Vigilant

 I was once implored by Tom Petty to believe that I didn't have to live like a refugee. I have tried to take this advice to heart all these years later, but this thought reentered my mind over the weekend as my younger brother sat in my living room. We had lunch. We caught up. My son was there and showed him photos he had taken at the Twenty-Four Hours of Daytona a couple of weeks back. 

And I marveled at how cleanly our lives had managed to slip past the cliff of tragedy. My younger brother and his wife were just a few blocks away from the fire that consumed Altadena, California. They were told to evacuate and holed up in a hotel for three days while the winds shifted and the flames roared through a vast swath of southern California. Thanks of the efforts and bravery of firefighters and just plain luck, their little bungalow was spared. They were able to move back in just a few days later and begin the process of recovery. 

First was the matter of cleaning up the soot and ash that covered most everything inside and out. Then the hard work began: replacing the map that had only somewhat recently become their home base. The hardware store. The market. Those conveniences were gone. Their belongings were left unscathed, but their memories are now stuffed with a disaster that impacted everyone in their area. The burden of survivors' guilt was now neatly placed on the top of that heap, knowing that the blocks that separated them from devastation was a chance operation. 

There he was. Sitting in my living room. Visiting with us about all manner of things, including his experience in the Eaton Fire, as we have now come to call it. He had come along with his wife who was running a graduate seminar in Berkeley, and was taking the opportunity to reconnect with his upstate brother and his family. 

It made me happy once again to have this connection. It made me relieved that he was unhurt, for the most part, and had a home to which he could return. Part of me wanted to rescue him and keep him safe from the horrors of Los Angeles, but I remembered that he had lived in the Southland for years before he ever trekked on out to Minneapolis, where ice is much more a concern than fire. Then his return to the Bay Area where he braved the flooding that was part of the program for residents in San Anselmo. 

My younger brother will soon be sixty years old. I don't have to rescue him from anything, except for possibly my overprotective urges. 

And he does not have to live like a refugee. 

"DAN" Rearragned Is "DNA"

 Back in 1996, everyone in Boulder, Colorado had a theory about who killed Jon Benet Ramsey. Much in the same way back in the 1980s everyone from that college town had a story about Dan Fogleberg, it was one of the creepy ways that a community can plug in. The murder of a six-year old beauty pageant contestant was news for months, now decades, because of its tawdry nature. 

And because no one was ever "caught."

The story was perhaps highlighted by the fact that the Ramseys were wealthy. Not that there weren't plenty of wealthy residents of Boulder and its surrounding mountain evirons, but connecting salacious details to a family that had recently moved there from, old all places, Atlanta. Not that there was any particular issue with Georgia or Atlanta, but because as open-minded as the folks in Boulder attempted to be, the "Native" bumper stickers that they proudly displayed on their vehicles were just a hint at their xenophobic attitudes. The white-hot intensity of the media that swarmed the city that once played home to Mork and MIndy eventually drove the Ramseys out, maintaining their innocence all the while. It would seem that the locals were happy to believe that there was an alien in their midst who lived in the attic of a Victorian near downtown who drank with his fingers and sat on his face. 

They just weren't able to get comfortable with the kindergarten beauty pageants. The images of a gussied-up six year old were featured prominently in every story about the case. It was a "scene" that Boulderites and eventually a great portion of the rest of the country were never comfortable. How could justice be served in this case when the outside wrapper was so, you know, icky? 

And now, once again, the vault has been reopened to the potential of new DNA evidence that will clear the family from the ugly speculation that has swirled about them since that Christmas morning way back in 1996. 

Who cares? Well, it pains me to confess that I found this most recent surge in publicity worth mentioning here, so I am not immune to that circus of speculation. I just hope when they're done we can get back to good old fashioned stories about Dan Fogleberg. 

A different kind of creepy. 

The Blame Game (Home Version)

 Partial and in no way comprehensive list of things for which we can blame DEI according to the convicted felon currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

Constipation

Shark Attacks

Electrocution from the batteries of electric boats

George Clooney

Low Water Pressure

McDonald's not having the McRib available year round

Call Waiting

Stickers on apples

Climate Change (how did that get in there?)

"EZ Open" packages that are most definitely not

Lost Remote Control

Accidentally Biting Your Lip

Losing that little plastic clip that keeps the bread bag closed

Somebody forgot to fill the ice cube tray

The American Airlines Crash At Reagan International Airport. 

Diversity

Equity

Inclusion

Snakes. Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?

 If it talks like a snake, if it slithers on its belly like a snake, if it spits venom like a snake, well that's probably a snake you've got there. 

I listened to my wife paint a happy picture of this lunar new year, The Year of the Snake. She talked about the challenge of shedding a skin, with each little wriggle, every twist. And then she spoke of the renewal this symbolized. I did not interrupt her, because I appreciate that her world is full of glasses half full. In this case, they just happen to be full of snakes. Which seems to be a problem, of some kind. 

So let's get this out of the way at the beginning: Of all God's creatures, snakes probably get the worst rap. Right up there with spiders. No legs. Eight legs. Different from us, so naturally we fear them. We are repelled by them. Often we watch with hunched shoulders as those more enlightened than us handle snakes and spiders like pets. 

Ew.

And maybe we should blame the writers of the Bible. Or Freud. 

But no matter what the source, when I think of snakes, I do not immediately ascribe those attributes in a favorable light if I am speaking of a human being. It is not a difficult stretch to call the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a snake. The fact that we have, within days of the inauguration of America's First Felon Chief Executive, embarked on The Year of the Snake. Yes, a second term full of draconian, self-serving measures and policies has a ring of "renewal" to it, but not in a good way. 

In some cultures, snakes are depicted as symbols of fertility. I suppose if you stable the inability for women to choose to that, you might have a match for our current day serpent. We have the phrase "snake oil salesman" in our lexicon from another age to describe hucksters who might want to sell you a non-effective cure, or some golden sneakers. Harking back to that Bible thing, there's the snake that shows up in the Garden of Eden, who tempts Eve and ends up getting us all kicked out into the cold, hard world. Somehow this is connected to Free Will, which carries its own irony since it was our country's use of that Free Will to choose the scaly reptile for a repeat performance. Which doesn't feel like renewal as much as a rerun. 

And not a good one. 

101

 At the end of our one hundredth day of school for this year, our staff assembled to briefly bathe in the glow of the celebration we had shared with our students.

Then we got back to work. 

At stake was the potential of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descending on our school. Oakland has been a sanctuary city since 1986, and like many Bay Area cities, that ordinance has been reaffirmed in the past month as mass deportations have become the "law" of the land. Offering this sanctuary to the kids and their families becomes a new part of our job, and the expectation is that we teachers, administration and staff would act accordingly. 

What does that mean? Cooperating with federal agents in the slimmest way possible. Not to physically impede them, but to document any and all intrusions onto our campus past the front office. Once they make it that far, they are not allowed to go any further. If they present a warrant, we will call our legal department and have them make their way down to our site to give it a look-see. Meanwhile they will have to cool their heels much in the same way that a recalcitrant student might, sitting in the office chairs waiting for the powers that be to decide the next steps. 

The easiest thing would be to call their parents and let them know how disappointed we are in their behavior. 

The hardest thing was to explain to our Latino students why we gave them these little red strips of paper. They are printed in English and Spanish, letting their parents know their rights and what to do if they are stopped or accosted by ICE. Yet another way in which our kids are forced to deal with things that are not in a scale which they should be asked to cope. Pandemics, wildfires, terrorism, and now the fear of being separated from their parents by people with guns. 

Sadly, for many of our kids, this would not be the first time that last one has been raised. And if we have anything to do or say about it, this will also be the last. 

The work continues.