Oak Street Halloween

I think I've written about this before. 

The first year I was in the nest the mommie came for a visit. She had given up traveling but she really wanted to see the nest and Hood River. She got on a plane and came out. She loved looking out the windows at the Oak Street goings on. Her only complaint was that it was hard to watch TV because Oak Street was more interesting. 

On Halloween I was about to put dinner on the table when I noticed people in the middle of the street, including children. She noticed too. I opened the door and looked up the street. It had been blocked off and families were beginning to wander about, many with costumes. In front of the shops people were sitting with bowls of candy. The ice cream shop up the street was giving away free ice cream before they closed for the year. Dinner was going to wait. The mommie was captivated. Since then it's been one of my favorite times of year. Hood River feels like a small town. 

This year it won't happen. I am overwhelmed with sadness. Which seems a little extreme. I think it's carrying the weight of all the larger sadness. The rise in COVID cases and deaths. The exhaustion of the health care workers. The stress of the election. 

It feels dysphoric to say but COVID gave me a gift. I am so glad the mommie isn't here for it. I don't know how I would have taken care of her. The news coming out of care facilities is terrifying. There is a place near by in which there were a few deaths. There had been a fall in the care giving because they couldn't get workers. Those stories hit me hard. Yesterday in the NY Times there was an article about senior facilities and the problems with care. Because of all of that it's the first time I've been able to relax into the fact of her being gone. 

Usually I start getting a little sad in November. I see the cover of a magazine with pictures of turkey dinners. I remember Thanksgiving dinners that I loved cooking. The pain in my knees makes it hard to get cereal and milk in a bowl. I won't be cooking any big dinners. The date of her death is just before Thanksgiving. I get sadder and sadder through the month. The day after Thanksgiving I'm ready to put up Christmas decoration. I'm still a little sad but Thanksgiving just feels like loss now. Once it's over I'm ready to have a holiday. 

I'm usually so caught up in Oak Street Halloween that I don't feel the sadness. This year I guess it's going to start a little early. 

I don't have the ... uh ... I dunno ... what ever it takes to buck up today. I'm trying (not entirely successfully) to stay away from the news and doom scrolling. Read my book. Take it one breath at a time. 

Systems

I've been thinking about Plessy v Ferguson. Random? Not really. That supreme court (1896) upheld the idea that racial segregation was constitutional. It has never been overruled. It sits in the shadows like some rancid, not quite dead snake, that keeps reeling its head. Brown v Board (1954) sort of over ruled it by stating that separate but equal was unconstitutional (equal protections clause of the fourteenth amendment), at least in educational institutions. 

Eisenhauer signed the Civil Rights Act (1957) and LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. 

And. 

On Monday afternoon police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr.  He was ten feet away from them, holding a knife. He was shot multiple times.  

Black Lives Matter has been around for six years. In the streets. That is where my hope for change is. 

We're all worried about the Supreme court and we should be.  I am. Specifically because of Roe v Wade but on Monday the court ruled that Wisconsin can't count ballots if they arrive after election day. Justice Kagan wrote a dissent in which she said that nothing could be more supercilious or improper than refusing to count ballots because they arrive after midnight. It was a shot at Kavanaugh. Justice Ginsburg may be gone but the struggle continues. 

I've been thinking about the Jane Collective. From 1969 to 1973 they worked to help women find doctors who needed an abortion. They even learned how to do simple abortions. If the court overturns Roe, or just upholds laws that make legal safe abortion hard to get there will be a battle. 

I don't really know what the future will look like. I'm not sure what the battles will look like. I just know that through out history the courts and the congress and all the rule makers have done some terrible things. And people continued to fight. I think Justice Ginsburg was know to respond to defeat by getting back to work. 

I've been really nervous right before I go to sleep lately. I have mini panic attacks.  I feel like something is wrong.  And then I remember. Something is wrong. Lots of somethings are wrong. 

A group called Joy to the Polls have been working with various artists to get music to poll locations where people are waiting hours in line to vote. People dance in line. There have been drummers. And marching bands. The wonderful Chef Jose Andres has been providing food for people in line. People helping and bringing joy. 

This is what I hope it looks like.  

No Good Very Bad

The nest has three floor to ceiling windows in the front. When I first moved in they were covered with blinds that I almost broke the first night. It's hard to explain how I did that but I did. They weren't just cheap blinds. Every morning I walked the width of the room opening the blinds and then the reverse in the evening. After a year or so one broke. 

I wanted smart blinds that I could raise and lower with my phone. I went to a place in town that sells them and had a long conversation with a really nice woman about what I wanted. She showed me books full of samples. The ones I liked the best were super costly. Of course. She very kindly told me about a guy who could fix my blind. And he did. A year later they broke again. So I got the ones I wanted. They have a honeycomb shape that blocks sound and light really well. They are purple. A very light diaphones purple, of course. The wall is a dark green/blue. The blinds and wall look so lovely together. I often sit in the chair by the window and just stare at those colors and feel happy. I feel grateful. My little nest makes me so happy. I feel spontaneously grateful, often.

I've never been enthusiastic about gratitude as a practice. I don't want to conjure it. There are days when gratitude is a child lost in the fog. I might be able to hear it but I can't see it. 

I am fierce about feeling what I feel when I feel it. 

These days feeling are hard to track. We are all exhausted, braced, uncertain. The election will be what it will be but we'll still have the two months after that and COVID is going no where. I slump. Sometimes for a short time. Sometimes for hours or days. Of course I do. Of course we all do. 

I'm buried in a book most of the time. 

Yesterday was no good very bad. Starting with a bunch of small problems so small it's embarrassing to document them. There were too many. I was too tired. I felt like everything was just too hard. The day didn't get much better. I didn't have the news on. I wasn't on social media. I checked in long enough to hear about the 345 children languishing at the border and the administration's inability to find their parents. That stirred up a wave of fury. But it wasn't that. It was more personal. By the end of the day my brain was spinning with thoughts. I couldn't get to sleep. 

I mean. It's just the way of things sometimes. 

Today is so so. Some problems that seemed to resolve. I'm still in the storm of rage about the children. And I'm probably going to watch the debate. 

The one thing I know. The one thing I count on, is a moment of awareness, in my nest. A moment that will calm the storm for a minute or two. I take comfort in the way colors randomly feed off each other. The rainbows on the wall pouring through the prisms on the chandelier. The fray on my rug. The lines of books on shelves. It doesn't change anything but it feels good. 

A Nice Day

 It had been a nice day. I was able to swim, which is always a happy thing. When COVID first hit the club was closed. At some point it opened and we went swimming. The friend who gives me a ride had some problems and couldn't take me for a few weeks. Then she was able to take me again but the smoke hit. After a few days of staying out of it we went swimming anyway. We weren't really out in the smoke for long. 

Things at the pool had felt safe largely because there was no one there. This week was a bit of a worry. More people. Not enough masks. I've been wondering if I need to stop going. But Friday was great. Mostly empty pool. Masks. The water felt great. 

Later a friend stopped by with brisket from a new BBQ place across the river. I got a piece of white cake.  Not something I would normally get but white cake by southern cooks is special. It was good. I had enough left of everything for the next day. 

I forget what I was doing when I found out. Reading probably. I checked Facebook and saw that she was dead. Justice Ginsburg. She was gone. 

I don't always react to the deaths of famous people. I felt sentimental and sad when John Prine died but I was not as done in as some of my friends. Famous people don't always feel close to me. 

When John Lewis died I felt tore up. It's hard to say why with out sounding trite. He was an important historic man. He fought. He took the blows. And he stayed focused. And he was joyous. I love the videos in which he is dancing. His fight changed the world. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the world. Again the words I have to describe my feelings feel too small. I would like to have just focused on the feeling of sadness. I would like to have mourned. But replacing her on the court has too many terrifying implications. 

 I resent how scared and angry I feel all the time. I resent how worried my friends are. Trump lost the popular vote by almost  3 million. He is in the office because of a political slight of hand that should have been done away with long ago. And he didn't even win by large numbers in the states where the electoral college gave him the presidency. His reaction was to look for voter fraud. He didn't find any. 

The words I can use to describe him are all foul and take me out of my heart. I don't want to be out of my heart right now. I am grieving the loss of a great woman. I want to be in those feeling and not be distracted by rage. 

And. 

That's not where we are at. 

My Facebook and Twitter feed are filled with the word fight. Because that is where we're at. 

The peaceful trasfer of power has been with us since 1800 when the election was as fraught as the one we are currently about to have. Trump people like to talk about the founding fathers but I don't think they have any idea how fractious they were. They broke laws. They destroyed property. It wasn't like they just all agreed one day and life went on. They believed that the arguing they were doing was making the country better. Trump has made it clear that he has no interest in the peaceful transfer of power. I doubt he understand the concept. 

So. We are all gearing up to fight. 

We are worried about our votes being counted. We are worried about bad faith. Elections should be dignified. 

That's not where we're at. 

So. I will swim again. There will be more BBQ and white cake. Life will. Go on. 

And I expect to feel rage for months. 

Two Parts

First Part

Butt to chair is an aphorism from some book on how to write. I guess the idea is that if you want to write you need to sit your butt in the chair and face the page. I don't really read books on writing. And I've sat on a number of chairs staring at blank pages, coming up with nothing. 

Something happened with my right knee. It is similar to something that happened to my left knee last year. The right knee is the knee with the most pain.  There is more than one kind of pain. This problem seems to start in my back, wind around my thigh, into my knee, down my calf into my foot. Last year I decided it was a nerve thing. I read a bunch from doctor Google. My own doctor was kind of stumped. The local orthopedist barely concealed her contempt. (Fat people deserve the all the pain.) Cortisone wasn't helping. I took all the OTC pain relief I could. Finally I started sitting with a hot pad on my back. It seemed to relax my back and (maybe) the nerve stopped hurting. I don't really know but the pain settled way down. 

So this time it started one night, shortly after the whole social isolation thing began. The pain is wicked. My knee locks and then collapses. And sitting is painful. I'm only sort of comfortable sitting in a recliner with my knees on a pillow. I got out the heating pad again and things have begun to settle down. There's still pain. Just not as much.  

Ironically, today, when I was going to write this post, I had a relapse. Some time on the hot pad settled things down again. 

So here I am. 

Butt to chair. 

Ouch. 

Second part

I've been reading Maxine Hong Kingston. I read an article about her in The New Yorker. I vaguely remember not enjoying reading her back in the day. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't even sure what I had read. I did know I had tried to read Tripmaster Monkey. I owned The Fifth Book of Peace but was pretty sure I hadn't even opened it.  

I bought an Everyman's Library book with Woman Warrior and China Man. Loved it. Still can't remember if I ever read either book earlier. I've just started The Fifth Book of Peace, which opens with her house being destroyed in the Oakland/Berkeley fires. A book she'd been working on was also destroyed. 

As I'm reading my Facebook feed is filled with pictures of smokey air, suns and moon surrounded with read and covered with smoke. Yesterday the air here was filled with smoke from distant fires. 

Spooky. Or maybe auspicious. 

I knew I had a copy of Tripmaster Monkey but could not find it until today. I wasn't even looking for it at the time. I just glanced over to the shelf and there is was. 

OK. Time for the butt to get off his chair. 

Rage. Sorrow. Frustration.

Baldwin was on the Dick Cavett show in 1969. I used to watch Cavett. I can't imagine how I understood Baldwin at that age. You can watch it on YouTube. He is talking about race. Of course. Cavett is listening earnestly. At one point Cavett says I don't understand. Gotta give him props for that. He wants Baldwin to acknowledge that things are better and there are good cops. Baldwin says of course there are good cops (and now I am going to paraphrase) but he isn't talking about individuals. He's talking about systems of oppression. He say the cops aren't there to serve and protect Black people. They're there to protect White property.
In a recent New Yorker Jelani Cobb wrote: Policing is inescapably a metaphor for governmental power.
Think about the number of years between those articulations of the same problem. The weeks and months of the Black Lives Matter. People in the streets. The same thing over and over and over and the same violence from the police. Are there good cops? Of course there are. It is beside the point. Policing is an out growth of slave patrols. It's a system in need of reform.
In 1969 I would have been like Cavett. Earnest. Wanting things to be OK. Not wanting to feel the daily terror in Black life. Wanting to be understood as a ... good ... White person.
Right after the George Floyd murder I was worried about my feelings. I didn't want to talk about them too much. I didn't want anyone trying to comfort me. I felt rage, sorrow, frustration. And I still do. Some things are changing but not enough. Not fast enough. Not deeply enough.
My friend George Kelly writes for the East Bay Times. One of his recent articles was about a couple painting over a BLM sign. There was a video in which the woman is painting over the letters and the man is walking around saying there is no racism. It's just leftest propaganda. I mean.
Rage.
Sorrow.
Frustration. 
They were charged with a hate crime. 
On July fifth. I saw a video of a Black man pushed up against a tree by a group of White men and women and someone was calling for a rope. Again. Again. The FBI is investigating the case. I'm not sure what there is to investigate. There's a video. There were witnesses. They pulled out chunks of his hair and banged on him. He had a mild concussion. They should be charged with assault and attempted murder. NOW.
I want the cops who killed Breonna Taylor to be charged. NOW.
I watched the movie Marshall the other day. (spoiler alert) (or maybe a reason to watch). At the end of the movie Marshall is getting off a train to meet another family in need of his work. A Black boy, a child, needs a lawyer in Mississippi. Marshall was doing this early work in 1940. Before I was born. The local family lawyer is played by Benjamin Crump. The parents are played by Trayvon Martin's parents. It was a short scene. 
I burst into tears. 

Reading Deep

Ezra Klein had a conversation with Nicholas Carr on Ezra's podcast. Carr wrote a book about what the Internet is doing to your brain:The Shallows. They talked about that book. They also talked about the value of deep reading and what it does for your brain. When I say I love to read I mean deep reading. I love when a book pulls you under into the deep.
When I started reading the Library of America Baldwin books I didn't think about how many books I'd be reading. Two volumes but seven or eight books. There is third volume, which I intended to order but am sort of glad I didn't. Yet. I need time to digest. When I got to Another Country I thought I might take a break. But first I thought I'd just read a page. Yeah. I was in really deep. Really fast. The last book was Going to Meet the Man, which I did not read well. It's not a long book. He uses some of the names of characters from Another Country and I couldn't adjust. I was still emotionally involved with them. Still am. 
Both Ezra and Nicholas talked about needing to put the phone across the room so that they could sink into the read. I get that. I pick my phone up in the middle of every other page. Not every time but more often than I care to admit.
I have a thing that happens. Usually when I'm reading magazines or on line. I can't take the words in. I know in a few moments if I'm going to be able to settle. Sometimes I push and some times I'm glad I do. Usually I flip the page. I have always loved magazines and have had deep reading experiences with them. Right now I just want books.
I haven't been buying things. Not even books. It's OK. Since I usually do over buy books, I have a supply. But I didn't get any books for my birthday, which actually made me cry. Big baby that I am. So I bought myself Eddie Glaude's new book. Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons For our Own. Perfect. It's helping me to feel through everything I just read. It is also making me want to reread a lot of it.
For me, when you get deep into a book you're still sort of in it even when you put the book down.