Long time no blog, I know. This time, I'm not on a soap box. This time, I'm feeling a huge hole in my world because a member of my family is no longer with us - and I'd like to share her with you.

Once upon a time, there was a little, tiny black, orange and white fluffball - one of several siblings - out on a pig ranch. Momma cat taught them to leave the caged chickens completely alone, but to be ready and willing to play with whatever else moved within striking distance. This little ball of fluff entered our lives and was promptly - and very appropriately - named Mischief. Mischief proved herself a unique individual almost immediately. She learned to play fetch - with miniature plastic shuttlecocks and wine corks - and true to her mother's training, she left caged birds alone.

At the time, we had a parakeet by the name of Sparky in a round cage that sat at the end of our dining table. When Mischief joined the family, the bird was bigger than she was! She would get up next to the cage, and Sparky - brave little fellow - would come over close and pull on her whiskers and ears. As time went on, whenever Mischief would get upset, she'd get up on the dining table and curl up next to the birdcage. Almost without fail, Sparky would get over as close to her as he could and would, in his parakeet way, sing to her.

I never thought that animals could grieve - but when Sparky died suddenly, Mischief came up on the table one time, gave the cage - with Sparky in it - one sniff, laid down next to it for about a half hour; then she jumped down and didn't have a thing to do with the cage again. The new parakeet had to move a long way past being a baby bird to having created its own new parakeet song before she once again would curl up next to the cage. Ziggy - the new parakeet - learned Mischief was harmless, but he never sang to her the way Sparky had.

When the time came - partly because of her predeliction to shredding doorjambs, wooden chair legs, antique bureau corners and piano stools; and partly because we had NO intention of letting her roam out of doors on our busy residential street - we not only had her neutered but de-clawed. She handled that with about as much grace as one would expect - and commenced a long and fairly happy life with us. She was a creature who loved heights - finding roosting places on the narrow tops of doors and shower doors. She quickly decided she preferred to get her water either from the sink or a dish left in the kitchen window ledge. She STILL sharpened her non-existent front claws on wooden surfaces - doorjambs, piano legs, etc.

Mischief was also one of the most stubborn people I'd ever met - and yes, I considered her about as close to human as a feline could get. When she decided she wanted to do something, unless it was made completely unattainable, she persisted until it was MADE unattainable or she got her way. That included making a habit of sitting on my chest at night while I watched TV. For years, everytime I sat down, within ten minutes I had a "boob kitty". There was NO leaving food on the counter - Mischief would get into it, whether it was meat or otherwise. The only real human-enforced rule she learned and was content to live with was to never get up on a table while we were sitting around eating.

She was also one of the most verbal cats I've ever met. She learned before long how to meow twice quickly to mimic our "din-din" call, and thus ask for food when she'd get hungry. Later, when it became harder for her to jump all the way up on the kitchen counter to get to her window for water or to watch the backyard world go by OR to get back down to the floor again, there was another special meow for "up" and/or "down." Eventally, she just enjoyed getting her own words in edgewise in conversations - and she'd sit either on the floor, in the window or on the counter and "talk" to us. She'd greet us with a "meow" the moment she saw us in the morning - and whenever any of the accepted family would come into the kitchen, she'd strike up a conversation with them. Her evening "boob kitty" time was taken up partially with conversation if I would pet her at all. If sitting in the kitchen window, she'd greet anybody walking up to the back door.

Early on, we tried giving Mischief a feline friend. When she was about two, my kids brought home a bedraggled and thoroughly abused little black ball of fluff that ended up being named Peeper. We took him to the vet, got his infected eyes and ears cleared up and then watched HIM grow healthy and strong. Did Mischief accept him into HER household? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! She turned her back on all of us for having betrayed her and brought the interloper into the house, refused to play with us any longer, and just generally avoided us entirely except at dinnertime. Peeper, however, decided when he was about eight months old to try to chase poor Sparky's cage off the dining table - and was promptly given away to another good home, leaving Mischief sole queen of her domain. It took her a good two years to completely forgive us - but she never again played fetch for us either. She'd chase a string, but never a wine cork.

Time passes, as time tends to do. Mischief developed a severe allergy to flea bites - something that would raise hell with her and leave her utterly exhausted at times, not to mention anemic from blood loss. She HATED to have any hygenic activity pertaining to flea control done to her - combing her for fleas earned the idiot who tried a fairly serious cat bite, she would get rid of flea collars as if her last name was Houdini, howled and bit when my son Lee would give her a flea bath, and detested being dosed with Frontline. Vet trips were traumatic - she'd sit in my arms with her face tucked into my armpit as if she were an ostrich.

As she got older, she got more crotchety. She became our "old lady cat" - someone who would growl when, after being picked up to get petted or held, didn't really want to get put back down again. And this was a full-throated, wild cat growl that could raise the hackles if heard in the dead of night.

About three months ago, after getting tired of getting "meowed" to pick a kitty up into the window and "meowed" to put a kitty back on the floor (by then, her arthritis in her front paws was so bad that she'd shake her paws when she'd trot anywhere for any reason) my husband Bill built a "Kitty Ladder" for her. Amazingly enough, it only took two days for Mischief - smart little devil - to learn how to get both up and down the ladder to the counter by herself. She was so pleased with herself, I think she made several trips just because she could do it herself again after all this time.

Mischief was with us for 14 years - from February of 1992 to this afternoon. She was my fourth child - the one I never had to stop carrying around with me.

In my heart, I know that she's finally free of arthritis pain, the itch and exhaustion of fleas, persistent bladder problems and teeth going very bad. I hope that she finds herself able to jump up into the windows again like she used to - to sit in the doorway looking out, or even to slip out the back door to roll on the porch the way she used to love to do (and give us all heart attacks when we found her OUTSIDE). Our haunted house - that's right, I've never written about that, have I? I'll have to remedy that one day - can make room for one more spirit. I hope she chooses to visit from time to time.

But in the meanwhile, I'm going to miss her terribly.

You know, if I were hired to write a blog, I would have long since been fired…

I’ve just taken the last hour to re-read blogs that I’ve written over the past two years – and I look at the date in August of LAST YEAR when I wrote my last entry and ask myself, “what have you been doing with yourself, girl?”

Don’t really have a good response to that one yet. Gimme time, tho – I’ll think of something…

But now it’s Springtime, and today was the first day that it was warm enough to actually feel like Spring. As I drove my mom to her dialysis for the day, we happen to notice that there were strips of tiny ice-plants along the roadside and some of the field edges as we followed the Arroyo Grande valley back towards Lopez Lake. Those little strips were vivid purple swashes that contrasted with all of the green surrounding them. The hills behind were green – or at least, as green as hills with very poor ground cover will get with ample rainfall. The sky above was blue, virtually cloudless.

Then, as we turned onto another lane that wanders closer to the hills amid various and sundry vineyards and wineries, the sides of the road were freckled with little green puffs of California Poppy plants – all of which were bursting with the bright orange flowers. The spring poppies are so happy, so full of life – the summer poppies are generally the die-hards blooming more to prove a point than anything else. What’s neat is that with a law making it illegal to touch those plants, weed abatement on the side of the road (at least on this little lane) is done by hand with a weed-eater. The grass is cut away, leaving the little green and orange-speckled puff-balls standing tall and proud.

I’ve learned to appreciate the local agriculture, making this drive three times a week over the last two and a half years. I’ve watched the vineyards go from trimmed and tied-down and virtually nude vines to the fragile yellow-green of new leaves, to more verdant and covering mature leaves, to seeing the bunches of grapes dangling, to seeing the leaves turn golden, then brown, and then drop away, to seeing the vines looking like a person who stuck a finger in a light socket with vines stretching long and far in all directions. Then, it seems, within a few short weeks – maybe three of them – the vines are pruned, tied back, and readied for the process to begin all over again.

We have a grape vine here at the house too – right now it’s been trimmed in what we’ve affectionately called a “Butch” for years. The new leaves don’t usually start to show for another couple of weeks yet – and yet, I watch my own vine (a very OLD vine – set out when this house was moved into its final location about 100 yrs ago) go through much the same stages of the vines in the vineyards. We’ve made wine from those grapes – wine, jelly, juice, you name it. And we give grapes away – boy howdy do we!

One thing I’ve noticed: those vines in the vineyards are never allowed to grow to their full potential – each year they’re pruned back to mere nubbins. Our vine – a single plant of old-fashioned Concord slip-skin grapes of the purple-black variety – covers an arbor of roughly eight feet by ten feet – and we’ll eventually have to set in new posts and let it actually take over the extra four feet it is encroaching on toward the house. It is a healthy, happy vine with roots deep in the remains of the old septic tank (now filled to the brim with broken whiskey bottles, courtesy of the old man who lived in the house before we bought it) and watered year-round by the run-off from our greenhouse.

The wisteria vine outside my window is ever so much more grown up than before – I really hadn’t considered how much having a living awning over my window would mean that I can’t see out quite as well as before – but I’m enjoying the blooms that drape so gracefully long before any leaves make their appearance. I can remember when this wisteria was nothing more than a remnant of a vine that USED to cover our chimney – but my dad cut it down (he thought) about thirty years ago when he rebuilt the brickwork. For years after, we’d find a wisteria vine trailing off through the rose bushes – and I’d tolerate it for a while before my dad, bless him, would come along and lop it off again. One day, he decided to keep it. Now that little limp vine is as big around as a garden hose, has been trained up onto a trellis.

Nature is persistent – have you noticed? A wisteria vine, cut and actively discouraged for decades, eventually gets a trellis of its own over which it is invited to bloom its light lavender canopy in early Spring. A walnut or avocado that falls and the resulting sprig that grows not being cut down or pulled out becomes a new tree. We have one English walnut baby and one avocado baby – both in bad places for walls and other stuff on the property. The walnut is producing nuts now – the avocado, I’m not sure. But despite the fact that my husband is starting to get that look in his eye that says that I may have to wish these interlopers farewell soon, I take heart in the fact that Nature doesn’t care – she doesn’t ask permission to push ahead.

I guess there’s a lesson there – that whatever the obstacles in Life (capital L), to just keep on doing what one is supposed to be doing and eventually reap the rewards of a job well-done. There’s another lesson in agriculture: there is a time to grow – and a time to die back.

As my parents push closer and closer to that threshold to what comes after this life, I’m finding that looking to Nature to help me cope is working. Every year, the mustard blooms on the hills, the lupine blooms amid the grass, the poppies are carefully trimmed around by patient men with weed-whackers. And each year, the plants that bloom and make the drive on the back-roads a joy are new ones – not the same ones from the year before.

When I was young, I watched my parents take care of my mother’s mom until she was too infirm to remain at home. I took it for granted that, when the time came, I would do my stint in taking care of my parents until their health becomes too precarious for me to handle alone. I can only hope that one of my kids follows suit, IF it is to be that either I or my husband live that long.

But even if it doesn’t come to pass – this is how Nature works. Were it not for the constant movement toward that threshold, there would not be room for the new generation to make a place for itself. Death is as much a part of life as the Springtime is – and just as necessary.

Maybe this is just me, getting myself mentally prepared to say goodbye. There’s never going to be an easy way to do it – but it’s something I feel is in my own best interests. My brother is coming to spend a week with us in May – and there are times when I wonder if he’ll have two parents to come home to, the way things are going. He’s going to see a huge difference – one that I see but don’t find as startling. I’m like that little frog in the saucepan over a low flame – I jumped into cold water, and now the hot hasn’t got me frantic. At least, not QUITE yet…

I love Springtime – not quite as much as Autumn, but almost.

I *WILL* try to write in here more faithfully – even though I sometimes wonder if anybody (other than Adelaise – bless her heart!) reads these things regularly. But, to be honest, right now I’m busy just making sense of the One Day At A Time. If another few months pass without any new material, consider that I’m just keeping doing what I’m supposed to be doing – and forgive me.

Once again, I look at the last publication date for a blog and wonder at my own lack of ambition.

When I started "blogging", I thought it would be easy for me to just sit down and spill my everyday thoughts into my keyboard - probably boring you folks stiff in the process. I could yak about the weather, the political scene, minor miracles, and all without really breaking a sweat.

Not.

Real Life (tm), as those of us who spend a lot of time online call it, had other plans.

One thing I hadn't counted on was a serious case of "Writer's Burn Out" caused by pushing myself to post at least 3000 words of original material per week - sometimes as much as 20,000 words. It might have been fan fiction or original fantasy, or even a blog entry, but the effort and dedication that needs to go into producing that much in that short a time is taxing. My muse - the little voice in my head that helps me know where I'm going next - decided to take a vacation and, when she returned, only steps out of the bathroom a few times a week to make small suggestions.

The next thing I hadn't really counted on - it had been a constant concern over the years I've been maintaining this site, but had never been foremost in my mind for a while - is the fact that my parents are getting quite elderly, feeble, and fragile health-wise. My dad is 84 and beginning to show signs of simple Senior Dementia - ill-tempered at times, short-term memory going haywire as often as not, difficulty following conversations going on around him - on top of his usual aches and pains that are having him begin to fall now while moving around. My Mom is 76 and a hemodialysis patient who has never REALLY snapped back after almost dying of kidney failure two years ago. Her latest trek to the hospital came at the instigation of a pumping bleeding ulcer that required four units of blood in a transfusion and, once more, nearly cost her her life.

I'm the transportation to the doctors, renal centers and sometimes shopping trips; and an extra hand when arthritis doesn't let someone lift something up or down from a high shelf. I try to be mindful and save my folks steps that would wear them out needlessly. And I'm realizing that I'm coming every day closer to the end of this task and finding that I have to pay attention to my responses - both to my parents' needs and my emotions - a whole lot more.

It's hard to watch those you love go down-hill and know that there isn't a damned thing you can do about it. This is the road that Life (with a capital "L" for a reason) has set for all of us to walk down sooner or later. I watched my own Mom walk down this road with HER mother about thirty-five years ago, and I never questioned that my time at doing the same would come - but like looking into the face of my brand-new first-born child and having a hard time conceptualizing the day when that child would be an adult and capable of living independently, I had never thought the day would actually arrive when I'd look at the face of my Mom and/or Dad and wonder just how many more days I still have with them.

Mind you, I know our family doesn't exactly function the way the normal "modern" family does. In "modern" families, the elderly are shipped off to institutions that are really nothing more than graduated warehouses of discarded humanity to live out their last days alone and forgotten - except for the inheritance they may provide after they're gone. In "modern" families, parents and children live together only as long as the child is a minor - with the child often being "kicked out" the moment s/he reaches the age of eighteen.

In our family, we have three generations living in one large house: my folks, my hubby and me, and my now-grown kids. My kids grew up around and knowing their grandparents VERY well - my only regret there is that my mother-in-law died very early on, and my kids didn't get the chance to know her half as well. My folks were an important influence in my kid's upbringing - and my kids kept my parents from becoming so stuck in their thinking that they couldn't see the good in this new generation at all.

I'm not sure how my kids are handling watching their grandparents slow down and become enfeebled - we don't exactly talk about it much. I know we all grouse and grumble at each other from time to time - my kids because the grandparents are so demanding of having their stuff done "NowNowNow,", my folks because the kids are typical in wanting to procrastinate until the last minute (they get that from me).

But you know, looking back at growing up in a similar situation and now seeing my kids grow up this way too, I think that this is a healthier way to go about living and raising a family. There is no mystery, no sectret, to getting old for my kids. Old folks in general have become human beings, just like the young folks; people who have feelings that deserve respect and rights to be recognized and opinions deserving to be given ear. The old have interesting stories to tell the young, and the young have equally interesting stories to tell the old - if both can learn to listen. There IS a "generation gap" - but it isn't half as big as one might think it, IF the situation is handled correctly.

And yes, those are VERY big "if's."

I don't mean to sit and brag here - I'm very proud of the fact that we are a three-generation household that manages not to want to kill each other on an on-going basis - but I wonder just how much of our current society's ills come because of the lack of dedication to the full meaning of the word "family". Economic pressures mean that in order to buy the newest, biggest, baddest, bestest, Mommies have to work all day long just like Daddies - which means kiddies grow up at babysitters or in day-care. Television is the way tired parents keep active youngsters out of their hair at the end of a long workday - but is a HORRIBLE role-model when it comes to teaching values and ethics. Watch the sit-coms lately. In them, all the kids are wise-assed and smart-mouthed - and what do we have in society today but a whole generation of kids for whom the wise-crack or sassing attitude is a way of life, not even caring how those cracks make the other person feel. They live their life in search of a laugh track - and do immeasurable harm to the interpersonal realm around them. Old folks are people seen only a few times a year - and the visits are generally viewed as obligatory by both parent and child.

And so, now, we have a society that talks "family values" without the vaguest idea exactly what that means. We have this assumption that it means two parents to raise the children rather than one - with some people demanding that the parents be one of each gender ONLY - but in reality, "family values" go a whole lot deeper than that. "Family Values" are the ones that keep an elderly parent living at home for as long as humanly possible - in touch with the younger generation. "Family Values" are the ones that decide that being able to buy/lease a new car every two years or afford that big new house is FAR less important than knowing where the kids are, who they are spending time with and what they're up to during the hours after school. "Family Values" are the ones that make a person want to BE THERE for the other family member, no matter what - and be mindful of manners and behavior.

You aren't going to get these values going to church - although religion does speak to the "honor thy father and mother", it doesn't have any REAL authority to back it up other than what a believer gives it. You aren't going to get those values through legislation - you cannot oblige people to act in manners contrary to their upbringings without creating an entirely new class of outcast, which our society definitely does NOT need. You aren't going to get these values in the school system - although teaching the ideal family formula has been a part of the education system for decades. Schools, as the result of the growing violence in students, now adopt "Zero-Tolerance Policies" that are about as ANTI-"Family Values" as it is possible to get - and kids raised in that arbitrary, heartless manner are understandably arbitrary and heartless toward others in return.

We get what we pay for. "Family Values" doesn't come cheap.

Sometimes it means that a blogger goes over half a year without saying a single word - and most of the time it means that money isn't the most important thing in life.

I wouldn't have it any other way. I hope you don't mind.

It's that time of year again...

You know, I could go on and on about the many pressures of the season ushered in by Thanksgiving - of how our personal calendars experience a yearly crush of parties, events, visits and so on; of how we have to fit shopping trips into our daily schedules so that we have all the gifts purchased in the time allowed and so on. I could even write a diatribe about the commercialism of the season that has totally obscured the reason for the season in the first place.

I could - but I'm not going to.

I think my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving itself. I love the smell of the baking turkey - heck, my family has a whole series of meal plans that depend upon a plethora of leftovers from that one meal. We have a casserole called “Feathers”, and then Turkey Egg Foo Yung – and the inevitable turkey salad and turkey & gravy over rice/potatoes. I look forward to those meals almost as much as to the original feast - and as much because it's usually served with the same people around the table as for the original feast.

Thanksgiving is when family gathers and shares in a meal around a common table - or at least the grownups sit around the big dining table while the kids sit around card tables or at breakfast counters. It is a time when, even if just for a moment or two somewhere along the way, most of us take time to think through what it is we have to be thankful for over the last twelve months. Some of us do a great deal of introspection, some of us give the whole concept a glancing thought - but each in his or her own way remembers why this holiday exists in regards to their own lives.

Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays we have that hasn't been co-opted by commercialism - where the market forces aren't pushing us to buy. Buy. BUY! There isn't a huge push for cards to be sent out before the fourth Thursday of November – at least, not yet anyway. For the time being – and hopefully for a very long time to come - the holiday itself still exists more or less entirely to remind us to at least once a year follow the admonition in the very name of the holiday - to take time to be thankful.

So… I thought I’d take the time to share with you all what I have to be thankful for this year.

My family is still all here in the land of the living. This is a fairly big thing when one considers that both my parents are elderly and in very frail health. One has suffered kidney failure and needs thrice-weekly hemodialysis, the other is slowly slipping into senile dementia and has heart trouble. Each year at this time it gets easier and easier to see that our time together is growing very, very short. How lucky I am to have them with me for another year!

Not only were we all still breathing, but we were all still able to belly up to the table and share in the ebb and flow of around-the-table discussion - and, you know, that is a lot of what "makes" Thanksgiving. At my table that day, three generations sat down together and enjoyed the meal. What a treat that was – and how grateful I am to have experienced that!

I have three grown children; and I enjoy stable, loving relationships with all of them (which doesn’t hurt when we all still live under the same roof!) My kids get along with their grandparents, and my folks get along great with my kids. We have no drug issues or other troubles that poison so many parent-child relationships presented. We laugh together, tell jokes together, help each other, and depend on one another. I listen to the stories others tell me about how this branch of their families doesn’t get along with that or how the “black sheep” screwed things up for everyone again at the family get-together – and I am amazed and proud at how our family managed to avoid such squabbles. That, too, is something to be thankful for.

Granted, we were missing a few with whom we would have loved to have shared our meal - my brother and his wife were celebrating their Thanksgiving with the wife's family over 500 miles away in Arizona, and an unofficially adopted young man won't be able to come home from Tennessee for a while yet - but we knew we were "all together" otherwise. The missing pieces of our lives were safe, warm, well-fed – just not with us at the moment. I celebrate their safety and wellbeing too, even if necessarily from a distance.

I have a group of friends who make my life interesting and fun – and I know that each of them was celebrating the day with their families and turkeys and the associated traditions. This year, that circle of friends is a little bigger than last year – and I’m grateful for each and every one of those people who have given my life a new facet. How lucky I truly am to have my Saturday “coffee klatch” group to meet with, or the wonderful group of folks I play taiko with on Monday nights. I look forward to seeing the servers at the restaurants I visit while waiting for my mom to get off dialysis – and I appreciate all the help the technicians and nurses at the renal center give to the both of us. All of these people are a part of who I am now – and I appreciate each and every one of them.

I just read what I wrote, and it suddenly occurred to me that I am absolutely awash with riches – maybe not of the monetary, material kind, but riches nonetheless – and I can’t help thinking of those who aren’t quite so blessed. There are a lot of people who don’t have the family togetherness, the close friendships, or maybe even the wherewithal to buy the ingredients for a basic meal much less a feast. This is one of the first years that we haven’t had an “outsider” at our table – someone who might otherwise not have a feast to sit down to or friendly faces about them when they did. Perhaps I should be grateful that none of my friends or acquaintances would have otherwise been going without this year – or maybe I need to be a little more open about looking for someone with whom to share my bounty.

I’ll have to think on that one for a while.

Next up is the madness and wonder of the year-end holidays – whichever one we each chooses to celebrate. There are quite a few to choose from, each with its own set of traditions and practices. I suppose it’s a good thing that they all come at about the same time of year – we all can share in that slightly shell-shocked attitude of “are we there yet?” and appreciate the other’s lack of time and sometimes even patience.

But… you know, I don’t think any of us would be in any shape to be introspective in the least if Thanksgiving came any closer or in the middle or end of the list. So I guess the final thing on my list of things to be thankful for this year is that Thanksgiving happens when it does.

Actually, I’m just grateful that Thanksgiving happens – it is the one, unique holiday that America has to offer to the world that has nothing to do with religion or even really national history per se. One need not cook turkey, think of Pilgrims and Indians or any of that other American History stuff to make Thanksgiving meaningful. Yes, maybe those things speak to Americans specifically – but it is the attitude and the idea that one sets aside a time to celebrate all the good things in life, including life itself, and to share that celebration with friends and family.

The world could use more gratitude – even if only for the gift of life. Perhaps if we spent more time thinking of things to be grateful for than thinking of things we can be angry about, there wouldn’t be quite so much violence and hatred.

I can dream…

I’m sure just about everyone both in the US and elsewhere know that the United States is involved in that peculiar phenomenon known in these parts as “election season.” Media pundits have spent the last few months – indeed over two years – trying to second guess the Presidential election. Local media sources have only recently begun hitting us with campaign commercials extolling this or that candidate OR, if you live in California or Arizona, this or that initiative creating new laws or fiscal policy.

Whether it be a choice as to whether or not to free up some of the local sales taxes levied several years ago to pay for freeway systems not yet completed in order to begin installing things like light rail systems (can you tell I just got back from a trip to the Phoenix, AZ area?) or whether or not to require all persons arrested for a felony to have their DNA samples entered irrevocably into a database, the proper exercise of democracy has these regular periods of managed chaos. Most of them bore a lot of people to tears and can cause a sense of “I don’t know what it’s about – best I just say nothing. My vote doesn't count anyway...” apathy.

That’s not a good idea.

The Presidential election of 2000 was decided by a mere five hundred and some odd votes in Florida. That’s a national election in which millions took part – and the tiniest fraction of that number was the key. How anybody could possibly think their vote doesn’t matter when things can get THAT tight is a form of Flat-Earth mentality that I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

Yes, the US has its problems. Yes, the federal government, in OUR names, does things that we personally don’t approve of. Yes, the federal government hides things from us that they don’t think we’d be able to deal with well. Yes, we all gripe and moan about it, viewing the government as a “Them” against whom the “Us” (We The People) has to stand.

But you know what? That last statement – that the government is a Them and we are an Us – is illusion.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that Them was put there by YOUR vote – or lack of it. You can gripe and/or moan ONLY if you voted. If you didn’t vote, then you got what you paid for and should, in this blogger’s opinion, keep your mouth shut. If you didn’t vote last time and didn’t like the results, then get off your butt this time and VOTE.

Think of it this way: if you don’t vote, my vote counts double. Are you SURE you want ME speaking for you? No??? Then speak for yourself, damn it!!

The United States is a democratic republic – where we democratically elect representatives to take responsibility for voting our sensibilities in a republican-style forum. We are a country where the rights of the minority are not capriciously abrogated by a powerful majority – and vice versa. We are a country with a complex and intricate system of checks and balances between three main branches of governmental service: the Executive Branch, with the President, VP and various advisors; the Legislative Branch, with the Senate and the House of Representatives and their various advisors; and the Judicial Branch, with judges and clerks and lawyers. Everything done by one branch touches and is checked by the other two – or, at least, that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work.

And who are the ones who watch those who run these three branches of civil service?

We are.

Every so often, on a regular schedule, we get to give these folks (or at least the elected ones) a firm idea of whether or not we think they’re doing a good job. If we like what we’ve seen, we vote them another term of office. If we don’t like what we’ve seen, we vote the jerks out of office. We need have no more bloody revolutions to change our government and change the direction our country moves in – we only need an election and an inauguration.

And that’s why getting out to the polls on Election Day and making your voice heard is so important. We are the life’s blood of the democratic element in our society. That means you, and me, and the dimwit down the street.

Democracy – or even a democratic republic – isn’t a civic system that can run well on apathy. Apathy leaves room for special interests to gain a foothold – and those special interests are only interested in one thing. I’ll give you a clue: IT AIN’T THE WELFARE OF THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE – and you, as an individual, don’t even register on their import meter.

In the end, I really don’t give a darn whether you, my reader, are for this candidate or that – whether you support or oppose this proposition or that. What I DO care about is that you respect your country enough to do the right thing by her. This country, despite all of her problems and attitudes, is a grand place – and it is the practice of asking the common man on the street to raise his hand ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ from time to time that gives us all of the many blessings we Americans enjoy. Each and every one of us owes it to this land to be counted.

Vote your conscience, by all means. Inform yourself and make your voice heard.

A mere two centuries back in our own history, people fought and died for that opportunity – and in other parts of the world today, people still ARE fighting and dying for that privilege.

Don’t squander the riches you were given.

Vote.

Please.

I promise the next blog will be on something light and stream-of-consciousness-related. But this one just HAD to be written. It’s too darned important. -MMB

The ravens are back…

Raucous, brazen, noisy – these are the harbingers of the change of the seasons. In a place where one can watch four seasons only by paying extreme attention to the details, ravens are one of the really dependable ways to tell that summer has ended and autumn is now in full swing. The melodic trills and warbles of mocking birds protecting their fledging young have gone silent, and the air is now filled with “Caw! Caw! Caw!”

Of course, around here, the ravens descend on us the moment the walnuts begin to fall. We have a tree – actually, it’s a neighbor’s tree – right next to our driveway that sprinkles walnuts liberally right where the cars can crack them conveniently. Thus, when the car is gone, a host of black moochers will descend on the pavement to pick through the squished remains of an English walnut – daintily taking the motes of nut meat from the shards of shell.

If that doesn’t work, the moochers… er… ravens will go right up in the tree itself, take a nut that is almost ready to fall out of its protective rind, and then fly away with it. From my window here at my computer, I watch ravens with their booty sitting on the top of a telephone pole, trying to peck their way through the shell. Or else they decide to get smart and drop it to the pavement time after time after time to crack it. They’re persistent and inventive little creatures, those ravens.

There are other signs of autumn too, of course. The walnut trees themselves begin to lose their leaves, as does our grape arbor. The grapes are ripe – black and round against the green and gold backdrop of leaves and vines. The poinsettia bush near my kitchen window has finally reached the ten-foot-tall mark in places – although this year, the leaves are curled from the slightly longer spate of hot weather.

The wind has a serious chill to it now – an invitation to be smart and not leave the house without a jacket at least tossed into the car “just in case.” The hills behind town are still golden – but it is a gold that is beginning to have a brown and dead feel to it because the seed heads are long since either eaten or fallen. In the areas where there is some farming, the corn stalks are either tall and producing or turning golden and drying. Area tomatoe vines are producing their little hearts out – which means that there is canning to do to put up stewed tomatoes for soups and casseroles in the winter.

The wisteria vine just outside my other window here at my computer is beginning to show signs of thinking about losing its leaves. Many of the older leaves now have black tips to them – and the trend is spreading. This being the first year that I’ve had a genuine green canopy of leaves at my window, it’s interesting to see how a plant begins to go dormant. I need to replenish the sugar water that feeds some of the area hummingbirds – that’s a show that I don’t want to lose out on.

Autumn is when the joints creak just a little louder, hot chocolate tastes just a little bit better, and the air gets a crisp feel to it – even when it’s warm enough to have the door standing open, as I do now. At night, I’m starting to think that maybe it will get cold enough one of these days for us to use the fireplace.

I love the changing seasons – but I think I love autumn the best. Everything has a sense of completion to it – ripe and full, or already harvested.

Even my own life is starting to move into autumn now. My kids are grown – although not gone, which is OK right now. My parents are older, needing help now. I look at all the women running around with toddlers or infants and think to myself, “been there, done that, your turn!” I’ve no grandkids yet – although I’m in no hurry to have them – and know many of my friends who are already grandparents several times over. The grey is starting to outnumber the black on my head.

But, you know? I still feel young inside – not a whole lot different than I felt at sixteen or twenty-two. I have a heckuva lot more memories stored away in my grey matter now than I did in those days, but other than that and the aching bones, I haven’t changed all that much.

Well… OK. Yes, I’ve changed. Even though I’ve a long way to go, I’m slightly more patient now than I was back then. I’m a little less materialistic. I’m a little more tolerant (on my good days.)

I’m not quite ready to retire to my rocking chair and continually preach about “when I was your age…” but I’m not that discontent with my lot.

And yet, this world – at least that part of it overwhelmingly conditioned and shaped by commercial interests – wants me to want my youth back. Oil of Olay has how many products now to help me deal with my wrinkles and “aging skin.” They have commercials now extolling the benefits of Botox, Rogaine, Viagra/Cialis, you name it that will lift, separate, enhance, return, replace that which has sagged, come together, diminished, vanished or departed for greener pastures.

It’s really a shame, because there is a lot of beauty to be found in that which sags, silver hair shines just a little brighter than black or blonde. Wrinkles on the face tell stories about character and a life that has been lived. Whether or not a person buys into the ever-young society that marketing influences want us to become, no amount of Botox, Cialis, Rogaine or Oil of Olay will be able to wash away the number of days a person has been here.

There is a poem I read back when I was considerably younger that I have a much greater appreciation for now. It begins, “When I am old, I shall wear purple” and goes on to extol the virtues of being content with who I am in each and every moment – not caring what others say or think.

I’m not old – at least, not by my own measure. But I think I’m going to wear purple a little more often, despite all that. To hell with Oil of Olay, Rogaine and the rest. Each silver hair I wear is a crisis I survived and because of which I grew stronger. My wrinkles celebrate my life with me. My body sags where it has been used for the purpose for which it was intended. I’m not ashamed of having lived.

Autumn’s cool – in more ways than one.

Just for giggles, I was looking at my own web page this morning – and I noticed that I hadn’t added a new blog entry since long before the summer started. How awful, I thought to myself – were I a faithful reader of this blog, I’d be getting pretty pissed by now at the thoughtlessness of the blog writer for not giving me any new material to read for such a long time.

I do my share of daily on-line reading – my links page has a list of some of the sites I frequent most often – and I know I often catch myself thinking “for heaven’s sake, how long does it take you to come out with a new column/cartoon?! I check daily – so why can’t you write something new, say, weekly, eh?” That’s how I know what any faithful reader of these words might be thinking after three months without a single peep from MMB...

Well – not exactly without a single peep from MMB… I have been updating my ongoing fiction on a fairly regular basis – except for Topiara, on which I’ve hit a writer’s block (in case any of you are reading that – sorry about that.) I spend a healthy share of every day writing, although much of what I write now is stuff I’m really hoping to send off to some publisher and actually sell one of these days. Lately has been an exception – I’m working on my next Pretender novel, Out In The Cold, and I’m up to chapter four so far.

Still, looking at my home page this morning got me to thinking – dangerous thing, I know, but it can’t be helped sometimes. I hadn’t written a blog entry for a long time, and (if my feedback for some of my Pretender stuff is any indication) there actually might be folks out there who would like to see something new and who are either fed up or have given up on ever seeing any.

Sometimes, life just seems to stream out of control – to where a fiction writer (who would like to pretend to have a sane mind – as oxymoronic as that might appear) takes no time to write a stream-of-consciousness article. No, instead the pressure is on to “finish that chapter” or “get this out to the beta readers” or “make sure I do my weekly update on schedule” – and not “OK, kid – sit down and just start to type something that speaks more to who YOU are than to the worlds and characters you usually are wrapped up in.”

I even have the usual line of excuses that each and every one of us can and sometimes does haul out to try to justify why we didn’t get this or that finished on time: out of state visitors caused a mad rush to get house cleaned at least a little, social activities, obligations to this one or that which required plenty of prep time out of the day, the occasional illness that knocked one off their ass for a portion of a week, financial crunches that came when something BIG broke down and made a huge dent in the pocketbook, family life (oh, you mean I’m supposed to actually spend time with those people?) and activities, and so on, and so on.

I’m sure you all know the drill.

But from a reader’s standpoint, none of that matters. None of those things happened to them – they never existed. All that exists is the little note on the homepage that says that MMB hasn’t updated her blog since May - BAD MMB.

Expectations. We all have them – we all trip over them every day. Expectations of ourselves, expectations of others, expectations of events, recognition, and so on. We make them each into little pieces of our reality and then complain loudly when REAL reality doesn’t snap to attention and cater specifically to us. We don’t see that we’ve done nothing but to create our own dissatisfaction – not by having the expectations in the first place, but by being attached to them. It is when we move them from the realm of dreams and hopes to “this has gotta happen!” that we manufacture our own misery.

Whether it be getting down the street without having to stop at a single red light, getting that slow jerk in front of one to get the hell out of the fast lane NOW, getting through the annual physical exam without the doctor telling one that one must lose weight and exercise more, getting one’s reading “fix” on time, getting to go to that movie tomorrow night or getting that promotion – dependence upon that which isn’t real is what causes ulcers and road rage and high blood pressure.

Y’all know what? It ain’t worth it.

And ya know what, folks?

I wrote this blog to myself as much as to anyone else.

But at least it’s something new for YOU to read…

About time.

We’ve all seen the pictures detailing the abuse of Iraqi detainees. We’ve all – or at least most of us – have shaken our heads and wondered what kind of madness must have possessed our people to not only allow but actually perpetrate such barbarities. What was done in the depths of that prison at the dead of night paints us all in a hideous manner – it betrays every principle we claim to stand for.

We ask ourselves how such a thing could have happened – and start turning over rocks for convenient scapegoats. We would be putting our time and efforts to better use if we stopped and considered just how easy it would be for any one of us to end up a perpetrator rather than an armchair critic.

In 1974, Stanley Milgram published a book entitled Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View that rattled the cages in psychological corners. The experiment described took place during the 1960’s at Yale University and was intended to test and measure the willingness of a person to obey a perceived authority figure, even when asked to perform actions that violated said person’s principles or sense of conscience. The most infamous experiment had the subject put in charge of administering electrical shocks to another as “punishment” for making mistakes in a learning situation. Starting at a low voltage, each subsequent shock is to be made 15 volts stronger. The person receiving the shocks was, of course, an actor who not only was feigning reaction to the shock, but was instructed at 150 volts to halt the experiment. The experimenter behind the actual subject informed the person giving the shocks that “the experiment requires that you continue – please go on.” If the subject balks further, the experimenter then told him or her that he took all responsibility – but to please continue the experiment. The expectation was that only a very few sadists would push the button to administer the maximum voltage shock.

Surprisingly, 65% of the subjects continued to administer shocks all the way up to the maximum 450 volt level – and no subject refused to stop before the 300 volt level. Repeats of the experiment over time, documented in the March/April edition of Psychology Today yielded roughly the same result – that the percentage of subjects willing to inflict fatal voltages remained between 61% and 66%, regardless of time or location.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that while we’d like to think of ourselves as moral and ethical people, given certain conditions and situations, we all have the capacity to violate our principles – that far fewer of us would be willing to stand up and take our licks for not buckling to a perceived authority than is comfortable to consider.

I’d like to think that if I’d been in Iraq – in that horrible prison that was the worst of the worst during Saddam Hussein’s time – I would treat those held there in a humane manner. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t make them strip, sodomize them or make them masturbate, or put hoods over their heads after attaching wires to them and tell them they’re going to be electrocuted.

But seeing the odds above, I can’t be sure. And that is a MOST uncomfortable thought!

Thanks to people high in the military and government, our soldiers in that prison have been told that the Geneva Conventions – the rules by which the whole world has waged combat for decades – no longer applies to us. Our enemy doesn’t play by the rules – so why should we?

No, boys and girls!

Every parent knows and has been harping and drilling into their kids’ brains for centuries that “TWO WRONGS DON’T MAKE IT RIGHT.” When we abandon our principles because the other guy doesn’t buy into them, we become that which we abhor – that which we’re fighting in the first place. We cannot hope to balance within our own hearts and minds the ethics of overthrowing a sadistic dictator if we behave just as sadistically as they did when we have the power and authority - not without doing ourselves and our moral standing serious harm both in our own eyes as well as those of the world at large.

So whom do we hold responsible?

Certainly those who participated in the atrocities need to have their actions addressed directly and unequivocally – but they were just the guys with their hands on the voltage dial and the shock button. They are the convenient scapegoats, these men and women who “should have known better.” But what do we do with or to the men standing behind those subjects with their fingers on the shock button saying “the experiment requires that you continue” – how do we tell the men who tell soldiers that “the Geneva Conventions no longer apply to us” and the FBI to “don’t go there when the ‘interrogations’ are taking place” that what THEY are doing is at the very least unethical?

Until we figure that one out, the world will make us – you and me and every other person who claims to be a citizen of the US – responsible.

And we will be.

The other day, I was told that I was too “hostile” to be considered a friend anymore.

Seems that my now-former friend, an apostate Orthodox Jew, had been sending me overtly self-righteous pro-Zionist articles. I'd been making small responses – letting him know that I deplored the violence from both sides equally. The last straw, however, was one about petitioning the UN to make suicide bombings into War Crimes. I first responded that if violence toward civilians from one side of that issue is to made a War Crime, the violence from both sides toward civilians should be similarly codified - or to forget the whole thing; anything else would be hypocrisy. His response was something to the effect that Israel had the bigger guns, and that we'd see who was "right". My answer was to ask whether two wrongs ever made it right. At that point, I was told I was “hostile” to the Jewish state – and that when I felt “less hostile”, I had his permission to get back in contact.

Is this the shape of our future? That either we walk in lock-step, or we are enemies?

I introduced this topic to a discussion group in which I participate, and the commentary has been interesting. Some see this as an inevitable display of human failing. Some see this as evidence of our “lack of choice” when it comes to news and media. Some see this as evidence of the “#1 problem of human existence: ATTITUDE.”

Frankly, I’m thinking that this is evidence of our inherent predisposition to moral laziness. It’s very easy to preach tolerance when things are going our way - preach it to the choir as it were - but very, very difficult to actually PRACTICE tolerance when in a situation where a conflicting idea or belief or agenda stares us in the face. And because we seem to suffer from a morbid lack of tolerance on virtually every level nowadays, I'm afraid I'm finding this an indication of the extremely weak foundation upon which we seek to maintain our democratic society. Tolerance by its very definition requires being able to withstand the expression of ideas that one doesn’t agree with or approve of. Our Constitution, in the First Amendment, recognizes that in a free society, tolerance of differing ideas is an absolute that shall not be abrogated. It is tolerance that allows (in my neighborhood, at least) a Pagan to live next to a Buddhist, with fundamentalist Christians across the street – and we all actually get along together!!

In recent decades, our media has been more than willing to offer any number of alternative perspectives on any issue currently occupying the public debate platform. But 9/11 changed that, didn’t it? Suddenly, we had administration officials warning us to be careful what we said, lest we give aid and comfort to the “enemy”. With FOX and MSNBC leading the pack, there has been no in-depth investigative reporting of what is going on in our ultra-secretive administration. Critics and whistle-blowers are smeared and swept under the rug – with the media complicit in the act. After all, we don’t want to give aid or comfort, do we?

But, what “enemy” would we be aiding or comforting, one might wonder?

“Terrorists”, we were told, “who hate America for its open society and freedoms.”

Ah. So we’re supposed to give up our rights to those freedoms because those who hate those freedoms want to take them away from us?

Hellooooooo…

I look around me at the current state of debate in this country – nay, the entire world – and I’m appalled and worried. WE AREN’T LISTENING TO EACH OTHER ANYMORE. We are demonizing those who sincerely and with the best of intentions believe radically differently from us – to the point that we dismiss what a person MIGHT have to say immediately because it comes from that “other” viewpoint.

Liberals heap disdain and insult on Conservatives, who are just as willing to heap disdain and insult right back – and it’s no longer possible to say “But he hit me first, Mommy…” Our national debate has become a barroom brawl – compromise is not considered an option. Politics is now a black vs. white proposition – whether it be over Iraq, environmental protections, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, global warming, nuclear proliferation, or you name it. There is “our” position – whatever that may be – which is not only right, but self-evidently so; and then there’s the stupidity of the “other guy”.

I love my apostate Orthodox Jewish friend dearly. He has a most delightful and skewed sense of humor – and we have had many interesting and thought-provoking discussions on spirituality, religion, etc over the years. But now, because I am unwilling to give unequivocal, unquestioning and uncritical support to Israel’s answer to their national dilemma, I am thrust aside as “hostile.” And I’m left sitting here thinking, “Hell! I can’t give unequivocal, unquestioning and uncritical support to the current administration of my OWN country and its policies – how the heck am I to be required to do so of another?”

And perhaps that’s what’s so scary, from where I sit. America sits on the verge of a new kind of civil war – one that is just as capable of tearing solid friendships and even family affiliations to sunder. We don’t TALK anymore – worse, we don’t LISTEN. We don’t compromise. We don’t tolerate. Life has become a huge play of Black VS White.

And all I can do is shine a light on how this lack of tolerance has affected me as a person.

I’ve lost a friend.

I am diminished.

Sometimes, I guess, it doesn’t pay to be sane anymore.

The idea for this essay came to me as I was driving across the CA-AZ desert, heading off for a few days of "Mommy Vacation" with my brother in Scottsdale. For the first time in... WAY more years than I want to admit to... I am off, by myself. No kids. No hubby. No schedules. No expectations (other than the ones that have essentially already happened (I got here Friday night, and it is, after all, Monday morning.)

Anyway, back to Friday afternoon...

Yes, I could have flown. Driving 9+ hours alone in a car at one sitting may not be anybody else's idea of a "good time" - and I'll be the first to admit that I was pretty well exhausted by the time I pulled into my brother's driveway. But you know what? It was an experience the like of which I truly hadn't had before, and one I'm going to treasure for a long time.

Flying takes something away from the journey that is very precious - the proper appreciation for the distance being travelled being only the most noticable. We live in a country that is nearly 3000 miles from one coast to the other. But until we have seen every inch of that 3000 miles up fairly close, "3000" is just a number I've rattled off - a number which could be completely random. Five hours by transcontinental jet gets you from LA to NY. Past the Rockies AND the Appalachians, over the entire Great Plains. These massive, majestic, impressive landmarks become simply names - places one reads about in geography-related magazines or textbooks - names with no meaning because there's no experience to go with the name. On a trip like the one I just took, "The Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area" becomes very much the same - something one would hear in a tavel-log or in a documentary. From the air, it is just a huge expanse of asphalt, cement, freeways and smog - something it takes but a few minutes to get over. MY experience of "LA" starts climbing the mountain into Thousand Oaks, twisting past the Hollywood Bowl, and for two hours or more (depending on traffic) making my way south and then east past San Bernardino, Riverside, Redlands.

My folks have flown between San Luis Obispo, CA (about 15 miles from where I live) and Scottsdale AZ many times - the trip in the air takes a little over 2 hours. I looked at my trip-o-meter when I pulled in - and from my house to Dave's is approximately 556 miles. Now, to some, traveling that in 2 hours means that one hasn't "wasted" a day driving - running the risk of getting stuck in LA traffic (the subject of a previous blog entry) or hit by some yahoo who's either drunk or trying to do something stupid while driving. My answer to that person is, yes, you will have more of the day to work with after arrival and less risk on the way over - but you will have lost something.

Flying over the desert at several thousand feet of altitude simply doesn't allow for an appreciation of the scenery past which one is moving. One simply doesn't get an appreciation for the regularity of the vegetation in an area that most wonder if it ever gets water at all. One doesn't get an appreciation - as I did a little bit this trip - for what a desert smells like when it gets wet. One doesn't get to see the buzzards sitting on a fencepost or on the ground - or circling endlessly overhead, hunting for something that used to be alive that is now not moving. One doesn't get to see the occasional plume of dust, rising and swirling in the air AND, if it's hot out, starting to walk a path of its own. One doesn't get to see the shimmer of a mirage from a mile up - where the heat waves radiating off of the hot, yellow-pink gravel begins to look like water that simply recedes with ever inch you travel toward it. The entire experience of "desert" is reduced to, "Oh. Gee. Not many trees. Ho-hum..."

Mind you, I chose as my sole traveling companion a selection of music that meant that I crawled through LA during rush hour comforted by the sacred vocal music of Palestrina and Bach - music that made sitting and waiting for the "Chaos Theory" knots and freeway interchange madness much easier to handle. And as if that wasn't the cat's meow, I then traveled the desert listening to Mozart and Beethoven - everything from piano concertoes to symphonies - to a string quartet playing the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Nineth Symphony. The miracle of modern technology meant that I was able to put in a single CD of compressed music and travel for 9+ hours without a single repeat, without a single commercial (now that's heaven!) and knowing that there wouldn't be a single piece I didn't like coming up. And, surprise of surprises, at each point of my trip, the music was entirely appropriate.

So I was barrelling down the road at somewhere between 75 and 80 mph (keeping up with traffic, but not zooming past everybody in the world) watching the various hills and mountains rise from the flat plane of the desert on the horizon in shades of rose and blue and lavender, slowly come closer and deepen into reds and browns and blacks, and then move behind me to make room for the next contender in line. My thoughts were amazingly quiet - more involved in keeping up with the harmonic changes and the melodies of the music than trying to plot or scheme or plan what I was going to do later or daydream about what I'd like to do later or stew and fuss about something I didn't do (or did do, to my regret) in the past.

And that's when it hit me.

By choosing to drive, and by choosing the kind of music I had, I had opened myself up to the experience of simply BEING - with the rare exception of when I had to concentrate on driving because there was road construction or some other very temporary distraction. I could simply BE IN TRANSIT. I wasn't home, I wasn't "on vacation" quite yet - rather, I was in a very flux state somewhere in between. I had a cruise control so I didn't have to worry about keeping my speed steady; the road was straight enough that I didn't have to worry about going around twisty, windy curves and turns; the traffic was sparse enough that I didn't have to worry about congestion. All those things that normally make it nigh on impossible to enjoy a trip were either limited or missing entirely - and so I did enjoy my trip.

I enjoyed watching the clouds in the overcast sky get darker and then lighter again in slow phases, wondering if I was going to ever get sprinkled on (I did finally get sprinkled on in Blythe - but not before, and not for very long.) I whistled along with the music, finding the inside voices that make the harmony so compelling. I heard the soaring sound of Beethoven's genius, and could hear in places the happy or sly laughter that Mozart could and did put so effectively in his works of art.

I was neither happy nor sad - I was contented. Contentment is a state beyond superficial happiness or sadness or any point in between. Contentment is a state of being satisfied with what IS - and in that, it is an essential element of the state of just BEING. Spiritual Masters and self-help gurus have spoken for millenia on this technique or that to achieve this - and I found it on the road between Indio and Scottsdale, listening to Mozart.

What's more, I'm sitting here in a very rainy Scottsdale, looking out a front window at a "wash" just south of my brother's house that is slowly filling with runoff rainwater from the houses and streets (Dave calls it "the tide coming in,") and I'm finding that just thinking about that experience of driving across the desert makes me almost attain that same state of mind again. No, I don't have any music playing for me right now - what I hear is the purr of Dave's new computer and the low sound of the wind through the eucalyptus and palo verde trees outside. The hummingbird feeder just outside this window here is swaying back and forth like a ruby-red pendulum of a clock. I look at the reflection of the sky and trees on the sidewalk and see the play of raindrops sparkling like fairy dust.

Now this is a vacation!!

Just now I hear the roar of a jet airplane either taking off or landing at the Scottsdale airport - probably filled with people who don't want to risk being on the ground traveling when its wet. Can't blame them - I'm just not one of them anymore.

I get to drive back on Wednesday. I get to start up my Mozart and Beethoven and have those esteemed gentlemen's gifts for musical expression as my companions for another 9+ hours-long drive back home. Maybe it will be wet - maybe not. I'll be contented with whatever I get.

And the lesson of this trip will last me for a very long time.

Just about everyone living in America today, whether they are sports fans or no, has now heard about the infamous ‘costume failure’ that resulted in the flashing of a human breast on ‘Family Hour’ TV during the Super Bowl halftime show. Much has been made of it – speculation whether it was a deliberate attempt by the artist/s involved (no, I’m not going to name names; they’ve had enough publicity over this already…) to cause an incident to add fire to a waning career, an accident (hard to believe, considering what was ultimately uncovered still had an iota [and not much more!] of protection) during an unwise and not rehearsed stunt, or something else entirely.

And I sit here wondering what the big, fat, hairy deal is.

There are so many other things that go on around us that should be raising our eyebrows and causing an uproar, I’m really flummoxed to understand what the big, hairy deal is about a breast being bared on CBS.

Where is the uproar at the outright deceit in the new federal budget that steals from programs to help the little people in order to make it possible to make the tax cuts to the wealthy permanent ones?

Where is the uproar at the systematic onslaught being made on our constitutionally guaranteed civil rights?

Where is the uproar at the idea that, while Saddam did have WMDs in the past, he did not have anything remotely approaching that which was claimed as the reason to invade Iraq?

Where is the uproar at the fact that we (as a people) are willing to spend more on building prisons than on education?

Where is the uproar at the fact that multi-billion-dollar corporations are given carte-blanche to move essential departments of their operations off-shore in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes?

Where is the uproar at the fact that we here in California have to wait until the field of presidential nominees is ‘thinned’ before we get a chance to get our say in who we’d like to see as candidates in the November elections?

Where is the uproar at the fact that such a small minority of eligible voters take the time to make their opinions heard – why is there so little attention given the psychological disenfranchisement of the ‘silent majority’?

Where is the uproar of the broad base of workers – skilled and otherwise – at the systematic whittling away of the labor protections that have been counted on for years – where is the consumer backlash at corporations who abuse and exploit their employees?

Where is the uproar at the fact that we, the American people, are now as much the victims of a administration-approved propaganda machine – and blatantly so – in place of a free press; why are we so complacent in being less informed about the matters of import to our world than citizens in some of the less-developed countries are?

Where is the uproar at the way in which the judiciary is becoming politicized?

Where is the uproar at the way the current administration blithely ignores the scientific community’s near-panic at the way pollution is paving the way for a New Ice Age – calling it ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘chicken-little syndrome’ rather than deal with the facts presented?

Yes, I could go on and on, thinking of things that we desperately need to be focusing our attention on – things that will affect each and every one of us eventually if not dealt with in a sane and intelligent and informed manner pretty soon. Maybe that’s the problem – there are so many things that need attention, we’re overwhelmed by the magnitude of problems. We don’t know where to start – what to address first – so we take the easy way out and don’t address any of them. We’ll find a convenient diversion and make it into a cultural obsession.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the process – a job that must be done has been ignored for so long that, by the time one actually gets around to looking at it in order to determine where to start attacking it, the prospect for success seems hopeless. At that point, it’s easier to say, “Ah, I’ll start a grassroots effort to lobby Congress to repeal the Patriot Act tomorrow – but right now, what about that halftime show, eh?” It’s stupid, short-sighted, generally making the problem all that much worse when one can no longer ignore it – and very human. The process works, whether it has to do with cleaning away dust and cobwebs or national deficits – the longer we wait, the bigger and more daunting the job gets, and the more likely we are to look around for something else we can do first.

After all, we don’t like to tackle the tough stuff ourselves. That’s what heroes are for, after all – those rare individuals whose sense of morality, personal integrity and outrage simply cannot abide simply letting the issue lie for another day – and that’s why we look up to them. We tend to think that we don’t have that kind of backbone, that kind of endurance, that kind of motivation. We’re willing to wait for the ‘other guy’ to come along and start a movement rather than start one ourselves. We’re armchair quarterbacks in the game of life, abdicating our priorities for comfort, security and out of sheer laziness.

We look to those like Martin Luther King, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Rosa Parks to get the ball rolling first. Then, after we pooh-pooh the efforts for a while as doomed, even as we watch the momentum begin to build, we can jump on the bandwagon and claim the movement as our own. But start anything? Don’t be silly!!

That’s what makes it so easy to turn our backs on waning civil rights, a looming federal deficit, no coherent program for post-war Iraq and any number of other pressing issues for our time in favor of tut-tutting over the uncovering of a human breast at a football halftime program, or salivating in expectation of juicy (and horrific) evidence in the trials of Scott Peterson and/or Robert Blake. After all, these are issues easier to wrap the brain around – one need not do any critical thinking to be titillated (pardon the pun.) One need not get hot under the collar considering implications and consequences of any one of the issues running rampant and unchecked for too long when one is being grossed out at the scientific explanation of what happened to Laci’s body after it was tossed into the bay – or how a television celebrity could go so bad – or all of the moral and ethical implications of a boob on TV.

Me? I didn’t watch the half-time show – didn’t see the boob (the flashing of a part of the female anatomy on national TV one, that is…)

I see enough boobs elsewhere, thank you.

I went to Long Beach and back this weekend.

Correction - I drove to Long Beach and back this weekend. My daughter wanted to attend a convention down there – and she wanted the use of my van because it has cruise control, where her little Saturn doesn’t. So, to get my car, she took me for a 1-day “respite” trip. I drove down, and I drove back – three hours plus, both trips, in weekend, late-afternoon not-quite-rush-hour traffic.

And you wonder why I wonder about my own sanity…

I live on the California Coast roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. When the traffic is running smoothly, it takes approximately three to four hours of freeway driving to get to either place - and by "running smoothly," I mean traveling consistently at a speed somewhere between 65 and 80mph. Of course once a person gets in city traffic, one travels at the speed the rest of the maniacs are driving – and that means that speed limits are moot. If the traffic is going 90mph, trying to stick to a sane 65mph is asking to cause an accident. If the traffic is clogged and moving at Dead Slow (when not at Dead Stop, that is,) gunning the engine repeatedly is not going to help!

Where I live, the freeway is two lanes each running north and south – and for those of you who’ve never been there, the freeways in the LA area are at least four lanes each direction, often six and sometimes seven. The good news was that the pavement was dry – the average speed I hit was 75mph, too fast to be traveling safely on wet pavement. The bad news was that everybody else in the world decided they wanted to be traveling too. The five lanes were jammed and very literally bumper-to-bumper – and everybody moving at 75mph.

There is a state of mind that a person gets into when they know they’re in a dangerous situation, they know there’s no way around being in that dangerous situation, and they know that the only way out of that dangerous situation is to behave just as dangerously as everybody else around them (within some minimal limits of sanity.) Driving in Los Angeles means entering that state of mind and staying there until one gets OFF the freeways. The city streets might be just as crowded, but they’re rarely full of cars traveling 75mph.

Driving in Los Angeles also takes an immense amount of trust – and not only in one’s own ability to manage a car. One has to trust that the guy ahead will be a good driver, trust that the cars behind will not slam into the trunk, and trust that the cars to the side know enough to look before changing lanes. One has to trust that the people who designed the signage will put up ample warning for upcoming freeway junctions so that if one must battle to move two or three lanes across traffic to be in the proper place at the proper time, one has the time to do battle.

One thing I’ve noted over time is that manners – waiting one’s turn, signaling lane changes, etc. – is a dying trait, never more obvious than on the freeways of Los Angeles. Everybody is in so much of a hurry – and so completely self-absorbed in where they want to go – that navigation takes on the elements of a chess game or not-quite-contact sport. An empty slot between two vehicles rocketing down the lane will be filled, even if the act of moving over makes the vehicle behind have to hit the brakes to avoid being clipped.

Have you ever noted that the line in a exit-only lane moves more slowly because of all of what I’ve come to call “yellow-breasted lane darters” – those idiots who wait until THE very last minute to try to move over into an exit lane. These are the same idiots who, when they see construction signs saying “lane closed ahead” just keep right on barging forward in the lane to be closed, fully expecting some poor slob to give them access at the head of the line.

What ever happened to the concept of politeness in our society today? How is it that the Golden Rule came to be re-written? What used to be “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is now “Do unto others and run like Hell” or “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” Hedonism – the philosophy that puts self and self-interests before everything else – is now the defining element of American culture.

Politeness, compassion, altruism – those are words we don’t hear a lot about anymore except perhaps in a religious context. “Love thy neighbor” is what we hear or read in scripture – “Love thyself,” while certainly a worthy concept, is now not only the only concept taught, but it is taken to extreme lengths.

And all of this – ALL of it – can be seen in the way Californians drive on the freeways.

And yet – it still exists. You just have to know where to look for it (and don’t try looking at other freeway drivers – they’re lost causes.) After parking at a HUGE Convention Center and finding out there was no place for me to stay while she was busy, I resigned myself to spending six to eight hours in the parked car because I didn’t know where to go while my daughter did her “thing.” But while walking back toward the parking lot, I was lucky enough to run across one of the security personnel of the Convention Center. Not only did he stop and answer my question, but he put me in his electric cart and then drove me over to Shoreline Village, where I could find someplace considerably more comfortable to kill the time while my daughter was busy. He was polite, he was compassionate, and he went above and beyond as far as I was concerned. I never learned his name, but after fighting Angelenos (yes, they even have a name out here for the folks trapped living in this metropolitan zoo-without-bars) he was a refreshing reminder that there is still a dram of humanity left, even in such a place. Whoever you are – I salute you, sir. You made my day.

You know, like my two-lane freeways and my rural lanes that I can take when I don’t want to fight traffic that only seems to be getting heavier year after year. I like being able to slow down – if I really feel like it – and enjoying the scenery along the way. I like the fact that even though our local stretch of US 101 does get crowded at rush hour, one is nine times less likely to get stuck in a traffic jam caused by the Chaos Theory – traffic jams around here tend to have more to do with “yellow-breasted lane darters” and the unfortunate consequence of their actions.

So I guess my trip to Long Beach was a vacation from the sanity of being contented with being a “country mouse,” with a reminder that sanity can survive, even in the midst of utter chaos.

An afterthought- I did, however, find a fabulous and reasonable place to eat down there. So if anybody’s in the vicinity of the Long Beach Convention Center with anything resembling an appetite for lunch, slip on over to the Shoreline Village and check out the Island Sunfish Grill. Their fried shrimp and chips is excellent! My way of paying back their kindness to me is to recommend them to anybody interested and going to be in the area.

I like to think of myself as a relatively sane person.

I pay my bills, shop for food and other necessities, read the newspapers, sit at my word processor (hoping my muse hasn't decided to take a powder) and otherwise try to co-exist with the world around me. I'm Mrs. Joe Q. Average.

And I think I'm going nuts.

Today, the newspapers and editorial columns are all filled with one of two headlining stories:

1. The results of the Iowa Caucuses 2. The State of the Union address by Pres. Bush.

Am I interested to know what happened in Iowa? Yes, of course I am. The presidential election cycle has a way of insinuating itself into nearly every possible facet of American life every four years - it's a good thing to at least try to keep up with the process. It's a good thing to know who is going to be running against the incumbent this year, isn't it?

Why?

I am a firm believer in the American way of life - a way of life in which voting is not only a privilege but a social obligation - who is starting to get extremely tired of not seeing from either of the behemoth political parties anybody that I'd REALLY like to see elected. I hear a lot of hype, a lot of promises, and yet experience has taught me that hype and promises are just words - and when a man sits down at that desk in the Oval Office, those words tend to matter very little.

So I sit here and read article after article about how Dean blew it in Iowa - as if the caucuses of one sparsely-inhabited state out of 50 was all-important. Well, OK, maybe it's a little important, because Dean believed he had things pretty well wrapped up and now knows that he can't just sit back on his Internet-donor laurels and wait for the nomination to come to him - now he knows that anger will only get him so far, he'll have to have something else to take him all the way to DC. Big deal.

I'm a firm believer in the American way of life who has also come to the conclusion that some political traditions are maintained at too high a price - traditions like the Electoral College, which had a valid place in by-gone eras but is now not only anachronistic but tending to sabotage the collective will of the people. In an era of instant communications, we do not need to be electing people who will get together later and tell us who the president will be - all of us can sit at a TV screen and run a calculator. The Electoral College is the American version of wearing powdered wigs in a courtroom - utterly, utterly ridiculous.

Which brings me to the second topic of the news today - Bush's State of the Union address. Did I listen to it? No. I've heard far too many lies come out of that man's mouth over the course of the last three years, I didn't need to hear more.

Oh-HO! I hear you thinking, 'she's one of them pink-o Bush-haters!' Not so. I disagreed with his politics while he was campaigning - couldn't understand how anybody could be fooled with his "fuzzy math" (remember that?) But then came election night - and the Florida aftermath. That's when I became seriously disillusioned with both men running - because both were willing to twist the system to win the prize. Bush did the best job of twisting, you have to admit. So courtesy of the Supreme Court meddling where it had no business, the Electoral College was able to torpedo the will of the majority of US voters and install GW in the Oval Office.

That's when I found out the measure of the man - especially after 9/11 - and learned to trust not the smallest word from his lips.

"No Child Left Behind" - meant more tests, but no money to education.

"Tax Cuts" - meant a couple of hundred bucks to most of us belonging to the Joe Q. Average tribe, but millions to those who already have more money than they know what to do with. If we wonder where the money for "No Child Left Behind" went, we need look no further.

"Homeland Security" - meant headline articles about a color code that serves only to stress the public, with no funding (much less organization) for actually closing security loopholes in our ports or airports.

"War on Terrorism" - now there's a good one. Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorists carry out an audacious attack on US soil and what do we get?

1. War in Afghanistan - ostensibly to track down and capture Bin Laden, but ultimately just to unseat a globally unpopular Taliban regime and then promise funding to rebuild that has never materialized. Afghanistan is now falling into civil war.
2. War in Iraq - where we sacrificed every last bit of goodwill and sympathy 9/11 gave us. For what? The answer isn't pretty. We did it for oil and for Halliburten.
3. The Patriot Act - which directly undermines and destroys rights promised in the US Constitution, and accomplishes from within what Bin Laden was trying to accomplish with planes into buildings.

And so I sit here, herbal tea in hand, looking out my window at flowers and trees and birds and a crystal blue sky, wondering how I, a sane person just doing my best to get by in the world, is supposed to behave?

I know the events in Iowa and what GW said last night on the tube will impact me personally eventually.

I'm wondering if a sane person would continue to sit here, looking out at nature's beauty, or run screaming into the street, tearing her hair and gibbering.

Which is insanity?