Category Archives: Americana

A couple of thoughts on Voting this year

Americana, Politics

Voting-76

Don’t be cynical, A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten years old that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and he’s still upset. Judge Philander Coates

I love voting but I don’t always love the results. This year was different, however, in that I didn’t particularly enjoy the voting part either. Partially because I felt certain that I would not like the results. By Tuesday morning, I had quit thinking the polls were wrong, still, I didn’t expect that much of a blow out. But even more disconcerting is that I didn’t care about the results as much as I wanted to and felt I should. My disappointment in Obama has bled into a generalized disappointment and that has dampened my enthusiasm.

I want to be clear that I think Obama is a good, journeyman, President and I want to acknowledge that he has had an uphill fight in getting needed legislation passed . He has done alot of – what I consider – good. Much of it under the radar, like appointing a large number of – mildly – Liberal Appellate Judges which, importantly, is the pool from which the next couple of Supreme Court Justices will come. He has reduced the National Debt (a fact that is often hidden by the Republican’s hysterical screams). He has reduced taxes, although in sort of a backhanded and bumbling way, even if nobody seems to know it.

Still, I am disappointed. Some of that disappointment with Obama are what are usually touted as his major accomplishments ObamaCare and the Economic Recovery. I am not a fan of ObamaCare  – which I think is, primarily, a boon to insurance companies, subsidized by Federal Money  – still, he got a Universal Health Insurance bill through and nobody else has been able to do that. Yes, we have had  a steady, all be it slow, Recovery under Obama but the poor are not part of it and most of the money has gone to a cabal of the already rich.

My biggest complaints, in the end, my real complaints  with Obama are really complaints about his failure to change our National Direction, his failure to be the transformational president of his campaign. We are on a path that I believe is destructive to our country: at home, we, increasingly, have policies that result in less Economic Fairness, less Democracy, less Transparency, and more Oligarchy  and everywhere else, we are locked into what the historian Charles A. Beard calls perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Of course, Obama wasn’t running in 2014, even if the Republicans tried to make the election about him. I am not sure, actually, who was running because most of the Democrats weren’t running as Democrats. I think the refusal to run for the Democrat’s accomplishments but only against the Armageddon that the republican would surely bring on, was a big mistake. In Connecticut, Governor Dannel Malloy ran on the fact that he got some gun controls through, as did John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s governor. They both won but everybody else lost. Including, I think, me.

 

Tom Magliozzi , RIP

Americana

Good guys-76Tom Magliozzi died Monday morning from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. Tom, along with his brother Ray, were Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers on NPR’s Car Talk, one of my very favorite programs on my favorite radio network. I loved Car Talk and I don’t think that had as much to do with the fact that it was about cars as it was about humor. Both humor as in comedy and humor as in good humor, in which they abounded. They always seemed to be having fun.

I’ll miss him, I’ll miss Car Talk.

 

Turns out he wasn’t kidding,” said Ray. “He really couldn’t remember last week’s puzzler.” 1

 

Three worlds

Americana, Around home

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Last Sunday, while Michele was in Napa, I went to see Fury with Brad Pitt. It was pretty close to the classic war movie, checking all the appropriate war-movie boxes. And it was pretty good. Actually, the first three-quarters was very good and then it became a little too fanciful. It was a world that felt very familiar, not that I have ever been in combat, but it felt like alot of early 50s war movies that I have seen.

When I got out, it was pretty late so I stopped by El Grullense Grill for some pisole. I figured it would still be open because they have a bar at one end of the restaurant. I ordered my pisole and, while I was waiting for it, a fight started in the bar. I looked over and it seemed like a typical bar fight with a couple of three  or four guys sort of inexpertly pushing and shoving with alot of yelling (not that I know anything about bar fights, the last one I saw was at Evy’s Partytimer on the edge of Watts in 1963).

As the fight escalated, the adults who were eating – especially the women – started backing out the front door so that the restaurant side of  El Grullense was semi-empty by the time one of the fight participants threw a beer bottle at the bartender (incidentally, for those of you, like me, don’t know what an exploding beer bottle sounds like, it sounds a little like a gun going off).What surprised me, shocked me, actually, was that, when the fight started, all the kids in the restaurant left. Instantly! The was a yell by the back door, a push or a swing, and all the kids got up and ran out the front door.

I grew up in a world in which the kids would have been trying to see what was happening at the other end of the room. A fight after all is intrinsically interesting, in much the same way that an accident by the side of the road is interesting. But, in El Grullense, this time at least, no kid looked to see what was happening, they just all ran for the door. This is not a world I am familiar with.Three worlds-0579

Last Tuesday, Michele took me to An Evening with Caroline Casey & Climbing PoeTree – Magnetizing Metaphor into Matter at Oakland’s Impact Hub. Caroline, pictured above with Michele and one of her favorite clients, is hard to describe, she uses astrology as lens to riff about everything, from the Grail Legend to Sufism, from Voodoo to the Kabbala, from Classic Chinese Theatre to Movies. She is always entertaining and insightful. On Tuesday, she was joined by two women who are equally hard to explain, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman. They reminded me of a CD I had – probably in the early 90s – by a black woman, whose name escapes me, that – looking back – seems to be a combination of poetry and rap. Rather than even try to explain Climbing Poe Tree, I’ll just embed a performance from Bioneers.

What surprised me was the crowd. Both the familiar and the unfamiliar worlds of the crowd.  The crowd was overwhelmingly female. The familiar part was the women my age that I feel I know: they are intellectual and liberal, they are consumers of art and invested in things as they are. They say they want change and, even, recognize the necessity of change. Still, they aren’t – really – doing much about bringing it about except voting. Most of my generation, especially the men of my generation, but including these women, for all their good intentions, have stonewalled progress towards equality and fairness. As an aside, when I say especially the men of my generation, I include women like Dianne Feinstein who seem to be living through their masculine side even though their persona is female. End aside.

The unfamiliar world of the Tuesday night crowd, however, was the majority of it: young women couples. This Impact Hub was started, primarily, by several women of color and is dedicated to change.and this crowd seemed to be living and embracing that change. Even though it was a new world to me, it is a very welcome world.

Hiking into Coyote Gulch

Americana, Camping, Utah

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The center of Gina, Courtney, Michele, and my trip to Utah was a four-day – three night – backpack down Coyote Gulch. Coyote is in Southern Utah, about half way across the state and the drive there – across California, Nevada, and half of Utah – can seem endless.

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Escalante Trip-0853At some point during the drive, somebody asked me what I most liked about Coyote Gulch and I reflexively answered, The Adventure. I think that I surprised them with that answer, I know that I surprised myself. It is not the answer I would have thought that I would blurt out. The beauty or The awesome geology maybe, but I didn’t consciously remember Coyote Gulch as particularly adventurous. Dark Canyon and Buckskin Dive are adventures, I remembered Coyote as a canyon that can often be walked barefoot. I remembered it as a walk in the park. As is often the case, my remembrance was only partially right.

The night before the adventure started, we camped near the Trailhead. The next morning, while Gina and Courtney shuffled the car around, Michele and I started walking across the desert on a well-worn trail, down into the Escalante River Basin.Escalante Trip-9998

That is the rub, while the trail into the Gulch starts off easy – wide and smooth – and looks like it will stay easy, it gets progressively harder as it goes. The first time I walked down Coyote was around Memorial Day, 1982 which means that I was 41, almost 42, and now I am 74. What I remember as easy, or didn’t even remember at all, would be much harder now.  At first I didn’t think that I should even try to hike into Coyote, but Courtney and Gina volunteered to carry most of the weight so I would be carrying a very light pack, and it is only thirteen miles in plus two out. With a full pack, even though it is very light, a small step up or down becomes a big step and a big step becomes an obstacle so I knew it wouldn’t exactly be a walk in the park but I didn’t expect it to be almost undoable.

Walking in, we run into water after about a mile and a half. Where there is water, there are Cottonwoods with their heavy bark, and chattering leaves that sparkle in the sun. they provide the shade that makes everything more comfortable. As soon as we hit water, we went from the desert into a classic riparian environment. By the time that Courtney and Gina catch up with us, the red walls dominate the little stream and we are bathed by reflected red, light.

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Escalante Trip-0032The first night, we sleep on a flat bench under a huge red wall,Escalante Trip-0034

and the next morning we wake up under cloudy skies. The weather forecast had been for sun the first day, clouds – but no rain – the next two days, and sun on the last day but, still, the cloudy sky left me a little uneasy as we walked deeper into the canyon.

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The river is entrenched, a meandering open space that has been carved out of solid Navajo Sandstone. The sandstone, itself, was formed about 190 million years ago when this was a huge sand dune field at the western portion of the Supercontinent Pangaea. The Appalachian Mountains had been formed when the continents banged into each other as Pangaea was formed and, as they eroded for the next 100 million years, much of that erosion flowed west into a shallow sea at the edge of the continent, leaving layers of  sandstones and shales. Those layers have been raised as Pangaea has broken up into the continents we know today.

On the outside of each meander is a huge wall and on the inside is a sandy bench with Cottonwoods, grasses, and a variety of blooming wildflowers. It is stunning! We walk down river, spending a time walking through the river itself, and then – to get out of the water and to take a short-cut – we hike across a hot, sandy, bench. Then it is back into the river. Variations on a theme in an – increasingly – deepening canyon. Escalante Trip-0092The second night, we camp on a bench, overlooking the Kayenta Formation, where we pump our water from a small pool above a rapid.
Escalante Trip-0118The next day, we will be going deeper into the wildness.

 

 

Happy 50th, Portola Valley

Americana, Around home

Portola Valley-0826 Portola Valley celebrated its 50th Anniversary last weekend. That’s 50 years as an incorporated Town – in California, there is no legal difference between a Town and a City but Towns do seem to be smaller and often use the County Sheriff for their Police – not 50 years of being inhabited. The area had been inhabited by the Ohlones for only – probably and approximately – 600 years although there have been signs of human habitation around the Bay for about 4,000 years. What ever that exact timeline, by the time California became a State on September 9, 1850 – although we Californians didn’t find out about that for 38 days because news had to come by ship, around Cape Horn  – people were already cutting down the Redwoods for San Francisco housing. By the turn of the Century, most of the Redwoods were gone and Portola Valley became a farming area mixed with a few big estates.

As an aside, one of the major estates was owned by the inventor of San Francisco’s cable cars, Andrew Hallidie. He built an aerial tramway, now gone, that went from Portola Road up about a thousand feet to Skyline. He also built the best swimming pool I have ever seen, it is probably about five or six acres and has a small steam train that goes around it. About twenty years ago, or so, Michele and I were walking through some second-growth Redwoods, on an abandoned logging road, when we chanced upon the pool in an open area. It was full of water and clean but looked abandoned. The next Fourth Of July, on a similar walk, we decided to go by the pool only to find it all decked out for the Fourth, complete with small sailboats and lots of bunting. We felt like trespassers and started to back out when we were spotted, told to stay on the roads, and then ignored. End aside.

By the 60s, the residents voted to incorporate in order to have local control over development. The goals were to preserve the beauty of the land through low-density housing and to limit services to those necessary for local residents. They thought they would keep the government small and cheap by having lots of volunteers and Portola Valley still has that tradition and, apparently, enough money has been saved to host a free dinner for the residents of the Town.

Michele wanted to go and I tagged along. Portola Valley-0796 When I first moved into Portola Valley, it was a different place. That was 1981 and the whole world was a different place. It would be two more years before the Macintosh would be introduced, AOL was still called Control Video Corporation,  and Silicon Valley was an inside joke rather than one of the richest places in the world.  Portola Valley was already a low density suburb but the houses – trending towards Sunset Magazine Ranch-house  – were modest by today’s standards. I was far from being the only forty something in town but we were among the youngest citizens. Most of our neighbors were older and, as they got even older and moved out, they have been replaced by young families from Silicon Valley with kids.

I knew that intellectually, still it was a surprise to go to a public gathering and see so many young kids.
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Portola Valley-0817The Birthday Party was also full of very nice adults, but Portola Valley has always had nice adults. .

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Referring to the San Andreas Fault – which is about a hundred feet from the hay bales  above – Michele said something along the lines of These are the people who want to live on the edge. It’s true that they are more on the edge than the people who are living in Menlo Park or Palo Alto, but it is a deceptive edge, nobody is growing their own veggies and we are 3.5 miles from the freeway. What is different is that the center of the world has change from where ever it was to Silicon Valley and this edge is now the edge of one of the most vital places on earth and one of the richest.

The new, very nice, adults are very smart, very rich, and very good looking – even their dogs are good looking – with above average children. They also are people who want their own way. The Town has a Yahoo! Group – PVForum – and an amazingly big part of it is about airplane noise from the planes landing at SFO 30 miles away, or somebody driving too fast in their BMW.

Still, this is one of the world’s sweet spots. Happy Fiftieth, Portola Valley.