fail or plan for an alternative. I had a wife and three kids to support.  Failure wasn’t an option.  Success requires that kind of thinking. Absolutely requires it. 

Did I know all this when I was younger?  No.  When I look back on whatever challenges I’ve had, I’ve discovered that fully believing and embracing that I would succeed is the common thread that ran through them all, just as it does this morning, the third week of my booted convalescence. After I broke my ankle I began to think of all the activities I could do while recovering. Creating the blog entry “Metamorphosis” was one, photographing visiting birds was another, adding to my hours of reading was a third. I asked my doc, “What can I do?” He responded, “Ab crunches.” That’s a fourth. Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t on the list.

Five days later. Some of what I wrote was easier written than done. After twenty-two days of almost complete inactivity I’m finding it a bit harder to generate positive thoughts as easily as I did when I first wrote this. Maybe I am feeling a bit sorry for myself. My blood pressure is off the charts. Yesterday Jadyne and Gail went on a glorious hike in Alvarado Park while I, of course, remained home. Last night i dreamt that I was delivering food from a wheelchair. Our real lives become our dreams.

The Mind Is Its Own Place

I didn’t really enjoy my college course in Milton, but these lines from “Paradise Lost” stuck.

“The mind is its own place and in itself can create a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

Larry Johnson lives three houses up the street. We discovered that he had esophogeal cancer five months ago and was on chemotherapy. He had a feeding tube because he was unable to eat. He went into remission, then discovered that he had developed pneumonia. Back to the hospital, then to a care facility. I called him. He said he was looking forward to the time he could get out of bed and go to the bathroom, that he had to rely on nurses to clean him in bed. He made that step, then he came home and was able to do much more, including walking around his garage, take short steps, circling it a couple of times, before climbing back to bed. I visited him, and we talked about the feeding tube. He said, “I look at it this way, David. I haven’t had to floss since November!”

Brilliant.

Infirmities are inevitable. How we respond to them is a choice. Here’s one way.

Who we are is partly defined by how we respond. Putin was surprised to find that Ukrainians would lay down their lives to fight him, grandmothers with AR-15s, young women celebrating a recent wedding. Many who fled came back to fight, knowing that they would likely be killed.

It is so in lesser ways, too, as it was with me yesterday morning at 8:00 at Tilden Park, where a misstep caused me to fracture my distal fibula (break my left ankle) and sent me hurtling headfirst into the gravel alongside Canon Drive. Fortunately, there was a ranger nearby who was able to take me home. After that, an x-ray, a confirmed fracture. and this, the boot.

Warning: Graphic Image. Not suitable for children.

Did it hurt? Yes. Does it still hurt? Yes. How long will I have to wear it? Perhaps six weeks or so. Do I have to wear it to bed? Yes. Can I take it off to shower? Yes. Can I walk with it on? Yes, to a limited degree. Because it’s about two inches higher than my bare right foot I have a strap-on lift that I can put on my right shoe to make them equal.

The old right shoe. Hey, I’m saving on laundry by only wearing one sock at a time.

How should I treat it? R.I.C.E. rest, ice, compression, and elevation. So how am I dealing with it? So far, okay. I slept last night. I’m enjoying the rain this early Saturday morning. I’ll have to change my life for a while, and I won’t be able to hike, walk distances, work in the yard, volunteer at the shelter. A lot of reading, guitar-playing, Rummikub with Jadyne. I asked the doc, “What can I do?” He replied, “Work on your abs.” Stay tuned. This is, in so many ways, a work in progress.

To echo Larry Johnson, though, this 5’6” man is now 5’8”. I’m tall!

P.S. Jadyne noted that Larry, my neighbor, has his wife Janet taking care of him. Henry has Kathleen. Anthony (across the street) has his wife, Farrah, watching out for him. Guillermo, another neighbor, fell and has a huge lump on his head. His wife, Davi, is in LA. He texts Jadyne three times a day to confirm that he’s okay. Two years ago Greg was in a near fatal medical situation. Sean was there. What is it with all these men and their infirmities? And what is it with these women who, unlike the Russian battleship, keep the boat from sinking?

Fail Army (The Dove Nest)

“A graceful, slender-tailed, small-headed dove that’s common across the continent. Mourning Doves perch on telephone wires and forage for seeds on the ground; their flight is fast and bullet straight. Their soft, drawn-out calls sound like laments. When taking off, their wings make a sharp whistling or whinnying. Mourning Doves are the most frequently hunted species in North America.

Unbothered by nesting around humans, Mourning Doves may even nest on gutters, eaves, or abandoned equipment.*”

*Birds of America”

And so did these two. I noticed that when I opened our front door two mourning doves often took flight, but I paid little attention to them. I asked Jadyne if she noticed, too. They were there later that morning. Then we noticed this.

And this!

The male liked to hang out on the bench on the front deck and revel in his beauty.

Grooming himself…

It’s a public place. This jay was eying the nest, wondering if she might be a better fit.

When not preening, the male went to work, bringing her all that she needed to make a home for their children.

We put up a sign on our front gate, reminding visitors to tread softly, to use the slider, not the front door. We watched anxiously as he brought her stick after stick. We had read that they typically take two to four days to build a nest. We were ready.

Then last night they left. Dinner out? A date? A menage a trois? Two days ago they spent the night away, then returned the next morning. She lay on the light. He brought sticks. it was a match made in heaven.

Then this morning, nothing. No nest. No sticks. No eggs, no mourning doves, just a collection of his gifts to her, scattered on our front porch. We’ll wait one more day, then take the sign down. I miss them already.

Overcoming The Awful

“I can’t even do this right,” Susie complained, after failing once again to end her life. She had hired an Uber driver to take her to San Francisco and leave her and her wheelchair by the bay. She’d had a lot to drink, and she thought that the alcohol would prevent her from suffering too much in the cold waters off Fisherman’s Wharf. The alcohol also made her so unsteady that she fell out of her wheelchair before she could reach the edge of the bay, and she suffered through the cold, inebriated night before she was found, hospitalized, and returned home.

On Friday she did it right . Once again an Uber driver took her to San Pablo Reservoir, a half hour drive over the East Bay hills. She waited until the park closed, the fishermen left, and she was alone. She found the kayak launch ramp and headed down into the water. She was found the next morning.

“It’s the sixth time since August,” her mother said, “and the sixteenth time overall,” she added. Susie was still in high school when she hopped on a bike and rode into nearby Tilden Park, intending to end her life by riding over a cliff. She was found the next day, paralyzed from the waist down.

But this isn’t about Susie. Although her parents ministered to her for the years between her first attempt and now successful effort, they still have to overcome the awful of losing a daughter, having spent so many years watching out for her, checking her medicines, fixing her wheelchair, taking care of her in so many ways, and hiding the resentment that these burdens were put upon them by a conscious, avoidable decision of a young girl whose brain was not fully formed and would have paid dearly to change the impulsive decision she made so many years ago. “This is what she wanted to do,” said her mother last night, “but it’s still a punch in the gut.”

Susie is dead, but her life and death will linger in their lives forever. Perhaps they will reassure each other that they did everything they could to prevent her first failed attempt, then again in the years they cared for her. It’s still a gut punch, leaving nothing to overcome, because overcoming this awful isn’t possible.

I had lunch with Susie’s father last Friday. “We picked up her ashes this morning,” he said. “I don’t know where we’ll spread them.” I knew he was doing well, but Susie’s mother’s life changed when Susie’s first attempt went awry. “How long was she in the hospital?” I asked. “Two million dollars worth,” he replied. First to John Muir Medical Center, then to a place where there were spinal experts somewhere down the Peninsula,” he responded. In speaking about his wife he responded, “Now I don’t know what she’s going to do. Her whole life these last fifteen years revolved around caring for Rosie.”

(The expression “overcoming the awful” were words from a friend, inquiring about my well-being. I can’t let go of them.. That same friend, after reading my post, reminded me that I had misremembered what she had said. “Don’t let the awful overwhelm you,” were her words.)

Overcoming the Awful Part II

We’re surrounded by awful.

The bodies of civilians murdered by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Russia claims it’s a “hoax.” It isn’t.

The war continues, now in its seventh week. The senseless war and the senseless brutality have stunned the world. Oh, not the whole world. China says it won’t turn its back on Russia. It, too, blames the West. India remains inexplicably neutral, a stance that with each passing day reveals a cultural ugliness. This is a failed culture.

I thought about writing this in my blog yesterday morning when I read this in the SF Chronicle:

Sacramento mass shooting: Suspect arrested as search continues for gunmen in the killings

A fight broke out in downtown Sacramento Sunday morning. Shots were fired. At least eighteen people were wounded by the gunfire; six died. Multiple gunmen are suspected. One has been arrested. We’re accustomed to such headlines, In the first three months of the year 136 mass shootings have taken place, with many killed and scores wounded. Awful gun violence surrounds us arm in arm with the NRA.

And here we go again…

Jesus, Nazis, The Confederacy, a Hitler salute.

Right wing extremists, anti-Americans, these “patriots”—white supremicists, misogynists, racists, so-called “conservatives”, are marching in lockstep with what was formerly known as the Republican party that is so broken, so immoral, so depressingly large, and so hopelessly stupid, that they’re once again happily putting up Sarah Palin in a run for Congress. A party with Palin, Boebert, Greene, Gosar, and Gaetz, is a party opposed to everything that I believe, candidates with a collective IQ in single figures. They are awful. The aforementioned Greene tweeted yesterday, accusing three of her intellectually superior legislators as being “pro-pedophile” because they’ve voiced support for the eminently qualified Ketanji Jackson, the first black woman to be nominated for the Supreme Court. How unimaginable it is to be that stupid.

From the NY Times, “California’s snowpack is now at 39 percent of its average, or 23 percent lower than at the same point last year. This signals a deepening of the drought — already the worst in the western United States in 1,200 years — and another potentially catastrophic fire season for much of the West.” It isn’t just California.

The UN released a report today.

Climate Change 2022

This is a global issue, not limited to a political party, a city rife with shooters or butchers in Ukraine, We’re talking about civilization, the planet, what we’re leaving to our children.

How we overcome the awful is an individual choice, one rooted in fundamental beliefs in honesty, integrity, religious values, self-awareness, an understanding and practice of the Golden Rule, good judgment, charity, compassion, patience, in recognizing the truth in “No Man Is an Island,” that what happens to others happens to us, too. Whatever we can do to support a besieged country, to fight against a corrupt politics, and to conserve our natural resources, overcoming the awful is not only being aware of the goodness in our lives, but celebrating that goodness—the people we love and who love us, the joy of a glorious sunset, the welcome sound of raindrops on the roof, and in the recognition that we need each other in ways we may never have recognized.

In Search of Joy

And it was only Baskin-Robbins. Imagine if it were Graeter’s Black Raspberry and Chocolate Chip! Off the charts.

As we age we still find joyful experiences in food and drink. If not, why would anyone pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine? Or $400 for a shot of Macallan’s scotch from a bottle that The Kitchen Restaurant in Sacramento paid $15,000? Not me, but I have been willing to pay dearly for the three-course anniversary meal at Gary Danko in San Francisco, and the $165 six course dinner at the aforementioned “Kitchen.”

And you don’t have to pay exorbitant prices for food-induced joy. The first bite of a Double-Double at In N’ Out, a fresh Pistachio. the fish stew I was served at a cafe in Seward Alaska, the buttermilk pancakes at the Cowboy Cafe in Rawlins, Wyoming, an el pastor burrito from Ausencio’s taco truck, a bite of any Diamond slice pizza, sushi at Sushi Sho, prepared in front of your eyes with instructions on how to eat it from the chef…

They aren’t this big.

…a Top Dog hot dog, the fries at Big Al’s, a #39 at Huong Tra (bun), pho on a cold day, (add a + if it’s raining), the lamb at Delhi diner (it arrives on a sizzling platter), Korean chicken wings at Bopshop…the list is endless…as are the extra pounds corporeally incarcerated by the joy of eating.

Another joy.

The Atlanta Braves after the final out of the 2021 World Series.

Vince Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Baseball players long for the joy of winning,—not just the game, not just the Series, but after 162 games and endless playoffs, getting into the World Series, then winning it. And of course, this holds true in all sports—whether it’s the fastest time, the highest leap, the farthest throw, the heaviest weight, the green jacket, the 300 game— joy follows. But the joy of playing is as valuable as the joy of winning. You don’t have to win to experience joy. My very competitive seven year old grandson said that he’d rather not get to play if his teammates would more likely win if he sat on the bench. He’s seven. There’s time. My daughter was a junior high cheerleader, carrying pom-poms and screaming for others before she suddenly realized that cheering for others wasn’t where it’s at. She started running and hasn’t stopped.

Joy accompanies success of any kind—raising a B+ to an A-, a raise in pay, passing a driver’s test, a new job, a negative Covid test, an eagle on a par 5; the applause of the audience, no falls on a black diamond run.

Joy in Nature

Joy is the emergence of pink dogwood flowers, the breeze after the smoke has cleared, the setting of the sun in mid-December smack-dab in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and the palette of colors left behind, the pounding of the waves on the beach at Asilomar, the flying V of pelicans heading towards Big Sur, the welcome sound of raindrops on our skylights, the reappearance of the Anna’s hummingbird, (missed all winter), the moment the rain turns to snow. And for me, capturing the osprey landing in its nest as the Cape Cod sunrise illuminates the wings. An English writer once defined nature as “a damp sort of place where birds fly around uncooked.” Funny, yes. True, no,

An uncooked bird

Point Lobos

Happiness vs. Joy

David Brooks, in his book The Second Mountain, defines all of the above as happiness, not joy. And he adds, there’s nothing wrong with happiness. But he writes,

“What’s the difference? Happiness involves a victory for the self, an expansion of self. Happiness comes as we move toward our goals, when things go our way. You get a big promotion. You graduate from college. Your team wins the Super Bowl. You have a delicious meal. Happiness often has to do with some success, some new ability, or some heightened sensual pleasure. Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by beauty in the woods and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in unison. Joy often involves self-forgetting. Happiness is what we aim for on the first mountain. Joy is a by-product of living on the second mountain.”

Self-forgetting is the issue here. I was serving breakfast to Zoom Bunny at the Men’s shelter in Berkeley. He asked, “Do you do this because you genuinely feel compassion for us, the homeless, or because it makes you feel good?” “A little of both,” I answered, amazed at the wisdom in the question. Then he asked, “And how much are you paid by the CIA?” I smiled. He moved on.

In evaluating what it is that brings us real joy we have to look at the self-forgetting part. I would feel an absence if I weren’t serving breakfast or delivering groceries. Because of Covid I miss driving for Meals on Wheels. After Cecile died and her house sold I no longer cut her lawn. I”m not writing this to gather compliments; I’m simply identifying the sources I mine to find the joy, most of which is in being of service. I also feel joy when my kids succeed at anything—when Jennifer was chosen as the boss, John wins a case, or Jason’s novel is published, and it’s multiplied for my grandchildren, too. Kim described the joy Lilly felt on her recent tenth birthday, “running through the house, hanging streamers.” The same goes for friends, too. It’s an inexplicable pleasure that accompanies even minor successes—Larry Johnson’s slow determined recovery from cancer and pneumonia, a friend’s recent appearance in a play and trip to Mexico—incorporating the joy of others into one’s own life.

I feel joy in just being married to Jadyne, the greatest joy of all.

Stress

War

My friend Susan posted this on Facebook. “If only I could share this glass of water with thousands of Ukrainians…oh how I wish I could.” And this: “My heart breaks every day for the Ukrainians.” When I wake up my first thought is the bathroom, then Zelenskyy, then coffee. After the first sip I think about killing Putin. Then, like Susan, I feel helpless, unable to do anything more than send money to the Red Cross for aid to Ukraine. Not a good way to start the day. The war is suffocating, and we’re not even in it, unless you count the extra dollar or two we’re paying at the pump, one of many stresses that have infected our lives over the past two years.

Pandemic

Yesterday, March 11, marked the second year since WHO announced that we were at the beginning of a pandemic. By then thirty-one Americans had died. On March 11, 2020 this conversation took place in DC: "Is the worst yet to come, Dr. Fauci?" asked Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee chairwoman. "Yes, it is," Fauci replied. He explained that the U.S. was seeing more cases from both community spread and international travel.

"I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now," Fauci said. "How much worse we'll get will depend on our ability to do two things: to contain the influx of people who are infected coming from the outside, and the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country."

The virus had by then infected more than 1,000 people in 40 states. At least 31 people in the U.S. had died from COVID-19, most of them in Washington state.

"Bottom line," Fauci said, "it's going to get worse."

Schools closed. Professional sports unceremoniously ended their seasons. Restaurants shuttered. No one went to work. Public transportation stopped. We hosted a one-day-a-week class for our granddaughter Isla and her friend Ella who were trying to learn through Zoom, a software classroom that allowed teachers to see and talk to students while trying to mimic electronically what they did in the classroom.

The Diamond Princess, a cruise ship, was held at sea for nine days while Trump tried to figure out what to do with it and several of its infected passengers. He didn’t want them to come ashore because he rejected adding the passengers to America’s Covid sick list. (Two years later. Almost a million have died; eighty million reported cases.)

Covid is still with us and may be for years to come. New cases and deaths are dropping, but the US still experiences over a thousand deaths a day. My friend Frank Guillen was one of those. Changing laws regarding masking, disinformation from the government, discomfort and inconvenience in our daily lives, especially for those with young children became part of an uncomfortable routine, a stress that in worst cases led to violence.

Inflation

We’re going through the highest rate of inflation in forty years. With the oil and gas embargo from Russia, gas prices have risen to levels never seen before. People who were living on a financial shoestring now find themselves in even choppier straits. The following is a post from Next Door, a community messaging forum. It isn’t about gas. It’s about behavior, the reaction to stress.

The Legacy of Donald Trump

January 6, 2021. Trump’s minions stage a coup. The worst attack against the United States Government since the Civil War, a criminal enterprise authored by TFG. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the lies that it never happened or that it was, as the Republican Party believes, “normal political discourse”, has taken root in Washington, in red states, becoming a centerpiece of the new Republican party, now referred to in liberal circles as the GQP”, as conspiracy theories from Q-Anon believers have taken center stage, removing any vestiges of the thoughtful intelligent fragments of what were once believed to be part of the Republican Party.

And walking side by side with the new Republican party are the right wing extremists, who are embraced by such walking minerals as the hopelessly stupid Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, and so many more who believe that they reflect true America rather than the fringe morons that embrace both their lies and stupidity. They conveniently blame immigrants for the very issues that they cause. Imagine this. Greene accuses Democrats as “communists” as she speaks at a forum where participants give hearty cheers to Putin. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. No moral bottom has been reached yet, only because we never believed that the Trumpies would go so far down…and continue…and continue…

BTW. Here’s a chart illustrating extremist events in the US over the last eighteen years. Trump’s desecration of the office of the Presidency begins at the same time the chart reaches for the sky.

Simply put, that so many of our fellow countrymen believe that a man who ridicules the disabled, speaks ill of deceased war heroes, has sexual escapades with porn stars while his wife is giving birth, and authors thousands and thousands of lies is a “great leader.” And those of us who don’t find that attractive are “haters” and “libtards” Stressed is what and who we are.

A Modest Proposal

So we’re all under stress. Lots of it. How we manage it is up to us. For Trump, a local psychologist scheduled classes for citizens who found his stewardship intolerable. So, one solution is therapy.

Another is to limit exposure. One half hour of news a day, whether TV, internet, whatever. Don’t cheat.

Another is a more proactive approach—doing something unrelated to the external stimuli that bring us stress. I volunteer twice a week at the Men’s Shelter in Berkeley, delivering doughnuts or serving breakfast to the homeless. On another day I deliver groceries for the Berkeley Food Pantry. I’m not looking for kudos. Doing this gives me pleasure. It’s a selfish enterprise. I do it for myself.

At least three days a week I hike/walk five miles in the East Bay hills. I feel better when I come back than I did when I left. I’m busy on the days I don’t hike—reading, playing guitar, gardening, working on images from my photo library. I dust, clean toilets, vacuum carpets, wash windows. I’m grateful for all the physical activity I’m able to do, not just because at the age of 75 I can still do it, but because cleaning, gardening, making my home look better makes me feel better, too.

I’m an optimist. I believe that things will get better. “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well,” Czech dissident, writer and statesman Václav Havel said, “but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” --Vaclav Havel.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

After several weeks of sending Russian soldiers to Belarus for “training exercises” and “military games”, the exercises and the games came to an end about ten days ago. From a text message that was revealed between a dead Russian soldier and his mother.

“There is a real war raging here..” he wrote. Indeed. A forty mile long convoy of military weaponry is outside the capital city of Kiev. Russians have enveloped all of Ukraine in the worst fighting since the end of WWII. The heavily armed Russians are finding determination and pluck in the Ukrainians who have chosen to stay. The world has found a new hero in Zelensky.

A 79 year old Ukrainian grandmother brandishes an AK-47.

Vladimir Putin finds himself and his country under economic attack. Money kept overseas is frozen, oligarchs’ yachts are confiscated, the ruble is in free fall, bars won’t serve Russian vodka, Germany has abandoned its long held position of neutrality and has sent weapons to Ukraine, Switzerland has frozen Russian accounts. Visa and MasterCard have ceased doing business in Russia, McDonalds closed all their stores, the US is banning all energy exports from Russia. Putin is a miniscule little man in the same mold as Donald Trump, as Hitler, and other little people who believe in force over freedom. Ukraine is the rock, Russia, the paper, and the rest of the world, the scissors. The world isn’t just cutting the paper, it’s shredding it. Over three thousand Russian soldiers have been killed. Putin thought that it was his fight and his fight alone. He didn’t expect that the rest of the world would unite behind Ukraine.

Here’s what it’s all about in four photographs.

Suffering.

Destruction

Refugees

…and death

A woman and her two children, killed while trying to escape. Evil has taken up residence in Putin’s heart.

Putin is one of a long line of small insignificant blobs of misaligned protoplasm, a specimen or organism, not a person, who believes the power that exists only to support their narcissism and delusions. Putin is just the current one. They breed in Russia. The history of humanity is mirrored in the history of war. It won’t end well. It never does.

He’s Ozymandias redux.

“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Yeats

The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Schadenfreude scha·den·freu·de /ˈSHädənˌfroidə/

“Schadenfreude is a combination of the German nouns Schaden, meaning "damage" or "harm," and Freude, meaning "joy." So it makes sense that schadenfreude means joy over some harm or misfortune suffered by another.” Merriam-Webster.

“I don’t hate anyone,” Al said last Saturday night, responding to an unusual question I had asked my wife and our four friends: “Is there anyone that you either know or know of whose death would bring you pleasure?”

Al and his wife Tracy have been dealing with issues that began when the marriage of their daughter, Becky and her husband, Marcus, fell apart. The two are divorced and share custody of their three children. Sort of. The thirteen year old daughter, Kaylee, changed her name to “Finn” some time ago because her father was the parent who named her. She hates her father. Even though Becky and Marcus share custody, a judge has ruled that Finn doesn’t have to see Marcus. She intends to select a different last name when she’s eighteen and can do it legally.

After a few moments, Al and Tracy both answered, “Marcus.” Imagine the pain that one person can cause to us, so much so that we would derive pleasure from his passing.

I tried to separate that feeling from hate. Like Al, I don’t hate anyone, either. Hating changes the chemistry in the brain. According to health experts, hate is associated with poor emotional well-being, feelings of anger, shame, and fear. Haters tend to experience poor mental health, including depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress and suicidal behavior.

When I asked my ex-neighbor Bob Frassetto after a neighborly disagreement if he was ever going to talk to me again, he replied, “You disgust me!” I was shocked. I didn’t hate him. But he hated me. He was the one carrying the burden. Bearing the weight of hate doesn’t make you stronger. It weakens you.

You don’t have to wish for someone to die to experience schadenfreude. A video shows a man walking across in front of a car and threatening the driver, giving him the middle finger. He’s so intent on looking at the driver and yelling at him that he walks into a telephone pole. A couple of weeks ago John was behind a driver who threw paper, wrappers, and a half-eaten burrito onto the left turn lane as we were waiting for the traffic light to change. John jumped out of the car, picked up the trash and threw it into the front seat, sending rice and sour cream over the driver and dashboard. “You dropped this,” he said. We loved it. A pastor in Florida preached that floods were sent by God to punish homosexuals. His house flooded. He escaped in a canoe. There are pleasures associated with schadenfreude. When someone gets his “just desserts” we do enjoy it.

I’m not innocent. I interchange the word “Schadenfreude” with “Karma.” A driver passes us at an excessive speed and two minutes later he’s on the side of the road with a black and white behind him. Yes!, we yell out, cheerfully.

When I heard that Trump had Covid I celebrated. I hoped that he would die. I don’t hate Trump. His image, his presence, his gestalt, though physically distant from me, has occupied so much of the space behind my eyes in the last five or six years, replacing all that I might have thought about, enjoyed, appreciated, and loved.

The choice was mine. With a more disciplined mind I could have sent him on his way, but I didn’t. I could have skipped over the political news when he appeared (Someone created an app that replaced his image with that of a cat. It was funny. For a while.). I could have avoided political conversations. Would I actually derive pleasure from his demise? His death would be like passing a kidney stone that was descending over a six year period—excruciating pain followed by blessed relief. Not happiness, just relief. sweet indulgent relief.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Frederick Buechner

Houses

We bought this house in 1974, the first home we ever owned. Three bedrooms, one bath, kitchen and living room. 900 square feet. $35,000, significantly less than we paid for our Tesla 3 almost four years ago. When we owned it we kept the original redwood color. We converted the garage into a family room and added a second bathroom. We lived there for three years, during which time we experienced approximately ten auto accidents in front of the house, one of which went into the wall of our bedroom. Jason was a year old when we bought the house; Jennifer was born when we lived there. We sold it in 1978 for approximately $70,000, leaving the “good side of town” for the “bad side.”

766 Brush Creek Road, Santa Rosa, CA 2019

And here’s our house on the bad side of town.

1524 Dutton Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95407

John was born in 1979 while we lived here. We paid $85,000 for the house, using what we had made from the sale of our Brush Creek Road house, and with the timely gift of $5000 from Alyce, were able to buy a much larger house. Behind the house was a barn, as the property had once been an active farm, then a prune orchard. Much of the land had been sold before we bought it, but in California, where land is so scarce, we had a national park. We lived here for twenty-six years, and this became the home of David Buchholz Photography, where I made my millions, or my thousands, or enough to send three kids to college and fund a retirement that lead us to where we live now, 330 Rugby Avenue, Kensington, CA.

We sold the house in 2004 for $600,000 during the height of what became known as the real estate bubble, a time when banks would allow unqualified people to borrow enough money to buy things they couldn’t afford, reaping the whirlwind that inevitably followed from greed and carelessness.

We were one month away from paying off a fifteen year mortgage, when we had to refinance in order to buy this house for $795,000. We bought it in 2001, rented it for three years, then moved down eighteen years ago in June, 2004. I’m looking around. It appears we still live there.

330 Rugby Avenue, Kensington, CA 94708

In the meantime we owned several other houses, none of which we lived in. A financial planner advised us to buy single-family homes, believing that even if our mortgage would be higher than the rents, the houses would appreciate in value, and that the appreciation would help provide a retirement income. We did that. At one time we “owned” four houses. We sold one of them for $7000 less than we paid for it, and during the time we owned it, lost about $25,000, the difference between the rent we collected and our mortgage payments.

We bought a duplex on Woolsey Avenue in Berkeley in 1999, and in the course of the twenty-three years we’ve owned it, our tenants have included our three kids and their friends. We close escrow on February 28th, 2022, and the proceeds will be transferred to this house, a future home to Jason, Hazel, and Hawthorn.

6115 Ralston Avenue, Richmond, CA.

Escrow closes on March 7th. What still makes me shudder is that our first home on Brush Creek Road sold for 35,000. This one, about the same size, sold for 28.1428571 times that.

Richard Cory

Paul Simon’s song “Richard Cory” retraces Robinson’s poem concluding in Simon’s words, “Richard Cory went home one night/And put a bullet through his head.”

Richard Cory had everything a man could want—power, grace, and style. And money. What could have possibly gone so terribly wrong?

Here’s Richard Cory 2022. Cheslie Kryst.

In the right column are Cheslie’s many accomplishments, and admissions of inadequacy, pressure, and what her mother called, “high performance depression.” Her mother only learned about her daughter’s depression shortly before she jumped off the 26th floor of her apartment building.

When we speak of “knowing someone,” we have to recognize that within each of us is something unknowable, unfathomable, ineffable, that the words don’t exist to describe it. The suicide note that Cheslie wrote was matter of fact, leaving her belongings to her mother.

She added, “May This Day Bring You Rest and Peace” and followed it with a heart emoji.

Then she jumped.

Katie Meyer, the 22 year old star goalie for Standford Women’s soccer team.

Katie Meyer felt the “stress to be perfect” before she ended her life in a Stanford dorm last week. She had ended a conversation with her mother hours earlier, sounded happy, laughed, gave no sign or indication about what was to come.

And Sara Schulze. a 21 year old track star, added her name to this sad list in April.

Cheslie was a thirty year old attorney, one who had performed pro bono work for many non-profits. A former Miss USA winner, an interviewer for the TV Show “Extra”, Cheslie had achieved more in her thirty years than many do in their lifetimes.

Last March she wrote an essay for Allure magazine. “I discovered that the world’s most important question, especially when asked repeatedly and answered frankly, is: why?,” Kryst wrote of her change in thinking.

“Why work so hard to capture the dreams I’ve been taught by society to want when I continue to only find emptiness?” Kryst was 28 when she won the 2019 Miss USA pageant, becoming the oldest winner in the contest’s history, “a designation even the sparkling $200,000 pearl and diamond Mikimoto crown could barely brighten for some diehard pageant fans who immediately began to petition for the age limit to be lowered,” she noted.

“A grinning, crinkly-eyed glance at my achievements thus far makes me giddy about laying the groundwork for more, but turning 30 feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes — and it’s infuriating,” she wrote.

“My challenge of the status quo certainly caught the attention of the trolls, and I can’t tell you how many times I have deleted comments on my social media pages that had vomit emojis and insults telling me I wasn’t pretty enough to be Miss USA or that my muscular build was actually a ‘man body,’ ” she wrote.

Cheslie Kryst was the oldest woman to win the Miss USA pageant at age 28.

“And that was just my looks. My opinions, on the other hand, were enough to make a traditional pageant fan clutch their pearls,” Kryst added.

“Each time I say ‘I’m turning 30,’ I cringe a little,” she wrote. “Sometimes I can successfully mask this uncomfortable response with excitement; other times, my enthusiasm feels hollow, like bad acting.

“Society has never been kind to those growing old, especially women. (Occasional exceptions are made for some of the rich and a few of the famous.).

“I fought this fight before and it’s the battle I’m currently fighting with 30,” she wrote. “How do I shake society’s unwavering norms when I’m facing the relentless tick of time? It’s the age-old question: What happens when ‘immovable’ meets ‘unstoppable?’”

Kryst cited her impressive academic achievements — notably earning a law degree and an MBA at the same time at Wake Forest University after her undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina, where she was a track athlete.

Kryst ended her contemplative essay by saying she marked her milestone birthday in her apartment, “parading around in a black silk top, matching shorts, and a floor-length robe while scarfing down banana pudding and screening birthday calls.

“I even wore my crown around the apartment for most of the day knowing I’d have to give it back at the end of my reign as Miss USA. I did what I wanted rather than the expected,” she wrote.

“Now, I now enter year 30 searching for joy and purpose on my own terms — and that feels like my own sweet victory,” Kryst said.

Sara Schulze, 21, died of suicide on April 13. The family announced.

“By balancing the demands of athletics, scholars, and everyday life, she was overwhelmed in one desperate moment,” the Shulzes said.  “Like you, we were shocked and saddened while holding on to everything Sarah was.”

Twenty year old sophomore Lauren Bernett was named “Player of the Week” on her college team’s championship softball team. Majoring in biology and pre-vet she was a much-loved member of the team an student at James Madison University.

One day after receiving the honor, she took her own life. Bernett's former batterymate and breakout star of JMU's World Series run, Odicci Alexander, tweeted Wednesday: "Love you LB" and "You really never know what someone is going through."

What do these young girls, all under the age of 30, accomplished, successful, respected, and loved have in common? This list, sadly, only grows.

On Relationships

A Little Life, a novel published in 2015 by writer Hana Yanagihara, focuses on the lives of four college friends, each of whom has achieved success in his field—law, art, architecture, and the last, as an actor in film. If you choose to read it you can learn more from the New Yorker’s review.

I found two quotes in the book that suggest that those of us who might mistakenly believe that our chosen, our one and only, our closest friend, our BFF, is the answer to everything. Our marriages and our friendships are not based entirely on faulty expectations, only that in modifying those expectations can we accept and appreciate the complications that define us as human.

“…he was old enough to know that within every relationship was something unfulfilled and disappointing something that had to be sought elsewhere.”  P. 566

“SETH:  But don’t you understand, Amy?  You’re wrong.

Relationships never provide you with everything.  They provide you with some things.  You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things.  Three—that’s it.  Maybe four, if you’re very lucky.  The rest you have to look for elsewhere.  It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things.  But this isn’t the movies.  In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life.  Don’t you see it’s a trap?  If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.”  P. 567 

Yeah, page 566 and 567. You have to read a lot to get to that point. The book is 721 pages long. I finished it days ago. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Say it's not Covid

…that caused a man to push Michelle Alyssa Go off a subway station platform in Manhattan directly into the path of a train, a brutal attack that sent shock waves throughout New York City. Friends remember her as an avid traveler, generous, and “incredibly smart.” The perp? Martial Simon, 61, a “houseless” man with a history of violence and mental health issues. The attack reverberated throughout the Asian American communities, a senseless murder that has shaken the city and has seeded more sorrow, fear and anger among Asians.

Michelle Go

Say it’s not Covid

…that caused Shawn Laval Smith, 31, to enter a furniture store last week and murder 24 year old UCLA graduate student Brianna Kupfer, who was working alone in the furniture store. Brianna had texted fifteen minutes earlier that she was getting “bad vibes” from a customer, later identified as Smith. Brianna had graduated from the University of Miami and was pursuing a graduate degree in architectural design at UCLA.*

(*A sixteen year old black girl’s body was found thrown from a car along a freeway at the same time that Brianna was murdered. No hue and cry from the public, no mention in the media, no returned phone calls from the investigating officers, and no $250,000 reward from the city to find her killer. But that’s another story).

Brianna Kupfer

We suspect the perp wasn’t spreading Covid. He was photographed shopping nearby, wearing an N95 mask. He was just being cautious. And risk-averse.

You can’t be too careful…

And it certainly wasn’t Covid

…that caused a London bound American Airlines passenger to make such a fuss about wearing a mask on the flight that one hour into the flight the captain made the decision to turn around and return to LA.

“A London-bound American Airlines flight had to return to Miami after a "disruptive" passenger refused to comply with the federal mask requirement, the airline said. American Airlines flight 38 had left Miami International Airport Wednesday night on its way to London's Heathrow Airport when the plane had to turn back because the customer refused to comply with the mask rule, the airline said in a statement.

"The flight landed safely at MIA where local law enforcement met the aircraft," the airline's statement read. "We thank our crew for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience."

Miami-Dade Police said the passenger wasn't arrested.” She was a woman in her forties, now placed on a “No Fly” list. Additional charges may be filed pending further investigation. For the record, over 4290 cases of mask related disturbances have been reported on airlines in the last six months. 6000 cases of unruly passengers.

Perhaps Covid has had nothing to do with any of this.

Some headlines

• COVID pandemic and isolation likely pushed spike in 2020 homicides and assaults

• Pandemic's unique impact brings aberration in overall crime not seen in four years, and in homicides not seen in decades.

• Homicides Surge in California Amid Covid Shutdowns of Schools, Youth Programs

• Police Pin a Rise in Murders on an Unusual Suspect: Covid

• First Covid raised the murder rate. Now it’s changing the politics of crime.

• Violent crime spiked across the country during the pandemic, forcing a reckoning in cities like Atlanta. .

We’re all under pressure, feeling stresses we haven’t experienced at any point in our lifetimes. Some handle it better than others. Some, like Smith and Simon are among us even now, standing on that subway platform, hiding sharpened knives, looking for someone they don’t even know for reasons that they don’t know or understand, just someone. There are no answers.

Everybody Makes Mistkes

As New Mexico authorities are accepting non-monetary donations on behalf of a baby boy abandoned in a dumpster in the city of Hobbs and for other children under state care, the mother of the woman accused of abandoning him is telling reporters, "Everybody makes mistakes."

Alexis Avila, 18, has been charged with attempted murder and child abuse in connection with the incident, according to city police. She allegedly wrapped the baby in a blood-soaked towel and two garbage bags, then abandoned him in 36-degree weather with his umbilical cord still attached. It was, by all definitions, a mistake.

Alexis Avila trying to kill her baby.

Hitting baseline shots in Australia right now is Novak Djokovic, who was denied entry to the country because of a declaration he made entering, claiming that his staff had erred in his application, that he hadn’t traveled in the two weeks preceding his arrival. But, “Djokovic told border officers that Tennis Australia completed the declaration for him, but the officer who canceled his visa said that the body would have done that based on information from Djokovic himself.” I guess he '“misremembered.” a mistake.

“Novak Djokovic has blamed his agent for an “administrative mistake” when declaring he had not traveled in the two weeks before his flight to Australia and acknowledged an “error of judgment” by not isolating after he tested positive for Covid.

Stay tuned. He’s still in Australia. We’ll find out soon enough if Australia has balls, and not of the tennis kind.

And that leads us to yet another “mistake.” Senator Ted Cruz, he of the Republican party. During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Cruz said what happened on Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol in an attack to stop the certification of electoral ballots, was a "terrorist attack."

He continued that "anyone who commits an actual act of violence should be prosecuted, and anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should go to jail for a very long time. And I think that's a principle that is true, regardless of the politics of the violent criminal, whether they are right wing, left wing or they got no wings at all."

Wow! Cruz told the truth! Or did he? Facing backlash from conservative members of Congress, such as MTG who called Cruz’s statement “irresponsible”, then queried by Tucker Carlson, who said, "You called this a 'terror attack' when by no definition was it a terror attack. That's a lie. You told that lie on purpose, and I'm wondering why you did?"

Cruz folded. He responded that the phrasing was "sloppy and it was frankly dumb" and, due to his wording, he said people misunderstood what he meant. He added, “It was a mistake to say that yesterday,” Telling the truth was a “mistake,” he said, walking back his one and only pathetic effort to be truthful.

Washington Post: Two men are accused of vandalizing a Key West landmark. A bartender recognized one of them because he hadn’t tipped.

Shaped like a buoy, a 12’ tall marker sits at the southernmost point of the United States, 90 miles from Cuba. It was badly damaged in Hurricane Irma and required extensive restoration. The Southernmost Point is a landmark with special meaning for Cuban Americans. Thousands of people shared photos of the suspects, expressing disbelief that anyone would purposely damage the monument.

Police were able to obtain arrests for the two men. They both conceded that they had made a mistake, according to police reports.

Some years ago I had a sigmoidoscopy I was advised by the nurse that I might experience some discomfort. Afterwards I asked him, “When does discomfort leave off and pain begin?” I hurt.

When I hear of these “mistakes” I can only ask “Where does making a "mistake” actually end, and the person making a “mistake'“ be recognized not as a person who has made a mistake, but an asshole?

A Twenty

I keep two of these in my wallet. I don’t use them to buy stuff. I use a credit card for that, a Visa card from United Airlines that awards me a mile or so for every dollar I spend. Covid has brought me thousands of miles and no travel to show for it.

I keep the twenties to give away. Once it was the Berkeley High School Jazz Band who were playing outside of a restaurant where Jadyne and I were dining, but mostly the money goes into unwashed hands with dirty fingernails, paper cups held between knees, people pushing shopping carts filled with all of their belongings up Shattuck Avenue.

I don’t need the twenties They do. If the “generosity” of giving away a handful of meaningless twenties could be measured it wouldn’t even show up on the scale.

Last week Jadyne and I were walking down Solano Avenue. In front of us was a man carrying a sign that read, “Any Little Bit Helps”, imploring passersby to give him money. As I began to reach into my wallet Jadyne said, “Not him. He comes into the Turnabout shop and makes a scene!” (She volunteers at the Turnabout shop, a store mostly filled with donated used ladies’ clothes. It’s a charity. The money pays dentists who take care of indigent children). Startled, I put my wallet back in my pants and walked on.

She immediately regretted her comment. We both recognize that the crux of the twenty dollar giveaway is this. Passing judgment cannot be part of the equation. They can use it for drugs, alcohol, or however the choose.

Some time after beginning the giveaway someone posted the following on Facebook.

Christmas Cards

What is it with Republican Christmases?

Rep. Thomas Massie from Kentucky and his family, a Christmas card that he tweeted four days after four high school students in Oxford, Michigan, were murdered by a fifteen year old who had just received his Christmas present—a gun.

Not to be outdone by a colleague, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, one of the two most “controversial” freshman congresswomen, said after seeing Massie’s card, “That’s my kind of Christmas card!”

Lauren’s Christmas card.

There’s little left to say. I’m glad that my father, a clergyman, isn’t around to see either of those cards, to see how un-Christian and un-American the Republican party has become since 2016. when with the assistance of Russia, the government has been taken over by fascists, totalitarians, jingoists, autocrats, xenophobes, racists, high school dropouts, poor spellers and even worse grammarians.

Neighbors

Paul Slater lived two houses away from us. Before he died (about three years ago) we would chat whenever I passed by his house and he was outside sweeping the sidewalk. He always stopped sweeping where his driveway ended, as the one house between us had a long and often leaf-filled appearance, so even if the fence didn’t divide the two properties, the leaves did. Paul was a retired university lecturer on something. When we moved here in 2004 he was retired but employed by one of those services that hire people to look through newspapers and cut out either ads or stories for some reason that I don’t know. A Luddite by nature, Paul never owned a cell phone or computer. He had a rotary dial phone, and because he only had tungsten lights in his house there was always a yellow glow coming through his front window. Sally and Glenn didn’t like that he complained about the noise their children made. And Bob Frassetto, our shared neighbor, got into an argument about Bob’s fence being too tall, or in the wrong spot, and they didn’t talk.

Bob Frassetto didn’t talk to me, either. I don’t think he talked to anyone in the neighborhood, and they, in turn didn’t talk to him. About five years ago I complained that the little fence that divides the creek that we share prevented the leaves from passing through the fence, causing the creek to flood and wash away my landscaping. He said, “I never want you to set foot on my property again.” After a year or so I passed by his house as he was leaving. I asked, “Bob, are you ever going to talk to me?” He replied, “You disgust me!” And because I disgusted him those were the last words we ever exchanged. (I hate it when I disgust people).

In earlier times, before I disgusted him, I took this photo of him with Kylee (a product of Bob and wife #2), and Kylee’s older stepsister Zoe, (a product of wife #1). This summer he married wife #3 and sold his house last week. Wife #2 is a real estate agent, and she actually listed the house before Bob fired her the day that the house went on the market where it languished for three months. We’re expecting new neighbors on Friday.

I taught Kylee how to ride a bike. As she was gaining her balance I ran after the bike down Vermont and Rugby while her father stood in the front yard in his green bathrobe, a cup of steaming Folger’s in his hand.

Kylee is now twenty-one, and Zoe is perhaps in her thirties. Neither one of them has anything to do with Bob.

Greg Yeary lived with Bob for ten years, trading room and board for his contracting skills. Greg built fences, a tree house for Kylee, planter boxes, reshingled the house. Whatever bad feelings we had for Bob were more than mitigated by good feelings for Greg. Bob sold the house. Greg left. Before he did he built a bathroom for us, fixed any number of things I couldn’t, and made many repairs at our Woolsey Street apartment.

Greg Yeary

Maria Curtis lives across from Bob, on the corner of Rugby and Vermont. When we first moved to Kensington we became friends. Her Costa Rican daughter-in-law Sonia came to visit Jadyne and me frequently. She and Paul, Maria’s son, lived downstairs from Maria, and Sonia was always trying to escape the tension she felt in this crowded house, where Maria criticized Sonia for almost everything. Here, Sonia, have another cup of coffee. Decaf this time.

Maria was married to Wallace Curtis, who died, as I remember, of cancer perhaps ten years or so ago. Maria goes to Mass every day. Her house in an impenetrable collection of things on the floor, walls, shelves, chairs, and tables. She has asked me on occasion to fix things I can’t. She brought me expired ink cartridges I promised her that I would take them to the toxic waste center. I may have done that. Here’s Maria.

Maria Curtis

Gary Roda lives next to Maria in the hilltop house he grew up in. My redwood trees block Gary’s view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, a view that would probably add a quarter of a million dollars to his property. He once said to me, “I’m saving you $25,000.” “Thank you”, I replied, “How so?” He responded, “I’ve decided not to sue you for the redwood trees that block my view” “Thank you,” I repeated, as I continued to wipe the now dry NuFinish car wax off my car. Gary hoped that we would be open to mediation, so he had brochures sent to us about “spite trees”, whose presence devalues someone else’s property. The brochure begins, “To a Berkeley property owner.” I returned the brochure. I live in Kensington, in Contra Costa County. Gary lives in Berkeley, in Alameda County. Case closed. We’re friends now. He was literally up a tree in getting all of us neighbors to cut whatever we might choose just to give him a snippet or two of a view.

And next to Gary live Guillermo and Davi Grossman. They’re wonderful people. Guillermo escaped Spain and the dictator Francisco Franco, looking for freedom. He’s an economist, works in San Francisco, and can often be seen jogging or walking Yashmi, their out of control puppy. Guillermo makes a paella to die for. Davi makes exquisite jewelry. She loves cats. Her license plate is QAT. We have no idea how many she has at any given time. Once in a while they discover fur outside their house. Kensington is a coyote heaven.

Guillermo, Davi, and Nico, a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara.

Double Feature on the Left. Nick and Russ lived there for several years, along with their canine and feline menagerie. When they moved to NYC (Nick took a job managing the Rockefeller Philanthropic Organization) we were sick. I’ve written about them in my blog:

http://www.davidkbuchholz.com/new-blog/2021/7/18/russ-and-nick

They come back to the Bay Area a couple of times a year to visit friends. Russ’s mother lives in the Central Valley. Our disappointment that they moved was mitigated by the arrival of Anthony, Farrah, and their two children, Celine and Nigel. A Christmas photo two or three years ago.

Farrah’s mother, father and her siblings have, because of some genetic anomaly, had their spleens surgically removed. Two years ago Farrah’s surgery went south, and she spent a difficult January at the Stanford Hospital. She’s recovered, and we’re all grateful, as are her mother and her siblings, who, like her, were named for movie stars. Marilyn, Marcello, Marlon, etc. While she was recovering her family came to tend the children, and on at least one occasion I drove her mother to the hospital.

January 2019, not a month to remember.

Living next door to Farrah and Anthony are Jen, Carys, and Alvin Lumanlan. Their marriage several years ago was billed a “Hiker/Biker” affair, featuring the bride hiking and the groom riding. They’ve continued in that vein, having hiked in Patagonia and ridden all the hills in the Tour de France. In the rain. When Carys was not much older than she is in this photograph Jen went hiking in Europe for several days, packing food, supplies, and a baby.

Carys and Jen

Jen has at least two Master’s degrees and operates a website teaching interested moms and dads how to be a perfect parent, or at the least, how to solve parenting issues. She home schools Carys.

https://yourparentingmojo.com/

Alvin was in advertising, but as of now he’s both a stay at home dad and a photographer who’s hoping to make a living with his camera.

Behind us live the Yearwoods. Kahlil is an attorney. Amber is a stay at home mom. Here’s Amber, pregnant with her second child.

For ten years their house was occupied by the Flinchbaughs. Sally runs the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center, a job she had in Berkeley. Glenn is in tech, and I have no idea what he actually does. We were saddened to see them move. We hosted a farewell party for them before they left.

Back row: Russell, Carol and Jim Patton, Cecile Grant, Chris Anderson, Glenn Flinchbaugh, David Anderson, Guillermo and Davi Grossman, Rachel, Jen Lumanlan, Isla and me.

Front row; Nick, Tess Flinchbaugh, Alvin Lumanlan, Jadyne, Jack Flinchbaugh, Jennifer, Nico, Sally Flinchbaugh, Jason, Reed Flinchbaugh, Susanto, Andrew, and Hawthorn.

And across the street live the Pattons. More at home camping for months in Death Valley trapping rodents, Jim has been shipwrecked five times and spends his happiest times in the mountains and deserts. His greatest work is the one thousand page volume “The Rodents of South America”, available everywhere. Carol, a speech therapist, patiently, goes with him. Jim is a professor emeritus at Cal, and even though he turned 80 this year work is what he knows. And loves. Carol writes letters to senators and congressmen almost every day, hoping, as we all are, that things will get better. Jim and Carol have no children, but they care for an assortment of pet turtles who have the run of their house.

An ex-neighbor and a neighbor. On the left is Charlie Patton, who was renting a house with his wife Donna, and their daughter, Eva. Charlie’s father died and left Charlie enough money to buy his own house. They live less than five minutes away.

Next to Charlie is Nancy Rubin. Nancy taught at Berkeley High School, and in retirement took up photography. She has a sensitivity in knowing what makes a good photograph. She also has a rapport for the people she photographs and has shown her work around the Bay Area.

And George. George is single. He retired from UCB a few years ago where he did a lot of stuff with computers. I recruited George to volunteer for the Berkeley Food Pantry. He created a software program to replace the rolodex cards in shoe boxes and has been active in keeping the Pantry running smoothly. George has envied our Tesla for the past three years and is awaiting delivery in January for his. George is a twitcher and his only worry about the Tesla is running out of electricity as he chases down a previously unseen double-breasted Sopwith Camel. Or whatever. Once a bird never seen this far south was spotted in Half Moon Bay. By the time George arrived the area was surrounded by bird lovers, cameras, telescopes, and what-have-you. Shortly thereafter (not when George was there), a peregrine falcon ended the bird’s journey south.

George lived next door (until last week) to Jim and Vi Gallardo. Jim and Vi bought their house in 1958, sixty-three years ago. We admired the two of them for living life to the fullest. Jim served in WWII and was a docent on a WW II ship docked in San Francisco Bay. A few years ago I took Hawthorn and Susanto for a personal visit to the ship.

Jim on board.

After fighting cancer for several years Jim succumbed to it earlier this year. He was in his mid-nineties when he died. Vi stayed until last week. We loved them both. Good people. She, too, is in her nineties, and her son and daughter-in-law took her to their home in North Carolina. Jim and Vi had both admitted that they should have left their home with its three stories years earlier, when they were still more ambulatory. It will go on the market for the first time since they bought it when I was twelve.

Eveline,Charles, Vi,and Janice. Charles and Janice are Vi’s children.

And not all our neighbors are still with us. Ky, who lived in the Lumanlan’s house, passed soon after we moved in. So did Jim Jones. Kay and Russ Weeks both died, too, but Russ made it to 100. His daughter lives in the house. At the end of the street live John and Amy Ream, his daughter. His wife, Renee, died a month or so ago. When their son died unexpectedly several years earlier the neighbors held candles and sang Amazing Grace. Renee asked Jadyne and me to come to her bedside three days before she died, thanking us for what she felt we had done for the neighborhood.

Of all the neighbors who have passed, none has been missed more than Cecile Grant. When we moved here seventeen years ago she lived next door with her husband Jamie. Jamie died within a year or so, and their three daughters would have moved Cecile to a care facility, except that they knew Jadyne and I would take care of Cecile. We did.

We didn’t know Jamie nearly as well as we knew Cecile, who hated George Bush with such a passion that we were warned never to bring up his name in a conversation. She was as kind as she was fiery, providing us with cookies, cakes, dinners, spirited conversations,and the proceeds from a clock that Jamie’s employer, Bechtel, had awarded him for his retirement. I sold it on eBay for $1000. She wouldn’t take the money.

Cecile and her prized diesel Mercedes. When she gave up driving she sold it at a nominal price to the UPS driver who cherishes it.

From Wikipedia, "Neighbourhood is generally defined spatially as a specific geographic area and functionally as a set of social networks. Neighbourhoods, then, are the spatial units in which face-to-face social interactions occur—the personal settings and situations where residents seek to realise common values, socialise youth, and maintain effective social control."

We love our neighborhood, which, I’ve narrowed down to the houses on both sides of Rugby Avenue. I left some people out. Larry and Janet Johson, kind neighbors who contributed to my food collections for the Berkeley Food Pantry. Larry was just diagnosed with cancer this past summer and has a feeding tube; Janet is a former elementary school teacher at Madera, the school Isla and Susanto attend. To our left is Ursula. She’s Kahlil’s sister, and we never see her. She has two children, both of whom, we think, are autistic. And loud. Kathy Weeks lives in the house that belonged to her late parents. She thinks the election was stolen. There’s a Chinese couple that live at the end of the street and some Chinese students who live two doors down. We don’t know any of them. So it’s a selective neighborhood. Friends seek out friends. Those that keep to themselves keep to themselves.

Josie lives up the street. She calls herself a “Jew/Bu”, born Jewish but Buddhist in how she thinks and lives. She taught a class I attended for a year called “A Year to Live.” At the end of the class we all “died.” The last exercise was to walk up and down Solano Avenue and simply observe, recognizing that all that we saw would be taking place whether we were there or not. I sat in Starbucks for about thirty minutes, watching people lining up for “grandes”, couples sharing conversations, students on laptops. No one looked at me. Not my neighborhood.

White Vigilantica

Admittedly, it doesn’t roll right off the tongue. And in patriotic songs like White Vigilantica the Beautiful, it’s a bit too long. Even if it’s a more accurate descriptive title than the old America the Beautiful, accuracy in music isn’t a prerequisite. John Lennon was never a walrus. And Goo goo g’shoob makes no sense at all.

A lot of things don’t make sense, though. Take Anthony Sabatini’s tweet, he, a Florida congressman.

Let’s parse that out. A 17 year old boy asks a friend to buy him an AR-15 assault rifle, then loads it with armor piercing rounds, asks mother to drive him to nearby Kenosha so that he can “protect“ a used car store from Black Lives Matter protestors who might be intent on setting remaining cars on fire. In the process he leaves the car store, and while wandering in the street he is attacked by one rioter, then another, and a third. He shoots all three, killing the first two, goes to trial and is acquitted on five charges all related to these shootings.

A psychologist had this to say. “"We watch politicians do what they're doing, and it feels very out of control," Dill-Shackleford said, noting some people may feel "angry for one reason or another" or "full of anxiety" about authorities who are supposed to be in charge of protecting us—be it political leaders, police, etc.—that aren't doing their jobs. Thus, Kyle Rittenhouse stands as a symbol of someone who took power back himself.

He claimed self-defense, but as the prosecution pointed out, “You can’t claim self-defense for a situation you created yourself.” But he did. And he walked.

But white vigilantica? Kyle was white. A black man in the same situation would have been convicted. Quickly. On all five counts.

You go, Kyle. Protect us. From you.

The not really Supreme Court is considering a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. In questioning last Wednesday justices seem prepared to agree that it imposes an intolerable burden on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and that people seeking to exercise that right should not have to demonstrate to the government that they have a reason or special need to do so, perhaps excepting places like subways, theaters, and other “sensitive places.”

So what will that mean to white vigilantes? (I know that “white” and “vigilantes” is redundant). As white kids see that their boy Kyle walked away after murdering two people, and that packing heat is a constitutional right, the likelihood that more white boys with AR-15s and other “cool guns” will roam the streets looking for more Rosenbaums and Hubers, the two victims whose paths unfortunately crossed the armed juvenile property protector perhaps on the proposed Kyle Rittenhouse Day, the national holiday celebrating murder.

From the NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/21/us/rittenhouse-militia-paramilitary.html

In Georgia another vigilante case enters closing arguments tomorrow. Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-five year old black man was jogging in a neighborhood when a white man and his father chased him, thinking, as they said, that he might have been responsible for previously reported thefts in the neighborhood. Travis McMichael, the son, brandished a shotgun, and shot Arbery to death. The prosecutor questioned him, “All he’s done is run away from you,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him.” McMichael said Arbery forced him to make a split-second “life-or-death” decision by attacking him and grabbing his shotgun. Race hasn’t entered into the argument, but race is certainly there. N.B. Travis is white, has a young son, and he felt threatened. Threatened by a man who was paying no attention to him until McMichael chased him down and brandished a shotgun. Welcome to Southeast White Vigilantica.

And last. Another trial is about to wind down. The jury is deliberating in the case of plaintiffs who sued white nationalists in a Unite the Right protest that ended with one of the protestors dead and several injured.

White Vigilantica is not the country I remember. Twenty years ago we were one country. We’re now two. I can’t accept that I live in a country that lionizes a juvenile right-wing murdering t-shirt wearing gun lover, a Georgia redneck that hates and murders blacks, and a collection of violence seeking white nationalists frightened that they’ve been exposed for being the trash that they are. Imagine that these people submitted their DNA to 23 and me or Ancestry and discover that their closest relative is pond scum.