The Life in My Years

Election Day Morn

Paul

November 5, 2024

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend,
come inside, come inside
There behind a glass stands a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along*

*Karn Evil 9.
Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield.

A forecast of sunny and bright weather belies my mood this morning. I’ve been dreading this day for longer than I can remember.

Wait, that’s wrong, I have a vague recollection.

Yeah, that’s right, darkness began to fall two years ago, in November of 2022, when Donald J. Trump decided to make another run at the presidency.

As if the previous seven years that included his initial disgusting 2015 candidacy, his tumultuous presidency, his run for a second term, his election denialism, an insurrection and two years of whining weren’t enough, Trump decided to put the nation and the world through another spin cycle of incompetence, despair and chaos.

These past two years (years 8 and 9 if you’ve lost count) have only magnified Trump’s unfitness for office. Trump has not only gone unapologetically all in on fascism, he also seems to be a few bricks shy of a load (or to put it in rougher terms, he’s off his fucking rocker).

In the final weekend of his campaign, at a rally in Milwaukee, Trump decided that it would be a good idea to simulate giving a microphone holder a blow job. Now here’s where I’m going to descend into outraged geezerdom. I am 100 percent certain that most people’s parents or grandparents, regardless of political stripe, upon seeing a grown ass man, much less a grown ass man wanting to be the leader and face of the nation, simulate a blow job in public, would denounce that grown ass man as a classless lout who never outgrew prepubescence and should never hold a position of responsibility and maybe, just maybe, should be institutionalized. But, for some perverse reason (and I use the word “reason” with copious looseness), Trump world is okay with that. They’ll figure out a way to excuse it.

Come inside, the show’s about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo
You’ve got to see the show, its rock and roll, oh

Not to be outdone in the election cycle’s overall carnival of the bizarre, the Democrats decided to add to all the turbulence by first trying to anoint old Joe to a second term only to unload him after watching in horror, his June debate performance.

It was the preemptive coronation of Biden (the second out of three election cycles after Hilary crashed and burned in 2016) that compelled me to leave the Democratic Party and register as an Independent.

These days I wonder if we’ll ever return to the old normal times. I have a vague recollection of those times, when Trump was still just a two bit reality show host, when election day came and went with a winner and a loser, and the loser would concede and say ‘We’ll do better next time and I promise to support the incoming president,’ and the winner would graciously accept the concession and the lame duck would carry on until inauguration day and then the new guy would step in.

In the normal times if your candidate won you might be giddy with hope and if he lost you figured the country could gut out four years of the other guy. Oh maybe you were a little panicky but, really, how bad could it get?

How bad? This time the potential knows no bounds.

Oh God, the nostalgia of it all.

The normal days are a fleeting memory and I’m not certain that they’ll return anytime soon. Trump tossed the banquet table and we’ll be mopping up the chow mein and the Jello salad for a long time to come.

Right before your eyes see the laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries, then he dies, then he dies

European Days: Munich – A cautionary tale of history

Paul

3 comments

November 2, 2024

16, October, 2024
Munich has been dank and gloomy throughout our visit. It’s the risk the traveler runs when choosing to vacation in autumn. It’s part of the trade off; you’ll take dodging raindrops in exchange for dodging the hordes of travelers. The irony of being a traveler and wanting to avoid the hordes of my own vacationing species doesn’t escape me. I am what I’m trying to avoid, what I often curse.

“Damn tourists.”

The city woke up to a low fog that obscured the top third of the magnificently, architecturally busy, neo-gothic Rathaus (town hall) in the Marienplatz, the city’s old town square. The shroud has lifted but the murk persists.

Cora and I are walking through the Hofgarten, a pleasurable peace (yes, you read that correctly “peace”) of green in the center of bustling München. It rained last night, and the macadam path before us is pocked with puddles. We’re drizzled on by occasional spits of mist that have kept the park largely devoid of visitors. The garden is left to those of us who’ll accept muddy outer soles as a small inconvenience for the benefit of an inner soul cleansed by a walk in the park.

An old fellow eats his lunch on a bench, sitting close by his equally old bike which leans against the end of the bench. A few younger people are strolling the path or sitting on benches, all likely taking a midday break from work. A short pause for serenity in a city that, if you judge from the madness of the underground, is anything but serene on any given weekday.

We’re flanked on either side by rows of trees that stand in perfect lines. Wooden soldiers. It’s autumn and these soldiers are clad in neither steel gray nor green camo, but in brilliant yellow.

Soldiers.

Wooden soldiers.

That’s the tag that the Germans wear.

They’re grim, rigid, officious, much too serious, and overly scrupulous. Prone to being engineers, scientists, staid pipe smoking philosophers, and uber patriotic soldiers. It’s the cross of iron that the Germans bear.

And it’s bullshit.

A visit to any biergarten or rathskeller will disabuse you. It’s rousing, jovial, and communal. No reservations. Pull up an empty spot on a bench, sip your beer and munch your pretzel next to a stranger who, before that stein is half empty may just become your friend.

Hell, how staid can the Germans be, given that they invented Christmas – at least the one most of us celebrate, the one with trees, lights and Santa Claus. You know, the fun Christmas.

At the same time, an American’s first visit to a German restaurant can seem a bit off putting. Don’t expect a perky, “Hi, I’m Kimmie and I’ll be your server today. Here’s our list of signature cocktails.”

Nope, you’ll get pointed to a table, and handed a menu, sometimes wordlessly. The server will return and likely say, “So?” or maybe if you’re lucky, “Bitte (please).”

At mealtime’s end, they aren’t going to come by your table and bring you a check. That’s on you. And that’s a paean to hospitality – and something of a repudiation (gasp) of capitalism. Stay as long as you want. Linger over your coffee. Don’t want more coffee? No beer? No schnapps? No problem. There’s no bourgeois rush to turn tables. Hell, in a coffee house where there are often servers who, one would think, would love to see a healthy turnover of tables, there are racks of newspapers for coffee sippers to choose from and linger over.

Go to a hofbrau and you shouldn’t be surprised to see regulars, often dressed in traditional Bavarian garb, hovering over a chess game or just shooting der Scheiß while nursing beer in steins big enough to hold enough brew to fill up a Benz fuel tank.

In America the server drops off the check and says, “No rush.” Loosely translated that means, “Hurry the fuck up. I need to turn this table.”

The Death of a Franchise

Paul

6 comments

October 1, 2024

It was an unusually large crowd at the Oakland Coliseum on the final day of the Oakland Athletics home season. Some came for the love of baseball. Some came as fans of the team. Others came to pass a sunny afternoon at the ball yard.

The rest? The rest was most of the crowd, and they came for the wake. Someone dies and the family, friends, loved ones, and hangers on come to remember the departed. It’s that odd mixture of sorrow and joy, bereavement and comfort, tears and laughter, closure and commencement. Maybe commencement is the hardest part. You move on. But to what?

The last pitch on this day wasn’t just the last of a season, it was the final pitch of an era. After years under the ownership of a penny-pinching billionaire named John Fisher (according to Forbes, Fisher is worth 3 billion dollars), the A’s are pulling up stakes and moving to, well, God knows where. Fisher certainly doesn’t.

For the foreseeable future (3 years is the stated timeline), the team will play 85 miles up Interstate 80 in little Sutter Health Park, home of the minor league Sacramento River Cats. Yeah, it’s come to that – MLB in a minor league park.

After squatting at Sutter Health Park, the team is expected to move to a new stadium in Las Vegas, although depending on what news you hear or when you hear it, that move may be a pipe-dream – on again, off again.

And if it’s off? Off to Portland? Salt Lake City? Charlotte? Nashville? Some city starving for major league ball, and if you’re willing to accept Fisher, you are fuckin-A starving.

Why move?

Fuck if I know – at least not the gritty details.

The owner, John Fisher, was the chief instigator in making the move a self fulfilling prophecy with his propensity to trade away on field talent, or simply let them walk away, and his obtuse and inept approach to finding a stadium solution. At times, one might have thought that Fisher himself was trying to sabotage a Bay Area stadium.

True, the A’s needed a new stadium. For years, the Coliseum has been a dump. Built a short distance from San Francisco Bay and 22 feet below sea level, a healthy rain and backed up pipes had been known to bring flood waters into the players shower area. The stadium has long been in need of a facelift, some TLC, and, oh yeah, there’s a mountain behind the centerfield wall that needs to be razed. None of that will happen now.

Jill Stein and the Contrarians Without a Cause

Paul

6 comments

September 18, 2024

“Do they see the lethal insanity of a race to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If they did, surely they wouldn’t be racing to begin with.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

Disclosure: This past June, I left the Democratic Party and registered as an Independent. I have no intention of rejoining any party until the electoral process becomes more democratic and the Democrat Party itself changes its nomination process.

It’s the quadrennial election, and to the surprise of nobody, Jill Stein is back and running for president. Jill has become the political mosquito whose name shows up on my sample ballot once every four years in October.

In a few weeks I’ll be getting my sample ballot, and I’ll open it and puzzle over some candidates who I’ve never heard of (and after election day will probably never hear of again).

They’re the independents, squatters who managed to finagle themselves onto a state ballot, or, if they’ve been really resourceful, a few state ballots. They’ll garner a few votes from family, friends and the hopelessly dissatisfied. For them, there is no there, there; no path to the White House, unless they book a tour. And yet, every four years a small herd of the hopeless hopefuls trot down a short trail that ends at the November precipice.

Noiseless ciphers, they’re not unlike the tree that falls in the unpopulated forest.

It’s the third and fourth party candidates (the Greens and Libertarians) who also fall every four years, though not always so softly. They have potential, not to rise to the presidency, but certainly to affect the outcome of the contest.

Most of the time the vainglorious third party candidates are little more than a worrisome side-show headed by a gadfly who proposes a platform consisting of some genuinely good ideas, coupled with promises hatched from a recipe comprised of one part good intention and a dump truck full of naivete, flights of fancy, ignorance of political reality, and maybe a little too much Chardonnay. More often than not, third party runs make about as much noise as a waterlogged firecracker, but there have been examples of when third party candidates turned into tripped electoral landmines.

The two most recent were Ralph Nader who, in 2000, helped by a fictitious character named hanging Chad, managed to divert enough votes from Al Gore to put George W. Bush over the top, and then in 2016, when Gary Johnson and Jill Stein pushed Donald Trump over the goal line (with a little help from James Comey).

I’ve heard the arguments that both Gore and, in particular, Hilary Clinton could’ve/should’ve run better campaigns but the fact remains that in both of those elections the knowingly frivolous candidates succumbed to misplaced vanity and shaped history (and not for the better).

And so here we are, less than two months away from election day 2024, and Jill Stein is back and once again she’s wearing the Green jersey.

Not satisfied with having a hand in birthing the hell spawn that is Trumpism, and apparently not contrite (proud in fact, if you take Stein at her word) about bearing some responsibility for the worldwide, yes worldwide, chaos that Donald Trump has wrought, she’s decided it is not in her, and more importantly, America’s best interest, to just remain in shamed seclusion and sit this one out.

Yes, Jill is back. Well, why not. In 2012, Jill ran for president and was but one of the noiseless ciphers. It was in 2016 that Jill (along with Gary and James) made a name for herself. It was in that year that Jill secured her spot, or more accurately, blemish in history. So why not; another quadrennial, another go, even with the threat of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Project 2025 and the hellscape that they promise (and oftentimes with their very words). Why not shoot for destroyer of democracy this time? Like they say, go big or go home.

What the hell, go for it Jill. Whaddya got to lose?

The Highway 395 Chronicles: Reno

Paul

11 comments

August 28, 2024

You can always recognize the road warrior by looking at his arms. The right one, the one that rests on the center console is pale. The left one, the one that rests on the frame of the open window is weather beaten and bronze.

October 15th, 2022
The morning sun leaps angrily off the concertina wire at the High Desert State Prison just outside of Susanville, California. I slow down and glance off to my left, taking a long look at the high walls. It’s not unlike the times when I’m home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and find myself passing San Quentin. Slow down and look. I’m usually on my way to a warm, peaceful Marin County beach, or detouring away from a jammed Bay Bridge and heading to the Golden Gate to get into San Francisco.

During every drive by I stare, fascinated, wondering about what life is like behind that concrete. Not unlike slowing down to gawk at the aftermath of a car collision, it’s one of those “there but for the grace of God” moments.

During every passing, I can’t help but wonder what went wrong. Those men were once kids. Kids like me. They played tag, hide and seek, and baseball, went to school, had sleepovers, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bothered mom and dad for a puppy. They went through the phases of marveling over the sciences that excite kids; dinosaurs, sharks and space.

But something went sideways. Abusive parents? Addictive parents? Absent parents? Didn’t give a shit parents who should never have been parents? A few regrettable and ultimately fateful moments with a “friend” who’d already gone sideways? A society in which some have disadvantage baked into life’s cake? It’s easy to forget that some people never share the kind of childhood I had.

There’s a Christian notion that babies slide out of the chute already damaged. “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Well, that’s pretty fucking half glass full. Just another reason to reject religion.

Past the Susanville Pen, shake my head, exhale and drive on. Drive on – it’s what we do.

Next stop is Reno, Nevada, 90 miles southeast, nonstop on Highway 395.

I’ll get to Reno well before check-in at the hotel so on a Saturday, college football game day I can kill some time in a casino sports book – or kill some of my bank account at the Blackjack tables.

Just out of Susanville, it’s the 395 I’ve become accustomed to; high desert, rangeland and not a lot of cars in either direction. I’m spending the drive memorizing the little Blackjack crib card that instructs the hopeful player; when to hold’em, when to hit ’em, and when to fold’ em.

Always split aces and eights. That’s the easiest one. Well, except for standing on twenty-one.
Don’t hit twelve or higher if the dealer shows two. Intuitively this gambit doesn’t make any sense. There’s that giant chasm between twelve and twenty-one that the dealer could so easily land in.
Never, ever, split a pair of tens. Ha! That’s the mistake that every novice to the tables makes. I’m certain I did it – but only once – I hope. If the rookie is fortunate, he’ll get a compassionate dealer who’ll pause the action and ask, “Are you sure you want to do that? “ Maybe another player will nudge the newbie, “Stand on that.”

I’m looking forward to Reno. I’m going to indulge myself with a nice meal at the Peppermill or the Atlantis. It’ll be a nice respite from the microwave shit that’s seen me through up to this point. The Peppermill and the Atlantis are the only two hotel/casinos that are worth a damn anymore in downtown Reno.

A few miles to the east, Grand Sierra is decent, but out of the way. Cora and I stayed at the GSR one time. Our stay coincided with the final day of the Burning Man Festival out in the desert. The attendees were using the GSR parking lot as a sort of rest area. The place looked like a cross between a refugee camp and a scene out of Mad Max.

There was a time when Reno had a busy, vibrant strip, back when Reno laid some legit claim to its motto of being The Biggest Little City in the World.

That motto still glows on an arch over Virginia Street. The arch went up in 1926. It welcomed tourists from California, before the Highway 80 bypass, when the interstate ran right down the strip. That was when Reno’s strip was all the shit. Now the strip is all just – the kinda shitty. What’s left of it anyway.

The Highway 395 Chronicles: A Night in Prison Town

Paul

11 comments

July 31, 2024

October 14th, 2022
I’m on a one night layover in Prison Town, USA. No, I’m not staying in a 6 x 8 concrete studio, courtesy of the great State of California. I am a less than satisfied guest of the Super 8 Motel, in Susanville, California. It ain’t all that super but we’ll leave the details to the Yelpers and the Trip Advisors. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. Accommodations are a lot more rudimentary a few minutes away at the lockup nearby.
(Prison Town, USA was the title of a PBS documentary about Susanville that aired in 2007)

From where I’m sitting, there isn’t much to recommend Susanville. To be fair I haven’t been downtown. The Super 8 is located on the bleak flats just outside of downtown, smack next to an entrance road to the Lassen County Fairgrounds. There’s a tire shop/auto wrecker across the street, and kitty corner to the motel is a Walgreens. Make no mistake, there’s no mistaking this place for Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. If this is representative of the town as a whole then the Susan that the ville was named for must’ve been pretty damned ornery.

Maybe the “historic downtown” is quaint and interesting with the usual collection of a candy store, an ice cream shop, a family diner, and a divey bar where colorful, hard bitten, old timers in dirty ball caps grumble about Sacramento and DC into rocks glasses filled with cheap whiskey. There may even be one of those country stores that sells scented candles, kitchen gadgets, local jams, wooden signs emblazoned with pithy down home philosophy, and dish towels embroidered with Old Glory; the insulting part being that all of that Americana is made China (Except the local jams but who knows these days. Local might mean local to Shenzhen).

Like many of the small rural towns that sprouted in the mid-nineteenth century, Susanville started out as a logging and mining town. It was, at other times, a rail hub and an agricultural town.

Now the town’s main industry is incarceration. Counting three prisons in the immediate vicinity (the High Desert State Prison, the minimum-medium security California Correctional Center, and the Federal Correctional Institution, in nearby Herlong), nearly one-third of the population of Susanville is realizing the dubious hospitality of the Golden State, complete with the proverbial three hots and a cot. (When I visited Susanville all three prisons were in full operation. Since then, the California Correctional Center has been deactivated)

Joe Goes to the Bench

Paul

9 comments

July 23, 2024

The exhale was palpable, as if the very earth beneath America’s feet had physically billowed. A massive sweeping sigh of relief as the news broke.

Does it make me a bad American that I had to find out from my friend Eden in Toronto? High noon. I’d just returned home from the local coffee joint where my phone was silenced and my head was buried in a travel book.

A three word text sent at 10:57.

“Biden is out.”

“Fuck yes.” I responded (Before you get on your high horse, Eden and I have a sort of informal contest to see who has the pottier mouth).

I turned on the television to catch up. Open and shut relief on MSNBC and CNN after twenty-four days of tension since the June 27th debate debacle.

The look on Rachel Maddow’s face? You’d have thought she’d just had a gargantuan movement after three solid weeks of solid constipation. After coming out of the bathroom, newspaper in hand and a big smile on his face, dad would often say, “There’s nothing like a good crap.” Yep. That and the sudden resurrection of a presidential campaign that had been left on the side of the road for the buzzards to feed on. Right, Rachel?

I spent the rest of the afternoon switching between the news and watching the Giants baby faced rookie pitcher Hayden Birdsong throw an absolute gem against the Colorado Rockies, hoping that bad defense and anemic hitting wouldn’t rob the kid of a win. (Yeah I get it, CNN and MSNBC are not really news stations)

By the time I was grilling a salmon for dinner, it had already become clear that Kamala Harris would be replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket and there would be little resistance within the party. I’d already jumped on the bandwagon and donated $25 dollars to the campaign. It wasn’t so much a matter of the money but one of helping fuel a campaign that needed some momentum.

Hell, didn’t need my money to inject some life. An ebbing campaign had just been stabbed in the thigh with a heavy dose of epinephrin.

***

Incidental Notes From the road part II: The Old Bridge

Paul

4 comments

July 13, 2024

A loose continuation of the post Incidental Notes From the Road – link here.

“I dropped south to New Harmony, Indiana, twelve miles downstream from Grayville, Illinois where I’d spent that first grim night.”
From Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, by William Least Heat-Moon.

October 12, 2021
I’m standing in New Harmony, in front of the now closed bridge that William Least Heat-Moon crossed 43 years ago. He’d stopped for gas in New Harmony, and then drove over the New Harmony Bridge that spans the Wabash River, the border between Illinois and Indiana.

Heat-Moon’s crossing marked the last day of an odyssey; three months and 13,000 miles between “that first grim night” and this old bridge.

At loose ends after separating from his wife and then losing his job as a college professor, Heat-Moon outfitted an old van that he christened Ghost Dancing, and then he took off on a meandering journey through America’s backroads (the roads designated in blue on road maps). Life had offered him the proverbial shit sandwich. Heat-Moon declined the offer, and instead decided to put time and miles between himself and the source of his troubles.

Lemons into lemonaid. Make due with what ya got.

Is it a coincidence that forty-three years after Heat-Moon crossed over the Wabash, I’m standing here in New Harmony, looking through a chain link fence at Illinois on the other side of that river? Not at all. It’s almost as if it were meant to be. It was a labyrinthine string of circumstances that got me here. It all started with my own need to escape.

Declaring Independence

Paul

18 comments

July 10, 2024

I declared my Independence last Monday.

That is, I resigned from the Democratic Party and registered as an Independent. For years, usually after another Dem disappointment, the idea of leaving the party would cross my mind, but it was a combination of my own laziness and the reality that, as an Independent, I wouldn’t be able to vote in primaries that kept me from jumping ship.

And then came the June 27th massacre and all that’s followed.

Joe Biden’s debate failure, his subsequent interview with George Stephanopoulos, his letter to the Democratic members of Congress, and his phone-in to the Morning Joe television program combined to overburden the poor camel. The spine specialist could only shake his head and walk away.

My disgust over Biden’s insistence on running, despite the preponderance of voters from his own party who have consistently said that they believe that the president is too old to serve a second term, has long been feeding my appetite to depart a deluded party.

Biden’s post-debate persistence to stay the course, a persistence backed by his campaign and the cult of Biden (because at this point, what else could one call it) has me wondering just what the goal could possibly be.

Call me an old romantic fool, but I’ve always believed that the primary goal of every presidential election is to elect the man best suited for the job.

The man best suited for the job. Why is that so often a unicorn of an idea?

Every four years at least one of the major parties manages to endorse a fool. This time around both parties have managed to fail the nation by pitting a pair of unqualified old men against each other (and against the well-being of the country). And both parties did so knowingly and without regard to the future consequences.

In this election, as in the two previous, the electorate has been presented with another goal, and that is to beat Donald Trump. At least that’s the goal of anyone who wants to preserve a semblance of democracy and to keep the lunatic from occupying the assylum director’s chair .

This has been Joe Biden’s goal, and in that I take him at his word. Anything after that, and he loses me.

Two Wolves and a Sheep

Paul

17 comments

July 7, 2024

There’s a scene in an episode of the drama/comedy, The Bear, in which Sydney, the young sous chef, knocks on the papered over glass door of the restaurant that she and her partner and crew have been remodeling – just a simple makeover, really. She’s spent the day bouncing around Chicago, visiting various restaurants, sampling menu items to get ideas for her own menu. She’s been eating like a Roman senator at a bacchanal. She’s tired and stuffed and then stunned when Carmen, the head chef, opens the door to reveal that the remodel has been turned into a tear it down to the studs, major overhaul.

Carmen talks Sydney down from the ledge, pointing to the reality that the joint is old and there’s mold, dry rot, rust, leaks, structural issues, bugs and rodents. There’s nothing for it but to accept the reality, swallow hard, roll up sleeves and get to work.

Age, mold, dry rot, rust, leaks, structural issues, bugs and rodents. That could describe the way in which America chooses its president – especially the bugs and rodents part. If there was ever any doubt that the American system is not only decrepit and in need of being torn down to the studs, rebuilt and modernized, this current election cycle is proof positive that the system is antiquated and precariously close to collapse.

From the very start, the founders established a system that was only a façade of democracy. In the decades since, time marched on, and the system was not allowed to keep pace. The introduction of political shenanigans only made things worse. A system that from the beginning was not nurturing of a democracy has become even less democracy friendly. (And to be clear, we are not a democracy. Please see a previous post, The Saving Democracy Myth).

The events of the past week, and in fact, this whole presidential election cycle, have shown just how obsolete, and undemocratic our electoral system is. And just for fun, let’s add corrupt to the mix. We’re on the cusp of conventions, which have become glorified political infomercials, and just four months from election day and the electorate is faced with the most dreadful of binary choices – ever.

Welcome to the buffet folks. On the table before you we’re offering a rotten, old orange carp and an over done chicken that’s far beyond its sell-by date.

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