The Traveling Paintings

Yesterday, my oldest son stopped by for a while; when he left he took my huge "Patty Hearst as Tania" painting to Storage Locker #102, where it joins three of my other favorite pieces of artwork, paintings by my two youngest daughters.

They await me settling into a more permanent living situation, where I will be able to display this art once again.

The Tania lithograph has inspired many conversations with visitors over the years -- it's been with me for 43 years now, since Rolling Stone left it behind in the big move from San Francisco to New York in the summer of 1977.

This painting was on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1975.

My former colleague, Ben Fong-Torres, wrote a song about that story and performed it at least once in a nightclub when I was in attendance. 

Here is his memory:
"I wrote the songs for amusement; this was decades before radio shows concocted and aired parody songs every morning. But at Rolling Stone magazine in the Seventies, I continued my little hobby, and at least two songs were performed. One, to the tune of Bob Dylan's Hurricane (The Ballad of Reuben Carter), celebrated the magazine's big scoop in 1975 on the Patricia Hearst/SLA kidnap and aftermath. I vaguely recall doing the song, with real musicians behind me, on a couple of occasions, including a nightclub, the Boarding House:

Doorbell rang out in the Berkeley night
Into the apartment house they burst
Knocked down Steven Weed with hardly a fight
And made their getaway with Patty Hearst!

Here comes the story of the Rolling Stone
Of David Weir and of Howard Kohn
They found the trail of Patty Hearst
And they wrote about it first."

***

Three news updates:

* The House of Representatives for the first time ever has voted for statehood for Washington, D.C. This is a move that is long overdue, IMHO. Having lived in the area, I can attest that D.C. is a state in any sense that matters.

Besides, what alternative makes sense? That our capital is hosted in a colony? Give me a break.

* The administration wants to throw out the ACA/Obamacare protection for folks with pre-existing conditions. This is at a time that millions of people are relying on the ACA for health coverage, since they've lost their jobs.

Give me another break.

* Facebook will start labeling any post that incites violence or attempts to suppress voting. 

It's about time.

***

From my position now, as a retired journalist, I have the opportunity to promote investigative stories. that come to my attention.

That's what I did yesterday in this space: "'He Played With People’s Minds': Fresno Priest Left a Trail of Sexual Abuse Allegations," by Alexandra Hall for KQED News.

This piece is a reminder that even with the pandemic and the marches for justice and the election campaigns and everything else going on, journalists like Alex are working to hold powerful people accountable when they abuse that power.

Please read her article and think about the work of people like her, who are sometimes falsely attacked as "enemies of the people."

In fact, they are the Friends of the People at a time when the people need all the friends they can get.

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Quail Eggs

Now we are getting two a day, including blue ones!

Daisy's Art

My six year old granddaughter made this piece this morning...

The Coast Isn't Clear

Yesterday, according to the U.S. government, was the worst single day of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 37,000 new reported cases.

We also learned that this may be only the tip of the iceberg, as the CDC estimates that for every reported case there are at least ten more that have not been recorded.

So the bad news is that some 25 million Americans may already have gotten the virus. The good news would then be that the death rate from the disease is apparently only one-tenth as high as we thought it was.

The entire world is reeling from this unfolding disaster. India is in deep trouble; Latin America is in full-on crisis mode; poor countries everywhere are suffering. The prospect of a vaccine? Our best bet is to listen to Bill Gates, as his resources on global health matters dwarfs anyone else's. He says December or January -- maybe.

So here we are, stuck at home, able to go out more than before, but the risks of getting sick may be greater than ever.

That nationwide rash of fireworks going off night after night remains unexplained. Authorities believe it may be a reaction by some to being cooped up so long.

***

The last night of our recent trip, grouped around the campfire, my family members and I played a game where someone starts a story and then everyone adds on. I'm not sure what the game is called.

Now my hearing could be better, but I was following along well enough to know this particular story was about a family isolated on a remote island that finds a turtle. My six-year-old granddaughter had just added her intervention when it became my turn, but I hadn't heard hers properly.

"The family boiled the turtle and they all enjoyed delicious turtle soup," I announced triumphantly, figuring people in such a circumstance would be overjoyed at finding a new source of food.

My granddaughter looked appalled. It turned out I was building on her sentence: "The family loved the turtle and adopted him as their pet."

***

Back here on the edge of the mighty Pacific, we all contemplate our futures. Some of our popular places -- bars and restaurants -- are open for business, and normally they'd be packed. But Californians, like everyone else, get noticeably uninhibited when they get a little alcohol in their systems.

And this is, after all, the center of wine country, with the gentle rolling hills covered with vineyards sprawling throughout Napa, Sonoma and other counties all around us.

What is a nice dinner out without the requisite bottle of wine?

"Song and melodies change and change
And sway
But they still stay the same
The songs that we sung when the dark days come
Are the songs that we sung when we chased them away
If I ever found a pot of gold
I'd buy bottles untold of the nectar of the vines
I'm going to die with a twinkle in my eye
'Cause I sung songs spun stories loved laughed and drank wine"

--The Cat Empire

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Mountain Journal

Where I spent the past four days.

Mountain Cooking

Last night I cooked a huge portion of spaghetti sauce and noodles for our group of ten. Food always tastes better when you've spent the day out in the open air, and the kids gobbled it up.

Every time I cook that meal, the result varies a bit, probably due to the varying ingredients on hand; but partly due to the fact that I don't like doing the same thing the same way twice.

In any case, you really can't screw up spaghetti, plus it always tastes better as leftovers. That tells me that mixing is the key.

People who give me feedback on my writing, especially here at Facebook, tell me it is "wistful" and "nostalgic." Some say it is "comforting." I'm not sure whether it reads better as leftovers, but I'll accept those compliments since my goal is to accompany anyone who cares to stop by during this period of disruption, when so much around us has changed.

Cooking that meal made me nostalgic for the recent past, starting 17 years ago until about four years ago when I was caring for the my three youngest kids half-time and they were still in school. On spaghetti nights, I'd start late afternoon, soon after preparing their bag lunches for the next day and after serving my youngest her favorite after-school snack: cucumbers, carrots and sometimes cauliflower and broccoli with hummus.

I'd carefully slice the vegetables and arrange them on a plate with the hummus in the middle. I'd always lightly salt the cucumber.

Some days she would have a friend come over and I would make enough for both of them. One friend questioned upon tasting the first slice, "salt on cucumber?"

"That's the way it is done," said my daughter, ever loyal to her cook.

The amount of spaghetti I served over the years was prodigious. My daughter and one of her brothers and I ate modest amounts, but their other brother ate the meal in amounts that are hard to fathom.

He's always been slender, so it would be easy to underestimate his appetite. But when it came to his favorite meal, he'd help himself to plate after plate. We seldom had leftovers.

It's many years later now and I've not been able to cook him dinner for too long a time. He is six feet two inches tall.

After dinner last evening my grandchildren shot arrows and carved sticks. Then they built a campfire and cooked marshmellows. Sparks from the fire rose to fly away as the stars began to come out above.

All of this took me back to my childhood over sixty years ago. How quickly time passes; now I am the old guy with a white beard in the swinging couch on the porch, and they are the ones staying up late and telling each other stories.

They contemplate a world of limitless possibilities, I swing slowly, remembering what never came to pass.

***

Summertime, in my youth, was a time to be bored. This was long before video games, social media and flash mobs. There was so much empty time back then thatmy only choice was to let my imagination take over. Often that meant, for me, inventing games.

Vacations were sort of boring too, much of the time, so while my father fished at the riverside, I went down to the beach, where the river emptied into Lake Michigan and sat on the rocks. There, I watched the waves break over the outer rocks and gauged each wave by its height and how far it splashed toward where I was sitting.

I made up teams and calculated their scores by those waves.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, the waves grew bigger and the wind picked up. Out there across the lake toward Wisconsin, clouds came into view.

At that sight I would amble back to my Dad, still working the fishing holes one by one.

"Storm's coming'."

We'd have fish for dinner.

***

There are days I think the whole world has gone crazy. Covid-19 cases are again exploding but people are resisting wearing masks or keeping a safe distance. Thus, the virus hops person to person like a manic bumblebee pollinating weakened flowers, hanging by their stems.

The President ignores this crisis; even worse, he dismisses it as nothing of consequence. He comforts not a single family who has lost a loved one. Instead he blames China, using a racist slur as a campaign slogan.

He desperately wants to get re-elected. He tries to sell to his followers a made-up story that mail-in ballots will lead to massive voting fraud at a time many voters may be too afraid of Covid-19 to go to the polling places. The scary thing is that some of them will buy it. They won't read the studies that prove it is a lie; they blindly follow the demagogue.

The set-up here is for a contested election in November. Biden leads in polls by an overwhelming margin now that may well lead to a landslide victory. But will Trump concede? Will his followers accept the result?

This is the chaotic time we live in. And our democracy is what is at stake.

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Wisdom By Age

After a rather shaky history lesson from their ancient abuelo, more like a rumor session about these parts, my grandchildren scampered down to the creek yesterday morning. Soon, shrieks of joy filled the valley.

"Gold! We've found gold!"

But I didn't hear them clearly. From my perch, I thought they were shouting: "Bones! We've found bones."

So I proceeded to explain to the one grandson who had stayed behind that when animals die in these hills, their bones eventually get washed down to the lowest point, which in this case is a creekbed.

He nodded indulgently, no doubt amused by this unrequested digression.

Anyway, as the others emerged from the underbrush and ran back up to the house, I retreated to my room for another nap, my main activity these days.

Before repose could occur, a granddaughter burst in with something in her hand. "Oh did you find a bone?" I inquired sleepily.

No, Grandpa, look at this. It's gold."

***

You know that reporters have been feeling just as cooped up as everyone else when you see the headlines these days. "How to pee outdoors" or "It's not just you, the fireworks are everywhere."

I'm going to take a wild guess that the instructional article about peeing had as its target audience  females because men pee outside all the time. It is practically the essence of manhood.

So the advice I have for female friends who find themselves in this dilemma is beware of what weeds may be in your immediate vicinity.

Privacy is preferred, of course, but don't let yourself inadvertently brush up against a plant while finding the properly discreet place. It might be poison oak.

As for the fireworks endemic, nobody seems to know what is going on, but we've been noticing it for weeks back in the Bay Area, and according to reports, Boston, New York and other cities are experiencing the same thing.

"Boom!" It happens hour after hour. What's behind it all? July 4th is still a ways away.

***

You live by social media, you die by social media. That's what they say.

For weeks, Tik Tokers and K-poppers were doing their thing, which in this case meant signing up for Trump's Tulsa rally last weekend with no intention of attending. The President's campaign team fell for the ruse, predicting 100,000 or even 1,000,000 people at the event.

According to the Tulsa authorities, fewer than 6,200 actually showed up. I guess the campaign folks were dancing to the wrong playlist. They shoulda known:


"Livin' on Tulsa Time"

Well, there I was in Hollywood wishin' I was doin' good
Talkin' on the telephone line
But they don't need me in the movies and nobody sings my songs
Guess I'm just wastin' time
Well, then I got to thinkin', man I'm really sinkin'
And I really had a flash this time
I had no business leavin' and nobody would be grievin'
If I went on back to Tulsa time
                                     --Daniel K. Flowers


Of course, the President has never heard of Tok Tok or K-pop. His social media preference is Twitter. So he got doxed. 

Speaking of Twitter, Trump is unhappy with the platform that has been so good for him because of things like this: "Twitter on Tuesday put a warning label on a tweet from President Donald Trump in which he warned if protesters tried to set up an "autonomous zone" in Washington D.C. they would be 'met with serious force!'"

C'mon, you can't talk like that. Bating an already angry group with an obvious taunt meant to get them to do what you want them to do so you can use force against them is the not the way a leader should act.

Knock it off.

Meanwhile, OAC easily won her primary for re-election as Congresswoman for parts of the Bronx and Queens. As a rising young star for the Democrats, she is also a strong progressive voice in a party that hopes to win in November through moderation and centrist appeal, i.e., Joe Biden.

Should the Democrats prevail and win the White House and perhaps even the Senate (their advantage in the House is assured), there will be fissures in the future between the progressive and moderate wings of the party.

This already happened in California, after it became a one-party state. Democrats routinely win every statewide office, but the winners differ from each other on many policy fronts.

OAC is a democratic socialist. Other successful party officeholders can be described as conservatives. So even if the GOP disappears nationally like it did in California, my point is there will be plenty of ideological alternatives within the one party that remains.

That's one scenario. Another is that Trump wins.

God help us with that one.

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Mountain Post

For the first time in many years, I am staying in the foothills of the Sierra, surrounded by trees, fields and streams. It is peaceful country, where Mark Twain and John Muir provide the reference points. as well as much of the content of the historical markers in the area.

My grandchildren run through the fields down the paths to a swimming hole. The dog races free of the constraints of the city.

Getting here meant traveling through Manteca and the small towns to its east into Gold Country. Coulterville is the last small settlement on the route and Yosemite is not far of you keep heading east.

Sutter's Mill, where gold was first discovered, is also near here. John Sutter had his statue taken down recently. He enslaved Native Americans.

Back in San Francisco, the statue of Christopher Columbus at Coit Tower was taken down as well. It had been made by Mussolini's official sculptor.

In various parts of the state, statues of Junipero Serra are being dismantled by the Catholic Church.

In case anyone wonders why, the history of racism and oppression reach far beyond the Deep South.

***

Election Year: As much as I would prefer to avoid taking sides between the Republicans and the Democrats, I cannot in good conscience remain silent about the outrageous charges leveled against his perceived enemies by Donald Trump.

His accusations of treason against Barack Obama are abhorrent. He speaks as if he is wants to incite a mentally deranged person to threaten the former President and his family. He muses over the days when traitors were executed.

Shame on him!

It's the same way he rants against the press. He has asked aides if reporters can be jailed for failing to reveal their confidential sources. (In some cases, they can be, which is one of the risks journalists live with to do their essential work.)

But he has also stated that some reporters who cover him unfavorably should be executed.

Shame on him again!

His poor aides are left trying to clean up the messes he creates. Often, their only explanation is that he was joking.

If so, these are very bad and dangerous jokes.

***

On Father's Day, I got to see two of my children whom I have not seen since the beginning of the year. They are in their 20s and told me they long for leadership that is not so base, so vile. They feel our electoral system ignores voices like theirs, that a sense of decency and inspiration is lacking in this country.

This is the direct result of Trumpism. His words and actions cause immeasurable damage via disillusionment. As a people, we cannot afford to have our newest generation of voters to turn cynical and resentful that the ideals they were taught in school no longer matter.

We need them to believe in the highest ideals of democracy, freedom and equality so that they will choose to strive for the changes we need to wage war against racism, inequality and discrimination. We need them to work hard to combat climate change and transform our economy from one that exploits natural resources to one that is sustainable into the future.

We need our young voices to be heard so that we may form a more perfect union.

That requires a change at the top. And this is an election year.

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Amending History

All over the nation, statues to past heroes are being taken down, destroyed or moved. Shrines to former Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the north are among those being replaced, as well as Confederate statues throughout the south.

What is behind most of these events is an attempt to right the historical wrong of racism. Just as our news coverage of these events represents the first rough draft of history, it will be forever subject to the action of the rewrite desk, which is the job of historians.

Most of what is going on is in response to police killings of unarmed black men, for certain, but the persistence of the demands for change are also due to the ongoing use of racist code language by President Trump.

Many of his supporters in 2016, I'm sure, were unaware of how he was exploiting their legitimate concerns about immigration, government overreach, and trade imbalances. The catchphrase "Make America Great Again" implied that the country had once been great but no longer was.

Those points can and will be debated by historians forever, but what was lacking from the phrase was how America got to be the nation it was in the period Trump enthusiasts yearned for.

On whose backs had that country been built? Two examples:

Who built the White House? African Americans, many of whom were slaves.

Who built the most dangerous portion of the transcontinental railroad? Chinese immigrants.

Of course, for European Americans who until recently formed the majority of the American population, there are deep historical contradictions well beyond slavery. This country has never come to grips with the virtual genocide of the indigenous people who had lived here for millennia when the first white men arrived.

One historical figure whose tarnished reputation is slowly being rewritten is Christopher Columbus. Perhaps the Ohio city that is home to the Ohio State Buckeyes should be renamed? Or perhaps I am a just  Michigan fan.

***

This time around, Trump's political strategy is failing to rouse his base. Many have grown tired of his rants, unsupported by facts, and his desire to inflame divisive impulses when what we need now is healing.

Among his most dangerous claims is that this year's election will be "RIGGED!" (his punctuation).

Every conscious adult needs to think about what he is trying to do. He is trying to set up a scenario where he can discredit his upcoming defeat. Meanwhile, every serious study of our voting system has confirmed that mail-in ballots are not subject to widespread fraud at all.

Most ironic of Trump's claims that foreign interference will skew the electoral results. If that happens, it will be to his benefit -- he is the one who has begged Russia, Ukraine and China to help him win, not Joe Biden.

No one will steal this election from Trump but Trump himself.

***

Amidst the sea of bad news, there have been many inspirational changes in recent years. There's a high school in the Bay Area named after Fred Korematsu, one of the handful of Japanese American men who resisted going to the concentration camps set up by the U.S. government in World War II.

That is a wonderful thing.

There's the ongoing battle for women's rights, including the quest for equal pay, even in Hollywood (thanks to Jennifer Lawrence).

That is a wonderful thing.

There is the battle for equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and the support of the overwhelming majority of the American people for marriage equality.

That is a wonderful thing.

All of these struggles continue and all of them are openly on display in today's social turmoil. The common thread through it all is the next phase of the reckoning of history.

The problem for those who yearn for a return to "greatness" is what that greatness was made of, how it was achieved, and who paid the price.

That brings us to the present tense. Who pays the price for today's America? Who is getting rich and who is getting poor?

No, the real battle in the streets is not only over the past.

The real battle is over our common future.

-30-

That's Why*

Happy Father's Day!

Last night, tens of thousands of people expected to show up for Trump in Tulsa stayed hone instead. Their absence and their silence sent a blunt message: Even the President's base is tired of his hate-mongering.

They chose to protect their families and friends from the Covid-19 infection that will now inevitably spread among the relatively small crowd that did attend the campaign event. But perhaps the worst-case public health catastrophe will be avoided..

Trump's appearance was an abject failure; one of the most embarrassing and humiliating spectacles in modern political history. His attempts to divide us by race, color, creed, class, gender, age, and political preference have failed.

We are all better than that.

***

This is one of those moments you are proud to be a parent. We all try to do our best, raising our children to be ethical, compassionate beings. We want them to achieve material success, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that. We are fortunate to live in a country with the natural and human resources to sustain success for millions of people, but there are still way too many who are left behind.

On the one hand, our society is capable of producing a nine-year-old girl who skates and dances like an angel on the Black Lives Matter banner painted on the streets of Washington D.C. Her message is one not of fear or hate but one of hope.

At the same time, lest anyone forget, the demagogue remains in power, with four-and-a-half months to try and salvage his tattered political career.  He has enough time to apologize for the awful things he has said and done and to ask for forgiveness.

Should he do so, many people would forgive him. We are a compassionate people and we would rather see him grow and evolve as a human being than allow ourselves to shrink and shrivel into what would have been our worst selves.

We are better than that.

***

Father's Day is deeply personal for me. I have three daughters and three sons and feel pride in them and their achievements. That's what I celebrate this Father's Day.

My children have been out there in the streets marching for freedom and justice. They have carried signs and they have chanted. They all vote and participate in attempts to improve our society and preserve life on this planet.

They have brought seven more young people into our world, three girls and four boys. Those children are in turn the ones who dance and sing at our parties now. Their sweet voices fill the air around us with hope.

And our brightest hopes can overcome our darkest fears.

Growing up is always hard, regardless of circumstances. Sometimes their hearts will be broken, some of their dreams may prove unattainable.

But the way they are being raised ensures that their values and aspirations will be to help make our world a better place, not one riven by racism and hate.

They are better than that. We all are.

* = Today's essay is a direct answer to yesterday's, which was called "Why Us?"

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