I did not want to join the crowds at crowded Lake Tahoe. Mike Moore had passed on a place recommendation, The Sierra Valley Preserve, from a photographer friend, Deborah O’Grady, who seems to have a similar esthetic to my photography. We decided to give it a try. This is the headwaters of the Feather River and, while it was great to be alone in a beautiful landscape, The Preserve promises to be much better in the Spring when there will be more water and wildlife. Still, the quiet was very welcome and the area came with the timely bonus of having been “discovered” by a black explorer, Jim Beckwourth, in 1850.
Two days before our walk, Rashida Tlaib won her primary by a landslide. According to the New York Times, she was the most vulnerable of The Squad so it was nice to see her win by 30 points. The same day, Justice Democrats backed Cory Bush, an activist from Ferguson Missouri, beat long time office holder, William Clay in her primary, and Marie Newman beat an old time anti-abortion Democrat. Newman ran on Medicare-for-all, a $15 minimum wage, and the Green New Deal as well as getting rid of ICE. Here, walking in a wilderness preserve in what is undoubtable Trump Territory, the sun is shinning and it seems very much like the Progressives are on the rise.
We saw a few Trump signs but the one that tickled us the most was the No More Bullshit on the sign above. It seems like the most unlikely slogan imaginable for a guy who is, after all, a professional bullshitter and it didn’t detract from our joy over the Progressive wavelet.
“I know, it’s nuts up there.” Claudia Heath agreeing with Michele that the Tahoe area is crowded.
Michele and I are at the Heath family cabin in Squaw Valley – soon to be “the place formally known as Squaw Valley”, I guess – and it is packed. The whole Tahoe basin is packed; like Strasberg in July packed. The Truckee River is stuffed with shore to shore groups of rafts and it makes me wonder how virus safe it is. Sure, they are outside and the clusters of people are probably pods of people that probably already know each other and already feel safe together but California had 4,380 new Covid-19 cases yesterday with 35 deaths and this can’t be helping.
We decide our best bet in taking a lonely walk is at the Donner Camp Picnic Area by Alder Creek.
I have been here before and going back during this time of Black Lives Matter protests reminded me of a post I wrote six years ago. I’ve reposted it here with some minor changes:
As I left Truckee, I passed by Alder Creek, one of the two sites where the Donner Party was stuck over the winter of 1846-47. Tamzene Donner and her husband, George, died here as well as George’s brother, Jacob, and his wife, Elizabeth. Still, all five of Tamzene and George’s children lived as did three of Jacob and Elizabeth’s seven kids. In addition, there was one single woman who lived. But, out of the seven single men who were with the party as teamsters and animal handlers, only two lived.
Two of the children who lived were only three years old. The five teamsters who died ranged in age from 23 to 30, the two who lived were both 16. The only person over 16, who lived, was Dorothea Wolfinger, the single women (who had been widowed on the trail). Clearly, this was not survival of the fittest. Rather, this was a case of the fittest sacrificing for the least fit. If it had been any other way, the survivors would have been considered beasts. But I don’t think that is the reason they saved the children, I think that they considered themselves as part of a large family. Family might not be the right word; maybe Community would be better.
Going into nearby Sierra Valley, it struck me that this was a community also.
It is a community that is spread out, but – in my imagination, at least – a community that would not let its three-year old children starve to death.
As I drove through the Sierra Valley, passing ranches, separated by miles of seemingly nothingness, I kept mulling over the idea of Community and how it affects its member’s actions. When Romney was running for president, he seemed particularly hard-hearted and out of touch, but people who knew him thought that he was generous to a fault. However, his generosity was to people that he knew or were in the same church, in other words, in his Community. When I think back on the Conservatives I know and have known, they are all generous. Indeed, they are often more generous than many of the Liberals I know but, they are only generous to members of what they consider to be their community. Liberals, the Progressive wing at least, tend to consider their Community the entirety of Humankind making it more diverse and larger than Conservatives so that their Community includes homeless Guatemalan children trying to get back to their parents as well as Palestinians fighting the Israeli takeover of their land (although Progressives are not so diverse that they would want to give money to the Westboro Baptist Church).
I entered Sierra Valley from Truckee, going through Sierraville and as I left it at the eastern end of the valley, I saw a train loaded with Armored Cars. They fascinated me, they seemed so out-of-place and, in a very strange way, so lovingly conceived. They were brutal with exquisite detailing, the kind of that can only happen when something is built with, close to, an unlimited budget.
It also struck me that anybody inside that armored car – looking out through the bulletproof windows – was completely separated from whomever was outside. They are in a different community. Soldiers, riding in those behemoths, in Iraq or Afghanistan, are saying “We are not you, we are separate, and we can do anything we want”. Cops riding in those mobile forts on city streets are saying the same thing, not only to the citizens outside, but to themselves and so do cops behind face shields encased in helmets and bulletproof vests.
One reason the police are so militarized, it turns out, is thatthe Armored Cars, M16 assault rifles, bulletproof vests, Kevlar helmets, et al, were pretty much free through a Department of Homeland Security program to fund military equipment to police departments after 9/11 – so they are hard to turn down. But, again, they are actually bad for everybody concerned. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail; this equipment gets used. The police, looking through the windows of an armored car or military grade visor under a Kevlar helmet, are no longer part of the community, they have become an occupying army. They say things like “Bring it, you fucking animals!“
That’s the problem, the militarization of the police is not good for anybody except the people actually selling the military equipment. Armored Cars don’t help deter crime, they don’t help catch criminals, Armored Cars don’t help with crowd control, they don’t even help in riot control (although, I guess, one could argue that they would help in a mass zombie attack).
“Yeah, about that; this is today, today is yesterday, and tomorrow is also today. It is one of those Infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.” Nyles explaining the movie’s premise to Sarah.
We saw Palm Springs, the movie, the other night and then, two days later, we saw it again (and then parts of it a third time). It is a perfect movie for our Groundhog Day-esque life under the dreaded Covid.
Years ago, as our beloved cat, Spike, was dying, he spent every day laying around, seeming, just waiting to die. I kept thinking Am I doing the same thing? Just waiting to die? Three years later, Michele’s mom died after a long, slow, slide, into Alzheimer’s during which she had no idea of where she was or when it was, and that same feeling came back as What is the purpose of this? Am I just filling time, waiting to die? That, I think, is the central question in Palm Springs. The easiest way to describe Palm Springs is to call it an updated redo of Groundhog Day – using “redo” in a very loose manner – and seeing it twice is a perfect metaphor for our daily sameness. But that’s not why we saw it again and again, we saw it again and again because it is a fun summer movie and we liked it that much.
The movie stars two actors, Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg, who have both been around for a while but I didn’t know. They are great fun to watch, especially especially Milioti, who starts out as a sort of shrill one horse pony saying “what the fuck” over and over again, but blossoms as the movie goes on. Although I am not a Bill Murray fan, I am a big fan of Andie MacDowell and the two of them were OK together, but Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg as two cynical thirties-something cynics are joyous together. The movie takes place during one of those movie weddings that are familiar not because we’ve been to them in real life but because because we’ve seen them in the movies so many times. May I suggest you go one more time, I am sure you will like it. (And let me know what you think.)
Michele has pointed out that everywhere there is racism, there is also misogyny. Women gaining power, especially women of color like Representatives Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enrage the right. A rage that is out of all proportion. The night before last, I published a blog post that included my admiration of AOC, and yesterday I got a rambling hate-filled anti-AOC comment – that I’ve deleted – but gave me a very small taste of what women of color go through all the time.
Two days ago, Florida Representative Ted Yoho, a self-described Christian, insulted AOC on the Capitol steps and her answer is below. I think it is worth listening to.
Biden goes big, fast on clean energy investments: shifting from $1.7 trillion over 10 yrs, to $2 trillion in 4 yrs. He commits to 100% clean electricity by 2035, historic investments in sustainable public housing, public transit & EVs, & more. Check it: https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/ Tweet by Sunrise Movement @sunrisemvmt We are building a movement of young people to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process #GreenNewDeal United States sunrisemovement.org
Ever since I first started reading about Presidential Nominee Joe Biden’s Platform, I’ve been trying to blog about it. I start to write something and it just doesn’t work, so I try a different tack. Now all I have is a group of almost connected paragraphs. Meanwhile, our country seems to be falling apart on an almost Biblical scale and the Platform seems less important. Our National response to Covid-19 is the most inept in the world with 220,000 deaths and still counting. Unemployment is skyrocketing, a true Depression is looming, and Congress seems paralyzed. Meanwhile, against the objections of both the Mayor and Governor, the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, a former lobbyist, has moved Federal para-military thugs into Portland, Oregon, and started “proactive detainments”. Any good news seems illusionary, still, the Democratic Platform is surprisingly proactive.
About April 8th, when Joe Biden got the Democratic Presidential nomination by default, I wrote Today, Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Primary race and I am sad, angry, scared, and feeling sort of hopeless. Maybe Biden will be a better candidate than he was in 1988 or 2008, maybe the time is right. Maybe. Right now, all I feel is loss, all I want to do in mourn. I didn’t expect Bernie to win and he wasn’t even my first choice but Joe Biden was my last choice. He is an old man with, seemingly little interest in Climate Change and a long history of being on the wrong side of what I consider the major problems facing our country and the world today. However, when times change, people change, sometimes; this has been a time of huge change, and Joe Biden seems to be changing with it.
He is running on a platform that is substantially to the left from where he started. At last, he is taking the Climate crisis seriously, saying; To reach net-zero emissions as rapidly as possible, Democrats commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency. We will dramatically expand solar and wind energy deployment through community-based and utility-scale systems. Within five years, we will install 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems, and 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines.
The quote above is from the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force to study and make policy regarding climate change and it implies a large investment to rebuild our National Electric Grid. The first time I heard about The Grid was in an interview with Representative Ortega-Cortez just after she was elected. In the interview, I was surprised when she said that the Climate Crisis was her biggest issue. Her district is one of the poorest districts in the US and she has made it very clear that she is representing them so I thought it would have been Health Care or something similar. But, of course, the Climate Crisis is her biggest issue, poor people are hit the hardest by every storm, every heatwave, every fire, they are always downwind. Her answer of “The Grid” was to what she thought was the biggest problem standing in the way of successfully meeting the Climate Crisis. That surprised me but shouldn’t have. Her answer reminded me of the quote When the war starts, amateurs think tactics, professionals think logistics. This was the professional answer, and Ortega-Cortez has obviously thought about the problem.
To backup, shortly after Bernie dropped out of the primary, he endorsed Biden, shortly after that, Biden announced the formation of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force to study and make policy suggestions regarding climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, health care, and immigration. Considering that Joe Biden won the nomination, the committees are surprisingly equitable. Biden and Sanders would each choose a Co-chair of each of the resultant Committees, with Bernie naming three additional members and Joe naming four. It didn’t give the left – with Bernie representing the left – real power to set the agenda, but enough power to influence it. At the time, there was still a feeling that the Biden camp needed the left and I suspect – fantasize may be more like it – that Biden, being the consummate politician, is realizing that the electorate is moving left and felt he had to offer real change. To head the Committee on the Climate Crisis, Joe Biden chose Secretary – and former Senator – John Kerry as his Co-chair of the Committee and Bernie chose Alexandria Ortega-Cortez.
The choices couldn’t have been better, or more representative of the Democratic Party today, with Kerry representing the establishment and Ortega-Cortez – hereinafter known as AOC, her Twitter handle – representing what I hope is the future. It must have made an interesting dynamic. Kerry is almost my age and is old school, although he is one of the best my generation has to offer. He was a hero in Vietnam. A real hero, getting wounded twice while commanding a heavily armed but lightly armored riverboat. Vietnam was a bullshit war and, when Kerry left the Navy, having seen the stupidity, worse, the criminality of the war, he started protesting it. Protesting the War was no more popular then than it is now and, as far as I’m concerned, that is what makes him a real hero. Additionally, It was at Kerry’s Democratic Nomination Convention in 2004 that Obama gave the Keynote speech, first putting him on the National Stage. It was a great opportunity and a great speech. That Kerry was the first one to see Obama’s potential is to Kerry’s credit and it is to Biden’s credit that, given that he picked an establishment old-timer, he picked Kerry to Co-chair the Committee.
OK, this is where I lose any objectivity I may have because I think choosing AOC for anything is the right choice. She is the most extraordinary politician I have ever seen. I first became aware of her when she won her primary against Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent Democratic who was considered unassailable. After she was elected to Congress, AOC’s first political move, so to speak, was to join the Justice Democrat’s/Sunrise Movement’s protest for The Green New Deal in front of Speaker Pelosi’s office. This was the first time I had heard of either the Green New Deal or the Sunrise Movement or the Justice Democrats and I was and am thrilled that somebody is actually working towards saving the planet. It was also the first time I had heard of the Overton Window which is the fairly narrow range, between what is considered the extremes of the Right and Left, in which politically acceptable dialog can take place. According to Bloomberg Business, where I first saw it, AOC was already moving the Overton Window considerably to the left on Climate, Taxes, and Health Coverage. I was smitten and I still am. When Bernie chose AOC to Co-chair the Committee, he chose the most persuasive Progressive in the known universe. At the risk of sounding old-fashionedly chauvinistic, I also want to point out that a man Kerry’s age is especially vulnerable to the charms of a woman as young, attractive, and smart as AOC.
For good measure, Bernie also named one of the Co-founders of the Sunrise Movement, Varshini Prakash, another young, at only 26, attractive, and smart woman to be a member of the committee. The Sunrise Movement is probably the most influential pro-climate, pro-earth advocacy group in the country and they are becoming increasingly politically active. Joe’s nominations included Chiraag Bains who investigated local police departments while at the Department of Justice during the Obama administration and Karen Bass who has also been active in trying to control the out of control police so they were outgunned on the Climate Crisis Committee who report starts with Climate change is a global emergency. We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives and futures. Reading it has left me very hopeful even if the rest of the news is distressing.
