Welcome to the 23rd year of this weekly column that's updated now infrequently, on Sunday nights or Monday mornings, depending on how well the booze holds out. If you've got any news, clues or rumors to share from around the Bay, or the world, feel free to send them to Editor@Island-Life.net or use the envelope in the masthead. For previous issues, including 2018, visit the Archives.

MARCH 19, 2023

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER

This week the image comes from Island artist Carol B. Taylor who sometimes makes us miss this island home of 27 years. That is the USS Hornet to the left and Babylon in the distance.

DIRTY OLD TOWN

So anyway, when Denby got out of the jail on account of the St. Valentines Day Massacree -- an annual tradition that has Denby depantsed, arrested and thoroughly humiliated from one year to the next because nothing says True Love like pain and embarrassment -- he got back to the Household a dispirited but unbroken man. He had to pay a fine of $50 and go down with a bunch of felons wearing orange vests and pickup the garbage from the SUV and get discharged with the stern warning never to be seen driving around the County with garbage and bags of weed ever again.

By then another weekend had arrived and it was come to the annual wearing of the green with shamrocks and Ireland's 39 all over the place, especially at the Old Same Place bar on the Island. All the usual gang was there to hoist a Guinness or two and talk about the times, both old and new and enough hot gossip to sear the bristles off the cheeks of a boar.

Dawn and Padraic stood behind the long teakwood bar with its brass rails and jars of pickles at one end and IRA tip jar at the other. Suzie had been got up by Padraic in a fetching green fedora, white blouse, and a far too short green miniskirt (designed by Padraic) and white stockings inserted into buckled shoes. Suzie had drawn the line on wearing six inch stilleto heels all night for she was a sensible girl.

The whole place was cheerful with a clatter and chatter and Denby up in the Snug playing his guitar when the door opened and a strange apparition flew in to the room to hover overhead. It was an oval box with antennae and two propellers and stenciled underneath was the image

"Anatoly," Padraic said. "What does that say?"

Anatoly, full name Anatoly Tolysha Diminya Irysa Schostikovich Borotkin. This name is because his great grandmother had blue eyes, which persist in his lineage to this day. And it may be that he has lineage extended back in time to the Ukraine. He had come to the US to escape the Soviet gulags some time ago.

Anatoly turned pale. "Is Russian Air Force."

Padraic shrugged. "Well it is not doing any harm at the moment. Just ignore it."

Dawn, however was not so sanguine and she grabbed a broom in an attempt to shush the thing away. "Ya omadhauen ya, its spying on us!" The drone only spat some kind of oil that burned on Dawn's skin as it evaded Dawn's broom flailing.

The door opened and in flew several more of these things which began buzzing this way and that. Two of them flew over the bar and dropped poop into the ice behind the bar, causing Padraic to fly into a rage and knock one down with his blackthorn stick so that it landed beside the rail on its back, quivering like a beetle, but before Padraic could come around the thing righted itself and took off again into the rafters. Two of them flew over to Denby and interrupted him by singing in mechanical voices parts of the Bohemian Rhapsody until Denby threw a drink at it.

"So you think you can stop me? O mama mia mama mia mama mia . . .".

The others dived at the hair of people sitting at tables and joined in singing in various keys disjointed phrases, occasionally joining in dreadful chorus harmony.

"Boobalah! We will not let you go! (Let him go!) Boobalah! We will not let you go! Never let you go! Let you go! Let you go!"

The door opened and in strode the members of the Angry Elf gang, accompanied by two enormous men dressed in black overcoats and fur hats. The man who ran the Angry Elf gang had earned his label by way of standing 5 foot 1 in boots with heels and possessing a demoniacal rage that manefested itself in violent outbursts that often injured both property and people. His one positive attribute was that each year he presented a public resolution to do his best not to kill someone that year. Of course no one is perfect and some years he lapsed in this promise via indirect action. Most years he made his money threatening people for hire, and this seemed to work well for him most times. Then he might have to get someone beat up to make an example. Some people said he was a useful businessman.

Padraic put his hand under the bar on his shilleleagh. "We are wantin' no trouble here."

"Me neither," said the one they called Weasel. "We are just making a collection for charity." Weasel motioned to Narita the Knife who brought out a jar from the sleeves of her kimono. "Tis a care package for the mothers of all those stalwart Russian boys fighting the Nazi Ukraines."

A few of the drones hovering over tables lowered little baskets from their cargo bays while still singing, at a somewhat merciful lowered volumne.

"He's just a poor boy from a poor family . . .".

Then was heard a mighty music that drowned out the drones. A stirring of violins followed by a single horn and then a swelling of strings and more horns and all who stood there were amazed and the Angry Elf gang looked at one another non-plussed.

"Oi, stoh eto?" queried a drone.

Then the door was open and the wind appeared. The candles blew and then disappeared. The curtains flew and then He appeared, saying "Don't be afraid."

And in darted an host of hummingbirds which drew an attack by the drones. And as the Wee man strode amidst the battle of the skies to the bar, others hid beneath the tables and the stirring strings yielded to the lusty sound of a chorus of deep voices as the hummingbirds dived like the dragons of Avatar upon their foes.

Sinne Fianna Fáil,
Atá faoi gheall ag Eirinn,
Buíonn dár slua, thar toinn do ráinig chugainn,
Faoi mhóid bheith saor, seantír ár sinsear feasta
Ní fhágfar faoin tíorán ná faoin tráill;

"Ah point ah plain, Padraic," said the Wee Man, for indeed it was he of old returned and scaredly aged a bit beyond his claimed 1,000 years.

A drove dived down to harry him and the Wee Man produced a small derringer pistol which he discharged into the drone without so much as looking before putting the weapon away into his waistcoat. The Drone fell to the ground.

"Maamaa!" said the drone before going still.

Attempting the same the enormous man named Ivan pulled out a Makarov and attempted to shoot down a hummingbird but only put a couple holes in the rafters, until the Wee Man turned about and clapped his hands. The lights all went out and when they came back on a moment latter Ivan was holding instead of a pistol a live octopus, which wrapped its tentacles around his meaty forearm and bit down on his hand with its beak.

"??? ???????!" shouted Ivan Feodor Raskolnki. His friend, Igor Strabismi would have cut the animal off but he found in pulling out his hand from his overcoat only a bundle of feathers. The two of them ran out into the street.

The remaining drones followed them, pursued by the ferocious hummingbirds. The members of the Angry Elf gang began to slink after them, until the Wee Man held up his hand. "Now who is going to pay for the damage here?"

The Angry Elf gang looked at each other. Weasel looked at Narita. Narita looked at The Cackler. The Cackler looked at Brian Kapo, Brian looked at Weasel. They all shrugged and made to go out the door.

"Hold on a sec," said the Wee Man. "I am thinking we'll be wanting some gold here, as usual."

"O no," Suzie said.

The Wee Man clapped his hands and the lights went out again. When they came back on, a fall of pixie dust was descending to the ground. Narita reached into her kimono and her hand emerged covered with beetles. "Yah!!!" she screamed and ran out, followed by the others who were tugging at their waistbands. One of them couldn't wait but pulled down his pants to let a horde of green beetles scuttle off in all directions even as Officer O'Mahauen cruiser passed by, stopped, and emitted the Officer who arrested the thug for indecent exposure.

The patrons in the bar also all reacted but with wonder at what had happened below the belt.

"Lord save me, the Wee Man has turned me knickers into lacy gold again!" Dawn said. Suzie, who had arrived prepared on account of precious experience, stalked stiffly off to the restroom to change.

Padraic, looking down past his waistband said, "The man is a sodding pervert!"

"Well," said Dawn sidling up to Padraic. "Let get them knickers off ya right away!" She batted her eyelashes looking up at him and holding his arm.

As the hours of St. Parick's night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW LET IT SNOW

Rare sight of snow on Mt. Tam February 24th. The Bay area was treated to an unusual deposit of snow from Mt Tam out to Mt. Diablo and down to the Santa Cruz Mountains, where Hiway 17 was closed due to the hazard.

OH, I NEVER WANNA FALL IN LOVE \ WITH YOU

So anyway. Denby's freakout ended abruptly when he discovered the SUV containing a dozen bags of pot, 1/2 ton of garbage, and his friends had plunged off of the cliff to land nose down in another pile of garbage along the picturesque coastline of route 1.

There are those who would say that the situation was dire and fraught with elements of catastrophy along with possible serious injury. Other know better about the nature of the Household members.

Each of them in that SUV was a member of Marlene and Andre's Household, transplanted from the Island to Silvan Acres in the San Geronimo Valley during yet another catastrophe and each one of them was a Loser in his and her own special, darling way. It was just like this crew to wind up in a place where even the name of the town was misspelled from the Greek.

"Is anyone hurt down there?" Denby called out to the ascending Pahrump, who had a 50 gallon plastic bag stuffed with weed slung over his shoulder.

In answer there was a spate of giggling and then Marlene's voice. "Quentin has his feet up in the air and Martini is in my lap, and . . . and . . . Martini's got a stiffy!" More giggling.

People started climbing out of the vehical through the windows until someone, in their stoned brilliance, figured that the thing had a hatchback. Pahrump reached the top and plotzed down.

"What are we going to do about the car," Denby said.

"We rented a Ford economy Escort, " Pahrump said. "But the keys were in the ignition for this one at the end of the lot so we took it instead. No one knows we have it. Besides, Martini's credit card is expired."

"Where the heck is this rental place?

"Grima's Garage on Francisco."

"Oh yeah. Grima."

Eventually all the passengers reached the top of the cliff, some with bags of pot. Martini, carrying two, handed one to Denby.

"What do we do now, " Marlen said. "We are miles from anywhere."

"Hoof it," Martini said.

"Anyone got anything like a candy bar on them," Quentin said. "I gots the munchies."

Each of them checked their pockets but only one small bag of peanuts emerged from Pahrump's coat. Quentin began gobbling up the peanuts until Marlene said, "Hey! Mind sharing the weath?"

Quentin looked guilty and sheepishly spat out two nuts into his palm which he offered Marlene.

"Yechh!" said Marlene. "No thank you!"

So the crew began trudging down the road

After a while, with the sun sinking down over the ocean in its usual picturesque way -- you really couldn't ask for a more beautiful setting to enjoy your own personal and group catastrophe -- Denby said he had to pee. So he set down his bag and turned to face the sunset and that is why he did not see the sheriff come up, scattering the others into the bushes as they saw it come around the further bend in this very bendy road.

"All right fella, put your hands up and keep them up or we will blow your fool head off its stump!"

County Sheriffs are a mean, nasty ornery sort of tough guys and you had best do what they say. so Denby rose his hands and his pants fell to his ankles.

"What the hell are you doing marching around Highway 1 with your pants down?" the Sheriff asked in a most reasonable manner.

"I was taking a pee," Denby said honestly.

"Why the hell did you not use the potty at the State shoreline access point fifty yards from here?"

"Didn't know about it," Denby said honestly.

"Ignorance of the potty is no excuse in the eyes of the law. Turn around so we can see your face"

Denby obediently did so.

"For god's sake pull up your pants you disgusting pervert! You are scandalizing my partner Cpl. Tunduk."

Denby obediently did as he was asked.

"What's in the bag?" The Sheriff asked.

"Pot," Denby said honestly.

"Pot." Said the Sheriff flatly.

"Yeah, pot." Denby said, feeling that things were not likely to go well for him again this St. Valentine's Day.

"Just why are you toting a big bag of pot that is clearly larger than the amount allowed for personal consumption on California's beautiful Hiway 1"

"Car went off the cliff," Denby said honestly.

"Now when and where did this happen?

Denby pointed back from where he had come. "About an hour ago."

The two sheriffs looked at each other.

"You some kinda Hippie?"

"No sir, the Hippies are all dead." Denby said.

"Turn around." said the Sheriff. Cpl Tunduk put a set of come-alongs on Denby's arms behind his back and he was pushed into the back of the patrol car. The bag of weed went into the trunk.

They drove to the "scene of the crime" and Cpl. Tunduk got out to shine her flashlight down on the SUV and took note of its license plate and returned to the patrol car to call in the plates.

"You planning on just leaving it here?" asked the Sheriff.

"No," Denby lied.

"This your car?"

"No," Denby said honestly.

Getting out of the patrol car the Sheriff tucked his thumbs into his sam brown belt. "Who owns the car?"

"I do not know," Denby said truthfully, without elaborating, for elaborating on this detail felt like a really bad call.

The Sheriff climbed down to make sure there were no dead burnt bodies or any sorts of additional mayhem of the extra-legal kind and climbed back up.

"Car is full of garbage and more bags of pot," the Sheriff told Cpl. Tunduk. "No bodies though." He sounded disappointed.

"Cpl. Goblok, the car is associated with Grima's Garage in San Rafael."

"Oh yea. Grima, said Cpl. Goblok. "You are under arrest."

That is how this time Denby wound up yet again in jail on St. Valentine's Day and the weekend after, being charged will all sorts of indecent exposure, transporting pot without a license, littering, and being a general nuisance.

Take it from Denby, you cannot find a more romantic and beautiful spot to get arrested than the pristine California Pacific coastline at dusk with such a beautiful sunset to add to your memories of being held overnight in a cell shared with John Biestly, in for unnatural congress with a sow. And it was not even his sow to boot.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

FEBRUARY 19, 2023

ON AN ISLAND

This photo was taken from the window of a building in the Gold Coast of the Island by a long time Island-Lifer.

LIGHTHOUSE

So anyway. Abegail was her name and she was the last of her kind. Household members came upon her as she hitch-hiked during the last Amospheric River Storm, trying to head East to Kansas for days, but only winding up, like so many of the Household, entirely turned around and heading for the Pacific Coast. Well, it happened this way: she got a ride from a BMW driver who took her west toward his luxurious and remote estate with vile intentions instead of to Amarillo. She jumped out at the first gas stop in Arizona when she realized the lecher's intentions, clutching her handbag and one backpack, losing the hatbox and her suitcase and pillbox. She snagged a ride with a long-range trucker on the wrong side of the road and found herself soon in Nevada instead of the Panhandle. She spent a sleepless, cold, hungry night at a railroad siding in Winnemucca, until a couple girls from the Bunny Ranch took pity on her -- for such is the way among those who know the harshness of this world. In the morning she set out after a full meal, rejecting the offer of employment there, and promptly hopped the wrong blinds at the railyard that took her south-west and so arrived in Fresno, California from where she took rides north, aiming for the I50 freeway, snagging bits of food from rest-stop tables where people had left fragments of sandwiches and fries along the way.

It was near Oakland where she unfortunately got a ride from another BMW driver who had the same intentions as the first one and so took her not East toward Sacramento, but over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in the pelting rain with an eye towards some amorous event in front of his well-stocked fireplace. She jumped out at the Valero in Fairfax as the fiend cursed.

As said, she was named Abegail and she was the last of her kind. She had been formerly employed as a live Operator for the Western Division of PacBell, which became ATT. Over half a million women once provided tips and information before Google over the telephone handset, but times changed. Phone booths turned into open kiosks and then even those got removed from streetcorners and freeways. Dial O for Operator got you a live person who worked to connect you to a person or information. You wanted a cake recipe? You wanted to know how to make a muffelata? You wanted the number of a long lost classmate? You wanted to talk to Elvis Presley or the President? Dial O for Operator and women like Abegail would answer your call.

For 25 years Abegail listened to stories of failed romances, missed connections, frustrated desires, longings in the dark night of the soul, and sometimes just the weather, and if she did not have the exact connection to a number, she always had a kind word to say. In her early days she once prevented a young man down from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge before transferring him to Crisis Hotline. Now that entire world of human connection had been dissolved and she had been let go with a letter of recommendation and severance, but no other acknowledgement. An era of human connection had ended with her termination. She was offered a position in Account Management, which she knew to be a graveyard, so she refused.

And so they cut her loose. Another piece of outdated equipment.

At the Household she sat with her remaining possesions in bags, cupping hot tea in her chilled hands, slowly warming to the Household brown aura of simple Humanity.

Meanwhile, and so anyway, Denby was preparing for another disastrous St. Valentines Day Massacree.

Every year various members of the Household handle the Anniversary of the St. Valentine's Massacree, each in their own way. The Editor stocks up on Michetorema's frozen dinners and bottles of scotch and then draws the shades and locks the doors for several days so as to avoid the amorous charms of the long-legged Johanna.

Denby has tried various ruses but lacking the resources of the Editor often falls afoul of that nasty, naked boy flying around with martial arts weapons with no supervision whatsoever.

If Eros had ever had been subject to decent parenting, the world would be very much different. But his parents had been irresponsible, undisciplined creatures and so that is what we got -- a naked punk with a bow and arrows, flying here and there causing havoc.

Now the COVID cabins had been structures erected by Martini and others when Martini got sick so as to quarantine folks who had gotten the virus, and getting the virus involved some upchucking, rear-end expulsions, hacking and terrible weakness for days on end and nearly everyone in the Household had gotten the disease, so the Cabins were pretty raunchy after two years of Pandemic with styroafoam food containers, rags, empty bottles and cans, dead rodents and the remains of at least one opossum and all sorts of mean nasty disease kind of stuff left behind behind by the plague survivors.

So Denby joined the cleanup detail assigned with clearing out all the COVID cabins of garbage, which he and Martini and Pahrump piled into a Subaru mini-SUV with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction the day before Valentines Day and so drove off to the city dump in San Rafael where peacocks guard the gates -- against what, no one knows -- but there they are to prevent any unauthorized removal or deposit of unlawful garbage in the city dump.

But when the Household arrived at the gates of the dump there was a sign and written on the sign were the following words "Closed on Valentines Day".

Now no one had ever heard of a dump being closed on the day before Valentines Day, but nevertheless, since Marin is a wierd place with its own special rules, with tears in their eyes and the peacocks calling out peacock epithets and glaring with all the venom a bird can muster as they spread their fantails aggressively, they turned around and looked for another place to put the garbage.

Now some people, now I means some People, might wanna confuse this St. Valentines Day Massacree with another Holiday Massacree and we want to put all that gumption and misdirection aside as we insist the St. Valentines Day Massacree has all to do with some Jewish guy ordering the massacree of a dozen Mobsters in a Chicago barn, and nothing to do with Mrs. O'Leary's cow or Thanksgiving but is really all about candy hearts and chocolate and blood and brains and all kinds of mean nasty stuff splattered on the walls of a Chicago barn many years ago and what do you mean a Jewish guy did this? Oy do we not get enough flack as it is?

Lets not get complicated. Back in those days the Costa Nostra was real equal opportunity so even though they was Italian and Catholic when it came to money, if you could prove yourself cruel and sadistic enough, you earned your creds; anybody was welcome to the Family, so is that not Nice?

So anyway, the guys decided to drive to Mt. Trashmore which is an Island attached to the main Island and looked for a place to drop their garbage, but Mt. Trashmore was no longer a dump - it had been turned into a public park -- so with tears in their eyes they picked up some Jaegermeisters and wine from Bevmo and headed back to Marin, looking for a place to put the garbage.

Along the way they stopped at one of the Clinics that was part of the Hospital where Denby worked. Across the parking lot of the Clinic there had been a Weed-packing factory that had gone out of business. The people cleaning up the place got so high from contact with the produce stacked up in garbage bags they forgot to lock the doors, and so the guys, being all neighborly like and seeking to help out with the clean-up by collecting any number of plastic bags for stuffing garbage, so they walked in and found all the plastic bags had been used up, for they were filled with Product and so they walked in to the warehouse and came out with several 50 gallon plastic bags that also happened to be stuffed with prime 401 which they loaded into the Subaru. So they headed toward the coast in their Subaru micro-SUV, drinking that good wine and smoking some fine reefer from the pot warehouse.

Now you would expect that the arc of this story would feature the boys coming to a cliff, just like in that thanksgiving story by Arlo Guthrie. They was supposed to come to a cliff and seeing there was a pile of garbage at the bottom of the cliff and there being no point bringing that one up, were supposed to throw theirs down and go home and have a St. Valentine's dinner that couldn't be beat and go to bed and not get up until the next morning.

But that is not what happened.

Now there are a number of things that could have happened, as you might expect. They could have strewn the garbage all along Route 1 -- -- but they were good Californians -- and they did not do that. They could have dug a pit and buried the garbage, which is what you might have expected. They could have built a big bonfire and attracted the police on a Spare the Air day, which is what everyone else expected. They could have been pulled over by the Sheriff for driving while Black, Brown, multi-racial and bilingual, been hauled out of the car and beaten, tased and shot to extremity -- which has become an expected sort of thing. Or they could have been unmercifully bombed and invaded by the Russians for no special reason save to be mean, which nobody expected ever to happen, even though it did in at least one place.

But no. Instead, when they came to the cliff where a pile of garbage was sitting peacefully in the cold sunlight of Valentine's day, they parked the Subaru and everybody rolled a spleef and took deep inhales and looked at the poorly appelled Pacific Ocean and had visions of mermaids dancing with Cthulu and ancient Greek gods.

It was pretty good reefer.

Denby stepped out of the van and slammed the door to close his eyes and spread his arms wide to take in the wide wonderful world of sunlight on his closed eyelids and breath in the seasalt fresh ocean air with great gulps.

When he opened his eyes and turned, the van was gone. He stood alone on the cliff and time seemed to stand still and he wondered how much time had passed in what had seemed like a few seconds. Had he stood there for a few seconds or for several stoned hours?

Puzzled, he looked all around him, not seeing any sign of any traffic on the road as far as he could see. Had he been abandoned? How long had he been standing there in that parkinglot? Hours? Days? Years? Was he going to turn out to be a modern day Rip Van Winkle to awake in a brand new world where the Loud Boys had gotten elected to Congress and Trumpists had caused Florida to secede from the Union and there existed only One News Agency and that was Twitter? And Denby got really anxious because what if the Parking Lot had some kind of new surveillance by the Facebook Corporation which had engulfed both Taco Bell and Mcdonalds? Mehta Burgers. Impossible Face Burritos. Bag of chips - you want a tracking implant with that order?

What if it was now Valentine's Day 2053? And right then Denby began to cry, because he did not want to live in a brave new world full of clones of Marjorie Green who walked down the street howling and pointing at the remaining human species to be gobbled up like those pod people in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

He ran back to the cliff to find some place to hide and ooked down to see the van where it had plunged nose-first into the garbage pile thirty feet below because stoned Martini had forgot to set the parking brake. Pahrump was even then climbing out one of the back windows.

"If you are coming up here now, bring one of those bags with you, " Denby called down. "And a light. I am feeling we are all going to be needing it."

Marlene handed a bag through the window and with the logic of the stoned, Pahrump commenced to climb up the cliff with a fifty gallon plastic bag of pot.

[To be continued next week}

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

JANUARY 22, 2023

IF IT KEEPS ON RAINING, THE LEVEE'S GONNA BREAK

Here is a scene from posh Mill Valley, where not all the wealth and assumed privilege in the world can shunt Nature's wrath.

DASHBOARD

So anyway. The New Year brought in rain storms with a vengeance. The Household has been busy shunting water off of the hill down past the holdings, with Martini and company busy with shovels and pipes, letting loose the pressure from under the earthcap over shale and bedrock. Out into the storm they went in a car driven by Percy Worthington Boughsplatt in search of more pipe to snag for the diversion project when they came across a mysterious figure beside the road.

She stood beside the road, rain dripping down her old-fashioned hat, bags in a puddle. She looked so bereft that they pulled over to ask where she was going.

"I do not know," she said. The Company had let her go and dissolved her Department. A common story around here these days, with companies and people so fearful of a Recession they seem hell-bent to cause one rather than remain uncertain. In any case, she was the last to leave and there would be no more of her kind.

She was the last Western Division Telephone Operator. As of the turn of the year there would be no more human Operators where once upwards of half a million woman had thrived answering calls, providing information and loads of working material for countless musicians, including Laurie Anderson, Jim Croce, Jimmy Stewart movies, and a great many country western singers. It was the end of an era that featured dial by letter numbers, rotary phones, streetside phone-booths that enabled Superman quick-changes, dial Time, switchboard operators that manually patched in calls from one location to another, human information lookups before Google.

She was brought back from the Road to the Household to dry out and take refuge. Because Americans are supposed to do this for refugees and our own. We do not cast our own out into darkness.

While this was going on Arnold White and Jason LeNoir set up a football watching party for just the two of them. As the years have passed for the two of them they have seen more and more of their old gang check out or get sidelined by health issues. Jeremiah got Alzheimer's. Winston wears a colostomy bag and never goes out anymore. Tyree's family checked him into an assisted living home. Members of the weekly poker club wanted to stay with their families this weekend and the daughters and sons of both of them are away at Eastern Colleges. So the two poker buddies decided to watch the Big Game at Jason's although they did not know each other well. Both of them fourth generation Bay Area Natives. Jason went to Mission High and Arnold went to Poly High Tech. Both served in the Army as grunts, but in different units so they did not know each other then. Both continued to be bothered for years after leaving military service, but neither man ever talked about it and both avoided VA reunions. Same for high school reunions.

During the Civil Rights period of greatest unrest, both men remained on the periphery of events. A friend asked Jason to join this new Church was overturning the tables on race, but after looking once as the pastor with pink wire-rim glasses Jason turned away with some unease. The Church did a lot of good work and lead the fight against the eviction of tenants from the International Hotel while working to normalize relations between Black and White. A bit later on this Church packed up its bags and moved to Guyana. Like many men of his generation he saw, or heard about, brothers gunned down by police and crackers from Fremont, but opted for the path of self-preservation, teaching his girls to stay alert and always be careful.

It was the Army that taught Winston the truth that all men are the same on the inside and all men bleed and all men can die. Nothing like sharing a hooch with a fellow from darkest Mississippi while angry guys out there in the darkness tried to kill you both to set your perspective. When he returned Stateside he was changed in many ways, but not always for the worse. Before that he had only the language of his father and uncles dripping the N-word and warning to stay away from Those People. Like the rest of his family he rooted for Nixon and preserving the Social Order until the force of truth and disappointment caused the scales to fall from his eyes. It may have been this revision in his heart that helped his marriage to Cynthia to fail under a mountain of regrets. He did not wake up screaming anymore, but still.

So the years passed, both men had their respective interactions, each according to need and employment. Winston became a manager for MacMurray Pacific, a hardware supplier for the trades. Jason worked his way up from a fitter at Chevron in Richmond to dock foreman. The two met when Doyle McGowan started up the weekly poker night at his place in Bernal Heights. Doyle died of a stroke a couple years ago, but some of the gang kept the poker nights going intermittently.

So that is how the two men came to be at Jason's house, watching a football game. The two started talking about football history and Jason's memories of John Henry Johnson, last of the Miracle Backfield to pass away; Jason had know his family and when he went to the funeral the front row filled with broad-shouldered men, glittered from all the gold Heisman Trophy rings.

A commotion outside brought Jason to the livingroom window where he opened the drapes wide to see Alex Baynard shooting up the street with a Mendoza RM2 in the sort of event now commonplace in the New America. The 1945 version of this rifle can shoot 400 .30 caliber rounds per minute. When Alex saw Jason at the window he fired a burst that shattered the glass and then hit Jason in the head and throat, killing him instantly while removing all the glass from the window and marking up the house facade.

"Hey!" shouted Winston, turning in his chair. The next burst shattered the chips bowl, pocked the wall above the TV set, and hit Winston in the lower chest, his right arm, his left thigh and his left eye-socket, exiting just behind the Malar through the Temporal bone just below the sphenoid, and then a round smacked the TV screen, which partly went dark, but continued playing the game. Other rounds pretty much wrecked the lamps and furniture.

Winston fell back in his chair and briefly passed out as Alex continued to shoot at houses and people on the street until the TAC squad put an end to his rampage in the usual way.

When Winston came to in a blurry fog, he thought he had to get his cell phone, but then remembered he had left his phone in his truck outside. His truck also had sustained some damage, but that would never concern him ever again, for he realized he could not move his legs and he had a hard time seeing things and he was drifting. He noted Jason on the floor, realizing his newfound friend was dead and a paraphrased line from a Hemingway story came to him just before everything went black.

"You and me, old friend, we have made a separate peace."

At the Island-Life news offices, the Editor shut down the video stream of this shooting event in Babylon's Bayview District and sighed. What is to become of us - a benighted Nation of violent fools and a benighted People unworthy of god? The Editor sat there a long while after the offices had closed down, the single desklamp spreading a pool of light on papers and his hands while all around hung the dense curtains of night. Out there, somewhere out there gleamed a sympathetic like mind. While he remained in this solitary state, doing all for Company.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

JANUARY 1, 2023

NOTHING CHANGES ON NEW YEARS DAY

CHRONOSYNCLASTIC INFUNDIBULUM

So anyway. The end of the year spun down to its inevitable decline in a sordid blather of entropy. This year the celebrations and hoopla lacked energy as the multitude exhausted by COVID and partisan feuding and sour political tranche plotzed down with the simple common futile desire to have no more arguments amongst ourselves.

Because of COVID the annual Interdenominational Xmas Pageant did not happen this year again, and the corporate holiday parties were definitely more subdued everywhere, with departments opting to hold their own. Denby joined his hospital department, The Definitely Non-Clinical Operations Non-Licensed Grunts for a BBQ out at West Oaktown's Horn BBQ. It was held out of doors so everyone wore parkas and had brisket sandwiches. Yuey Bui was the only licensed person there, but as RN's are often treated like crap just like Operations it was all good and the folks had a grand time with the Secret Santa thing and talking about Spills and Hazmat and Grey Codes and exploding printers and last minute Initiatives and everything Urgent, Urgent, Urgent, and staff fluttering back and forth with their desks like plovers on the beach practicing office feng shui while plugging in data cables willy nilly right and left in states of somnambulist disregard and all kinds of groovy medical and semi-medical things and patient safety and privacy being often afterthoughts to people's egos and a fine time was held by all on the cold benches there, the cold benches of Horn BBQ in the heart of Oaktown's Industrial Arts Complex where Burning Man statues and wondrous kinetic sculptures get forged in the firey crucibles of art collective warehouses.

As for the Licensed Important Medical People, those Departments held their affairs in nicely lit warm dining rooms, served with poached salmon, petite filet mignon and fine wines served by tuxedo waiters into cut glass goblets. Speeches were held and enough said.

On the Island the hours ticked down to the final turnaround to the next year.

Per Tradition, Pastor Nyquist of the Lutheran church met up with Father Danyluk of the Catholic church of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint for an evening of theological discussion and imbibing from the capacious cellars of Father Danyluk's rectory.

There, each year for the past twenty or more, ministers of either cloth had been wont to gather before the fireplace in the Catholic rectory to toast the new year with no partisan acrimony to interfere.
"I understand
you have have former Pope who is not well, " Pastor Nyquist said as Sister Profundity stoked the fireplace.

"Ah, yes Benedict. Rare for a Pope to retire early, but he was getting on."

"None of us getting any younger," said the Lutheran. "I wonder to where I shall retire."

"Tuscany," said the Priest. "Among the wine-stained feet of the maidens."

"I should prefer Tenarife," said the Minister.

"Ah! De gustibus non est disputandum," said the Priest. "As for Benedict, who is not long for this world, de mortuis, aut bene aut nihil."

"I agree," said the Lutheran. "Just don't talk about me when I am gone."

As the year ticked over its final minutes and the two clergy snored themselves into the old Dominium of Sleep. Sister Profundity came in to remove the wine glasses to safety and tuck each holy man in with a comforter and thence bank the fire in the grate.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

DECEMBER 19, 2022

MIGHT AS WELL JUMP (JUMP!)

Someone from the East said there couldn't possibly be salmon runs here in NorCal because the salmon runs were all up north in places like Alaska and Washington State. Well here is proof we do still have steelhead and salmon doing what they have been doing for millions of years. The recent rains have reinvigorated our local streams such that the age-old migrations are taking place again.

NUN GIMEL HAY SHIN

So anyway, Bobby Blunt is in trouble again. And this time it does not look like the little scamp is going to get away with it as the PTA Commission set up to investigate the ruckus caused by a mob composed of Bluntists, Loud Boys, Patriot Babies, and Election Whiners last January when the Official Treefort and also the Schoolhouse were overrun, wrecked and bloodied in a violent rampage of infantile rage.

Because the demands and organization were so inchoate with no attachment to serious organization, and the disgruntled parties so amorphous in their complaints the insurrection broke down, and then the unexpected happened to the Instigator, Bobby "Baby" Blunt, who planned to arrive amid chaos, raise his chubby arms and quiet the mob while restoring order while retaining the position of President of the Diaper Party and Chief Treehouse Commander and so dissolve the PTA Constitution under Emergency Powers.

But as the violence unfolded, with babies crapping wantonly everywhere and Loud Boys storming the Principal's office, the drivers for Bobby Blunt refused his orders to take him to the schoolhouse -- because it was for his own protection. In vain did Bobby howl and command and beat his tiny fists on his protectors; because there was violence at the Schoolhouse, that was the one place to which he could not be delivered. Adults remained in control for that part of the entire episode.

Now Bobby is facing Juvie Court for being a Truant, a public nuisance, a loudmouth liar, an Insurrectionist, and a general Bad Boy devoid of morals, ethics, honor or self-discipline. Loud Boy leader Nikki Ox has already been sentenced to 55 months of detention after school for shoving schoolteacher Ms. Morales and beaning Principle McGuffin in the back of the head with a rotten tomato. A number of others face similar disciplinary actions that involved messing up the school offices, breaking windows, threatening people, cursing and generally acting like very bad, spoiled children.

Over at the Household in Silvan Acres, Marlene and Andre put out the menorah and after sundown some of the Household gathered for the lighting of the first candle, while Andre on electric guitar and Occasional Quentin on drums played a punk version of Rock of Ages. Pahrump who is not Jewish, played the bass.

Missy Moonbeam, invited to the party so long as she kept her clothes on, showed up to honor the Solstice happening in a few days, while Denby honored Samhain friendly as he was for it was an interdenominational Chanukah of the kind to which all were invited as everyone in the Household was Family and there was nobody sad about it for this was the first post-COVID Chanukah gathering with all kinds of singing and dancing and drinking and potato pancakes made by Marlene and Marsha and Little Adam spinning tops with the neighbor girls Aisling and Jasmine and so everybody got along and there was no fighting, bitching, moaning or groaning in all the assembled Company, which caused some to wonder that a Great Miracle Happened There. Nes gadol haya sham.

The festivities went on into the magical night and Lo! Peace reigned throughout the Island and the Valley. No sirens rent the night's frosty air and no one got shot and no one got stabbed.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

DECEMBER 11, 2023

ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWN \ AND THE SKY IS GRAY

THE SMELL OF HOSPITALS IN WINTER

So anyway. The ambulances have all pulled away, the rain has hosed off the sidewalks of gore, Padraic has packed up the BBQ grills and stored away the remaining barrels of Guinness and Water of Life (Usce qe bah). The surviving poodles have emerged from hiding to prance about -- a bit nervously this early after the end of the annual Poodleshoot. Leftover scraps from the bbq got tossed into a pot for Dawn's special post-Thanksgiving boshintang soup.

The Household is preparing for the annual recurrance of the Horror Days in the usual, traditional way. Martini, Pahrump, Javier and Denby "obtained" a tree which arrived on the Household flexible flyer wagon and found itself plotzed into the old washtub with a cinder brick base kept around for the seasonal devotions.

After two and a half years of lockdowns, disease and death, the Bay Area was especially ready for something that approached Normal this year.

Mr. Howitzer has scheduled his annual Holiday Gala although all around the Bay we are seeing much smaller Corporate shindigs than in years past. Even though job market is good, CPI is excellent, consumers are buying geegaws and crap like the money will never end, salaries are up, and gas prices falling, people are talking "certain Recession". Maybe after two years of COVID plus LaPuta's Ukranian adventure, plus an ex-President's misadventures people just want to pick the next worst thing to happen, rather than it be a surprise.

The parties taking place this year have been mostly departmental affairs. Small gatherings at BBQ shops with Secret Santa games. The larger corps in the area, like Twitter, have been busy ruining xmas for thousands of workers and families with massive layoffs.

Denby's department had a party at Horn BBQ in Oaktown. The department did not rent a room as there is no room there to rent other than 6 barstools. The sky was grey and it was cold as hell and everyone wore parkas as they chowed down their beef brisquit sandwiches outside on the park benches. But then, IT and Operations are used to privation and hardship and being shunted to the least desireable locations and into dangerous and harsh environments because that is just the way it is in Healthcare nowadays. Patient-facing gets top shelf. All others scrape the barrel, regardless of real importance.

Denby still has dreams about the nurse with the long hair from time to time, but their interactions are few and far between so the infatuation has become a sort of memory of lust, with images of her riding him cowgirl style and the long rope of her auburn hair flying as she goes "whoop! whoop!"

The nurses down in Urgent Care have decorated the PODS, but they are still stepping out on strike as two years of dealing with COVID and other nonsense besides have left them irritated and unhappy despite the Season. Or maybe because of it. The nurse is the one who makes things happen in healthcare and if you stint the nurse who always stints herself, bad shit is going to come down.

Night falls as a full moon wanes above the glitter of dogged festivities, with orniments going up and strings of lights draping the battlements up on the ridgetop hills of San Geronimo Valley.

The Editor arranges his End of Year papers and sets to work after the luminous moon has arisen with the desklamp spreading a pool of light across his table, dripping into the darkness while all around hang the black curtains of black though which some mysterious eyes appear to gleam.

It is close to midnight and the Editor continues his labors, the Island-life desks all desolate of activity and the newsroom silent of chatter. The Editor continues, doing all for Company.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

NOVEMBER 27, 2022

NOVEMBER'S GOT HER NAILS DUG IN DEEP

THE 24TH ANNUAL THANKSGIVING POODLESHOOT AND BBQ

As per Tradition, on the day of the 24th Annual Poodleshoot, rosy-fingered Dawn arose from the horizon's dark bed and pushed back the shutters of night to allow Phoebus to mount his golden chariot and so, preceding the day, she trailed her gauzy banners across the firmament, traveling across the yard from the battered old half-moon privy hard by the weeds to the house back porch, leaving behind a sort of dew after her passage. Gently, she flushed, and gently she tugged upon the coverlet, and gently she kissed the eyelids of the sleeping Padraic, but he stirred not. Gently she nudged the man, who only mumbled and snorted as he remained held fast in the soft, woolly folds of Morpheus. Playfully, she noodged him once again, but he remained walking in that shadow kingdom of the somnolent God.

Her fingers becoming rays of sunlight, turned the dial so as to allow the sweet strains of muse Calliope to thrum the air as guided by the goddess Rosalie Howarth of KFOG, but Padriac snored and stirred not.

Dawn O'Reilly was not a woman to be trifled with

Then Dawn reared back with her rosy fists upraised and brought them down heavily to smite Padraic a mighty thwack, and that got him up all right, for Dawn O'Reilly was not a woman to be trifled with at any time of the day. And so Padraic bestirred himself to make ready for the Annual Island Poodleshoot and BBQ.

So it was that Padraic rolled out the barrels of the Water of Life and set up the Pit for this year's festivities under bright, chill skies, which had cleared briefly from the storm clouds for the day, once again down by the disputed Crab Cove on the Island while Bob Brown, owner of Rancho Nicasio, helped setup the Silvan Acres site with tables, BBQ drums, and all the fixin's for a great feast.

The ceremonies began with the traditional playing of the Paraguay National Anthem, as arranged by Terry Gilliam, and performed by the Island Hoophole Orchestra accompanied by the Brickbat Targets chorale ensemble. This piece has been favorably compared to John Phillip Sousa's Liberty Bell March, with which work the modality is inextricably entwined.

In Marin the Hapless Jerrykids noodled into Walking on the Moon, which was followed by the San Geronimo Acoustics who performed Neal Young's "Pocahontas". Ensemble then broke all their instruments and stalked offstage with a number of war whoops.

This was followed on the Island by the devilish meisterwerk composed by Marie Kane entitled, "Die Sieg der Satanische Landentwickler", an adaptable work which allows insertion of alta-contemporary chorales at the whim of the Conductor at the pleasure of any municipal governing body.

MAYOR - Marilyn ezzy ashcraft, vice mayor Malia Vella, councilpersons: Tony daysog, Trish Spencer, John Knox White

The ensemble group which has made something of a name for itself by inventing entirely new parts for voice, consisted of Mayor Izzy as soprano alla triste in the Misericordia segment and Councilperson Daysog as mezzo soprano mournful did a fair version of Iago's treacherous soliloquy, with Trish Spencer shining in her solo "You'll not get rid of me", from the esoteric work La Chambre à l'arrière Enfumee Boogie by Brooks and Dunne.

John Knox White and Tony Daysog performed a lovely duet as well as a lovely pas de deux in pinstriped pinafores with nunchucks. The two sang "Our Town" and "I got you Babe with astonishing verve.

In Marin, the ensemble performance of Le Papillion Enragee, featuring Trish Spencer and Malia Vella playing the part of uprooted milkweed, caused a number of gentlemen to faint and ladies to resort to flasks of bourbon to revive our beloved Monarchs.

Karen D'Souza of the Contra Costa Times has called it "devilishly complicated"

Many reviewers have called this piece amazingly impossible to accomplish, and quite a pastiche. The East Bay Express found "this game of smoky backrooms is too much to believe." Karen D'Souza of the Contra Costa Times has called it "devilishly complicated" and "hard to believe it goes on. And on. And on still more," while Jim Harrington has called this performance, "the most dreadful rubbish since the last time I wrote a mixed review. I never fully approve of anything, but this gave badness a new name."

The Chronicle, always more reserved due to the heavy influence of conservative ACT in the City, has commented, "It should be interesting to see how well this thing floats in the future amid this stormy time for companies. We miss Trish Spencer performing as City Mayor, a role she continued to adopt with nearly convincing theatricality. Mayor Izzy Ashcroft is far more persuasive although less a comic genius."

Of course, their theatre/music review got mixed up for that issue with the economic report and the elections special, so the meaning of that is up to interpretation.

The East Bay Express got the dates wrong on its Calendar section, as usual, so they had no review.

The Examiner, struggling under its newish stewardship (if you have not lived in the Bay Area for at least 40 years and do not have family roots going back another 120 years, you are considered New), ignored Reality and talked about the batboy who had been abducted by space aliens.

Fox News ran a piece about how the Examiner's Space Aliens had stolen the Presidential Election and that former President Obama had never really been President and all this fol-de-rol about poodles was a LIberal Hoax involving COVID attempts to rob Patriots of their Freedoms, and so sensible people paid them no attention save for Ms. Marjorie Greene, who is insensible.

This year, with the addition of the venue in Marin, featured a number of local dignitaries. There were also some modifications to the Official Rules in deference to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic.

With a toot of the Poodle Bugel, the 'Shoot was on as the hunters spread out across the fields with many a cry of "Poodle there!" and "Avast ye furious hound!" The crisp air of autumn filled with the report of .45 and 9 mm rounds mixed with the thud of percussion grenades and RPG's across northern Marin County and the Island.

Marjorie Green managed to salvage a near hopeless situation when the armored flame-thrower failed in a pinch by blasting by force of lungs a stream of hot air across the igniter and thus sending a jet of flame into the encampment of a number of vicious Toy breeds, thus rendering quite a haul of a brace of Poos trimmed, skinned and Ready to Eat for the BBQ, wanting only a slathering of E&J sauce and warming after delivery.

Lauren Boebert eschewed projectile weapons entirely and so caused a good deal of mayhem by running about on hands and knees and biting the necks of errant poos, which resulted in a number of "clean" kills with only savaged jugulars and blood loss affecting the quality of the BBQ meat.

For this Lauren wore a Conservative mid-length black skirt, bullet-proof vest, combat boots and hair done by Sassoon.

The 'Shoot proceded swimmingly until the Greene and Boebert faction faced off across the field where the bus stop shelter for the Valley stands amid native grasses and dormant poppies against an AOC contingent of Liberals wielding short swords and slingshots -- as this group abjured firearms.

The AOC group would have been overwhelmed by force of arms, much as people expected Russia to do to the Ukraine, but dislike of firearms did not forbid hand-held explosives and so the Bobert coalition that was reinforced by the Flat Earth Society and Election Deniers was forced back in an hail of molotov cocktails. Across the field many a stalwart Trumpist was seen staggering in a pillar of fire extinguished only by the prompt attention of the Pee Tardy members letting loose their pent-up golden showers unleashed in the name of Patriotic duty.

But in the thick of battle and fog of war charged a phalanx of Loud Boys who bore down upon the Pure Host and they were aided by Poodle Wargs and Effete Dogwalkers waving their banners of Pink and Self Indulgence and the tide of war shifted as Dogwalkers armed with Impermeables swept the stout-hearted back across the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the trees of San Geronimo where the fighting descended to an atavistic hand-to paw internecine orgy of violence. The news from the Island was just as dismal, where black-robed Judges had enforced a number of rollbacks of personal freedoms causing dismay among the Estrogen Cohorts and a pitched battle ensued upon the playing fields of Franklin Park while a wedge of Conservatives and Russian Blues separated the group of Slavist Freedom Seekers at Crab Cove where the group was sorely beseiged by the Russian contingent let by Vladimir LaPuta with his Army of Les Miserables armed with missle weapons and helots, not unlike the Persians that assailed noble Leonidas and the 300 at the narrows of Thermopylae.

Over all this dreadful clamor spread the terrible arms of the dread god of War who, exhalted by chaos, inflated the prices of fuel and groceries, sent missives that encouraged dissention, and sent a fume from his infernal Tower of obscuration across the heavens to dampen the spirits of the hale and the holy across the land. All news was confused and all Truth was veiled in this infernal murk all across the land.

The sun set upon a terrible carnage on all sides amidst divsion of the Poodle Hunters and division among the ranks of the Other Side as factions fought against factions at terrible cost. Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson strode into the field with ferocious chihuahuas at their heels, but were encountered by their own phalanxes with disapproval and bad rankings.

The entire world was aflame with dissension and conflict. No one leader seemed able to arise above the fray and much blood was spilled at Crab Cove and San Geronimo during this divided conflict.

So it was on the third day, on the top of the ridge above San Geronimo, appeared Pelosi mounted upon the steed yclept Wahrheit, and at the edge of Crab Cove appeared Gandalf on Shadowfax, Pelosi reinforced by the armies of the Firbolg and the Ents of ancient story, and Gandalf by the armies of Truth and Justice and the American Way, the old Numenoreans of Democracy and the ghosts of Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings and Edward P. Murrow.

Down from the slopes of San Geronimo swept the host of angels who scattered the fell enemy like leaves before a mighty wind. The Ents strode from the shelter of tree-friends and smote the poodle-walkers with massive branches and so dispersed them into the forest where they disappeared into the shadows, and the Firbolg led by Ghan Buri Ghan, swung their axes and poison spears with terrible effect upon those who dared to oppose them.

On the Island, the ghosts frightened the enemy into flight and their lies evaporated like cigaretted paper under the pee of bees. The Numenoreans advanced with flaming swords of truth, and science and pushed back the fractious enemy and so dispersed them to the far dark corners of ignorance and so Laputa's minions were pushed back across the river to impotently howl their indignance.

Power generators were trucked in to restore lights and life to the destroyed areas and BBQ's were set alight in celebration at both Crab Cove and San Geronimo church and there was cause for celebration and feasting even though the Enemy remained beyond the Pale, still armed with missles of misinformation and poodle disdain.

So ended on the third day the 24th Annual Poodleshoot and BBQ.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

NOVEMBER 20, 2022

TIME, TIME, TIME

This week's image comes from long-time Island-Lifer Carol Taylor who is kinda good with both charoal pencil as well as paints.

NOVEMBER'S GOT HER NAILS DUG IN DEEP

So anyway.

This is the time of dank morning mists shrouding the hills with protective coverlets. The heat wave has come and gone and the buckeyes are all gone sere with battered, bare limbs. Mornings and evenings the pogonip drifts in over the hills.

Yes, that special season has come upon us when the air turns brisk with scents of apples and chimney smoke and thoughts turn to traditions and season rituals. Dick and Jane go gaily scampering through the fallen leaves with ruddy cheeks and panting breath hand in hand, leaping over babbling brook and fog-damp fallen tree, each dreaming of popping a few rounds into a Fifi, blasting the stuffing out of a silver-haired poo with a brand new, polished thirty ought-six.

God! It is such a magical time! It is glorious America in Fall! Praise the Goddess for the Red, White, and Blue!

Yep, that much anticipated Island event is nigh upon us once again, the Annual Island-Life Poodleshoot and BBQ.

We will be posting the official rules presently in the sidebar. For now, last year's rules are up there to give you an idea of what this dreadful celebration is all about. What is the Annual Island-Life Poodleshoot you may ask. This year marks the 22nd year that the 'Shoot has taken place and the 2nd time it will be held off the Island after it moved to Marin where the infernal species abounds in great numbers and so provides splendid opportunity for Red-blooded American Sport. To commemorate past glories a small ceremony will be held on the Island which still holds the Old Same Place Bar that funded much of the beverages. It is, in short a Tradition, and around here we are big on Tradition.

Each year avid gun-nuts and hunters have gathered in the Bay Area for the Poodle Hunt, renowned throughout the world as having few events of such magnitude and utmost serious rivaling NASCAR races and the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

This year the hunting promises to be very good as Marin is a haven for misapplied sentiments and distracted emotions applied to a scurrilous creature rather than fellow humankind. Herds of the repulsive animals are seen daily cavorting on pampered booties with atrocious pompoms and bowties while NIMBYS protest the building of homeless shelters in a nearby neighborhood.

Denby, having recouperated from his annual trip to the Land of the Dead, was back to work at the Hospital, pushing a mop and still mooning after that gorgous nurse with the long hair. Martini and Pahrump stood with Javier in a long line for a couple hours to pickup Thanksgiving fixing's and the turkey at the Valley food bank. When they got back to the Household, which does not participate in the annual 'Shoot, there was all kinds of celebration and jumping up and down. The plan was to brine and then deep fry the two 18 pounders. Towards this end Martini had constructed a scaffold from parts of an old engine hoist and set this contraption over a gravel pad ten feet in diameter. A propane burner made of parts scavenged from camping stoves had four jets fed by propane through a hose from a canister. The hose had come from the Pick-a-Part yard in the East Bay.

The first time Martini fired this thing up to test it, Adam expressed some concern about the integrity of the metal hose.

O the hose can take 800 PSI, Martini said.

There was a pop as the hose came loose at the jets and spurted a troubling jet of flame as it snake around the yard, setting a shrub on fire before Martini could shut off the supply at the canister.

Hose is fine, Martini said. But I'll have to scrounge up a better fitting . . . .

Do that, Adam said from where he had run to put distance between him and the canister.

Now is the time when the long shadows reach out to each one of us in the late afternoons and the air turns chilly, swirling red and brown leaves in circles on the ground. Fairfax streets are vaulted with brilliant red maples and San Geronimo Valley Road becomes as mysterious as an Ent Moot. Night fell through striations of clouds that had been gathering for days without promise of rain and the Editor sits at his desk within the pool of lamplight while beyond hung the curtains of muttering darkness, still doing all as he has for 23 years, all for Company.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

ALL THE LEAVES WERE FALLING

WAITING ON A TRAIN

So anyway. The straws have been drawn, the Chosen selected, and Rachel returned to her apartment on the Island and dear Henry. In short time Denby must perforce cross over to the Other Side when the veils between the worlds are thinnest.

The days of triple digit temps yielded to reasonable 70's as the nights descended to the forties. Massive spiders appeared on the hedgerows and fences along with crows and bats and shrouded figures with glowing eyes. At the hospital where Denby worked pushing mops and brooms at the early hours, two ofretas appeared with photographs of people who had passed beyond to the Other Place.

The fateful night descended like the contents of an inkwell knocked over by a soused drunkard, black drippings and a terrible mess everywhere..

The time came for Denby to make the annual crossover, which had remained as a Tradition even though the offices and the Household had been transplanted by force during the Night of Shattered Fires. Tradition has its own powerful force as some of you may know.

The sun descended and shadows grew long across the little avenues of Silvan Acres. Because of the creek passing through, and then the long absent train line and now the road, this place had been a traveling place for many hundreds, if not thousands of years.

The Editor said, "Go now," and so Denby took his walking cane and went out to the uplift where the earth was embanked higher than in other places along the road.

A train came trundling along the way beside the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, even though the tracks that once had gone to the coast had been torn up long ago.

The machine heaved to a stop with steam and groaning and Denby climbed aboard and took his seat in a cabin with no other passengers in the car. The train proceeded down Sir Francis Drake, stopping at Yolanda Landing and various points not known to Denby and then proceeded south and east through a dense fog that made identifying landmarks difficult. For a long time everything outside the windows was entirely black and Denby assumed they were somehow crossing one of the bridges.

"Endstation! Endstation!"

At one point the train stopped and the conductor, a gaunt man wearing a robe, came down the aisle announcing in a foreign accent "Endstation! Endstation!"

Denby disembarked to find he was on the Shoreline Road on the Island. He walked along the path there that bordered the brightly lit condos and the seawall until he came to the Iron Gate, the gate which appeared only for a few hours each year. He undid the latch and was greeted by an owl. "Who? Who are you? Who?!"

An iron bell began to clang and then he saw the vast expanse of bonfires lit upon the beach. Those bonfires lit by the souls waiting passage to redemption or eternal fire.

A distant dog or trio of dogs set up the jarring sound of barking.

He used his cane to push open the gate and so step through a veil of mist to the Other Side where a long reach of strand with bonfires extended to north and south, broken only at this height by the extension of a stone landing.

As in years past, as he approached the Portal, the Voice bellowed to him from some echoing deep cavern.

"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate!"

"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate!" and the words flamed inside his skull as if poured in molten steel. Just as it had each time for the past 22 years.

For pete's sake. As per Tradition, dammit, Denby muttered.

A large owl, about two feet tall, perched on a piling scolded him with large owl eyes.

"Hoo! Hoo! Hoooooo!"

Okay, okay. Poor choice of words.

"Hooooo!"

On the other side the ground sloped down as usual to the water for about thirty yards, but he could not see the far lights of Babylon's port facilities or the Coliseum. A dense, lightless fog hung a few yards offshore, making it appear that the water extended out beyond to Infinity. The sky above was filled with black cloud and boiling with red flashes of lightening and fire although not a drop of rain had fallen.

All up and down the strand he could now see that countless bonfires had been lit, as is customary among our people in this part of the world to do during the colder winter months along the Strand, and towards one of these he stumbled among drift and seawrack.

"ch'io non avrei mai creduto / che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta"

Strange words in another language reverberated again inside the skull: "si lunga tratta / di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto / che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta" echoing and echoing down long hallways of echos into eternity

A small child, barefoot and wearing a nightdress ran past and disappeared as quickly as she had come.

A glimmering figure appeared before him, a woman shining with internal light, her blonde hair glowing in that dark atmosphere, and clad in gauzy fabric blown by an impossible wind.

"Denby!" said the woman. "Here you are again!"

"Hello Penny," Denby said. "Back again."

"You look careworn. Much more than before. I wonder if these visits are any good for you. Are you taking care of yourself?"

"Ah, well. Is Tradition," Denby said. "There is not much time these days to take care of oneself anyway. Look at all the assholes who take care of themselves first before anybody else."

"You still have no family," Penny said. "That is not good."

Several little girls, all between the ages of six and nine, wearing pinafores, ran barefoot across the sands between them and vanished into the misty beyond.

"Ah well, there is time . . . ".

"Time, yes, Time. Now Time is much less than before Time began, and you have much less time than that remaining." Pennie said.

"Well, the opportunities ended themselves," Denby said. "It could have been you or someone else. Now Time posts on proud Bolingbroke's proud horse . . . ".

"O fuck that! You always abstracted things to meaningless allusions instead of engaging! Why do you not embrace your truth!"

"Penny, are we having our first argument 20 or more years since you died? Is this what we would have ended up with had you not taken yourself out?"

"You can still hurt me," Penny said. "That enforces the law that I am not yet in the Place of Eternal Happiness. And maybe it is best things did not continue in that other world you still inhabit."

Denby spread his arms, although he could not embrace this phantasm. "Penny, I am sorry."

"In the end it is always the same old story. The guy says he is sorry." Penny said bitterly.

"I suppose men are all just made that way," Denby said.

In answer Penny stamped her foot. "Why cannot you just be perfect!" She then burst into tears.

A tall man with sensitive features appeared. "The perfection in theatre is that it's over the second it's done."

"William," Penny said.

"You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term-relationships that you really value."

Denby realized what was happening. "You are an actor by trade. And now in this existence you can only repeat what has been said."

"My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face," William said. He made a series of motions with his arms that the two souls in front of him should embrace for in this way he could employ the actor's gift while avoiding the "ordo Vico di rerecordo", the endless recirculation of Time. .

Penny shook her head, for such a thing was impossible between a shade and a mortal. But she remained there with her arms out as Denby approached and embraced her and there, for the first time in five thousand years of recorded history, a man felt the body of a wraith and she the living warmth of a living human and for no knowing how long they held one another on that dismal beach for who carries a timepiece during times like these. Then, suddenly it was over and Penny evaporated from Denby's arms to once again become a translucent figure as a group of pinafore girls ran shrieking between them across the sands.

William turned to go as the glimmering appeared across the water, signaling the approach of the Ferryman with his eyes that are wheels of fire.

Souls from all along the beach began making their way to the stone jetty.

"I am so thrilled by the privilege of life, and yet at the same time I know that I have to let it go," William said, and so went down to the jetty, taking the obolu from out of his mouth.

Along came a man with a ducktail haircut, shouting, "Great Balls of Fire!" while dancing and playing an electric guitar.

Another man followed behind him, a distinguished looking Black man. Denby asked who he was.

"“I am the me I choose to be.”

A Black woman wearing a sort of naval military uniform came down from upslope and said, "And we aint stopped yet."

Next, a woman dressed in bulky robes and wearing a tiara came down attended by a train of corgis.

"Queen, what say you as our Nation of the United States and all the nations of the world face again our darkest hour?" Denby impulsively asked.

"I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice. But I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations." And with that she descended to join the multitude of hoi polloi on that infernal skiff approaching the stone landing.

Finally, along with a multitude of other distinguished souls, a woman wearing eagle feathers and buckskin came down.

"What say you Sascheen?" Denby asked.

"I promised myself a long time ago that I would lead an interesting life." And so she departed.

Bevies of children ran this way and that down below along the glimmering beach, their pinafores fluttering like the feathers of birds. They were the silent Chorus for this goat dance of a ceremony, they were the promise of all that might have been and may be still could be, they were the Daughters of the Dust.

The fire of the Ferryman's eyes approached the stone landing.

The fire revealed a towering figure controlling a skiff that approached a stone jetty towards which a multitude of souls approached, each holding the gold obolu, the passage fare. Each soul offered up its fare and those that were destined for the Eternal City of the West were allowed to board. Those others destined for the City of the South were unceremoniously shoved down and away to be fetched later for their journey to the Southern City of Despair.

While the skiff remained in the process of loading, across the sands came the tolling of the iron bell announcing the end of Los Dias de Los Muertos.

Time for you to go, Penny said. I am sorry we don't have more time during your annual visits to talk. But something happened this time that was different, she said, recalling the impossible embrace. And then she stood up, a shimmering vision of luminescence.

Denby arose and turned to go up the slope back to the gate which led out of that place. He stumbled up as the insistent bell clanged its fateful hours on the last day of El Dias de los Muertos, that day when the veil between the worlds is thinnest.

"Denby." Penny said simply, for she had followed him as far as the gates, and he paused as a wind kicked up with gusts.

She reached out her hands to cup his face. Cold, so cold. He felt a wetness on his lips, on his face. The rain had returned to NorCal.

Good-bye. Until next time.

He ascended the slope as the sound of the bell and the three dogs-heads became more insistent until he stumbled through the gate which slammed shut behind him. There, an open door to a train compartment waited for him and he climbed in to plotz into a seat in an otherwise empty railcar with salty, wet cheeks. On the return journey, he reflected Penny had become in the afterlife what she had been before. In life she had been a nurse during the height of the AIDS plague whose job it had been to handle the affairs of patients who had been sent home from Hospice as they lapsed and eventually died and allowed her to handle the paperwork of such things, there always the angel to usher souls to the door and through it to the next form of existence, if any, beyond.

The train passed through shadowy regions of smoke and the skeletal forms of houses and the smoke of spooks until it passed Yolanda Landing and eventually to the San Geronimo Station, where Denby disembarked. From there he went dutifully to the Island-Life offices although he felt exhausted unto death.

The Editor awaited him as in years past.

"So this is the 23rd time you have crossed over," said the Editor. "How was it this time?"

Denby fell into a plush chair Martini had snagged from a For Free roadside pile. He gave the Editor the one thousand yard stare.

"I can tell you are wanting a drink. And by just the look of you, so am I." The Editor reached into the desk and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich and set two glasses on the desk before pouring more than two fingers into each glass.

"So any talk about how the Midterms will end up and what the Economy is going to do?" asked the Editor.

"Somehow the subjects did not come up," Denby said.

"Well, I suppose given past reports I should have expected that," said the Editor as he poured out of the bottle. "But no harm in asking."

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

OCTOBER 23, 2022

LOOK! DOWN THERE! A HAUNTED PLANET IS SPINNING ROUND!

THERE'S A HALO 'ROUND THE MOON

So anyway.

Finally after a nearly intolerable season of searing hot weather, overnight the fogs rolled in over the headlands, the daytime temps dropped to something reasonable and everyone started putting away their fans, their window AC, and all of their summer desires. The trees flamed up in magenta and gold while the buckeyes dropped their poisonous fruit.

All the neighbors down the Hill in Fairfax and San Anselmo are putting up the usual seasonal fright displays in this ongoing effort to return to something like normal, although so much time has passed, no one can remember what it was like before acrylic splash guards at the cashier and social distancing. Unlike a bad movie or sitcom series will not no ever go entirely away, just like influenza, which ironically saw a big drop during the period all the sensible people wore masks.

Denby was sitting disconsolate on the porch of the Island-Life offices when Little Adam came to sit down beside him. Snuffles had his gallon jug up on the battered sofa which had been rescued from San Anselmo as a freebie and Pahrump sat there smoking a pipe with god knows what in it. Denby asked the kid how school was going at Lagunitas Elementary and learned that next year Little Adam would be going to that renamed school now called Archie Williams in San Anselmo.

"You mean Drake High School," Denby said.

"Yeah. I dunno why be they renamed the place after so long."

"Stupid White people," Pahrump said. "No special reason as usual. It do nothing for my people; only some peoples egos."

"Who was Archie Williams anyway," Little Adam said.

"He was alright," Pahrump said. "Decent enough to get a school named after him. Plenty of folks like that. Just no reason to rename Drake that way. Does nothing for us coastal Indians and nothing for Drake and nothing really for anyone else. Just a salve to bruised conscience."

"Name don't matter and where you are from don't matter," Denby said. "Study hard and apply yourself," Denby said. "You will come out ahead of where you would have been otherwise."

"So what happened to you," Little Adam said. "Why you got to go to the Other Place every year and why you so stomped on by the Big Folks around here."?

"Little Adam, " Denby said, "This is a lesson in that we do not choose our destiny and in many things we have no choice. Many times most of the world must simply endure what happens to it and what makes us as Peoples is our response to the Inevitable. A foreign power of immense size invades a slavic country. Well this country did not ask to be invaded and partitioned. What can this country do but resist with all its heart. That is what makes that country what it is beyond surrender.

So it is with the course of our Lives. We have no control over what happens to us; what defines our nature is our response to these evil acts. "

"I am not sure i understand," Little Adam said.

"That is okay. You will come to understand, just as the Apache, the Chumash, the Yurok, and the coastal Miwork have." Pahrump said.

Over at the Health Center where Denby works they are saying that COVID will become a seasonable problem and due to variations, require annual vaccination, just like for the flu. No, Bruce Willis will not be able to come in with all his guns blazing and angrily kill off all the bad guys; this situation is not like a Die Hard movie and besides, we understand Bruce has his own problems, big problems, to deal with right now.

Rachel, after the evening Drawing of Straws, arose from the cot in the outlying building COVID quarantine shack and had a cup of coffee with those of the Household who arose early. She then hitched a ride on Pahrump's scooter from the Valley to the San Rafael ferry landing where she bought a scone and some tea before taking the ferry from there to Babylon Terminal. At that terminal Rachel transferred to the Island ferry and so with wind blowing through her hair she arrived at the Island landing from where she took the Express bus across town to the bus stop on Central adjacent to the Senior Citizen's parking lot. It was a short walk up the block to the entrance at St. Charles, where she let herself in and marched up the stairs to her 3rd floor apartment and so opened the door to enter.

"Hello Henry!" Rachel said, as her cat arose langorously from the bed spread and approached her.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

OCTOBER 16, 2022

IT'S A DEAD MAN'S PARTY

People tend not to decorate so much in the Valley as the houses are spaced too far apart for much trick or treating. Down the Hill in San Anselmo, however, people really get into the spirit of the season.

GOIN' TO A PARTY WHERE NO ONE'S STILL ALIVE

So anyway, it has come 'round to that time of year for an Island-Life Tradition: The Annual Drawing of Straws. On a late afternoon this week, the dance instructor, Rachel, packed her bag, set out instructions for Carole before taking her hat from the hook and walking down the hall to hand over her key to the apartment. With a hug and a goodbye she descended the stairs of the St. Charles Home for Deranged Managers and Former Hippies to the street where she turned sharp left to walk past the Altenheim for Seniors to the bus stop. From there the bus took her to the Ferry Terminal where she got onto the ferry to Babylon. There she crossed over to the pier and awaited the ferry to Larkspur, on which she ate her sandwich of watercress and tuna, before going up on deck to let the crisp sea-salt air blow through her hair as the sun began his descent behind the sleeping breast of Queen Tamalpais.

From the Larkspur Landing, Rachel took the bus to Red Hill and there changed over to the shuttle that runs from San Anselmo to the coast, finallly reaching Silvan Acres in the San Geronimo Valley at dusk, that crepuscular time when things move from the hills down to the valley creeks and the pogonip starts to creep in ghostly strands over the ridges through the haunted trees.

Pahrump collected her on his fire-scarred scooter to bring her to the Household of Marlene and Andre and the new offices in exile of Island-life. There the Editor collected all the staff into the newsroom, all the Island-Lifers living in exile, including Februs the hamster, save no one could find Denby at first.

Where on earth was Denby? He was no in the converted barn that was now the offices. He was not in the restrooms. He was not in any part of the Household living quarters. No one had seen him leave the Valley, for the Editor had posted spies to make sure no staff tried to escape this hallowed Tradition. The Editor sent someone to check the restaurant At Swim-Two Birds, but he was not there nor hiding in the San Geronimo church.

It was Februs, in consultation with the tree squirrels of the area, who located Denby hiding up in the branches of a Monterey Cypress. Unfortunately for Denby, who categorically refused to come down, the Monterey Cypress is considered invasive by the local fire departments and orders to cut them down on behalf of fire control have been extant for some time.

"Come down now, Denby!" shouted the Editor upwards.

"No!" shouted Denby, seeking to avoid Tradition.

"I order you to descend immediately!", shouted the Editor.

"No!"

"You will starve up there!" said the Editor.

"I have granola bars and a sleeping bag and a board on which to rest." Denby said.

"All right then," said the Editor. "I will bring you down." And with that the Editor employed a chain saw borrowed from the fire department to cut down the cypress. And down it went, taking branches and leaves and Denby with it, who landed discomfit in a pile, surrounded by broken tree limbs and shattered timber.

AAAAAhhhhrrrrrg!"

So anyway. There stood the Editor armed with a chainsaw and Denby all messed up in his former treehouse and with tears in his eyes was compelled to march from that spot of destruction into the offices and the Tradition.

Rachel, who had no idea of any of these developments was finishing a cup of green tea with Marsha when Denby came in the door.

"Well I guess we better start," Rachel said. "Now that everyone is here."

The procedings followed the same outline as has been practiced for the past 22 years. Rachel took her hat loaded with straws around the tables at which staff members sat. Marlene and Andre, not members of staff, had supplied a platter of ham and cheese sandwiches which no one touched. Not even the kosher caprese rolls. Each staff member drew a straw from the hat held aloft by the statuesque Rachel. The tension in the room continued to mount as each staffer drew. Each held their straw in trembling hands until Denby was compelled to draw, at which all the staff, save Denby, exhaled sighs of relief. Once again, according to Tradition, Denby had drawn the shortest straw. As he had each time for the past 22 years.

And so they all filed out, clapping Denby on the back congratulating him on his good fortune while muttering under breath as they exited the door, "Thank god it is not me, poor sod!"

Mancini put up Rachel for the night with a space heater in one of the better quarantine cabins that remained after the COVID lockdown.

Finally Denby was left alone with the Editor.

"So I guess the infernal train shall arrive on schedule to take me there as usual," Denby said.

"Is Tradition," said the Editor. "You are Chosen and that is that,"

Denby walked out onto the porch and breathed in the dry, cold air of Fall. Once again he was Chosen for the Crossover as part of Tradition. Someone asked, "What does this mean to you to be Chosen year after year"?

A Tzadik once said, "It is not always to advantage to be Chosen". But one has no choice. No one ever does. It is like this: no one ever chooses the Blues; the Blues choose you.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

OCTOBER 09, 2022

DEER ON THE PARKWAY

This image of an injured buck was taken a while ago down the hill in either San Anselmo or Fairfax. We are seeing a lot of bucks appearing with severe antler and hind leg damage, due to either coyote attacks or being hit by automobiles or buck vs buck contests. Because of the drought, the deer have been coming down from the open space hills in search of water, with apex predators following.

EX MACHINA & WHAT'S GOING ON

The past few months have been rough as we have concerned ourselves with wrapping up a 2-year WAN topology redesign and implementation affecting 51 sites of a Federally Qualified Heath Center. This kind of work is not 9-5, M-F kind of work, let me assure you.

As a consequence it has been difficult to supply you with your weekly Island-Life requirements.

Sorry about that but in the health care world the patient comes first in nearly every decision, whether that decision point is valid or not. Often the decision tree results in bad outcomes, so it is critical for the Team to be alert for these potential misapplication of values that end up endangering the safety of patients and of staff.

You do know that COVID is not going away and that we are likely to live with it -- or not -- for years to come.

SUMMER HAS GONE AND PAST / INNOCENCE WAS NEVER MEANT TO LAST

So anyway. We heard Pastor Rotschue has enjoyed a resurgence after suffering the slings and arrows of slander and verbal ignominy. Good, good. More power to him.

tiny monsters breed in the doorways

Now is the Season when the days fade early and the nights bring on the fogs rolling in to ease the land's misery of heat. Now is the time when the afternoon shadows grow long upon the land even as the morning light delays arrival and the evening grows mysterious and dark earlier and earlier. Dull roars erupt suddenly without warning in the crepuscular times and tiny monsters breed in the doorways of unkempt houses with grounds strewn with the ragged shreds of spiderwebs and midnight howlings.

Ravenous ghouls, brain-eating zombies and bloodsucking vampires will appear in throngs - yep, you guessed it: the midterm elections are coming.

a mixture of dread and of anticipation

We approach with a mixture of dread and of anticipation Los Dia de los Muertos, the Days of the Dead, when the veils between the worlds are thinnest. One day soon, a selected Island-Lifer will perforce travel from this world to the next, propelled by an Infernal Tradition. For each year it is destined that one Island-lifer shall cross over to that land from which no none returns -- save for destined visitors of the like as Dante -- intrepid wanderer into the deepest abyss guided by Virgil, brave Ulysses - one who was never at a loss -- and our man of the Island -- he who assailed for decades because some spread the vile rumour he had insulted the goddess of the hearth, remained true to his immortal soul and so survived many trials.

Everywhere people put out their hallowed decorations, people gather in groups at the sidewalk cafes without masks, people ride the busses and enter establishments without face coverings; people just want to return to some semblance what is imagined as "normal."

Well, with inflation, monkey pox, Trumpism being what it is in terms of denial of reality, the Ukrainian invasion, and a certain Recession, "normal" does not look so achievable in the short or mid-term. It has been said some time ago that a return to "normal" is not possible now, nor ever. Every conversation must start with, "now this is the new reality."

a month-long orgy of fantasy role-playing and hedonistic pleasure

There is an annual Tradition in the Island-Life news room in which Rachel moves through the knots of trembling Lifers with her hat loaded with straws in a sort of game of chance to determine who will go to The Other Place to find and consult the oracle on matters of great import. This drawing will take place next week. In the meantime the Bay Area will enjoy after two years of COVID lockdown party after raucous party in a month-long orgy of fantasy role-playing and hedonistic pleasure featuring its crown jewel of parties, the Hooker's Ball where costumes are optional. Indeed clothing is optional for that one. But how to carry the KY and the little latex pouches? The word, dahling, is accessorize. Vaccinate and accessorize.

doggy version of Buddhist ahimsa

The days remain warm in the eighties, and disturbingly sunny and dry; we sure could use some of that stuff that is now drowning Florida and other places east of here, but it does not look like it is going to happen for yet another year. The nights in the Valley temps are dropping into the forties and the pogonip has returned in force over the hills of Belvedere and Tiburon. Little Adam, Pahrump, Marlene and Adam sit out on the covered porch-deck thing that extends to the left and the right of the front door to enjoy the fresh air and look up at the stars as they gradually appeared following the roseate glow subsiding to the West. Bonkers and Wickiwup, getting on in years with grey muzzles now and less zest for chasing squirrels, having adopted a sort of doggy version of Buddhist ahimsa, dozed on the grey unpainted wooden steps. Johnny Cash was out pursuing what the full moon would reveal in the San Geronimo Valley. The full moon had not appeared as of yet, so the outter arm of the spiral galaxy we call home revealed it self in all its glory.

Marsha was talking about missing the annual fireflies she remembered as a girl in New Jersey before all the horrible things happened that drove her beatup in that beatup stationwagon west to California. "They would come towards the end of summer, if I remember right," Marsha said. "But time has passed and I am not so sure what I remember any more. I do remember that when they appeared, blinking on and off in any old yard for hours, I felt truely happy. And maybe I have not felt so happy ever since."

There was mansions of glory and infernal refineries

Little Adam wanted to know all about New Jersey, for what he knew about the Garden State came from Bruce Springsteen songs, and those songs did not reference anything like fireflies. There was mansions of glory and infernal refineries and souped up hot rods and castle prisons made of steel set on hills. There was racing in the street that was unlike the Oaktown sideshows in their gladiator greatness. Everything in New Jersey had to be bigger than life. Because the Boss said it was so. It all sounded really exciting. New Jersey! The wonderland of the East, Hoboken, the Meadowlands and all.

The truth that Little Adam, thrown from a moving car by his mother's boyfriend, had barely escaped those very things that matched New Jersey's grime in Oaktown, which is certainly no playground for the downtrodden. He had been taken in and adopted by Marlene and Andre and was now living in Marin County, of all places, the most outlandish place on the planet. Still Marin does have Marin City, the Canal district of San Rafael and other places that make BMW drivers nervy, because poor people have to live somewhere.

the Jersey Girl whose face nobody loved

And of course there was the experience of battered Marsha and her reasons for needing to escape with her life so as to preserve it. Marsha, the Jersey Girl whose face nobody loved save the fist of a brute, the determined girl who threw what she had into a station wagon. taking with her the car keys, the shoes of a brute and a whole case of the Blues. The shoes she threw into the Pacific Ocean. The Blues she kept, because nobody chooses the Blues; the Blues choose you.

A sort of fog filled the glade in front of the porch, then, one by one, little winking lights appeared in the cooling darkness. Soon the glade was filled with what looked like fireflies, causing Marsha to jump up and clap her hands. "How is this possible!"

Well it was possible because Martini, the electronics wizard, overheard the whistful longing of Marsha and so started up a fog machine so as to provide a substrate to hold the holographic projection of . . . fireflies; easy enough to do for someone like Martini. In the next episode we will talk about wizards and muggles and other magical things, but for now others inside the house came out to gawk at this illusion of joy.

And so for a time the Household enjoyed fireflies in autumn while the rest of the world churned over missles, nuclear retaliation, mad Russians, hurricanes, and climate change.

"Wow!", said Little Adam.

the coyotes who began to howl their evensong

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

JULY 4, 2022

LUCK WILL STILL SMILE UPON US BROTHER UKRANIANS

All over the San Geronimo Valley, and we hear in places inland, the yellow firehydrants have sported new bright blue caps. Must mean something. Like support for a beleagured Democracy far far away but near to the heart.

SANDY THE FIREWORKS ARE HAILING OVER EDEN TONIGHT

The unofficial parade of Silvan Acres took place July 4th. Because we remain defiantly unincorporated, there were no politicians in attendance.

We always begin with an acknowledgment to Fire defence.

The party continued at the Dickson Ranch and members of the Household remained to push brooms and clean up the garbage after everyone had had their fun.

Some people like to go out dancing; other people like us have to work.

The Editor bundled his papers and set to work after an hiatus due to health reasons in the various staff assignments. The worst health reasons had to do with death and so these things are always hard for a commander to deal with.

The Editor stepped out onto the back porch and regarded the silent, black night on this July 4. No whizzbangs, no bottlerockets, no illeagal munitions. Only an absolute idiot would think of launching a sparkler in this severe drought with dead trees all around and fire danger at maximum. Such a person would be lynched within minutes.

Perhaps July 4th has always been more than BBQ and sparklers and whizzbangs. As the country confronts its first serious challenge to democracy in the form of a demogogue inciting violent insurrection, we should be thinking about just what the July 4th declaration was all about. So thinks the Editor.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

JUNE 12, 2022

THIEVIN THIEVIN

Scumbag caught on camera before robbing a house.

CELEBRATION DAY

That time of year rolled around again for the most feared event in the entire Bay Area: Javier's birthday.

This time Javier relocated the festivities to Washington Park on the Island. Some said this was to confuse his former girlfriends as to his whereabouts and perhaps avoid ultraviolence this time. Padraic supplied beer barrels and BBQ equipment. Attendees chipped in for the hot dogs, chicken and burgers and all the fixings. Javier brought a couple bottles of Patron, for this year he would turn that magical age about which the Beetles had sung -- 64.

Denby brought his guitar for a few songs and Andre's band The Monkey Spankers setup to play music throughout. They were allowed to play so long as they limited the setlist to two hardcore punk songs per hour as part of extended negotiations. "How about rock-a-billy?" Andre asked, thinking of Social Distortion. Padraic and Javier had no idea what rock-billy was, but it sounded Country so that was fine. Social Distortion does not play rock-a-billy and so Andre was unclear on that avenue as well.

The Monkey Spankers set up and Padraic threw flesh on the BBQ. Seared Poodle had been considered, but hunting Poodles out of Season was frowned upon by the Poodle Hunting Council. The Poodle Eradication Group (PEG) had been lobbying for a year-round hunt without success for some time. Due to the mayhem and wanton destruction that takes place each Poodleshoot, the Council had decided no dice for Open Season -- not for preservation of the detestable breed, but for preservation of property.

On a related note, unbeknownst to Javier and everyone, there was a movement underfoot to shift the annual birthday celebration from populated areas to sites like the Blackrock Desert or the Mohave. Perhaps on top of Mount Shasta would be a good idea, if the uninvited ever brought flame-throwers. The real problem was in deciding what part of the Country would suffer the least damage as a consequence of one of Javier's birthdays. Perhaps a location that was both remote and instructive to idiots needing a lesson in violence, like West Texas or northern Idaho should be selected. As a result the Committee for Relocation of Javier's Birthday (CRJB) remained stuck. Well, stuck in Committee.

But for the longest hours the party continued without interruption. There was not much dancing, as the Monkey Spankers did not do dance music. Or the Blues.

Mangling the original text a bit, Mike Nix of the Monkey Spankers sang, "It's been 64 years and a million tears and look at the mess I'm in / A broken nose and a broken heart / An empty bottle of gin . . . ".

"Jose," Javier was saying. "I think it is time since you are of age, to claim your true Latin heritage of hot blood."

"Oh no," Jose said. "I do not like the way this is going."

Jose, it might be said, was a good, honest, religious, hard-working and decent man who always listened to his Abuelta.

"Jose," Javier continued. "You have heard about the legend of that gabacho Johnny Appleseed, yes? You need to be like him, but instead of trees you must do the women. It is in your nature as a Latin-X man. Un hombre con cojones grande!"

It might also be mentioned here that Javier, from Mexico City, was not exactly a good role model for Jose or for anybody for that matter. He was a man who consorted with the mistresses of narcotrafficantes, with women of loose character, and with other persons of ill repute. He was not a good example. As we shall shortly see.

"But wherever I have gone \ I was sure to find myself there \ You can run all your life \ But not go anywhere," sang Mike Nix.

"I think," began Jose. "That I am not so sure my path is the same as . . .".

There was a loud "CRUMP!" followed by a whistling sound and a sudden geyser of earth and grass in the open area of the park. This was followed by another explosion that detonated closer to the group.

"Good god," said Denby. "They are shelling us with mortars!"

Jose, Pahrump and Suan scrambled into action and racing to the upper baseball diamond part of the terraced park they quickly disabled several ninjas with squirtguns loaded with balsamic vinegar, which did not sit well with faces swaddled with absorbent cloth. The sortie party quickly disabled the mortars with baked potatoes

The group was driven back by others armed with scimitars and morning star flails. The Ninjas held back from killing them fully -- for the moment.

A loud thundering was heard by all and the party looked anxiously at the skies for a reappearance of last year's chinook helicopters. A platoon of women on Harleys roared into the meadow and dismounted armed with bladed weapons and flails.

Sharon swung a double-edged broadaxe at anyone and at random. Samantha made her razor-embedded whip over her head. Felicia hacked at Jose who defended himself by lifting a bar-b-que filled with hot coals and tossing the contents at her. She managed to jab Javier in the side, but she screamed as her clothes caught fire. Everyone else scattered to safety. Denby hid under an overturned rowboat with a work colleague named Kelly whom he had invited, since after last year's contretemps Fatou had categorically refused to attend any more dangerous functions. "This whole affair badly needs organization and a firm hand," Kelly said. "I am going to put Walter on this project right away. Should we survive."

Someone had re-enabled the mortar on the upper terrace which produced another loud "CRUMP!" and the main BBQ pit erupted in flames as the propane tanks exploded.

As the sirens wailed and the injured lay bleeding on the ground, people dispersed and the Harley's rode off without having found the mysteriously disappeared Javier, who had run into the canebrake stand there at the first sign of trouble.

As the islolated fires died, and peace and calm returned to the Island and the surviving members of the Household returned to the San Geronimo Valley, or got treated at Highland Trauma, the sun set on another idyllic day on the idyllic Island that some people imagine to be perfect and composed.

As the group of survivors debarked at the bus stop in Silvan Acres long after dark, someone asked Jose "Why do we keep doing this every year when so many of Javier's ex-girlfriends want to kill him?"

"Birthdays in the Bay Area are a Tradition," Jose said. "You cannot escape them."

The group got the gallon jug and soothed their rattled nerves on the porch.

As the hours of night ticked by, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

MAY 28, 2022

THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY

Memorial Day dragged itself around to the same time of year and Decorations were hung and grill-fests scheduled despite the inflationary prices.

Gas stands at $6.80 for premium around here. And other costs are also through the roof.

The Editor never minds Memorial Day. The comrades he lost long ago are not going to revisit this tormented Earth right now or ever. Thoughts and prayers do nothing to restore what was lost via violence.

Johnny was dear and slight. Raymond was sturdy and lived across the road. Both returned in a box.

The Editor did not attend the yearly celebrations on Decoration Day, nor did he attend the regular gatherings of his command with all the hats and paraphernalia. That was all living in the past, no different than the guy who raved up and down the avenue in rainbow colors, pushing a shopping cart of memory and deploring the loss of the past in the form of the '60's Revolution. The Revolution was just as asshat as the War, costing lives with equal abandon and just as disillusioned while not going anywhere.

On Memorial Day the Editor kept inside, avoiding the stench of BBQ that could only resurrect the smell of charred flesh after a napalm run over a ridge. All the old vets wearing their squadron jackets, their memorial battleship hats were living in the past, no different than the tie-dyed white-haired former hippie wandering the streets of downtown Fairfax, mind blown out by too much LSD. The Editor was irritated by them and their stories. There was nothing about the past he wanted to relive. Nevertheless some nights he still woke up sweating, voice hoarse from yelling in his sleep.

The only segment of that documentary by Ken Burns he watched he saw an actor portraying what had to have been Johnny P getting killed and so Johnny died twice before the Editor turned off the TV.

All of his companions were gone now after the Agent Orange and jammed M-16s were done. Nothing would bring back Raymond or Johnny P. All that was left is a granite wall bearing the weight of 58,281 names (as of 2022). Not Johnny, though; they found out he was underage.

Then came the Balkans. After that, Operation Desert Storm. Now Ukraine. It looks like it would never end.

The Editor poured himself a stiff one over ice. Looked like it was going to be another bad night.

As the clock ticked past midnight, the coyotes howled over the far ridge of San Geronimo Valley.

Just then, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

MAY 08, 2022

SLEEPY TIME GAL

THE DAY WILL BEGIN LIKE ANY OTHER

So anyway. The title this week refers to a song by Richard Shindell titled "Spring", and if ever there was a time when we all needed a breath of renewal, of resurgence of life, of hope the time is now.

Mother's Day arrived on time this year and so the Household along with adherents all repaired to Mama's Royal Cafe in Oaktown for the traditional brunch and those who still had mothers among the living brought them along.

Well who were these people? What were their names and their dispositions? Marlene, head of the Household, brought, or was brought by, Little Adam as the sort of surrogate mom for he had been abandoned by his biological mother who died in a crackhouse some time ago. Suan showed up and so did Tipitina, although both had lost their mothers years ago. Jesus managed to get his mama from Mexico to appear because they were all Americans now and fully wanted to participate in the American Traditions. Pahrump appeared with his mother Flying Squirrel from the Pyramid Lake Rez, and Sarah appeared even though she did not know where in Mississippi her mother now lived.
Mancini was there with his mother, a fifth generation San Franciscan.

Mr. Howitzer never attended these celebrations as he always drove out to Colma armed with a 22 long rifle to dispatch the crows hanging around the family plot.

This year the weather was iffy, so the group dominated a big table inside and there was all sorts of catching up and joking and so on because people had not been in contact for so long during the COVID lockdowns.

"You people have no idea about lockdowns," Suan said. "They complain about wearing a mask even when in Shanghai, no one is allowed to leave their apartment, not even for food. Don't talk to me about your abridged 'liberties'!

The table included people from all over the United States as well as long-term Californios. The discussion about abortion rights and a woman's right to determine the use of her own body along with the state of the Economy and Ukraine was spirited and if the leaders of the world would only listen to the Mothers then many problems would be resolved without senseless death.

After the annual Brunch was over, each of the gals and guys seperated with their moms. Pahrump took his mom on his scooter to the Greyhound station. Marlene returned with Little Adam to the Household in the Valley along with Jesus and his mom, who spread out a sleeping bag on the floor. Mancini and his mom took the bus to the Oakland ferry for the return to San Francisco where they both got roaring drunk on tequila at Specs with an old poet named.

The day will begin like any other
Another sunrise in the east
It will reach across and touch you like a lover
It will tease you from a dream

And opening your eyes you will surrender
To the light that fills the room
And the hope that you have carried since September
You will offer up to June

Maybe will be certain
You can take it as a vow
Winter's just the curtain
Spring will take the bow

Looking out your window you will wonder
At the blooming in your yard
And evry opening flower will be a mirror
Of the quickening in your heart

The day will begin like any other
Another sunrise in the east
It will reach across and touch you like a lover
It will tease you from a dream
You won't remember

The day will begin like any other
Another sunrise in the east
It will reach across and touch you like a lover
It will tease you from a dream
You won't remember

Richard Shindell
© BMG Rights Management

Just then, the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island breakwaters and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

MAY 1, 2022

THE LIZARD KING

LIVING IN A DUSTBOWL

We had some late showers last month, but are unlikely to see any more. Marin's reservoirs are nearly full, but the rest of the Golden State is going to see more dry, hard times. The Sierra snowpack, which produces the vast quantity of the State's water for industry and agriculture, is much lower than average.

In a survey at Phillips Station, the Department of Water resources Following a January and February that will enter records as the driest documented in state history, recorded 35 inches of snow depth and a snow water equivalent of 16 inches, which is 68 percent of average for this location for March.

Despite March and April rains, surveys done in April found found a shrinking patch of snow that contained only 4% of the location’s average water content. This year’s snowpack is the worst it’s been in seven years and the sixth lowest April measurement in state history.

What this means for homeowners is a continuation of water rationing, and a possible moritorium on new housing developments.

MAY, MAY THE LUSTY MONTH OF MAY

So anyway. With another harsh season of Fire Wars coming up, crews all over Marin are hard at work clearing years of underbrush and cutting trees and tree limbs in danger of bringing down powerlines. Every day and every weekend chainsaws echo across the dells and valleys. Even in unincorporated Silvan Acres which has no co-ordinated sewage system, postal delivery, or street lights. It does have the West Marin Fire District Marshall however, and there, like the incorporated cities further to the east, has orders to clear defensible space 100 feet from the domiciles.

Now this leads to any number of situations potentially unpleasant. If the homeowner does not comply, the Fire Marshal will engage any number of entities to raze every shrub and tree and vine imagined to be out of compliance by a crew of felllows who do not speak a word of English.

The supervisors, whose command of Spanish is usually limited, spread their arms wide and issue the orders "córtalo todo". This means in Spanish, "Cut it all down."

The landowner then pays for what transpires.

Say what you will about people from Mexico and Ecuador, but never say they are lazy. They will chop, saw, and cut with a ferocious will for a solid 8 - 9 hours and they will not stop until a full 8 - 9 hours of industrious hourly labor can be charged.

Mr. Blunt, who could not be bothered to clear out the wisteria overgrowth, returned from work in the City to find his sylvan acres had been converted from a green NorCal domain to one resembing Ojai, but without palm trees and cactus. His neighbors were quite happy as Mr. Blunt was that sort of Marinite who loved to toss lawsuits right and left like a kid tossing Black Cat firecrackers and his property became certainly one that could never support a fire of any type for not one stick was left standing from the ground where pines and redwoods and shrubbery had once sheltered a cool, shaded place and now the merciless sun baked any new attempt of greenery to survive on that full acre lot.

The Household got their marching orders via the Landlord who offered some discounts if the tenants would handle the Fire Marshall. The guy was a typical slumlord -- and if you believe for one second slum lords do not exist in Hippy Dippy Marin, you are living in a fool's paradise -- and so the gang set to with spades and axes and other implements of destruction to clear the place to its boundaries with San Geronimo only to realize that with a no burning order in place they wound up with hella piles of burnable debris and no place to put it.

At the edge of the property they found the owner there had created a practice area for downhill bicycle racers to practice with ramps and chutes and all kinds of crazy stuff. Turned out the owner had been a professional downhill racer and the Household had no knowledge of this aspect of professional sports, but she invited them in for lemonade and they all had a grand time talking about downhill racing which involves speeding down slopes and cliffs and dangerous leaps at tremendous speed and breaking bones and all kinds of cool, crazy stuff and also surviving in Marin and other places where people try to kill you, which the Household certainly knew a lot about and they all seperated with lots of hugs and kissy stuff, but still the Household had no place to put the debris.

So the initial idea was to part it out all over the landscape but that idea did not seem so good, for if it was burn fuel where it was, then it would become burn fuel other places, only distributed.

Then the idea was to bring it out to the ocean and dump it there but then the practicible nature of doing that while evading park rangers plus other objectionable authorities and such got in the way.

Martini made a sort of wood chipper from an old motorcycle engine and a lawnmower and so reduced the volume of the debris somewhat by drinking Red Bull and staying up for several nights in succession, but still there was this problem of heaps of debris, which they all suspected would not gladden the heart of the Fire Marshall.

It turned out that the downhill goddess came to the rescue. She was an icon in bicycle sports throughout Marin where bicycles are as revered as small dogs and perhaps more so, and so she enlisted an legion of bicyclists to carry in smallish parcels carried on trailers the debris from Syvlan Acres up over White's Hill, down through Fairfax, through San Anselmo, all along the Miracle Mile to San Rafael to the Jacoby Street County disposal center. Thousands of bicyclists thronged the streets and at the end of the day all the burnable fuel had been cleared from the Household property and the property owner harumphed over a deal well done and the bicyclists held a fine orgy of feasting at Marla's place in San Geronimo and all of this is perfectly true, so help me Spaghetti Monster God.

And so as the bonfires of the celebration subsided, with proper supervision -- and the Household retired from their labors and the bicyclists retired to their haunts and Marla gave the Household a poster of her standing naked in the desert on a bike as published in Outside Magazine. "I was a lot younger then," Marla said, brushing a whisp of gray hair from her forehead.

You never know who you are going to meet in Marin.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

APRIL 17, 2022

YOU SHOULD BE DANCING

A group of blacktail deer were captured romping about in sheer frisky joy the other day.

COVID PSA

Briefly at the FQHC consortium we are seeing a spike in cases but a decline in deaths and hospitalizations. Many area are acting as if COVID is entirely over but as a Fully Qualified Health Care org we cannot drop back as we must consider the health of our target populations as primary in focus. Consequently masking is required inside all clinics, no food with meetings, meetings to be kept short and done primarily via Zoom, low room occupancy, persistance of parking lot triage tents, resperatory and other COVID services done outside in tents.

What this looks like going forward. Due to Zeno's paradox of never being able to achieve zero, we can expect annual COVID booster shots along with flu and Pneumonia for all populations across the board. We are unlikely to pursue new lockdowns as they are doing in China, due to economic impact. We will continue to live with this thing -- or not -- for years to come if not forever.

Yes a new pandemic can be expected at any undetermined time, worse or lesser than COVID-19.

For now, do not pretend the Thing is entirely over. A number of Bay Area Counties have reverted from Medium to High alert status due to higher infection rates.

A fourth booster for high-risk individuals is now available and this one covers the variants which have popped up since the last one.

You should use the reporting tool that tracks vaxxing for the CDC. They are not tracking you individually, but looking at the numbers by the millions and the info helps people like Dr. Fauci determine policy.

APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH

So anyway. The buckeyes are spiking out with their savage daggers and small floral explosions are happening all along the byways.

We have entered the Most Dangerous Season.

The Island has been handling the COVID lockdowns with its usual stoic perseverance. The buckeyes have been erupting with green spikes and everything is burgeoning into the usual riot of Spring, that most dangerous season even as the dark clouds that lowered upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

May begins the Most Dangerous Season. Yes, Spring is the most dangerous season. Maybe it is different in other places, but here, wise men remain indoors and order pizza for dinner, hunker down by the TV to watch endless reruns of Monster Truck Destruction and Terminator I, II, III and IV. It's safer cuddled there in the dark lit only by the blackout curtain blocked TV set glow.

Bees dive-bombing the clover, hummingbirds bayoneting the jasmine that keeps throwing out punches this way and that while sending wafts of chemical weapons of mass disruption. Army ants on the march in great phalanxes and squirrels conducting reconnaissance forays add to the mayhem, while raccoons begin nightly raids. The daisy bush bursts with yellow ack-ack blooms while the poppies erupt with tiny explosions across the fields. Squadrons of swallows swooping and diving, ducks performing sorties, Canadian geese streaking overhead in formation and then, worst of all, there are the girls in their summer dresses.

Meanwhile, somewhere overhead, flying in stealth mode -- that naked, blindfolded, fat boy keeps firing off at random his erring arrows of wanton mishap, those IEDs (Improvised Erotic Designs), wreaking chaos in a wide swath more terrifying than Sherman's March to the Sea. Squadrons of women and girls swelling with fatal charms stroll on patrol, their smooth lithe legs flashing beneath their uniforms: thin summer dresses, haltertops, daisy-dukes, and god knows what else underneath that armor. If anything. It's all agitprop left to the imagination.

Save us all from Spring's violent terrors.

Observe Jonny, happy and carefree as a lark, striding with ruddy cheeks and full confidence down San Pablo Avenue. But after him comes Jane, armed with those sharpshooter eyes, that flippy short skirt, and strappy high heels. Now Johnnie is down! His face wan and his appetite poor, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as Jane cradles his head among the wildly blooming, victorious daisies. Right in the heart, poor lad. A goner for sure.

Yes, Spring is the most dangerous Season. And now Denby was captivated by the nurse Mariah with her tatoos and everything besides. Her beautiful eyes glowing in that dark pit. His daydreams featured images of Mariah riding on top of him with her luxurious rope of chestnut hair flying about like a cowgirl riding a rumpus. In short, he was hopelessly smitten and tottally lost. Ah the poor sod.

The Editor made his usual annual preparations to deal with the punishing effects of Romance by stocking up on Michelina's frozen dinners, cases of Glenfiddich, and plenty of cold showers. Blackout curtains go up at night and he retreats to the inner sanctums of the house so that no stray light or sound announces that anyone is at home. He will hide out like this for months until deep summer and everyone has safely mated someone else or left town and the leggy Joanne has turned her wandering eye from prospective boudoire partners to postmodern art.

Yes, Spring is the the most dangerous Seaon.

As the weather warms the Editor retreats indoors while Denby moons about the Hospital and only Javier, who enjoys violent excitement and physical danger goes about looking for trouble. As the most Interesting Man in the World once said to Javier, "My friend, to remain interested in Life you must BE interesting yourself."

And so the sun set on NorCal gilding the buckeye spikes before all light eroded from the trees. Marlene and Andre put away the remains of the Pesach seder. COVID restrictions had eased everywhere and so gatherings were permitted. The glass of wine at the end of the table remained untouched and so was decanted back into the jug.

Far far away the cannons and missles rained down on yet another Chosen People. This year in fear and sorrow. Next year in Truth and Justice.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

MARCH 13, 2022

PARKING LOT

As it turns out there are lots of urban-themed songs that feature parking lots, but not a great deal about the problem of parking in limited areas. Wierd Al Yankovic are you listening? Here is a golden op . . .

WHATS THE BUZZ

Word has it that Marin is doing what all the slope-forehead knuckle-dragging States are not and making it easier to vote, not more difficult.

LEAD ME ON

So anyway. Gas is now $5.48 in the cheapest spots and $6.00 plus in some locations. In the Old Same Place Bar, Padraic prepared for the annual St. Paddy's day celebration. He got Suzi up in a green miniskirt uniform and stocked up on Guiness, which is good for you, and plenty jars of the Water of Life, Usce-que-bah.

In the middle-early hours in stepped old Vladimir Borotkin and all eyes turned to watch him as he walked slowly, balancing on his cane, to the rail at the bar.

Everyone knew his name. Everyone knew from where he had come. Everone knew he owned the cafe\restaurant called the Russian Tearoom over the Hill and downtown. They did not have much information about his family being incarcerated at Spravitelno-trudovoi gulag during the Soviet days. The gulag archapelago was a vast prison system intended to make the population quescent. It was devised by Lenin and further archetected by Stalin. It operated in secret for years until Alexandyr Solsinitsin published a detailed description of the gulag's atrocities.

The Soviet system, once anticipated as a welcome panacea to the worst excesses of Capitalism, quickly was seen by disappointed Western intelligentsia as a nasty piece of inhumane works relying upon a string of satellite faux republics to shelter its oppressed people from information and independence.

The gulag system engulfed hundreds of thousands of Russians, subjected them to years of inhumane abuse and at the end of their tenure, should a citizen survive so long, evicted them from the country. So was Borotkin's fate.

Now he lived in a foreign country as an exile, thrown out by the regimes. And all eyes were upon him.

The post-season games were all college so the overhead projection showed news from CNN. Faux News was not allowed in the Old Same Place and in this space, Barotkin began his monologue. St. Padraic's day celebration was in full swing, but the TV's displayed instead of March Madness sports, the terrible devastation taking place half a world away.

Borotkin sat there staring at the screens. His first name was Anatoly if you want to know. And of course all Russians have a diminuitive as well as a secondary patronymic which the readers of Tolstoy know well So Borotkin's full name was Anatoly Tolysha Diminya Irysa Schostikovich Borotkin. This name is because his great grandmother had blue eyes, which persist in his lineage to this day. And it may be that he has lineage extended back in time to the Ukraine. So!

As he sat watching the news he began to weep.

Members of the Angry Elf gang came in and saw the big Russain crying. They were Cackler, Brian Stinnge, Toshie Yakuza and Hymie Stumpf. The Angry Elf gang members all enjoyed seeing someone someone; they took real pleasure in someone elses tears and so they surrounded Borotkin.

Enjoying the show, eh Ivan? Cackler said before emitting that signature sound which had given him his nickname.

So, um, sad many Russia die before Mister Putin gets his way, Floozie said.

Putin zloy chelovek! My ne prosili ob etom! Borotkin said.

Stop speaking German, Brian said and shoved Borotkin. We speak English here. English and Japanese only.

Padraic came over to say, We're wantin no thruhble here.

We're just makin' this Nazi Ivan here feel welcome, said Hymie.

I am here because i am dissident, Borotkin said. Putin threw me out with my family!

Yeah sure. All you Ivans are spies, Brian said.

Lets take him outside and give him an American haircut, Hymie said. The Cackler laughed and grabbed Borotkin.

Padraic went back behind the bar to fetch his shilleleah and the gang produced several switchblades in response.

It was then the door flew open, a cold wind swept in and then . . . HE appeared.

O crickey, Brian said. It's HIM again.

Yes it was he: The Wee Man. All 48 inches of him from his buckled shoes to the top of his green derby. The Wee Man, for it was him, stroked his chinny chin chin and thought and thought.

What did he look like? For a start he wore a twill newsboy cap on a head of bright red hair. Red, too was his full beard and cobalt blue his eyes. He wore a green checked waistcoat which sported a gold chain that went into the side pocket and green checked pants. And on his feet a set of green suede brogans with tassels and toe tips that curled up and about in a merry way. He stood all of three feet in height.

The Wee Man produced a small derringer pistol which he discharged into the ceiling without so much as looking before putting the weapon away into his waistcoat. A bit of faery dust rained down and everyone remained quiet.

As to what the Wee Man really was, besides himself all day, which most of us can claim at nearly the same rate, the matter was open to speculation and never-ending discussion. Some say he came from the Spanish Armada that sank off the coast and others say he was of the legendary Firbolg that harried the ancient Romans loose from the Emerald Isle thousands of years before. Some say despite his stature he was related to the mythic giant Finn ni Cuchulain, Finn McCool, whose body extended the length of Howth, and that his apparent manifest physical size was merely a kind of trick, and some say that he was of the tribe of the Bann Sé that howl about the chimneys at night and cause the tree branches to toss about and wave by way of their long hair as they fly among the trees and so therefore a sort of faery, but with some disreputable attributions, including cigar smoking and farting.

Too bad you used up your single shot, Toshie said, producing a wicked-looking iron tanto. Iron, as one knows from folklore, is fatal to the Wee folk and the ancient Sé who still inhabit the old Gaeltacht.

Spring is coming, said the Wee man. I dearly love Spring and am so glad you brought something for all the cut flowers. With that he leapt up with a mighty bound to stand on a table surrounded by Not-From-Heres. He clapped his hands twice and all the lights went out. They remained out for five seconds and when they came back on, the Wee Man was seen sitting at the bar with a half-empty glass of Guinness. He wiped his moist lips and damp beard and sighed contentedly, Ahhhhh, Guinness is good for ya.

Instead of knives all the members of the gang held lilies and pink ladies. Toshie's tanto had been replaced with a lupine. Padraic's blackthorne stick had been replaced by a bouquet of yellow roses.

Once again the Angry Elf gang had been thwarted. But that was not all. Once again the Wee Man had turned the knickers of all the good people into apparel of spun gold. Which, if you did not know is not exactly the most comfortable material. The knickers of the gang had been changed to thistles and they all left quite suddenly in some discomfort.

Eto kakaya-to shutka. Ya dolzhen skazat' spasibo? Borotkin said staring down with his waistband open.

Of course you can, said the Wee Man. Dobro pozhalovat', my friend. He snapped his fingers and the news channel changed to a Foo Fighters concert. I am sorry magic cannot save your country or the one now being brutalized for it could not save even my own from uncivil war and a time of Troubles. I can only extend my deepest sympathies for what the Russian people are about to suffer and what the invaded are going through now. The Magic comes in the form of small kindnesses . . . here he picked up a lily from the floor where one of the gang had tossed it . . . that bloom like tiny miracles in Spring.

He then snapped his fingers and there was a bright flash and he was gone.

The man's a soddin' pervert, Padraic said. But I am startin' ta like him.

C'mon, lets get those knickers off ya, Dawn said.

You have not said that since the night we was married, Padraic said.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

MARCH 6, 2022

SHCHE NE VMERLA UKRAYINY, NI SLAVA, NI VOLYA

Furthermore, Trump is an ass.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Usually we satirize public events, both national and international with buffoon comedy. Yes we sometimes get serious as when we did the pieces on teen self-cutting and rape, but normally we aim for the comedic as a way to reveal the buffoons for what they are, from politicians to capitalists.

We have now a situation so serious, so injurious to Humanity, so dangerous to the World, and causing so much pain to so many that we cannot turn this thing into even the Blackest Grande Guigonol Comedy. Tucker Carlson and Trump remain buffoons in the old style. Tired and old in their old jokiness that has been going on for years now. Putin, on the other hand, is a murderous criminal foisting the most dangerous event upon the world since World War II. By invading a sovereign nation and causing so much death and destruction and rattling the nuclear arms sabres, he not only causes wide-spread misery affecting millions, he destablizes the world economy struggling to recover at this point from COVID, his own nation's economy by way of the sanctions, and risks expanding this regional conflict into a global disaster, another WWIII costing a ghastly number of lives.

In the coming days, weeks and months, while a bull-headed man continues to insist on reducing a proud and independent Democracy to rubble, and as this conflict results in family struggles and difficulties in both Russia and the US, we will need to be resolute in purging our own land of dangerous buffoonery in the form of neo-nazi, White Power, fascist movements so that we can face a truely monumental Evil that has arisen in Russia and will soon find like-minded allies to form a new Axis.

This thing is not going to go away in the moment of a sound-bite. We may be living with what hopefully stays a Cold War, but know for certain other nations are going to suffer this invasion thing. Putin is not going to be done with Ukraine. He is too inflated with himself to stop there.

LIFE IS FULL OF DISAPPOINTMENTS, AND I AM FULL OF LIFE

So anyway. Denby got let out of jail by the Commissioner who could not find any fault in his actions the day the homeboys robbed the QuikeeKing restaurant, but he was fined $50 for walking around wearing oversized-suspenders and no underwear, which was not done in that district. The factory foreman girl, Erica, considered him hot property and so would not assist him in the slightest so Denby had some difficulty retrieving his clothes from the laundry and getting back to the sanctuary city of Silvanacres after yet another Sucky Valentines Day.

When he got back to work at the hospital the usual nurse was not there at the greeting station, so he missed flirting with Jennifer of Urgent Care. The nurse there was Tom and he was handsome, but he did not have anything there that interested Denby although Denby liked to call himself Straight but not Narrow.

The new Help-Desk Manager guy had Denby scrubbing the corners of the exam rooms, so he could not get out to see the delightfully tattooed Mariah at the Trust Clinic.

So all in all, the whole V-day thing turned out to be the usual wash. Nobody got anything and nobody got anywhere.

This is true for most Island-Lifers. We are common people and we go to work each day to jobs we do not particularly identify with so as to pay the rent and keep body and soul together. Island-Lifers have to pay the same high gas prices and inflated costs as everyone else. We are just like you. In fact. we are you.

Mr. LeBlanche just finished up at the Red Hill gas station filling his mini-suv gas tank and was shocked at the price, knowing it was soon to get even higher. Mr. Blanche was a French teacher at San Geronimo High.

"A bas cette Mssr. Putain!" Exclaimed Mr. LeBlanche. "A bas Mssr Putain!".

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

I WILL SURVIVE

Actually the photographer reported the hare did in fact get away this time.

MY SUCKY VALENTINE REDEUX

So anyway. For some MLK day is an opportunity for a day off and get all teary-eyed and sentimental about the Civil Rights Movement like that was yesterday. The rest of us dream this dream every day in combat on the streets.

The new has begun and still the old stuff is still around. We still have Inflation. We still have the Trump appealling to the fascist fringes of the far Right along with the more myopic pieces of the once proud GOP. We still have COVID, thanks to the legions of maskless and unvaccinated slope-forehead morons acting as breeding grounds for yet more virus variants.

Harvey Pearvy is a friend of the Cribbages and Mr. Howitzer. He owns a liquor distributor, one of the biggest on the West Coast, and he was of the mind that the mask mandates and vaccination requirements were the most severe limitations on personal civil liberty since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even worse so.

Harvey dragooned Denby into working on February 12-14th which normally is a time Denby avoids due to past difficulties, but this time around Denby figured work would keep him out of trouble during the dreaded V-day period.

So during his time off from the Hospital, it was Denby's job to fetch liquor from the warehouse, load up the truck and deliver the stuff to groceries and bars in Marin. It was lousy to work during a holiday, but this way Denby got to avoid the charms of the delightful Mariah with the long rope of hair that had enchanted him some time ago.

The Editor's solution to avoiding the allure of the the long-legged Joanne was to each year stock up on scotch and Michelina's one-pot meals and remain sequestered without ever going outside for a few days.

So there, Cupid. Take that.

How can a guy get into trouble pulling stock from a warehouse and delivering to various locations?

As it turned out the foreman was a gal named Erica and she was a short stick of dynamite with short hair, black jeans, black shirt and eyes that were limpid pools of blue so deep Denby felt he could dive in and drown.

She was from someplace in Eastern Europe by her accent and she was a terrible flirt. Denby fell head over heels, never mind Mariah; the American species of male is known for its peculiar ability to fall in love with two or more women at the same time.

"Ah Mister, I see you lifting theeeeze boxes you have theeeze bulges! O! So beeeg!"

So the flustered Denby drops a case and gets 100 proof all over his clothes next to the forklift. Which, by the way, he was not certified or unionized to drive. Mr. Pearvy was like that.

"You cannot go deliver smelling like you are drunk. Put all your clothes in warehouse washer we use for strapping machine."

Denby protested. He could not go around naked.

"There is warehouse overalls in team room next to laundry. Put on."

Yeah right, Denby said.

"I go take mandatory lunch. Bye bye. I think about you with overalls only and no underwears! Bye bye!"

So Denby went down to the washroom where the big industrial washers were, making sure to peak into the team room to make sure the orange overalls hung there first.

So he took off all his clothes and tossed them into a washer and entered the team room to find that the overalls there were either for midgits or for elephantine people.

He could not understand why this was until he remembered that the staff were either diminuitive Filipinas or immense Samoans because that was the kind of staff Mr. Peavey liked to select. He wanted submissives to work the administrative and he wanted massive brutes for the heavy lifting.

The story about how Samoans and large Hawaiians came to dwell in California involves George Sutter and is a long story recounted elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Sutter, a Swiss citizen, brought them here after becoming a Mexican citizen and then gold was discovered on his property. So we have the gold rush, Samoans, Hawaiians, Swiss adventurers, Mexicans and any sort of complicatoins that come into this story which is supposed to be short and simple.

So it was Denby sloughed on a set of overalls that hung on him like a tent and did not conceal his nakedness very well such that he could not exactly continue deliveries for a while.

Now of course was lunchtime and Denby was hungry. Erica had taken off and so had most of the wrecking crew so he was left to his own devices and so found himself outside looking for the lunch-truck. Every warehouse has one that comes around at a certain time to the parkinglot. But since this was an official holiday the truck did not come around so Denby was left to shamble in his oversized outfit down the road to where he remembered there was a taqueria. Soon as Denby came in the door, faintly smelling of liquor in his oversize suit the cashier buzzed the manager.

"Whaddaya wan'", asked the cashier.

The Manager appeared and looked dubiously at Denby wearing his oversized overalls and of course, his hat.

"Uh uno Burrito Grande, carne asada. Black Beans."

"Para esta," said the cashier flatly. She wanted this guy out of there."

"Uh, yeah, para esta."

Now it just so happened that some gangbangin' homeboys came by after robbing the Shane Company distribution warehouse down the street.

"Mane, after pistol-wippin' that mofo hired dick and grabbin' some slag I got a jones for some grub, " Alonzo said. "Let's get some burgers," He had learned most of his communication style from TV specials, which led at times to serious confusion among his mates.

"Skip the burgers," Long Round said. "We gotta skip out quick. Here be a taco joint. In and out fast."

So in busts about four guys with shotguns and hot iron ordering everybody to get the f***k down on the floor. Except for the cook.

While the boys went through the patron's wallets there on the floor Long Round issued his orders. "Uh, three big bowls of them tostada things - extra meat. About four super tacos. Beef. Always beef for everything. Hot sauce, sauer creme, the works. Bags of chips - with the salsa okay? With the goddamned salsa green and red! And what's up with the guy in the big suit on the floor?"

"Uh, uh, uh he jus' come in here. He not one of us, said the cashier."

"That's fine. Open the cash drawer before I blow your fool head off and gimmee all the money."

The gang collected their food, cash, and other valuables and split out the door and Long Round ordered everyone to not raise their heads or get up for 20 minutes.

"You stole all our watches," said one man. "How are we going to know how much time has passed?"

"Just estimate!" Long Round shouted. And the gang roared out of there and were down the road just as PD arrived in screaming squad cars and people started getting off the floor.

Busting in, the belated PD trained all their guns on Denby.

"What's up with this guy," shouted Officer Tantamount, who was kind of cute as a female officer of the force. Short in stature but a stick of explosive when she was riled.

"We do not know who he is," said the cashier. "He just showed up just before the robbery, and he is not one of us."

"Okay mister, you will have to come along with me to the station and answer a few questions."

"But I was just working down the way at the factory and wanted to get something to eat. That is all!"

"Yeah sure," said the officer. "I've heard all kinds of stories."

"Can I at least get my burrito now?"

"No food allowed in the squad car. Put your hands behind your back before I have to kneel on your neck to make you comply."

So it was that Denby spent another V-Day in jail and this time for crimes he did not commit at all. He lay there on the cot and observed that cloud cover had hidden the moon and stars on this night of nights. That lady cop sure was cute. Mean but cute.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

JANUARY 1, 2022

I WANT TO HEAR THE SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY

NOTHING CHANGES ON NEW YEARS EVE

So anyway. This year pass quietly into the next. No big explosions, no fireworks. Father Danyluk invited the Lutheran minister Pastor Nyquist again for a NYE libation in what has become a 21 year tradtion celebrated by both houses of the clergy.

Of course there are other collaborative traditions that lead up to this event. The Catholic parish can scarcely scrape up the vocal talent for an offkey barbershop quartet, let along the stupdendous choruses expected during the holidays, but it can field dollars and field animals for pageants in great numbers. The Lutherans boast quite an impressive, well trained, vocal ensemble they are most willing to loan out in service of the Lord.

As a consequence the annual Xmas Pageant features grand orchestral crescendos and magnificent arias, due substantially to Lutheran contributions in normal times. This year all celebrations were cancelled due to the Pandemic.

In return, Father Danyluk can offer the bounty of the Vatican wine cellar and other benefits. That part was not cancelled.

So it it is that each year Pastor Nyquist repairs to the rectory of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint to indulge in brandy and discussions of things theological of which we poor secular fools can barely imagine the consequences.

This year the two men talked about current events, expecially the effects of COVID upon the Faithful.

The entire Island-Life staff has been knocked down with illness, along with the administrations of both congregations. Everyone has been hard hit right at the start of the year,

It has been a trying year. No one has been spared. No congregation has been spared. For the first time in American history, all churches have been shut down for services. This has never happened before.

So on the final night of the turning of the year, our two clergymen are very conscious of the times and their position in grand events that dwarf the individual. The year for the Golden State has been fraught with drought, fire, disease, and any number of other disasters In the final hours the two men of spirtual conscionce held their final powpow.

Until in the early hours after the fireworks, after the ball had dropped, after all the hoopla, Sister Profundity entered the room to tamp down the fire and lay blankets over the laps of the two snoring there in their easy chairs and so put out all the lights, save for the single flickering electric candle, which could symbolize the faint hope of Salvation, the faint hope of change and anything getting better, or just the faint hope of an angel, or anything besides.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

DECEMBER 26, 2021

YEAR OF THE CAT

During the past few months of the drought we had a flood of bobcat and mountain lion photos coming over the transome. This was largely due to the predators following their prey down from the hills to the well-watered lawns in the towns.

Here is a bobcat looking out over a fence for any possibilities.

WHATS GOING ON WHATS GOING ON

Due to the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus we are back to selective lockdowns. Because so many people are vax hesitant and also resistant to common-sense preventatives like wearing masks and social distancing, there is a pool of variant breeders who will ensure by their irresponsible actions this thing continues and also continues to produce yet more variants.

The one good outcome from all of this features the Darwin Award actions of a certain group of people in the country who are now dying with higher frequency than folks livining in places gifted with commonsense and higher intelligence.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

So anyway. The skies have gone all dense with high fog and the nights have gotten chill, for Norcal, and with the sun arising late and descending early, we have started to live in the crepuscular atmosphere of darkness from start of day to end.

Last Tuesday was the longest day of the year as the Solstice ticked over on the ancient stone clock and the sun's rays streamed through the portals of Stonehenge. Old Gaia sits there on the rickety porch of the world. Now is the time when Gaia tilts her weathered face creased with valleys, arroyos, hills, deserts, plains, mesas, continents and the liquid seas of her deep dark eyes away from gazing at her son, Phoebus Apollo riding in his bright chariot as she sits and rocks ever so slowly in the ticking wicker chair, the folds of the quilted Universe draped across her lap, the rocking becoming the dance of Shiva, the creaking rails marking the ever ceaseless count of time's advance, ticking each second, each century, from the first moment of creation until that rocking chair stops at the moment of that last, terrible, motionless silence.

As Gaia turns her face away from the light, her ravined face gradually cools with measured shadows covering the valleys of her eyes, all the world chilling under the frost that puts all of Nature into a deep sleep, and everything is precisely where it needs to be right at this moment while Phoebus Apollo gallops in his low-rider at an angle to her repose, harder to see in his daily journey, a sort of sideshow to beat all side shows.

Now is when the Goddess walks the cold furrows, morning the temporary loss of her daughter, gone to spend a pomegranate season with the Dark Lord below, and the sere stalks crunch beneath her sandals.

And so we passed through the longest night of the year. All shall be brighter henceforth as each day lengthens gradually minute by minute.

The 25th of December wound up on a convenient Saturday and all the usual suspects showed up on schedule: glittering angels, luminescent deer, fat inflateable red and green Santas, douglas firs bedecked with strands of tinsel and blinking bulbs, and Adam Sandler singing that song for all the kids in the neighborhood without a Xmas tree.

The Household, now fully vaccinated and full of juicy antibodies from contracting the Disease once again enjoyed a tree in a washtub, obtained by Pahrump, Denby and Tipitina from some place unknown. Lord knows they could not have paid much for it as no one has any money since the stimulus funds ran out. Martini again applied his electrical ingenuity by supplying lights in the form of LEDs from discarded circuit boards. Beer tabs and condom wrappers festooned the scraggly branches along with strands of yelllow and green CAT 5 cable. Gold ribbons and other tchotchkes rescued from the dumpster helped fill out the gaps. Topping this magnificence was an armless Barbie doll with pigeon feathers glued to her back.

The weather has been unruly with glorious, thunderous sheets of rain replenishing the parched earth, restoring the reservoirs all over the Bay Area and marching East to restore the Sierra snowpack. A great sigh of relief comes from many people who see the drought coming to an end.

Denby has been arriving at the Hospital where he works in the early hours before dawn as usual to push his mop down the long corridors where nothing sleeps. Nurses, Pa's cross from one room to another in white coats. Doctors wearing silver stethascopes peruse clipboards of information. The MAs type on silent keyboards in front of glowing screens. And back and forth, back and forth across and down the hall pass the Providers to and from rooms of various dramas, various fates.

Denby asks Dr. Rodrigo how many lives he has saved today and the Doctor pauses, looks up to reflect, says, "About three or four." Then bends back to his work.

In one room a code is announced and a new mother dies - her intentions fall to the floor. And the figure of a woman wearing a long white robe appears, her wings transluscent, glimmering behind her; she closes her eyes. Lightning crashes outside as the storm resumes and hail beats against the windows of the Team Room. Down the hall, a new mother cries as the placenta falls to the pan and the child is raised up to breath its first breath. And the woman in the robe appears above the new baby to open her incredible blue eyes.

Denby leans on his mop as the woman with wings passes in front of him, turns to look and then continues down the hall, padding in bare feet, unnoticed by the scurrying Providers. She pauses to lay a gentle hand upon Dr. Rodrigo's shoulder and then passes on to another room.

Denby, the hapless schlemiel who has been no good at anything in his life, a total failure in all his efforts at love, at work, at music, at saving people's lives, has one singular talent. Denby can see the Angels who walk among use while he is still alive. This apparition is someone's Xmas gift to him. He is still not sure how to make use of it. So he dips his pole and continues mopping the corridor on this Xmas Eve, Year 2021.

Back at the Household, the hours advance to midnight with all inside asleep in their cots, sleeping bags and hammocks. The decorated tree continued to blink through the night as the small creatures who live behind the walls came out to cavort and dance their usual dances until mama raccoon appears with three young ones who pull at the pinecones hanging from the lower boughs of the tree.

It was a peaceful night in Silvan Acres. No sirens rent the night air and no one got shot and no one got stabbed.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then ricochet its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slide over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais, following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, the sound stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog and dripping redwoods to an unknown destination.

That's the way it is around the Bay. Have a great week.

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