Working Through and With Our Congressman
July 31, 2025
A bit of a surprise to me, I was invited to participate in a meet-up this morning with our Congressman, Mike Thompson. Mike asked Don S to gather a small group of local political activists to meet with him and share concerns from the frontlines. It was an impressive who’s who of representatives from a variety of activist groups and unions. I knew everyone and had worked with most.
I consider myself more of a line-level activist, someone who responds to calls and does a fair amount of work in teams, but I don’t lead those orgs. Most of the folks gathered this morning do.
Whatevs. I had some things to say and certainly understood the task at hand. It was a fairly productive 90 minutes.. some blah blah but also some urgent reality checks about the moment we’re in.
For my part, I wanted to hear more from Congressman Thompson about how, specifically, we go beyond politics-as-usual to fight what we all know is something new and far more dangerous than anything we’ve seen before. I want to know that we are supporting a congress member who’s going to work with us to push back aggressively on this administration NOW, not wait for the midterms to turn things around. Thompson is a solid Democrat… of the Blue Dog variety (“Democrats committed to bipartisan problem solving and fiscal responsibility”). He takes a more moderate position on most issues. Since trump’s come back into office, however, he’s gotten an earful from folks in his district (via townhalls and thousands of communications that constituents have had with him & his staff) and has upped his game. Thankfully.
Going forward, I hope he’ll use the resources and energy of the resistance, and I hope he’ll carry to Washington these messages and act on this energy. The resistance movement is very sophisticated and has a lot to offer. I hope we have a partner in Mike.
At Least Pretend You’re Sorry
July 30, 2025
Look at this little blip I read this evening in the NYT (the bolds are mine).
The power of Loomer
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official resigned under pressure yesterday after he found himself in the cross hairs of the right-wing influencer Laura Loomer. I asked my colleague Robert Draper, who recently profiled Loomer, to explain what this tells us about what she calls her “independent auditing.”
For Loomer, the F.D.A. official, Vinay Prasad, failed a basic loyalty test: Even as he had criticized vaccine manufacturers and Anthony Fauci, he had, in years past, repeatedly disparaged Trump and his followers.
Loomer has devoted considerable energy to looking into the backgrounds of officials who fall under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who she says is “running a shadow presidential campaign” from his office. Prasad fell into that category.
In an interview today, Loomer said that someone like Prasad — who had said on his podcast of Trump, “I hate him, too,” and ridiculed his followers as a “cult” — was not beyond redemption. After all, she said, “JD Vance compared Trump to Hitler.” But, she added, Vance “publicly apologized.”
“My biggest litmus test, besides loyalty,” Loomer said, “is whether you’re honest and have enough humility to demonstrate that you’re sorry.”
According to Loomer, Prasad didn’t come close to asking for forgiveness from Trump. “You’ve got to at least pretend like you’re sorry,” she said.
Isn’t it creepy that someone can just take it upon themselves to run around trump’s government hunting down people who fail the loyalty test? She, presumably, passes those names along to officials who then fire these non-loyalists.
It’s a lot, this administration, and its baldfaced authoritarian practices. The stuff that’s overlooked or, worse, normalized because there’s just no way the media, the congress, the resistance movement can keep up with all this… it’s exhausting and defeating.
Never mind all the self-dealing.
I hate this.
Signs of the Times
July 29, 2025
Top of the fold: Genocide through starvation in Gaza; the liar in chief is dancing as fast as he can, fabricating stories to prove he had no culpability in the Epstein case (he will slip through with his base intact, however, because that’s the state of the USA these days); consumers will bear the burden of the trump tariffs; a tsunami may or may not hit Hawaii and the entire west coast.
I’ve posted Barbara Galinska’s artwork before.. it’s so clever:
And Jimmy Kimmel and family. The kids’ signs are just the best:
A Hard Day’s Work
July 28, 2025
Well, let’s say a medium day’s work.
Here, at the end of July, I finally cleaned all the backyard furniture, which is to say:
- removed cushions from the patio chairs and beat the crap out of them with the BBQ spatula (great tool!)
- washed the patio chairs, every nook and cranny
- hung the covers over the chairs and power washed those, then let them dry
- washed the patio table, every nook and cranny, including the underside and base
- shook out the patio umbrella
- wiped down the BBQ
- pruned the bushes around the hammock
- cleaned the hammock and hammock stand
- cleaned the hammock umbrella
- washed the 3 deck chairs and 2 deck tables
- wiped down the deck railings
- replaced the cushions on the patio chairs and re-covered them
Took about 3 1/2 hours!
Then I made myself a smoofie and rocked in one of those clean deck chairs for a very long time, before I moved to the hammock and lay there for an even longer time.
What a great day!
Sun Dried Oily Garlicky Goodness
July 27, 2025
Last night, we dropped a few dozen cherry toms on two trays in the dehydrator. Fourteen and a half hours later, we had these beauties. Wrinkly and still a wee bit soft. Then, into a jar with a couple of garlic cloves, some kosher salt and covered in olive oil.
Some do them in the oven at a low temp, which I believe is a lot faster. We’ll see how these go. We’ve done them in the past, but dried them too long and they were hard. Mighta softened in a jar of oil. The summer is young and the tomato plants are prolific; we will experiment.
I Should Spend More Time on Insta
July 26, 2025
Because when I do, I see great photos of nieces and/or their offspring.
Here’s one of Maia, Tim, Ted and Diana.. everyone’s looking pretty spiffy:
Another of Maia and Tim (they run a martial arts academy in Virginia).
And here are a couple of River and Mags, who, from the looks of it, recently attended a cowboy camp:
All’s Well That Ends Well
July 25, 2025
Yesterday, following my breakfast/lunch with John and Elliot, I headed to Pleasanton to see Aunt Joy and Heidi. This was kind of a big deal, as it had been a few years since I’d seen Aunt Joy.. a major figure in my life from the time I was a wee child (when she married Uncle Vic), until relatively recently. I have no real idea what got between us, but something seemed to. As mysteriously as that apparent rift arose, so did it vanish when she called me last week and we set up a time to have dinner. It was as though those non-communicating years didn’t happen. Grateful for that.
Aunt Joy and I had about an hour to visit, then Heidi dropped in. Conversation and catch up continued, we ordered dinner in (from De La Torre’s) and had a great evening.
Hard to believe.. Aunt Joy’s going to be 90 in October. Who’da thunk?
~~
I took off about 8:00. Just as I’d gotten onto the 680 heading north, I pulled off again in order to set up a podcast to listen to on the way home. I was making my way back to the freeway and at an intersection when my car totally died. Like one moment it was running and I was listening to Pod Save America (those guys keep me sane), the next it was radio silence (so to speak). Nothing worked. Dead.
Long story short: I immediately called AAA. As I was doing that, a police officer saw me and came around to provide a buffer so I wouldn’t get hit from behind (my hazards didn’t work either). AAA arrived about an hour later and couldn’t jump my car, so called a tow truck. Another hour went by. Jason the tow truck driver arrived, loaded my car, then we headed to another part of Pleasanton to pick up another stranded driver (a mariachi musician from Sacramento). Such an odd happenstance.. two broken down vehicles in Pleasanton at the same time both needing tows all the way to Davis and Sac. I rode back in the cab, the musician rode back with a friend who’d come down to rescue him. Everyone was nice and cheerful. Jason dropped me at Hoffman’s (we still call it that, even though it’s now just AAA Automotive of Davis), Jim was there to pick me up, and we got home about 12:30.
Postscript: we learned the next day that the problem was a loose battery cable and once reattached and the battery recharged, I was good to go. Just 94 bucks to figure all that out. Jim’s embarrassed because he was the one who bought a replacement battery a few months ago and installed it himself.. and was thus the one who neglected to tighten adequately the cables. But I don’t blame him one bit. I’m just glad the car’s okay and I’m home. And also glad I had dinner with Aunt Joy (and Heidi, who I do see more regularly). All’s well that ends well, right? On so many fronts.
Here’s my car, quietly sitting at a red light (many red lights over the course of a couple hours), as the sun set on a lovely day!
Here’s the police officer, and then the backup Community Service Officer who took over for him when he needed to get back on his beat:
Here’s my car getting hauled up on the tow truck bed (almost two hours later):
And here’s the other truck that we pulled behind us… quite the rig.
Shop Talk
July 24, 2025
The first part of this day involved a trip down to Berkeley to hang out with John Higgins and Elliot Margolies.. two esteemed former colleagues — community media legends, both. Rapid fire convo was had. That was a fun breakfast!
We are certainly older than we used to be! I was the last arrival.. and when I approached Rick and Ann’s (our oft chosen restaurant), I thought: look at those two old men sitting on that bench.
Sigh.
With age comes wisdom, I guess. I can absolutely say that we had some pretty good observations about the world of community media and its evolving mission.
Eggplant Smile-Worthy
July 23, 2025
That was today’s garden haul: rosy cherry tom cheeks, basil eyebrows, tomato eyes, chard hair, strawberry nose, eggplant smile.
This also made me smile. Bigly.
But this! This was the smile worthiest thing I looked at today.
Hi and Dry
July 22, 2025
First, here’s our garden haul yesterday, strawberry hair edition:
Try not to think about the time it took to form the head with all of those rolly polly cherry tomatoes. But do know, I have fun amusing myself with my garden art. LOL.
The zucs were a late addition… and kinda don’t really make sense. Just chalk it up to garden whimsey.
Also, while you may not hear it, this fellow is saying “hi” with the golden twinkle in his eyes.
Okay, next up: Dry.
I cut into this mango last night only to discover it was not ripe enough to use in our salad.. but now that it was peeled and cut, what to do, what to do?? Overnight in the dehydrator was Jim’s solution. Jim’s really branching out in the dehydrating department!
Like we discovered with unripe plums: an unripe mango yields unripe dried mango. But these are (er, were) pretty good! Next time we’ll shorten the drying time in order to achieve a chewier result, but I tell ya, this dehydrator is showing a lot of promise.
Life of Wry 