words, words, words, lies, lies, lies

                                                                   pre-owned trees

i remember going to a talk years ago where the speaker said, 'human beings have a unique ability to cover things up (lie).' i disagree, as quail parents can fake injury to lure hunters from their young. and there must be many other examples. still, i have to say, we all have to fabricate to survive, to endure our fellow human beings. 

or to get a job. i had a friend who always answered, 'yes i can do that' when he'd never done a task and he would go out and learn, like getting a truck-driver to teach him how to drive a big rig. and a commentator said years ago, 'democratic presidents have to lie a lot to get anything done." now we have a doozy of an example!

what really makes me crazy: how words invented to cover up the actual damage done.

                                ESCALATION: invented during Vietnam, used to hide the fact it meant thousands of more troops and dead. how it meant taking the money for schools, highways, health care, and blowing (literally) it in southeast asia. alas, people simply didn't read books. all the underbelly of the war exposed by writers where the information could be found, but no, a dirty word like escalation taken as an justification  and definition.

                              PRE-OWNED. o god, this phrase a slumlord's paradise. 'this car was owned by someone who never drove it. a blind lady who just like to sit in the front seat and smell the leather!' what a crock. what used to say used car for sale, telling the honest truth now goes for 'i've only gotten you a little bit pregnant' or 'the cancer you have is actually good for you. it will inoculate you when the real thing comes along'. i propose we advertise houses saying, 'this dump has been very slightly partly trashed."

                           FAKE NEWS:   Even if a president has to lie - a democratic country very reluctant to go into into a WWII - we have a president who's lies, pre-fabricates, covers-up already  ten thousand times while in office. he invented the term 'fake news' and continues to create it. the term confuses everything, and these days, for example, christians? who want us all dead (Armageddon) so they can go to heaven read only church bulletins, and those who should know better get everything from talk radio.

                            CLEAR-CUTTING. yes, the forest service did invent this. 'clear' implies good, healthy, clean. it's a term devised from american history. it meant progress, crops, the railroad. and what has it done, at least in california? created scabs in the sierras which can't hold ground water and thus can't be re-planted. of course, the original plan left standing trees along roadways where drivers couldn't see what had been done. unfortunately, thousands of people fly over these mountains every day, the truth clear for all to see. 

why do i always accept a lie as truth? so i can tread water, go to work, read fiction which is truer than what i read in the paper. the problems seem so big, yet perhaps not as big as our imagination. i don't know anything but loss that stirs me to action. am i alone?

A little lesson on China

the older i get and the more i know about some things, the more i realize how much i don't know. i'm quoting a lot of philosophers, including socrates. i've studied theater, art, photography, the art of travel, and so on, but lately i've discovered topics of which i was totally ignorant.

take the transgender transformation, men turning themselves into women and vice-versa, the whole process laid out on youtube, many individuals outlining their experience along the way, doctors describing what to do and how. i even watched a film of male genitals changed into female, vagina and clitoris   included. it was fascinating and i didn't wince once. obviously own equipment has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. 

really, though, i want to talk about china. of course, i read the headlines, the trade war with china and so on. i simply assumed our government paranoid, as it is about everything else. then i stumbled onto many videos of life in china, the taming of the population since Tiananmen Square (1989), the extreme measures of surveillance taken, the development of technology, the thriving sex trade, and so on 

it really i BRAVE NEW WORLD as the population happy with the chance to make money and send it back to the village. owning cars and tv sets they don't seem to care about censorship, no social media from the west tolerated, everything substituted by the government, little news of any account distributed. the education must make everyone react to the same signals. in a day all foreigners enemies, another day all friends. 

i recommend this site first: https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza/videos  done by a south african with a chinese wife who's lived in china for ten years. he talks very quietly about almost all aspects of the life there. i'm amazed he's been allowed to operate. he wears a formal suit and maybe that's why. 

other videos show the manufacturing developments, especially shenzen. i was blown away by the wealth and progress of technology. with government sponsorship and control the system is working to put them way out in front, especially in robotics. some commentators tell us not to worry, as we can take the new knowledge from them and apply it in exciting ways. here's the video to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taZJblMAuko&t=1275s  if you don't know any of this, you may be as blown away as i was.

the picture of chinese people, themselves, basically shows a bright and happy population. and i don't think we're so different from them, except in certain instances. for example, they run from people who need help. if they do help, they may be arrested!! and if you want a real expose of china, look at this  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eViswN602_k&t=1324s

i've always loved ancient chinese poetry and art. alas, as in japan, the good old days are not like today. i feel wiser, but not consoled. is understanding an action? 

O the joys of a feral childhood!

i feel sorry for kids today who rarely have a taste of freedom. when i was a boy 70 years ago, i was unchained. it wasn't that my parents didn't worry, didn't care, but in the summer i could say goodbye in the morning and be missing all day. i'd be out with my buddies, shooting rubber guns, smoking stolen cigarettes, running through the woods, and killing rattlesnakes. i didn't have a cell-phone in my pocket to track me everywhere. nor did i have to call every hour and say i was hale and hearty.

as the population has grown and the cities swelled, milk-carton pictures of lost children invaded every home. sexual predators were announced in every neighborhood. and parents became more possessive, not always for good reasons. every parent wants children they can brag about. 'o she's a doctor in ohio, o he's a lawyer in san francisco. last year they passed the five million   dollar mark.' 

i remember going to a class reunion at UC Santa Cruz. they had sign-in sheets, stapled together into books. all of the former students except one claimed so be successful and happy. yes, that isolated fellow said, 'i'm a drug-addict, served five years in prison, fathered five children and deserted them.' not everybody responded to the questionnaires and i suspect there were a lot of losers among the silent ones. 

there are  real dangers, of course,  especially from cars and stress. six girls i've known in town have been killed, four by cars, one by suicide, one by cancer. having kids is a risky business, parents bound to feel them as extensions of their own nervous system. as the years go on there are fewer feral parents. most have been raised on a tether, too much alone in the fantasy of virtual reality, cell-phones have grown out of the palm of hands.

yes, the kids constantly looking at screens, looking for friends, more communal than ever, at a distance. and i feel it is a search for a safety they've never been allowed to cultivate on their own. the herd instinct has them imitating each other more than ever. this doesn't mean they aren't bright and well-spoken. it may mean they may simply repeat the words others speak. and live with a certain fear.

Footnotes to a fire: an interview

What makes lookouts valuable?

Let me answer that with a question. How many people in the Campfire did not need to die had the lookout over the town, Sawmill Peak, been manned? To add insult to injury, the camera on the lookout did immediately pick up the fire, but the alarm had been turned off. Cameras cannot do what a human being can.

Why was the lookout not staffed?

Russian Roulette, the Forest Service and CDF are playing Russian Roulette. In order so save money and buy a plane costing millions to  run, the state closed it’s whole lookout system in 2003, more than 60 lookouts were abandoned. The forest where the campfire started closed all its remaining lookouts for the season  the week before. They used to have 26. They now have 6.

Do you have any other examples?

Yes, the Angora Fire at Lake Tahoe burned ninety houses and almost the high school. The fire was first reported as a control burn. A mile from the fire is a lookout, Angora Lookout. I served on it in 1980. It had been decommissioned, as had the other two lookouts around the lake, Zeper Cove and Stateline,  on both of which I also served. No, it was not a control burn, and a lookout on  Angora would have told them so immediately. I don’t know how long the response was delayed, but long enough.

And how is the lookout situation?

As I’ve said, we’re down to 6 from 26. And though I’d been payed to watch on my lunch break for 35 years, the forest administration decided last summer to save a few pennies at the lookout’s expense. Last July they closed the lookouts in the afternoon when the wind and heat come up. Four times I came back from lunch to  find the helicopter looking for fires. Two turned out to be genuine flames, two were false alarms. One of those false launches cost them more money, I suspect, than what they saved on lookouts’ lunches for the rest of the season.

What do you actually do when you see a fire?

I call dispatch and say, SMOKE REPORT. Then I do my best to pinpoint the location and tell what color the smoke is and how fast it’s increasing, and most importantly is  wind pushing the flames. Then I report any changes as the crews are launched. This is extremely important. Even if the fire reported locally it’s up to me to keep tabs on it and issue any warnings. This is where Sawmill Peak Lookout could have warned everyone to get out. As it was there were no alarms. People found out by happenstance.

What do you think should be done?

All the lookouts in California need to be restaffed and new ones built. Early detection saves homes and lives. Many, many reports come in with false locations,  maybe ten miles away, or in absolutely the wrong direction. This is why fires reported need to be confirmed from above, even if the lookouts don’t pick it up first. Also,  using volunteers instead of a paid professional   is a form of playing Russian Roulette. No part-timer can substitute for a long-term lookout who has watched the same territory for ten, twenty, even fifty years and who can detect something out of place immediately.

Is this an expensive proposition?

Not compared to buying more and more aircraft and installing cameras which can be extremely pricey. I am all for more air-tankers, small ones that can fly low into the canyons. No more DC-10’s which can work only on ridge tops and valley. The DC-10 the state has, in my opinion,  is only for show, to impress people and the news. It costs an amazing amount to run.

Where else do you think money should be spent?

That’s easy, PREVENTION. I know the Forest Service spending less and less on it. It brings no glory and no big money. Every fighter becomes a hero when there’s a huge and dangerous fire. They deserve to be considered so. What’s forgotten is they’ve put out dozens of fires during the season no one ever hears about. Yes, unless it burns up whole mountain-sides and gets on the news, nobody pays attention to the real needs of prevention.

What was your actual experience of the Campfire?

It was a very bizarre one! I was two thousand miles away. As I said, I was laid off the week before. I immediately took the train to Berkeley, then hopped a plane from Oakland to Mexico City. I’d planned to spend a month, though my first impression of the city in the rain made me want to turn around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t cancel any of my reservation at the hostel, since I’d booked it through an agency. Okay, I thought, look at the room, give it a try.  I found a lower, corner bed where I could kind of hide from the other 15 beds in the room. I’d come for art and museums, since Mexico City has more than any other city in the world (except maybe Paris). I’d just snuggled in when I got my first email about the Campfire. I coulndn’t believe it, but I was able to get the news on my phone and follow the events. I felt terrible, like I’d committed a derelection of duty. Friends wrote about the smoke in Chico, twenty miles away, my home. How it blocked out the sun and created a nuclear winter, grass on the ground freezing. It burned toward Chico and they turned it aside burning toward Biggs, reaching highway ninety-nine. A friend wrote about walking his dog, hardly able to breathe. He volunteered at a shelter, where people vomited into the aisles, contaminated by a special virus which made the round of the camps. WHAT WAS I TO DO? I bought an extra ticket back. People convinced me not to come back until my month was up. I let the extra ticket lapse, throwing away $240. Needless to say, I kept connected as the news poured in. 50,000 homeless, Chico flooded with refugees, the parking lots full of tents, people going further afield to find places. At first the estimate of the dead was over a thousand. Gradually the number came down as people were contacted. The final dead just less than a hundred. Ironically, I felt I’d lived through the whole thing myself, only in a very dream-like way. When I did get back, most of the action over. The parking lots empty. No smoke in the air. The only Chico evidence of what had happened a doubling of the traffic on the streets. All in all, it was for me a surreal experience, mixed with Aztec masks and sacrificial alters.


HERE'S A LOOKOUT SLIDE SHOW, THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE!

https://youtu.be/5ERFiFS-eGE

Lancing the abscess

i wish i could discuss politics without being the dictator i despise! yes, i want to solve all problems by dropping a bomb on them. thus, i'm part of the problem. whenever i go for a walk, i can come back uphill faster if i carry on some internal rant. "Give them hell, Harry!" it gives me energy, as though i were pounding the earth with my fists and not my feet.

i'm surprised how intolerant of intolerance i can be. opposition simply stirs me up to violent thoughts, devastating solutions, yet most of the time i have to agree with myself. take this image going around in my mind: a giant abscess grew under the skin of the country (ours). racism, greed, the wider and wider separation of rich an poor, a paring down of the middle class on whom democracy depends, billionaires festering in their lawless domains. in other words, a hidden but not small disease.

and then came the lancing, the puss poured out over the land. this seemed the only way to handle the situation. in stealth and silence the germs and viruses simply multiplied  without recognition. once the scalpel of an election pierced it, the whole country could not ignore the problem. and the infection had to be dealt with by the everyone. hopefully, the seething mass of corruption could be cured by the nation as a whole.

spreading out to a certain sick thinness, the disaster could be absorbed by the healthy tissue, people who realize their own security depends on the good of others. the germs could be handled one by one. different strains of infection could be handled by the common thought. those who live without laws might be brought to heel. yes, it was taking a big chance. and damage is being done in the process.

beautiful lands subjected to mining, endangered species removed from protection, people being thrown out of the country, children and families being separated, bombast loaded onto the media every day. the prince of shame selected for this dirty work seems impossible to puncture. true, the forces of health and well-being have not been subdued. it's possible they will triumph over this flood of corruption. 

democracy seems like a very special state. like life itself, it demands certain conditions. and if the wealthy overwhelm the electorate, then voting will hold no power and the courts will be possessed by the oligarchs. as Aristotle said, "every democracy ends with the separation of rich and poor." will this drastic solution undertaken in the last two years prove to be nothing but a desperate attempt to save democracy? will the sane prevail?

THE RESCUER:
file://www./triggerguardonline/videos/403327400459345/?t=11

alas, too old to be a ladyboy!

yes, approaching 80 i'm not about to get a sex change. true, at times in the past i wanted to be a girl. i figured they got everything for nothing. they just had to be cute. and the way dads doted on them, giving them all they wanted. as a boy i always had to earn respect. what a drag!

yes, i've always been fascinated by the differences between the sexes. recently, i stumbled across a mess of videos on ladyboys in Thailand, mostly by older western guys (rather shy and not weird) who'd found the loves of their life. i kept watching. when could i tell it was a guy and not a woman? one video even provided a test. could you guess? i wasn't always right. some of the ladyboys simply could not be told from females without close examination. 

then, looking for films in spanish, i gravitated to Almovodar, the filmmaker from spain. he hit it big with 'woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown' and has had lots of hits and misses since. he's gay, mixing up transgenders and straight characters  in all kinds of interesting ways. from here i gravitated to guys on youtube showing how they changed into women. this was absolutely fascinating. 

i'd read 'the female brain' and 'the male brain' by  louann brizendine , mostly about the effects of hormones. and here the boys taking hormone therapy started changing, both physically and mentally, pretty much confirming what i'd read in the two books. without experiencing it myself, i can't be sure it's true. one guy in transition talked about losing his sense of direction and gaining feelings for other people he didn't know he had. 

they became more or less convincing as women, their voices something they did need to work on separately. hips bulged, legs softened, breasts grew. the physical changes real. and where do they go for a complete sex-change operation? Thailand, of course. and it's even more interesting since same-sex  marriage has become legal. true, this is outraging the right wing in politics and adding fury to the fire. 

i've  always felt being an American hinged on matters of identity, and how did you really know who you were, and especially were you male or female? this uncertainly plays a huge role in our society. and remember how the fear of being gay used to haunt every guy? think of the high school jokes and razzing. it's really interesting to see the transition, and these gals on youtube get a lot of criminal comments. 

still, ever since reading The Second Sex in a family psychology class my freshman year in college i've wanted to know the truth. i've always felt woman more powerful than men since they can manipulate them. and in work, now that women have been gaining authority, it's obvious an intelligent woman can do anything man can do. and remember: in old peasant societies the women had muscles like weight-lifters and loggers. 

years ago, i got kissed by an italian gay actor in the middle of a theater class improvisation. unfortunately it was embarrassing and unpleasant. i much preferred the soft lips of a woman. 

********************

the high at the end of the world

finally, today, it hit me: this is the culmination of human civilization. with digital memory banks i have all human knowledge at my fingertips. incredible amounts of information. unfortunately, my brain and body can't take it all in. technology is simply confusing me. the imagination of human beings has created wonders which turn into monsters!

in other words, none of us have the capacity of a library, of an internet, of difficult  formulas. i have it all, but simply can't know what i have. true, i try to find simple statements which sum up the situation. "No state of being is static."  "Even chaos has a structure." "We used to call this the future." and so on. 

in other words, if i can crack the atom, i can release all its energy. and i assume all the knowledge for creating a hydrogen bomb can be found on the internet. i don't think i want to know. and as for the picture above, i'm predicting most people would like to die happy. hence, drugs, opioids, overdoses. i don't know what makes life so difficult. i rather think it's trying to make other people happy. if i could just assume my own authority, as every artist must do.

unfortunately, i would re-create the world in my own image, which is tangled, fluctuating between ecstasy and the void. i would simply make a universe for human beings which already exists. global warming ultimately comes from overheated human brains. i'm bouncing off the wall with everybody else, heated up in a bell jar. 

yes, at the very moment i should be able to take pride in this sum of the species' endeavour, i have to admit i've created a power i can't ultimately control. as the ice caps melt and the seas rise, i pilot the minuscule craft of myself across immense and growing waves. if i could only get off the planet, settle another star. even stephen hawking said that my only chance. 

ah, well, i suspect i will continue to smoke the vapor of forgetfulness. after all, the problem way too big for me. and if the shit hits the fan fifty years from now, as expected, my mortal remains will have dissolved into the making of new stars. i don't say this with delight. rather, i'd like to give hope, joy, pass you the pipe.