dan

A Norman Rockwell moment

I left Santa Barbara about 6:00 pm. I was a bit tired after three days on the road. There had been an interagency meeting in the morning, and then I lead a 3-hour training workshop in the afternoon.

About an hour into the 6-hour drive home, feeling hungry, I stopped at an In-n-Out Burger in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is an ag-and-oil town, sprawling and charmless.

I skipped the drive-through lane, and instead parked up and walked inside to order, still in my business suit. A high-school wrestling team had got in ahead of me.

As I found my place in line, the coach appeared and told the kids to stand aside and let me through to the front. I thanked him in my public voice and headed to the counter, happy to act a part in his lesson to the kids.

I’m not that well-traveled, but there’s something about this experience that struck me as very American–perhaps it was the way the coach was so well-mannered and so informal at the same time, demonstrating grace and consideration that transcended mere rules. I’d like to think he would have done the same for anyone.

 

 

February 9, 2017 by The Nature of Belief 0

MLK Day

King’s most famous quote, in his most famous speech, was an audacious, in-your-face challenge to white people.

“I have a dream,” he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The message is uplifting, yes, and is also laced with righteous anger, bitterness, and sarcasm. “I have dream,” indeed.

The reaction to that message still reverberates. Today, after a half-century of advances and setbacks, King’s challenge to white people is as stark as in 1963.

At the August 28, 1963 March on Washington

The 2016 presidential campaign was all about character. About being consistently poised and respectful, despite differences. About answering difficult questions directly and honestly. About doing your homework and knowing what you’re talking about. About listening and remaining persuadable in the heat of argument. About being protective of those who need protection. About speaking one’s mind, and standing up for what is right.

Those elements of character were the core appeal of the Democratic candidate—much more than mere ideology.

And it was a turn-off for many voters. For many white voters, that is.

Here’s what I’ve learned from being white: The existence of white supremacy, with the very real advantages if confers in status and opportunity—constitutes a moral hazard. Because it is all too easy to substitute white privilege for the very difficult effort of cultivating good character.

And the less one has accomplished through real effort and real accomplishment, rather than skating by on white skin, the greater the hazard.

The moral hazard of white supremacy can lead people to stay in economically hopeless backwaters rather than face the rigors of urban life. To stick with fading livelihoods rather than learning something new. To substitute the falsity of homilies and heritage for authentic development of one’s individuality. Enough years of this avoidance will, almost inevitably, cause a whole community to suffer hopelessness, which can be measured in rising substance abuse and mortality.

Many will also suffer anger, and resentment, against “elites” who live in a multiracial, diverse, challenging, and forward-looking world. And they may feel they are being judged and excluded for lacking the elements of character that are, more and more, indispensable currency in that world—urbane poise, open-mindedness, sensitivity to others, attentiveness to knowledge. (These elements of character are often derided as “political correctness.”)

Part of Trump’s appeal is that he offers a comforting reassurance to white people that, in America today, those “elite” character values can still be sidestepped. All you need is white skin and money, and you can be coarse, ignorant, racist, and successful. Without the money, you’re still OK.

So, Dr. King’s dream that his children (and ours) should be judged by the content of their character—that is still a dream. As we continue to pursue it, we would do well to remember that it is not just a “dream” in the sense of a high-minded aspiration, but a dream full of righteous anger at white supremacy.

January 16, 2017 by The Nature of Belief 0

Private Property

The fog burned off in the late morning, and by 3pm it was sunny and in the upper 50s. I decided on an hour’s walk around the neighborhood.

I tried McPeak Road. On the map, it starts just the other side of the Hacienda Bridge and winds up Hobson Creek.

I was aiming for some late-afternoon sunshine, but I didn’t get that. The creek is in a fairly deep canyon and it was wet and gloomy in there, although the creek was roaring and burbling, still high from the past week’s rains.

I was also hoping for some woodsy peace, but I didn’t get that either.  There was a profusion of “No Trespassing” and “Keep Out” signs everywhere, and those always put me on edge. Like I’m feeling these folks don’t want outsiders walking up their road.

Even though it’s a public road.

I walked on, deciding that those signs were referring to the land on either side of the road, even though they were kind of aimed to be seen by someone coming up the road, like me. As I walked further up the canyon, I passed the last of the reasonably well-kept houses, and pretty soon I was traversing what seemed to be someone’s personal garbage dump, with disused recyclables and rusted equipment scattered all the way across a yard, to the edge of the road, and then piled on the other side of the road, leaving only a narrow passage to get through.

Soon after I came to what looked like a standard county gate, something that would be installed by a public agency, except that it had a “keep out” sign right behind it. So I kept out, and walked back down the road toward home.

There wasn’t any sign that said “end of county maintained road.” Since I’ve been living part-time in Sonoma County I’ve noticed instances where someone had staked out a portion of the public right-of-way (between their fence line and the pavement edge, for instance) for their private use. So I’m left wondering where McPeak Road ends, and if the public right of way continues beyond that gate, and whether I’m curious enough to go look at official county maps and records to find out.

And I’m also shaking my head at the decrepitude of these properties, here in the midst of a lot of wealth and a critical lack of housing.

January 14, 2017 by Personal Status The Nature of Belief 0

Night Work

2016 didn’t go the way I thought it would, or wished it would. But it’s over, and it’s time to look ahead.

I see adversity coming up.

I feel protected from the worst of it. I was way less protected back in 1981, when Reagan took office, and somewhat less in 2001, when it was George W. Bush, God help us.

In ’81, I was living above a pawnshop in downtown Brooklyn, young and broke. My friends were few and distant. I soon moved to a mostly abandoned building in a mostly burned-out block on the Upper West Side, sharing government cheese with my neighbors, and sleeping with one eye open and watching for the landlord’s thugs. In ’01, when Bush Jr. was the president-elect, I quit my consulting job and traveled most of the year, returning to find a worsening desperation in my South Berkeley neighborhood.

When they get into power, Republicans make hell for Americans who are struggling. The suffering is going to be really awful. It will be worst among those already most desperate. If you’ve never lived in a low-income neighborhood, you have no idea.

As for me, I thrived during those times. In the early ‘80s, I made a quixotic decision to go to engineering school, and spent my mid-20s setting type on the swing shift, and sometimes the lobster shift, still fighting the landlord, and making my way up through Harlem to City College for daytime classes. In the early ‘00s, I started my consulting business, stretching my limited expertise and even-more-limited social skills, often working late in my home office until even the dealers outside had gone home.

I’ll turn 59 this year, if the fates allow. I live in a quiet suburb and an even more quiet exurb. I’m more relaxed. I’m less likely to jump into a new challenge. When I get together with friends, we’re already sharing our catalogs of where our bodies hurt and don’t work the way they used to. I don’t really want to be working hard at something new.

But I’m going to be doing exactly that, I think. Maybe a lot of new things, or maybe a lot of new angles on old things, or maybe a renewed focus and vigor on things I’ve picked up and set aside, at various times, over a lifetime.

Because the times demand it, and also because of this. Continue reading…

January 1, 2017 by Personal Status 0

What Xmas Means to Me

I was raised strict atheist. We had a Christmas tree and gave gifts. We admired seasonal revelry in a Currier-and-Ives kind of way, without taking much part in it.

In adulthood, I learned to appreciate the blend of ritual and melancholy captured so well in the original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I can’t say I’ve ever looked forward to the Christmas season, but I have sought, each year, to find some transformative moment in it. I’ve found that moment, sometimes, while walking alone on a crowded shopping street, or hanging an ornament on the tree, or just sitting in a warm armchair and listening to medieval carols.

At 50, I fathered a child. My new relatives are assimilated Jews. I’ve done seven Christmas Eves their way; I’ve felt more and more each year that something was missing.

So this year, I started to explore various meanings of Christmas.

I should say: By this time in life, I’m a lapsed atheist. I still discount the truth of religious doctrine, but I don’t discount the value of faith.

My exploration was helped when I read this piece by Bill Muehlenburg, who seems to take his Bible straight up.

He says Christmas is about incarnation and redemption. Now here are ideas I can wrestle with. I mean, Christmas is also about finding light in the darkest hours, and it is about fully experiencing joy, and while it is not a given to achieve either of those things, I don’t question their value, or the value of trying.

But incarnation? The existence of God in human form, who walks (or walked) among us, like an ordinary man? I need to think harder about that.

As an evolution of belief, I like it. It’s way better than believing in a God who doesn’t walk among us. I can squint and appreciate Jesus in an immanentist way, as the experience of the divine in the mundane. We all could use more of that, I think, in a time when people tend to act as if their own fate, and the fate of the world, are things to be trifled with. We could have a little more awe, and conduct ourselves more as embodiments of spirit, and be less reactive to what gets served up daily in the earthly vale.

The idea of redemption had me digging a little harder. Even if we are non-believers, we can be attracted by concept of God’s unconditional love. Again, as a belief, it’s way better than believing in an Old Testament God, who is the kind of prick who smites you if he doesn’t like your looks (and even if you’re his biggest fan, invites you to kill your kid to demonstrate that you really believe).

The unconditional love thing looks easier than it really is, because to accept and fully experience unconditional love, you also have to accept yourself, just as you are, you sinner you. That’s hard, but once you achieve that self-acceptance, your relationship to God has to change, and I think that change must be profoundly liberating.

Which brings us back to the problem of belief. The great good deal, according to Christian doctrine, is that you get that unconditional love, along with everlasting life—and all you have to do is believe.

I don’t believe, and I look askance at the idea that one believes what one wills to believe. That idea is all too common, and you and I would do well to reject it. Like I said, I don’t discount the value of faith, but just up and deciding to have faith, to get the benefits it provides, strikes me as cheap and easy, and cheap and easy is not what I want at Christmas.

So here’s what Christmas means to me, at least for now: A celebration of the divine in everyday life. An awe of what it means to be human, and of the gifts and responsibilities that come with that. A time to stretch myself to accept myself and to accept others, and to revel in the changes that practice brings. And a little melancholy as I look at the passage of another year.

December 24, 2016 by Personal Status The Nature of Belief 1

Calibrating

USGS operates a stream gauge at the Hacienda Bridge, which is just downstream from here. The data is posted on the web in real time.

level

Taking the final difference in elevation, between a mark on the stairs down to the river and the slab inside the basement door.

However, I didn’t know what gauge elevation corresponds to the waters reaching my house.

Now I do know, I think, fairly accurately. That will help next time, especially if I’m looking at the stream gauge data remotely, or at night.

Here’s how I calibrated the gauge to my house: I found the high water mark from the most recent event (an obvious mark on the path down to the river), and used a construction level to measure the difference in elevation to my basement slab. This took two setups of the instrument. I make a crude sketch as I went along.

The flood crest at the Hacienda gauge was 29.77 feet, and the basement slab is 9.7 feet above the high water mark. Adding those together, I get 39.5 feet, a number I hope I won’t be watching for anytime soon. That 9.7 feet might seem like a lot–except that in this relatively minor event, the river rose more than 20 feet, at a rate of about a foot an hour.

floodelevationsketch

A crude sketch, good enough notes for my purpose.

1986_flood

1986 flood at Forest Hills market, a block away from me, and on higher ground.

Fortunately, the house’s first floor elevation is a little more than 12 feet above the basement slab–higher than the floodwaters reached in 1986.

But you never know.

December 19, 2016 by Personal Status 0

River’s Rising

riverrising1

There are a number of joys here, beginning with being comfortably nested at my table by the window, a warm drink and electronic devices close at hand. There is a gauge by the bridge just downriver, and I’ve found the link where I can view real-time data corresponding to what I’m seeing out my window. Cool. I’ve got some interesting work that I’ll be getting back to in a moment. Great.

And then there’s that metaphor of imminent deluge. Oh well.

russianathacienda

Real time data from the gauge at near Hacienda Bridge

December 15, 2016 by Personal Status 0

Thanks

With some help, I’ll be preparing and serving Thanksgiving dinner for 12.

Personally, I have a lot to be thankful for.

Still, I’m searching for something, the right thing, to say to my guests as we sit down. The youngest is seven, the oldest 84. Two are struggling with cancer.

And we all face a struggle we didn’t want, but must accept. There is something in there to appreciate, and be thankful for, and I’m sure that by Thursday I’ll be able to articulate it.

November 23, 2016 by Personal Status 0

Work Therapy

I was up into the wee hours this morning, crafting a database management structure for tracking land development projects, stormwater treatment facilities, and inspections of same. I’d been in bed about an hour shen the kid called out, needing me to come in there and cuddle her back to sleep. 3:30 is a special hour for such business, and I felt, as always, grateful to be able to do it.

In the morning, I had an extra cup of coffee, and once the family was off to school and work, jumped into a little damage control with a client, then to getting the graphic artist going on some illustrations for the new Guidebook. Then it was afternoon and time for the teleconference about the database.

During the usual preliminaries (What are our objectives for this call?) I managed to run around the house picking up toys and clothes, getting some laundry started, and packing for a weekend trip with the kid. By the time the group was reviewing the database structure item-by-item, I was on my way out the door to drive over to the elementary school. I parked and wandered through the crowded schoolyard, my notes in hand, earpiece in my ear, discussing the generation of primary keys, the organization of each table, the independent and dependent relationships, the need for flexible options to accommodate the differing practices of the three dozen or so municipalities who will be the users, which parameters needed restricted selections and which could be narrative, and other technical and regulatory ins and outs, while at the same time finally spotting the kid and sharing grins and looking surprised and properly awestruck at her wiggly cuspid, and using hand gestures and gentle touches to carefully guide her across the busy avenue and toward the truck.

About half way home I pulled over to the side before wishing everyone a good weekend and hanging up on the call. Without turning around, I reached into the back seat and gave the kid’s leg a squeeze.

For over an hour, I hadn’t thought once about the disaster unfolding in Washington and about to spread across the country and the world.

November 19, 2016 by Personal Status Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

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