Stories from the week -

Here are some things I noticed in the news this week -

1. Yay, Team! Once again, human discipline, effort and commitment has led to a scientific breakthrough with the potential to ease human suffering and prevent death. Which disease? Sickle Cell Anemia. As reported in a story in the LA Times:
   

   "Researchers have for the first time performed a successful bone marrow transplant to cure sickle cell disease in adults, a feat that could expand the procedure to more of the 70,000 Americans with the disease -- and possibly some other diseases as well."

   How great is that? Go scientists!



2. So let's see - Vietnam (per capita income: US$1024) has made a commitment to build high speed rail, and California (per capita income US$38,900) can't? As reported in the Japan Times, Vietnam has decided to go with Japanese technology in building their high speed rail system, beating out the German/French consortium. Political will is easier to muster in a one party state, no question, but the lack of will to seize the future here in California is troubling. The wealth of California has been built on innovation - the world's best university system from the 1960's to the 1990's, the University of California holds 11,000 patents and has acted as an incubator for scientific, pharmaceutical, and of course information technological advancements (together, fine, with Stanford, CalTech, and the Cal State system). We used to do things big here in Cali, and we are slowly killing the goose that laid the golden eggs of our culture, society and economy by strangling the funding for the higher education system here. It's a shame - we've we've lost our commitment to educational excellence and access for all Californians, and we've lost our will to seize the future. We've lost our nerve. And Vietnam, and other countries and cultures around the world, are not going to wait for us to get it back.



3. Ah, religion (take 1). As reported in the SF Chronicle, it seems that the huge influx of cash coming into Somalia is throwing the economy out of whack, and many of the poor, young, male pirates who are now awash in cash and buying trucks and sex and drugs are no longer living a virtuous lifestyle. The thoughts of one religious leader?
   "That is what is worrying us, a lot more than the risk they pose to the foreign ships and crew." Nice. Nevermind that people are getting threatened and that kidnappers are using the threat of murder, or actual murder; according to one mosque leader, the real problem is the dissolute lifestyle that the newly wealthy are living. What is it with religious leaders worried about sex and dissolution more than human life? Seriously? Read the story here.



4. Ah, religion (take 2). So in Uganda, homosexuality is illegal now. And if you know someone who is gay and you don't report them as gay so they can be put in jail, well, then you can go to jail too. You don't have to have sex to be labelled homosexual and put in jail, you just have to BE homosexual. So that's nice. And guess who is helping get this initiative passed? Religious leaders, of course, lying about gay people and our lives to spread hatred and misinformation. None other than Pastor Rick, whom Obama invited to preside over the inauguration, had ties to Ugandan Christian clergy pushing the bill. As reported in The Week and elsewhere, Warren and other American religious leaders, including Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, who wrote "The Pink Swastika" which argues that homosexuality led to Nazi atrocities. They all had or currently have ties with Ugandan clergy who were pushing the bill (because whenever people spouting superstition, hatred and fear need ideological cover, to whom do they turn? Religious leaders. Inevitably.) Check this out:
   

   "Homosexuality is infectious," says Ugandan Anglican Bishop Joseph Abura in Spero News. "But gays and their sympathizers want to export it here, to spread their satanic 'gay agenda.' Uganda must pass the anti-gay law to stop them, and others who 'want to uproot or bend our cherished traditions and values. For some Anglicans, vices are now virtues.'

   Sing it with me: "And we'll know they are Christians by their lies, and their fear / Yes we'll know they are Christians by their hate." In final passage, the Ugandan law was diluted - it's no longer a capital offense to be gay, just an imprisonable offense. You no longer will get executed for being gay, just thrown in jail. Jesus must be so proud.



5. Ah, religion (Take 3) - it's really like fish in a barrel this week. Mayor Russell Wiseman of Arlington, Tennessee (population 4000, up from just 1500 in 1990 according to the US Census), a fast growing ex-urban community 30 miles outside of Memphis, is mad at our President. It seems that he sat his family down to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and Mr. Obama was giving a speech at West Point about escalating the war, which preempted it. Naturally, Mr. Wiseman called Mr. Obama a Muslim, said it was all by design, and called it "total crap." The Facebook posting, sic's and all, is here:
   

   "Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

   
   Mr. Wiseman (and does anyone else wonder if maybe he has some ancestors who members of the Tribe, hmmm?) went on to say some more great stuff, here quoting further from the Memphis Commercial Appeal story on it:
   

   In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."
   At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

   
   Setting aside the abuse of periods of ellipses and the grammar confusion, where does one start? I'm sure the church he goes to every weekend nurtures his good Christian belief that Obama is a Muslim and only property holders should be able to vote. Let's not ask him about whether all the queers should be rounded up and put in jail, shall we?
   



6. And because Bren'sLeftCoast likes to end on a positive note, and because it was a tough week, news-wise, let's just end with a picture of the beautiful Southern California mountains with more snow than I've ever seen on them, from Tuesday. (Photo taken by Genaro Molina /Los Angeles Times)

And here's to a better week ahead.

Screw the South / Dig the South (2 of 2)

I have now passed the one year anniversary of beginning this post - it was one of the first that I started - and it's time to finish. (Not finishing has been holding up some of my other writing, so this might be one I just need to move off my mental plate, as it were, to make room for the next course.) Criticizing the South has been very easy for me; finding things to praise, Sisyphean. Whenever I'd get some momentum on this I'd come across a story like the town in Alabama with two proms, one for whites and one for blacks; or the Justice of the Peace in a Louisiana parish who wouldn't marry blacks and whites; or the tweaks made to Ole Miss fight song so that their students - their STUDENTS - don't chant "The South Will Rise Again" at its conclusion; or the mayor of a small southern town shows the world his particular brand of crazy as he posts the following on his Facebook account: "Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose." (And no, I'm not making that up.)

Yeah. Fish in a barrel for the "I hate the South" post.

But it's been more than that delaying me, too - I have had to countenance my ambivalence about the South, and Southerners, and fundamental aspects of my character and what I believe. I possess many of the traits of a stereotypical Southerner, and though I revile the region's fetishization of a simulacra of history there is much about the region and its people that I admire and even share. In undergrad, playing euchre one time with roommates with the Indigo Girls singing "Southland in the Spring Time" on in the background, the line "When God made me born a Yankee he was teasin'" made one of my roommates say "That's you, pal."

And he was right, I do have a Southern sensibility. I was raised to always answer a question from my parents or any grownup with "Yessir" or No sir," "Yessum" or "No'm" - it was so engrained as to be almost muscle memory, and a hard habit to break when we moved into town. Our speech was Southern - or mine was as I spoke like everyone in Fowler spoke, speech languorous and laden with diphthongs (mayzhure), and long "e"'s where most people pronounced clipped "e"'s or "i"'s (passeengers, deeshes) and strong emphasis on initial syllables (INsurance, XEErox). There was a strong deference to authority, and a clear sense of how to behave in public and in public interactions. When a lady enters the room, you stand. You hold doors open for whomever is behind you. You take off your hat inside. Bad manners would get you sent to the car. But those aren't really Southern traits, are they? I suspect many Midwestern boys, or California boys or any American boys growing up in the 1970's had at least some of the same shared parenting and manners; maybe it's just that the south is more conservative in this as in everything else, and more of it stuck there?

Recently when I was having breakfast at the little restaurant up the street from my office in downtown Palo Alto. Two lovely, grey haired women of a certain age came in and were a bit befuddled by the ordering protocol. When speaking to each other, not loudly or in an emotionally exhibitionistic sort of way, but with their indoor voices, it was clear they were Southerners. The young woman behind the counter was deferential, sorted them out, and then asked "Do you mind if I ask where you're from?" The ladies were from Tennessee and the barista was from Texas and there was an instant bond. They were soon talking like old friends, yet there was a ritualistic form to their exchange almost: the younger woman making her query, making a claim to a shared cultural membership, making small talk about their trip - it was unhurried and generous. (The following Saturday the Tejana was working and a lovely, grey haired lady of a certain age ordered right in front of me - and couldn't have been ruder. She didn't make requests, she made imperious demands; she was brusque and loud; she was unsatisfied with the answers to her 63 follow up questions; the exchange could not have been more different. The barista, after the Palo Altan empress had moved to her table out of earshot, visibly slumped and said to me and in general to the air around her, "Why couldn't she just be a little nice?" Excellent question.)

I have been in the South more since I started dating J (June '08) than in all of my previous life combined, if we accept that coastal Florida isn't the South. I've now been to South Carolina for the first time, and I've driven through non-interstate parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana and Tennessee as well. I have a 1992 Road Atlas - a Marquette graduation gift - in which I've highlighted every road I've driven in the US, and before this year there were huge swathes of the South with no color. Airports? Yes. Driving? Not until recently.

And I have found I really loved it. My skepticism would melt when I'd walk into a diner and be called "hon", or when I'd hold a door open for an elderly lady and she'd pause on her way through and look up at me and say "thank you, young man," or when I would revert to childhood habits of appending "Ma'am" and "Sir" to the end of most replies and get no funny looks. It's how I was raised to be, and it's comforting to be in a place where those manners are reciprocated and where social interactions are facilitated with an expectation of the acknowledgment of the other.

And what I've learned from these past two years is that of course the South is not monolithic; that there are some Democrats and even Liberals; that the races do mix in many places without enmity; that gay folk can be out in more places than just Atlanta, New Orleans and Memphis.

In Columbia, South Carolina, out for a nice dinner with J, I saw more inter-racial couples and more mixing of white and black folk generally than I remember seeing in Milwaukee or Chicago or Indy; and on top of it I had one of the best meals of my life. We were at Diane's on Devine, a place I found by doing a search for "romantic restaurants Columbia, SC." (If you're in Columbia - GO! Great, great meal.) We got there late-ish, most tables were at the dessert and coffee stage when we got our menus, and we got a table in the middle of the room as all the booths were taken. No one rushed us, no one gave us attitude.

Shortly after we'd been seated, a gentleman standing by the bar saw someone he recognized across the restaurant and strode to greet him. "HOW YA DOIN', OLD FELLA!" he boomed, before dropping back to his indoor voice. Seeing my eyes widen, JTB said "That's one thing I'm going to miss about the South, that hearty greeting and friendliness."

Our servers were absolutely fantastic - one was a Colts fan who was enrolled at Univ of South Carolina, the other had just moved back to her native South Carolina from San Francisco. The diners over behind J were out for their anniversary dinner, the couple behind me had been married 38 years and had just celebrated their anniversary the week before, and the young couple over my right shoulder, well, now they've got a wedding to plan since she said yes. An unusual set of circumstances (and one that led me to a peremptory and joking "don't get any ideas..." from me), sure, but the way that folks were getting along and talking story, as they say in Hawai'i, was beguiling.

At the other end of the dining spectrum, the Waffle House off exit 55 in Lexington, SC, is where JTB and I had breakfast the morning I left. Everyone knew each other and there was a lot of heartiness and jawing. One regular, smoking in the corner, ordered jam for his toast and a waitress yelled back at him from 15 feet away "What happened, Wheeler, you fall off the jam wagon, too?" Wheeler didn't look like he said no to much. It was the kind of place to which I bet I could go twice and people would recognize me, three times and I'd be "their Yankee." A few tables cleared and one of the employees who was working our area asked about J's ring, first, and then lowered his voice a little bit and asked "Are y'all family?"

"Yup, we are," I said.

"I thought maybe. Y'all in town for Pride?"

"No, we're not. " Pause as I thought about how to explain why we were in Lexington, South Carolina, and then, "Wait. Columbia has a Pride?"

"Yup, it's a big one, too - RuPaul performed at it last year!" His personal pride and excitement was evident.

You coulda knocked me over. And then he told us about his boyfriend, who was working back in the kitchen, and their house, and if we hadn't had to leave I'd'a bet we'd'a had invitations to a barbecue before long.

I like that friendliness, and as I've thought about these things and my feelings about the South over the past year in an attempt to write this, I've realized that by temperament I am not ironic or detached; that my intellectual and social stance is engagement, les mains sales; and that my default setting for public and social interactions is conservative - manners, respect, and awareness of communal expectations. This has surprised me, given my deep distrust of class and class markers (I once inveighed for 20 minutes on how wearing nice clothes to an event like a wedding reinforced socioeconomic strata, and I still believe it - and don't get me started on college bumper stickers; in most cases I find them as tacky as the guy in the 90s who would wear a different Hard Rock sweatshirt every week - "Reykjavik" or "Nagoya" - to show his ability to spend money).

Maybe it was all of those years in Japanese and Hawaiian culture - where one avoids being direct to avoid being rude, where knowing the social markers and how to behave is important - that has affected my perception of these things. There are similarities to Hawai'i, I've thought that before, particularly with New Orleans and Hawai'i. Food is important. Work is a means to an end. Neither culture is linear or time-based, they are relationship based.

In any event, I do believe that in the South people know how to behave in the public sphere. And no, it's not just in the South where you can experience this. My buddy Dave, a native Minnesotan, and I were in Milwaukee recently, and we both commented how if we were in Cali or South Florida the food would have been twice as expensive, half as good, and served with a side of surly.

I don't mean to idealize it. There was a reason that server at Waffle House was so excited about Gay Pride, a reason that a Californian may have forgotten. That crazy mayor in Tennessee has a lot of supporters. Some of the worst service I've had in the last year was at Rock'n'Bowl in New Orleans (much mitigated by the cheapness of the beer and the quality of the Zydeco band and, let's face it, being able to bowl).

The flip side - well, I've already written about parts of the flip side, but Southern culture can be tribal, insular, suspicious, superstitious and mistrustful.

But there is a strong regional culture that has been maintained in this national media age, and there are things about it that unquestionably contribute greatly to our national character. And in spite of myself there's a lot about it I really like.

But for now, I'll keep Senators Boxer and Feinstein, thanks.

Nothing gold can stay

I don't know what to say or how to write this, so I'll let the obituary speak for itself.

Steven McClure, 39, of Huntsville passed away Monday.
He is a 1988 graduate of Grissom High School and attended Auburn University. He resided in Colorado before returning home to Huntsville.

Survivors include his parents...; brothers...; sister...; nephews...; nieces...; partner ...; and dear friend...

The memorial service will be at 4 p.m. Friday at Laughlin Service Funeral Home.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Greater Huntsville Humane Society or to the ARK.

This is the Stevie about whom I wrote in a previous blog entry. I was listening to iTunes when a song came on that reminded me of him: Waiting for That Day, by George Michael. He used to chant the coda to me, "You can't always get what you waaaant...," when I'd be whining about something.

And on a whim, thinking about him, I Googled him. His death notice was in the Huntsville paper only two weeks ago.

Since readers here got to know something about him, I thought it only appropriate to share the news, and to say that the world is diminished by his loss.

I remember him as a fiercely decent man who was smart, and beautiful, and innately attuned to exposing injustice.

I am at a loss for words.

He was 39.

Benton County - Paper Route

I worked on or had a paper route in every one of the Fowler years, or the years that I can remember, anyway.

Fowler, Indiana, and the whole county had its own paper, the Benton Review, but that didn't need to be delivered. You got it mailed to you at home or you bought it at the IGA on Thursday, but there was no route. That saved some poor teenager(s) a lot of trouble - everyone in the County took it, and it only came out once a week. The social situation in Benton County what it was, you had to get it and read it right away so you wouldn't be behind on the times. You wouldn't want to be the last one to know who was entering what at the 4-H Fair, or be the last one to get that new recipe for zucchini bread, or get double booked and thus be unable to attend the Ladies' Altar Society's monthly supper.

I only once got a mention in the Benton Review, and that was after we'd moved away - I got busted for speeding just inside the Benton County line, near Templeton, driving up US 52, a four lane divided highway, to our dentist in Kentland with my brother Chris. That was one of only two speeding tickets I've ever received, and that was 1986 (the second was in 1991). (Makes you wonder what the cops are doing, really. Oh yeah, pulling me over on suspicion of grand theft auto. Or of knocking off a 7-11.) That ticket was earned only four years after we left Fowler so there was a chance that Ma would see the Benton Review, and thus learn about the ticket, and thus restrict my driving privileges. My friends the Schwartz's helpfully saved the Police Blotter column for me, and I still have it somewhere. "S. Brennan, LaFayette, Ind., speeding, 69 in a 55." My claim to fame in my hometown.

But there was more than one paper that you could get in Fowler in the 1970's, and while no one I knew got the Chicago papers, our family had the Sunday morning Indianapolis Star route. The Star would come to us in sections, with ads, comics and lifestyle arriving Thursdays and news and sports coming on Sunday mornings. The whole thing would then need to be stuffed together, rubber banded, and delivered early on Sundays. I would often help with stuffing but I only remember actually delivering it twice. It was the "big boys" route, mostly, but stuffing was a crappy job, so I got to do it.

When I was a little older, us "three little kids" had the afternoon daily, and I got to do more than stuff. There were two routes in town - we had the southwest one and another family had the other half of town. The papers from the Lafayette Journal and Courier distributor would arrive every day at 2:30, which meant that during the summer I'd ride my bike or run home from the pool at the 2:50 ten minute break. (At the Fowler Pool, hours were 1 to 5 [well, 4:50] and 6 to 9 every day, with a ten minute break every hour at :10 minutes to. I've never heard of this break at any other pool. I guess the pool closed from 5 to 6 for a dinner break, but why the ten minute break? No idea.) During the school year, the papers would be there waiting for me when I'd ride home or take the bus home from Sacred Heart.

The J&C came bundled in a stack, wrapped in brown paper with a slip with that day's count, and banded with wire. To prepare them for delivery they had to be cut out of their bundle, counted to make sure the daily slip was accurate, rolled, rubber banded, and stuffed into bike saddle bags which went over the rear fenders of our bikes. In the years we had TV in Fowler, Tom and Jerry would be on at 3:00 p.m. and sometimes we'd roll the papers with that playing in the background. I was a fast roller and I enjoyed that part: folding the papers into 1/4ths, grabbing a green rubber band from the pile on the threadbare living room carpet, putting it around the top, twice, pushing it down to somewhere in the middle, flipping the finished product onto the pile, and grabbing the next one. When there were just a few left, someone would start stuffing the saddle or shoulder bags with the rolled papers, fold side up for easy pulling and flinging.

We delivered the papers off our bikes, most of the time, unless it was really snowy and then we'd walk the route with a sled. I distinctly remember riding my old Schwinn in the snow, though - it had to be pretty bad for us to walk it. I don't ever remember getting driven for the daily paper, though sometimes on Sundays, after the big boys moved on to better jobs and the Indy Star was delivered by someone else, when the J&C was on a morning delivery schedule, dad and I would wake up early, just the two of us, and deliver the papers by car. We'd then go to 7:00 a.m. Mass and come home and make waffles for the rest of the family who would go to the 9 o'clock Mass, which was longer but had guitars. But that's a different entry.

For the afternoon daily route, though, it was almost always on my bike. I'd put the saddle bag over the rear fender of my Schwinn - or whichever Schwinn was in working condition - and I'd head into town. (Starsky's, Wagoner's, then you'd ride up past the grain elevator [above], over the tracks, across US 52,and down to 3rd street... as I sit here 30 years later, it's a little surprising to me that I could still do the route, maybe in the way that some people remember cheer leading routines or the Gettysburg address. I don't know where my checkbook is or when my siblings' birthdays are, but I could still do most of my paper route.

(I found a pic online here of roughly how I looked delivering papers - I was that skinny, definitely, but my bike was nowhere near that nice; and instead of "Houston Chronicle" on the white saddle bag that hadn't been this clean in years, it read "Indianapolis Star" in worn orange reflective lettering. )

We'd do a few houses on the other side of 5th, Fowler's high street, and then deliver to the businesses downtown. Growing up, Fowler supported two drug stores, Rexall's (closed) and Denny's (attractive, isn't it?); a men's clothing store, Muller and Muller (closed); a full service jeweller, Korbe's (closed); a bowling alley; a movie theater (still open; new pics here); two hardware stores, Western Auto (closed) and Dorsey's (still open!); two restaurants/cafes downtown (that I remember, there might have been more but two took the paper), the Flashing Arrow Cafe (long gone - the building has been razed but it would have been in the left foreground where the white car is parked facing the street) and Buc and Mason's (now Kidwell's Family Restaurant, still open); Molter's Mower Sales and Repair (closed); two insurance agents (it looks like there are three now, one of which you can see on the left [south] side of 5th Street, third building up); and a few taverns: Hank's, the Uptown Bar, and the Local Tavern. There were also three grocery stores, the Grab-It Here, Furr's Home Market, and the IGA.

(By the way, that first building on the left side of the street at 305 Fifth Street is the Fraser and Isham Building, built in 1895. More - much more, including photos of interior and exterior details - can be seen here. No tenant of the building ever took the paper, so I've never been inside.)

The Uptown Bar, Hank's Tavern and the Local Tavern all took the paper, and from as young as I can remember, every day, at a little past three in the afternoon, I'd park my bike in front of each, clomp in, set the paper on the corner of the bar closest to the door, and clump out, always very cognizant of the smell of smoke, of the men (always men) sitting around the bar, of the dark and the warmth. There was also a imbued atmosphere of the forbidden, as a kid delivering papers to the bars. My parents didn't drink, ever - no wine with dinner, no beer while working on a car, nothing - and while my older brothers may have it was never at home and it was never discussed. Here were people who clearly did. I was a very sheltered little boy, and I never thought anything about those men, or why they drank, and I don't remember ever thinking they shouldn't have been drinking at 3:00 in the afternoon every day, but I knew that going to bars was not something that every kid at Sacred Heart Fowler did, so that part of my route was always fun.

Well, but it wasn't my route, of course. Nothing too much belonged to any one kid, as I remember. Despite my father's politics we were definitely practicing Socialists in our house: the paper route wasn't mine, and though the labor was individual the profits were shared to cover household expenses. We'd collect door-to-door with our Collecting Book, held together by big metal rings, and we'd tear off little stubs from a perforated cardboard sheet, one for each customer in the order we'd deliver on the route, with dates printed on it as a receipt. We'd collect once every two weeks, and since it was the little kids' route I got to collect, too, once I got to be in 4th or 5th grade or so.

Can you imagine, sending a 5th grader around town by himself to take money from people and then ride away on his bike? We never thought a thing of it, of course. We didn't have bike locks, that I remember, or a house key for that matter, so it was definitely a different time.

When we had the money, we'd carefully count up all the bills and change, put aside what was due the J&C, and depending on how things were going we'd put the rest either into the empty band aid tins that served as our personal banks, if times were good, for our own savings, or into the Joker, a clear glass change bank that stood about twelve inches high with a metal screw-off top with a coin slot that was half Buddha, half clown. The Joker acted as a de facto petty cash for our family growing up, and I distinctly remember times when the Joker was raided to get staples. It wasn't often, but it happened.

I don't remember anything about the money I made from the paper route. I must have made some, and I'm sure my sisters paid me, but I don't remember what I did with it. Not surprising, really - thirty years later I still have no idea what I've done with the money I've made. I never did the paper routes - the rolling, the stuffing, the delivering, the collecting - for the money, it was expected and done in the same way that clearing the table or washing dishes or weeding the garden or any of the other innumerable chores around an acre of property with two out buildings and a house of questionable structural integrity were done. Money didn't factor into it, didn't motivate me, and didn't have too much of a hold on me, even then. I didn't really have any that was my own - never paper money, anyway, though I do remember gramma sending me a dollar for grades once a semester when I started school - but there'd usually be a nickle in my band-aid tin to get a piece of candy in town if I wanted one, or a few pennies to buy something from the concession stand at the Fowler pool during the summer. It felt good to contribute to household maintenance, I loved riding my bike and talking to people I'd see in town - sometimes to the point that I'd get in trouble for taking so long with the route - and I enjoyed the routine. It was part of what was done, and it was fun.

When we moved into Lafayette, I asked Ma if I could get a paper route to make a little money. She said, without thinking, "NO!" When I asked her about it, she said "You're never off, you have to find a substitute if you're ever going to go camping or see grandma or anything, and there are better jobs out there." I had never thought of any of that. All those years tied to a paper route that simply could not have been particularly lucrative would have to have taken their toll, and moving into town was a great chance to give it up.

That was one more thing that I missed about Fowler, though - knowing everyone, and going on a sanctioned bike ride by myself everyday at 3:00. Walking into Hank's, and the Uptown, and the Local, smelling the smoke, dropping the paper on the counter and walking out. It was so safe that we didn't think about safety, and so natural that we didn't think about not doing it - at least I didn't. It's almost breathtaking in its innocence; before cell phones, you'd let your 2nd grader load up his bike or a shoulder bag or a sled and set off by himself for an hour around town to deliver papers or collect money or walk into every bar in town. And you'd be confident that he'd - eventually - come home, if he didn't get plied along the way with hot cider or candy or "visiting."

I loved Fowler, and while I didn't always love the paper route it gave me access and confidence and conversations that I otherwise would never have had. It was another thing that made the move into town the line between my childhood and my adolescence. Like great literature often points out, changes in innocence are only ever one way.

Why Palo Alto is awful - errata

After my first post on this topic I received some thoughtful feedback from a respected friend, and I've been reflecting on it since.

In the past week we've seen a Muslim physician go off the rails and kill 13 people; we've seen Mormons support a gay rights law in Salt Lake City; we've seen a Republican House member of Vietnamese descent support health care legislation because it was the right thing to do for his constituents; we've seen all kinds of people do all kinds of things against type.

In my first post on the ill-mannered and pretty uniformly awful people in Palo Alto, I attributed behaviour to class, and no matter where that's done it's wrong. I was wrong. I started to get at that when I said

Here let me say that, yes, of course, there are exceptions. I have met people from families with great wealth who are level-headed, hard working, polite and thoughtful.

But that's not enough.

In my bedroom is this poster (Copyright Clyde Keller, 1968):


Robert Kennedy is one of my idols, a man who I believe truly understood, on a human level, the toll of poverty on so many in this country and who worked to fight injustice and racism wherever he could. He was a good and thoughtful and decent man. And he came from one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the history of this country.

I firmly believe that many from the wealthy classes in this country are unpatriotic, craven and avaricious beyond comprehension, but my facile conflation of class to behavior does not help hold anyone accountable or do anything, really, except buttress my smug belief that I have better manners and was raised better than the people with whom I'm slated to share an office space and civic life. Great wealth does not make one a boor; boorish behaviour does.

So, Mike, thanks for holding me accountable and being a thoughtful BrensLeftCoast reader. And, implicitly, for thinking I was better than that. Wealth is not related to boorish behavior anymore than praying for rain is to thunderstorms, than physicians are to murderers, than Mormons are to no civil rights for queers, than Vietnamese members of the House are to all progressive legislation (well, wait, there's only one, so...) - and I was wrong to have made the error.

Boors are boors, and if there is some Venn-diagrammatic overlap, it's incidental.

In future, I'll be more thoughtful about my polemicism.

BrensLeftCoast apologizes for the sloppy thinking and the error.

The Den

There was a small plaque up in the den in the Fowler house – and if you're picturing "The Den" as looking like the room in which Mr. Brady worked, or where Bob Newhart wrote his how-to books in the Inn in Vermont, well... the Den in the house in Fowler was different. It was a brightly lit, worn-linoleum-covered room on the southeast corner of our house. It had windows along the east and south sides, an arch into the living room on the north side and a squared – as much as anything was truly squared in that settled farmhouse – entrance into the dining room on the west side.

It also had the front door to the house, at the top of five concrete steps leading down to the pitching sidewalk which led out to the gravel driveway. It was a balky old wooden door that was simultaneously hard to open and completely ineffectual at keeping out winter drafts, so once it was shut up in the winter it was seldom used except for first time guests, Father Froehlich, and our District Manager from the Journal and Courier paper route. In warmer months we'd use it on our way out to the bus in the morning as it was closest to the road and we could see the bus crest the hill from there, but we didn't often use it to come in - afternoons, we'd troop past the flag pole, past the faded statue of Mary in her small but well tended grotto, past the bikes sitting out in the side yard, and past the tire swing - and enter through the back door, where we'd kick off our shoes.

The den housed both the toy cabinet and the gun cabinet. The glass-faced gun cabinet was in the southwest corner of the room, behind the door, and it always contained at least five long-barrel guns including a .22, a .410, and a rifle with a scope. After my brother returned from the service it also contained a Colt .45, but the way that gun was talked about and handled was very different. Shotguns were guns, but the handgun was different, and possibly sinister, and definitely locked away in the bottom drawer, with the ammunition. The upper part of the gun cabinet was locked too, of course, but since the key was IN the lock at all times so as not to be lost, and as the house itself was never locked, you couldn’t really say that this was highly effective security.

The gun cabinet was to the left behind the door as you entered and the toy cabinet was to the right, in front of all of those windows. It really was a shelf unit, a converted bookcase, about three foot high, two foot deep and four foot long, homemade of plywood with one lateral shelf about halfway up and painted light blue. Like most kids, I'd guess, I thought it was fantastic. It’s where I kept my barn and the plastic model animals, and the fences that I'd set up to keep them penned. The Silly Putty and the Play-doh, when there was any to be had (usually shortly after Christmas), were there (when they were put away), and also, later, my tub of BrixBlox (Sears' answer to Legos) and two big yellow Tonka trucks which were pressed into duty when I would play in the driveway.

On top of the toy cabinet was a round goldfish bowl, which you probably are picturing correctly if you’ve ever seen a fishbowl in the comics. If it were close enough after the Benton County Fair for the goldfish that was inevitably won to still be alive, then it would be a goldfish bowl with a goldfish; otherwise, it was housing for any vaguely water-based animal unfortunate enough to have been caught. Baby rabbits whose moms got run over by the mower went into a box with rags and were fed with an eyedropper of milk, but tadpoles from the Fowler pond and crawdads from Schwartz’s creek inevitably went into the fish tank, and were largely forgotten. (And, sadly but unsurprisingly, the fish tank was often their last residence - all died shortly after being moved in. It was on the top shelf of a southeast facing room that got lots of sunshine, so in the summer months when they were likely to be caught, vaguely water-based animals didn't stand too much of a chance.)

To the left of the toy cabinet in the corner there was a wooden rocker – just wood, no cushion – which was said to have belonged formerly to one of my grandparents and which was displaced for the Christmas Tree on the 24th of December. The goldfish bowl was put someplace else during Advent as well, since by then it wouldn't have housed anything living anyway, and that was where the cardboard Advent Calendar was placed. Opening one door at a time for each day that passed, revealing a different scene in the tiny window behind it in the story of Jesus’ arrival, was very effective at building anticipation for Christmas. The calendar didn't change from year to year, and by the time I came along it had tape on top of tape, and I was well enough versed in Christian mythology to remember from year to year which window had The Visitation, for example, so it wasn't suspenseful in that regard, but it was one of my childhood's rituals that marked the passage of time.

The den also had the desk of the house, which, looking back, probably earned the room its label. And which probably should have occurred to me before now, but as a kid it was just "the den" in the way that it was just Fowler or just Sacred Heart Church; the power of naming being opaque and bestowing that degree of inevitability. There was a ridiculously heavy old Royal typewriter for older sibling on the desk which I was not allowed to use. It sometimes had a black-and-red ribbon in it vs. just black, which I thought was especially cool. I would try to surreptitiously type on it, playing with the red and black settings, but I would always get quickly caught - it was a manual typewriter sitting on an oak desk on a linoleum floor in a room with plaster walls, so no surprise there.

The desk was a beautiful old oak desk, with shelves on either side, a foot board that ran the length of it that I could first reach in 5th grade, and a drawer that pulled out in front holding, inexplicably, a small red box with “Dennison” written on the cover diagonally in cursive on one side and three circles, like Cheerios, of white on the other. Inside the box were adhesive hole reinforcers. They were small circles of white paper with the equivalent of envelope glue on one side. When I was a kid I was mystified by these Cheerios, but eventually I learned that if you made a mess out of three-hole punching something, you could lick one of these babies, slap it over the hole, and you were all set. Some bored sibling had licked three of them and placed them exactly over the three circles that ran diagonally across the bottom of that box, and then that same or another sibling tried to circle the three adhesive hole reinforcers with a ball point pen and had failed, so that one tangent of pen line went off to the side, which I remember, even then, bugging me. That box was in the top desk drawer, always, even after we moved into Lafayette when I was thirteen. And I never thought it odd, from before I knew what it contained until after I found the box in its accustomed place when I was home on break from college and I was scrounging for an envelope. We never, as far as I knew, had a three-hole punch or a single-hole punch, and I can’t imagine what we would have done with one if we had it.

In the top desk drawer of the desk in the den was one of my favorite things in the Fowler house: a ruler. It was from my Grandpa M-- (and grandparents were simply grandma + surname and grandpa + surname, done, no nicknames) and it had inset across its face squares of different wood species, from light to dark, from pine to walnut, labeled to help the user identify them. I memorized it in the hopes of being able to recognize the wood of a piece of furniture and say it correctly, out loud, in the presence of one of my six older brothers, my parents, or my grandpa M--. It wasn't the kind of thing I was thought to have known. I loved that ruler and those beautiful wood grains; I thought it was the second most beautiful item in the house.

That desk felt majestic, almost regal, and when I would sit at that desk in the den as a kid, with the dining room to my left and the gun cabinet over the left shoulder and the toy cabinet over the right, even with my feet not touching the foot board, I felt very grown up. I would read the dictionary there, and write letters to my siblings who were away, and haul up encyclopedia volumes so I could flip back and forth between the beautiful topographical map and the no-nonsense political map of whatever state or country I was reading about, and quiz myself on flags and principal industries and largest cities. I didn't read fiction at the desk, it was a serious place for serious endeavours.

And as I'd sit there I'd often look up to my left, in the corner, above where the dictionary and thesaurus stood, and up almost to the ceiling, from my point of view, there were two rounded shelves snugged into the corner. The top one was empty, as I remember, but on the second one there was a thin rectangular wooden plaque – pine – with a perfectly fit rectangular piece of aged paper mounted on it with three words written in brown ink and in all capitals: “I AM THIRD.” I learned to read when I was very young, thanks to my sister who read to me incessantly, so I could read it for long time before I asked what it meant. “God is first, your neighbor is second, and 'I am third,'” I was told, when I asked. I wished I hadn't. I was terrified. Already I was 10th, and now I was third, too?

I didn't often think about it, and I never intentionally looked at it, but sometimes when I'd be sitting on the floor in my favorite hat, playing with my train set - maple - or sitting at the desk, swinging my feet, thinking of a word, it would catch my eye, and I would quickly look away, aware that I'd been caught not thinking about God first again.

Missed story of the week -

Perhaps with all of the media coverage of the "Obama Referendum" you missed the following news item, but relations between Thailand and Cambodia are worsening. Fast.

The Cambodian government has just appointed ousted and indicted former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra to be a personal advisor to Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, according to a story in the Singapore Straits Times.

This is a problem because Thaksin is legally on the lam from Thai government officials, and his supporters have rallied across the country repeatedly in the last few years, disrupting transportation in Bangkok and prompting counter demonstrations that shut down the international airport and significantly affected tourism, a major industry there.

This is also a huge "Screw you" from Cambodia to Thailand.

Civil society in Thailand is deeply divided over the coup that threw Thaksin from power in 2006 - the coup was urban and middle class, for the most part, while Thaksin is supported by poorer urban Thais and those in the northeast and east. A little bit of a Berlusconi figure without the buffoonery, Thaksin is a gazillionaire several times over and owns many media outlets in Thailand. He briefly owned Manchester City Football Club in Britain. He is politically populist, instituting universal health coverage for all Thais but also waging a bloody "War on Drugs" with extrajudicial killings, and he led a crackdown on those segments of the press he didn't own.

There has been residual unrest from the coup for the last three years, and a weak government is in place now, the third since his ouster in '06. Add to that the border tensions of Cambodia and Thailand, who have been shooting at each recently over an ancient temple that both claim (and I'm sure the resident gods whole-heartedly support THAT), separatist unrest in Thailand's Muslim south, and the Thai King's failing health, and things in Thailand could go very bad very fast.

If the Thai King's health continues to worsen, or if Thaksin makes mischief by rallying supporters from just across the border to demonstrate, overtly or covertly or tacitly, or if any of the fully armed troops from either army patrolling the border get trigger happy, the situation along the border could deteriorate into a hot war with disastrous consequences for both nations and regional stability.

Sources: The Nation and The Bangkok Post (Thailand), The Straits Times (Singapore)