Obola

When Obama first ran for office, some squat person in front of me in a line entering the county fair said something that sounded like "Obamanation." It took me too long to figure out that this was his comment on a political candidate.  More recently I've heard "Obola," an attempt by the illiterate to find the right person to blame for a virus.

More interesting to me is the way Americans react to fear and the way that political leaders play on fear.  Look at the situation Nurse Kaci Hickox is in--the governor of her state has been attempting to quarantine her for Ebola although our scientists tell us that she doesn't have it. The governor is up for re-election--Ms. Hickox has been folded into his campaign. He's been hinting in public that someone might want to kill her.  He's probably found a winning if illegal issue. 

Closer to home I have a good friend who has disinvited a guest on the grounds that the guest has visited a country in Africa that does not have Ebola. In other words, the guest visited a county that does not have the disease, returned to America, which does have it, and then forfeited her invitation to the party because she had traveled to a nation that remains Ebola-free.

Hillary

Our major political parties operate somewhat like gigantic corporations.  Taking control of a party can make a confidence man immensely rich. The Clintons understood that and did that and are now in the 1% and growing by the hundreds of millions. For them politics is a business career.

All you have to know about Hillary Clinton is that in 1996 she urged her husband to sign a bill that would strip resources away from poor kids; horny Bill was into "welfare reform," led there by Dick Morris and Hillary. The AFDC, passed by FDR back in 1935 (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), got wiped from the books by the Clintons, who went on to turn the Democrats into yet another party dedicated to obeying the fancy class. Bill got his eight years in office. It's Hillary's turn for eight years, as planned from Day One. That's 16 years of Clintons. And I will vote for Hillary Clinton because the Republicans are getting ready to nominate an amphibian from the dark lagoon.       

The Unbending Beckham

I watched a bizarre program on TV this evening, one worthy of Evelyn Waugh. David Beckham, a tremendously famous soccer star and the husband of a Spice Girl, set out on a journey into the center of the Amazonian jungle. He took along a camera crew and several friends who were less interesting than he was. The goal of this trip into the steaming heart of darkness was to find a tribe so isolated and untutored that it had never heard of David Beckham. With this tribe Beckham would at last be able to just be himself, an ordinary unknown Joe, so to speak, one dude relating to others. He would escape the photographers and handlers and false friends of England. In this quest he succeeded. Not only had the naked tribe members never heard of Beckham, they had never heard of soccer. In fact, I doubt if they grasped the concept of competitive sports.

In an Evelyn Waugh novel, Beckham would have been heartlessly condemned to remain with the tribe for the rest of his life. There was literally no road out. But as it happened, Beckham caught a small chartered plane back to the coast the next morning. In about 90 minutes of screen time only one event held my attention. The tribal people liked to paint their faces and arms with thick lines and symbols. You can imagine their reaction to Beckham's gorgeous array of modern tattoos, which cover his arms and shoulders and neck. The tattoos made the tribal painting look puny, and the locals could not seem to grasp why, when they rubbed at the soccer star's arms, the tattoos did not flake away, as they should, to make way for new ones. 

Why Feminism Failed

Feminism isn't popular among American women. In part that is because all ideologies reduce a complex reality to something thinner and more manageable. Ideologies--religious, psychological, financial, political--often pixelize the world, in some cases so that our eyes slide by the worst parts. That helps us live at peace with ourselves. Other ideologies, while reductive, insist we stare at the worst aspects of life on this planet.

This came to mind as I read an article by Jenny Diski in which she mentioned in passing the four different waves of feminism in my time, resulting today in "unequal pay, unresolved work and child-care balance, and still marrying, forever marrying men." Reading that it occurred to me that perhaps the inability of feminism to succeed might be rooted in how its success gets measured.

Judging feminism a failure because women still marry men sets too high a bar. About 385 million years ago our ancestors began the male/female hookup. Changing genes with a manifesto might not work. On the other hand, President Obama has appointed many judges, and nearly 45% of them are women. That's an advance over, say, what George Washington or Abraham Lincoln did. Perhaps justice for women is gaining ground.

The Especially Golden State Bridge

Believe it or don't believe it, the truth is that the Golden Gate Bridge District is considering taxing (or tolling) people who walk or bicycle across the bridge. This is not an attempt to pay for the bridge, which was paid for decades ago. The purpose of this fee is to keep the riff-raff, the poor people with grimy children, off the bridge and out of sight. The tourists who fly into SF and walk the bridge want to enjoy the views of the bay and the ocean, the City and Marin County. These wealthy visitors are graduates of our finest private colleges and universities, trained to appreciate aesthetic experiences.  Nothing spoils a wonderful encounter with wind and sea more than being jostled by a ten-year-old in run-down sneakers, who is skipping along on the metropolitan pavement for free. 

Unintended Abuse

People are beginning to vote. My wife and I cast our ballots by mail a few days back. For our local city council, I voted for Brigette Mansell, a high school teacher who got into the race for no other reason than to do some good. Somehow she won the endorsement of the Democratic Party, maybe because she's an independent thinker and has not run a typical campaign. She's a citizen, and she's beholden to no one, a rare candidate.

Healdsburg has a significant proposition on the ballot, Prop. P., which calls for a continuation of the 50-year-old project that lightly fluoridates the city water. At this point 70% of America has been drinking fluoridated water for generations, and the science is settled. Fluoridation helps poor people keep their teeth. Rgulated fluoridation is proved harmless and for a large percentage of poor children, fluoridated water is the only dental care they get. If you have any questions about fluoridation, ask your dentist, a scientist,  what he or she thinks. The opposition to fluoridated water is based on paranoia and a few studies that have been misinterpreted or were imaginary to start with. Ending fluoridation, which some of my friends call for, is a form of unintended and ignorant child abuse. (Ask your dentist.)    

A Ferry Ride

This is a true story. Not too long ago I went by myself to a foreign country, and while I was there I fell asleep on a ferry. When I woke, I jumped up and broke my glasses. I fixed them with white adhesive tape and continued to wear them like that when I returned home.  Friends noticed the tape and cracked jokes at my expense.

Then one day I was looking for some stuff and found my old glasses with odd frames by accident. Okay, the prescription was no longer quite right, but I washed the dust off the glasses and put them on. I thought, Boy, this will surprise my wife, but it didn't. That was three weeks ago, and she still hasn't noticed. Today I thought, You know, Mabel hasn't actually looked at me recently, which is kind of interesting. 

Two Actors

Last night I was watching an early talkie, RED MORNING, a film I had never heard mentioned. It was a fairly big movie with countless extras, murders, some heedlessly racist elements, etc., and it starred a fetching young woman named Steffi Duna. I'd never heard of her, either, but she was oddly compelling, so I looked her up. Duna had started out as a ballet dancer in Hungary (she looked and sounded Latina to my ignorant ear). She starred in some major films in the early 1930s like ANTHONY ADVERSE, and she married John Carroll and Dennis O'Keefe. I don't suppose much of Duna's work remains available--she did not become a major star--but I decided to keep my eye out for her in the future. She died in 1992.

Yesterday also brought the obituary of Elizabeth Pena, another actor who did not become a major star. I suppose she will be remembered by most people for her roles on television series. I didn't watch those series, but I will not forget her in LONE STAR, a John Sayles' film that I rank in my top ten. How many Westerns end with a brother and sister marrying one another with your approval? The movie is a stunning comment that no matter what the rules are, they do not fit snugly around the complexities of our lives.

Why The Giants Win

On paper the San Francisco Giants seem to be maybe an above-average team, but they've now reached the World Series in three of the last five years. That achievement does not match their mediocre statistics, so what is going on?

Last night, in a game that would decide who will represent the National League in the World Series, the Giants were tied 3-3 with St. Louis in the bottom of the ninth. The Giants had two men on base and Travis Ishikawa, a journeyman backup, at the plate. This was for all the marbles, and in a few minutes Ishikawa would hit a three-run homer. Just before that, Brandon Belt, the Giant's first baseman, was staring at the batter. Then Belt stepped back to get a drink or something, and Brandon Crawford, the shortstop, stole the first baseman's glove and hid it. 

Bruce Jenner's Face

Looking at Bruce Jenner's face on AOL reminded me that on my recent trip to Los Angeles County, made with Mark and Sarah, we stayed at a rundown motel in Redondo Beach. That's where I went to high school. Anyway, across Pacific Coast Highway stood a small stuccoed building that housed a business. The sign on the building read something like this: "$9 Botox Shots. Every single day. Walk-ins welcome."  I tried to fit that invitation into my schedule but then realized I was already expressionless. My goal is to smile.

Uniting Courthouse Square

The time has come to unite or divide Courthouse Square. This happens every 50 years, and we do it to help businesses. We divide Courthouse Square by putting the Old Redwood Highway through it, making it more accessible for customers. Or we reunite the square by removing the road, making stores even more or less accessible, probably.

The process of dividing or reuniting the square takes the Santa Rosa City Council about 20 years of deliberation, which gives the council members something business-friendly to negotiate. The cost this time will be 17 million dollars, which, divided by 50, works out to a mere $340,000 a year.  Of course dividing or reuniting will cost more in the future, but you have to adjust for inflation.

One note of caution--the reason people shop in smaller towns and in malls or anyplace else in the county rather than at Courthouse Square is that small towns and malls do not charge for parking. Recently the metering system down town was changed to make it more confusing, and that might help businesses a little. I can say that I intend to return to shopping down town as soon as parking there is free. In the meantime I prefer that the square be reunited or divided at regular, inexpensive 50 year intervals. The City Council has my support. 

MSNBC and Horror

A year or two back, a friend pointed out that MSNBC provides TV entertainment rather than news. You find it amusing or you don't. If you want a quick review of what is happening, you can find that on BBC or Aljazeera. If you are looking for a deeper discussion, you go to Bill Moyers or Melissa. If you want the Republican slant on things, done in the most kindly way imaginable, you turn to the News Hour on Koch-funded PBS (its guest Republicans outnumber guest centrist Democrats by a 2 to 1 margin). 

I just want to add that, after all, I do learn things by watching MSNBC. In the last few days, for example, I learned that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has been tracking Ebola for forty years.  Ebola is a virus. The CDC knows how to go after a virus, but to eliminate taxes for the 1%, CDC funding got cut. The result: yes, our scientists knew Ebola was flying in on an airplane one day, but they could not prepare. The other thing I learned was something I had forgotten. The mess in Syria, which spawned ISIS, was influenced by climate change. A drought drove poor people into the cities and endangered the farmers. They began to starve. The 1% decided to suppress them. When droughts occur and people get desperate, the horror show begins. But as the Republican say, What, me worry?

The Press Democrat Begins to Dance

The Press (Corporate) Democrat has started its transparent election dance. On issues where corporations have no big stake, the PD supports rational, humane behavior: it endorsed fluoridated water because the science is proven, it benefits the children of the poor who lack access to dentistry and it costs the rich almost nothing. On issues where corporations like itself believe they have a big stake, the PD tortures reason until it yields a position favoring the 1%. In today's case, the newspaper has endorsed a Washington, D. C., wine lobbyist named Gore for county supervisor because he's backed by the wine barons, the developers and the Republican business community, while his opponent, Deb Fudge, is backed by "special interests," a sneering synonym for labor unions. At stake is whether the Board of Supervisors will have a majority that focuses on what is good for the corporations or on what is good for the rest of us. Vote for Fudge.

The most interesting aspect of this predictable behavior is the pathetic mental process of the editorial board. They believe they've carefully thought through an intelligent decision and done a good deed, when in fact they immediately sold out to their corporate employers while hiding the obvious truth from themselves. Feh!   

American Woman

The most successful athletic team representing the United States is, as far as I can tell, the American Women's Basketball squad. Since 1996 they have lost exactly one game in Olympic and World Championship tournaments. Many of the same players return year after year--familiar names to me at this point. Yesterday they beat Spain to win another World Championship. They have great skills, hit three-point shots regularly, and I saw a dunk.  If you enjoy sports, their games are well worth watching.