Leaving California

FROG HOSPITAL -- Sept 29, 2013

Leaving California

By Fred Owens

Not me. I'm not leaving. I love it here. The weather is great and the people are friendly. I was at Dodger Stadium last night watching a game -- beautiful skies in the city. My girlfriend, a native, was telling me how polluted it used to be downtown, when she was a kid, but there is far less smog now.

Look, I'm not selling the place. If you hate California, good for you, stay away.

But what mystifies me is why all these people left. Many thousands of people of have moved out of California in recent years -- gone to Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and other Western States.

Why did they leave? They just gave up and quit -- where's the gumption? I can understand the common complaints about California -- the high cost of living, bad schools, terrible traffic, too much government, and millions of immigrants, not forgetting moral degradation and a state income tax.

All these complaints are valid. So what did millions of Californians do? They quit. They left. They gave up..... Well, good riddance. We don't need you. We're going to fix a few things around here and make it better than it ever was. You just wait and see.

Gov't Shutdown

I'm expecting my Social Security check on Tuesday, so if they shut the gov't. down on Wednesday, it won't be a problem for me. I wasn't planning to go to the national parks, and I hope nobody starts a war in the next few weeks.
Uncle Ted

I promised my cousin Trish a story about her grandfather who was my Uncle Ted. I have thought about this story a good deal but I have only gotten two paragraphs written. Here it is.


What I remember most about Uncle Ted -- and remember this is me as a ten-year-old -- is that he had a very big nose. It came way out from between his eyes and then circled downwards toward his mouth. Uncle Ted's nose was an event in itself...... Also he never talked very much and we didn't see him too often.
Aunt Bee was his wife. I liked her but I thought it was funny she was named after a bug. I didn't know her real name was Berenice -- nobody ever told me.

That's as far as I have gotten.

Tom Robbins at the White Trash Food Festival

I like the title of this story, stepping off on a famous man, author Tom Robbins, and his real life role as Supreme Judge at the annual White Trash Food Festival.

The story is about Tom Robbins and how you can know a man. By his relations you shall know him.

It goes like this. Every year Tom judges the festival, along with co-judge Danny Jensen, aka "Danimal."

There's a lot of Jensen's in LaConner. Danny is probably related to Sybil Jensen who is one of the chief funders and docents at the Quilt Museum, which was founded by Art & Rita Hupy. Art was a well-known photographer who sometimes worked at the old Puget Sound Mail back when Bonnie McDade was the publisher. Bonnie was helped at the newspaper by her sister Maddy Free ( now married to Dan O'Donnell). Later Maddy got a job at the LaConner Post Office, and that's where Tom Robbins goes to pick up his mail everyday and, as many people in LaConner know, Tom loves to keep up a good old-fashioned non-Internet, snail-mail correspondence.

That is just one link of relations in a small town, and that is how you know people. I have notes and can spin out these relations for many pages.

Starting with Ralph Meeks, for example, dead 20 years now, an old fisherman who signed the protest pamphlet that objected to the jetty between Goat Island and McGlinn Island that was built in 1936 to benefit the Dunlap Towing Company but which also ruined the local salmon runs.

Ralph is somehow related to Bud Moore, who know lives in Ralph's old house. Bud is the son of Milo Moore who founded the Moore-Clark fish food company along with his brother Vernon Moore, who is somehow related to Gordy Bell, a longtime town employee, who is probably related to Sharon Bell, a close friend of Barbara Cram, who is no relation to Herb or Sally or Sam Cram. But Sally Cram is the sister of Mary Lam and the daughter of Pat O'Leary who used to own the Puget Sound Mail before Bonnie McDade owned the newspaper, whose sister is Maddy Free, who delivered the mail to Tom Robbins.

So it keeps going around -- for many more pages, but you get the idea.

Trust Your Dreams
Inline image 1

I did this calligraphy from my Arabic Studies. It is two words from a poem by Kahlil Gibran. It reads "Trust your dreams for in them is hidden the gate to eternity."

Kahlil Gibran was from Lebanon, when it was a peaceful and beautiful country. Now it is ravaged by war and flooded with refugees from Syria, but you still trust your dreams. What else can you do?

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

do the right thing

An important moment in the history of race relations in our country was the last scene of Spike Lee's 1989 movie Do the Right Thing.
The key moment is when the character that Spike Lee plays -- Mookie -- decides to hell with it and throws a garbage can through the window of Danny Aiello's pizza stand. Danny Aiello's pizza stand was one of the few functioning businesses in Mookie's neighborhood. And Danny hired Mookie to deliver the pizzas.
But Mookie couldn't stand it. He erupted in violence -- he threw the can, broke the window, burned down the building, a riot broke out, everybody got arrested, and Danny and his two sons left the neighborhood and there was no pizza for anyone and no more work for Mookie.
My reaction, reviewing the film last year, was that Danny Aiello liked black people, he just didn't like them very much. And Mookie was insane to start a riot over this.

Martin Luther King had a dream and Mookie set it on fire.
It's an incredibly good movie.

Family Planning

"Family planning" is quite a contradiction. Not to say plans are wrong, no, plans are very good. But children are much more important than any plan. How many and when you have them -- subject to a certain amount of planning and that's good -- but there is ample evidence of children showing up unbidden and children longed for but not appearing. And that's just the start. Once you have them, despite all the work you do, and more planning of course, you don't have much control over how your children turn out. A family is, in essence, not a plan.

Over and Under Population -- family planning on a much larger scale

Alan Archibald writes to me:

We humans have actually fulfilled a biblical command and are now in full compliance with Yahweh's command to "multiply and fill the earth."

I respond:

It is the only biblical command we have fulfilled -- the earth seems pretty full at this point, but there is limited value in purely theoretical discussions, as you point out, especially when it comes to children. Children are incredibly messy. They poop on theories and make scribbles out of your most careful plans.

When it comes to having children, how many is always a wrong question. Have as many as you want.

Think of a party, a room full of people, everyone having a good time -- who would bother to count how many people are in the room? Introduce disharmony and the room is instantly over-crowded

The goal is harmony. To fear or even consider over-population or under-population is more than a waste of time, it is actually a harm. Such thinking about numbers impairs the judgment of young people who are about to become (or not become) parents.

When parents make their best choices about having children we will have the best possible population --- the actual number is less important.
Passion

Seriously, we need to retire this word "passion" when used to describe our daily struggle to make a living. "What is your passion?" -- Ugh! Please, not at work.

At work, we have dedication and ambition. We strive. We are enthusiastic, energetic and determined. We pursue goals.

But we are not passionate -- I visualize someone panting heavily at a meeting of the board of trustees -- that doesn't work.

Social Science proves what we already know

Quote:

"The study relied on five experiments involving roughly 900 men and women on college campuses and websites."

I don't dispute the conclusion of this study. What amazes me is that people actually waste their time and money proving what the average idiot ( me, perhaps ) already knows.

As for the conclusion of this study, of course it's true -- I have yet to hear a man brag about the status or income of his female partner. I don't spend too much time with younger men however, so my sample is not age-balanced.

Social science is bogus. It impedes the natural flow of human progress. The behavior of men and women, in how they treat each other, is evolving --- we don't need social science to prove that.
Griping.

I save griping for the end of this essay. I am such a crank. I should just get over it.

Here's my gripe:

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a foe of inclusive grammar and the way it butchers the majesty and cadence of language like this. Should I point out the errors in Dr. King's sentence and suggest the correct terminology according to current standards?

Sons must be changed to children, of course, but that changes the rhythm of this phrase. English speech is full of strong one-syllable words, like "sons" and "red hills." Words like these are one of the glories of our language, but sons must be changed to children.

And brotherhood. I'm afraid there is no easy substitution. Personhood? Brotherhood and sisterhood? You might more broadly alter the text and say "at a table of harmony and good will." That doesn't sound too bad.

But I do miss brotherhood most of all. If only we had achieved it!

This whole essay is one long gripe.

I'm sorry about that. I will leave you with a poignant song -- about what might have been, about the dreams just beyond our reach.

Old Stewball was a race horse,
And I wish he were mine.
He never drank water,
He always drank wine.