Rhubarb Pie

Heat Wave

Friend, it has been over 90 degrees for days and days.  Like, for four or five days, in a row.  It is impossible to think in such weather.  I lie in bed with a wet towel on top of me and listen to the fan and a fly buzzing somewhere, and I can't imagine mustering the strength to lift my head.  I can't sleep, but reading would require turning on a light, and lights produce heat, which is totally unacceptable.  How do people live in places where this is part of life?  When it is cold, you can put things on your body that make you less cold.  When it is hot and thick like this, what can you do except dive off the dock into the ocean?  (I did that at lunch on Monday, and it was wonderful, but unfortunately I couldn't stay in the water all day.)    

Today we will get a thunderstorm, I am told, and this terrible heat will break.  

Back at you, lady.

I keep wanting to do a grand unified essay about all these, but I haven't pulled it together yet.  My thoughts have been grimmer than yours.  I keeping thinking about becoming poor.  This terrifying essay sets the microscale, what it is like for a person to become poor.  Here is a story about a town being poor.  And a county, when one of their resources goes away.  The thing I keep noticing is that cutting back early is the key to lasting.  These people have what looks like a path forward.  But it worries me that the bloggers I read are all using a growth economy as the standard, rather than a steady-state economy or a descent-based economy.

So I'm thinking about that.  I was sorry to read about the tragic shooting in your neighborhood.  When you brought food to the relatives of the deceased, how did you find them?

I totally love this song by High Places.

You know what I would love to link to, but can't? All the resources for people who are interested in co-parenting.  I'd love to show you the forums I'm reading and the matching services for people who want to co-parent.  I'd totally link to the blogs where people write about their experiences.  Except, you know, I CAN'T.  I don't think they're out there.  There're a few in Britain, but that's all I can find.  I've called around and gotten confirmation.  There is no infrastructure for finding someone else who might want to have and raise a kid with you, not in Northern California.  Wouldn't you think it would be in California as much as it would be anywhere?  Yeah, there isn't any.

This is so frustrating for me.  I'm sure of my decision to have kids, starting soon, but seriously daunted by the prospect of doing it alone.  I'm willing, but I've seen what that's like.  My friends are awesome and generous about offering help and I'm sure that when I'm in it, I'll make the arrangements I need.  But it looks hard.  It also looks like the first thing to go is my workout.  I'll make that trade if it is necessary.  But I don't want to.  If finding another involved parent is possible, I'm interested. 

But I can't even get to the point of negotiating the difficulties of that, because so far as I can tell, there isn't a locus for potential co-parents.  Everyone I've asked confirms, yeah, it is all ad hoc.  That's ridiculous.  There are so many people who could be served by this.  Some gays and lesbians, of course.  But I think of the women I know who wanted kids but aged out waiting for a romantic partner.  Some might have been better off with a co-parent, even if that isn't the ideal of a romantic partner.  This gives men who want kids another option too.  So I don't get why this niche is nearly entirely unserved.

A pattern!

Or maybe you see a pattern in my recent reading:

Human system responses to disaster : an inventory of sociological findings / Thomas E. Drabek

Strategies for coordinating disaster responses / Thomas E. Drabek.

Facing hazards and disasters : understanding human dimensions / Committee on Disaster Research in the Social Sciences: Future Challenges and Opportunities, National Research Council

I have to admit that I don't curl up with this stuff quite as readily as I do something with swords and horses, but I've been indignant recently that my department doesn't give the human sides of disaster response the same attention it does the physical system.  I decided that at least someone in the department should know how humans evacuate and what makes them build in the path of disaster and whether they will always go back.  So I poked around and it turns out that way smart people already know this!  I do not have to make up answers from scratch (although I totally would).   

Seems like Dr. Drabek is the Grand Old Man in the field. I tracked him back to the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center, where I signed up for their newsletter and want to go to the conference SO MUCH.  Anyway, I will read his books and find out if there is any hope of getting people out of the way of floods.  Then I will go to Boulder in early summer and maybe see some of you there.

Let it shine on.

I woke up excited.  I sang the voting song, which goes "Voting, voting, vote vote voting, voting voting yeah voting for me."  I did the voting dance, which is booty to the right, booty to the left.  I got on my bicycles, still singing the voting song.  I rode over on a clear blue day and I wept for joy as I locked my bike.  Then I stood in line and wept some more.  Then I voted and cried when I filled in the bubbles. 

I've been trying really hard to understand people who are opposed to gay marriage.  I've been trying to understand why they care.  I just don't get caring who marries whom.  For me, it is so boring that I can barely finish the thought.  "So, like, other people's marriage will somehow -what is that squirrel doing?"  "Two people of the same sex will GET MARRIED and COOK DINNER EVERY -yum, dinner.  Is it too soon to eat lunch?"  I cannot fathom caring about other people's personal lives (unless they care to tell me titillating details). 

But some people do care.  They care enough to try to write laws about it.  It really bugs them.  It bugs them so much that they go to a lot of trouble and give a lot of money to stop other people from having the personal lives they want*.  I don't get it.  I want to get it, though.  Those are our neighbors, and I want to understand.  If I understand, maybe I can tease out some of the drivers of that sentiment, and if I can figure out the drivers, maybe those are susceptible to influence.

So I've been trying to think about what it is like to care about something abstract, something that will never touch my life but still bugs me.  Bugs me all the time.  Well now, that's not so hard.  There are environmental problems that bug me.  Mountaintop removal coal mining?  Bothers me.  The plastic dump in the ocean?  Bothers me.  Shooting wolves from planes?  Bothers me.  All the time.  Not a lot, but a little, those things nag at me.  So I understand the concept that abstract things can be an irritant, effect your wellbeing**.  Then I was trying to think of something people would do that would bother me.  It would bother me if a white supremecist moved onto my block.  Yeah.  That would bug me.  If I had no contact with the guy ever, I would sit at my dinner table and know that he was there and it would be a lowlevel irritation.  So yeah.  I guess I can understand caring what someone does in the privacy of his house.

Today, weeping in line, I found out that I've cared about more than I knew.  The past eight years have been a weight and a thorn.  I know I should care about a big step into the light for my black countrymen, and I do.  I have.  But from my privileged life and personal vantage, other things matter so much.  My goverment will not be incompetent and openly biased toward the already powerful.  My highest elected officials will not mock the rule of law.  We will not be torturers.  We will take the climate crises seriously.  I have been ashamed and felt powerless. I am so relieved to vote today.  There was a process for changing the nation's direction.  Waiting it out fucking sucked, but we have a process and smart people figured it out and we are using it to give us the ability to make things better.  I am so relieved.

Today, in a gesture of empathy and understanding to the fucking assholes who would undo my friends' marriages, I will use their words and concepts.  Today is a day of redemption and rebirth.  I offer tears and love to wash away some smallest fragment of our national sins.  We have been offered grace, unearned and limitless and today we had the courage to take it. 

One of these days, before very long

Let the light from the lighthouse, shine on me

The whole wide world's gonna sing this song

Let your light from the lighthouse shine on me.

*Of course the important part of voting against Prop 8 is to ensure that all of our people are treated equally under the law.  But I must say, if Prop 8 fails tonight, as I dearly hope, I will take vast secondary satisfaction from knowing that it was extremely expensive for a lot of bigoted families.  Blowing tens of thousands of dollars on a failed proposition couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people, I say.

**I also decided that you can tell when you've hit on something like this because it seems so self-evidently bad.  You get to where repeating the concept seems like it should settle everything.  Because they are taking the tops off mountains!!  Because she is shooting wolves from planes!!!  Shooting wolves!!  Planes!  Mountains! Tops gone!!  So no wonder conversations around this stuff is so bad.  I agree with the complaint that no one ever gives a coherent argument against gay marriage, but also think that when opponents stutter in disbelief "Because they're gay and getting married", they are telling you the crux of what they think.

Better than a dream.

Every day for the past week or so, I've seen something new that makes me tear up, or sometimes sob. I remember crying like this twice before. I remember standing by the stove in my college kitchen and reading that Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State. A woman Secretary of State! I cried with relief and pride, and didn't even know why. My life hasn't been an experience in blatant sexism, but I was overcome to see a woman I'd never heard of reach an office that high. I cried one day at the only gay pride parade I've ever been to. The Dykes on Bikes led the march, and they were just so themselves, so unapologetic, revving the engines on that blue sunny day and I cried for their happiness. I didnt know I needed that either, to see dykes being open and loud. I don't usually see lesbians having to be anything in particular. So those were the times I surprised myself, crying in joy to see people rise into their full selves despite old -isms, when I hadn’t even known I cared they were oppressed.

I picked Obama early in the primaries, always thinking that the other two were good solid choices. In the end, I liked Obama's collaborative approach more than Clinton's skill at traditional politics, so I went with him. But a piece of me regretted the choice, because remembering the day that I cried to see a woman Secretary of State, I knew I'd be so glad, so proud and happy and relieved to watch a woman being sworn into the presidency. A small piece of me, one that doesn't even irritate or nag me anymore I am so used to it, that small piece of hurt would be lifted on that day. After that, I would always be better.

I talked to Margie about it and she agreed. Yeah. She'd be awfully happy to see a woman win the presidency. But then, she said, maybe black people need this more this time. Maybe there are more little black kids who need to know they can be anything than there are little girls who need to know that. I nodded. Maybe. It is hard for me to tell from my Californian world, where racism isn't black and white, but splintered and spread in every direction between dozens of ethnic backgrounds. It isn't the same; I don’t see the ugliest histories in my daily life. I simply do not have the firsthand experience to make any sort of comparison between the extent of the need for women to see a woman win and American blacks and multi-racial people to see one of their own move into his full, extravagant potential despite centuries of racism. (This is fine. Those comparisons are dumb.) So I held the question out, unanswered.

Until this week. This week I've teared up or cried from joy at least a dozen times. Oh. This amazing feeling, of vicious old wrongs dissolving. I don’t know if past wrongs can be righted and not everyone is whole yet. But the same wrongs aren't working this time. They weren't even wrong against me, but I can watch them lift and feel an echo of the pride and joy flooding my countrymen. That is a remarkable gift, unlooked for, because I didn’t know that old racism was making me sad and that shedding some of that shame and empathy would be joyous for me too. We are better, we are healing, even right now. Those of us who aren't at the center, we are so lucky to bear witness.

(I am so proud of my Mommy, who has been campaigning for Sen. Obama for months, traveling for weeks.)

(Links from everywhere, y'all.  Sorry for no hattip.)

Also, two pheasants, one deer and a VERY large cat.

The train this morning had a bike car, which is great.  We've needed one for a while.  The trend I see on the train echoes the news stories I hear from all over.  The train is steadily filling.  Ridership is up.

The other thing I see from the train?  New homeless camps.  Two more than Friday, in fact.  There's the one woman on the edge of a marsh, between the sand beach and the refinery.  Her camp has paths and rooms and stuff; she's been there since before I started taking the train a year ago.  On Friday nights, I've started seeing groups of men around small fires. That might be recreational.  But this morning I saw two new homesteads, tarps, tents, collections of items.  I can't believe people are choosing the train right-of-way for recreational camping.

Last year I read Jack London's memories of time as a hobo.  It was grim, and some of the worst of it was the battle between railroad companies and hoboes.  I think times are about to get bad, and I rehearse the same mental stories that you do.  What would I do if we contract to a near-barter economy?  What useful skills do I have?  I get the same outcome you do.  I'll fall back on my network, my ties to people. 

What I worry about as much as I worry about anything is that people will turn mean.  Or even meaner.  We're already so harsh and unforgiving, looking for fault in the victim, letting people die on cold sidewalks for being sick or addicted or mentally ill.  We've been mean for long time, but I keep hoping that we aren't yet the kind of mean that Jack London sees in his travels.  I worry that when people are scared for a long time, insecure in food and shelter, the fear poisons them.  It makes them cruel, feel justified in selfishness.  At the least, the last Depression left my grandparents with a crippling frugality, the inability to enjoy anything that cost money.  That lasted long after they were secure and cost them pleasure for decades. 

I have two hopes against that worry.  The first is that we may again be led by someone who is genuinely decent and humane.  People do get inspired, and they will follow a good example.  Sometimes, being shown the way is enough to get people moving in that direction.  Second, I run my little storylines about how I'd survive a Depression, and the thing that transforms them from fear and survival is to introduce a different frame.  Instead of, "how would I hole up?", I try to tell the story "how many people could we help?".  Running through that story feels different.  Well, there is organizing to do and resources to arrange.  The whole feel is different, more energizing, offering choices.  Well, there's this option and that option and it would be easier to reach this group and that person would know how to do this part so we'll have to drag her in.  It is not a fear-based scenario at all, largely because the focus is moved into the communal.  It isn't like I'm a saint who actually does anything so productive.  But thinking like that is a good way to move out of fear.   If things get bad, we're going to need to stave off fear.

Not much of a campaign slogan.

The other thing I've been thinking about is how to prioritize the work of the next administration.  If the nation gets extremely poor, like I expect, the administration will have to prioritize.  If they are triaging, they should choose to keep the programs that speak directly to things that people fear.  There are two components to poverty, austerity and fear.  Of those, the real problem is fear.

Austerity means you don't have stuff, even stuff you want.  But austerity itself doesn't invoke a given reaction.  People experience austerity in all sorts of ways, depending largely on their expectations and the company they keep.  Austerity, by itself, is independent of happiness.  There are euphoric monks, who chose to own nothing.  There are people who live in ostentatious wealth and misery.  Once the need for basic food and shelter is met, austerity and happiness have a very loose relationship.

Fear, though.  Fear is just terrible.  It shapes people, eats their goodness away, makes them permanently smaller, meaner, selfish, violent.  And what are people scared of?  They're scared for their kids and scared for their health.  They're scared of hunger and loss of shelter.  I think those are the things that the next president will have to secure.  Those things.  He should make those things safe and assured for us, and tell us so.  The rest can be dealt with, slowly rebuilt, our society contracted and re-knit.  We can live within our means or create things until we catch up to the money we spent in the last decade.  But it will be a thousand times easier if people are not scared for the very basics, if they believe they will not fall all the way down, if they don't turn on each other.

The experience of a Depression with fear and austerity is very different from one with only austerity.  I bitterly resent that we are forced to make choices like this, but the priority for the next administration is very clear.  Austerity without fear, '08.

Strong back, weak mind.

Before the Fall/New Depression/Peak Oil/Collapse, I have got to get some skills.   If you are strong and willing to work, but don't know how to build things, you end up digging fence posts, mixing concrete and carrying brick, while the skilled people squint at the frame with pencils in their mouths, humming to themselves.  I need to get on the right side of that pronto.

I could travel, go to Greenwich.

Hi. Thanks for helping me. I’m kinda nervous about being here, but your office is nice. I’ve been thinking a little about my options, what I want to do when I get out of school. Sometimes I think I am only good at one thing, and I just do the same thing over and over again. Like, I finish my job, and then I turn over and do the same thing again. I mean, I like it, but then I wonder if I could be more. Maybe when I get out of school, I could start working my way up. I bet I could reach forty-five minutes, if I tried. If I could do that, maybe I could aim for an hour, or a day. I mean, after I’ve worked at it for a while. You know what else I want to try? I’ve been thinking it’d be sooooooo cool to have hands. I’m not complaining or anything, but it’d be nice to stay upright the whole time. I bet it’d be fun to have moving parts.

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do if I followed my dreams. Do I want the big glory, huge fame, like the countdown for New Years in Times Square?  Some of my friends talk about joining the Long Now, but I don’t know if I really have the stamina for that. Maybe trying to be all millenial isn't a good fit for me. Maybe I just want a simple life in a sweet little city. I could be a college score board, watch all the games. I’m minoring in Scorekeeping, so maybe that’s a clue about what I like. And I barely passed Circuits, so I think I want to stay analog. I mean, some of my best friends are digital, and I’m totally cool with that. If they’re happy, I’m happy. But I don’t think that’s for me. Should I do more school?  Try to find a job somewhere?  Is it OK if I don't have big dreams? I know that I totally want to stay Eastern Standard. It just feels right to me. What should I do, Ms. CounselorLady?

Probably nothing, because I am cowed by a ten year old.

I don't know what to do about my wallet.  My sister says to go get my wallet back.  I'm all fired up, so that sounds great except that I can't picture how the conversation will actually go.  I'll walk over to her at the pool and she'll walk away.  Then what?  I walk over again?  No, that doesn't work.  Once you're chasing someone, you've already lost (this goes for dogs and toddlers as well).  I grab her?  No.  I can't go lay hands on a kid.  Imagining that she stands still, then what?

The only good leverage I have over her is that if I raised enough of a shitstorm, I could get her barred from the pool.  That's powerful.  She and her sibs spend all afternoon there every single day.  They must like it, or at least have no better options.  It would take a fuss though, and I'm not sure the pool would back me up on the spot.  I'd have to go to their supervisor, whom I met last summer when I was agitating for long course.  What else?  Well, there's the authority of being a grown-up and whatever you can convey in your voice.  Considering that she picks gratuitous fights with grown-ups and mouths off without consequence, I doubt this carries a lot of weight with her.  There's the threat of the police.  This is a pretty empty threat.  I cannot imagine the police investigating a rash of small thefts at the pool.  The idea is ridiculous.  On the other hand, she and her sibs are undocumented, so the mention of police carries a scary specter of deportation.  If I thought that were at all likely, that would actually deter me.  I'm not going to get a bunch of children shipped to a country they barely know over a stolen wallet.  A stolen wallet is worth a talking to and a letter of apology, and not much more.

So I'm not convinced that force is an option.  What are other choices?  Niceness?  I wouldn't mind niceness, except that it feels so exactly like getting played, and I don't know how it would work.  The barrier to spontaneously returning a wallet, even to a nice lady, is pretty high.  Reward?  Sure, if it would work, but again, the part about acknowledging the theft in the first place is a barrier.  (This is slightly farcical, because every single person at the pool knows exactly who took the wallet.  She and her little sister were the only two people through the locker room.  When I told the lifeguards about the theft, they sighed and said "Yeah, the girls are here.".  When I told the front desk, they said, "You can't leave anything in the locker room when the girls are here.  Did they take down our warning sign again?") 

Well, the cards are canceled and I have an appointment for a new driver's license.  (The day after my haircut, so I'll be all freshly bobbed.)  I didn't lose much cash.  The rest I can't remember.  A swim card, which the pool replaced.  My library card, which was wearing out anyway.  A frequent flyer card.  A BART card with a couple trips left on it.  I liked the wallet itself.  Boooo!  This sucks.