Reality

Posted Yesterday, under appreciation, compassion, health, love, mindfulness, perspective, politics, public schools, Uncategorized
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I’ve been having more and more difficulty writing this column. I have only a few ideas, I feel like I’ve worn them out, and ideas don’t interest me much anymore.

I can’t concentrate. I could say stuff about the Presidential campaigns and all of that, or medical cannabis or nuclear power or our local goofs or even meditation or love or tolerance or consciousness or forgiveness, except when I try to formulate a thought, let alone a sentence, I remember how sick Janice is. Sick doesn’t begin to describe her experience.

At the cancer clinic in Arizona I was with her most of the time. During our second stay I’d sometimes find something to do—often involving Thai food or a thrift store—while she was getting some therapy or other, but mostly I was with her. I just wanted to be there—and still do—although there’s precious little I can do to help her and nothing I can do to make a big difference. I can’t fix her. I’ve never felt more helpless than I do now. I can’t do shit.

Well, not exactly. I can drive her around and carry stuff and run errands and wash dishes and make her alkalizing juice and flush her IV and tell her that I love her, so I do. Big deal. What she needs is a miracle. I’m working on one.

I’ve heard that serious illness can be a blessing. I know that blessings can have some of the best disguises, so I suppose that’s possible. Janice’s illness has brought us closer together, and that’s a good thing. It has also made most quotidian bothers fade into the background. I even don’t think nearly so much about what my sons want as I used to. They weren’t asking me to think about them anyway, and letting them fend for themselves means I assign myself fewer tasks, Janice gets more of my limited energy, and they grow up faster. Nice.

One cliché I’ve verified is that life-threatening illness clears up what’s important and what isn’t. That’s one reason I don’t pay much attention to politics anymore. I don’t care who wins the Presidential election, because there’s not much difference between Obama and Romney anyway, and the clueless public schools have kept most of us ignorant enough to go along with whatever the big boys want for years to come. Politics is just a story. Reality is at home.

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Joshua Foer on memory

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Right speech

Posted 2 weeks ago, under judgment, kindness, perspective, tolerance, Uncategorized
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Now and then I get an urge to pay attention to politics. I used to read about politics and comment on political issues. I’ve been to Chico Silly Council meetings, and once I even went to a meeting of the Butte County Board of Ignoramuses. My problem is that I think of them as the Silly Council and the Board of Ignoramuses, and my experience of them alters my perception of them.

Wikipedia says right speech is “Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter.” I’ve been looking for a way to keep to right speech and talk about politics at the same time. I’m still looking. I’m sure it can be done. I’ve met a few City Council members, and they seem like decent people, just maybe afraid of more things than is good for them and trying to satisfy a lot of people at the same time, which isn’t good for anybody.

I’ve been trying to like Obama—I really have—but this embrace of super PACs after dissing them specifically not all that long ago was yet another last straw. The sole remaining honorable Chicago politician died, I think, in the nineties, and I’ve never expected much from Obama, although I admit I did expect something. Torture, domestic spying, any underhanded government policy is fine with him. What bill of rights?

I still just barely manage to think Barack Obama may be a decent person. If I were an old-fashioned, judgmental kind of guy, I might, if I were also both uncharitable and folksy, say Obama warn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. I may be all those things but I won’t say it anyway, because I don’t think that’s right speech. Nate, a local political analyst, says Obama is the least worst candidate, and he may be right.

The Republican wannabes are a disheartening lot, though not quite beneath contempt. Robert Williams and I came to blows over the 1956 Presidential race, and although I won my enthusiasm has waned steadily ever since. Based on everything I’ve seen and heard, a lot of people in the United States are ignorant, quite a few are stupid, and several of the dummies are frequently on television. Even if that’s true, I don’t know that it’s right speech. Even if it’s not abusive or divisive, it’s still idle chatter.

Whenever I read or hear about some political development or discussion, I can often think of a lot of things to say or write about it, and all of it is wrong speech—true, apt, and no help at all. I’m sure all I need is practice, for which there are fortunately myriad opportunities.

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Helen Caldicott

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Jokes

Posted 3 weeks ago, under Uncategorized
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Over a month ago I asked you for jokes you personally recommend, and how did you respond? With no jokes, that’s how, unless you’re S.C. in Red Bluff, who sent me several cut out from newspapers. In the words of the immortal Hank Kingsley, get ready to have a good time. I’ve edited all of them.

This first one reminds me of the story about the Allies after the second world war deciding that anything that the Axis had done and the Allies hadn’t was illegal and so inventing the Nuremberg trials: A fellow passing through a small town noticed many bull’s eyes with a single hole right in the center. They were on buildings and fences and telephone poles. He asked a policeman who the sharpshooter was, and the cop pointed to a politician crossing the street toward them. The traveler asked the politician, “This is the best marksmanship I’ve ever seen! How did you get to be so accurate? The politician said, “It’s easy—I shoot first and then draw the circles.”

“If lawyers are disbarred and clergy defrocked, then it follows that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed.” Of course it does.

I have laughed at blonde jokes, although I suppose they’re vicious slurs on the blonde community. I don’t think I’ve actually known many blondes—or blonds, either—and I don’t expect them to be dimwits. For now I’ve made the protagonist in the next rib tickler a politician. “How do make a politician’s eyes light up? Shine a flashlight in his ear.” Nyuk, nyuk.

“I have good news and bad news,” the defense lawyer said. “What’s the bad news?” “Your blood matches the DNA found at the crime scene,” “What’s the good news?” “Your cholesterol is down to 140.”

This one is paraphrased from the Ozarks Christian News: A man sees a sign on the side of the road—“Talking dog fer sale.” He pulls over, and a beautiful dog bounds up to the fence, wagging its tail and grinning. The man asks, “You talk?” The dog responds, “Yep, since I was a pup. I worked under cover for years for the CIA and the FBI. No one suspected a canine spy, and I was extremely successful. Now I’ve retired out here with my bitch, just taking it easy.”

Just then the dog’s owner comes over and says, “Ten dollars, take him or leave him.” The man says, “Ten dollars! That’s all?” The owner says, “Yeah, he’s an awful liar—he’s never been out of the yard.”

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Mt. Moriah Baptist Church

Posted 4 weeks ago, under Uncategorized, video
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You’rs

Posted 5 weeks ago, under Uncategorized
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I’ve used PayPal for five or six years. It was easy to set up the account and easy to use it afterward, and now I make a few recurring donations that way. As one of the world’s worst bean counters, I only recently discovered that what I thought was a monthly contribution to my local art gallery was actually two identical contributions. I like them and all, else I wouldn’t be giving them money, but I’d been ponying up twice as much as I’d planned since last summer.

Bless ’em and God speed, but it was time to cancel one of those transactions. The last time I wanted to stop an automatic payment from my checking account, I had to close the account. I couldn’t just change my mind. I thought PayPal™ would be a snap.

Once on the PayPal site and in my account, I looked at my options. Under “Payments” the last choice was “Cancel a payment,” and under “Cancel a payment” I picked “How to cancel a recurring payment,” since that was precisely what I wanted to do. Well, it didn’t work, and “Help” wasn’t very helpful.

I eventually figured out how to cancel the duplicate payment, and the whole deal reminded me that several people think the move to electronic money is convenient and all—I write about a check a month now and have little need for cash—and coincidentally makes it laughably simple for you-know-who to shut off anybody’s money, Wikileaks’s, for example, or yours.

Speaking of yours, and your and you’re, I think the whole brouhaha in my head is about to dissipate. I’ve been gritting my tooth whenever I’d hear someone pronounce “you’re” like “yore” instead of like “yoor”partly because it was wrong and mostly because I also think that the pernicious spread of misused your and near absence of a grammatical you’re are caused by poor spellers listening to ignoramuses mispronounce words and then sounding out what they heard. No good can come of “your” meaning “you are.”

I’m such a fogy. I love new words and usages, but haven’t found a way to get behind a loss of precision. It’s like losing a color from a painter’s palette.

At a restaurant recently I saw displayed on the wall an autographed plate, and the signer had handwritten you’rs, a version unique in my experience. The signature was illegible, but the restaurant was in Maricopa County, Arizona. Take heed. I once heard a band do a song in which You’re occurred what seemed like upwards of 4 bazillion times, and invariably sounded like Yore. Nice people, too.

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Mumford & Sons

Posted April 15, 2012, under video
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Thich Nhat Hanh on mindful consumption

Posted April 1, 2012, under anger, consciousness, corporate media, fear, health, mindfulness, Uncategorized, video
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Receiving

Posted March 22, 2012, under appreciation, compassion, expectation, health, health care, materialism, stuff, Uncategorized
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I’ve been crying rather a lot lately, partly out of gratitude. I’m grateful for the many people, maybe you, who have given money for my wife’s cancer treatment. I’m also astounded, humbled, and maybe flummoxed. I know that people are essentially good and can manage our own affairs reasonably well without threat of violence, and still if I think about your compassion and generosity I end up slack-jawed at the awesomeness of you. Then I cry.

Even people I’d never heard of have given us money, sometimes hundreds of dollars. The biggest donors are people we don’t know. A guy I barely know handed me a C-note in the co-op, just put it in my hand, to help pay for Janice’s treatment. That time I got to the parking lot before I cried.

Some years ago, trying to raise money for an alternative newspaper, I happened to take part in a meeting with a billionaire. His office was obvious, and he opened with a story about how when his father had been sick recently he’d simply hired a plane and had the old man flown out to the best place on the continent for treating the old man’s ailment. Those of us with experience with the obscenely rich were duly impressed with this guy’s selfless generosity toward his also-rich father’s health care. The three of us were there begging for chump change, and he was bragging about his wealth like we might have missed it.

And I want to do the same for Janice, spare no expense, just keep doing what’s working and I’ll take care of it, and I know that I can’t take care of squat. Sometimes that makes me cry, too, that after a lifetime of trying to accumulate more and better stuff, I don’t have much. Part of me feels responsible and a failure, for a little while anyway, for not having been better at wage slavery or even capitalism—more cause for weeping.

So far the hardest part is learning to receive the gifts of the universe, this time obviously routed through you, and also more commonly and subtly routed where I least expect it. I’m grateful for getting to know Janice better. Her persistence is something to behold. She makes me feel flighty, another reason to cry.

My emotional life is such that I’m perfectly capable of bursting into laughter or tears at any moment. There’s so damn much profundity and joy and awe in my life, I don’t know what to expect from one minute to the next, which is probably just as well.

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Ethics

Posted March 15, 2012, under cheap labor for business, children, compassion, environmental responsibility, government, health, materialism, mindfulness, perspective, Uncategorized, work
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I just read an article about working conditions at Apple factories in China. Apparently workers at Apple’s major supplier in China “‘have needlessly suffered lifelong injuries, and even died from avoidable tragedies, including suicides, explosions and exhaustion from 30- to 60-hour shifts.’ . . . Others have suffered from exposure to chemical toxins. The manufacturing plants . . . are sweatshops of the worst sort, relying heavily on child labor and rampant violation of basic labor rights. The working conditions are truly horrendous and brutal.”

The AFL-CIO is up in arms. I could be up in arms, too. While I encourage child labor, one should treat them well. Still, what ought I do because of “reports of some workers suffering repetitive motion injuries that caused them to permanently lose use of their hands” and split needlessly an infinitive?

I’m real sorry about their hands, but as I keyboard this on my Mac and periodically rejoice in never having to experience the agony of Windows™, repetitive motion injuries seem an inevitable consequence of using people as machines. It’s part of the deal we’ve made with capitalism. I’ve had carpal tunnel syndrome for years, and the whole time it took me to develop it I knew there was something wrong with sitting there like that all the fucking time holding my hands just so. I wanted the money, though, so I did it and still do now and I wear my wrist braces when I must. I’m glad it’s not black lung.

When I worked for the B&O railroad I walked alongside many a tank car and hopper that leaked something I didn’t recognize. I realized once when some liquid splashed onto my cheek that I was responsible for that happening, that no matter what it turned out to be, if it ate my face off or not, it was on me because I chose to be there for money.

And the poor Chinese people, many of them women and children, I suppose, who get eight bucks for an iPad do it for the eight bucks. That’s what eight bucks will buy over there. I don’t see how to change that from my worktable. I could find a way to protest—I think I signed an online petition—but there’s no way I’m gonna settle for anybody’s Windows™ machine because of who got shafted getting Lion to my desktop. I would be annoyed most of the time, and that’s no way to increase the love and peace in the world, which is what interests me most.

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Wayne Dyer

Posted March 11, 2012, under compassion, consciousness, love, meditation, mindfulness, oneness, perspective, video
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How’s Janice?

Posted March 8, 2012, under appreciation, customer service, drugs, health, health care, worry
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Friends ask me, “How is Janice? How is she doing? Is she feeling better?” I came to say “She has good days,” which was vague enough and still true.

When I was at the clinic with her if she’d slept well she often started with yoga at 8am, very gentle and easy with lots of blankets and pillows in front of a fireplace. Then sometimes she’d sit in on a raw-food class or get a shot of fresh wheat grass juice. Raw foods and juices are key to this approach to treatment for cancer. At ten-thirty or eleven she might have an intravenous infusion, maybe insulin-potentiated therapy—the latest chemotherapy technique—or a supermega dose of vitamin C or selenite or whatever the medical team suggests and she decides is worth the always hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars such concoctions cost. Her first week cost $6,000, the second was only $5,100.

I think I know what people mean when they ask how she is, but her illness doesn’t seem to lend itself to easy judgments. She has easy days, when she only spits up seven or eight times. She has hard days, when she’s too weak to sit up.

I know how she was three weeks ago. She looked pretty good my last morning there, but she was gonna have a physically more demanding day than she’d had lately, because I was leaving for the airport and her old friend Kathy wouldn’t get there until early evening. So when the shuttle came to get me Janice looked pretty good—well-rested and confident.

We talk and text, so I have reason to believe that nothing major has happened to or for her as of this writing. She’s in pain and has little energy. She has growths in many areas of her body that seem to be asserting their presence less than before—her bad numbers are down. She has a pic—a long-term IV apparatus—in her arm and an open wound in her chest, and I think she needs good cheer more than anything else. You can imagine what it’s like trying to keep a positive attitude under such a circumstance, and still that’s what she’s got to do. Do you know any good jokes?

We’re all of us learning as we go, and the past few years have let me appreciate life and Janice in new ways after all this time, and one thing I know is I don’t know how she is unless I’m with her, which I will be by the time you read this.

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Billy Collins, “What She Said”

Posted March 4, 2012, under video
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Thich Nhat Hanh on ego

Posted February 26, 2012, under compassion, consciousness, judgment, mindfulness, oneness, perspective, Uncategorized, video
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Arizona

Posted February 23, 2012, under appreciation, perspective, Uncategorized
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I was recently in Arizona, a mixed blessing, like pretty much everything else. I didn’t have many expectations about Arizona other than lots of desert and heat. It being February, there wasn’t much heat. There was a lot of sunshine, though, which I always love and appreciate.

I remembered having read only one thing about Arizona. The unknown writer had been unfavorably impressed by the plethora, not to mention surfeit, of strip malls. I don’t mind strip malls, at least not as long as they’re not in my neighborhood. In your neighborhood—fine. I recognize strip malls’ right to exist somewhere else, and I was prepared to tolerate your defense of that right. That was before I went to Mesa, one ’burb away from Phoenix in Maricopa County.

Now that I’ve been to Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler, Apache Junction, and other areas of what to an outsider—which I gratefully am—still looks like Phoenix, I can understand why that writer was anti-strip mall. Maricopa County has a lot of strip malls. I’d go so far as to say that Phoenix and environs have too many strip malls. I say “too many strip malls” not because I think there’s an optimal number of strip malls per unit area or per capita or per anything. I say Maricopa County has too many strip malls because many of them have died for lack of a reason to be there. Several showed no signs of ever having been active at all, just a block or two of empty brown store fronts.

Maricopa County seems to be mostly shades of brown, from écru to chocolate. There are great swaths of sand-colored buildings along the ginormous streets—Second Street in the heart of downtown Chico would be an alley in Mesa—mile after mile of beige carefully accented by burnt umber and coffee, with the occasional flamboyant splash of auburn.

I like brown, and not just because I’m personally brown. I like many kinds of brown surfaces, from skin to wood and actual sand and autumn leaves, and still Maricopa County, in addition to too many strip malls, might be said to have too much brown. In the desert, brown makes sense, and although I found the brown buildings usually inoffensive and occasionally elegant, I began to think that local government put the kibosh on bright colors, the way slaves in parts of the Old South were forbidden to wear bright colors.

I also went to Sedona, which oozes charm and smells like money, and the Grand Canyon, which is awesome.

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Singing

Posted February 19, 2012, under love
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Dancing

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The bus

Posted February 16, 2012, under customer service, Uncategorized
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I recently rode a Greyhound bus from Chico to Phoenix. It was a trip. I took a bus from Saint Paul to Chicago in the late ’80s and encountered the same kind of motley assortment of poor people. Of course I have no way of knowing they were poor people other than my keen analytic and deductive skills, and they fit the stereotypes in my head.

The drivers were all polite and professional, including the one out of Sacramento who warned a bunch that sat together in the back that there weren’t gonna be any shenanigans this trip. No loud talking, no radios, no cell-phone conversations, pretty much nothing audible.

As far as I could tell the driver picked them out solely on the basis of how they dressed and carried themselves. He was profiling. In his position, I would have expected some hubbub before we got to L.A., also based solely on how they were dressed and carried themselves. They clearly used the same fashion consultant, and I bet they were used to getting special attention. Folks who fly in Muslim garb probably experience the same thing.

Even given the state of corporate paranoia I was still surprised when some guy with a “security” patch on his shirt rifled through our carry-ons before we could board to leave Los Angeles. He put the bags on a little table by the bus door and—maybe because the light was so dim—stuck his hand in each one and felt around inside for God-knows-what.

There were a lot of fat people, mostly women. I just managed to get my arm rest in place before one plopped down next to me. She flowed over anyway, but the steel barrier saved me.

The most popular luggage, as it were, was plastic bags, mostly black yard-waste and white garbage bags and some from low-end retail stores. One dapper young man dressed in white used a clear plastic bag for his stuff. Clear. There were a few roll-along suitcases and a couple of paper bags, too.

I tend to look askance at parents who are dress themselves more warmly than they do their child. Several times I found myself wanting to say, “Cover that baby’s head, you ninny!” Not being armed, I didn’t.

Sincerely wishing to avoid the onboard toilet, I opted for dehydration, and for the the 19-hour trip I limited myself to two Tin Roof raisin-oatmeal cookies, 12 ounces of water, and a truck-stop sandwich sealed in plastic, which I decided would go down best in the dark. I was right.

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The Post Office

Posted , under appreciation, customer service, government, Uncategorized
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I love the Post Office. The Post Office is a useful government service and worth paying for, like Amtrak, Social Security, and universal single-payer healthcare. We shouldn’t expect it to make a profit or even break even—we should just pay for it.

One of my uncles worked for the Post Office for forty-two years. He had a good job and was one of my mother’s heroes. I worked for the Post Office for a couple of years in the sixties and, while working there now is bound to differ from my experience, the Post Office is still doing the same thing it was doing when I had the best part-time job in town.

Management was a bit dim—as management tends to be—and it didn’t matter because everybody knew that the goal was delivering stuff. We never had strategy meetings or new thoughts about what to do. We delivered stuff. Because we all knew why we were there management had limited influence.

I don’t know what this month’s first-class postage is. I don’t care. It’s worth it. I can give the Post Office a letter and somebody will put it in the designated slot anywhere I say in the continental United States for under fifty cents. What’s cheaper than that? Nothing. Businesses that depend on cheap junk mail can die and go away.

Whenever I piece together postage with several stamps I put extra stamps on as a tip. Since the Post Office people should expect to do the necessary for every stamp sold, when I buy stamps and don’t ask anything in return, I feel like I’m giving them a little respite, a slackening in their steady pace, a minuscule, anonymous break.

The Internet has caused the Post Office to lose a lot of business. That’s traumatic for the people who make their livings that way, and I hope the government will do right by them as they try to find another way to make a living. I hope they can be as useful as they are now.

I give a little extra to the city of Chico, too. I used to keep nickels, dimes, and quarters for parking meters, and now I use quarters only, even if I’m only gonna be five minutes. You’re welcome, Chico.

If you handed me a #10 envelope and told me where to put it in Chicago or Key West for fifty cents, I might tell you where to put it. If the Post Office charged a dollar instead of the current rate, I wouldn’t squawk. Deliver your own mail and see how you like it.

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