Life of Wry

We live in exponential times. Every day seems like a firehose of new Coronavirus news that compounds the news from the day before by orders of firehose magnitude.

Or something like that.

Today’s brought the announcement of more universities suspending in-person classes; the end of the NBA season; an end to gatherings > 250; a whole lot more talk about social distancing; assurances from my spa (I don’t even go there anymore) and my massage therapist that they are observing the strictest hygienic practices; notices about the cancellation of the Arboretum plant sale and a nice little book reading at a nice little gallery; and just tons and tons of postponed (or cancelled) concerts, conferences, festivals, sporting events, etc. Oh, oh, and Tom Hanks and his wife have tested positive for the Coronavirus, way down in sunny, warm Australia (so much for hoping this things fades with the winter season).

Today’s horribleness also included Trump’s monotoned, clumsy reading of a statement to the country, live from the oval office that — among tricky little xenophobic slights, tough talk and self-congratulatory non-truths — suspended travel from most of Europe to the US.

The European ban thing… I’m just not sure it’ll help. Too little too late, I’m thinking. Besides, we haven’t even tested anybody here yet. Once the results of the tests start rolling in, we’re going to see that the horse is way, way, WAY out of the barn.. that the virus has already spread to such a profound degree that barring the door for a smattering of European travelers is useless.  But it sounded big. I heard he wanted Steven Miller to write him something really big. 

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: nothing he said tonight was even remotely comforting. Anyone who lies as breezily and relentlessly as he does… really… has just lost all credibility. Untrustworthy right out of the gate. He could not convincingly lead a small roomful of people in the Pledge of Allegiance, much less address a nation during a genuine global crisis. The idea of him speaking with any sober authority on any subject, much less a pandemic, after subjecting us to four years of incoherent babble and brazen lies…. is just laughable.

Scary, actually.

As unsteady and capricious a leader as we could have. Don’t feel safe, don’t feel in good hands, don’t trust him as far as I can cough (which we’ll all be doing here, soon). Pretty damn, effin’ awful.

And this virus stuff is just gonna get way worse, before it gets better.

At least we’re all learning how to properly wash our hands.

Home #1

UC San Diego is planning to suspend in-person lectures and classes for the duration of Spring quarter.

This is an excerpt of an email from the chancellor, Pradeep Khosla, dated March 9.

Such a bummer. Not sure what it will mean for graduation.. we’re just not sure how long such a moratorium will last. Peter’s disappointed, as he was looking forward, in particular, to the final class in a graduate fluids series with a professor he really admires. All remote classes, though, with little to no professor or student interaction … heckuva way to wrap up one’s undergraduate career. Feel sad about that for him.

All for the cause of safety and health. Which… who can argue with that?

Home #2

Our Election 2020 Volunteer Center, which had its fabulous ribbon cutting and grand opening just three days ago, full of fun and fanfare and the promise of a tsunami of new volunteers and activities …. is now closed to the public.. more or less. The Yolo County Health Department issued a new set of guidelines this morning with this advisory:

No big gatherings and the observance of “social distance.”  Social distance is now a thing.

Kinda puts the kabosh on a lot of what we had set out to do with our trainings, gatherings and voter outreach efforts.

There was a meeting this morning of a group of us to discuss one thing, but an hour before our meeting, these guidelines came out and the meeting morphed into a strategy session on how to respond, starting with cancelling every last thing. 😦

(I will say that it was an impressive, smart, quick response.. no time for whining .. we needed a plan, which we came up with and then moved to implement.)

Here’s what our entrance now looks like:

And a close up of that one sign:

We are all planning to get familiar with Zoom, a video conferencing platform which will allow trainings to continue for things people can do at home (text banking, phone banking for example) and we’ll remain staffed at the center so people can drop in to pick up or return postcards. For now, voter registration and canvassing and any direct voter contact is out.

Anybody’s guess how long this will last… can’t be through November, right?  I mean, RIGHT?

Sigh.

There’s a new mural in town. I wandered down what has become a very art-filled alley — the one between D & E, 2nd & 3rd… the one with the Marilyn-like woman, the giant bees and flowers.

I met the artist, who’s an East Coaster in town for a painter’s conference at the John Natsoulas Gallery. He was supervising a couple of young painters, who were basically transferring his artwork to the big wall.

The mural in progress:

A photo of RCW’s original art:

So… that’s how that works.

A long time ago, when I was moving out from living with John and moving into my own place again, a friend gave me a book called Being Home. The book is a meditation on the deep comfort a person feels making, creating and sustaining a place that becomes one’s home.  The peace in cleaning and ordering one’s space. The peace in living in a space completely of your own making. There’s a poem called “Crossing the Threshold.” It is also a mediation on the tasks one takes on in a home.. the everyday chores, for example, “Taking Out the Trash,” and another, “Sorting Wash.”  One of the reviewers said it was the best book he knew on the sacrament of the present moment.

Paula gave the book to me about 30 years ago, and it’s been about that long since I’ve spent any time with her, but she’d probably be pleased to know I still value that book!

I developed a particular aesthetic growing up in the home my mom created.. she decorated sort of handsomely, I’d say. I think her style was a bit eclectic, but definitely  strong, crafty, woody and rich (not rich rich, but rich in earthy colors and textures). In my opinion. I think a lot about her when I look around my house now.. in part because I really liked her style and I think it comes out a lot in my own tastes. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, ya? Maybe the sincerest form of love.) I also think of my mom a lot in huge part because so much of the stuff in my house comes from her house (our family house, of course, growing up).  Of course this is Jim’s house, too! He just gives me carte blanch to fix it up however I like, so when I say “my house” I’m really just talking about my influence on its look.

Anyway.. I like our house. I walked around yesterday snapping some pics of my favorite corners and such. I missed a bunch, but here are some I took yesterday.

This one I just took a moment ago.. while sitting in my chair writing this. I love that front door.

For years I’ve loved that tile behind the stove. Each piece had to be set. Good job, tile guy!

Mom’s desk, mom’s chest, mom’s lamp, mom’s owls. Aunt Ellie’s chairs. Hi mom, hi Aunt Ellie!

I’m ridiculously in love with this corner. We got that blanket in Scotland last spring.

One of my favorite rooms in the house, Peter’s bathroom.

It doesn’t look like this when he’s home.

Where Jim and I eat. That’s Mrs. Lambert’s painting, which I’ve always loved, and those are three of mom’s Mexican plates. This photo makes it look kind of spare. Looks fuller when there’s food on the table and we’re eating.

I’d spend more time in the laundry room too, and imagine I will when projects start up. There’s a huge work table out of photo shot. I just like this tile.

We also brought to Davis this chest that used to be in mom and dad’s bedroom. It’s stuffed with blankets.

This is another good place to hang out.. nice when the sun’s streaming in.

Finally, this is a painting by Jim’s mom, and that’s some of mom’s cooper on top of the hutch.

It’s late on a Saturday night and I just watched Elizabeth Warren — whose campaign for president came to an end this week (profoundly disappointing, which I hope I’ve written about… sometimes it’s hard to remember which social media platform I’ve expressed myself on) — do the cold open on SNL. What a great sport she is. And pretty funny, too.

Damn.

Anyway, that’s what was in my mind as I titled this blog.

Not incredibly un-related to Elizabeth Warren’s cold open on SNL was the Grand Opening of the Election 2020 Volunteer Center this morning over on Olive Drive. What a rousing good time that was!

Somebody had the inspiring idea to kick off the celebration with a couple of old time political folk songs, so there we were singing If I Had A Hammer and This Land is Your Land, lead by a just-formed-for-this-occasion group called the Peace and Justice Singers. Moving and hilarious at the same time. And lucky for me, I stood next to Darlene whose voice rose above all others in perfect harmony (to drown out my own off-key singing .. at 64, I’m still in search of my comfort-octave). We had a good ol’ time.

The singers (there are actually 3 more off to the left, out of camera shot)..

There were speeches … of course Kelly and Rachel, plus this guy…

…who is a muckety muck with the national Indivisible organization, though he’s just a regional rep. I took this picture for the shirt, which, I’ve learned is the mantra of all political action: register voters, phone bank, canvass, GOTV (and text bank, too, even if it’s not on the shirt).

(In fact, in a letter to her campaign manager a few days ago, EW credited her campaign workers with the following mind blowing stats: “…knocked on 22 million doors, made 20 million phone calls and sent 42 million texts…” So yeah, I completely conclude that’s the way it’s done.)

And we heard from this guy, Andrew Kim, who’s kinda big in Flip the West, and who’s been generous about setting us up with office space. Mostly I like the picture for the weird projector-light-in-eyes effect.

And, we heard remotely from two leaders of the Sister District organization who delivered perfect comments about the importance of the work, of course, but also about the by-product of doing that work in such a place — the community created by shared values, shared goals, shared effort in a shared space. They said it better, but that was their point.

After the speeches there was a ribbon cutting — honors bestowed upon our youngest volunteer who’s reportedly decorated thousands of post cards (his mom is post card team leader Audrey):

I estimate about 100 people were there for the celebration.  Here is the tail end of the crowd entering our new space..

People hung out for about an hour looking around downstairs and up…  here’s a shot of  the upstair conference room …

People wrote their “what inspires you to political action” on pieces of blue paper in the shape of water droplets, which will comprise, ultimately, a huge blue wave that will grown on our huge empty wall downstairs. Symbolism matters.

People also made their permanent name tags, which will live between wears here on our new blue wall…

There were doughnuts, muffins, coffee…  and just lots of great energy.  And the place, truly, looked fantastic. Amazing what came together over the course of just a couple of weeks. This was the last pic I took last night before going home.. and.. folks stayed late into the night to put the final touches on.

After the doughnuts were gone, the work began. The rest of the afternoon was spent with large teams of phone and text bankers.

Anyway, whatta week, whatta launch, whatta celebration, whatta lot of work to do in the next eight months.

But today went off without a hitch.

It was very much a warm open.

There’s this phase, when trees blossom out..

(Third St at C, looking west toward campus.)

And this phase, when the leaves are just starting to appear..

(On campus, in front of library, quad to the left, looking east along First St.)

The leaves are so tender and light. By summer, they’ll be dark and heavy (great for much needed shade).

Hashtag We Save Us is an informal slogan for our local political action group formed in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 train wreck of an election. When we were all shell shocked. When we were all sad. When we were all angry. And when we all needed a place to transform our despair into something a wee bit more constructive than crying in our beer.  We needed to convert a whole lot of negative energy into something positive and politically productive.

For the last three years, Sister District and Indivisible Yolo have, independently, organized all kinds of local activities and events, partnering with bigger, broader efforts regionally and nationwide. Mostly, we’ve post carded, text banked, phone banked, canvassed, registered voters, marched, ponied up money for faraway races… all of that. Our two groups have overlapped efforts all over the place and, in fact, co-hosted and coordinated on a good many of these activities.

Our group is going STRONG, hundreds strong. Now, we’ve officially joined forces to become a powerful, unstoppable mega group committed to electing as many democrats up and down the ballot, in and out of our state, as possible.

We just concluded a very successful fund drive to cover all expenses needed to open a Volunteer Center over on Olive Dr. that will be open through the 2020 election. All of our activities and meetings (and supplies) can now be housed in a single space. A large one at that.

And tonight we hosted an Election 2020 Kickoff Rally.. which was quite a success!

Some pics…

Kelly addressing the 200+ crowd of enthusiastic future super political action volunteers

Kelly and Rachel, leaders extraordinaire!

All the team leaders Linda, Audry, Meghan, Tim, Emily and Katherine, who spoke on text banking, post carding, promotion, phone banking, committing and voter registration.

And moi.. I spoke on canvassing.

It was an exceptionally motivating, inspiring, passion fest of political energy!

And on Saturday morning, we host a ribbon cutting, open house at our new Volunteer Center. On Saturday afternoon, we get to work!

Finally got ourselves over to the Varsity to see Fantastic Fungi, with one night to spare. Not the usual way we spend our Wednesday nights, but so glad we fit it in.

Says Rotten Tomatoes:

Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie Schwartzberg, is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet. Through the eyes of renowned scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we become aware of the beauty, intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom offer us in response to some of our most pressing medical, therapeutic, and environmental challenges.

I even took a couple of screen shots. This one was a bit blurry, so I tricked it out a bit to hide the defects.

I have to say, many parts of the documentary were fascinating, but especially the idea that carefully guided consumption of psilocybin mushrooms (aka magic mushrooms) with their hallucinogenic or psychedelic properties, can have profoundly emotionally healing effects.

“A study at Johns Hopkins University found that a dose of 20 to 30 mg psilocybin per 70 kg occasioning mystical-type experiences brought lasting positive changes to traits including altruism, gratitude, forgiveness and feeling close to others when it was combined with meditation and an extensive spiritual practice support programme. There is scientific evidence for a context- and state-dependent causal effect of psychedelic use on connection with nature.”

And this was the filmmaker’s interpretation of the experience of consuming psilocybin mushrooms.

This is a magic mushroom in real life:

Topics went well beyond psychedelics. And it’s worth seeing just for the visually eye-popping photography, specially the time lapse stuff.

Anyway, recommend it.

Proudly, with eyes wide open and a conscience clear and satisfied, I voted for Elizabeth.

And yet, despite my vote, and the vote of just about everybody I know, Elizabeth is losing significantly. Returns are coming in as I write this, and she is just getting pummeled. She even lost her home state of Massachusetts. And her birth state of Oklahoma. She’s getting killed in California, even Yolo County.

I sure can’t say I understand the voting public. She’s progressive, modern, smart, an incredible communicator, hard working, high energy, practical, experienced, authentic, consistent, proven. For democrats, she checks all the boxes.

Maybe she just lost some mo at a critical time. Maybe it’s because she made a couple of bad goofs along the way, but NOTHING compared to the goofs made by other candidates.

My only conclusion is that she’s a she.

I mean, really? She’s running against three old white guys.* That ALONE is reason to vote for her. Have we not progressed beyond old white guys dominating every damn thing?

I’m so tired of this.

(*) Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg

There was controversy. Some nimby-ism, perhaps justified concern. But last week, after much back and forth, the Homeless Respite Center opened on L Street.

I attended the volunteer orientation a few weeks ago, had the requisite live scan, and worked my first shift last week–its first day open to the homeless public. Today was my second three-hour shift as a greeter.

It was a lot busier today than last week; word’s gotten out, and I probably welcomed 12-14 folks between 10:30 and 1:30. I didn’t count, though I do track both the comings and goings on a log sheet, and it was about that number. They come to take showers, do laundry, get some sleep, hang out, and, if desired, meet with county case workers who assist with employment opportunities, medical or housing needs, rehab, or whatever else they might need to get back on their feet.

Living so centrally, and walking pretty much daily through Central Park and downtown (as well as driving for the rotating shelter during the winter season), I see a lot — definitely not all — of Davis’ homeless population and at least some of what they are experiencing day to day. I wish their lives were better. I can’t imagine it’s the way they want to spend their time on the planet.

The Respite Center is a really useful and humane resource for the City to provide.  I’m glad they worked it out with neighbors, I’m glad they found the money and resources to open their doors. I hope it alleviates some of the suffering & discomfort and solves some of the problems homeless folks have.

This is what it looks like behind that big locked gate:

The above shot: The main center is up the stairs and in that trailer. The other visible units here are showers — four in all. To the left, out of shot, are the laundry and rest rooms (literally rest… large room with cots for sleeping).

And below: A small yard, with a basketball hoop. To the right is a storage trailer for belongings, and to the right of that is a place to hang out and play with dogs. The Vet School is piloting a program of dog therapy.. soon to start.

Definitely nothing fancy, but provides a lot of service.