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JUNE 21, 2020

SMILE

Down the Hill in San Anselmo people told us about a cartoon event in which kids were encouraged to practice chalk art upon the sidewalks. Here is one of their creations.

SUMMERTIME

So anyway. A number of milestone events have taken place while the Creator has stepped from behind the curtain to address you last week for the first time in 21 years.

Javier had his annual birthday celebration amid coronavirus lockdown and we enjoy as of this evening the annual Summer solstice, also amid the virus lockdown.

The folks who had been living in the quarantine sheds at the Household finally emerged, pale, emaciated, with lingering health issues. As the contagion had seized members, the remaining members still hale and capable built sheds for people to self quarantine out in the back yard and Marlene had taken to delivering food supplies once a day to each shed, and Pahrump had taken to removing the chamberpots to empty into the lime pit he and Martini had dug with an excavator borrowed from a neighbor.

It is Marin and some people just happen to have excavators stashed in their garages. Toys for one-off projects.

So anyway again. Javier held an outdoor BBQ will everyone appropriately socially distanced and wearing masks save when sipping Tijuana Mules, a sort of potent tequila and vodka concoction that was deceptively fruity. The Vietnam era 188 howitzer they had rescued from the ruins of the Island yard sat there with its muzzle pointed up at the ridgeline.

Given the circumstances, it seemed highly unlikely that any of Javier's former girlfriends would show up to cause havoc as in years past. In fact the local ER's did not stock up on supplies in anticipation of a bloodbath as usual, figuring the pandemic would dampen ardor. Highland had its own issues with which to deal on account of the pandemic and Marin General had not yet experienced a total Javier Birthday, so they were caught unprepared.

So Pahrump was grilling up some vegan bratwurst and patties when a group of women stormed into the yard. There was Miriam and Sharon and Anna and Diane and Roberta and a couple of others all together and all armed to the teeth with weapons.

"So wussup," Jose said.

"Javier must decide which one of us he must marry and then carry his children," Miriam said. "And there are another ten of us following along on the bus from San Rafael who must have their say."

As the bus from San Rafael discharged its covey of angry women, all talking about how they would collectively emasculate the man should they not get satisfaction, Javier ducked under the picnic table as Martini loaded a shell into the 188 and set it off to the sound of a deafening KABOOM. A house high on the ridgeline above San Geronimo burst into flames and a PGE helicopter that was inspecting the lines up there took notice. Pretty soon the sound of fire engines filled the air and things got very busy with yet more helicopters.

At the Household Jose tried to intervene to keep the peace and Miriam cold clocked him with a hard right cross that brought him down to his knees.

Everyone was screaming and running every which way and chamberpots at the doorways of sheds that needed to be emptied got overturned. Denby stood up and asked that this whole situation get resolved peacefully, and in answer, Anna kicked him sharply in the balls and so down he went as well.

Suan got into a fistfight with at least three former girlfriends and managed to disable two before being brought down by a sidekick from Hope, who had driven all the way from Nevada for the occasion.

Marlene and Tipitina used kitchen cutlery and pan lids to defend themselves in a retreat to the house porch until Samantha, wielding a scimitar, sliced the cords of all the Teflon balloons, to send them into the powerlines, which called the Sheriff's department, who arrived in several cars with lights and sirens.

In escaping, Samantha ran past Occasional Quentin whom she tried to skewer, but as he dodged she split the door frame instead and so ran off, leaving Quentin to sob all by himself.

At the end of the day, the fire on the ridge was extinguished, the 188 howitzer was confiscated with its ammunition along with several swords, daggers and pistols, and Javier escaped once again into the woods. Marin General's Trauma Unit took charge of the several wounded and learned about this annual occurrence to its dismay.

"You mean to tell me this sort of thing happens every year?" asked the DON of the badly burned Jose on whom one of the women had used a blowtorch and gasoline.

Jose answered affirmatively.

"How long has this been going on?" asked the Doctor.

"About 21 years." Jose said.

"I want this sort of thing to stop in my District! Effectively immediately!" shouted the doctor.

"Sir, if I could have done that 20 years ago, I would definitely have done just that. I do not like being burned like this each time! Please speak to Javier and tell him to stop chasing after these incendiary women."

On the Island several Junteenth celebrations took place with considerably less bloodshed and horror. Same for other locations around the Bay. Junteenth commemorates the day that Union troops landed two years after the Emancipation Proclamation at Galvaston Texas to announce that all former slaves were henceforth and forever free. And so the furthest corner of the United States finally got the news absent anent telegraph and telephone and radio.

Finally, the Island Coven gathered at Crab Cove for the annual observation of Summer Solstice as did the Marin Coven at the hilltop maze looking out over the Mount Tam Watershed.

Eunice the moose did not attend this year for she and her herd had been quarantined up in Marin on account of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Nevertheless, candles were lit, prayers were offered, songs were sung and homage to the seasons presented. And Missy Moonbeam stepped out of her back porch to fling off her robe and dance the dance of Summertime, entirely naked and bathed by the beneficent glow of the moon.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

JUNE 14, 2020

BAD BOY, BAD BOY!

This headline image comes from archives showing a cop admonishing a citizen for not wearing a mask during the 1918 influenza outbreak.

O, THESE MIST-COVERED MOUNTAINS ARE HOME TO US NOW

So anyway. This week we are forgoing the usual format. This week the usual satirical segment will be replaced for the first time in 21 years with a statement from the Man Behind the Curtain.

We are postponing the annual presentation of Javier's birthday to bring you the Creator speaking directly and with no artifice.

Hello, I am the Man Behind the Curtain, the creator of Island-life for these past twenty years. I have decided to come out from behind the curtain for the first time to speak directly to you, my devoted readers and those who have come to this website by accident.

The past few weeks have caused a reaction of disgust, horror, and dismay in me personally. Also we have the pandemic of COVID-19 to consider in addition to all we have suffered as a nation.

George Floyd, a native of Texas, was a man who wound up in Minnesota because he lost his job due to the Coronavirus lockdown and needed to find employment elsewhere. He did find employment in Minnesotta, albeit a service job, but that was his situation in America.

I, as a service professional, have supported local police and fire departments in the past. I was on the front lines during the fire-wars of 2015-2016.

I can say the procedures of police have been increasingly militarized over recent years, simply by observation within the various precincts I have worked and the attitudes have hardened generally in favor of hard-line responses to perceived resistance.

But this discussion is not about general police tactics, rather than a plea for common sense to regain control over important decisions about our lives.

The responses to Floyd's murder and the subsequent killing of "yet another Black Man" by police have been disruptive and sometimes violent.

In the Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon stated that the separation of the colonized from the oppressor will necessarily be violent because the oppressed are dehumanized in point of view by the oppressor who feels they can do anything they want to the oppressed because the oppressed are not human beings. This message was passed to me by Eric Mosby underneath the high school bleacher stands of the gymnasium. Eric was later murdered while doing promo photography for the Black Panthers on the Mall of Washington DC. Yes, THAT Mall.

We would like to get beyond that towards MLK's inclusive idea of society. All people are welcome.

I feel that America is not performing at its best right now. People are hoarding toilet paper and people are acting badly at protests and we see evidence of progressive ignorance about racism. We have a national Leader who appears clueless and ignorant of many things. A man who acts less than a Leader than an Agent of division.

Nevertheless, I also see tremendous advancement in recognition of systemic racism among Whites, which is long overdue. I also see persistent hope among Black activists who still believe some education of White people is still possible, as did Eric Mosby. God knows where this comes from, but there it is. Just like that encounter beneath the bleacher stands of a long forgotten high school 44 years ago where one Black man saw an opportunity to educate a White man in hopes that in this one case there may be hope. That man was murdered, but his hope lives on.

I no longer directly serve police and fire departments; these days I serve a non-profit health consortium that provides healthcare to the underserved throughout the Bay Area with over 1,000 licensed professionals working in 45+ clinical sites. Our mission is to deliver integrated services including psychosocial, referrals, chronic disease management, dental, health education, home visits, low income residential, pediatric services, adult senior day care, and much, much more to populations that traditionally have been underserved by the medical establishment.

And with a Black CEO, Black COO, Black Deputy Director, we are aimed square on at combating racial inequities and disparities across a wide spectrum of life in the Bay Area. Our Consortium, with its eight members combined, serves well over one half million people in the Bay Area.

This is what I am doing right now. This is what I have been doing for some time. So just ask yourselves what did you do today and what are you doing with the rest of you lives?

I am going to step behind the curtain now, and hope that there should not be a reappearance of this kind for another 21 years.

I am disappointed in America, because I think we can do better, but I do think we will because we must. And because this is America and the experiment in Democracy continues. We do not yet have definitive Autocracy.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

JUNE 7, 2020

DEER PRUDENCE

This week the headline photo comes from Over the Hill in San Anselmo from a friend who knipsed this gangly deer trying to ascend the steps to a house where no doubt a fine garden awaited decimation.

Rats with antlers these things.

NEW TIMES! NEW TIMES! NEW, NEW, NEW TIMES!

All the news right now is about three things: COVID-19, the Munchkin occupying the Oval Office, and the story about police once again murdering a person of color while subject is in custody.

In fact there is really just one Story. According to the statistics collected by Lifelong Medical Care, COVID-19 disproportionally affects people of Color across the board -- in infection rates, in hospitalization rates, and in death rates per 100,000 persons.

The fact that the Oval Office Occupant has been a divisive, autocratic ruler who has encouraged racist groups throughout the country is not even news the information is so old and so obvious. Attacks upon minority groups have increased exponentially during his rule, including the outright murders of Black men by civilians because "they looked suspicious."

Finally there is the outrage of continued police brutality coupled with the ramped-up militarism of police forces across the country. This brutality results in the deaths of hundreds of people of color each year. It is not a few bad apples, but a continued systematic targetting of Black citizens as a group. The police often say, the numbers are disproportionately high because the police patrol certain neighborhoods more intensely and those neighborhoods just happen to contain high percentages of minority folks.

Now it just may be that "certain neighborhoods" contain higher levels of desperation which pushes people into doing things like selling untaxed "loosy" cigarettes and swiping small packs of Swisher Sweet cigars, but these sorts of crimes are not dangerous situations requiring lethal force to handle. It is the lethality of tactics and the obduracy of the authoritarian insistence: "You do what I say or I will kill you. There are no other options."

The insistence upon granite wall opposition and absolute obedience based upon fear and pain compliance is a bad choice for America, which is supposed to be a role model for behavior in crowd control and in individual subduance.

Now, as Kai Risdahl would said, lets do the numbers.

The Stock market has ramped up what appears to be a positive correction, which is not what people expected. When the Economy took a hit starting in March, the outlooks were all doom and gloom, and so investor confidence plummeted, taking down all major indices. However, and this is a BIG however, the period of shutdown was not really, in terms of total global output, that long of an interruption. The latest jobs report indicates an addition of another 2 million jobs after the lockdown, which made the Oval Office Occupant (OOO) quite giddy. This indicates that the economy is ready for a solid rebound.

We would not bet on a number of once solid industries, however, as we expect a number to file for bankruptcy. The auto industry is likely to take a while to recover as it re-connects factories with labor.

Small businesses are likely to take a hit, from your mom and pop grocery to any number of hole-in-the-wall businesses that were holding on at best before all this happened. A lot depends on local and federal loan assistance and lessor permissiveness. Unfortunately much of this aid is directed towards agri-business.

SBA has resumed processing EIDL applications that were submitted before the portal stopped accepting new applications on April 15 and will be processing these applications on a first-come, first-served basis. SBA will begin accepting new Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and EIDL Advance applications on a limited basis only to provide relief to U.S. agricultural businesses.

The new eligibility is made possible as a result of the latest round of funds appropriated by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On A more positve note there are a number of 0% interest loans available to businesses capturing less than $2 million dollars in revenue. These loans are available to small businesses in california. https://ewddlacity.com/index.php/microloan-program.

Locally we have had our protests, our car caravans, our signs that say Black Lives Matter and I Can't Breathe. We even had Oaktown PD take a knee during a protest which turned out because of that attitude to be the safest, most violence-free protest in years.

Basically, racism is like breathing air. You cannot avoid it for it is all around you your entire life. It comes in from age 2 hours and instills itself into your body each hour you live as long as you live. As a White person it is pervasive throughout your psyche and chasing down this contagion means work of a lifetime that may never be completed.

The beginning is admitting one is a racist and then working steadily each hour of each day through the significance of that legacy of privilege. One step at a time.

And the White person may want to cultivate connections with persons of color along the way without always putting the burden of resolution upon the person of color. There is nothing like dissolving barriers via connections. Both sides might learn a thing or two about the other and that cannot be bad.

GOUDY KIMBLE TO YOU!

So anyway, once again it came around to that Time. The local ER's all stocked up on trauma supplies. Certain individuals and storefronts boarded up their windows. Those who could took vacations far away or hid in basements.

Yes. once again it had come around to Javier's birthday.

This year, everyone had to maintain Social Distancing for the gathering, which caused Jose some significant relief. All the members of the Household who had been released from quarantine gathered behind the Household in Silvan Acres to hold a BBQ. Since exploding propane tanks had been a problem in the past the group made do with charcoal on an old fashioned 50 gallon drum cut-out.

Martini posted scouts on all four corners of the perimeter to watch for incursions from one of Javier's notorious girlfriends, who each each managed to wreak violent havoc and destruction on the day. The old 188 howitzer given him one year proved indestructible and was parked in the corner amid a gathering matrix of green poison ivy and poison oak.

Amazingly enough, perhaps due to the Coronavirus lockdownk, no furious madam showed up armed with scimitars and pistols. It was the first birthday celebration for Javier that had occured in years and as a consequence, Javier had sent over a portion of the birthday cake to the angel nurses keeping East Oakland alive and healthy and tested.

In a sense, some felt disappointed in that this year no one got shot and no one got stabbed.

The sun sank during a heat wave and each enjoyed his and her beer and the music supplied by Denby and by the Monkey Spankers.

Afterwards the Editor walked out in the hot darkness and mused upon the changed America to come. What strange worlds shall we encounter after this savage division has healed up or not healed up per chance? Will we really embark upon an hopeful path of reconciliation between Black and White or shall we fall back into the old, slow revolve of recourse and partial compensation? Token acts instead of resolve to really end the problem?

Cynicism told him that it would be token acts rather than resolve.

Time, the mighty arbighter of change, would tell.

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary to echo off of the embankments of the Island and then wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MAY 24- 31, 2020

DEAD SKUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

One of the pleasures of living in the country is all the wildlife. Here we have a party of vultures dining on a tasty morsel - skunk.

Loudon Wainwright iii came up with this Eco-song in 1972. Seems like yesterday.

Crossin' the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are

You got your
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high heaven

Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose
Roll up yer window and hold your nose
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory

You got your
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
And it's stinkin' to high heaven

Yeah you got your dead cat and you got your dead dog
On a moonlight night you got your dead toad frog
Got your dead rabbit and your dead raccoon
The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon

You got your
Dead skunk in the middle
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high heaven

C'mon stink
You got it
It's dead, it's in the middle
Dead skunk in the middle
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high heaven

All over the road, technicolor man
Oh, you got pollution
It's dead, it's in the middle
And it's stinkin' to high, high heaven

Songwriter: Loudon Wainwright iii

SINNE FIANNA FAIL

The Editor stepped out in the early morning shortly after his normal wake-up time at 5:00 am and fastened as was his wont an American flag on a stanchion he had Pahrump rescue from the Island ruins to the right of the door. He then attached a Marine Corps flag to a stanchion on the left and returned inside.

This he did each Memorial Day. He sole public acknowledgment of his time in service and the loss of brothers in arms. He looked down the line of backyard sheds that housed the quarantined due to the COVID-19 epidemic. It's like war again, with the same stupidities enacted by idiots, resulting in death for those just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He went back inside to remember Johnny P., who signed up underage and so his name never went on the Wall. And Raymond, whose family fought to get him remembered on that black stone for years. And many others.

The Purple Heart they gave him got tossed on the pile outside the gates of the White House one memorable day of protest. A pile of Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, stripes and Battle Pins. So many got theirs for minor injuries he felt it worthless when so many had suffered serious lifelong damage.

So long as one Nammi who had experienced the acrid fear of being blown apart in a rice paddy remained alive, the shame of that detestible conflict would persist like a contagion in the veins of America for years to come. So long as one former protester who felt the smack of riot batons breaking his bones walks or rolls this earth we are not done with that horrible conflict that was not even a fully declared war on a foreign power..

Everyone who lived through that time was a soldier, either for peace or for death. This is a difficult concept for some to absorb.

In the distance, some patriot blew taps through a brass horn over a field that, due to the coronavirus lockdown, had to be empty.

In the succeeding week the God of Fire assaulted the chariot driven by Apollo across the heavens, causing the chariot of the sun to plunge down and sear the earth with firey assault. Spears of fire pierced the air and scortched the earth with blades of fire as all the earth wilted under the torment of heat.

Amidst this time of lockdown and heat, a young man was murdered by a group of policemen in far off Minneapolis. This provoked a firestorm of another kind around the Country while the Twitter-in-chief continued to inflame the situation with foolish pronouncements.

THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY

So anyway. The Virus continues to wreak havoc around the country and around the world. Americans, who have been coddled for so long refuse to stay disciplined and self-contained any longer. That is fine as the stupid will congregate and the stupid will die in predictable Darwinian waves and thereby prevent expansion of their stupid progeny.

Those who remain masked and out of circulation will survive and after the third wave of infections will come out into the new, cleaner world with fewer Republicans and mate wildly after restrictions are lifted and produce a baby boom of Democrats. At least in this country.

Denby stumbled out of his quarantine shack to seek employment, but the At Swim Two-Bird cafe was closed for in-house dining. Same for the other regional establishments. So he parked himself outside the Good Earth on rotation with other musicians seeking this prime spot for the well-heeled and funded to busker a few dollars a day with his trusty Tacoma and Chad's old 1962 Gibson banjo.

The Editor stepped out into the cool of the evening after the recent heat wave and observed the line of quarantine sheds that extended the length of the backyard, listening to the coughing, and he thought to himself, when this is over it is not going to be simply over. The consequences of this are going to last another two hundred years at least.

There will, in reality be no more Democrats and no more Republicans. Both ideologies have become meaningless in a short two and a half months. Turns out we really were that fragile.

The Editor looked up at the moon, which has become clearer of late because of the lack of atmospheric pollution. We have a chance to remake ourselves better right now; get rid of all the Trumper thinking people or render them innocuous. Do we dare do so?

The train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MAY 17, 2020

LET'S TURKEY TROT

This week's headline photo is of a turkey in Berkeley. A witness said the turkey mixed it up with another turkey on the mean streets and so took refuge on top of this car parked on Dwight Way near the hospital complex for Alta Bates barely a block from downtown.

The song "Let's Turkey Trot" was released on the Dimension label by Little Eva in 1962 and refers to a dance that was briefly popular around 1910. The Dollrots did a punk version of this song in 2014, which oughta tell you that a good song has legs -- or wings -- for just about forever.

STATISTICIAN'S BLUES

Leave it to Todd Snider to be the only modern singer to write lyrics about statistics. Gotta love that Todd.

Okay its been two months of lockdown for a disease that likely will never go away entirely; remember AIDS? That one is still with us after 40 years. We needed the lockdown to buy time to gather resources to fight this thing. Things like masks, gowns, eye-protection, sterilization materials, research on what the novel coronavirus is, what it really does, treatment modalities (of which presently there are none) and hopefully a vaccine.

So here are the numbers for the Counties of Marin and Alameda and for California generally.

Marin County COVID-19 status update: May 16th, 2020

Marin Confirmed Cases: 299
Marin Deaths: 14
Marin Persons Tested: 9,060
Marin Cases Recovered: 224
Marin Hospitalizations cumulative: 48
Marin Hospitalizations currently: 2
California Confirmed Cases: 77,461
California Deaths: 3,216

Alameda County https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/1e0ac4385cbe4cc1bffe2cf7f8e7f0d9

Confirmed Cases 2,392
Alameda Deaths 83
Hospitalizations currently: 81

By contrast here is data for May 15 from Massachusetts, with a total population of 6.893 million

Health Department COVID-19 Case Update.

Total confirmed cases in Massachusetts: 86,010
New Cases Today: 1,685
Total cases in Norfolk County: 7,474
Total cases in Wellesley: 203

Nationally, the US has seen 1.52 million confirmed cases with 89,932 deaths. (Latest update: over 90,000)

This is an international pandemic. While developed Western countries are seeing some flattening of the curve, most of Central and South American countries have such a sharp ramp upwards in infections you could hang your hat on the graph point for yesterday.

On a quick survey we note that there is not one other country that comes even close to the infection numbers as the United States. The UK has the highest number of non-US cases at 243.695.

To give some perspective Turkey, which has over 149,000 cases to deal with itself sent two planeloads of PPE supplies to the US as a humanitarian gesture of solidarity.

Finally, "herd immunity" -- the theoretical condition that will maybe provide general protection and decline of spread of the disease -- will only come about, if it does, after over 60% of the total population has survived an infection. Of course people get the common cold year after year and that is also a type of coronavirus. So with 1.5 million cases nationwide we are a long, long way from anything like herd immunity, even if having the antibodies after getting over the disease are present. There are no guarantees. We have never seen this particular virus before.

We hear that the GOP plans on having over 50,000 members of its party gathering in person, in crowds, for the nomination of its candidate for President. Secretly we are overjoyed, as these people undoubtedly will spread the disease to the furthest corners of the NeoCon Republican Establishment -- all their friends and families and you know, the world could do with few less people like them.

SICKBED BLUES

So anyway. Denby recovered from the COVID-19 disease as did Martini, with some residual effects. A disease that turns your lungs into the equivalent of Lay potatoe chips does not easily let go once it is done.

Pahrump, who remained unscathed, largely due to the fact that with so many inhabitants of the Household living in the outdoor shacks, it became fairly easy to keep social distance, which Pahrump maintained by taking a sleeping bag out to the woods and keeping to the traditional cleanly habits of his ancestors. He built a sweat lodge beyond the house on what probably was private property belonging to someone else, but because of the pandemic nobody was out walking their perimeters anyway. So a fence, or part of one got knocked down and he dug a trench and thatched it over in the old way and built inside a firepit so as to create steam. The way the old lodges worked, the people inside had a bulrush bucket of water and a pile of stones and a fire. Someone would dip a stone into the bucket and then toss it one the fire and that produced steam. Stone-age sauna, pronto. Then Pahrump took a stick shaved down and scraped his skin to remove the surface dirt and after that ran out naked to jump into San Geronimo creek in a place where it pooled up with frigid water to rinse off and then return to the home-built lodge again.

There was one difference: there were no tribe members to join him until Little Adam glommed onto what was going on and so the communal spirit was restored when Little Adam joined Pahrump the Elder, for Elder he had become in the past 20 years. And this was a matter of thought in Pahrump, who had always considered himself one of the Household Losers, another pawn in the game of chance between the helpless and the powerful. Growing up on the Res, no one ever dreamed of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything important. There were no avenues in those directions.

When Denby came out, the situation was clear -- this is America and no matter the worldwide situation and no matter the lockdown, Denby must work for he was one of the few able to contribute to the Household by way of his job at the Hospital, where fortunately healthcare was considered Essential. For the first time, perhaps in American history.

So Pahrump fired up the scooter and ferried Denby over to the East Bay to earn those dollars as an Essential Healthcare Worker. And if you do not think it was grim, think another thing, for all of the licensed professionals were keyed up tighter than piano wire with this thing they could not order around and control under the name of Urgency. After the Governor began opening up the Golden State, people had already begun doing stupid things. We may be Californians, but not everyone who has the privilege has the intelligence to drive.

One by one the residents of the Plague shacks emerged, pale, thin, weak to return to Life even as Spring began to cease its annual violence upon the Earth.

By the back door an explosion of fritillaries bloomed. Across the street where the bridge crossed over the San Geronimo Creek, a line of dogwoods sprouted legions of flowers.

The man in the glass cube, The Editor, mused on all the events leading up to this night. The late season rainstorms that promise to stave off for a little while longer the inevitable fire season. The long lockdown and economic impact on folks large and small. The effects of the contagion upon his staff. The death of Sgt Rumsbum, who everyone had thought would plague the community on the Island for another half century. Much had changed and much was to change still.

The Golden State was on the first mend of a terrible period that seems likely to last for many years. When you are done with the disease Covid-19, the virus is not done with you. Damaged lungs take a year to heal. Damaged organs like the liver and heart also take time. This thing was not like the flu at all and its effects would linger quite a long time as each new successive wave swept through the ignorant America that had dumbed down by stages each year ever since Ronald Raygun's announcement that the murderous rebels of Nicaragua were comparable to the Founding Fathers. That was how many years ago?

As the newsroom shut down, lights also went dark down the aisles. It was almost as if things were "returning to normal, " but the Editor knew that things would never return to normal, not after all of the outrageous lies and distortions from the Administration. Not after this massive blow to the economy that would take years from which to recover. Not after this major insult to the Republican idea that the Market and the Private industry will handle all with no interference.

The Editor stepped out onto the back porch of the Household and listened to the night. The neighbor's nightly howling at 8 PM had long since ceased, and the nocturnal animals had taken over from the twilight creatures of the dusk. Out there beyond the twittering curtains of darkness there existed a like mind. He felt sure of it. Also doing all for Company.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MAY 10, 2020

HOO, HOO ARE YOU?

This week we have a shot of horned owls nesting not far away. Signs of Spring once again.

MAY, MAY THE LUSTY MONTH OF MAY

So anyway. It has been a number of weeks with NorCal under lockdown and people are starting to come out again and the roads that briefly reverted to the traffic levels of 1982 are starting to return to the same old obnoxious congestion and heavy flow with accidents.

The Island is a natural isolation container. It has limited ingress and egress points. Ms. Sanchez, nee Morales, has been challenged as teacher at Longfellow to keep her charges on track with the curriculum during the Corvid Crisis. She has found conducting classes on Shakespeare via Zoom to be difficult.

The Island has experienced a curious dimension of social togetherness as in some other places that do not see boorish, self-absorbed protests against the lockdown orders via protests that demonstrate not so much American independence as American stupidity via pounding on Statehouse doors in close packed numbers and gathering with firearms, as numbskulls are allowed to do in Open Carry states.

You could see them scurrying down allyways and streets, from block to block - people carrying packages of food and necessities to frail shut-ins during the epidemic that has surpassed in fatalities that of the Vietnam War.

Island acts of kindness to neighbors in this horrid time. Just when you think the world has descended into darkness, there remain angels spinning in infinity through the unimaginable blue celestial, festooning the limbs of the heavens with the thing upon which many people focussed when it all came down to crisis: evidence that many people are entirely full of shit instead of common sense.

There remain angels. Like Betty and Gardenia, nurses at the Hospital, who continue to go to work amidst contagion and the lack of masks and gloves to protect themselves because that is what nurses always do from day to day- give of themselves to their calling.

Sunday was Mother's Day, and because of the lockdown the annual gathering of moms at Momma's Royal Cafe could not take place. So Tipitina arranged a Zoom conference between all the girls and their moms in far-off places. It seemed like a good idea at first, but the problem with Zoom is the way in which people stare at each other unflinchingly without the diversion of other things to distract during conversation. Every tic, every wrinkle, every defect is revealed by the insistent camera's eye, and each girl saw too clearly what they would become in a few more years. And of course, due to the lockdowns all over, no one but no one could get a decent hairdresser or haircut. And because it was Zoom everyone scrutinized each other's mother.

This is a distillation of that Zoom meeting.

"Hello everyone this is Suan. My mother passed away a number of years ago but i am going to be your host for this meeting today. Anyone who has any comments or questions for the group please feel free to employ the Chat and i will do what i can to have your concerns addressed."

Mrs. Pontchartrain: Hello, this is for Tipitina. I am your mother, of course. That is why I am here. Have you found a good man by now? One to replace that horrible abuser . . .

Tipitina: Mom, we have been in lockdown for a couple months so socializing is kind of difficult right now . . .

Mrs. Eastwood: Marsha how about you? How are things going? Do you have enough toilet paper? Did you get the fabric masks I sent you?

Marsha: Thanks mom. I got all twenty masks and shared them out with my friends. Love the paisley ones.

Mrs. Eastwood: And how is the romantic thing going sweetie?

Marsha: Uh well I have tried Flirt4Free.com and have a few prospects, but you know it is kind of difficult to tell how truthful a man can be when it is all online.

Mrs. Eastwood: Darlin', let me tell you a man is always lying. That is their nature. You just have to decide who is the best lier and go with that. Believe me dear, I know.

Mrs. Maldonado: Sarah, are you getting enough to eat? You look pale and thin . . .

Sarah: Mom, I am fine.

Mrs. Maldonado: Do not do this 'I am fine' with me. I am your mother. I raised you from when you were smaller than my thumb, scrimping with all my chilblaines and gall bladder causing me pain from morning to night, and Wilbur not being of any use at all, and saving pennies in a jar to put you through . . .

And there was more of that until everyone wound up weeping online despite the camera's eye. And so it sort of worked out, more or less, the way it always does in life. And it was all good.

Across the Island Mother's Day in lockdown played out via instagram and Zoom and sent flowers as love in the Time of the Virus persisted. There was not a lot of huggin' and kissin', but there remained a whole lotta Love.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MAY 3, 2020

WHEN I THINK ABOUT YOU, I TOUCH MYSELF

This week we have a suggestive image to help those of us who need help with this touching our own faces. The idea is to put olives on each finger, since some idiots simply do not understand the purpose of masks.

Might work in public in a sort of perverted way, but what about during Zoom chat?

TIMES LIKE THESE

So anyway. We have a coronavirus thing going on and a whole lot of disruption in our daily lives. Last week we reported on how the Household was dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak by building quarantine sheds in the backyard. On the Island people like Mr. Howizer and the Elite are safely isolated in their mansions of stone and swards.

We are not concerned with them for they always have had the best of health care.

Meanwhile Marlene brings out pots of soup and bread once a day to the front of each shed in the back. Pahrump has placed a couple bricks or cinderblock in front of each door of a shed that has an elevated floor, but as people got sick, there were too few people and too little material to keep on doing that, so she sets the pot beside the door.

Then there are the chamberpots. Pahrump started a hole with a shovel but soon was compelled to borrow a backhoe and dig a trench filled with quicklime and charcoal from the pile created by the stove they used in winter to warm the place.

Down the Hill, in Fairfax and San Anselmo people could be seen going from one house to another, bringing flasks and boxes of food for elderly shut-ins too frail to risk the grocery crowds.

There was no May Day parade anywhere this year and certainly no dancing around the Maypole. Nevertheless we have workers out there in this time of contagion

The Editor retreated into his glass cubicle with most of the staff laid off and out sick and mused about these things and the nature of America today.

If you want to know the true mettle of a People, thrust them into dire adversity and watch what happens. At first we saw idiots manufacturing artificial shortages of things like paper goods and meat products by way of binge buying and hoarding. That soon gave way to restrictions on buying which meant people had to start behaving themselves. Then we saw people taking the opportunity to avoid work by flocking to parks and beaches. That soon gave way to additional restrictions since common sense had still not prevailed. Idiots continued to gather in numbers so the universal order to wear masks was imposed.

Now all the idiots have all the restrictions imposed upon them they deserved and the Thinking, Feeling People got busy making masks for their family, then their neighbors, then the front line hospital workers. The TFP then started going out on grocery runs for the elderly -- it was not like being in a nursing home was a safe place to be right now. The TFP then started online virtual dance parties and virtual cocktail hours using Zoom. When the going gets tough, the Thinking Feeling People get going warp speed. They do things for other people because doing things for other people makes us different as a species from lobsters. And it feels good, besides.

The TFP are America at its best. America at its worst is the nutcases that protest the lockdowns and demand we go back to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and millions of deaths instead of a quarter million.

The Editor stepped out of his booth and onto the back porch close to midnight and heard the sound of the horned owls that had established a family in the neighborhood.

"Hoo! Hoo!" And after a few seconds, "Hoo? Hoo?" Over and over again.

I, I'm a one way motorway
I'm the one that drives away
Then follows you back home
I, I'm a street light shining
I'm a wild light blinding bright
Burning off alone
It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again
I, I'm a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?
It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again
[Repeat 3x]

Songwriters: Nate Mendel / Dave Grohl / Taylor Hawkins / Chris Shiflett
Times Like These lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MARCH 12, 2020

LIGHTNING CRASHES

Amidst all this death and trauma, the natural world thrives. Here is an image of a mother with a newborn fawn.

SICKBED BLUES

First Pesach, then Easter came and went. With all the social distancing, the usual traditions just did not happen. There was no Seder meal and no egg hunt. At the Household, which is located in a bigger building than the old one bedroom cottage on the Island, it still was difficult to maintain social distances and sure enough, Martini developed a fever and a cough.

So Pahrump and Denby and Tipitina scrounged up some lumber from an empty construction site and built a small shed in the back. They ran a power cord out the window and setup a cot and a powerstrip and a camping stove and a heater and so Martini moved in to his new digs. Once a day Marlene came out with a plate of something for Martini to eat and would wait a ways from the door until he came out, hacking violently.

And so members of the household would pass by or look out the window to see the shed where Martin spent his days and his nights drowning all alone.

The inevitable happened and Marsha got the disease. Then Xavier. Then Piedro, followed by Denby and Suan. Each one got a little convalescent shack one by one, and Marlene and Andre kept busy supplying meals and dealing with chamber pots and toilet paper so that Pahrump had to dig a lime pit for the chamber pot contents.

Some, like Xavier, got only a little sick. Others, like Martini, were wracked with terrible symptoms of sore throat, chills and sweats, swollen eyes, and always that terrible cough.

Denby, lying on his sleeping bag in the dark cabin enjoyed the runs so his chamber pot was always full.

Of course no one got tested because this Country's set of medical arrangements is just that, a sad arrangement, and not a logical System. So none of the Household was counting in the daily stats of infection. Nor were the cases on the Island when Latreena Brown, Malice Green, Angus McMayhem, Kid Viper, Mr. Terse, Pandora Thighripple, Marvin of Marvin's Merkins, Maeve of Jacqueline's salon, all got sick and Sgt. Rumbo died. Yes you heard right; the scourge of the Sanitorium of St. Charles for over 40 years and the curse of the basement lady's lingerie department of Macy's Union Square did not survive this pandemic.

All down Church row the houses of worship stood empty this Easter with no services save for ones that were live streamed via Zoom.

Father Rich Danyluk continued to take his pensive daily walk clockwise around the block. Pastor Nyquist continued to take his masked walk as was his wont counter-clockwise around the block, each nodding to each in passing.

Reverend Rectumrod, Baptist minister, blasted out sermons via a foghorn until the police told him to stop disturbing the peace.

Pastor Bland, Presbyterian, and Pastor Nance Haughtboy, Methodist, sat in their salons composing missives to the Faithful, distributed by eNewsletter.

The Church of Sanctified Elvis and the Church of the Truffle Delight remained dark to save electrical bills.

Rev. Howler and Rev. Shouter of the Adelphian Iglesia del Luz de los Cajóns de Estacionamiento del Mundo held loud, broadcasts of their missions with the windows wide open.

Rebbi Mendelnusse heard that the wife of Mustapha Omer Kemal, the head of the Islamic mosque had fallen ill and he strode back and forth all night until a day later he brought that magical Jewish formula for sickness, a pot of chicken soup and left it at the door. Kemal saw him through the window and the Rebbi noticed this and going up to the window touched his fingers to the glass. Kemal did the same and the Rebbi mouthed the words, "IS HALAL!"

And the prophet of Islam mouthed back the words, "THANK YOU!"

The Editor mulls all these things while sitting in his isolated glass cube and all the desks dark, some of them for weeks. There has been no European report and no Asian report desk due to the shutdown. How are we going to behave when life resumes "as normal"? How shall we treat ourselves? Shall we continue to be selfish in buying up all the toilet paper in a store for our own families, or shall we learn that we really, truely are all in it together. Save for old Sgt Rumsbo, may he rest in uneasy peace, the old, authoritarian sod.

For face this incontrovertable fact: we shall face another pandemic and it may occur again next year or sooner so as to test our resolve. Viruses evolve all the time, just as this one that had been out there in the winds for years, and they will come back. Yes they will.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

APRIL 5, 2020

EXCELLENT BIRDS

This image comes from our files and is not about disease or disaster! Quelle suprise! The image was done by Island Lifer Carol Taylor, a talented artist working in isolation now in the Gold Coast section of the Island. As you might imagine, Carol is quite the wonderful person in person with two cats, which begs the question: is kitty litter an Essential?.

Downtown San Anselmo we saw a pet store allowing 3 customers at a time inside, so maybe there are allowances.

ON AN ISLAND

So anyway. Everyone is out walking their dogs and Eugene has been out also, walking and taking note of the number of poodles and taking notes so that there not be any loss of kills come next Thanksgiving, which ought to be this year a killer event.

As we move into the The Most Dangerous Season our heroes are heartened by all this Social Distancing thing. No huggin' and kissin' for any of you right now, not unless you already have a household honey.

Come nine months or more we are sure to experience a new baby boom, but for those of use without, we shall be among the Quirkyalones.

It is difficult to be a Quirkyalone right now. Single, sheltered in place at home all alone, and no one to do. Brings out the hazards of being single while those of you married with children are striving to find avenues that prevent murdering each other and everyone in the household. Every occupation has its hazards.

Those of us working from home have started to put tape over the laptop camera because none of us have been shaving for three weeks as there is no place to get shaving creme or razor blades and of course no one can get a decent haircut anywhere.

But we are hearing odd positives. It is only the coastal cities that experienced this panic buying, so reports come from the Valley that all you need to do is drive 50 miles inland to fetch your precious, oh so precious toilet paper, for in Lodi the stores are all fully stocked.

Lately the weather has been rainy and chill for this area. We hear that Boston is experiencing temps in the 30's and 40's. Somewhere someone is playing a Mamas and Papas song. "All the leaves were brown and the sky was gray...."

The Household had stocked up on canned goods from the day that they heard a GOP guy had once again stolen the Oval Office. No illusions there. So the Household was well stocked with rice and beans. No one expected a run on things like toilet paper so Mancini orchestrated a run out to the Valley where people seemed to be oblivious to what was going on still to bring back bags and bags of paper goods, largely because the people of Marin seemed to have gone collectively insane.

Meanwhile the Japanese plum is leafing out along with all the buckeyes. Nobody shoots their neighbors in the San Geronimo Valley, although there are a few who would like to, and the air is pure as people do the one thing allowed in this self-quarantine time - take walks.

It’s an easy life compared to what many people are going through and skipping the news lets you ignore a president who, as the British writer Nate White points out, “has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honor and no grace” and now, in a national crisis, shows himself to be an ignorant bumbler and con artist focused on weeding out non-yes-men in the White House.

The Editor mulls all these things while sitting in his isolated glass cube and all the desks dark, some of them for weeks. There has been no European report and no Asian report desk due to the shutdown. How are we going to behave when life resumes "as normal"? How shall we treat ourselves? Shall we continue to be selfish in buying up all the toilet paper in a store for our own families, or shall we learn that we really, truly are all in it together. For face this incontrovertible fact: we shall face another pandemic and it may occur again next year or sooner so as to test our resolve. Viruses evolve all the time, j ust as this one that had been out there in the winds for years, and they will come back. Yes they will.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railheads that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MARCH 30, 2020

ROCK N ROLL FEVER AND BOOGIE WOOGIE BLUES

This week's headline foto and the following photo essay comes from the front lines of California's battled with the novel coronavirus. It is a triage nurse sitting all alone in the hallway of Herrick Hospital outside the door of the Urgent Care clinic.

Seems there are a lot of songs including the word "fever", or some variation of feeling bad, from "Rock 'n Roll Doctor" to Springteen's "I got the fever (for the girl)", and of course Skip James has several as he definitely knew all too well the agonies of illness. Since most of you are staying home in this time - as you should - play this game among your loved ones. How many songs can you name that mention feeling unwell, from love "sickness" to things like St. James Infirmary. Suppose mentioning hospital settings should count, but to keep it interesting, leave out things like Death Letter Blues. Death don't count, because it is the suffering of the living we are talkin' about here. All I know is I have had my fun, if I never get well no more . . . .

GOT THE FEVER

Testing tents. So infected people do not enter a room and spread the virus indoors.

Screening station outside Sutter Hospital.

99.9 FAHRENHEIT DEGREES

So anyway. One wonders what everyone is doing in being absent from their usual haunts. The Old Same Place Bar is closed during the quarantine. Suzy can do some things as offered by Dawn and Padraic in cleaning the place top to bottom, fixing broken things, flushing the beer lines, etc., but it hardly made for a night of work six nights a week as before and of course no tips. Eugene could always go fishing, but he could not go hunting poodles for they were out of season and there was no replacing lost leads and flies from the stores that were all closed. Pedro could still go out on his boat each day, for he did not have a crew like the bigger enterprises, but the dock facilities were all closed up. He had to anchor out and ferry the catch laboriously in the dingy to the food chain trucks -- most of the restaurant suppliers had stopped sending trucks, although a very few still did.

For the rest of the Almeida family, life at home with no school was chaos as the 12 children ran amok and Mrs. Almeida went out to see peace and solace among the chickens in the backyard.

Speaking of chickens, Mr. Spline had given up his watch upon the Greek Orthodox church where Joshua had taken sanctuary. It had been a few years since Joshua had become a whistleblower and it had become clear even to one as stiff as Mr. Spline that Joshua had found some hidden back way out of there. Besides, there were bigger fish to shoot in a barrel now. Out in Area 52, Mr. Spline kept watch with his loaded Mauser, his Glock, his AR15 and his night vision goggles along with any number of items ordered from Soldier of Fortune Magazine -- Mr. Spline had an annual budget for Defense Enhancement and he always used up all of it. The way Government works in this country, your department has a line-item budget and if you do not use it you lose it. So it was that the American taxpayer shilled out $$$$ for Mr. Spline's mushroom bullets, his silencers, his disappearing inks and many other trick things besides to make any adolescent drool. He had hooks and paracord and spikes and gas bombs and many taser guns and taser batons and all sorts of fearful armaments and defenses, for he loved his job and every Thanksgiving season he would fly out to the DC area and have dinner with his idol, Oliver North with a number of operatives. Maybe not on the exact day, undoubtedly because of his GSA rating, but nevertheless important nonetheless.

So there Mr. Spline was in his Hummer, armed with all his armaments and overseeing his charges. The secret Government herd of chickens.

All around this containment of barbed wire and guard towers called Area 49 there was a Keep Clear Zone of one mile. Why? Because vaccines are developed in chicken embryos as media. And the Government had scientists and technicians nonstop working on vaccines for all kinds of Coronavirus germs, along with anthrax, ebola, and the nextgen bacillus that China or Russia would develop by their teams with their own protected chicken herds. There were several facilities scattered around the country like this one, but because of the Cell theory, Mr. Spline would not know where they were. That is why there is an Area 51. Think of all the protected Areas from the terrible Area #1 to #50 and up to the ghastly Room 101, famed in legend and documented theory. Sends chills down the spine it does.

Our Government in action.

We think first of our own people, but consider how other countries are protecting their own citizens.

The crew aboard the Iranian spy submarine El Chadoor groaned when they got the news about the quarantines. Iran has a navy, do not forget, and that navy now was needs quarantined from the Nation. That meant no rotation back home for months. And Iran was particularly hit hard. El Chadoor had been commissioned decades ago to spy on the shipping activity from one of the busiest seaports in America, the arch-demon. Years had passed as the Commander had continued to issue weekly reports about his observations. But all governments change and revolve and undergo political redesign of internal functions. The original mission had been long forgotten over decades, and so the response from Teheran had always been an official, "Keep on with established procedures until otherwise notified. Praise God for all your good work." Now it would be a very long, long time before the sailors in the Iranian navy got to smell the redolent fragrances of the gardens of Qom or taste fava bean stew made at home. For fresh provisions, the captain had wisely sent crew members who spoke English ashore to the Island and so shop at the markets there under cover, but now that was all but impossible. Eyes were everywhere watching the few who dared to go out during the mass quarantine. So the men were stuck with MRE's and tins of ful muddamas. And still the crew of the El Chadoor had to continue their mission.

It did seem that formerly revolutionary Teheran had fallen into the same trap of established government bureaucracies everywhere. Flexibility had been lost and hidebound rules had supplanted efficacy and intelligent response. Hence the terrible response to the Coronavirus there.

The Captain was in a quandary. He needed to maintain morale and still conduct his mission as originally assigned. So he had the Chadoor surface regularly beyond the Golden Gate so men could do calisthenics in the sunlight. He also conducted what he listed in his notes as "reconnaissance raids" in which he had parties go ashore and secure fresh provisions from markets on the Island. Really it was a matter of getting some crew off ship and on shore for brief periods. But now that was all kiboshed by the aforementioned quarantine.

In the past few decades the Captain's hair had gone from jet black to salt and pepper and now was quite gray. As he sat at his desk, with the lamp pooling its light over charts and logs while all around there was darkness, he felt that his position still had some meaning, some purpose, if only in keeping his crew, his people whole and safe. If it was true that when a man took one step towards God, he would enjoy the fact that God will take two steps towards him, then it must also be true that somewhere out there beyond the muttering darkness that shrouded the submarine, there was a like mind. A human mind. Because his life had been devoted to service, the Captain had never found the time to marry, and now here he was, many thousands of miles away from home with no chance of any further connection.

With that thought. the Captain arose and went to the periscope for one last gaze upon the land that they had come despite themselves to love as the light faded from that part of the earth. "Dive," he commanded as he slapped up the handles of the periscope he knew were old fashioned devices. "Dive!"

And so the El Chadoor sped out of the Estuary and across the Bay and beneath the Golden Gate, running silent, running deep.

In the Island-Life Offices the Editor walked down the silent aisles of the place where reporters and technicians sat at desks spaces dutifully 6 feet apart, while wearing whatever mask they had found in the garage. He returned to his glass cubicle and sat at his desk with the pool of light cast by the lamp creating the illusion of walls of darkness all around him.

The staff left the offices one by one at the end of the day, leaving the Editor by himself all alone. He could just as well have been in a submarine out at sea. Somewhere out there must be a like mind, like him engaged in doing all for Company.

In the distance he could hear the odd sound that the Valley neighbors had started to do each night. They all on the agreed moment started howling out their open windows like wolves or coyotes. It was their communal reaction to the stay home quarantine. When the going gets strange, the normal go weird.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MARCH 22, 2020

THE TIME HAS COME FOR US TO PAUSE

This week's headline foto comes from Carol Watkins Press who used to live in the Bay Area, but now lives up north around Willits. She is finding the positives in our present Social Isolation situation in the Golden State.

WINTER IS THE CURTAIN, BUT SPRING TAKES THE BOW

So anyway. 40 million Californians are ordered to stay home, but Denby works the medical gig these days so Pahrump has to drive him over the Larkspur Ferry which gets him to Babylon where he takes the largely empty BART train to downtown Berkley and walks then to the Herrick campus of Alta Bates\Summit each day. Back in the Valley, the Editor never saw so many people taking walks on the byways of the place. In the beginning of the Stay-home orders people felt too inhibited to venture more than a few blocks from their domicile with the dog. Only recently have families piled into cars to go to one of the park trails for day-long hikes, picnics, fresh-air outings. Time will tell what this increased family cooperation will feature. Almost certainly in another nine months we shall experience another baby boom. Indoor activities are of course limited to TV, internet and . . . cooking.

The places one normally goes during a crisis are closed. It came around to the time of the wearing of the green and obesience to St. Patrick. One dark night this past week a small figure could have been seen scurrying along the alleys of the Island. As it was raining he wore a mantle and a high top hat which added a foot to his otherwise three foot frame that arose from curly toed shoes to the gold hatband adorned with a four-leaf clover.

He came to the doors of the Old Same Place Bar and found them shuttered with a notice thereon that due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the establishment would remain closed until April 7 at the earliest.

A truck carrying members of the Angry Elf Gang drove by and they were all laughing, for pain and suffering are things that always delight the AEG.

The Wee Man, for it was him, stroked his chinny chin chin and thought and thought. Finally he said, to no one in particular for no one stood there with him and the streets were dark and bare, "This cannot do!"

The Wee Man raised his hands and shouted "Mach de Toor auf!", which is not Gaelic, but worked nevertheless. The door sprung open and all the lights came on and the Wee Man strode with powerful strides and said, "Inhabit!" And so suddenly there they were. Padraic and Dawn were behind the bar and Suzie was serving Guiness (which is good for you) to a table of Not-from-Heres and Eugene sat at the rail at his usual place and even Old Schmidt sat there with him, causing Eugene to exclaim, "I thought you were dead!" to which Old Schmidt responded, "Rumors of my death are sadly mistaken."

And the two of them began to talk about what it was like living in the DDR after the War and there was a cheerful clatter and chatter from within.

And the Wee Man clambered up on a stool and ordered a Guiness and a shot for the stack wait and everyone was momentarily stunned as things in the past had occured so magical and scary, but the Wee Man waved his hand to say, "Carry on as usual."

And so everyone who was there, did.

Wednesday morning Padraic awoke late and stretched his no longer limber arms as Dawn fluttered her eyelids.

"I had the most strangest dream last night," said Dawn.

"Indeed so did I," Padraic said.

"I dreamed that we were all back in the Bar and everyone was there and there was no talk about the virus going around. Everything was grand. And the Wee Man appeared as usual, but I don't remember the rest."

"I dreamed the same," said Padraic. "But the Wee Man was not so frightful. Still, I wonder what to do with the rest of the day. Maybe clean out the Guiness lines again in advance of schedule."

"I don't know, " said Dawn as her fingers began to walk down Padraic's body from his face and torso and down further. "I can imagine a few things. I am absolutely sure I can occupy the day with something delightful and better than flushing the beer lines."

"Good heavens!, " said Padraic suddenly. "He's done it again! He has transformed me knickers into something unusual!"

"Same for me!" said Dawn.

"Sodding pervert! Did you check the door before shutting up last night?"

"I thought you did that," said Dawn. "Lets take these knickers off right now and find other things to do. . . ".

On the Island, all was quiet as the sun sank behind the hills of Babylon and the promotories of Marin in flaming rooster-tails of crimson and gold. As the night advanced no sirens rent the night and few cars shushed down the little streets. It was a peaceful night on the Island with no screaming and no one got shot and no one got stabbed.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary, echoing off of the embankments of the Island to wend its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MARCH 15, 2020

RADIOACTIVE, RADIOACTIVE

This is the image of our times. The Corona virus is causing massive changes in our daily lives. This sign appeared in the halls of Herrick Hospital in Berkeley.

I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals

[Inhale, exhale]
I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Whoa
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive
I raise my flags, don my clothes
It's a revolution, I suppose
We'll paint it red to fit right in
Whoa
I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Whoa
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive

[Imagine Dragons, Dan Reynolds]

ROCK, SALT AND NAILS

So anyway. This issue was delayed due to the Coronavirus outbreak and Denby's V-day injuries. The most Dangerous Season seems to have begun around here even though the tulips had not finished poking up through the crust everywhere. Seems everyone is in a hurry these days. The CORVID-19 virus has everyone on edge and Bernie is running against Joe with everyone understanding that we have to get people together after this part of of the contest to end nonsensical foolishness for a while. Used to be the GOP was all about common sense, but these days that sensibility has been abandoned in favor of the scent of raw power.

Denby is recovering from his abortive foray into the realm of Eros. He is now being a good employee executing the Organization's Mission. Denby wore an N95 mask going to work but the abuse inflicted by the Angry Elf gang was still obvious. His face exhibited contusions and his eyes were blackened.

Right now most of the Bay Area is under mandatory orders of Shelter-in-place. Of course our Household people are enforced to get about and risk contagion because that is the way things go for the Household. Everyone in Marlene's office had to evacuate but Marlene had to go into work because the lesser species had to keep things running. So Marlene sat there in an empty office, safe so long as she did not venture out for lunch, and made the enterprise lumber onwards through the stock market crash. Getting there proved an experience as everyone on the BART platform made the utmost effort to keep social distance at six feet or more.

People with bicycles yelped if their hands accidentially touched each other. Others selfishly loaded up their shopping carts with paper products as if shitting was the highest order of process in their narrow minds. Use a rag and toss it into the washing machine? What are people thinking if thinking at all?

It was like the AIDS crisis magnified ten fold. Since it did not seem to involve gay people as target, now this thing was paramount of importance.

The Editor looked at the empty rows of desks and the silent computers before taking a walk past the empty and dark Silvan Acres Improvement Center. At least that much we are allowed to do.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

MARCH 7, 2020

WINTER HAS THE CURTAIN, BUT SPRING TAKES THE BOW

SPIRIL LIGHT OF VENUS BURNING FIRST AND AMONG THE BEST

So anyway. This time Denby got let off with a mild reprimand from the Judge after this year's V-day Sucky Valentine episode.

It should be considered that the Comissioner at the Court in San Rafeal is a strict disciplinarian and brooks no nonsense in his court.

"Stop coming into my court with your failed romances, disturbed sexuality, and violent amaranta seeking revenge!" thundered the Commissioner. "We do not support any such presentations in this district. You and your charges are dismissed with appropriate fines applied. Seek the Clerk of Court for payment. Now get out of here!"

Denby went to his office job, which is the one that pays the rent, as well as all of his legal fees, as opposed to his Island-Life job which pays for his soul's redemption and nothing else. He worked as a lowly step-n-fetchit for a medical group called LongLife that owned several buildings in Oaktown.

In a dark, dusty office with poor light and bad furniture stood a chair. In that chair sat one nurse named Mariah hunched over her workstation. Miriam sported khaki pants, a simple shoulder-strap shirt and a waist-length rope of chestnut hair. Her arms were liberally painted with tattoos. Her face presented full lips, a pert nose and the largest blue eyes Denby had ever seen.

The time was March and the beginning of the Most Dangerous Season and Denby was quickly and irrationally head over heels after that notorious martial artist named Eros armed with a lethal crossbow banged him 30 seconds after entering the building.

He checked with Walter about deliveries and then went down the dismal hall, passing the room with Mariah who turned to face him with searchlight blue laser eyes. That is when Eros did his work. He was pierced by the agency of desire.

She had a problem with eFax and Denby helped her out and could not help but inhale the scent of her chestnut hair. She was a blue glow of a jewel amid the detritus of trash and dust and tangles of wires and bad reception that evidenced a Light of Earth who glowed in the darkness of that cave.

Spring is 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 Johnnie, 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.

As for Denby there is fantasy and then there is acting upon impulse. Some things are better left to the warmth of imagination's oven. Or at least left to simmer a while so as to learn the best way to cook the pot. When Denby mentioned going to a concert together the nurse slapped him, issued an impressive volley of sailor's language and ordered him to take his aging carcass from her office before she had the DON write him up. A red-faced Denby departed, still thinking Mariah looked rather adorable as she spewed that torrent of profanity.

Heading back through Fairfax, still mooning about the nurse, Denby got off the bus to pick up lotion for his psoriasis at the CVS when a truckload of gangmembers from the Angry Elf consortium spotted him.

"There's the old guy!" one of them said.

A few hours later, Denby crawled up to his narrow cot, bloody with torn shirt and stockings, a bent nose and missing teeth and flopped down. It was the perfect end to another day in Paradise.

In the Island-life offices, now located in the San Geronimo Valley, the Editor considered the options that lay before him. Spring would be sure to come but then there was the coronavirus to consider. And the leggy Joanne who remained on the horizon with her desire and her charms.

All things considered equal, the Editor decided to sequester. The CDC, no less, had said that men of his generation needed to absent themselves from public life because of the coronavirus. Then again there was Eros flying about smacking people right and left with his errant arrows. Another violent danger in this time of cholera.

The Editor purchased a stack of Michelina's Ready Meals and prepared to stay in for the duration, avoiding all contact and the leggy Joanne for several months. Spring would have to happen without his participation this time as this sun of York overcame the winter of discontent. Only to leave a legion of still-breeding thoughts. And so Richard II breeds another Richard III in afterthought. A conundrum of one mal-formed king creating the predecessor before his time, while time continues posting on proud Bolingbroke's horse in advance of his own time.

Even so Denby gave at least a try, for the Editor strategy was his strength and not disaster. Our Lady of Carlisle would not leap at him coming out of the lion's den, no sirree. You decide who was wise.

Let my inspiration flow, in token rhyme suggesting rhythm
That will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done
While the fire lights aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow
Till things we've never seen will seem familiar

Shadows of a sailor forming winds both foul and fair, all swarm
Down in Carlisle he loved a lady many years ago
Here beside him stands a man, a soldier by the looks of him,
Who came through many fights, but lost at love

While the story teller speaks, a door within the fire creaks,
Suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there
Eyes alight, with glowing hair, all that fancy paints as fair
She takes her fan and throws it in the lion's den

Which of you to gain me, tell, will risk uncertain pains of hell?
I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance
The sailor gave at least a try; the soldier, being much too wise,
Strategy was his strength, and not disaster

The sailor, coming out again, the lady fairly leapt at him
That's how it stands today. You decide if he was wise
The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice
His job is to shed light, and not to master

(text by Robert Hunter)

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

FEBRUARY 16, 2020

YEAR OF THE CAT

A neighbor snapped this quick one of a bobcat running behind the house. Seems this animal is using this route as a daily passage. Keep your hot-tempered terriers indoors people!

BAD NEIGHBORS

Recently someone in Marin resurrected an old argument about who is to blame for the seeming degradation of quality of life in a particular district.

Now let us put this into perspective first with some facts.

In the late 1970's the population of San Francisco was marching just past 680,000. The 2010 United States Census reported that San Francisco had a population of 805,235. Today the inhabitants of Babylon by the Bay top 1 million souls. The entire Bay Area hovered just over 5 million people back in 1976. The 1981 Arbitron Radio Market Report listed 5,304,600 persons over the age of 12.

As of the last Census 2010, 7,150,739 persons lived in the 9 counties of SF, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, and Santa Clara.

Of these counties Marin contributes just 252,409, up from 2,000's 247,289.

It may disturb a number of people to know, and please a number of others to learn that Marin is sparsely settled and the slowest growing in population of any of the other 8 counties. That there really are not that many people living in Marin is hard to believe if you need to get anywhere by car at certain times, or if you need to find housing. The reasons for high prices and for the housing problems in Marin have nothing to do with population growth or any influx of "bad people." The truth is that the population density is so low that foot traffic barely supports merchants who cannot capitalize upon economies of scale the way stores in the 2 million inhabitant Alameda County can.

But prices and housing are entirely separate issues from the original Nextdoor post which states that every neighborhood seems to include at least one "bad apple."

To start with this issue on a less provocative note for Marinites, we will look first at the Island City down south which shares a narrow water border with the City of Oakland. Which also allows us to establish some sense of perspective. In Oakland the bad neighbor is the house of drugs, gang activity involving firearms and prostitution, which is a far cry in level of annoyance from minor vandalism and irksome lawsuits.

The City of Alameda is a story of transition. Back when the Navy base was there, the hard core stuff of fights, prostitution, drugs and other messiness restricted itself to the zones immediately adjacent to the garrison gates. When the Navy gradually moved out there was a time of about 10 years in which the rough stuff declined. A couple problem housing centers closed (for various reasons). In the 70's an ordinance was passed putting height restrictions on new buildings, protecting the Island's many Edwardian "painted ladies", and otherwise putting hindrances upon development. This was done so that homeowners could protect their housing values in a place that was not seen as a desirable place to live for decades.

In fact one such ordinance dating from the 1800's threatened the life and livelihood of a favorite neighborhood mascot, Bosco the Pig around the time of the 2010 Census. Seems a zealous bureaucrat tried to enforce an ordinance forbidding livestock from being housed closer than 100 yards from any dwelling. Bosco, a toy pig who never would ever exceed 15 pounds in weight was perplexed as were his owners. The entire neighborhood stood up for him at City Hall and so Bosco was saved. That is being a good neighborhood example.

Prior to the Navy moving in, the place stood as remarkable and singular instance in which three White men paid a fair amount in honest deals to the Native Americans and former Mexicans who owned the place. The Trans-American railroad first terminated there as the Oakland Terminus had not been completed by the 1860's. The old Beltline was the last strip of railroad tracks still in operation through the 90's

I did not think to take a picture of the last yellow donkey locomotive as it stood there waiting for me to cross over the tracks.

The Island up until fairly the mid 1990's was a blue-collar haven for electricians, sheet metal fabricators, welders, plumbers and a few knowledgeable professionals. Many of them still own homes there. By then most of the factories had been empty for years and so developers quietly began cutting up the parcels, demolishing the old factory buildings and shipwright facilities along the Estuary, replacing them with high-end condos and lavish housing developments. Funnily enough, the actual Navy base still remains largely undeveloped as the islanders began to realize their lack of resistance to development on the grounds of preserving housing values for themselves was costing them big time as the Island became more unaffordable. People did not want the place to be known as "antidevelopment."

Problem neighbors surfaced in the form of long-term live-in property managers who had to face a new sort of tenant paying much higher rents. The new people were not going to put up with vermin infestations, property appliances that failed, and so they started to complain. The live-in managers responded by trying to bully the tenants. It was not unusual to see some burly man come bursting out of the building with red face and veins bulging, screaming at a tenant or even at any innocent passerby.

In my block there were two managers like that who would institute any number of authoritarian decrees. The one fellow had lived with his mother in his unit all his life until she died and he became House Manager and with that title he felt he had any number of privileges. He often would toss clothing he felt had been hanging on the dry line too long into the trash. By "too long", he understood to be 24 hours.

The man living across the street had come from somewhere else, but was even more abusive. I came home one day to find him straddling a female tenant in the driveway, savagely beating her with his fists. When her boyfriend attempted to intervene the man cold cocked him with one punch then resumed hitting the woman until the police arrived.

A few blocks away lived another manager with a bad reputation.

Problem buildings and problem people increased over the course of 27 years in the Island which houses over 100,000 people now. I moved away from the abusive manager who seemed to have something against women's underthings to a place with no manager, but which was next door to the house where the owner's brother lived. The owner's brother believed he was entitled to occupy the lion's share of the back garage with construction equipment he did not ever employ and have the right to enter the premises at any time without warning so as to conduct "repairs" in violation of the lease agreement. He was quite mentally ill and otherwise harmless. Delusional but harmless. We put a lock on the gate, so he would just climb over the nine foot wooden fence to come in. The man was from Vietnam, but was quite unlike any of the other Vietnamese with whom I had dealt.

The woman who lived upstairs earned a living as a sort of self-help guru engaged in a plethora of greylight schemes based on dubious skillsets. The only skillset I could observe was her obnoxiously demanded personality that constantly extracted favors from unwilling people. She went through 9 roommates in 8 months. When six months with no roommates then promptly went through three more, including a doctor who did not last 24 hours. We called her "the Toad". The Toad possessed a larger sense of self-entitlement than Donald Trump. She ordered us to move our furniture to suit herself, took most of the back garage space for her things, attempted to physically enter our apartment several times to the point we sealed the front door and put a wardrobe in front of it to halt also her persistent door knock requests. She stole and damaged seasonal decor hung outside. We believe she came in to the apartment to use my housemate's computer to book a flight to LA.

This person was from some place back East. She possessed a sort of Brooklyn or Jersey accent, but schools based in Virginia sent her alumni material.

Now, the East end, the location of this new place I lived for a couple years has a similar population density to New York. In the latter few years the Island saw an Housing problem become an Housing Crisis which propelled a series of City Hall meetings that big property management firms attempted to control by packing the room and dominating discussion. This, of course, infuriated the newly formed tenant associations and as the crisis worsened, with one absentee developer with the name of Farad buying house after house to split them up internally to make extreme high end rentals charging thousands of dollars.

Finally, one night, during a City Hall meeting there was a melee that the police handled badly, breaking the nose of one tenant rep. A council member suffered a broken hip in what nearly became a full fledged riot. And so pools of blood collected on the once august marble floors of Alameda City Hall.

Not long after that, another bad neighbor turned out to be a criminal running a small organization that deals with stolen IDs, credit cards, bank accounts, arson, extortion and petty theft. This man imagined I had seriously offended him and after a number of life-threatening as well as petty incidents caused by members of his gang, the Island Police advised me to move.

I have known people living in Marin for over 40 years, so that is how I came to live here.

What I think is happening is that the obnoxious people have always been here, but the housing situation causes people to move around and break up communities of like-minded souls, putting people in proximity to other people who do not share their value sets. I talked with a pest exterminator who has owned a house out past Danville his entire life. A woman moved next door and threatened to sue him because of the noise his rooster makes. One could ask what on earth resides in the head of someone who moves to a rural area despising the sounds of the countryside.

So in Marin we have problems of a different order. But we still have people forced to move around because of the state of Housing. No amount of growth restriction will fill Marin; only fixing the Housing Crisis as noted in Alameda will fix Marin. A couple moves in, cuts down all the trees on the property and sets up pastel-colored umbrellas everywhere. They then begin ringing the phone off the hook at San Anselmo city hall to complain about the behavior of neighbors -- everything from the noise of power tools, to delivery trucks to landscapers and contractors driving by.

Another neighbor decides to sue all the owners of property abutting a creek which has an informal easement path connecting one road with parkland paths up on the ridge.

I would not go so far as to say these people should not be here, but rather that since they are here by right of ownership, they should contain their personal problems within their own property boundaries. You don't like roosters? Buy some earplugs.

As for the destruction of property that involved one neighbor tearing down a fence because they felt the fence was "too close" to where they decided to put a hot tub, that action would have had very different consequences in a place like Oakland.

Now if that had been my fence, in the past I would have wrung my hands and cried and done nothing. As of this date I have faced off with a petty Mafia capo, been nearly killed a number of times and attacked on the street several more. Nowadays if that had happened, I would force the police to respond that night by force of arms and a call of "shots fired" as well as a call for EMT response.

You don't like the hot tub being near the fence? Move the fucking hot tub. Destruction of property is a violent act and violence will beget violence. This stuff has to stop pronto. Believe me. I have lived her long enough to see how it ends up: With a petty Napoleon calling the shots with his gang and a brute pounding on a woman in the driveway. And you can forget any iota of your hippy dippy love conquers all shit. Again, no growth restrictions will fix Marin's problems -- they will continue to grow until the Housing Crisis for us and our neighbors is addressed.

MY SUCKY VALENTINE THIS TIME

So anyway, Denby returned from work after a hard week of trying to meet the unreasonable demands of staff in a large nonprofit medical organization. He stayed awake for 24 hours to monitor the work of guys running data cables in one building because Freeman demanded he attend a meeting at 7:30 am in Administration whereas the cablers started work at 3:30pm. So he was out the door at 4:30am only to return at 4:30 am the next day because the cablers ran into trouble in the old decrepit building. Then the IP migration for the new EBCRP migration took place Friday and Denby was out there in East Oakland from 8:00am to 8:00pm following orders and migrating PC's. He returned to his stall at the new Island-Life offices to collapse into a chair, fully clothed and dreaming of computers swimming upstream through Alaskan rapids to spawn in their original datacenter.

The smell that awoke him was the smell of the dinner of tandoori he was supposed to have had the previous night. It was still in the smoking oven.

Right then all the smoke alarms went off. Because of that, someone called 911 saying there was a fire. Denby did what he could to dispel the smoke with fans and opened windows and when Household members came down from the loft he said it was just a case of burned toast.

Nevertheless the EMTs showed up and they wanted to take his pulse and make sure he was not high on something and the CMP showed up because they are supposed to do that, and the Fire department showed up because they are down the street and have nothing to do.

The Fire department guy looked at the burned pan and fired a volley of ABC foam, covering the pan, the stove and the surroundings.

Why did you do that? Said Denby. "It was not on fire."

"Protocol," said the fireman.

"What's all this then?" said responding officer Pince-Nez.

"Well, " said Denby honestly. "I burnt my dinner."

"Sounds like a case of arson. Are you from around here?"

"I am from the Island," said Denby

"Not from around here," noted the officer. "I think you better come downtown to answer some questions."

"Downtown? Silvan Acres has no downtown. There is no place within distance worthy of the name. Where are you taking me?"

"You are going to San Rafael City Jail my man and I would advise you to stop dissing my burg."

So that is how Denby, once again, found himself in a city jail on V-day. And this time, he kept his pants on.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

FEBRUARY 2, 2020

DOWN AT THE SUNSET GRILL

This week's image is courtesy of Linda Ross.

GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!

So anyway. Seems we are counting down to an election as well as an impeachment trial that will produce unfortunately predictable results. At last report it was Monkey see, Monkey do in that the GOP Senate closed ranks to protect one of their own despite all clear evidence that the Trump is a vile criminal who broke the law and placed personal gain over national interest.

More important news: we have it hot over the wire that Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, which means that Spring shall arrive -- according to legend -- 6 weeks earlier, and for some people back East and in the middle of the Country Spring cannot come a minute too soon.

Around here we had a windstorm Sunday, but because of the general sogginess of things no planned outages were announced by PGE. Nevertheless, now is a good time to put in your order for a power generator.

You may want to also reduce the frozen supplies of things like Grandma's Hot Dish. We are still finding those white boxes containing Juanita's Improved Minnesota Hot Dish that featured jalapenos in the oddest of places. Eugene Gallipagus found one tucked under the arm of the statue of the Unknown Conquistador during the last Poodleshoot. The strange thing is that even after several years have passed, the stuff always appears unchanged and just as appetizing as the day it was made in Juanita's kitchen as a good faith gesture toward the Norwegians who had come southwest in search of their missing pastor quite a while ago. She made a lot of it in barrels, but it does not appear any of it made it back to Minnesota aboard trains or whatever convoy Lutherans prefer.

Juanita never learned that adding jalapenos to Hot Dish was considered an abomination by people who keep Velveeta and Campbells cream of mushroom soup and Lay's potato chips in business. These were honest Midwesterners gifted with unfailing politeness and they never would have dreamed of insulting a gifthorse. So they all said something like, "Thank you so very much. I have just had lunch by Mountain Time and so I will bring this back to my room and have it later for dinner or bring it home to Bear Lake on our return."

So that is how so many containers of Juanita's Hot Dish Modified v.2.0 wound up in so many places. To add to this confusion, the Minnesota delegation elected to send a case of lutefisk to Juanita as a "gesture of thanks", including a note that said "this is what we eat all the time."

Juanita received the smoldering, odiferous lutefisk shipment and quickly realized no human being could possibly eat this stuff unalloyed and so enlisted Mrs. Almeida to provide a bacalhau recipe that removed the objectionable rotten stench subsequent to drenching the salt cod in tomato sauce with spices and so rendering the substance tasty.

Juanita sent off a response to an email and thanked the Midwesterners for a delightful contribution to their cuisine, which puzzled Karl Krepsbach for a number of weeks. The Mexicana took the shipment and realized it was entirely inedible as sent, so she enlisted her friend from Portugal to convert the salt cod to Portugal's native dish, Bacalhau -- a stew steeped in spices and tomato sauce that completely obliterated the objectionable qualities of fish soaked in lye solution for months.

The Editor found a small white box of this fabled improved hot dish down by the bus stop and was reviewing its dubious contents that seemed as well preserved as the 5 pound blocks of cheese provided by the Reagan administration during its tenure of the Oval Office as a sort of sop for its misadventures at the time despite having never been refrigerated. He took it back to the offices and set it on the mantel above the unusable fireplace beneath the oar given him in advance by the Staff as an advance portion of a boat that would eventually be assembled, bit by bit. This would take time, but Island-Life has existed for 20 years. The Staff figured it would take another 20 years to accumulate all the parts to make an entire boat, and the Editor mused as he gazed upon the oar that by that time he would be a shade stepping aboard.

Martini, ever industrious, had already begun construction of such a vessel in the side yard where stones, gophers and skunks made gardening unfeasible. His plan was to construct no simple dory, but a 40 footer sloop to replace the lost Indomitable.

In addition to this project Martini had the new Household garden deer and rodent defenses to improve as well as an expanded Habitot environment that ran the length of the house for Festus and friends, plus all the House projects meant to turn a former horse barn into a domicile for some 15 people.

Martini knew a thing or two about making do with found materials, but Mr. Whingy down a few houses in the flats did not. Mr. Whingy thought he would save a few bucks by welding some exterior water pipe, using rented equipment and trying to mate copper with galvanized, and only succeeded in setting the hedges on fire, which called the fire department out to douse his experiment and earn a fine for lighting a fire on a Save the Air Day.

As the sun set on the San Geronimo Valley, Martini stood back in the cooling light and said to himself, "Today we live in these mist covered mountains, but one day we shall return to our homes down below."

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

JANUARY 20, 2020

PUT ME ON THAT WIND HE RIDES

This is a red shouldered hawk visiting a neighbor lately. There are a number of hawk families that call this area home, Coopers Hawks and golden hawks among them. He is all fluffed up for winter and well fed as the small mammals reliably come out to feed during the respite between downpours. Red Tails tend to inhabit the higher elevations.
The song reference is to the smaller red tailed hawk as described by John Hiatt in Before I Go.

I've been sleeping for some hours
Just woke up and you were there
Like the morning, like the flowers
Sunlight whispering in my ears
Red tail hawk shooting down the canyon
Put me on that wind he rides
I will be your true companion
When we reach the other side

I will try, I will stumble
But I will fly, he told me so
Proud and high or low and humble
Many miles before I go
Many miles before I go

Can't decide which way to travel
On the ground or in the sky
All my schemes have come unraveled
All that's left is you and I

And I will try, but I will stumble
And I will fly, he told me so
Proud and high or low and humble
Many miles before I go
Many miles before I go
Here I go

PSA

A reader, Thomas Hodge, has taken on disaster preparedness for California and has supplied us with content focussed upon post fire slide prep, but including a few other things pertaining to our situation in the golden State. Look to the Sidebar for these in the future.

The Ultimate Mudslide Safety Guide
8 warning signs that a landslide is about to strike
Post-Fire Debris Flow Facts
Ultimate Guide to Drought Safety
The 7 Most Common Signs of Sinkholes
Drinking Water Safety Guide to Use During & After a Flood
Disaster Preparedness for Pets

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.ALL THE SKY WAS GREY

So anyway. the news is scattered. Der Donald is up for impeachment in a Senate that will cowardly and surely exhonerate the filthy and sinful bastard along party lines. No surprises expected there.

The 2020 Census is coming up and we encourage everyone to lie and say they are ethnic Armenian. Would not that be fun?

Well, no. The Census carves up territory and divides the resources according to report. The Census is supposed to accurately report who lives here in the general numbers and that is important for allocating money that otherwise would be granted to waspish, self-entitled, schnubs driving European sportscars and living in places like Kentfield. It also is supposed to be used in re-districting efforts to counter Gerrymandering. If you do not want government resources to be allocated based on 1950's conceptions of what America is, then contribute honestly to the Census. Your offspring will thank you.

A number of the Household signed up as Census Takers, which is one of those seasonal jobs that come around every ten years or so. You do not need great qualifications to be a Census worker; no experience required, you need to be circumspect, non-threatening, don't be taking drugs, just count people by collecting forms, and work under the taut supervision of self-deluded inspectors who imagine their job is a stepping stone to a federal career.

Here's the news: it is not.

Jose, Pahrump, Denby, and Martini all signed up for Census Worker jobs. A temporary local Census Bureau office is normally set up in every community to handle local affairs but this time around the parsimonious mood of the goverment allowed for half of the centers employed across the board and across the country at all levels. So the guys were looking at hiking up to Santa Rosa, which had been made the County Center for the area, actually including two counties to get bang for the buck. Also this thing about Gerrymandering redo was likely to offend one particular Political Party extra hard, given the mood of the Country, as distinct from the Mood of the Government.

Important People were discussing this kind of thing at the Congressional level and as of yet the boys had not yet been sworn in. They went down to the library in Fairfax to fill out the online forms and submitted their official information and now they were sitting back, playing hacky-sac in the meadow when it was dry, waiting for the goverment to deem they were worthy of employment. It did look like this operation would go forth like many others that were semi-organized: the Big People would have all their plans done and drawn up in their private back rooms, concealing what needed to be done out of pride or avarice or any sort of goddamn hairbrained idea of self-importance, and then would demand at any given spontaneous moment suddenly the Little People to hop to it on the double as there were deadlines to suddenly meet. That is generally how things work out.

.In the Old Same Place Bar the regulars gathered to watch the 49ers defeat the Packers on the tube while getting soused as per Tradition. On the fumble recovery every man jack in the place stood up and cheered.

The new year has begun. The President is under trial under articles of impeachment and his best defence is that abuse of office is not impeachable. Rain has halted fire season, but another one is sure to begin soon, leading to power outages and the new normal in California.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

JANUARY 12, 2020

THEY BURNED JUST LIKE MOONBEAMS IN OUR EYES

Image is from Island-Lifer Carol who presented this image of Fall a while back.

WALKING BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS

So anyway Pedro was out on the fishing lanes in his boat El Borracho Perdido with his trusty Second Mate Ferryboat, when he heard the special radio broadcast over Sirius from his favorite televangelist Pastor Rotschue. The pastor had been disgraced and ejected from PBS by an overzealous Me-Too movement action but had rebounded back after a number of months to keep his hand in and promote Lutheran values, modest living, and sane actions of thought and deed. It certainly is an object lesson if people generally would proceed as a Minnesottan over glatt-eis in the dead of winter, carefully and thoughtfully, instead of plunging ahead with all the horses loose from the bridle and the carriage careening around the blind corners to result in any sort of damaged success or catastrophe.

In any case, the Pastor talked about Bliss as if he were already in heaven. That state certainly is foreign to the Catholic Pedro and most certainly to most certain Lutherans on earth to the best of his knowledge.

A writer may experience Bliss, but should seldom write about it. Milton, a writer more admired than read, found out as did Dante, that the really juicy stuff is found in despair and suffering and bad guys being bad. Take this from Paradise Lost when Satan speaks to his damned crew after losing the battle for Heaven

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed...

This is great stuff! This is our Bad Boy clad in a leather jacket and chains giving a great speech. When we get to Paradise Regained, not even the stuffiest don of the Department references one single line. All the dons have fallen asleep during the reading with their brandy snifters unfinished. The Archangel Gabriel has gotten boring, boring, boring, just by being happy as a nitwit poodle in verse.

And then Dante finds he loses his way in the middle course of his life and is led by hand through all the circles of hell with all sorts of adventures and meeting colorful characters along the way. After descending the river of piss streaming from Satan Virgil then leads our hero up the mount of Purgatory, getting more and more tedious along the way until we get to a tendentious account of a blissful heaven that few ever complete on account of the ennui of happiness and the overly elegant language that stresses the nerves.

Nobody wants to read about happiness. Most people lead lives of quiet desperation and discomfort. We want to read about the bitter cold of Minnesotta and Nordic stoicism, Stanley Kowalski howling "Stella!" up the stairs, and we want to see the undertaker pleading to the bad Godfather in the movie because that stuff is vastly more entertaining than lives presented like edenic car ads where everyone is beautiful, neat and perfect and entirely unlike ourselves. Reading about Bliss is like an adolescent devouring a Playboy magazine pictorial. Beautiful enough, but far from any realization in this life. You have not an icecube's chance in hell in even meeting that woman in the pictures young man, so get over it and take out the garbage after shoveling the snow from the driveway.

Then again when Andre was about to begin one of his concerts with the Monkey Spankers someone called out, "Play some happy songs!"

"Sorry homey," Andre said. "We don't know no happy songs." And people got that because punk is not about being happy with your poodledog.

As Richard Thompson has said, you do not want to play more than three "wrist-slashers" in a row or you risk losing your audience. We would say Mr. Thompson does know a thing or two about performance.

When Denby had finished one of his sets, someone said, "Why do you always depress us?"

Therein lies the rub. You need to be true but you also need to play to the field. Denby learned after that episode to include Jackson Brown and Dylan in his sessions.

An artist has many choices. Pastor Rotschue has described the Bliss that perhaps some of us may attain in the afterlife. So have Milton and Dante. Let the rest of us struggle on in this Vale of Tears without depressing anybody else.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

JANUARY 5, 2020

OH, OH, OH I'M ON FIRE

This week we feature a non-local photo of Australia as seen from space with much of the country burning out of control. Our local fire districts have sent crews to help out the Aussies as their Nation is consumed. We know well the heartbreak and disaster of fire.

NOTHING CHANGES ON NEW YEARS DAY

So anyway. This past year the annual joint pageant between Pastor Nyquist's Lutheran congregation and Father Danyluk's flock from the Church of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint went off fairly well despite one of the donkeys deciding it was the star of the show and the whole program was about itself, which apparently has happened elsewhere northeast of here and is a hazard when working with live animals.

When the donkey refused to move from center stage Eugene Gallipagus came in with a rope and tried to drag Imelda to the wings, only to get donkey kicked in the chest for his troubles. As Eugene lay groaning on the floorboards, Wootie Kanootie jumped up to scatter mule treats in a line to the exit, and so people were treated to quite a spectacle that included a Canadian topped with a fur hat retreating backwards before the Christchild and Mary and Joseph in distress as paramedics removed a man with broken ribs from up front.

The rest of the pageant went well and people said it was the most interesting show of this type they had ever seen, and very different from the usual seasonal treacle, so it turned out to be a kind of success.

As per custom, Pastor Nyquist and Father Danyluk adjourned to the Rectory to enjoy the fruits of the Catholic cellar and discuss matters of theology before the fire attended by Sister Profundity on New Year's Eve.

Much had happened this past year to concern both of the clergymen. It seemed that with all of the mass shootings, civil unrest, climate events, and wanton behavior by leaders that the Nation had lost its way spiritually and it was up to the rank and file clergy to set things right again.

The two spiritual men discussed these and other matters, including the fishing possibilities at Crab Cove and other places inland and dipped liberally into the brandy cellar of the rectory as the old year and the old decade revolved into the start of the new, when, surely, things would be better as they had been bad for so long.

Some time after midnight after the firecrackers and whizzbangs and ball droppings had passed, Sister Profundity came in to find both men snoring in their chairs and so she damped the fire and placed blankets over each of the men and so that was NYE for the Island as others whooped it up elsewhere with loud noise and streams of confetti.

Up in the San Geronimo Valley, no one would ever have known the New Year had come and gone for all was silent and dark and calm. At Marlene and Andre's Household, everyone retired well before 11:00 pm because people had to work all that day and they wanted the following day for sleep. It remained silent all through the San Geronimo Valley. No sirens rent the night and no one got shot and no one got stabbed. Happy New Year everyone.

The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's 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 to an unknown destination.

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

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