Cajun is back

We live in a semi-remote area, surrounded by small canyons, lots of trees, little mesas, populated by coyotes, fox, raccoons, owls, hawks, eagles, and other potential predators. So when an indoor cat gets out, and into a mean little storm, there is some degree of concern. Cajun, a Maine Coon Cat companion of mine for ten plus years got out there, into a powerful thunder storm and was out for three weeks.

Lots of flyers were posted, calls to neighbors, random surveillance, calling him of course, and for the last week a live trap set.
During this time an animal/bird person we know suggest we contact a psychic who specializes in animal communication (& this woman lives far, far away from here). She was contacted and we set a time to talk on the phone; this was done, she asked questions and then claimed to have tuned him in. The problem was, she said, that he had passed on to the next life, seems a predator had got him. Well, I was devasted and hung up. Meantime, he had been spotted a day or so before by a child in the area & the life trap was out.

Next day he was sighted again, and I moved the trap back to an earlier location (his favorite tuna as the bait). Meanwhile the words of the psychic were making me wonder about continuing with the trap. And then he was spotted again, and after that I saw him going away into a berry patch. He was, according to the vet still too scared to come to me when called. So I set the trap and did the usual visits to check it. Finally, three weeks after he had left I found Cajun in the trap at 4:30 a.m., and he was mighty unhappy to be in there. Burrs, sticks, and other debris were removed, and lots of matted fur was lost in the process. Then a trip to the vet was made for a check up and antibiotics and into recovery. Since then our farm dog has had an emergency and been to the vet. & Albert, one of the barn cats, is missing. Cajun is back, and we are blessed to have him. Moral to the story ... don't give up on a missing animal. Hopefully Al hasn't been caught by a predator.

"War is Peace"

George Orwell's novel "1984" has never been as cogent as last week when President Obama's pronouncement of the official occupation being over in Iraq was broadcast, and the last so-called combat troops moved into Kuwait (?). Thus a campaign promise was met, regardless of the fact that thousands of troops are there to back up the Iraqi forces, and have already been in "firefights;" and that thousands of mercendary soldier contractors are there as well. "War is Peace."

When is a war not a war, when is a "peace action" a peace action? My war was Korea, called a "police action" for a long time. We were, ostensibly policing the communists because they were breaking our cold war rules ... imposed largely by us, of course, and in collusion with the UN. Vietnam was an admitted war, a full scale version of a cold war outbreak, and it was on television (Korea was not, except in a minor way, and then became a TV sitcom for years after that).

A journalist named Rosen said last week (as the Orwellian rhetoric tried to drowned out the realities") that "Iraq is in a twilight zone." He described what he has seen and knows to be still happening as the Iraqi people suffer horrible standards of living while the largest American embassy in the world watches, waits and survives as part of the Green Zone. The realities he described are so contradictory as to be totally Orwellian. Who is scripting this thing? Is George Orwell novel to become mandatory reading for the times ahead? Has President Obama ever read it?

"Mend Your Ways"

A Hopi medicine man made some "rounds" in California (probably elsewhere) in the late fifties, early sixties; I heard him, as I recall in a Unitarian Church. His message paralleled Buckminister Fuller's ... "mend your ways before it is too late," and it may already be too late. His delivery was basic, things are "gathering steam," the downward momentum was more powerful that we imagined, and Mother Nature would not be nice in her reactions. This handsome, tall man reminded me of my Grandfather Roberts, nicely dressed in plain clothes, speaking his heart out.

Rachel Carson was in the wings, and Gaylord Nelson was on deck, soon to be pushing for Earth Day and the legislative recognition of the ills we were perpetuating. Meanwhile even into the turn of the century and beyond many legislators, politicians, bankers, professors and business people of all stripes denied the obvious and suggested we continue in our ways of environmental destruction and mischief. "Global Warming" was disputed, downplayed. I remember having the image of George W. Bush and Cheney riding in airconditioned limos, denying what was in everybody's faces, and then talking about "oil addiction" and other consequences seemingly with no thought to their life styles; while the glaciers were melting, the polar bear was becoming the "poster animal," and the confused American public tried to fathom its place in "The Long Emergency."

I tried to imagine recently that Hopi medicine man sitting in his hogan in Arizona, watching the latest TV coverage of floods, hurricanes, melting ice flows, drought in Hawaii, the reconstruction of New Orleans, a couple of burning oil platforms, shaking his head, apologizing to Mother Earth and praying. His is not a "I told you so" mentality, he is deeply hurt for his Mother and for her children throughout the Earth. I'm glad my Grandfather Roberts is not around to see this, his would not be as understanding as his Hope brother in Arizona.

The Cosmos

A BIG one, this subject, and I am humbled by even mentoning it. In L.A. in the thirties and forties, we lived in a time before smog, and one of my seminal trips with my parents was to the Mount Wilson Observatory on a mountain chain near by. But the skies in our Silverlake neighborhood were clear, we could see the "stars," be intrigued by the heavens. In a trip to the desert with Uncle Jess we stayed overnight in Death Valley, among some sand dunes. After watching the kangaroo rat jump over the fire, and a fox circling around the perimeter of the campsite, things got dark, the fire went down and Uncle Jess said simply "look up." In fact that was to be a kind of theme between us, the need to look up.

Elsewhere in thie blog I mention the "holy man" who came to the Silverlake Playground (I think I've written about it already, or have intended to), One of his themes too was look up, but it was always in the day light then, and he brought some celestial diagrams to enthuse the local urchins to do as Uncle Jess advised. But the Indian man (India) had a more spiritual twist, Hindu sort of. He wanted us to know what the common (today) poster with an arrow pointing at the heavens with the news that "You Are Here" means, that you are temporary, life is very transitory, the cosmos abides, is our home.

And thus I have circled around back to those beginnings, reading a huge book which I highly recommend: Dennis Overbye's "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos; The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe," what a book. The first chapter takes place in the San Gabriel mountains near L.A., at the Mount Wilson Observatory with the great astronomer Edwin Hubble, and his sidekick, Allen Sandage, the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. What a story, including Einstein's pilgrimage there, and how the dances of discovery play out, and continue. Look up and out, understand how mankind's ride is a tiny part of things.

"Shit Happens" & "Whatever" decades

I was in the Uptown area, going to the hardware store, and had been listening to a program on President Reagan's advice not to be concerned about being out of work. Just take whatever money you have and go into business, the great American way ... free enterprise, the American dream of working for yourself. The week before he and the Congress had succeeded in doing away with some anti-capitalist legislation enacted in the thirties, to enable business to succeed better it was assumed.

As I parked I saw an old, beat up pickup truck with a bumpersticker which read "Shit Happens" (the first of many sightings over the years), and it brought up the political situation real quick. I greeted the father and daughters who ran the hardware store and they quickly gave me the news. Seems their lease was not being renewed, they were soon to be out of business, and a boutique would soon take their place. Their years of experience and huge knowledge was pushed aside for the shit happens decade. The boutique didn't last of course, nor did the trendy furniture store which replaced it. Now that whole end of the building is gone, and another series of businesses are on the horizon.

"Whatever." a close relative to "Shit Happens" is now the reining word, and is undoubtedly on bumpers as well. I think of the word when Bill Clinton comes up, but the "Gitmo" ethos of Bush and Cheney bring the shit happens ethic back with a vengence now and again. Obama is embroiled in an Orwellian word of war and peace and high finance & unemployment, duking it out with generals and the Pentagon, the Tea Party, Wall Street and the banks. What his primary bumper sticker will be is anyone's guess, whatever.

Mrs. B

I met Mrs. B. in the neighborhood, at my Father's automotive garage. She was a person with authority, which I was later to find out about, both in and out of class. It took me a few years to catch up with her at the local high school, both in physiology class and around the school grounds and buildings. She was highly respected, tough but fair and intensly human. The most unusual thing she did was to invite athletes to offer her the opportunity to wear their letterman's sweater on Thursdays, the usual (but not for teachers, of course) practice between boys and girls. And, she taught an elective course for senior boys called "Boys Foods," which ultimately I was priviledged to take part in. Also, boys would offer to wash her black, classic car, a Lincoln as I recall; & I did that one time.

The most ibiding memory was the day in class when she lectured on germs, and then had us look through a microscope at flies and maggots. It was the big eye opener of the decade in a sense, a memory now that comes back to haunt me, expecially when I am at an outside (farm) dinner and there are flies crawling all over the food. She did things like dissolve metal in Coca Cola as well, with the accompanying talk about the hazards of soft drinks, sugar. She was no evangelist, no prude, but there were some health issues which she delivered on with no mercy. I can see her as clear as day walking down the hall with an enormous letterman's sweater on, way big, her hands doing their best to push out of the cuffs. I hope that students now and in the future will have at least one Mrs. B in their lives.

Haus Mann

By the time you get through a work day it is well nigh impossible to write in the BLOG, the combination of farm work and house tasks remind me of the dilemmas described by feminists decades ago. Haus Mann is a name heard on the media some time ago, perhaps described by Werner Herzog (of a character he was to have filmed, I don't know)? This mythical man was born filling new post feminist shoes, taking on tasks at home and abroad because the woman had shifted to the public sector, and he was left with her other pair of shoes. Am I making this up, did I really hear this, or could it be a comic strip, attributed to German culture?

An older haus mann, such as myself, has still another dilemma. He has to "pick up the pieces" because he is no longer employable, can only fill in as he can, and if he doesn't do the minimum required might find himself in a retirement home (?).
For me the paradoxes are compounded because I have farm chores outside to contribute, and must followup with teenage and other help to make sure things get done. Not only that, but because my partner, Joni, is working and studying off the place so much, I must still act as if I am managing most of it, anticipating problems, fixing and cleaning, a lot of it. And why not?

A couple of decades back I visited my old neighborhood in California, stood in a local gas station watching one of my former class mates working in the office, Alan R. Meanwhile an old, big Detroit station wagon rolled in with two women, half a dozen children and another classmate, Jimmy R. My interest went up and I identified myself and asked about his life. While he pumped the gas he described living with the two sisters, having children with both of them and taking care of the house, car and yard. He saw no reason to imagine things would change much. He was a version of haus mann in a prefeminist time, and I suspect that the aggregation still exists, although perhaps feminized some, and some of the children would have undoubtedly departed by now. Jimmy may have worked his way into a retirement complex by now, and perhaps he has managed to shift his job description to that facility. I wish him all the best, as I try to improvise in my different roles.