Logic, schmogic.

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Pat Greene

An open letter to the privileged Texas Senator I heard on NPR today.

You are not very bright, sir. The NPR story was about a Texas county sheriff who has taken the position that she won’t turn anyone over to ICE unless the agency had a warrant, and that her doing so it would make her communities less safe. You ridiculed that idea, saying that “protecting people who are breaking the law so other people won’t break the law” lacks any type of logic. I could hear the sneer in your voice.

Leaving aside your mansplaining (you are telling an experienced sheriff how to do her job, and what will and won’t make her county safer) and the constitutional issues (the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, and the Bill of Rights generally, protect all people in this country: citizen, green card holder, undocumented persons), she is right on the money that over-aggressive enforcement is an invitation to crime.

Say you have several arrests like the domestic violence taken from inside a courtroom by ICE, or the DACA kid arrested at his home. Before long, people without papers will refuse to contact law enforcement when they are the victims of a crime. Abused women will stay with their abusers, victims of muggings will nurse their wounds in private.

The criminal element will recognize this, and start targeting “illegals.” Absent leaving a dead body somewhere, they will believe they can get away with just about any crime.

It won’t end with undocumented persons. Green card holders and citizens with names like Jimenez and Garcia will have a target on their backs as well. There are a depressing number of people in this country that assume that anyone with brown skin and a Latino surname must be in the country without papers. Some thugs will commit crimes of opportunity: Latinos might make good targets because they are less likely to go to the cops. It would be foxes picking off hens for whom seeking protection is not an option.

But others… others see that brown skin and are looking for a reason to “Make America Great Again” by beating the crap out of the “illegals” they irrationally blame for many of the perceived problems the country faces. Believing that their victims are not going to go to the cops makes their “job” all the easier.

Vigilanteism is a nasty, nasty business, sir.

You fail to grasp all of this. But then again, you’ve never been a target, have you? Bigots and white supremacists might look at your white skin and see, rationally or not, a potential ally. Simple thugs would know that attacking a powerful white man would let them in for a world of trouble. In any case, you’re going to be safe from predation.

It’s all the other people that need safeguarding. Unlike you, the sheriff of Travis county has enough brains to recognize that.

And, unlike you, she cares.

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And that, children, is why I went to law school.

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Pat Greene

It started with a road, and a neighborhood.

I’ve been interested in historic preservation for most of my adult life. It’s a passion, really, arising out of my experience growing up in an area that was in the process of trashing its natural beauty and where “historic preservation? What’s that?” seemed to be a prevailing attitude. (The Soreno, one of St. Pete’s historic hotels, was blown up (after the City Council gave its blessing for the  demolition) at the end of Lethal Weapon 4.)  Even historic neighborhoods which were saved were often a truncated version of larger areas. (Roser Park — which haunts my dreams, literally — comes to mind.)

People are tied to the land. That’s why you see “takings” cases such as Kelo v. City of New London which involve people fighting to keep the homes they grew up in. It’s not just because municipalities often lowball residents when buying out their houses. It’s because “home” can mean something more than where you put your head.

Neighborhoods carry on our history and our heritage. Gentrification hurts because people are pushed out, but also because the emotional history of a neighborhood — what makes a place home — can be destroyed.

To get back to the neighborhood in question.

Sweet Auburn was a prosperous African-American neighborhood in Atlanta during the Jim Crow era. While Donald Trump likes to think of all African-Americans as living in inner-city hells,* that’s not true now and it wasn’t true of Sweet Auburn. Successful African-American businesses lined its commercial streets, and in 1956 Fortune magazine called it the richest Negro street in the world.”

That’s not to mention its importance in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King was born in Sweet Auburn, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both he and his father were pastors, was in the district.

By the 1980s, the area had fallen into disrepair. This is where the road comes in.

The state of Georgia, in its infinite wisdom, decided to run a highway right through Sweet Auburn, bisecting it.  Mind you, at this point the neighborhood had already been designated a National Historic Landmark. And the government ran a damn highway through it.  They didn’t invest in it. They didn’t try to rescue it from disrepair. They  — and I include not only the state of Georgia but the city of Atlanta — seemed to shrug and say “oh, well.”

Bisecting a neighborhood hurts. It breaks up what would otherwise have been a coherent whole, not to mention the structures that were destroyed for that ribbon of commuter concrete. It destroys “home.”  Sweet Auburn survived, and has experienced something of a revival, but in 1992 was listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.”

All of this took place in a city that at that time was trying to figure out how to save the Margaret Mitchell house, a building that was falling apart, which Mitchell herself called “a dump” while she lived there. Now, of course, it has been renovated into tourist attraction. (Sweet Auburn aside, that turns my stomach. I really hate Gone With the Wind, which I credit with helping maintain the “noble Southerner versus the rapacious Yankee” idea, not to mention the “servile slaves good, freed blacks bad” fiction. It’s not as bad a Birth of a Nation, but it certainly does nothing to help race relations in this country. I think of that damn movie every time I see an idiot waving a Confederate battle flag and going on about “heritage.”)

I am not African-American, but that doesn’t matter. Like all Americans, I have  stake in saving Sweet Auburn the same as I have a stake in saving Native-American historic sites, the same as I have in saving Miami’s Art Deco South Beach, the same as I have in saving California’s missions. Our historic places are who we all are as a nation. If we are to understand each other, we have to understand where we come from. Besides, who am I to say that Sweet Auburn is less worthy of saving than my beloved Roser Park?

And so, to law school. I tried to get into Duke’s joint J.D./History Ph.D. program, but tanked my GREs. (I got into the law school, but not the history program.) So I went to Stanford.

Stanford didn’t have anything that really mapped to historic preservation. Instead, I became interested in the next best thing: environmental law. I developed my nascent interest in land use, an area which overlaps historic preservation. I learned about environmental justice. (I also learned water law, which I think every Californian should know. It might save municipalities a lot of trouble when they try to enforce water restrictions.) I’m not sure Stanford was the best fit for my interests, and if I had gone somewhere else I might still be practicing, but then again, maybe not. (The family  and personal issues that were the primary  reasons for me staying home would have still been present.) I nonetheless got a lot out of going there, and have nothing but deep and abiding affection for both for the place and the people. (Furthermore, being in Silicon Valley made it possible for the Rocket Scientist to find his work. Lawyers are thick upon the ground, but he is an expert in a small and highly technical field, which he would not be doing if we had landed somewhere else.)

This area which has its own preservation woes. Houses on hillsides by major architects are dismantled by captains of industry so they can build their own palatial wonders (see Ellison, Larry, and Morgan, Julia). There are victories: a small house (“Immigrant House”) which had been removed to make way for an apartment complex downtown was moved and installed in a newly opened park near me, along with the last windmill to have operated in the city. While buildings and other artifacts really should be seen in their original context, this is certainly the next best thing.

In the end, what happened to Sweet Auburn steered me on a course I might have not taken otherwise, and I’m glad of it.

*After he made that comment, my friend Jane posted a picture on Facebook of her brick Tudor hellhole, complete with manicured lawn. Would that I could live in such desolation.

 

 

Posted in My life and times, Who I am | Leave a comment

“What do you call that hairstyle?” “Arthur.”

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Pat Greene

February: not a fan. I’m ambivalent about Valentine’s Day, and since my kids are grown and we don’t have ski week to go on outings, President’s Day holds only mild promise. The weather has been miserable for the most part: today was spectacular, but another storm hits in two days.  It’s been years since the last time I can remember such a heavy rainy season.

February does have some excitement, though: the Oscars are February 26. The Academy nominated a good crop of movies this year several of which I have actually seen. Personally, I want Lin-Manuel Miranda to win Best Song for “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, so that he can become the youngest EGOT winner.*

And TCM holds its “31 Days of Oscar” festival. I get most of the movies on my DVR from either this or the HBO/CineMax/Showtime free promotions around Thanksgiving. Because of  “31 Days of Oscar,” I have the complete Lord of the Rings Trilogy, with no commercial interruptions, My Fair Lady, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and from this year, most appropriately, Gaslight… These are the keepers, as opposed to Fame, say, or Dreamgirls, which I’ll watch once and then erase.

And tonight’s movie, A Hard Day’s Night, will go on the “keeper” list. It’s funnier than I remembered; more accurately, because I’m actually an adult now and not an angst ridden teenager, I can appreciate its silliness. And with each passing year I become more deeply enamored of the title song.

It can take as much artistry to put together such a slight confection as this movie as it does to create a Merchant/Ivory period piece. You may not feel as erudite after watching it, but you’ll feel a whole lot less pretentious.

*Actually, he would be a PEGOT, since he also has a Pulitzer (following in the footsteps of Richard Rogers and Marvin Hamlisch). Or even better, he would be a McPEGOT, since he also won a McCarthur Genius grant.

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The story that just. will. NOT. die.

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Pat Greene

Standard disclaimer: See sidebar. These are my views, not those of my former employer, for whom I am in no way authorized to speak. I am writing from my experience working for an elections division, a worker bee who got to see up close and personal how elections happen, and who processed a lot of provisional ballots.

I thought that since he had won the White House, Donald Trump would leave this whole “voter fraud” business alone. Clearly, I was wrong. In refusing to let sleeping conspiracies lie, Trump shows himself to have even less judgment than George W. Bush, who, once he had the Supreme Court hand him the Presidency, let the matter slide, calling out for genuine unity (not this shut the hell up and go away crap).

New wrinkles are being proposed all the time. (The latest I heard was that busloads of people were hauled into New Hampshire from Massachusetts, thus making Trump’s victory there narrower than it should have been and also depriving poor, poor Kelly Ayotte of her Senate seat.) And, of course, there are all the allegations that undocumented immigrants illegally voted in California.

That last is easy to rebut: no one living more or less underground is going to put their name on a piece of paper for the government when they don’t have to. Police say that sometimes undocumented immigrants are afraid to report being victims of crimes, for fear of being reported to ICE. They sure as hell are not going to register to vote.

Which leaves two areas of investigation: registration and actual voting. No evidence exists of fraud for either one.

To take registration first: if we discount the absurd narrative that millions of undocumented immigrants registered and voted, the pool of people that could have registered illegally would be under-eighteen year olds, and people convicted of  a felony, (and in California) who are in prison or on probation. (Felons don’t regain the right vote ever in several Deep South red states, but Trump et. al. have never claimed voter fraud in those states.) People on probation are not a big enough pool to sway a statewide election, and those in prison won’t have the opportunity. As far as the youngsters go, it’s hard enough to get them to register and vote when they do hit eighteen. Only a handful are going to try before them, and they get caught, and their registration is put on hold until their eighteenth birthday. (People do register in multiple counties, sometimes (like Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) but, as  understand the law (I might be wrong), merely being  registered in more than one place is not illegal as long as you do not vote in more than one place. People have been prosecuted for the latter.) I suppose that there might be some strange situation whereby masses of people could illegally register, but I fail to see how. Certainly I have not seen anyone show any evidence at all that this is the case.

Which leaves the stupid “people voting more than once” or “people voting in another state” scenarios, which seem to be the theories those idiots (or liars, take your pick) in the White House favor. And, based on my personal experience, I feel more than comfortable stating that these theories are utterly ridiculous.

I cannot believe that I feel compelled to go through this explanation again. 

People who are not on the voter rolls, for whatever reason, will not be allowed to cast a regular ballot. Period. They will have to cast a provisional ballot. Those provisional ballots are checked against ballots already cast, both those from other precincts and those vote-by-mail ballots that have been sent in. The signature is checked against the signature on file for the voter. Those provisional ballots are checked to see if the voter is registered, has moved out of the county (or state), if the voter is on probation, or in one case last year, dead.*

People voting from out of county — e.g., the Massachusetts scenario? Can’t happen. The ballots are invalidated.

People voting ten times? Can’t happen. The extra ballots are invalidated.

Somebody voting for someone else? Not unless they forge that person’s signature. If the signatures don’t match, the ballot is invalidated.

Non-citizens (which would include green-card holders) voting even though they’re not registered? Can’t happen. Ballots cast by people who are not registered are invalidated.

True, I only have first-hand experience of California elections. But given that Trump and his minions have focused most of their weird ire on my state**, I feel comfortable stating that there was very, very little or no voter fraud in California. I strongly suspect that other states have similar regimens in place to prevent fraud. We take our jobs as defenders of democracy (okay, so I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek) very seriously.

I had discussions after the California primary with the occasional member of the lunatic fringe on the left (usually Bernie Bros) who insisted that the provisionals were simply thrown out. (No, no, no, no, and once again no. Valid provisionals are counted the same as other ballots.) This just seems odd now, to have to repeatedly hear about fraud that I know for a fact would not have happened.

I don’t just get frustrated and angry about these voter fraud conspiracy theories. I worry about the damage it will do to our democracy; if people do not trust in the election process, how can they believe their vote counts? Between apathy and cynicism and the effect of Citizen’s United, our system is already screwed six ways to Sunday, and it seems that voter participation rates keep dropping all the time. Trump and his henchmen (and woman — I’m looking at you, Kellyanne Conway) and their ridiculous and dangerous lust for vindication can make things even worse.

Trump  won the White House. I wish he would just let this go.

*As I recall, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity; a man was removed from the voter rolls accidentally even though it was his father who had died.

**More evidence of bizarreness: Trump’s repeated claim that all those illegal votes had been cast for Hillary. The man’s not stupid; does he think his followers are?

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Meh.

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Pat Greene

Note to self, as I sit in the empty classroom:

Always, but ALWAYS, check your email before you venture out in chilly 55 degree* moderate rain (heavy for California) on a highway that is nothing but red the whole way, taking 45 minutes, triple your daytime commute and ten minutes longer than your usual evening commute.  Then you would have seen the professor’s notice that she and fifteen of your classmates (out of forty) were down with a nasty virus. With my luck, I’ll get it and be forced to miss NEXT week’s class, when we are supposed to do an important** in-class assignment that we were going to do this week before everyone got sick.

*Stop snickering, all you New Yorkers, Bostonians and Michiganders. You know who you are. Yes, I’m a wimp. What can I say, I grew up i n Florida.</>

**I keep telling myself that this is a class I am taking for my own edification and that it doesn’t matter what grade I get, but I can no more ignore my grades than I can hold back the tides.

Posted in nothing special | 1 Comment

Posted on February 4, 2017 by Pat Greene

Far too many things are going on in the country right now. The media is stretched thin, I am sure. That said, I was disappointed that they spent as much time as they did (too much, really) on the National Prayer Breakfast.

I’m not the media, though.  And our new President’s behavior at his event sickens me. I may struggle with faith, and God, and the afterlife, but I firmly  believe that there is sin. I do not presume to state if someone else’s actions rise to the level of sins (I have enough trouble working on my own), but in Donald Trump’s case I am tempted to make an exception.

The National Prayer Breakfast occurs every year, attended by, in addition to the President, 3,500 guests from around the world. Barack Obama quoted Scripture. Donald Trump boasted. To resort to an apt, if massively clichéd saying, if you look up “solipsism” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of Trump.

Donald Trump cheapened an event which called for at least the appearance of reverence, for at least the simulacrum of respect. Instead of reverence, Trump joked about how we should pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger because… his ratings were so low on the New Celebrity Apprentice. Instead of respect, Trump engaged in open political pandering, by announcing he was going to eviscerate the Johnson rule, a rule that prevents churches and other nonprofits from endorsing specific candidates for public office. It is as though he could act no other way than he has since he won the presidency — since he began campaigning for the job, really.

It seems he doesn’t understand how to act properly. Have you noticed how since he won last November all his speeches sound so much like what he said at his campaign rallies? Even his inauguration speech, with its darkness and carnage, wasn’t designed to unify the country as much as to scare the bejesus out it.

In the grand scheme of things, what Trump did and said at the National Prayer Breakfast is unimportant. So much else has occurred, so many awful, scary things, that a man standing up and bragging when he should have been invoking the Lord and calling us to look to the better angels of our nature really isn’t all that big a deal.

Except there is only one Savior in Trump-land, and that is Donald J. Trump. Self-idolatry is idolatry nonetheless; a sin, and to the extent we as individuals or a nation celebrate this man — or even normalize his behavior — we become complicit in his sin.

God — whatever Gods or Goddesses there are — help us all.

Posted in God faith and theology, Politics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Today’s efforts in defense of Democracy.

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Pat Greene

Calls to oppose Scott Pruitt as EPA head and Betsy DeVos at Education:

Multiple attempts to call Senator Dianne Feinstein’s offices, both in California and D.C. The D.C. number just gave a busy signal, the California office number a “We are sorry, but we can’t answer your call right now due to a high call volume.”

Multiple attempts to call Senator Kamala Harris’s offices, both in San Francisco and D.C. The D.C. number rang a few times and then kicked me over to voicemail, where I left a message. The San Francisco number rang a few times, and then gave me “this mailbox is full and can take no more messages.”

Later today I’ll send emails, if I can’t get through on the phone.

And yes, I know I really should say “oppose every Cabinet pick,” but I am trying to sound a little more focused. I know we’re not going to be able to block every nominee, and these are the two I am most concerned about (other than maybe Rex Tillerson at State).

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Why I marched.

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Pat Greene

A letter sent to Dianne Feinstein’s office, who was collecting stories about why women participated in the marches:

I marched in the San Jose March, even though I have fibromyalgia and was only able to walk half-way. I marched for people with disabilities. I marched to support Planned Parenthood and the right of women everywhere to control their own bodies. I marched in support of my Muslim, African-American, LGBT — and other — sisters and brothers. I marched for all the people who are going to lose health insurance when the ACA is completely gutted. I marched for all the DACA kids who trusted their government enough to come out of the shadows, who now wonder how long it will be before they are deported. I marched for the environment.

Mostly, though, I marched for the truth.

Whatever decisions we make for ourselves first and foremost have to be grounded in the factual truth of the world around us. We have a President who believes — and who has surrounded himself with others who mirror this belief — that truth does not matter, that reality is a construct to be molded into whatever shapes he wants. That we live in a “post-fact” world, where “alternative facts” that are not facts at all are perfectly  acceptable. That lying — not spinning, not misstating — absolutely demonstrable LYING does not matter because most people in America don’t care.

I marched to show him he’s wrong.

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No. Not anymore.

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Pat Greene

A lot of people — even people I care about and respect — call for we liberals to reach out and bridge the divide with the people who voted for Trump.

Fuck that.

As long as I can remember many of these people have called me and people like me sinful and evil because we support equality for all people, including members of the LGBT community. We have been called enemies of the country because we favor dealing with undocumented persons in our country humanely and finding a way to support them here. We have been called weak-headed liberals who enable lazy people who just don’t want to find a decent job with health insurance.

Worst of all, we have been called baby-killers repeatedly and emphatically  (underscored by violence, up to and including murder) because we support a woman’s right, in consultation with her doctor and her own conscience, to determine whether and when she will bear children.

We did not create this divide, they did. They damn well can bridge it. I am tired as hell of being told it is my responsibility to reach out to people who have spent far too much time over the past decade sneering at me.

They have to change first. Respect is a street that runs both ways.

They’re not going to walk down that street. If by some miracle they do, I’m willing to meet them in the middle. Until then, the only metaphorical streets they’ll see me on will be ones I’ll be marching down. With my compadres, holding signs.

 

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Ah, yes, the hallowed halls of Academe.

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Pat Greene

I am currently taking classes at a local community college, for reasons I don’t really want to go into right now, perhaps stupidly taking a full courseload (12 units for this semester).  I am (re)discovering several things about myself:

  1. My community college is one of the best in the country, and  I take irrational pride that my string of well-regarded institutions of higher learning continues, even if I didn’t actually have to do anything but fill out a form to get admitted.
  2. Laptops make doing schoolwork (especially papers) so much easier. How did we ever live without Google?
  3. I still get bored during movies.
  4. I need to record lectures now — trying to write notes isn’t really working for me. (One of my professors won’t let me record lectures. Damn. I am going to go to disability services and explain that my tremor makes taking notes difficult, and then maybe they can get her to let me record lectures. Worth a shot, anyway.)
  5. I can procrastinate on doing homework (like I am right now!) with the best of them. The difference now is that I have a son at home who is more than willing to nag me about homework and studying. I think he gets joy out of this: payback’s a bitch, sometimes.
Posted in My life and times | Tagged | 2 Comments

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Pat Greene

Dear David Brooks:

It infuriates me no end, when people such as yourself state that the Women’s Marches were about “identity politics,” and that we’ll never see change in this country if we engage in “identity politics,” after telling us ad nauseam we need to understand and reach out to the white men who voted for Trump who in many cases only view the world in terms of their identity.

Why, it’s almost as though people like you and them think that theirs is the only identity that matters. And then you get mad when we call you misogynistic racists.

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Posted on January 23, 2017 by Pat Greene

The title of my blog (from Man of La Mancha, for those of you who do not follow Broadway) is to some extent appropriate. While in many ways my life has been pretty unremarkable (I really haven’t done anything of note), I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively in Europe and the U.S. I have been to forty-five out of fifty states, and to seventeen countries on four continents. Finishing my art museum bucket list alone required going to six different countries.

Why I bring this up now is to explain my changing header photo. I have my blog set to produce a random picture every time you check the blog. I am using pictures from places I have been. Unfortunately, I tend to take pictures vertically, which means I do not have a lot of horizontal pictures to choose from. I have several photos from Paris, and one from Brussels, and various locations (mostly beaches)  in the U.S., and one of my favorites (“Hemingway never ate here”) from Madrid. I have asked The Rocket Scientist to send me photos from other countries we have visited together. I hope to make the header a record of travels, of a sort.

“Withersoever they blow,” indeed.

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More March humor.

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Pat Greene

Some other great signs from various Marches:

“Dumbledore’s Army: still recruiting”

“Donald Trump uses Comic Sans”

“I’ve seen smarter cabinets at Ikea”

“Now you’ve pissed off Grandma”

Next to an elderly Japanese woman in a wheelchair:  “Locked up by U.S. Prez, 1942-1946: Never again!”

“What Meryl said”

“I’m not usually a sign person, but Geez”

And my favorite, which expresses what a lot of us think:

“Just, ugh.”

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The music of the waves.

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Pat Greene

See the line where the sky meets the sea
It calls me
And no one knows
How far I’ll go…
“How Far I’ll Go,” from Moana, lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Long ago in a galaxy far, far… well, no, it was downtown Palo Alto … over pretty good but not exceptional Vietnamese fusion food, I asked a man I knew, “Are you a mountain person or an ocean person?”  In complete seriousness, and without hesitation, he answered “An ocean person. I always know how far away it is.”*

Me, too. I swore many years ago that I would never live anywhere farther away from an ocean than a couple of hours. I will not live where I cannot stand and hear the waves crashing and smell the salt air if I need to.  When a job ends, I drive Highway 1, from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, and I always feel better. If I had my way I would always drive down through Big Sur when going to SoCal.  If I am driving out of San Francisco, unless I have to be home quickly, I make my way to the Great Highway, and turn off the music and roll down the windows, even if it is raining. There is no such thing as “beach weather”: all weather is beach weather.

When my life goes to hell in a hand basket, I head for the waves.

I have swum in the Atlantic and the Pacific, I have waded in the Mediterranean. The crystalline Caribbean has my longing heart†, the gentle Gulf — so calm until the black clouds filled with blue-white lightning roll in from over the horizon — my soul.

My love even extends to music. Sometimes, I just need to put my put my head down and listen to the music that reminds me of the sea — almost any sea. I listen to the soundtracks of Moana and Lilo & Stitch and the comforting Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. (Yes, I know I need to expand my stock of Hawaiian and Polynesian music.) I listen to Marley. I listen (cultural appropriation be damned; this was part of my adolescence) to Buffet. And then I head north, to the music of the Maritime:  Newfoundland’s Great Big Sea. There are individual songs by artists who otherwise concern themselves with other things: Billy Joel’s “Downeaster Alexa” fills this niche.

When I started this post, I did not intend to write about music. I was going to write about Moana, how I understood her.• I understand looking at that horizon, that line where the ocean meets the sky, and wondering what lies out there. Even though I know, intellectually, where that goes, I want to experience that joy of exploration. Maybe someday I will.

For now, I will have another shore to stand on in a few months. I am going to Barcelona for the first time in May, and I will walk in the waves of the Mediterranean. I have felt that sea on my feet before, but not there. This will be new.

That ocean, like every ocean, calls me. I answer the best I can.

*The love of the sea was not that surprising, since the gentleman in question had (has? I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in years) startlingly blue eyes deep enough to drown in… focus, Pat, focus.
†In order to celebrate its 2017 centennial, the U.S. Virgin Islands are giving away $300 in credits which can be used to help pay for a three night stay on one of the islands. I wish I could go. Someday I should write a post about my trip to St. Croix, and my stay at a funky little hotel that instead of flowers or chocolates left a fifth of rum on your pillow when you checked in.
•I think I understand her grandmother even better — I intend to be, unapologetically, “the village crazy lady” when I get older.

Posted in Music, My life and times, Travel (real or imaginary) | Tagged | 1 Comment

March… sanity.

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Pat Greene

Odd bits and pieces of the San Jose Women’s March:

Proud parental moment of the day: when you text your eldest son about being at the San Jose March,  and he texts back pictures of where he is in the New York March. (His youngest brother lamented that he woke up too late, and the San Diego March was too far away, for him to go. I reassured him that undoubtedly he would have other opportunities, and besides he had marched in support of immigrants’ rights the day after the election. The other brother worked, so couldn’t march, and later said he wished he had. Have I told everyone lately how much I love my sons?)

I only did a short stretch of the march. I am recovering from an odd household accident (I was sleepwalking and fell into my tub, torquing my ribs), and walking is not comfortable. So I walked a short stretch of the route (resisting the urge to just duck into the Starbucks) and went into the park. I listened to the speeches until what I thought was dehydration caught up to me and I had to sit down at the medical tent. They gave me water, took my vitals, asked if I wanted to go to the ER ( I refused), and decided to head home. (As it tuned out, I was starting to get sick, and ended up in a different ER later getting IV fluids. This post is less than stellar because I am zonked out on meds.)

On my way I saw friends I haven’t seen in forever (and you guys, I’m sorry I didn’t talk longer, I was starting to feel bad) and went and sat on the light rail platform. On the way home, women (and men) talked about the march, and how marches in other places were going. It is a remarkable movement, and I am excited to see where it goes. Just being with all those people was oddly comforting. (And really, Donald, that first tweet asking why we didn’t vote? We did vote, and it did no good. That’s the problem.)

The choice between buying a ten dollar lunch so you can use the restaurant’s bathroom and fighting your way through twenty thousand people to get to the Port-A-Potties at the other end of the park is a no-brainer. Even if the tacos were mediocre.

The route took us by the Fairmont Hotel, under the bridge between the two buildings. As I walked towards the bridge, I looked up and saw about fifteen men standing and watching the all the people walking underneath. They were in all levels of dress, from blazers to shorts and t-shirts. I found myself wondering what they thought of the March. Did they approve (and if so, why didn’t they join us)? Did they detest it (and us)? Were they simply annoyed that they would have to fight nasty, nasty traffic if they tried to leave the hotel?

I had decided to go at the last moment and didn’t get a sign made. I saw where someone made a sign saying what I was going to: an excerpt from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony sonnet. “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love/ Cannot be killed or swept aside.” I am thinking of making the sign up anyway. I have a suspicion that this will not be the last time I march against this administration; besides which, there is always Pride.

Some of my favorite signs:

  • “My 5-year old has more self-discipline, compassion, and manners than the President of the United States”
  • I saw a lot of “A Woman’s Place is In the Resistance” with a picture of Princess Leia. I think Carrie Fisher would approve.
  • A picture of a cat with the slogan “Bare your fangs, show your claws, fight back!” (There were a lot of signs about pussies.)
  • “Strong women scare weak men,” which pretty much sums up the current political situation.
  • And not humorous, but important: a husky, bearded man with a sign that said “This is what a feminist looks like.”
  • Held by what looked to be an eleven or twelve year old girl: “Future Nasty Woman.”
  • And my favorite from the San Jose March: “We’re the great-granddaughters of the witches your ancestors didn’t burn.” (The Resident Shrink, who went to the Oakland march, texted me my very favorite sign: “So bad, even introverts are here.” As an introvert who normally has a serious allergy to large crowds, I completely agree.)

While I was impressed and happy about the turnout in the big cities, my favorite statistic came from my hometown: twenty-thousand people marched in St. Pete, making it by far the largest protest in the city’s  history. (The previous city record had fifteen hundred people.) Wow. And city officials supported the march (the mayor proclaimed yesterday Women’s Rights Day in the city), and the state senator was there and encouraged people to write their Congressional Representatives. This makes me happy and hopeful, if a somewhat sleepy town like St. Pete in a state like Florida can turn out all those people.

Closer to home, from what I understand, the organizers of the San Jose March expected 10,000 people and ended up with 25,000. It really did look like that many people, even though it was cold and windy and threatened to rain, and the park where the rally was held was seriously muddy. (Days and days of rain will do that.)

The San Jose protest appeared to me to be three quarters women, and one-quarter men.  A lot of kids, too. People are teaching the importance of standing up for what you believe in to their children at an early age. As someone who tried to do the same thing, I heartily approve.

On the light rail home, a woman said “They say write to your Congressional representative. Ours was at the protest! We’re preaching to the choir.” (While true, it’s still important so they can say the people have their back.) She also had an interesting observation: “People shouldn’t move to Canada. They should move to a red state and organize.”

This is by far the largest protest I have ever taken part in. Given this administration, I expect it is only the first of many over the next four (and hopefully not eight) years..

Posted in Feminism, Politics | 2 Comments