my friend julie is moving back to the bay area, damn her.

so i am driving the u-haul up that lovely scenic california highway, the interstate 5. can't wait to chug that bastard up and over the grapevine.

julie, however, will be driving her car, which leaves me alone to ponder my life and the landscape, both equally bleak, both powered by water from the owen's valley (me from crystal geyser, and the landscape the california aqueduct).

i'm feeling a bit better about all the recent trauma, although while i am coming to peace with my grandfather's death, my disappointment in my former partner grows. everything that has happened just makes me more sure that i will stand by my friends and lovers in time of need no matter what else impacts us. this is not the first time that my crises have driven someone away at important times in my life, but this is by far the one that impacted me the most - and even though i know in my heart that it was not a malicious act, it still hurts me so deeply to feel abandoned at a very low point in my life. i question whether it is something i can ever truly put aside.

but i certainly realize one thing - that i can learn from other's mistakes almost as clearly as i can learn from mine.


spun by the propagandist at 2:49:00 PM

 
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos".
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío. Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.


-Pablo Neruda

spun by the propagandist at 1:16:00 PM

 
papa was always a little cavalier about women, even though he managed to hold his marraige together for over fifty years. he and my grandmother obviously loved each other very much, and her creeping madness and accelerating disintegration - culminating in her death several weeks after the initial heart failure - damaged him considerably.

but he reveled in his youthful reputation as a "high-stepper" or womanizer, and his charm and charisma were apparent every time we went out. even though some might have looked down on him because he was a custodian, people in his town were deferential and women flirted and flocked around him, especially in old age. he had the touch, the charm and the head of hair. people loved and trusted him.

he rarely showed me emotion, but i could tell from the subtle changes in him whether he felt happiness, pity, or love, or saddness. they were shades of the same color for him, all blending together in a long and hard life. but his subtlety of emotion, his restraint made them that much more significant for me - because he wasn't holding back or denying his feelings - simply distilling them through his years of disappointment, poverty, alcoholism and loss. they were real, they just were cured and in perspective.

i always went to him when things were tough for me or i was hurt and confused. i knew that no matter what i was going through, he had had it worse. and he was still here, and he was still standing - after all he survived poverty, abandonment, alcoholism, and two kids. he always had an answer, even if it was glib. but it was hardly ever an easy answer - or one that was comforting in the moment.

i'll never forget what he told me after i had my heart broken for the first - and to this day, the worst - time:

"women are like streetcars. miss one - just wait long enough and another'll come along."

and such it is. although i feel like i've ridden the last car to the end of the line.

i miss you papa. i wish you were here right now.
spun by the propagandist at 10:40:00 AM

 
i can't believe i just fixed it.

code monkey mikey!
spun by the propagandist at 3:59:00 PM

 
okay, i've installed this thing and i hate the way the comments text is larger than the rest of the text, but i can't seem to figure out how to fix it. even when i remove the code from the site the damn "COMMENTS" post eight stories tall is still blinking blinking blinking below my text.

so now i will be reminded in vegas style signing (one story casino, ten story sign) that no one cares to comment on my sentimental rantings.

i can hear the echo of my typing even now.

hello?
spun by the propagandist at 3:41:00 PM

 
i've just added a comments function so the people who don't read this cannot leave me messages, ideas, rants, accusations, etc. is it working?

let me know.
spun by the propagandist at 2:57:00 PM

 
Papa was a cowboy and a stubborn bastard.

My grandfather was born in Oklahoma, abandoned as a small child and adopted by the Crenshaws. Granny Crenshaw raised him as her own son; some of her other children would say her favorite son.

He rode rodeo and traveled the Midwest following the rodeo circuit with the bulls and other rodeo stock the Crenshaw’s raised on their land. He was an accomplished cowboy, and respected on the circuit for his skills.

But eventually he moved to California with his wife’s family, and worked as a migrant farm worker, boxmaker and troublemaker.

It was here in the imperial valley that he joined a boxmakers’ strike and walked home alone when the rest of the workers, including his ride, returned to work after being threatened by management. He was the only one to refuse.

But he did finally find that rarest of things in those days, a steady job that provided for his family.

And it was here that he took the stand that drove him and his family from the valley. As the manager of the government work camp for migrant workers, it was his responsibility to maintain the living quarters for the workers, including the Mexican Braceros.

When his superiors ordered him to build another camp of shanties for the Braceros, he refused. He refused because he didn’t believe that human beings should be forced to live in such conditions. They told him he had to leave. And not just the job – because he stood up for the wrong people, the people with no power or voice, he angered the people with the power. He had to leave Brawley too.

The night before he was forced to leave he took his son, my father, to show him why they were leaving.

He showed his son the one water tap that served the entire Bracero camp. He showed his son the dirt floor shacks where entire families were forced to live. He told his son how there were no bathrooms or outhouses, no beds or kitchens or places for the families to eat, wash or sleep in comfort. He told him how no person should be forced to live like this, that it was wrong.

And the next day they left the Imperial Valley to make their way somewhere else, somehow.

spun by the propagandist at 12:28:00 PM

 
it is the 30th anniversary of watergate, a time when we should turn towards our past and shake our collective fist in righteous anger, cursing the bastards that deflowered the republic in the modern media.

but we won't, because nobody understands any more what really happened. can i really be the only 32 year old with a dog eared copy of the Nixon tapes and the national archive nixon site bookmarked? (okay, they have pictures of the nixon/elvis meeting too, so its not just the tapes.)

and here is the proof, thanks to the polling report:

Remembering Watergate

ABC News Poll. June 7-9, 2002. N=1,004 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. Field work by TNS Intersearch.
.

"It's been 30 years since the Watergate break-in caused a political scandal in Washington. Do you feel you know enough about Watergate to tell the basic facts to someone else, or not?"
%
Yes 34
No 65
.

"Do you think President Richard Nixon's actions regarding Watergate were, or were not, serious enough to warrant his resignation?"
%
Were 63
Were not 24
No opinion 14
.

"As you may know, President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a pardon from criminal charges arising out of Watergate. Do you think Ford did the right thing or wrong thing in granting Nixon a pardon?"
%
Right thing 59
Wrong thing 32
No opinion 8

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Associated Press Poll conducted by ICR. July 28-August 1, 1999. N=1,012 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
.

"It has been more than 25 years since the Watergate break-in caused a political scandal in Washington. Do you know enough about Watergate to tell someone else about it?"
%
Yes 40
No 60
.

"Which statement comes closer to your view about Watergate? It was a very serious matter that revealed corruption in the Nixon White House. OR, It was just politics -- the kind of thing both parties engage in."
%
Very serious matter 48
Just politics 45
Don't know 6
Refused 1
.

"Looking back, do you think President Nixon's actions regarding Watergate were or were not serious enough to warrant his resignation?"
%
Were 62
Were not 26
Don't know 12
.

"Twenty-five years from now, do you think Richard Nixon will be remembered more for the Watergate scandal or for his policies as president?"
%
Watergate 72
His policies 22
Don't know 6
.

"Do you think the charges of misconduct against President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky matter were more serious than the charges made against President Nixon in Watergate, less serious or about as serious?"
%
More serious 18
Less serious 45
About as serious 33
Don't know 4



spun by the propagandist at 11:15:00 AM

 
Papa died while we were at dinner.

He first went into the hospital with pneumonia, a disease that had plagued him in his later years and gradually, incidence by incidence, whittled down his lung capacity to less than 20% of normal. Every breath was labored and calluses began to form on his nose from the supplemental oxygen tube.

It was frightening watching him struggle to breathe, gasping as his muscles atrophied from the lack of oxygen and exercise – because without the air, he simply couldn’t stand on his own. And his obstinacy in the face of crisis – that same will that had carried him through heart attacks, a 5 way bypass on his heart, the prognosis that his heart wall was so thin it could just explode some day – the four or five predictions of imminent death over his last 3 or so years – it began to erode. It began to erode the day he moved into a “home,” a 24-hour nursing facility.

We just couldn’t meet his needs, his requirements for medicine, oxygen, movement. I lived with him for several years after we had to move my grandmother into a facility, where her descent into madness induced by small, multiple strokes only intensified. He could still move around in those days, still take care of himself – although we had to confiscate his driver’s license after he almost backed his van over his best friend.

After I moved out he lived with my parents for a while, and then when his health deteriorated, he moved – or I really should say we moved him, because he never really wanted to go – to the nursing home. The nursing home, where he would shrivel to a skeleton of a man and fight for his breath, where his eyes failed him and he went gradually blind. Trapped in darkness and in bed, with a crushing weight on his chest, he sat alone most of the time, I was too hurt and disturbed by what i saw, too guilty at seeing this man that had ridden on the backs of bucking bulls, hoisted me above his head as a child, the man I saw as invincible, strong, capable of overcoming any challenge or obstacle – I was too guilty and too pained to see him weak and helpless. And that narcissism, that selfishness deprived him of comfort and love before his death.

He got that attention in the week before he died, when he was conscious enough to realize it. And when he left, when he died, he did it as he had spent most of the last year of his life. Alone in his room.

spun by the propagandist at 12:35:00 PM

 
my grandfather's name was mack. we called him papa, for a while little papa because physically he was smaller than my alcoholic and abusive step-grandfather. but to me he was always the real papa, identified in that innocent way that children sense and simplify true feelings of love and dedication.

he died on may 3rd of this year, one day shy of his 84th birthday. he was one of the cornerstones of my life, along with my parents one of the people that i respect most in this world and life, and one of the few people that i can claim to truly love without any reservation or doubt. i miss him in a way that aches deep down. i can't talk about it, and this is only a feeble attempt to somehow deal with those feelings by writing about some of the things that i loved about him, like the myths that surrounded him, and the aura of menace and charisma that always encompassed him, even in old age.

stories about his life have entertained me my entire life, even his shortcomings: abandoned on the side of the road at age 6, rodeo cowboy, migrant fame worker, brawler, womanizer, entrepreneur, restaurateur, brawler, father, friend, grandfather. brawler.

one of the favorite stories revolved around one of his rodeos in texarcana, probably in the 50s. he was bullriding, got thrown and felt that the rodeo clown didn't try quite hard enough to distract the bull. as my father, somewhere around 8 years old, turned a corner looking for papa, he saw my grandfather beating the living hell out of the clown, bouncing him off a chain link fence while lecturing him on how to distract bulls. my father hates clowns to this day.


spun by the propagandist at 12:08:00 PM

 
bitter mike sez:

identifying a behavior or problem is no excuse for perpetuating it.

selah.
spun by the propagandist at 9:43:00 AM

 
amtrak ride from berkeley to sacramento

berkeley "passenger station:" two benches underneath the university street bridge at 3rd.

i like the way the conductors always pull out the yellow step stools when you get on and off the trains.

small park in el cerrito that butts up against the train tracks. two people sitting on the hood of their pickup, their bay view momentarily obliterated by my train.

in the water, stubs of pylons from old piers, almost like willem defoe's teeth in wild at heart.

train rolling right thru the refineries in richmond and the gravel pits in martinez.

the lines and lines of old freighters tied together in san pablo bay.

port o john storage yard.

dump truck painted in desert camo with chain link fence over the bed, abandoned in the wetlands outside fairfield.

two signs on small property outside sac (not my emphasis): "trespassers will be shot AND KILLED."
spun by the propagandist at 1:00:00 PM

 
i usually don' t agree with safire, but this time i think his libertarianism has overtaken his conservatism to actually produce something i agree with.

fucking fbi. and since you're on the web now mr. mueller, i hope you add this to my file.

J. Edgar Mueller
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


ASHINGTON
Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. That is the dismaying probability that Congressional oversight (it should be called undersight) will begin to show this week.

To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director "J. Edgar" Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.

They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.

Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).

Thus we see the seizure of new powers of surveillance is a smokescreen to hide failure to use the old power.

Ashcroft claims he is merely allowing the feds to attend public events, or to surf the Internet, which "even a 12-year-old can do." That's a masterful deceit: under the former anti-abuse guidelines, of course the F.B.I. could send an agent into a ballpark, church or political rally. All it needed was "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny" — not even "probable cause" to investigate a crime, but a mere tip about possible wrongdoing.

Same with surfing the Net or reading a newspaper or watching television news. Often that's how F.B.I. agents in the field have been alerted to a potential crime, and could then open a preliminary inquiry. If a lead showed "reasonable indication of criminal activity," agents could initiate a full investigation without going through Washington headquarters — hiring informants, staking out a house, seeking wiretap and search warrants.

But under the new Ashcroft-Mueller diktat, that necessary hint of potential criminal activity is swept away. With not a scintilla of evidence of a crime being committed, the feds will be able to run full investigations for one year. That's aimed at generating suspicion of criminal conduct — the very definition of a "fishing expedition."

Not to worry, say governmental perps — we won't collect data in dossiers on individuals or social or political clubs or church groups — the sort of abuse that suppressed dissent in "the bad old days."

Just because the F.B.I. brass hats are presently computer illiterate, do they think the public is totally ignorant of the ability of today's technologists to combine government surveillance reports, names on membership lists, and "data mining" by private snoops to create an instant dossier on law-abiding Americans?

Consider the new reach of federal power: the income-tax return you provided your mortgage lender; your academic scores and personnel ratings, credit card purchases and E-ZPass movements; your political and charitable contributions, charge account at your pharmacist and insurance records; your subscription to non-mainstream publications like The Nation or Human Events, every visit to every Web site and comment to every chat room, and every book or movie you bought or even considered on Amazon.com — all newly combined with the tickets, arrests, press clips, full field investigations and raw allegations of angry neighbors or rejected lovers that flow into the F.B.I.

All your personal data is right there at the crossroads of modern marketing and federal law enforcement. And all in the name of the war on terror.

This is not some nightmare of what may happen someday. It happened last week. Jim Sensenbrenner, chairman of House Judiciary, said the removal of restraints made him "queasy"; Pat Leahy of Senate Judiciary is too busy blocking judges to object. Some sunshine libertarians are willing to suffer this loss of personal freedom in the hope that the Ashcroft-Mueller rules of intrusion may prevent a terror attack. They won't because they're a fraud.


spun by the propagandist at 11:36:00 AM