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Malibu in My Lungs

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The Franklin Wildfire in Nearby Malibu

When the dry Santa Ana winds blow in from the desert, every tree, every cactus, every bush is at risk of being involved in a wild conflagration that eats up vast tracts of land. Such is the Franklin Fire in Malibu, which, after a week of rampant destruction, is only 54% contained.

Alas, a good part of the ash from that fire is contained in my lungs. It causes my nose to run, punctuated by mammoth sneezes that shake the walls of my abode. As the crow flies, I am only a few miles from Malibu Canyon, ground zero for the worst damage.

I have driven Malibu Canyon Road many times en route to Malibu Creek State Park, which is where the M*A*S*H television show was filmed.

After I was on crutches for two years, I had a crutch-burning party at Tapia Park around 1969. Unfortunately, the flames have destroyed Tapia Park where I celebrated being able to walk again without sticks.

If we get some rain soon, I will be able to go through the day without forcibly expelling ash from my lungs every few hours.

No Skin in the Game

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UCLA Students Protesting Israel’s Actions in Gaza

What with all the campus protests of Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza, I am reminded of Hamlet watching the murderous King Claudius tear up at ancient Greek tragedy:

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing—no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

I am somewhat amused by all the campus protests. It’s not at all like the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, because American college students, for the most part, have nothing to gain or lose by doing so. In all likelihood, they will not be drafted and shipped off to Rafah to confront the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza.

No doubt, Bibi Netanyahu is a villain, as are the West Bank settlers depriving the Palestinians of their land. But then, there’s plenty of villainy to spread around, when one considers the horrors of Hamas’s October 7 attack on innocent Israeli citizens.

Have there been any campus protests on behalf of the Rohingya? the Chechens? the Ukrainians? Granted, the United States supplies Israel with arms, but we are not participating in or even encouraging what looks like genocide to me. It does not look to me as if the protesting students had any skin in the game.

Perhaps the protests erupted because it’s spring, and “dull and muddy-mettled rascals” like to kick up a row from time to time.

Somebody Sez

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To begin with, I am not a great lover of the news media. In fact, I believe that if somebody wants to have a good night’s sleep, they should not watch or listen to the news after dinner. And certainly not the eleven o’clock news just before bedtime. It’s just not healthy, because those news outlets are peddling fear or outrage as their primary product.

One example is what I call the “Somebody Sez” news story. Just to give you an example, here are a number of headlines I just gleaned from the Cable News Network (CNN) website tonight:

  • Biden could face obstacle getting on Ohio’s ballot, secretary of state’s office says
  • Retired judge says statute cited in Trump’s motion raises concerns about NY judge
  • Republican lawmaker says Russian propaganda has ‘infected a good chunk’ of GOP base
  • Retired US general predicts Israel’s withdrawal won’t prevent an invasion
  • Republican strategist says Trump has made a critical mistake in the campaign

CNN apparently relies on an army of “experts” who “say” certain things or “predict” certain outcomes. It is possible that none of these things come true, but they can certainly succeed in riling up the consumers of the news.

Let’s take a more biased news medium, the Salon.Com website. Its readership obviously does not wish Trump well. (Neither do I, for that matter.) But its page today bristles with chatty “experts”:

  • “Punk”: Don Winslow on Donald Trump
  • “This is a big deal”: Experts say Judge Cannon’s order signals “bad news” for fate of Trump case
  • “Things just got very real”: Legal experts say Jack Smith appeal threat “puts Cannon on notice”
  • “Trump is running scared”: Legal experts slam “harebrained” scheme to get NY judge to recuse
  • Profs: Trump ruling unlocks key evidence
  • Experts “very worried” at Cannon’s order

People, it’s not news until it actually happens.

It is possible for editors to avoid this type of rampant supposition. For example, I could find no examples of blabbing experts in the NBC or CBS news sites. Apparently, they are more interested in reporting the news rather than creating it.

Eclipse

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Enough Fentanyl to Kill a Regiment

Yesterday afternoon, I heard some strange animal-like sounds coming from below my living room window. I pushed back the blinds, only to see several policemen and paramedics tending to something hidden by the hedge separating my building from the neighboring building. As I continued to look, I saw the paramedics hauling a black man in a bloodied t-shirt who was still howling.

Just another day on the streets of L.A., watching as our civilization is being eclipsed. And not just for a few minutes, either, but for the long count.

I do not understand why anyone would think that recreational drugs would be an improvement on real life. Even when real life is grim, it beats madness and suicide by chemical.

What is the tipping point after which there are so many people on drugs that reality has been supplanted? For a possible picture, read Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress.

Sanctuary

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Immigration: Becoming More of an Issue As Time Passes

When it comes to immigration, the United States has been lucky. That is mostly because most of the migrants to our country were not at odds with our civilization. I think of the problems with Pakistanis in Britain and Burmese Rohingya in Thailand, and I see the American prejudice against Mexicans and Central Americans as solvable over time. We were just plain lucky that the peoples of the North and South American continents are not substantially different from us, and that we are separated from Europe, Africa, and Asia by two large and formidable oceans.

Within historic times, there have been long periods of migration that contributed to the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. On my bookshelves is an eight-volume study by Thomas Hodgkin entitled The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. They tell a long tale of ravages wrought by the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, and Franks. They are not the only reason for the fall of Rome, but they certainly contributed.

We may soon be seeing hordes of migrants that dwarf anything from the past. The reasons for this are two-fold:

  • Because of the acceleration of climate change, many island, equatorial, and desert regions are becoming uninhabitable
  • More and more countries are turning into failed states, the worst being Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, Mali, Libya, Albania, and DR Congo

In the years to come, the United States will be sen more and more as a sanctuary from the world’s climatic and political ills, even though we see ourselves as having climatic and political ills aplenty. It will be like the migrants of over a century ago who thought the streets of America were paved with gold. Even when they were not.

I don’t think that building a wall along our southern border will accomplish much: the Mexican cartels have discovered that fences could be climbed over or tunneled under. They are now in charge of the coyotes guiding most migrants over the border. In the end, controlling access to the border will probably be more profitable for them than smuggling drugs ever was.

Will the oceans still protect us when the pressure to migrate grows tenfold? I think not. Even now, many migrants crossing over from Mexico are from China and Africa.

What a Coincidence!

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I’m Sure Orange Jesus Knew This

I was watching the National Geographic Channel last night when suddenly I sat bolt upright. On her show entitled “Trafficked,” Mariana van Zeller investigates a man who flew to Mozambique to claim an inheritance, only to find himself in jail for attempting to travel with heroin in his luggage—heroin disguised as candy that was given to him by a man from South Africa to give to someone in Nigeria.

Nigeria? Oh oh! Can anything legitimate have anything to do with Nigeria? Apparently, there is a term in Nigerian Pidgin describing the types who are so imprudent as to turn up in Africa for their “inheritance”: that term is maga, which means “easily fooled idiot.” On the show, Van Zeller interviews a masked Nigerian baddy (no doubt a Prince) who points out that the man imprisoned in Mozambique is nothing more than a maga for actually showing up to claim his non-existent inheritance.

Ha ha, it is to laugh!

So when all those flyover country chuckleheads show up at Trump rallies wearing their MAGA hats, is it merely a case of self-identification? “I’m an easily fooled idiot. Lie to me!”

Too Much and Not Enough

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Heavy Rain in Southern California

Is it time to turn on the news yet? And when it is, what do you expect to hear? I don’t know about you, but I have come to the conclusion that the purpose of the news is to sell advertising by making the viewers fearful, such that they will want to be “informed” on the latest developments and continue to come back for more.

I have been asked by several friends outside of California whether I have “survived” the rainstorms that have hit the state this month. Evidently, I have, as I am writing this blog.

Southern California weather news can be illustrated by the following Venn diagram:

The blue circle indicates that “there has been too much rain”; the yellow circle, that “there has not been enough rain.” And what about the pale green zone where the two circles intersect? That’s when some weather reports are saying “there has been too much rain” and some others are saying that “there has not been enough rain”—at the same time!

At the same time we have been bombarded by reports of too much rain, there have been numerous stories that now a La Nina weather pattern is being established and that soon we will not be getting enough rain.

Apparently, there is no such thing as “just the right amount of rain.” It’s always a case of too much or not enough.

My suggestion for all of you: Try not to turn on the news just before going to bed. It will play havoc with your sleep.

Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined

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The News Has Not Always Been a Major Part of Our Lives

When I was growing up, the news on television was not the major production it is today. There were Walter Cronkite, John Cameron Swayze, John Chancellor, Dan Rather, and a handful of other mostly White males who spent thirty to sixty minutes telling us what was happening around the world.

Now the news is televised 24 hours a day on several channels. We are lured in with graphics indicating Breaking News, even when it isn’t. Watch a news channel for an hour, and what you get in thin gruel with one major component: F-E-A-R.

If you watch the news shortly before going to bed, you will have a difficult time falling asleep. There will be dire suppositions and wild guesses. I am reminded of these lines from Macbeth in which the uneasy king speaks:

          I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air.
But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.

To which I reply with a quote from Calvin Coolidge, which I use frequently: “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” If the various news media took that to heart, they would lose most of their viewers. Instead, they are in the business of magnifying our fears and even creating new ones.

Just imagine how many stressors they have at their command: Iran, Russia, China, Israel, the Middle East, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, global warming, drought, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cryptocurrencies, immigration, Covid-19, Trump, Biden, tomorrow’s rain, traffic, and so on ad infinitum.

Even the newspapers will scare you with a story. What you think happened in your town actually happened in (frantically skip to page 8) Somalia.

What is the best way to cope with the news? My suggestion is never to watch the news on TV in the evening. Rather, read about it using the Internet and print media during the earlier part of the day. After all, it is a lot better to go to sleep with a smile on your face than shaking with dread.

Forever Subscriptions

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Beyond Baroque in Venice, California

Several years ago, when I was employed and making good money, I decided to join Beyond Baroque, a literary and arts center headquartered in Venice, California. When I retired on a mostly fixed income, I was appalled to discover that my membership was constantly being renewed, even though my intention was to make it a one-time event.

Since then, I have discovered that I have several “forever subscriptions,” some of which I don’t mind renewing, such as Flickr and WordPress. But what about the Entertainment Book, which no longer even produces a book but is now Internet-based?

Why is it not mandatory to request a renewal each year. Granted, many members would fall off the rolls; but I find it somewhat nasty to be charged annually, whether I want to be or not, for a service i do not used. I have even left messages for Beyond baroque, but they have never called me back. I suspect I will just have to show up in person and vent my displeasure face to face.

What I find particularly objectionable is that the credit card companies buy into this scam. I now have a new Discover card, but Discover still allows my old Discover card to be charged by Beyond Baroque.

Whacked Wednesday

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Rabid Black Friday Shoppers in Laramie, Wyoming

I guess it was inevitable. First there was Black Friday, which after the weekend was followed by Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. Retailers love such intense concentrations of outgoing cash flow. I see as the inevitable result a Whacked Wednesday, meaning completely exhausted and presumably short of funds.

If you are a strong believer in sales, you will inevitably spend more money than you can afford on stuff that you will not likely use. Oh, you’ll get some real bargains—but will it be for things you actually need? I rather doubt that quite as much is spent on Giving Tuesday.

As Epictetus wrote some 1,900 years ago: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” Unfortunately, it can take a lifetime to learn this.

So it goes.