It’s been thirty years today since Challenger.
I don’t know what to say that I have not said before, but it seems important to me to mark this anniversary again. So, once again, I salute the brave men and women of her crew:
Francis R. Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Judith A. Resnik
Ellison S. Onizuka
Ronald E. McNair
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe.
Thank you for your service, and for showing us the courage to dream.
David Bowie died. Although I recognized his importance to a great many people, I had never been particularly a fan of his music. I recognized his genius, but but my sadness at his passing felt muted.
Alan Rickman died. That made me very sad: Rickman was one of my favorite actors. He consistently made my famous people dinner. You know the game: pick six people to have dinner with you. In my case, I invited Alan Rickman, Michelle Obama, John Scalzi, Georgia O’Keefe, Mark Twain, James Thurber. Although the other diners changed over time, Rickman and Thurber were constants.
Then Glen Frey died.
I have always thought it weird to grieve for famous people: I had friends who cried when Princess Diana died. I know that I cried over the Challenger and Columbia astronauts, and when Nelson Mandela died. There have been a few others.
Glen Frey is one of those I grieve.
Glen Frey’s music threads its way through the soundtrack of my life. I have had a lot of times in my life when I looked on “Desperado” as a theme song, and “Smuggler’s Blues” somehow captures the feel of South Florida, probably because it was used in an episode of Miami Vice.* And then there is “Hotel California.”
In 1992, The Rocket Scientist and I headed back East to Virginia, so that he could spend a year on a temporary assignment at NASA headquarters. Virginia was the South, was home. We were a day’s drive from his family, another down to my family in St. Pete, close enough to visit more often than once every two years. The food was familiar — true, it was hard to find a good burrito, but you could get great barbecue. And grits made properly. There were green fields even in summer, and thunderstorms.
We lived in McLean, in a house I loved: a split-level with a half-finished basement, and a cool unfinished area where the Rocket Science could stash his homebrew to lager. There was a planter box out front that I was looking forward to finally eradicating the mint in, and a huge backyard where it was a battle to stay on top of the bamboo shoots at the edge of the property. It had three bedrooms, a study, a living room, a formal dining room, and a large kitchen. It’s the nicest house I’ve ever lived in in my life. We liked our neighbors. We were only a couple of miles from the Metro station, and forty minutes to Maryland. I would take The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy (who was a toddler) to the Smithsonian, and Glen Echo Park, and Potomac Falls.
The way that temporary assignments worked back then was that they were essentially year-long job interviews. If you did well, and were happy, you stayed on. We fully expected that outcome. We could have settled down: I was pregnant with Railfan, and the owners of the house were looking to sell. Everything looked rosy.
Then Al Gore came along and reorganized the government. A lot of jobs at headquarters went away. We were lucky: there was a job back in California that the Rocket Scientist could go back to.
I was disconsolate. I moped all the way West, crying occasionally. I did not want to return to California. I was in tears as we crossed the state line, just as…
…”Hotel California” came on the radio. I couldn’t tell if fate was mocking us, or welcoming us back to the state. In either case, it was quite an eerie coincidence.
As it turned out, coming back was not the disaster I feared. The Rocket Scientist found work he loves, we found a church community, and The Red-Headed Menace came along. Maybe we couldn’t go to the Smithsonian, but we could go to Muir Woods, and the beach. My kids are thoroughly California: wherever he goes, the Not-So-Little Drummer Boy will sound vaguely like a surfer,* and The Red-Headed Menace and Railfan, although they don’t have a pronounced accent, have been shaped by the weird cauldron that is the Bay Area.
And me? I’m not a Californian, not really, but have resigned myself to living out my days here. The area has a great deal to commend it — see my road trip post. I’m close to the ocean, and if for some bizarre reason I ever want to go see snow, that’s three hours east. Three national parks are within half-a-day’s drive. And, quite frankly, I have been thoroughly spoiled by the climate. I don’t really want to deal with a Florida summer, even if I do miss thunderstorms. Not to mention the politics.
So, even if sometimes we want to check out, we haven’t left.
:*The summer after his freshman year in college, the NSLDB came home. We were having a conversation in which he used “like” in every sentence. “Can’t you go just one day without using “like”?” I asked in exasperation. “I can’t, Mom, I’ve tried,” replied. I threw up my hands and snapped “You sound just like a Californian!” Silence struck as all three kids looked at me in confusion. “I am a Californian, Mom,” James finally replied.
Bernie Sanders was right: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder should resign. (Or be impeached.)
Rachel Maddow was right: contrary to what Snyder said in his State of the State address, local government — elected local government, that is, not the emergency manager Snyder put in place — did not let the people of Flint down. Because an emergency manager was in place, elected officials could do nothing, other than try to raise media awareness, which they did.
Speaking of Maddow, she should get a Pulitzer for this. Really. She made this into a national story, as can be seen by the fact that she was given a public thank you by the mayor of Flint, as well as Michael Moore when he was on Chris Hayes’s show. (“I’d like to really thank Rachel Maddow, wherever she is.” “Um, right down the hall, actually.”)
If I had a daughter, I would want her to grow up just like Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha: ethical, stubborn, principled, and brilliant. Dr. Hanna-Attisha shows what you can accomplish if you care more about the truth than what people are going to say about you. the water expert, Marc Edwards, was likewise important in alerting authorities to the presence of the high lead levels, but he was from Virginia Tech. Dr.Hanna-Attisha, on the other hand, worked in Flint. It’s harder standing up to people in your own neck of the woods.
The mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, likewise performed heroically in the midst of this crisis: when the state government downplayed or ignored the problem, Weaver proclaimed a state of emergency, and went to the press. The state of emergency proclamation was essentially meaningless unless the state government acted, but it caught people’s attention.
The Michigan emergency manager statute undermines local elected government, replaces the whims of the governor for the will of the people, is undemocratic in the extreme, and needs to be repealed. Immediately.
The feds are making the right call in refusing to pony up to repair the Flint infrastructure. This was not a natural disaster. Not a hurricane or tornado or mudslide or other act of God. It was entirely manmade and entirely preventable. While having FEMA be involved in mitigating the immediate crisis makes sense, as a federal taxpayer I’ll be damned if I want to shell out for replacing Flint’s infrastructure that was damaged as a result of carelessness and greed, while Michigan sits on a budget surplus and with business tax cuts in place. This isn’t Sandy and this isn’t New Jersey. Let Michigan draw down its “rainy-day fund” and leave federal money for actual storms.
I woke up late Monday, as a result of starting a Lord of The Rings marathon on Sunday night. I glanced groggily out my window and saw blue! And sunshine! For the first time in what seemed like weeks, the weather was clear. I hastily grabbed my phone and checked the weather app. I dashed into the bathroom and took a quick shower, got dressed, and, phone in hand, headed for the living room.
“We’ve got two hours before the rain returns! I’m going to the beach — who’s with me?”
The two young men sitting on the couch showed a decided lack of enthusiasm. The Red-Headed Menace said he had was going over to a friend’s house to watch movies; Railfan said that he wasn’t interested in the beach but would take a long walk later. “Fine,” I said a little sniffily, “I’ll go by myself.” After dismissing the thought of going to Casa de Fruta or San Francisco, I headed towards Highway 17 and Santa Cruz.
It was a glorious morning. The air was clean and clear, the skies were empty except for a smattering of enough clouds to make it interesting. The normally harrowing (for me, at any rate) drive “over the hill” seemed like a cakewalk. I opted not to go to the actual beach:our family’s beach of choice, Natural Bridges, has a lagoon which swells during the rainy season. After the series of storms we have had the previous few weeks, it was sure have no easy access to the shoreline.
Instead, I drove to Lighthouse Point. I walked along the seawall, and looked over and watched the surfers. I’ve never surfed, but every so often it strike me that surfers seem to have a lot of fun. These guys were, certainly.
I am an ocean person to my core. I don’t have to stand in the waves, or feel the sand beneath my toes. I just need to hear them crashing, and smell the salt spray. I stood on the walkway happily watching the white foam stream the fine green and coarse brown seaweed back and forth, like hair discarded by some wayward mermaid.
What is it about a seashore? People were smiling and polite and seemed generally happy. (Of course, it could have been the effect of the first clear day in ages.) Even all the dogs seemed to be smiling. There was a profusion of them: Yorkies, a couple of boxers, a Norwich terrier, a Portuguese water dog, more boxers, a husky, an akita, and mutts in every size and color.
After walking around, looking at the ocean and watching the people, for a couple of hours or so, I noticed wisps of clouds coming. Worried that they might herald the return of the rain, I got in the Mustang and started to head home.
Except at some point before reaching Highway 17 I decided thatI wasn’t ready for my day’s adventure to be done, and that I would go home the long way, via, um, Casa de Fruta. Santa Cruz and Casa de Fruta are far enough away from each other that under normal circumstances had credit card charges shown up from both places on the same day I would have suspected fraud.
I drove south along Highway 1 to Watsonville. (Who knew it was so pretty south of Soquel?) Watsonville is an agricultural town, and far, far different from the suburban sprawl of Silicon Valley.
Somewhere south of Sequel I remembered that I was in KPIG country. KPIG is the best radio station in the universe. Full stop. They play an eclectic mix of Americana and rock, and while I was listening had a memorial set for Glen Frey, which included the best song that the Eagles did (“Desperado”) as well as the best song of Frey’s solo career (“Smuggler’s Blues”). Years ago, either here or in my LiveJournal, I wrote a list of my favorite phrases or lines from songs. The list included the last line from “Smuggler’s Blues”: “It’s the politics of contraband.”
It’s important to go through areas that you’ve never seen before. Even if you don’t stop and talk to anyone, it’s a reminder that there are people who live far different lives than the people I know. We forget that, a lot, in this country: each of us sees only the people who look like us or talk like us, and far too often think like us.
We lament the divisions between us, at the same time insisting that the answer is for the people on the other side of the trenches we have run across our body politic give up their cherished beliefs and take on ours. Does this mean I don’t think that what I believe is true? Not at all. It means that I need to remember that there is a reason they believe what they do beyond “they’re evil” or “they’re stupid.” It means I need to have humility, while at the same time calling out oppression and venality. It is okay to call white supremacists evil, and the would-be revolutionaries at the Malhuer wildlife refuge traitorous, or the Koch brothers and their millionaire ilk a danger to democracy, without demonizing the people who live in small cities and towns (or, for that matter, large cities) who might support conservative causes.
It is also good to be reminded just where food comes from. Passing through the fields of black plastic with the green tops of nascent strawberry plants poking through, and the rows of dark earth ready for seed, and the smell of garlic, the odor of which spreads out for five miles around the Christopher Ranch processing plant, made me grateful not only for food, but for all the people who work growing it. (There was also the Martinelli’s plant, which doesn’t smell and which also unfortunately doesn’t have an outlet store that I could see.)
Living in Northern California gives you a chance to see agriculture at close hand. Many times the crops we place ourselves in a position to see are the grapes of Napa and Sonoma when we take visiting family members on winery tours, or the cows and fruit trees we zoom by on I-5 headed down to L.A. Perhaps if we head down the down the coast from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz we see the artichokes.
We grow an insane amount the country’s produce: California is the largest producer of 77 different crops, including providing more than 99% of the artichokes, walnuts, grapes and raisins, sweet rice, figs, and 95% of garlic, plums, and peaches. Too often we take it for granted. (The drought poses not merely a regional but a national problem. If California can’t grow its crops, America faces serious nutritional problems.)
After I hit CA 152, I drove past newly reinvigorated wetlands. The past few years, the low places had been dry; weeks of off-and-on rain had made shallow pools with waterfowl paddling in them. For all its crazy-making, the El-Nino created storms are making life a bit easier for the birds.
All the rain is turning the hills jade and emerald. Add the cows grazing on the hillsides, and you could almost put it on a calendar. The horses and goats closer to the road were less picturesque but in their own way no less charming.
Casa de Fruta grew out of a fruit stand on the route between the Bay Area and I-5. The original fruit stand still stands, but now it is joined by Casa de Sweets, and Casa de Choo-Choo, and Casa de Gasoline (I’m not sure if the gas station is really called that, but it wouldn’t surprise me.) They have peacocks for toddlers to chase, and a carousel, and a train, and really excellent low-sugar dried pineapple. (Sadly, they no longer seem to carry the dried apricots dipped in chocolate.* Sticky, but wonderful.) Families stop here so their kids can play, and tour buses stop here on their way west.
See? Peacocks… toddlers…
I go to Casa de Fruta frequently, not because I need produce that I can’t buy at my local Safeway but because I love the drive. Going to Casa de Fruta is a small rebellion: a place that there is no reason for me to be, to buy things I don’t need. It’s a very silly, and who doesn’t need silly sometimes?
Casa de Carousel
I also love carousels. I have seen a lot of them over the years: Great America’s, the King Arthur’s Carousel at both Disney World and Disneyland, the carousel on the Mall in DC, and, best of all, the beautiful carousel at Glen Echo Park in Maryland. Years ago I used to take the Not-So-Little Drummer Boy to Glen Echo. It is a very special memory for me from when the now grown man was a very small boy.
The Casa de Fruta carousel has small horses, but makes up for that by being two story, and having real horsehair tails (!). It also has a twirling seat (like the Teacups but without the handles). Having decided the last time I was at an amusement park that I was too old to enjoy making myself severely nauseous, that’s not a point in its favor, although I imagine it might be for someone younger.
When it was time to go, I flirted briefly with the idea of heading east to Santa Nella and eating at Pea Soup Andersen’s. I decided against that, and then thought about heading south. I could have gone down to 25 and hit San Juan Bautista and Pinnacles. But I really needed to go home.
I turned northward with a sigh. I knew I should get back home and make dinner, and clean the kitchen, and do all the mundane things one needs to do everyday. I had been lucky: the good weather had held all day, in spite of the forecasts.
I went home, but I didn’t want to. The lure of the open road is strong as the running tide for me. I’m glad I was able to indulge it for a day.
*It has been a Hanukkah tradition for me to drive the hour and a half to Casa de Fruta to get the chocolate-dipped apricots for the Resident Shrink, one for each night. I don’t know what I’m going to do next year, get the humongous caramel-pecan turtles, maybe.
Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat included a very lovely Terry Pratchett shout out in Sherlock: The Abominable Bride. When Sherlock is tossing out names for the case, he suggests “The Adventure of the Invisible Army? The League of Furies? The Monstrous Regiment?”
Okay, okay. I know that Monstrous Regiment of Women is the title of a Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel by Laurie R. King, and before that “A First Blast Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” is a work of political philosophy by sixteenth-century reformer John Knox, but I still think Moffat and Gatiss were referencing the late Sir Terry.
I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go
And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward
Whithersoever they blow
“Man of La Mancha,” from Man of La Mancha, lyrics by Joe Darien
It is all Cristopher’s fault.
In January 2006, my friend Cristopher had a blog. Because Cristopher is erudite and thoughtful, he wrote interesting and well-reasoned posts. And, naturally, I wanted to comment on what he wrote. One problem: in order to comment, you had to fill out a CAPTCHA.
I hate CAPTCHAs with the fiery heat of a thousand suns. I have a lot of trouble reading them, and I find the audible ones amazingly irritating. This may mean I’m a robot, possibly. In any case, I was under the (mistaken) impression that if I got a Blogspot (later Blogger) account I would be able to comment without decoding those damn blurry letters.
So, on January 16, 2006, I signed up for a Blogspot blog. It a fit of whimsy, more or less, I named it after lines in a song from a musical about one of my favorite literary characters. I chase windmills myself, sometimes.
I was wrong about the CAPTCHAs. I still had to cope with that ridiculous sloppy text. In any case, I found myself with a blog. I had a Livejournal* already — what was I going to use this for? My Livejournal was filled with both day-to-day entries and longer, more formal, thought pieces. I intended to use the new blog to do the latter and maintain the LiveJournal for the first.
For a long time, that’s what I did. Even when I wrote about intensely personal issues, such as my struggle with postpartum psychosis, I wrote more thoughtfully, more precisely, than I would for a hurriedly dashed-off LJ post.
Over time, this blog morphed into something else. Facebook took over most of the day-to-day posts, but my writing here became sometimes looser, less structured. My LiveJournal fell by the wayside, mostly due to the time that it took and that most of my friends were on Facebook by that time. (I find this to be a shame: there are things I was comfortable sharing on LJ that I find appropriate for neither here or Facebook. Believe it or not, though, there are large portions of my life that I would share on LiveJournal that I will not here.)
This blog became about me, and the world viewed through my eyes.
I like to think I have a pretty interesting view of the world. I have enjoyed writing about politics, and history, and my life. I have also, I believe, helped make a very small difference in the world. I have had posts that people have sent me email thanking me for writing. The more “shameful” parts of my life I talk about openly, because I think that society often disdains people who struggle with mental illness or “invisible” disabilities such as fibromyalgia or who have been subject to sexual assault. Coming out, for whatever the issue is, helps people who might otherwise be silent to say “I’m okay. Whatever it is does not make me a lesser person.”
I have also informed: at one point, my blog was the top hit for people looking for “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the heartbreaking poem by Wilfred Owen. I had written a post about the poem — including it in its entirety — and how it resonated with me as we were stuck in the quagmire of the Iraq war. I have also written about Alice Paul and the women of the Occaquan workhouse, and Harry Burn and the ratification of the 19th Amendment in Tennessee. The posts are not there any more, but for the 2006 and 2008 elections I had posts listing the registration deadline, deadline to request absentee ballots, and voter’s rights for every state in the country. You can now find that information in one place online, but you could not then.
My life has changed so much in ten years. Since I started this blog, I have seen my sons grow to adulthood. I have gone from Little League and marching band to texts from Brooklyn and plans for UC Davis and Sacramento City College. The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy is gone, Railman and the Red-Headed Menace will be next year. As happy as I am for them, I miss them, and look wistfully back on their childhood.
I have done work that I would never have expected. But with the boys grown and away (or soon to be), I feel as though I have been involuntarily retired from my life’s work. Opening that next chapter has been more difficult than I thought it would be.
Through it all, The Wild Winds of Fortune has been here.
It nearly died in 2009: I only had five posts the entire year. Yet in 2010 I found myself with renewed interest in documenting the world as I saw it. I am not convinced my writing improved; if anything, I think it was better the first year. In early 2013, I moved from Blogger (owned by Google) to WordPress. Blogger had an easier interface, and offered more options for customization, but, well, it was Google. In 2012, there had been some cases of Google freezing people’s accounts for minor TOS violations, and even though I knew it was unlikely I would violate their TOS, I didn’t want them to have the ability to take my blog away.
I am under no illusions as to my reach here. As I have explained to people, I am not a small fish in a big pond; I am krill in the Pacific. Still… ten years. That’s something.
I’m looking forward to what the next ten years will bring.
*Actually, at that point, I had four Livejournals.
New Year’s Eve the Rocket Scientist and I went to one of our favorite restaurants, Iberia, in Menlo Park, California, for the last time. We have been to Iberia dozens of times over the years, but this time we were there to say goodbye.
Iberia closed on New Year’s Day, a victim of the insane Silicon Valley and Peninsula real estate market. The land will be turned into yet another bland office park or corporate campus.
The owner went around and said goodbye to all the frequent patrons who crowded the place their last night. He stopped and said goodbye to us, and I wanted to tell him just how much his restaurant meant to me, but there wasn’t time. He is going to open a new restaurant in Belmont further up the peninsula, but it will be smaller with a simpler menu. I have no doubt that the food will be great, but it won’t be Iberia.
I am still trying to wrap my head around “Iberia is closed.”
No more tapas in the bar. No more deviled dates that I would sell my firstborn for, no little warm cheese scones, no juicy shrimp swimming in red pepper and garlic, no wonderful gazpacho, no sangria that tasted like good red wine with some fruit juice rather than fruit juice cut with red wine.
No more paella.
No more snuggling into the leather armchairs while watching the fire across the room. No more confidences shared over the small tables in the womb-like wooden booths. No more lounging on the patio in hot weather.
Iberia was the first place I tasted Spanish food, a good year before I went to Spain for the first time. Iberia might have been the place I started falling in love with my favorite country outside my own. A country’s cuisine offers a sight into its soul, and Spain is no exception.
Iberia was our restaurant of last resort; the place to go when you look at each other and say, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” The place to go when you needed somewhere comforting because of all the crap hitting the fan. The place to go when you were so tired you didn’t want to think about what was on the menu, but could just order what you wanted.
The place to go to have serious talks about what was going on in our lives.
Restaurants become markers for our psyches. Memories tie themselves to food and to place — tapas at Iberia, the Brussel sprouts at Alexander’s in Cupertino, knishes at Nathan’s, ice cream with mix-ins at Steve’s (the original Somerville location, where a group of juniors took a green Wellesley freshman on a cold evening in February), the grouper sandwiches at the Hurricane on St. Pete Beach, the insanely good Smoke burger with duck fat fries at Alewife in Baltimore — and weave themselves into the fabric of our being. I look at some of those names and smile, and look at others and sigh.
I will miss Iberia greatly. I don’t know what I will replace it with.
In a few weeks, I will celebrate the ten-year anniversary of this blog. I was thinking go putting together some of my posts together into a .pdf. And what I’d like to know is, are there any posts that you remember particularly vividly? (I’m already including the Echidna Quest story, as well as “Gold and Darkness,” one of my space posts.)
Just leave a comment. If you don’t remember the title, just tell me the subject.
Thanks.
As I mentioned in June, I had a bout of “post-viral” encephalitis that affected my memory and cognition. It’s been a long slog back, and it seems like the better I get the longer it seems I have to go. Certain things remain hard, such as driving directions, and my memory has holes sometimes. The most disconcerting problem is that sometimes my facility with words deserts me. I was a lawyer: lawyers live by words. It’s been scary. But as I said, I’m getting better all the time, and am much better than I was in the summer.
I am a fan of Bejeweled, particularly on my phone. It’s not like an addiction — I can quit any time I want to. Or so I keep telling myself. I have tried going cold turkey to no success, and substituting Tetris, but I keep finding myself sitting in the car waiting for someone, and I will whip out my iPhone and make those pretty jewels drop into place.
Bejeweled is, like some things, more difficult these days. It takes longer to see the patterns. Where before I could swipe left, right, up or down (two more directions than Tinder!) in the blink of an eye without thinking, now I have to look carefully and ponder. It has slowed down my game.
But it has made me a much better player. I rack up more hypercubes. I see patterns developing two or three steps ahead. I am less likely to find myself with only one or two options on the board, and I am cognizant of all the possible plays, not simply the one I’m making.
Recently, I kept a game going for several weeks, playing here and there while waiting for people, in the line at the Walgreen’s pharmacy (or waiting for them to fill a prescription), before going to bed, etc. My final score?
Over 30 million. It’s a bizarre little accomplishment, and I am inordinately proud of it.
I wonder how much the slowing down and pondering is showing up elsewhere in my life, and whether it will change my decision-making for the better. Something to, erm, ponder, at least.
Here’s hoping.
Consequences of knocking a stoneware vase from the hutch onto my foot this morning:
Pro: The vase, which was handmade by an artisan in Mississippi, not easily replaceable, and a gift from my sister, did not break.
Con: the middle toe on my left foot* has turned various shades of purple. Come to think of it, the colors of my toe match the colors of the irises on the vase.
All in all, it’s a wash.
*Thank heavens it was my left foot: I need my right to drive.
Obama showed by his new executive orders on gun control that he is no longer interested in dealing with a recalcitrant and do-nothing Republican Congress. This, finally, is the leadership many of us who voted for him have wanted to see ever since he took office. And the cooler-than-cool President has shown anger (after the Roseburg shooting) and sadness to the point of tears (while introducing his new gun control program). In other words, he has shown himself to be human. Good.
Bravo for Obama for pointing out that most of the gun violence is not the result of mass shootings. “And, by the way, this happens in Chicago every day” recognizes the horribly widespread nature of the problem. The statement got a well-deserved ovation.
Bravo also to including increased mental health funding, but not making that the main focus of the program. Bravo for recognizing that the mentally ill are only part of the problem.
I’m sure I will find myself restating Obama’s “Second Amendment rights are important, but so are the rights to life, liberty, and happiness” a lot over the next few weeks.
I spent time talking gun control issues (among other things) with The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy on our way to the airport after his way-too-short visit home for Christmas.* Talking politics with my kids is so much fun, especially since they have different viewpoints (the NSLDB lines up roughly with me, Railman is a bit more conservative, and The Red-Headed Menace is more liberal, to the point of being radical). Is this weird? One nice side effect is that my kids vote, and sometimes nag their friends to vote as well. Representative democracy: it’s contagious.
In other news, Donald Trump has finally gotten around to questioning whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be president. After all, Trump led the birther charge against Obama, who had an American mother and was born in Hawaii, why not against the son of an American mother and a Cuban father born in Canada? I am interested to see if the Tea Partiers who were so eager to slam Obama will follow Trump down this road. I really doubt it: Cruz is as extreme as the Donald, perhaps more so. Cruz is just quieter.
You have to love Cruz’s response: he posted the clip of Fonzie jumping the shark on Happy Days. I have always considered Cruz to be humorless but it appears that I’m wrong. Many of us felt the Donald’s campaign jumped the shark some time ago, but not in a humorous way.
In a way, Cruz showing humor makes his hard-line stance on reproductive issues and gay rights seem more extreme. I know it is a fault to assume one’s political opponents are cartoons not people, but it’s understandable.
Cruz also likes to quote from The Princess Bride. Mandy Patinkin (“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to die.”) takes exception to this.
Everyone on my side of the fence (aisle no longer seems appropriate) has been comparing the treatment of the Oregon seditionists (taking over government property really is nothing other than sedition) with the Ferguson and Baltimore protesters. While I agree that it highlights a problem with racist disparity in treatment, I feel the need to point out the obvious: this is a federal problem, to be dealt with by federal law enforcement. Most of the overreaction to protesters in Ferguson and elsewhere came at the hands of the local, county, and state police. The feds should have stepped in to stop the locals, but that’s a slightly different matter.
The analogy to the situation on Oregon that fits most closely is not Ferguson, but the 1973 AIM standoff at Wounded Knee. And even that is inexact, given the internal politics of the Oglala. Although both involved the feds, neither Ruby Ridge nor Waco is apposite: those took place on private property. And at Waco, children were in danger.
The Bundys (Cliven and his offspring) say they want the federal government to give up federal property to local, state, and private control. Given that neither the locals (municipal and county) nor the state want them there, I think it’s clear that what they want is the federal government to give federal land to already existing landowners, namely them. I wonder what they would think if a bunch of Mexican-Americans or African-Americans came West to claim land? Actually, I think I can pretty well guess.
The government has already ceded a lot of property to private citizens: grazing rights on federal lands go for less than $2 an acre, as opposed to $15 on the private market. Similarly, mineral and timber rights on federal lands are a fraction of what they go for elsewhere. (And let’s not get into water, although water is less undervalued than some other commodities.) These people are just freaking greedy, is all.
Roy Moore is at it again: the man who refused to take down the Ten Commandments from the statehouse, and who argued in 2002 that sexual preference would be the determining factor in child-custody disputes, former World Net Daily columnist, who has argued that Muslims should be ineligible for elected office, who opposed removal of references to poll taxes and separate schools for “whites and colored children” from the state constitution, has ordered state judges to refuse to issue same-sex marriage certificates. That the voters of Alabama re-elected him as Chief Justice after he had been removed from that position makes me think twice before ever visiting Alabama.
I have often thought that elected officials should have to pass an exam about the Constitution before taking office. That goes in spades for judges.
Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson has announced a Libertarian run for President. He claims that since he is “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” he’ll pull from both sides. He’s wrong: he might pull some Republicans, although many will be put off by that “socially liberal” business. (Not to mention that he heads up a marijuana-based business.) The Democratic primary is looking to be a referendum on economic issues, specifically on income equality, and I can’t see a “fiscal conservative” gaining much traction. (What the hell is a “fiscal conservative” anyway? I try not to cynically think of it as shorthand for “don’t raise my taxes or have any business regulation whatsoever and to hell with poor people, who are probably poor because they’re lazy and come from broken homes, or workers, oh and let’s get rid of unions while we’re at it,” but I’ve seen too many “fiscal conservatives” who believe just that.
Besides, Democrats have learned from the 2000 debacle. Okay, I sincerely hope that Democrats have learned from the 2000 debacle. Of course, we’re Democrats. To quote Will Rogers, “I belong to no organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Given the bizarre nature of the Republican primary, there is an outside chance that the California primary in June might actually be relevant in the presidential race. That hasn’t happened in several election cycles. It would be nice to be something other than a presidential afterthought.
Only three weeks until the Iowa caucuses. Then we’re off and running.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee………..
*Any visit by him is definitionally way too short. I love that kid.
One of the advantages of being more mature older is that it’s easier to resist the temptation to drink to excess on New Year’s Eve. Besides, the champagne wasn’t that good. Far too dry for my tastes. The half-bottle of Shiraz I killed this afternoon, however, was just up my proverbial alley.
Reduced-price Christmas candy at Walgreen’s poses a much more serious threat to my long-term well-being than Kirkland champagne. Hey, Turtles are 70% off!
I can’t say that I am looking forward to 2016, except with a vague sense of dread. 2014 and 2015 were terrible; I’m worried about what could happen next. The upcoming elections don’t make things much better, even though I usually enjoy the quadrennial combination circus and shouting match that is the presidential election process.
I can hardly wait until I never have to hear the name “Donald Trump” again. I don’t think that will happen until after the election — even when he loses the nomination, I’m sure he will have a lot of probably offensive things to say and there will be a lot of media outlets just willing to give him the attention. In fact, I may be hearing the name Donald Trump until he dies, which is a terrible thought.
Pat Greene: the sole Martin O’Malley supporter. O’Malley threads the needle between Clinton’s corporatism and Bernie’s socialism. (Hey, not my term — the man used it for thirty years.) He is also the youngest candidate. Not that Clinton and Bernie are not healthy, but Bernie will be 75 when the general election hits, and Hilary will be 69. O’Malley, on the other hand, is 52. I want someone who can go the entire eight years in a job that ages people tremendously. Not only is O’Malley younger (a fact he alluded to in the last debate, only to get booed), he is in terrific shape.
Also, O’Malley fronts a folk-rock band, and lists it on the home page of his website. How cool is that?
My support for O’Malley notwithstanding, I do love Bernie Sanders. He has been the sharpest critic of toxic American capitalism for years now, at least until Elizabeth Warren came along. Also, just by being in the race, Bernie has forced the political conversation in the Democratic party to shift leftward, and deal with economic justice issues. Bravo, sir, bravo.
In more personal news, I received a lot of nifty things for Christmas, from the ridiculous (The Mallet of Loving Correction by John Scalzi) to the sublime (a case of Gosling’s Ginger Beer). I loved all of them, but my favorite was a set of Bluetooth wireless headphones. I can dance around my kitchen without risking pulling my computer onto the floor. Of course, I still have to wait until everyone is out of the house to do that.
The Force awakening is one thing; the Abbey closing is another. As all good Masterpiece geeks know, Downton Abbey ends after this upcoming season (Season 6). Rats. What am I going to do without my Lady Violet quips to sustain me when I’m faced with fools?
Mythbusters also concludes its run with its upcoming season. I may need to do a special “things I learned from Mythbusters” post. In the ads for the final season, Adam asks Jamie what he thinks they’ll be remembered for, and Jamie answers “Blowing crap up.” Yeah, pretty much.
As far as Star Wars goes, it’s wonderful. Full stop. No, I am not going to debate this with all the nerds who can recite every line of a New Hope, or who know exactly how many stormtroopers were on the replacement Death Star in Return of the Jedi. The Force Awakens is Star Wars for adults.
The Doctor Who Christmas special had River Song in it. My favorite Doctor with my favorite non-Doctor character. (No, she’s not a companion. Hush.) I loved it. Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston have much better chemistry than Kingston ever had with Matt Smith.
The preceding three comments, as well as three Scalzi books for Christmas (all of which were requested), make me wonder if I might be turning into a…. fan. You know, one of those people. Next thing you know, I’ll be saving up to go to Comic Con. Now that you mention it, though, Comic Con does look like a lot of fun.
For everyone who has seen Sherlock: The Abominable Bride… WHAT THE HELL?????????? For everyone else, ignore the previous comment. For those intending to see it who haven’t yet, heh-heh-heh-heh.
My current media crush is Adam Driver. Good Lord, the man is gorgeous. He’s also a Marine. From Leatherneck to Sith Lord-in-training: who says the military doesn’t provide the opportunity for advancement?
Given that the Bucs sucked once again this year, I’m relieved that the NFL season is over. I am also having misgivings about watching football now, given the concussion issue. While I have not seen the Will Smith movie, I both read the original reporting in Sports Illustrated and watched the Frontline show about it. I do not know if I can in good conscience follow a sport that exacts such a terrible toll on its participants, any more than I can follow boxing. The athletes may be engaging in the sport voluntarily; that does not mean that I have to abet them or the NFL.
Yes, I know that there are people who feel that way about horse racing.
Sam Smith: the male Adele.
IMDb does one thing better than anywhere else, even Wikipedia: answer the “Where in the world have I seen that actor’s face?” For example, it told me that Domnhall Gleeson, of whom I thought “I’ve seen that guy somewhere before” every time be came on screen in SW:TFA, played Bill Weasley in the last two Harry Potter movies.
On a topic other than pop culture: in my ongoing job search, I have made the executive (ha!) decision to unsubscribe from any job listing service that lists UberX as a job opportunity more than once, ever, unless it is for an actual hourly or salaried position (not that I’d take a job with them — aside from my opinion of the company, they’re in San Francisco). Ditto with any firm that has more than one job listing offered which is not in my geographical area. No, I don’t want to move to Wasilla, Alaska. [Insert Sarah Palin joke here.] I have unsubscribed from about a half-dozen so far. They keep multiplying like rabbits, though: I despair of every getting my Work account email box from receiving less than thirty emails a day from firms. It would be one thing if most of what they send me were good matches, but they’re not. I’ve tweaked my settings, but I think keywords in my resume must be tripping something. (And no, I don’t want to do phone sales, although I would be willing to do tech support.)
“Muse” is not an actual job description. Nor is “sage.” I’m still holding out for “philosopher king,” though.
I don’t have much hope.
[Spoilers, more or less.]
Having seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens more than once* now, I can honestly say I like it. A lot. It’s the movie A New Hope should have been: more interesting plot, better acting**, and much, much better dialogue. It also features a love story between older adults, which you never see in blockbusters.
I think I have a good grip on what’s going on, but I still have questions. Namely:
Is it me, or does everyone speak droid now? How did that happen?
How come the communicators used on Jakku look like mid-90s cell phones, complete with antenna stub?
Why does the Resistance, with all its advanced technology, use data storage that looks suspiciously like a USB flash drive?
Why doesn’t BB-8 get its ball stuck when traveling through sand or leaves? Doesn’t all that grit damage it?
How come a sanitation worker ended up being trained as a stormtrooper? Was it because Finn met the height requirement?
Do horned melon and romanesco broccoli flourish everywhere in the universe, or were they imported?
What the hell is a nerf-herder? Are they licensed by Hasbro?
Where can I get that purple dress that Leia wore when she said goodbye to Rey? And can I borrow the hairstylist that she has to carry everywhere with her to get those intricate styles?
Exactly how many people put in cameos for this movie?
Will I need to sign up for HBO to get my Adam Driver fix?
Which stormtrooper was played by Daniel Craig?
And, most pressing:
Who’s up to see it again? Maybe in IMAX this time?
You buy the popcorn, I’ll bring the Junior Mints. It’ll be fun.
*Four times, to be exact.
**The new actors are very good, and the returning actors are very much better than they were in the original. Part of this is that they are simply better actors now, but it’s also a function of better writing. Mark Hamill wordlessly creates more genuine emotion in the last two minutes of The Force Awakens than he did in all of A New Hope.
I would say that I have learned that making New Year’s resolutions is a fool’s game, except I do make them, every year. This year I want to set objectives, not make resolutions, in the hope that somehow, some way, I’ll actually do some of them. Or work on them, at least. Therefore, in no particular order, thirteen objectives for the New Year:
And, most importantly to me, number 13:
Attempt to reconnect to people who I care about but from whom I have seemingly drifted away. The last two years have been hard, and I have learned that the future is uncertain, and that people matter. There are a lot of people that I have lost sight of that I want back in my life.
So, that’s my baker’s dozen. Some are more important to me than others (the last six more so than the first seven, for example) but if I am able to make good progress on these goals I think I will be happier and, just as importantly to me, make others happier as well.
I wish all of you the best of luck in following whatever resolutions or goals you have set for yourselves this year, and in any case, I wish you
A Happy and Peaceful New Year.
Tamir Rice was twelve.
Twelve.
He was playing with a pellet gun. My kids have played with toy guns: not pellet guns, but water pistols and Nerf guns. They are brightly colored, but at least a few of them are shaped like guns, and in the twilight could be mistaken as such. At least, if you didn’t bother to stop and look at them, which the cops who murdered Tamir clearly didn’t.
Twelve.
When my sons would go to the park with their water pistols or Nerf guns, it never occurred to me that they might be gunned down where they stood by cops who didn’t bother to actually make sure they were a threat. Who didn’t bother to render first aid as they bled out. Who tackled their sister when she tried to help, or at least hold them as they died.
Twelve.
Ohio is an open carry state: there are grown men who wander around proudly exercising their Second Amendment right to be as scary as possible. Grown white men. Why are they not decrying a boy shot simply for appearing to do the same? Oh, right. He was black. The Second Amendment doesn’t apply to those people.
Twelve.
My sons are adults, now. Unlike me, Tamir Rice’s mother will never get to see him grow up, graduate high school and perhaps college, settle down and have a family. Instead she will have to live with the horror of his violent and senseless death. None of us is vouchsafed the future of our children, but we should at least be able to sleep at night without worrying that they could be killed by callous cops.
Tamir Rice was twelve. That he will not get any older, and that no one will be brought to justice for his death, is an indictment of a system which holds the lives of young black men as being of little importance. And on us, as a nation, that we watch this evil pattern repeated time after time after time and yet somehow cannot manage to change a damned thing. That we find excuses for the inexcusable.
Tamir Rice was twelve.
May God bring peace to his family, and have mercy on the rest of us.
The Wild Winds of Fortune 