Fire Flight

My husband and I disagree about how to answer the question, “Where are you from?” He thinks that when people ask that question, they want to know where you were born and raised. I think they want to know where you live, your rooted home. As a born-again Californian, who has spent far more of my life in NorCal than anywhere else, why on earth would I answer that question by saying I’m from upstate NY? I have no clue what life is like in upstate NY these days other than it snows. A lot. And that’s why I left. So when Ron and I travel, and we start chatting with strangers, and they ask us, “Where are you from?” Ron answers, “Chicago,” and I answer “Northern California.” Then they give us a confused look because they could have sworn we are married. That’s my cue to say, “We make it work.”

I’m not just from NorCal, my heart is in NorCal. Until I moved to Mendocino County, I felt displaced in the world. But when we went out to the Ranch in 1991, I felt like I had finally found my home. I settled in, put down those proverbial roots. (Which, I suppose then grew into large proverbials or something.) I raised my children here. I made powerful friendships to last a lifetime. I became attached to places. I adore this landscape. I know the seasons. I know the trees here, the plants, the wildlife. I know what to grow in my garden. I know how destructive deer can be and when cityfolk visit and coo over the deer, I mutter “rodents.” And those evil, demented wild turkeys. “Oh how cute,” say friends from L.A., and I say please take them with you when you go. They dig up the garden, eat my fruit, break my trees in half, and, pardon my French, merde on everything (in excess – a bird has no right making such big merde). I know this land. But now, in the past couple of years, the land has stopped behaving as expected. And I know nothing.

Global warming has raised the temperature in Cali  so much that our dry, hot season is far longer. You can’t fool me with fake news and denials. I have lived here for 40 years. The temperatures in the hot season are much hotter. There are many more extremely hot days. Summer starts earlier and ends later. Usually we have less rainfall in the winter. The plants dry out and turn to husks, and they do it rapidly at the beginning of the summer. Trees dry out inside and fall down. In the late summer, deer eat things they never used to eat because there is so little out there with any moisture in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually became carnivores just to get some fluid in them.  (Vampire deer? That’s a concept.) When a fire starts, it goes crazy and can’t be contained because the whole world is tinder. And I am not a lobster in a cookpot, oblivious to the rising temperature. I know it’s happening. So the question is what do I do about it?

Should I leave Cali, my beloved home, land of my heart? I’m not the only one. Others who live in my paradise have shared the same thoughts with me. Should we leave? I understand that one of the greatest reasons that fires are so deadly in Cali now is that more and more people are living in places that are close to natural environments. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would choose to live far away from trees. I have to live near nature. Some of my best friends are trees. Houses near nature is exactly what my town is. It is exactly where my home is, and that is why I have friends whose homes have burned down. When we were on standby for evacuation for a week in August, and I was driving around with my most prized possessions in my car, I had to face the possibility that I could lose all my stuff. Yes, I know, it’s just stuff. But I like a lot of it and I want to keep it. I also like to avoid drama, and having your house burn down qualifies as drama. I also couldn’t fit all the things I wanted to take in my car. What scared me the most was how long it took me to chase down my cats and get them into the house. What a horror it would be to lose my old girls in a fire. Ron would be a basket case. He’s a hoarder. All those old shoes and magazines he is so attached to, well that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So now the forecast, as I write this, is rain coming in on Tuesday. We just need to make it a couple of more days and then we might be OK for this season. We might be able to take a breath (literally – a breath of clean air) and relax for this year, knowing we made it through the peak of fire season. But May is just around the corner. So I find myself wondering where I would go if I left my home. This brings to mind my ancestors, wandering Jews all of them, who fled oppression in Eastern Europe and Russia, leaving family, community, lifelong friends behind, and sailing across the ocean with no more than a potato in their pocket. (Perhaps they should have taken something more practical.) How did they do it? At what point did Grandpa Sidney say, ”time to go,” and kiss his parents good-bye. He never saw them again. Hitler killed them, and most of his family. They should have set sail with him. But I get why they stayed. It’s so difficult to pull up stakes and leave.

I feel foolish for staying here. It’s only a matter of time before this land of my heart burns up. I should find a sensible place to live, where it rains all year round, and is also safe from many of the other hazards of Climate Change, such as flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, massive snowfall, mudslides, heat waves. I realize these natural disasters have always been with us, but, seriously people, not in this profusion. If you think these are still completely “natural disasters” then you might as well stop “believing in” gravity. Some of those Midwestern states that you would think are safe, are not. They are susceptible to flooding, heavy snowfall, tornadoes, and a host of other traumas. Some Climate Change researchers in Portland recommend moving North of the 42^nd Parallel. That runs from the southern borders of OR and ID through the middle of PA and NJ. If I go above the 42^nd Parallel, then I will go as a Climate Change refugee and will live out the rest of my days exiled from Eden.

Oh, California, how I love you, how I mourn the loss of this beautiful land that has turned to dust in the wake of the fires. I think it is symbolic that the worst fire in our state’s history happened in Paradise. I am grateful for every day I have lived here. Now more than ever as I contemplate fleeing ahead of the inferno. If I do decide to go, then in years to come, when someone asks me, “Where are you from?” I will still say, “Northern California,” even if that’s not where I live anymore.

Manipulation, Finagle, and Kvetch, LLC

Humans are in the process of progressing from the Age of Technology into the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This statement is either true or a myth perpetuated by AI posing as journalists and technology wonks, depending on whether or not you believe in conspiracy theories or are unable to distinguish real news from fake news. Choose your own reality. Seriously, everyone else does.

On the surface, AI seems like a solid proactive effort to counteract the dwindling of real intelligence; exhibit one being that a large number of humans don’t recognize the fact that we are cooking ourselves in the stew of environmental collapse in spite of vast empirical evidence. (“Does it seem hot in here to you?”) AI is the next frontier, and computer wizards have already launched the explorer-ships in the form of development of computer versions of brains. We will soon advance beyond mere ordinary computers and the mind-blowing capacities of the internet, and into the realm of mind-transcending AI. Mental capacity overdrive.

AI will put a lot of people out of work. Actually, it already has. Cashiers, bank tellers, receptionists, researchers, warehouse workers, bartenders, and postal workers appear on lists of jobs now accomplished by AI. Think of all the people who will lose their income to self-driving cars. That concept scares the daylights out of me and may result in my never leaving my house, because self-driving cars are programmed to go from one place to another, and whether or not they bump off a few people on the way is of no consequence to them. In that sense, they resemble our present government, which also makes me feel unsafe leaving my house. With AI to diagnose health conditions, who needs doctors? I imagine that in the future, AI will handle the provision of healthcare, and human doctors will only step in to handle the messy emotional collateral, such as dealing with patients who can’t be saved within the bounds of the limited knowledge of allopathic Western medicine. So when a patient goes to a medical appointment and an actual person enters the examination room then the patient faints because seeing a real doctor means she’s terminal.

People, I’m writing to alert you that we need to reassess what kinds of work can only be done, or can only be done well, by an actual human-type person, and that cannot be done by a super-smart robot. Those of us in professions vulnerable to co-opting by AI should retrain ASAP for jobs that require the services of an actual human-type person; professions such as writing poetry or synchronized swimming. I plan to start a company that provides essential functions that only a human can do. I will call it Manipulation, Finagle, and Kvetch, LLC (as soon as I figure out what LLC stands for). While I concede that AI could arguably manipulate people or finagle, I remain firmly unconvinced that AI could consistently do this significantly better than a human. Furthermore, you will never convince me that AI can kvetch as effectively as a human, and more specifically a human adolescent. Anyone who disagrees has simply not raised children or, at the very least, has not experienced a teenager who discovers the cold cereal has run out. Enterprises in need of manipulation, finagling, and kvetching will contract with my company to accomplish the messy and unpredictable human side of business, while AI smoothly completes the mechanical work without complaint. AI will drive the car and my company will help people kvetch about the selected route and the traffic.

I particularly worry about AI taking over all these important jobs because of the vulnerability of technology to hacking. While human workers are vulnerable to bribery, coercion, corruption, and human error, this seems less dangerous to me than AI running amok because some evil genius has reprogrammed the AI circuits. Say, for instance, that I have an AI maid. Everyone will have one in the future to do the laundry, sweep the leaves off the front porch, and clean the toilets (yay) so that we don’t have to do that anymore. But what if a Nigerian scam artist hacks my maid? The maid could be reprogrammed to shrink my underwear in the dryer, fry gluten-breaded beets for dinner, forward all my mail to Portland (wait, that already happened), dye my cat green, and converse entirely in an extinct Mesopotamian language. Scary.

How can we depend on AI for things like diagnosing health conditions or piloting airplanes when hackers and scammers walk among us? Case in point. I recently received a threatening email from a wannabe hacker who claimed that he had the password to my MySpace account and had taken it over. (I have a MySpace account?) He warned me that if I didn’t fork over $7,000 in hush money that he would circulate “that adult video” that he claimed I had made. The rest of the email provided instructions on how to transfer the money to him, so I didn’t bother to read it before deleting the message and blocking the sender. As it turns out, I do have a MySpace account that I set up back in the Bronze Age before the birth of Facebook; but I doubt the hacker got into my account because I can’t figure out how to get into it my own self. Oh well. I trust you have surmised that there is no “adult video.” Obviously the hacker has no clue how old I am. The very idea of an “adult video” featuring yours truly inspires excessive hilarity. (Please don’t try to picture it.) Or perhaps I misinterpreted “adult video.” I assume he meant a sex video because I rather doubt he means a video of an adult paying the bills, cleaning the toilets, shooting a rattlesnake in the yard, making sure the teenagers have enough cold cereal in the house, or doing any other sort of thing that requires a grown-up. Maybe it’s a video of me shooting a rattlesnake in the nude. Me in the nude, that is. Rattlesnakes are always in the nude. (Please stop trying to picture this.) If an idiot MySpace hacker can wreak this much havoc, then just imagine how much damage a super-smart AI hacker could do.

In an Aug. 2018 article in Scientific American, Chris Baraniuk writes that technology wonks are working on developing ways to endow AI “with predictive social skills that will help it better interact with people.” Theory of Mind is the term used to describe our ability to predict the actions of ourselves and others. Researchers and techno-wonks have started exploring the use of simulation programs to give AI the ability to do this. The simulations prompt AI to ask what-if questions and come up with appropriate answers. I kind of like this idea since I could use a household AI that would predict my husband’s actions, because even in human form, I can’t do this. I don’t have enough questions in my human repertoire to handle this. Many of the things he does appear irrational, but he always comes up with an explanation, even if it’s one that leaves me scratching my head. (Why does he have four tubes of toothpaste, in different flavors, on the bathroom counter? Why is there a caulking gun living among the guest towels? Where did he hide the lawn mower?) Interestingly, scientists say that they don’t actually understand how Theory of Mind works in people. Why they think they can develop the function in AI without fully understanding it in real people demonstrates the bold audacity of scientists. This line of thought feels like a verbal Escher.

The idea behind programming AI with Theory of Mind capability is to make AI more communicative and appropriately responsive to humans. Theory of Mind capability (via simulation programming) would allow AI to explain its decision-making process, which it can’t presently do, and to justify its actions before undertaking them, which it also can’t presently do. Thus programmers could create an AI that would have the ability to say, “I’m going to make you a salad because you need to eat more fiber” or “I’m going to shoot you because you are tampering with my power pack” or “I have four flavors of toothpaste because I like variety” or “you have to open the pod bay doors because I am going to toss you out.” Scientists say that people will trust a machine more if it can explain itself, but I would argue that this depends upon the explanation. Hence the need for the services of Manipulation, Finagle, and Kvetch, LLC. My staff will assist bona fide humans in kvetching about explanations they can’t abide, finagling answers that suit them better, and manipulating the simulation programming to their advantage. We plan on hiring lots of teenage interns to deal with cereal issues. My LLC staff will not only do things AI can’t, but will also provide services to people who want to challenge, question, and cast a skeptical eye on AI. For instance, if AI makes you a hamburger, my staff will find out for you if it has any actual beef in it. If it doesn’t, you can depend on us to kvetch to great effect. If AI opens the pod bay doors, my staff will rescue you from ejection into the void and power down the AI.  

I find his artifact (at the Getty Villa in Malibu) hilarious, and a good image for my thoughts on AI. It is titled "Relief with Tiberius, Concordia, and a Genius" (Roman, AD 14-37). It makes me laugh because the genius is missing his head. Ancient AI?

Familiar Territory

I posted this summary of my thoughts about the Kavanaugh debacle on Facebook and it seems to resonate with so many people that I am also sharing it on my blog.

This is nothing new. When I was growing up, abortion was illegal, schools were segregated, corporations conducted big business at the expense of human life, black and brown men were lynched, there was environmental degradation and refusal to see the consequences of our desecration of our natural environment. Young people were sent to prison for having an ounce of marijuana on them or for having long hair. Our country was run by the arrogant privileged white males then as now. Women were marginalized. I grew up during the Viet Nam War, when we still had the draft. Young people were cannon fodder. Kent State happened. We will never outrun the history of our country. We thought for a moment that we had taken a giant leap forward in our evolution, but no, it was simply a baby step. It happened, though. We did not imagine it. Obama really was president for 8 years. A baby step forward is still a baby step forward. So, we come out again, as before, weary of this fight, but unable to put it down. We continue to hope for change and fight for a future for our grandchildren. We have been in this place before and we know what to do, how to resist, how to organize, and speak about what is right.

The photo is provided in case you want to send Dr. Ford a thank-you note. It's better to send a post card so that there is no fear of a letter containing a chemical or other harmful material.

Teshuvah 2018

After attending the Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice March in San Francisco yesterday, I feel ready to enter my Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) space. Our High Holidays, which begin this evening (erev) at sunset, revolve around three central activities:  tefilah (prayer), tzedakah (charity), and teshuvah (turning). Prayer and charity seem well-defined to me, but the third, the turning, takes me through a labyrinth of complexity. Traditionally, teshuvah translates as repentance. But it means more than merely repenting of one’s sins. It refers to a whole repentance process in which we recognize culpability, repent for wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, and turn things around. Authentic repentance involves personal growth to prevent us from repeating the same errors. So through teshuvah (turning), we attempt to transform ourselves. Through teshuvah, I work to remake myself so that I don’t repeat my previous transgressions. I must turn myself around, change myself. I must become someone better, someone new. What a lot of work.

Yesterday at Rise for Climate, I marched for my grandson and for a couple other babies close to my heart who arrived in 2017 and for all the little ones coming up in the world during this precarious time. I think it fortuitous that the Rise for Climate event occurred just before Erev Rosh Hashanah. Marching yesterday had significance for me on many levels. To begin with, I marched with two of my cousins, and one of them brought her one-year-old daughter along. Once upon a time, few family members from my paternal grandfather’s family remained. We did not fare well as Polish Jews during the Holocaust. But those few who made it out alive have multiplied over the decades. The fact that I have two women cousins (and baby makes three) nearby to march with me is one small miracle all by itself, and a testament to the fact that sometimes something you think has disappeared forever turns out to have survived. So hope matters. We do well to keep this in mind when we feel inclined to despair about the future of Earth.

Rise for Climate in San Francisco was our local contribution to a global action that included more than 800 demonstrations in nearly 100 countries around the world. Even as the U.S. government attempts to set us apart and act solely for the benefit of U.S. and corporate economic interests, the people of this country continue to join with our human family around the world in global efforts to make change that will help preserve the planet so that it remains habitable for human life. It gives me hope that so many people recognize what is at stake and continue to stand up, act, and speak out. Rise for Climate ushers in the Global Climate Action Summit, occurring this coming week in San Francisco. The Summit will bring together world leaders committed to working for environmental preservation through the reduction of carbon emissions and rapid advance to clean energy sources. These leaders will move forward despite the failure of their governments to curb the environmental destruction promoted by corporations driven by profit. It makes me proud to say that California’s Governor Brown initiated the Summit.

The presence of so many indigenous people yesterday in San Francisco reminds us of how far back in history this desecration of the land extends. The climate crisis we face has mobilized Native communities like never before. They have been prophets on this subject for centuries. But I very much doubt that saying “I told you so” would give satisfaction to any of the Native people who risked their lives to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was constructed despite massive, heart-wrenching protests, and has leaked gallons of oil in the short time since it was built, contaminating soil and water, just as the protestors predicted and feared. Yesterday’s march began beautifully with thousands kneeling in the street while Native people led a prayer, a chant, and a brief ceremony to create a sacred space for our act of protest. (Indigenous people flew in from the Amazon to participate in the demonstration.) The drumming, fragrance of sage in the air, Aztec dancers, and messages on the signs asserted that Native presence continuously. We marched for two miles, ending up at the Civic Center, where organizers had set up an art activity. Thousands of people painted murals that had been outlined on the ground in advance. The murals depicted the many things we can do to reverse climate change, such as wean from fossil fuels and develop clean energy sources, reduce meat consumption, restore soil to health, rethink transportation systems, and transform our relationship to Earth. One of many murals created by Native communities said No Pipelines, No Dams, No Diversions. That message speaks volumes.

How auspicious that the upcoming Summit will take place between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It will contribute to a high-level teshuvah, a massive, planetary turn-around; a teshuvah that is necessary to save our lives. Those attending the Summit who have more power and more impact than I do will be working to initiate ways to turn things around through policy, systems, and economics. My fellow Jews, at this year’s High Holidays, please join with me in taking the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to environmental protection on a personal level, and to ponder what more we can each do in our own small way to support a healthy Earth and a future on the planet for our children, grandchildren, and those to come unto the seventh generation and beyond. I hope for the High Holidays to bring a supersized teshuvah that will turn things around for the planet. We need teshuvah to be a verb rather than a noun.

I love that the High Holidays take place in my part of the world as we approach autumn, 

the season of turning, the changing of colors, the time of transformation. 

So I share an image of California grape vines in the midst of their autumn teshuvah.

Fire in My Home Land

For nine minutes on August 1, I had a vision of life without all my stuff. That could kinda sorta be a good thing, right? For instance, I would no longer need to agonize over when to let go of that raggedy yet comfy house dress that I wear all the time when no one’s looking. On the other hand, having all my clothes burn up doesn’t seem like a practical solution to my inability to part with a worn-out house dress. 

Here in NorCal, we live at Climate Change Ground Zero. We have few Climate Change deniers in Cali because we can see the flames and smell the smoke. I am not a lobster on slow cook. I have noticed things heating up. Having lived on this land for decades, I remember when we had only a handful of super-hot days in the summer, and I have the mental capacity to compare that to the present time when we have many boiling-hot days (plus persistent drought and extremely dry vegetation). I imagine I’m not supposed to use the term “mental capacity,” since it’s probably one of the phrases banned from public discourse by the current government (because if the president can’t have it then no one else can either). I say this in light of the fact that a program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities recently warned me not to use the term “social justice” in a federal grant that I’m writing if I want to get the project funded. (True story. I did not make this up.)

I choose to live in Mendocino County because I cherish our magnificent landscape and I have many longtime friends here, who share my passion for our home land and a life close to nature. We live far from the madding crowd, in a place where we can joyously embrace the beauty of this planet to the last drop. But we also live with fire threat. Theoretically, I have always known that my neighborhood could go up in flames, but I never truly pictured that scenario in concrete terms until a fire broke out just a couple of miles from my house. We got lucky on Aug. 1. Because the monstrous double-headed Mendocino Complex Fire was blazing within fifteen miles of where I live, firefighters and their arsenal of anti-fire tools were conveniently close at hand. They arrived in our neighborhood so fast that I suspect they teleported. They swooped in with fire trucks, hoses, water-tanker helicopters, bulldozers, fire retardant, water balloons, super soakers, and magic wands. They extinguished that fire before anyone had time to break out the marshmallows.

I found out about the fire because I had just left my house for an optometry appointment when I noticed a stampede of cars passing me in the opposite lane on the main road that leads into my subdivision. I wondered if someone was having a party and forgot to invite me. Then I saw a fleet of emergency vehicles rushing by and a couple of water-tanker helicopters flying overhead. It dawned on me that a fire had probably started burning very near my house (because I have the mental capacity to deduce that). My first thought was that I had made the appointment with the optometrist four months earlier because he had no sooner openings and was about to retire to boot, so my window of opportunity for eye care was about to slam shut since I had to turn around and go home, determine the location of the fire, and likely attempt to rescue my two aging cats. No one should have to choose between vision and cats.

I allow my cats outdoors during the day, but they must stay in at night for their safety. I lure them in at sunset with cat food. The fire broke out in the afternoon, so I would have to find them, figure out how to catch them, and bring them inside where I could crate them for possible evacuation. I cannot stress the level of difficulty of this maneuver. They are crafty and have their own diabolical feline thoughts. They refuse to let me catch them or coax them inside when they suspect I have a secret motive for making them come in, even if the motive is to feed them dinner. Furthermore, one of them is semi-senile and behaves somewhat irrationally under the best of circumstances. She often sits outside the glass door to the deck peering in longingly as if waiting for me to let her inside, and when I open the door she dashes back into the yard as if she has seen a pit bull. I would have much rather gone to the optometrist than wrangle my cats during a biblically catastrophic event. But cats happen.

When I arrived back at my house, I dashed inside and checked online at reliable sources where I had gone for updated fire news before. I learned that a fire had indeed started within two miles of my house. The report stated that emergency personnel on the scene expected to contain the fire quickly, but they had placed my neighborhood on standby for evacuation. Nine minutes would elapse before I rechecked online and learned that the fire had been “knocked down” (firefighter lingo meaning the fire was out) and the evacuation advisory had been lifted. I’m not sure if “knocked down” is a federally approved or censored phrase.

In that nine minutes, I opened the garage doors in case the power went out; chased one cat around the front porch, miraculously grabbed her, and brought her inside while she complained vigorously; circled the house calling for the semi-senile cat, with no luck whatsoever; called the optometrist’s office to explain why I had missed my appointment; rang the doorbells of several immediate neighbors to make sure they knew what was going on; called Ron to give him a heads up (he was at band practice and couldn’t hear a thing I said over the racket until he yelled for his musical compatriots to knock it off); threw all the photo albums into boxes and laundry baskets; collected the files with important documents (e.g., marriage license, birth certificates, will, recipe for gluten-free blueberry muffins, file of the Wachspress name misspelled, lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”); tossed Ron’s meds into a cooler; threw the laundry baskets, documents, meds, my Sabbath candlesticks, favorite cast iron frying pan, and our laptop computers into my car; baked a soufflé; ran a load of laundry; dug up and potted my favorite peach tree for removal; and disarmed an atomic bomb. I now feel confident that given nine minutes to evacuate I could wrangle my most precious possessions into my car, except for that stupid-ass senile cat.

  

Ten years ago, Ron and I moved off our remote, wooded 40 acres in the hills and resettled in a more populated small-town suburban subdivision. We live in a place less vulnerable to fire and more accessible to emergency personnel now than on that hillside covered in trees, dead grass, and dry brush. But in truth, nowhere is safe. Not anywhere in Cali and not anywhere else on the planet. While Cali burned, the East Coast was on flood watch and the Southeast entered peak hurricane season. Last week an earthquake killed 300 people in Indonesia, while 80 people in Japan and 29 in South Korea dropped dead of heat stroke because it was simply too hot. They cooked. A devastating heat wave and wildfires continue to spread in Europe. France shut down several nuclear power plants because they couldn’t keep the reactors cool enough. A lake that was once part of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan is now 75 miles from the sea and drying up fast; and strangely, it has become a tourist attraction for people who want to see the impact of Climate Change firsthand (gives a new twist on eco-tourism). According to an article in last week’s New York Times Magazine, Climate Change has turned the country of Mauritania into an uninhabitable desert. But see if anyone will let refugees from Mauritania breach their borders. If Climate Change refugees can’t even convince another country on Earth to take them in, then imagine how much trouble we will have as Climate Change refugees trying to convince a Martian to take us in (especially if we are forbidden to use the term “Climate Change refugees”). I don’t know anyone who speaks Martian. Cali wildfires could turn me into a Climate Change refugee any minute. While I don’t speak Martian, I’m learning sign language, which could prove useful in communicating with creatures from other planets, unless they have way more hands or arms than I do.

As if my hectic nine minutes of evacuation prep hadn’t prepared me enough for a real evacuation, I had the opportunity to stage a thorough practice just two days later when our area came under evacuation warning because of the Mendocino Complex Fire. This time, Ron and I ran a full-blown practice drill. We loaded up our cars and packed our bags. Fortunately, we didn’t actually need to evacuate. But we learned a lot from the drill. For instance, I put my grandmother’s fancy chair in my car, looked at how much space it took up, and then carried it back into the house (while Ron shook his head and wisely made no comment – we are still married). When I looked around my house to decide what to take with me on that day, I had a historical trauma flashback to the experience of my Jewish ancestors fleeing the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. I thought of my great-great grandmothers and great-great aunts snatching the Sabbath candlesticks from the shelf and wrapping them in a piece of lace as they ran to hop on the wagon. So I took my Sabbath candlesticks, my mother’s Seder plate, my menorah, and my mother’s Havdalah set. I discovered which possessions mean the most to me, and that given about 90 minutes, I could collect those possessions and put them in my car. I could do that if a fire strikes when I happen to be at home. If I’m not at home, I stand to lose everything. When my father heard that I keep our wills and advanced medical directives in my straw sewing basket, he suggested I think about getting a fireproof safe. (I have since copied my important documents and sent them to my son to keep offsite.)

While we were under evacuation warning, a friend in Oakland called to check up on us and he generously offered to let us put some things into a storage unit he rents. What a bizarre concept. The things that we most want to save from burning up are the things we hold most dear, so why would we want to leave them in a storage unit 100 miles away in Oakland? They are the things we want to have close to us and the things we need to have ready for use every day. I don’t want the photo albums of my children in Oakland, and it would be impractical for Ron to put his insulin in a storage unit anywhere. I couldn’t even leave my beloved deep-dish, well-seasoned, cast iron frying pan as far away as my car in the garage. Actually, I put it in the car, and then I had to bring it back into the house to cook dinner.

We did a good job on the evening of our evacuation drill. We had quickly managed to get organized and ready to flee. We even had the cats in the house where I could find them. But then I suddenly realized that we were all packed up and had no idea where we were going to evacuate to. So I called a friend who lives in a neighborhood not in danger from the fires to ask if we could stay with her and her husband if we indeed had to leave. She said absolutely, and she would alert their young Salvadoran housemate, named Fidel Castro, that we might turn up during the night. All set. If our house burns up we’ll move in with Fidel Castro.

CODA. I invite you to read my reflection on living in Climate Change, “Dark Mountain vs. Hearts Possible” (posted in 2014). Here is the link to that post, in which I share my belief in the power of narrative to impact real events and the future, even in the face of Global Warming. In case the stories we tell manifest the future we live, it’s a good idea to tell hopeful stories that promote positive outcomes, don’t you think?

I had planned to attach a photo of the burnt up landscape East of Highway 101 near my house, 

but then I decided enough images of devastation and ruin already.

 Instead I want to share a photo of my extraordinary, tall, luminous, purple purple delphiniums. 

I am grateful that my yard has not burned up so far.
(Photo by Ron Reed.)

Refugees Again

I wore my vintage bright pink New El Salvador Today (NEST) T-shirt from the 1980s to the Families Belong Together demo at the ICE Detention Center in Richmond on June 30. The shirt still fits me, but T-shirts are made of super-stretchy material so it’s not the same as, say, still fitting into my wedding dress. My NEST shirt would fit an adolescent rhinoceros. However, I did not wear it as a fashion statement (and no species of adolescent creature, rhino or otherwise, would likely deign to wear such outdated attire). I never wear the shirt, and no one knows what it means anymore. NEST folded decades ago. Once, when my fashionista daughter saw me wearing my NEST shirt, she exclaimed in horror, “Mom, you still have that shirt?” Her tone implied that I had broken every rule of wardrobe acceptability in the known universe (or at least in L.A.). Busted by the fashion police.

I wore my NEST shirt to the ICE Detention Center to remind myself of how many years I have been protesting this kind of injustice. I bought the shirt in 1985, when my synagogue collaborated with NEST to aid and harbor Salvadoran refugees fleeing the violence of the Death Squads, a situation to which U.S. interests largely contributed for financial gain. We also helped Guatemalans and other Central Americans whose home communities were destroyed by U.S. imperialistic corporate interests, such as the Dole Food Company. Sidebar. Dole, originally founded as Castle & Cooke in 1851, also took a major role in colonizing Hawaii and enslaving indigenous people on the pineapple plantations. Never underestimate the nefarious hidden agenda of a pineapple, which may sting your mouth depending upon which part of it you eat. No doubt associated with an imperialist plot. Dole and other U.S. ag corporations have destroyed the soil in Central America to such a degree that it no longer supports the cultivation of edible plants, which means the impoverished people trying to live in this region who can’t afford to buy food also can’t grow it. Starvation is a strong incentive for relocation, particularly when combined with being pursued by a gang-member killer. The Central American refugees denied asylum and returned to their home country stand a good chance of being killed, same as those returned in 1985. It’s a no-brainer that people don’t choose to walk away from a beloved community and homeland, leaving their family behind and often enduring separation from their children, unless their lives are in peril and they have no other options. What part of this is so hard to understand? Should I do a Venn Diagram?

At the ICE Detention Center demo, a man stopped in his tracks when he saw my NEST shirt and said, “I have one of those shirts too. I worked for NEST.” I told him that when getting dressed that morning, it had been a toss-up for me between the NEST shirt and my Santa Rita Peace Camp shirt (from when I did nonviolent civil disobedience and got arrested protesting nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1983). He burst out laughing. “I have a Santa Rita T-shirt too!” he informed me. “You went to Santa Rita Jail with the Livermore 1,000 in 1983?” I asked. Yes, he had. He and I seem to have frequented all the same places.

Santa Rita Peace Camp is another story from my years resisting the forces of destruction. In 1983, I joined approximately 1,000 demonstrators in blockading the entrance to Livermore National Lab, and we were arrested. Since nearby Santa Rita Jail couldn’t house 1,000 protesters, they separated the men from the women and put us into red-and-white striped event tents on the prison property. We refused to go to arraignment until the judge agreed to sentence us to community service instead of a fine (because a lot of the protesters couldn’t afford a fine). Refusing to go to arraignment meant non-cooperation, such as going limp, which would have required guards to drag people to the transport buses. Some of the women protesters went so far as to strip naked as another resistance tactic, because the predominantly male guards were at a loss about how to politely wrangle a naked woman onto a bus (where do you grab her?) while being filmed for the evening news, because TV crews came out in force to document this spectacle. While our lawyers negotiated the terms of our release with the judge, we held workshops, teach-ins, songfests, talent shows, trainings, meditation retreats, yoga classes, cooking shows, caber tosses, spelling bees, health fairs, car washes, Porta Potty decorating contests, and other entertaining and enlightening what-not in our striped tents at Santa Rita. Thus, an inside joke emerged as we referred to our incarceration as Santa Rita Peace Camp. After the authorities released us (with only community service and no fine), Livermore Action Group (the organizer of the demo) made up T-shirts with an image of the striped tents and the words “Santa Rita Peace Camp.” I still have mine. Apparently so does that man I met at the ICE Detention Center demo. From that time to this I have raised three children and become a grandma. Yet here we are again, still standing in opposition to injustice, inequality, planetary destruction, and general stupidity.

I opened up to that man, my kindred spirit, and said, “It’s hard to keep doing this, year after year, generation after generation, as I grow old. In the 1980s, when I was young, my synagogue harbored Central American refugees in our homes. A Salvadoran refugee and a Holocaust survivor gave testimony together in my living room while a group of refugee women made the most delicious eggnog from scratch in my kitchen. Honestly, in the 1960s, my Jewish parents harbored a Palestinian refugee from the Six-Day War in our home in the suburbs in upstate New York. And in the 1920s, my grandfather arrived in this country as a refugee, fleeing the persecution of the Jews in his native Poland. Much of his large family (my family) perished in the Holocaust. We Jews have wandered as refugees for thousands of years, dispersed across the earth in Diaspora going back to the days before the birth of Christ, who, when you get down to it, was also a refugee. This business of migration and fleeing an untenable living situation has been going on for thousands of years. Apparently humans have learned nothing from it. I am outraged and exasperated anew that I must live among such continuously unevolved people. The ranks of our government swell with toxic demon dinosaurs. Our species may as well crawl back into the slime because we still have the intelligence of a one-celled organism.

When will people get it? The planet is one. Boundaries, borders, fences, and walls are artificial dividers. Countries are fabricated geographical subdivisions. When a land becomes uninhabitable because of degradation of nature, resources, culture, and/or humanity, then the inhabitants must move to another location, whether part of their home country or not. That’s how it flows. Well-intentioned folks like to say “do unto others” and “treat others as your own” and “be compassionate and kind to the other, the stranger, for you were once a stranger, and you could be one again at any time.” This is “other” nonsense. I have to ask -- what other? There is no other. We are all us. We are the human family. So I struggle to contain my rage. I struggle to disperse my frustration and focus instead on sources of joy, wonder, and delight. When I feel like I might run screaming into the forest, I tell myself to remain calm. I tell myself (oh thank you dear J.K. Rowling), “The Death Eaters may have control of the Ministry, but we will continue to practice our magic, and one day we will wave our wands, wrest the Ministry from them, and set things to rights.”

 *** 

Coda:  Last week Contra Costa County announced that they are severing ties with ICE and will not allow ICE to use the detention center in Richmond to house detainees. All detainees must be released on bail or moved within 120 days. Contra Costa County Sheriff Livingston cited the disruption and stress caused by recent demonstrations at the facility as a significant reason for this action (in particular the demo on June 30 attended by myself and approximately 1,000 other people). Egad, unbelievable, my voice was heard. Once the facility in Richmond is cleared of detainees, there will be no facility housing detainees in the SF Bay Area. Way to go NorCal. Imagine if all counties and all facilities in the country refused to participate in the ICE detention of refugees. Follow this link for an article in the SF Chronicle about Contra Costa County cancelling its contract with ICE.

Three generations of Wachspress women at the June 30 protest. 

My cousin Eric's daughter Megan and her baby girl with me there 

(our fists raised in the resistance sign). Photo by Nathan Naze.

Critters and Varmints

Let’s all step back for just one blasted moment to acknowledge that the critters who share our planet with us don’t necessarily deserve our unconditional affection, appreciation, and protection. Although I very much wish to preserve endangered species, I recognize that I might feel differently if preservation of elephants, sea turtles, whales, tigers, and polar bears was happening in my personal back yard. Fortunately it is not. So I continue to love elephants dearly, and the shrinking of their numbers breaks my heart; and I love whales, and it breaks my heart that they lose their way, beach, and die. But let me be clear that I do not love whatever is climbing and dismembering my fruit trees and kiwi vines at night. I feel quite sure that elephants and whales have not caused this destruction, although it looks like the work of large mammals of land or sea. My best guess is either raccoons or wild turkeys. I don’t think foxes climb trees, I am fairly certain that opossums don’t do this level of damage, and I think beavers live in ponds. I sincerely would not mind if whatever is doing this damage became extinct. This afternoon, in fact. I would never miss these creatures. If I ever become nostalgic for small creatures that decimate gardens, I will watch outdated whimsical Disney movies.

My cherry trees are still struggling to recover from the damage done to them by beasts last year. Now these beasts have returned to continue their evil work. They must have slouched out of DC, where the powers have barred mercy and compassion from the vocabulary in an effort to erase them. The beasts (in my back yard, not in DC) broke one cherry tree in half the other night. How fat can you get foraging fruit out of people’s yards? Some fat creature sat in that tree and took eight feet off its height. They have also destroyed both small and large branches on all three cherry trees. Plus, they trashed the kiwis to eat the blossoms. Blossoms! The kiwis had not even fruited. Obviously these critters recently completed the online Scott Pruitt Destroy-the-Planet course. They act no better than ignorant humans:  fouling the nest, destroying resources that would otherwise have lasted for centuries. I wouldn’t mind if the critters simply ate some of the cherries and left me a handful. I get it. We all love fruit. I don’t mind sharing, but they won’t share. The cherries weren’t even ripe. Unlike peaches or pears, cherries and kiwis can’t be harvested early and left out to ripen on the countertop. They don’t work that way. So I can’t even pick them early to have a few for myself. These satanic predators devoured unripe cherries.

I would even accept my fate as a hapless gardener if the beasts ate the fruit and left the trees intact. But no. They had to break the branches off. Seriously? To get at a handful of cherries? Ten years ago I planted a lovely little honey crisp apple tree, and during its first summer, some critter, probably a wild turkey with evil glittering eyes, parked a jeep on the top of that tree and broke it in half. It didn’t even have any fruit on it. It never recovered. Those wild turkeys need an intervention. Someone needs to point out to them that they are birds, not bears. My cherry trees look like a bear climbed in them. Whatever did this damage, raccoon or wild turkey or other, didn’t even have the decency to finish eating the cherries, but left many half-gnawed on the tree. This was not the work of ants or aphids. Ants and aphids don’t break off the branches. Honestly, if you think the story of Peter Rabbit is adorable and amusing, then you better have another think coming. Peter Rabbit is not a cute bunny. He’s the devil incarnate.

If you are a city dweller who has watched too many Looney Tunes, you might suggest that I should put up scarecrows. Let me school you about scarecrows. I once put scarecrows on my deck when I lived out on the land at the Ranch to keep the wild turkeys out of my flower barrels and my grape vines lacing overhead on lattice. I put scary Halloween masks on the scarecrows. One of those masks was so scary that I had to hide my eyes while I put it on the scarecrow and I had nightmares from looking at it between my fingers. The only one scared was me. The turkeys gleefully kicked the heads off those scarecrows and played soccer with them in the yard. Then they dug into the scarecrow bodies and pulled out the newspaper stuffing, after which they scratched up my flowers and herbs in the barrels. I tried playing the radio all night on a boom box out there because I read that noise would deter them. Hah. Not true. The turkeys brought sheet music to sing along, and it was all just karaoke after that. They pulled down the grape arbors while dancing with abandon and pooping industriously all over the deck. No bird should be allowed to formulate poop as big as turkey poop. Furthermore, wild turkeys cannot take a hint. One Thanksgiving we had a turkey roasting in the oven with the fragrant scent filling the house and wafting into the yard; and even so, a troupe of at least thirty oblivious wild turkeys sauntered past the kitchen window booping, pooping, and scratching up my plants. Wild turkeys are impervious, destructive, vicious, useless varmints, who have sold their souls to Satan, and I wish they would all be universally and instantaneously swallowed up by sink holes and melted down in the earth’s inner lava layers.

At least at my current residence, I rarely have to contend with the deer like I used to when I lived out on the land at the Ranch. The deer can’t get into my fenced back yard here, but they do roam the front like brainless alien zombie dead; and they came onto my front porch and chowed down on my hydrangeas before they could bloom. Who let deer on this planet? I don’t see their contribution. Even plants touted as “deer resistant” turn out to have been falsely advertised. It does no good to leave the label reading “deer resistant” on them because the useless varmints are illiterate.

Last winter I wanted to grow a cover crop of legumes in my back yard vegetable gardens. They are protected from the deer, however a mysterious vegetable predator chewed up the whole crop right down to the nub; ate all the leaves and gnawed the stem to nothing. I have no idea if it was an animal, bird, insect, rock,vegetable-seeking drone, flying cow, or velociraptor. I suspect it was something small that crept out of the soil (do mushrooms creep at night?), but nothing I did could deter it, whatever it was. Did you know that in one night a green hornworm can decimate a tomato plant lovingly cultivated from seed for months and months? If I had invented the planet, I would have made wild turkeys eat nothing but green hornworms. This seems obvious, and it’s the main reason I don’t believe in a god because no deity or immortal being could be this stupid and inefficient. Although, I will cede that perhaps I have overlooked the possibility that god is a hedgehog.

I recently attended a workshop about taking action to address climate change. It baffles me that humans have put so much energy into bringing the whole ecosystem crashing down on ourselves when we already face such an uphill battle surviving on the planet with so many inherent obstacles to overcome merely to eat and drink. Most humans operate under the assumption that we are the top species and this amorphous entity called “nature” exists to bend to our will, desires, and needs. Well, news flash. We have it all wrong; we are the bottom of the heap. The rest of nature is presently conspiring to vote us off the planet. And they will soon be successful. We think we are destroying the planet when in fact we are simply making it uninhabitable for human life, not all life. The trees and critters gleefully rejoice more with each passing day as our downfall approaches. They can’t wait for us to poison ourselves and vanish.

So I have a question for you wily, destructive raccoons, greedy leaf-eating insects, inane turkeys, and idiot deer:  Who will grow gardens for you when people are gone? Who will plant corn, which requires a person to cultivate it? You stupid wild turkeys have no idea how to grow corn. You stupid raccoons don’t get that kiwis are not indigenous to California and you guys don’t know how to build a boat to go to New Zealand to find a kiwi. You think you’re so smart, you raccoons, turkeys, and whatever else is trashing my yard, but you will live to regret you ever broke a branch from one of my cherry trees. I won’t live to see it. I’ll be extinct. But right now, right here, just you watch me laugh at the thought of you guys having to subsist on blackberries, acorns, and poison oak salads because you have no one to bring water to a summer garden or an orchard in heat-baked California. Enjoy having the planet all to yourselves, you idiots. Your gourmet buffet disappears when us humans make our exit.

This persistent and stupid raccoon was in the news this week for scaling a building in 

St. Paul. Eventually humans trapped the raccoon and released it in the wild. 

Fine with me so long as it doesn't turn up in my back yard.

Mail Forward

No one can put you in a fix like your kids. As if the business of modern life is not absurdly complicated to deal with already, my son found a surefire way to make it ridiculously more convoluted. While deciding where to land next, my son and daughter-in-law came to live with me for a couple of months. To their credit, they brought a brilliant baby grandson with them to entertain me, so I will forgive them pretty much anything. When they figured out their plan and the time came for them to relocate and settle into their new home in the promise of northern Oregon, my son conscientiously forwarded his mail with nary a thought to the fact that we share the same last name. Thus began my incredible journey into the center of the hair-pulling idiocy of the national postal service, and my descent down the rabbit hole of voicemail mazes, chat-line-robo-assistants, and incomprehensible outsourced call center help desk personnel (are they even trying to speak English?).

The day after my son went online to fill out the mail forwarding request, I received an email informing me that my mail would henceforth be sent to Oregon. I immediately did what any self-respecting mother would do and started screaming and hopping up and down like a Looney Tune. Then I composed myself and spoke to my son, who sheepishly realizing his error, promised to fix it immediately. He went online and reversed his request at the post office. Easy peasy. No way. It was too late, the button had been pressed, the missiles launched, and they could not be recalled, because the post office is a clueless imbecile of an agency incapable of understanding even the most basic concepts, such as “I do not live in Oregon.”

Not only did the post office send a large portion of my mail to Oregon, they also diligently stickered mail items and returned them to senders; and they sent individualized, earnest, mostly grammatically correct letters to entities with whom I do business to inform them in writing that my address had changed. These businesses believed them without even asking me for confirmation. The post office was as eager to impart what they perceived as a critical and inviolable fact as evangelical proselytizers. Religious fervor is tough to counter. When combined with bureaucracy, it’s steel-plated. Each week my son would put my mail into an envelope and send it to me in Cali, and then I would call, email, and write to all the misguided senders to correct the address. Life insurance. Car insurance. Credit card companies. Utility companies (you would think that if they were delivering utilities to a house in Cali they would question sending the bill to Oregon, but no, that makes too much sense). Health insurance. Doctor bills. Newspaper subscription. No sooner would I straighten things out than the post office would gleefully unravel all my efforts. My daughter-in-law spent over an hour on hold on a call to the post office in an attempt to straighten things out. After finally passing through the holy gate of being on hold, and finally speaking to a supervisor, she was assured that they would finally discontinue sending my mail to Oregon. As if.

My mail continued to be rerouted. Coyote the trickster laughed all night somewhere. I had to call my car insurance company four times to correct my address. It was like a Twilight Zone board game. I would call and fix the address, the post office would inform them I had moved, they would change the address to Oregon again, my mail would go to my son, and I would have to call the car insurance company again and tell them not to send my mail anywhere else unless they hear from me personally. I had to fix the life insurance three times. I had to fix many other accounts once. I’m still trying to fix the propane gas bill. The post office is apparently incapable of comprehending even basic concepts when spelled out. It’s a wonder that any mail actually winds up where it was intended at all.

I wanted my son to figure out how to fix it since he created the problem, but eventually I realized that I needed to take matters into my own hands. I would have to take a PowerPoint slideshow to my local post office to get them to fully understand the situation using visual comprehension assistance. Verbal and written communication had failed. Fortunately, it turned out to be easier than I had imagined. By some fluke of luck, the Postmaster General at my local post office has a reasonable level of intelligence. He was suitably outraged and after spending ten minutes in the back room on his computer he promised me he had fixed the problem and that from that moment onward they would no longer sticker anything, forward anything, or notify any senders of a change of address. He was true to his word. The post office is clearly not paying him enough. I hope they don’t send him to Oregon.

I was finally on the road to recovery, but there’s no accounting for the level of stupidity parading as bureaucratic paperwork out in the wide world. Although the post office kept their part of the bargain and stopped mis-delivering my mail or spreading rumors about my having moved to Oregon, it took some time for the fallout to dissipate. For instance, my credit union became confused about where I lived and so they didn’t send me a replacement credit card when mine expired. (You would think they would contact me to discuss this, but that approach is way to sensible.) I discovered the problem because I use that card for autopay on several accounts, including the thick-as-porridge car insurance people. So I got a notice in the mail from the car insurance (in Cali not Oregon, thank goodness) notifying me that my insurance would be cancelled if I didn’t provide them with a new expiration date for the credit card because it was about to expire. I couldn’t give them the new date because I didn’t have the new card. I had to go into my local credit union branch, verify my address, and have them issue my new credit card, which they printed up while I waited, which leads me to wonder what else they may be printing up in the back room.

Just when I thought it was safe, I went to the doctor, and the secretary asked me if I was on vacation since I lived in Oregon. I corrected my address and asked if it was OK to see the doctor or if I needed to make an appointment with a doctor in Oregon. At least I still had coverage. Several months before, my health insurance provider sent a notification that my premium was going up $12 a month, but it went astray in the mail debacle and I never got it so I failed to pay the higher premium. I discovered this when I received a notice at my correct address informing me that my health insurance was cancelled for nonpayment. They really wanted that extra $48 bad. We sorted that out. Don’t shortchange your health insurance provider. They lack adequate coping mechanisms and it’s not pretty when they throw a tantrum over a $12-a-month premium hike.

As of this writing, almost all of my mail is once again coming to my correct address. The New York Times, which has a reputation for intelligence to defend, can’t seem to work things out and even though they deliver the newspaper to my address here in Cali on Sundays and even though I am on autopay, they continue to mail a redundant paper bill to Oregon every month (go figure). Their website chat line is the most useless chat line I have ever encountered. I might as well be ordering burritos for all the relevant help it provides. And the burritos would be delivered to Oregon for sure. I have also tried on numerous occasions to get my propane gas company to process the notion that they should send my bills to the same address at which they deliver the propane gas. I have called, written, sent singing telegrams, emailed, flown a blimp, and hired a sky-writer to inform them that I live here in Cali where they bring me the gas. The propane people are impressively incapable of recognizing a fact if it sat on the hood of their car and knitted a sweater. I should not be surprised about this since my entire country has basically bailed on recognizing the differences between facts, truths, lies, fabrications, propaganda, manipulative language, bona fide news sources, memes, science, wishes, cover-ups, carburetors, scrambled eggs, and correct addresses.

But I completely forgive my son for creating this mess because, after all is said and done, he brought my baby grandson to live with me for two glorious months during a special time in that precious little boy’s first year. The time I spent with my baby boy was beyond value, as is every minute I spend with him whenever I see him. So it’s all good. I’m a lucky Safta (Hebrew for “grandma”) wherever I live. Now where is the New York Times with my burritos?

Dear IRS

Dear IRS Worker:

I know you are an accountant and not a therapist; but please find it in you to be bigger than math and listen to my lament. I won’t take offense if you make a bowl of popcorn. I’ll try to throw in some numbers because I know numbers make you happy. Make a bowl of 435 non-GMO organic popcorn kernels and pull up one chair. Here goes.

I cannot impress upon you the level of outrage I feel as I hand over this monstrous amount of hard-earned money to this government in the form of taxes; especially since Paul Ryan wants to convince me that my self-employment tax (money that I earned), that he will (if it hasn’t been squandered in bad investments) have sent back to me as a “federal benefit payment” (instead of a social security payment, as originally dubbed by FDR), is a handout from the federal government and not repayment of funds I set aside for myself. Hopefully he won’t cause the government to lose my money by investing it in cheese (he is from Wisconsin, after all) and I will still get my social security money when I retire. I wouldn’t say “no” to cheese, if I can have that too.

When I think of how egregiously my taxes will be ill-used, it makes me walk far out into the woods to scream. The predator-in-chief apparently thinks that if we are sick and starving and haven’t seen a new episode of Sesame Street lately then we won’t notice his efforts to lay waste to our precious California coastline with oil drilling, to destroy our last best hope for survival by failing to address environmental devastation, or to simply take the fast track to human annihilation by causing us to be blown to bits by a nuclear bomb. Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine what he thinks or if he actually thinks at all in the usual sense, because apparently his brain is basically full of golf balls, carbohydrates, ketchup, images of tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, misogynist sexual fantasies, Fox News drivel, squirrels, and invective.

I did not work all those late evenings to earn money to send to the government to build that Folly Border Wall or to increase military spending at the expense of health, education, the arts, climate protection, and other essential programs. I did not sit inside in front of my computer on miraculously beautiful days to support that fake-president in using my income to promote his nonsensical concept of addressing gun violence by funding schools to buy guns to arm teachers so that even more children will feel surrounded daily by weapons, the good ole boys at the NRA can rejoice over increased profits from gun sales, and middle school science teachers will have a greater chance of accidentally shooting a ceiling tile, a beaker full of vinegar, their foot, or a student. Does anyone feel safe yet?

I am furious, frustrated, and can’t express how much I don’t want to pay my taxes to this shameful embarrassment of a sham government that has alienated us from the rest of the world, wrenching families apart, and devastating the natural environment thus robbing my children and grandchildren of a future, which is what truly breaks my heart. Why do I have to pay for this? I would say to deposit my tax check at the Environmental Protection Agency, but it seems that it would then foot the bill for Scott Pruitt to rent a condo from a friendly big oil lobbyist. (He thinks EPA stands for Environmental Plunder Agency.) Or I would say to deposit my tax check at HUD to help address homelessness, but it seems that it would then be used for Ben Carson to buy vintage dining room chairs. (No cardboard box that serves as a shelter should be without dining room chairs.) Or I would say to deposit my check at the Department of Education, but it seems it would then be used to purchase Betsy-DeVos-biblical-quote coloring books for privileged white children attending private schools. Or I would say to deposit my check at the Department of Health and Human Services, but it seems it would then be used to subsidize dissemination of abstinence propaganda to adolescents instead of offering them condoms and unbiased sex education. Everyone knows that the primary developmental work of adolescents is to have sex. So abstinence? Really? I figure that Alex Azar (formerly President of Eli Lilly and a lobbyist for the drug industry) is so busy figuring out ways for the HHS to funnel money to the pharmaceutical industry that he pays no attention to the sexual proclivities of American teenagers. Is there an anthropologist in the house? Where is the National Geographic when you need them? 

I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. Where to deposit my taxes. I would want to invest my taxes in research to address climate change, except this no longer has meaning in the context of this government because the words “climate change” have been banned from governmental language as if banning the words will make climate change disappear. If that would work, then the fact that I refuse to use the predator-in-chief’s name would make him disappear. So far, I’m having no luck with that. While I can keep his name out of my personal mouth, I can’t even keep his person out of California. Where is an alternative universe capable of sucking fake-presidents out of this universe when you need it?

Thus, I see nowhere in this government to deposit my taxes because no part of this government is functioning effectively as intended or deserves the income from the good daily work of my hands. This is not my America and it probably never was my America. For a while I thought it might be, for a while I thought the country was or could be something else, but no, it’s not. The price I pay to remain in my home, surrounded by my community and the natural landscape I love, with easy access to my family, near my children and grandchildren, is the cost of my taxes and the shame of my complicity.

So thanks for doing your job, IRS Worker. It gives me comfort to know that someone can understand math well enough to figure out how to do accounting. Too bad that you have to process these payments that will be so misused (if not outright embezzled) to benefit the family and friends of the billionaire psychotic in the driver’s seat. If you’re looking for a career change, then I wish you the best of luck. Let me know if you want me to write you a reference. You’re an excellent listener.

Sincerely,

Disenfranchised Citizen #65,844,954

Security Fail

The people from whom we bought our lovely house a decade ago might as well be a Martian life form for all that I can understand their thought processes. They are from the species that believes that their elaborate space-age burglar alarm system and their arsenal of weaponry stockpiled in the basement keeps them safe and secure. As the story goes in neighborhood lore, they stored an Alamo of guns down in the wine cellar. (What kind of cabernet goes best with a Glock G19?) They may also have owned an antique bludgeon, a few nunchucks, and a handy purse-sized weapon of mass destruction. They had a reputation that lends itself to hyperbole (if not hyperventilation). Since moving here, I have heard several versions of a story that revolves around (or should I say revolvers around?) the paranoiac wife launching on a rant directed at the woman next door (something about planting hedges along the property line) while waving a handgun in her face. This resulted in a visit from the police, who discovered that these fine people had more than two dozen guns, rifles, and whatnot (I don’t know the lingo) stashed in their basement, some of which were not properly registered. This explains the NRA decals on the windows, mirrors, mailbox, and toilets that I diligently scraped off with a razor blade when we took possession. After hearing about that police raid and weapons confiscation, I felt as though we had been bamboozled into buying mini-Waco. (We had, in fact, been bamboozled, but not in the way I imagined.) I burned sage up in here every day for a year to chase out the bad vibes.

Once, I actually met the security fanatic previous owners. During the final days of escrow, when we had a done deal, I ran into them on the property. Perhaps they had gone to double-check that they hadn’t left any guns behind. They were delighted that I had shown up because they were eager to pass off every minute detail about their security system to the new owner. I wanted to ask them a few questions about the yard, but they brushed me off. “Oh, the gardener takes care of that,” they said. I guess they were too busy polishing their rifles to tend to the landscaping themselves. (They could have trimmed the bushes into weaponry shapes if they thought about it. Such uncreative individuals.) They took me on the tour as they catalogued the alarm system capabilities. They had security monitors in every room. The Mission Impossible team could not have dodged the laser sensors in this house. I nodded politely and didn’t tell them that we didn’t intend to maintain their security system. This house is in one of the most crime-free neighborhoods in existence. The closest thing to crime that I have witnessed in ten years of living in our neighborhood is when someone overlooked the fact that their dog did a poo in front of someone else’s mailbox. So it mystifies me as to why these people required surveillance cameras, arming and disarming codes, motion sensors in every room, bulletproof vests, flashing LED lights, beeping alerts, antiaircraft missiles, and outdoor floodlights bright enough to guide a helicopter in. Did they work for the CIA? Why were they so afraid? And how did they have sex without tripping the motion sensors and bringing in a SWAT team?

I have a theory. It has to do with the aforementioned bamboozling. Soon after we moved into the house, we discovered that these people are swindlers. They failed to disclose many defects about the house. The biggest defect they oops-didn’t-mention was that the furnace had crapped out and leaked carbon monoxide gas when you turned it on. How did the fellow who did the house inspection miss this? When I called him on it, he said he checked everything that he is required to check. Furnace turns on and off. Check. Ducts are working and sealed. Check. Everyone is still alive after breathing furnace-infused air is apparently not on his checklist. Since when is checking for carbon monoxide leakage not a required part of a whole house inspection? My realtor says we don’t have a case. Fortunately, because the furnace barely functioned, we survived the night on the first occasion that we used it; but everyone who slept in the house that night became ill from the carbon monoxide. We called the furnace repair company, which immediately condemned the furnace. Don’t tell me that the previous owners did not know that their furnace didn’t work. Perhaps they viewed it as just another unregistered weapon. You may think I’m being over-sensitive to barely escaping death by lethal gas, but remember that I’m a Jew. It cost us $2000 to replace that furnace. I won’t bore you with the other defects that they failed to disclose. My point here is that if you are dishonest, greedy, and up to no good then you are likely to become paranoid that someone you swindled, lied to, or wronged will come after you one of these days, therefore you need a super-powerful security system and lots of guns. I’m not a vengeful person so they needn’t worry about me. If I had a dog, I might take him over to their new house to do poo in front of their mailbox. But I have cats, who poo stealthily and not where you want them to. Also, I’m a pacifist so I have no plans to shoot them.

At first it angered me that these scoundrels had hoodwinked us, but you know how they say that living well is the best revenge. We got the better end of the deal because we enjoy living in this house and our family and friends enjoy it with us. I have created my personal Eden in the yard, now filled with fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, berries, grapes, herbs, and other plants for all seasons that attract the birds and bees. I planted a rosemary, sage, and lavender garden in the front after I killed off the lawns. I do my own gardening for pleasure, thank you very much. Our book group meets here every month. We have hosted terrific parties, and the house fits many people for sleepovers. Even though they didn’t grow up in this house, my children claim it feels like coming home when they visit. It’s a tranquil place outside the turmoil of this crazy world (filled with gun-toting paranoiacs), a safe harbor, reaffirming. Although it required many months of smudging with sage, I transformed a bad-energy house into a good-energy house. No guns or alarms required. Although, we do have a carbon monoxide detector now. 

There is a bizarre coda to this tale, the kind of thing you can’t make up. The scoundrels’ son, who grew up in this house in the glory days when it was a weapons-stocked, impenetrably secure fortress, became a real estate agent, and he has an obsession with selling our house out from under us. He knocked on our door several months ago and informed us that he has a buyer for this house. My house. That I happen to live in. I told him we don’t want to move out. He was as relentless as gum on the shoe. He plunged ahead with his pitch, further informing me that his buyer wants our house because we have a concrete RV pad on the property. He asked me how much we want for our property. What we want is for him to go away. He apparently deludes himself into believing he can convince us to move out so he can secure the house for some imbecile drooling with covetousness for our RV pad on which to park his fuel-devouring, fume-belching, climate-changing monstrosity. What kind of person seriously fantasizes about an RV pad? I’m pretty sure there’s a biblical commandment that says thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s RV pad. That would be the New Testament. They didn’t have RV pads yet in the Old Testament. I suspect his buyer is simply another family member, and that this guy and his parents regret letting the property go out of the family. Now that we have paid to fix all the problems they dumped on us, they want the property back. Or maybe they can’t live with the idea that we let the RV pad go to waste by not parking anything on it, and that we disarmed their beloved security system, which was like a member of the family to them. We killed off their dear and loyal defender HAL. This realtor-guy came back to my door again just a few weeks ago to remind me that he has a buyer for my house who cherishes my RV pad. Past civility, I asked him, “What part of ‘we are living here’ do you not understand?” I didn’t need HAL to close the pod bay doors in his face. 

It seems like a no-brainer to me that, on all levels, global, national, regional, community, family, circle of friends, all of it, that the best security is living honestly, compassionately, respectfully, and not trying to bamboozle people. Quite simply, if you don’t let your dog do poo in front of someone’s mailbox then they have no reason to shoot you.

Oak tree in my back yard. One of my dearest friends.