Wednesday Morning $%&*@ Report

Yes, I altered this photo.

Sometime it's great to tinker with reality. Sometimes it's not. When I read this morning's New York Times, I saw that of the top ten trending stories, all but one had to do with $%&*@. Almost the same was true of the most read stories and the stories selected just for me (a long time subscriber.) However, there were only or two stories about #$%&@ in the most emailed stories. Friends don't let friends drive drunk and they don't email one another about #$%&@. I'm not going to be blogging about him or linking to articles about him on FB. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. 

There's a lot to read. A lot of very important stuff. How about this heartbreaking blog post by my friend Elizabeth Aquino? 

Or THIS? There'a a very pretty picture there.

Or read about THIS BOOK, then maybe buy it.

Or instead of obsessing over $%^&* follow this hot advice:

1. Go buy a box of those Trader Joe's peaches right now. Seriously. Get up. Go. 

2. If you want to put texture on your walls, maybe don't use that powdered pour in the paint can texture. I have no idea what you should use instead.

3. If you are a MAC user and you're doing an online search on your state website for unclaimed property (well, California, for sure) use your CAPSLOCK key when you type in your name. Seriously. 

You're welcome.

I don't know what the quote of the day was in the New York Times today, because I often don't see it now that I read it online. But I'd vote for this from the article on Las Vegas real estate wherein the reporter interviewed this guy who is losing his shirt. “I just don’t know what this world’s going to be like in 90 days. I have never been more confused about my country.”

Friday Morning Beach Report/ Report from Pillville

Sometimes I smell the bodies before I get close enough to the water to see them. A couple of days ago, I came upon four in a walk that was barely a mile, one so emaciated it looked like a sea serpent.  Sea lions are starving. Last year I saw quite a few pups and juveniles awaiting rescue. This year it's mostly bodies. Someone told me about the northern elephant seal pup that washed up yesterday. It was alive, she said, but didn't look good. This morning I came across the sign and the orange tape. Normally, elephant seals aren't this far south.

Also on this morning's walk, I saw a back hoe dig a big hole and mound up some sand. I guess this is how the dead ones are buried. It being Easter weekend and all, I suppose there's some concern about freaking out the tourists. Maybe we should put up signs marking all the spots where sea lions died. So people know and we can all freak out communally. There's a large sea lion colony in the islands. Maybe they'll survive this crisis.

As for life in Pillville, we have an assessment scheduled with a hospice nurse. Nothing has changed dramatically with my mom, but her slow motion slide inches downward. A walker instead of her cane. More pain. Less energy. But odd as it may sound, we're happy enough here in Pillville. Yesterday friends came by to drink champagne. They're all so pretty, my mom told me afterwards. She wanted to know if they all had husbands. No, I said, oversimplifying things quite a bit. I knew where the discussion was headed, so I changed the subject. I think if I hadn't, she would have told me once again I should have a husband--or at least a man in my life. I'd love to fall in love, but I don't think I'm ready. And I absolutely can't imagine how a man would fit into life here in Pillville. He'd have to be a saint. That's not exactly what I'm looking for.

"I'm no saint. I got papers to prove I ain't."-- fragment from one of Dan's songs.

So thanks for visiting and taking time to read about the dead and dying.

Here's a pure white dove for you. Peace.

California is Burning

"Every story happens in a particular place at a particular time," a writing teacher of mine once said. Place has always loomed large for me. I long for places I've lost and yearn for places I haven't yet seen. California was just blot of color in my grade school geography book--one more thing I had to memorize until I heard the Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys, and Jan and Dean. That music and those silly romance/surfer movies transported me to an imagined beach blanket of adolescent perfection. 

I was 22 years old when I finally got here. The palm trees were real--not cardboard prom decorations, the ocean was surprisingly salty, and people ate strange green-fleshed things called avocados.

I've travelled  the entire length and breadth of California. Driving, camping, backpacking, touring, sailing, eating, drinking. Coastal redwoods, Yosemite, Sequoia National Forrest, Mineral King, Mojave Desert, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Visalia, Stockton, Fresno, Bakersfield, San Diego, Monterrey, Big Sur, Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, Mendocino, Cambria, Anza Borrego, Montana del Oro, Anacapa, Catalina, Calistoga, Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, Lake Shasta, Big Bear, Death Valley, Ojai, Oxnard, Ventura.

Each day when my feet hit the sand for my morning walk, I renew my sense of amazement at what a stunningly beautiful state I live in. But while it's a balmy 75 here in Margaritaville, there is beauty burning farther inland. Fire season is a given in Southern California. But climate change is making it worse here and in many dry western states. There's this from a piece in Mother Jones: "Thomas Tidwell, the head of the United States Forest Service, told a Senate committee on energy and natural resources recently that the fire season now lasts two months longer and destroys twice as much land as it did four decades ago. Fires now, he said, burn the same amount of land faster." 
My mother is always cold here where the coastal breezes blow. "It's never summer here," she grumbles to everyone. If she gets her wish and breaks the family record by living to age 99, we may have to send her long underwear back to relatives in Iowa as the climate gets hotter. But then again, if a mile of coastline disappears as the seas rise, we'll be living on a boat. It might be drafty.

Visualize rain clouds, everyone, and send them to the fires burning around Yosemite National Park. And while we're at it, let's visualize tall corn, waving wheat, healthy livestock in green pastures, plentiful fish in pristine waters all over this land which is your land which is my land. Let's visualize stories and places that speak to us. Let's visualize politicians and people with some wisdom about climate change.

photo credit: Ansel Adams photo from the Yosemite National Park website