Category Archives: Books

I’m currently in the process of getting my first novel published. I’ll give you the inside scoop of the process.

Nevada Lithium Miner Days

4 Aug 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

A down on his luck husband from Winnemucca, Nevada had been drinking hard, there were words, he got into a quarrel with his wife took her outside and shot her and his son dead. An all-points bulletin went out for a man by the name of Ty Victor Albisu, the Highway Patrol believed the murderer to be armed and dangerous, the suspect was seen headed north on Highway 95 toward the border, the Paiute Shoshone town of McDermitt is there. A day later, it was on the Solstice this past June, longest day of the year, when the suspect was found ten miles off the main highway out a dirt two track road, the Winnemucca husband and father was dead in his car of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

There was nothing suspicious. Appears a defective propane heater caused the fire. Two Winnemucca men were pronounced dead at the scene. This was March of this year.

Last year Winnemucca City Council denied a license to a vendor that wanted to open both a dispensary and cannabis consumption lounge. Dispensary was approved the lounge part of the permit was turned down. No problem, this is Nevada there are work arounds.

In 2017 Nevada’s Tribal Marijuana Compact was passed by legislature in Carson City. There were some questions about what Nevada’s tribes could or could not do and this new law settled those concerned with keeping Nevada in the business of catering to whatever a human being might want, need or desire. Just so happens that right there in the heart of Winnemucca is located Indian land, the term of art is colony. With the expert guidance of Tribal Cannabis Consulting the tribe opened a drive-thru dispensary, cannabis café and consumption lounge. Quinn River Farms out of McDermitt was licensed and provides product for this Winnemucca dispensary. That’s how things get done in Nevada. You really do need to reconsider moving here.

The Winner’s Inn Casino and Hotel is a 2-minute walk from Winnemucca Convention Center, 7-minute walk to the Amtrak station and about a one-minute ride in a getaway car to the interstate. One time while passing through on the interstate I’d gone in for a late afternoon dinner, the Winner’s Inn was known for serving the best prime rib in Humboldt County, by coincidence we were treated to an official weigh-in for a prize fight scheduled to take place that evening at the convention center. The two game faced boxers removed their robes and stepped on the scales. The weight of each fighter was officially announced then recorded by prize fighting officials, these were a gallery of men all had the look of citizens with priors, they had the suspicious demeanor of a perpetrator that knew too much and were under the bosses orders to keep their mouths shut. One fighter seemed to have struggled to make the official weight, the boxer was whisked away, the trainer knew his kid needed a meal and fast before his legs went out from under him.

Life is writ large in the 7^th largest state in the Union. To get some idea of its size if you were to take off by car from a casino south in Laughlin and go north to a gas station in McDermitt that drive would be the equivalent of traveling from Atlanta to Washington DC.

Civilization is tenuous in Nevada, the potential for weakness of appetite haunts Nevadans, it is too common to find yourself overcome by the solitude and Great Basin abyss, you’ll end up going feral, you’ll end up running with coyotes, roaming with mustang, bagging a bull elk out of season, it’s all too sure the tempting pull into lawlessness is endemic.

Detective Matthew Morgan working with the Winnemucca Sheriff’s Department died on June 25, 2020— the cause of death— an overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine. Everything is in play here in the Great Basin— the brothels, the crap tables, the mob bribes, booze and tobacco, these are self-indulgent Nevadan behaviors, a native son can’t see vice as a human flaw.

There are 17,000 living in Humboldt County, Nevada. Most live in Winnemucca. Up in McDermitt there are 400 Paiute Shoshone living on 19,000 acres. The tribal members live along the Quinn River.

South of McDermitt is located the Quinn River Valley farmlands. Hay and alfalfa are irrigated. Paradise Valley to the east also is hay farming land. Then, over to the west is Kings River Valley where there is also hay farming. Humboldt County exports most of the hay to California and Idaho, tallied up all this hay is worth about $135 million.

Paiute Shoshone tribal members find some work on the farms, most don’t find any work at all. You are an eighty-mile drive back to Winnemucca if you live in McDermitt. Gasoline for a roundtrip in a pickup truck, that’s got to take 10 gallons of fuel, figure $40 just to go to town for groceries.

The Montana Mountains separate Quinn River Valley and the Kings River Valley. The road running east to west between the two valleys runs through Thacker Pass. Lithium has been discovered up on this mountain, science identifies the geology of this spot a caldera. To halt its development the Paiute Shoshone in McDermitt have claimed that in 1865 members of their tribe were massacred there by soldiers from the United States Army and that the mine would desecrate the land their ancestors died on.

There is no evidence the massacre was fought on this ground. There is just too little information. It is just as probable that the massacre took place on nearby hayfields, fields that have been plowed and harvested for most of a century. If you dig a little further into the issue what comes to light is that not all 400 tribal citizens in McDermitt are of the same opinion about the development of the lithium mine. Some portion of the tribe see the opportunity of finding a good paying job in a place where few if any have been available. To that end courses at the community college in Winnemucca that prepare a student for work in the mining industry are available and the new mining company has already promised to make a priority of employing the Paiute Shoshone.

Hay farm operations will need to reckon with the changes the mine will bring to Northern Humboldt County. Maybe a century ago it made sense to allocate 90% of all the water up here to hay growers, but it is time to recalibrate, we don’t travel by horseback, more and more people don’t drink milk, and exporting the hay to markets in other states is essentially exporting all the available public water for the benefit of a handful of private growers. Anytime one industry is found to be using most of the water from one watershed it is going to turn out that one day that deal is going to need changing. The world’s climate emergency has arrived, and that time for a new bargain has come.

Environmental organizations have been opposed to the Thacker Pass lithium mine. They can’t be faulted entirely, the history of mining companies operating responsibly is not promising. The mining company out of Vancouver, British Columbia has submitted plans and its permit has been issued. Lithium America’s offices are in Reno. Trucks will take the lithium to Winnemucca where Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway will then ship the metal to nearby manufacturing facilities. Tesla, Ford and General Motors all have built or are building enormous battery manufacturing facilities, some are here in Nevada others as far away as Michigan and Tennessee.

The fight between forces for climate action and environmental justice will continue. Hay growers in Northern Humboldt County, Nevada will have to surrender some of the water they’ve been using. In a resource constrained world some compromise to what we grow and how we eat are going to be necessary if we are going to avoid incinerating humanity into extinction, we need to try something.

The Paiute Shoshone people have proven to be responsible stewards of the land they first settle on 15,000 years ago. Lithium America would do well and be wise to seek the tribes help. Our first people lived here and in balance with the natural world for all these many thousands of years, it is not by accident, it happened by a people that had the wisdom to listen to the earth, to understand her limits. In this crazy world you would be hard pressed to imagine that in this most remote unpopulated northernmost corner of Nevada that our first people would be called upon once again, after the Indian Wars of the 1860’s, after signing the peace treaty, after agreeing to surrender vast swaths of their land, that having done all of that, that now the climate emergency would come near two centuries later to ask for further sacrifice, and that it is the Paiute Shoshone, the hay growers, environmental organizations and the mining company that through cooperation, mutual assistance, that all of these various stakeholders are going to make this all work.

Now this Bobby Garza character, back south down in Winnemucca last month ran into trouble when he was caught trying to use a stolen credit card, sheriff while attempting to arrest the 37-year-old suspect got into quite a scrap. Like so many Nevada men he has got some history with the courts and is likely to be put back into the gray rock hotel for a spell. By the time he gets out the lithium mine should be up and operating and with luck and sincere rehabilitation it is one of those 600 good paying jobs this ex-con might hope to land.

Nothing about rural Nevada changes, it remains remote and empty, most what you’ll find is the truth of what you truly are, friend or foe, good or bad, often you’ll live by the pursuit of vice, a few odd characters take the riskier path and try their luck with virtue. That’s just less common out here, no man of appetite and excess is wired up to behave problem free, that is just not in the nature of the animal, and once you’re out in Nevada you need to understand yourself, look into that image in the mirror and see that you have limits and boundaries to all that goodness locked up inside that human heart you have been given. Plenty come here to whet their appetite and uncage their spirit, but most are satisfied after a lost weekend to return to where they make their home and fend off such feverish temptations. Most of us are wiser for this, Nevada can be tough as a stubborn burro, even the good souls have to fend off the demon temptation to go bad.

Books

Tight as a Tick Dry as a Bone

29 Jul 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

If you are living in San Francisco, don’t have a car, rent an apartment, don’t have a garden, haven’t got out on a road trip, then it is likely the 20-year drought gripping the American West may well have gone unnoticed. If on the other hand you are Max Gomberg the Director over at the California States Water Resources Control Board your time has run out. Gomberg just quit.

Video Credit Alex Arguello CalFire

Lake Shasta was completed in 1945 and filled for the first time in 1948. As of July, this year Lake Shasta is filled to 38% of capacity. The two other lowest measurements occurred in 1992 and 1977. The landmark Northern California reservoir isn’t a stranger to the problem of inadequate rain and snowfall, it is the problem that keeps on keeping on.

Lake Shasta feeds the Sacramento River, the water appears to the unaided eye to be flowing, but the water is hotter and threatening the salmon runs and by threatening I mean extinction, like you know it’s over. Scientists have responded and have diverted water that would have been used for irrigation to reduce water temperatures in the river so that the salmon may survive. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation because of the drought has had to zero out water deliveries to the agricultural operators all up and down the Central Valley, from Redding to Bakersfield.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has just released a scaled back version of a new piece of Sacramento Delta plumbing that is going to go exactly nowhere, I think of this proposal as a way of placating agricultural interests struggling to find water south of the Delta, as the saying goes this tunnel has as much a chance of passing as a snowballs chance in hell.

Much of what happens to the political careers in Sacramento are the result of keeping key constituencies flush with water. Talk of saving salmon isn’t even half the problem, saltwater intruding up into the Delta risks contaminating the drinking water of millions of Northern Californians. The scale of such a catastrophic drinking water crisis is the King Kong of water disasters, the only special interests pretending that cutting off the drinking water to 4 to 8 million people are a few hundred farmers that stand to profit from such a calamity. The Army Corp of Engineers rates this potential disaster as potentially the worst infrastructure crisis facing the nation.

Here’s the thing Gomberg wants us all to know and no politician dares to say out loud. The days of growing whatever the hell you want are about to come to an end. Millions of acres are going to be fallowed, water thirsty crops are going to go the way of the dodo bird, and if you don’t like it well that’s just too damn bad buckaroo—

I traveled through New Mexico during April. Historic wildfires intentionally started by the United States Forest Service have burned hundreds of thousands of acres near Santa Fe and Las Vegas. For the first time in decades the Rio Grande is set to completely dry up as it passes through Albuquerque. Further downriver at New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir this key piece water storage infrastructure is at just 10% of capacity. Veteran high-country hikers are reporting conditions so severe that this spring aspen trees have not leafed out and appear to be dead or dying as the alpine ecosystem is nearing irreversible collapse.

What individual published pictures do is give us just one piece of a global climate crisis that is overtaking life on earth. From the snow on top of the Rocky Mountains, the runoff we see in the Colorado River, to the missing water that no longer fills Lake Powell— all are part of a complex plumbing system that have run out of time and are about to cause the mother of all water manager problems.

Utah’s Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 2/3rds exposing its salty sandy lake bottom to winds that threaten to scatter heavy-metal laden dust storms east where local Utah citizens will be at risk of illness and death if exposed to such air pollution. The circumstances are so serious the state legislature has funded a feasibility study to pump Pacific Ocean water from California 600 miles overland where the salt water will be used to restore the Great Salt Lake to its original level.

The same multi-billion-dollar emergency efforts are underway in Southern California’s Salton Sea where both the United States and Mexico are studying whether a pipeline from the Sea of Cortez can be built to save Imperial County residents from the same kind of dangerous toxic airborne dust.

The climate crisis is getting hard to ignore, most now say it is impossible. The wildfire in Yosemite, the Oak Fire has already consumed 19,000 acres, forced 3000 to evacuate and destroyed 41 structures. Smoke is moving both north and to the west, the California Air Resources Board has issued warnings to reduce outdoor activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pets, children and adults are advised to remain inside. This is now a regular feature of our summers here.

Making matters ever more complicated is the Army Corp of Engineers rushing plans to fortify coastline, skilled scientists at the agency are now recommending regions to prepare to strategically retreat from rising sea levels or in select regions of our coast where urban population is high, they are initiating plans to build multi-billion-dollar sea walls. The costs are staggering.

About 30 million people are living in Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. This group of urban and suburban citizens are our residential water users. For the moment the concerns of this group include having access to water for swimming pools, watering lawns and washing dishes, laundry and flushing toilets.

The same is not true of Rio Verde Foothill residents living near Scottsdale, Arizona. Having opted out of incorporating into the city limits of Scottsdale in the shortsighted effort of keeping their taxes lower the residents have been cut out of access to Scottsdale’s municipal water system. Instead, citizens in Rio Verde have resorted to punching wells nearly 1000 feet deep, at that depth a water well can cost a minimum of $40,000. Now those efforts have turned into a giant crap shoot. It is more common than not to punch a dry hole than to find water, and punching wells isn’t contingent on finding water, you pay to play whether the driller finds water or not. With hat in hand the 2000 plus homeowners have found water 110 miles east in the Harquahala Valley purchasing groundwater that is then hauled at great expense by truck to fill the cisterns in their Rio Verde Foothills homes. As you might imagine this has not done a thing for their property values or politics. Some of Arizona’s most conservative libertarians are mad as Wyatt Earp losing a poker hand to Doc Holiday.

By my count this was about exactly right

If you start sticking your nose around the rural American West, you’ll find some communities that still have access to drinking water. Ajo, Arizona south of Gila Bend and adjacent to the Barry Goldwater Air Force Test Range is one such community. If you live in town on 5 acres or less the local Ajo Water District will hook you up, but there are rules and water is carefully regulated for residential use only. Local farms and ranches enjoy no such access. Some have drilled wells, but water is found deep if found at all and pumping it to the surface can be prohibitively expensive, it’s the equivalent of spending $10 to grow a $1.00 carrot. You get the idea.

Urban and suburban citizens are unaware of the mounting crisis rural farm and ranch operators are facing. Millions of acres that have depended on subsidized Bureau of Reclamation water are being cutoff, there is no water to allocate. Some farmers are trying their best to adapt, other farmers are confronting the reality that the only crop they’ve ever grown is the only crop they know how to grow and at this stage in their lives it is too late to start all over again. The cost of feed has spiked, and livestock operators are hauling their herds to auction zeroing out their operations.

Was once a time when a farm or ranch operator awarded hard work with a living wage. A farmer could afford a new pickup truck, pay his debts down and put a little something away for the future. Businesses on Main Street in such rural communities could sell seed and feed, tractors and other farm implements and the whole virtuous economic cycle could keep our rural communities afloat.

Because of the megadrought many rural communities are being tipped into recession or worse. In this urban/suburban versus rural drought emergency climate change has brought our farms and ranches to the brink. “There ain’t nothing but no good lousy stinking big rocks and hard times for as far as an eye can see—”

Olive orchard growers in Northern California once flooded their fields, but scientists cracked the olive tree code and state of the art is now to use drip irrigate, and the olive trees are only watered when a specific moisture content measurement triggers a radio signal to the switching equipment that turns the drip irrigation system on and off. Drought tolerant the olive trees thrive when the miserly drip irrigation technique is utilized. As is true of every kind of enterprise there are winners and losers, good moves and not so good adaptations. We’ve only scratched the surface of agriculture’s reconfiguring production in a water scarce world

Pecans in New Mexico are a more complicated story. So are the almond, pistachio and walnut crops of California.

It isn’t just this year’s wildfire, drought or loss of water for agriculture that we fear, it is the possible permanent climate emergency that has our water managers terrified. So far, we’ve set policy by extending and pretending, our stakeholders continue to hope forests will become more resilient and less fire prone, the term of art is thinning and culling. Meteorologists keep hope alive and are desperate to report that the rain will return, that the drought will break, that our farms and ranches will return to business as usual.

Decommissioning coal, natural gas and nuclear power stations turns out to be harder to do than we might have imagined, many of these legacy industries have organized and are fighting back. Our changing world is colliding with our unchanging minds. We have turned not giving up on its head, and instead of making the necessary changes there are fossil fuel interests that insist there is nothing that any of us can do, that we can’t change, and the world would be foolish to even try. This Gomberg guy from California’s State Water Board has had it with this conspiracy of naysayer’s intransience.

What is so absurd is that scientists have already invented all the necessary technology to get the world off its carbon addiction. It isn’t like we don’t have the tools so much as we haven’t yet summoned the will to do the hard work.

Looking for a hopeful sign it might well have happened this week. Democratic Party Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he has secured the vote of Joe Manchin and apparently the United States is on the brink of passing the most ambitious climate emergency bill to ever make its way to this or any President’s desk for his signature. Now that is some serious never give up and not taking no for an answer. When it comes to a brawl this Biden guy can take one hell of a punch, answer the bell and still win the fight. Now come November all we have to do is vote like our lives depend upon it because in fact the whole ball of wax is going to be on that ballot. Friends, this is what flirting with end times looks like. One hell of fix we’re all in. When it’s all said and done, just me I suppose, but I say we’ll make it, just barely, but as the big boss Warren Buffet has said, “It’s never paid to bet against America.”

Books

The Living Breathing Heart of Summer

22 Jul 2022 Dana Smith 1 Comment

Summertime has always had a soundtrack. The really best summer’s you’ll see by sunrise when coming back from an all-nighter. Slightly buzzed the lack of sleep aches in your body, eyes hurt, you’ll collapse but sleep fitfully, you haven’t stayed in bed until 2 in the afternoon since forever— and now you’re all out of sync, tomorrow is already ruined, but not that all-nighter, that one will live forever, you bet the house on that one, you bet the best on that howler of a time.

Image a teen club. The club from my town during summers operated out of the cafeteria hall at the high school. My pack of jackknifes, looters and thieves would bike over after stopping to play in the ditch with pollywogs. This all brewed until ready mob, we’d meet up and rot in one of our bedrooms until we couldn’t stand the smell of our adolescence any longer— we gotta get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do— that was gospel, our blues, a pack of troublemakers anthem.

Playing for the crowds of summer—Edmonton

Peak summer experiences have no roadmap, there is a sense of arrival, there’s no telling for sure how to find your way— in some instances it is place— the harbor at Avalon aboard our sloop, midnight dancing cheek to cheek with a bikini clad heartthrob in a scorching Scottsdale, with the old man at dusk trout fishing on the banks of the Trinity River, Boston’s Beacon Hill on the Fourth of July listening to Fiedler and the Boston Pops with real canon fire synced to the Overture of 1812. The glory of season is a cherry tree in a yard along the Puget Sound, a lost weekend on Shelter Island in San Diego, ballroom dancing on Nob Hill at La Colonial until closing time, then after hours at Baker Beach, then sleeping all day until dinner hour and audaciously getting a shower putting on your best threads, raring to go and to do it all over and over again. A proper summer rave requires you have a touch of madness in your blood, you are out of control, nothing can stop you, you will taste the sweet scent of summer, savor this delight, store it up in your heart, let the light give you peace and hope for more, then more still, there can never be enough deli trays, summer is too rare and too much the showstopper in your life. This is the standing ovation as season.

One long lost summer ago there was a trip in my ’39 Chevy to Tahoe, Yosemite and Big Sur. The great grand circle, my partner in crime Ralph Rose, long since passed from bone cancer, when we were still not yet out of our teens. Every day of that grand expedition was based upon a pair of aces standing at the end of their adolescence knocking on the door of the opening chapter to their adult life. What a send off that summer was. We returned changed by that summer.

Sprawled out on our backs with a stoned throng in British Columbia lost deep in the Kootenay’s along the banks of the Slocan mesmerized by the Northern Lights, then moon ring, then lightning, then satellite track, then full moon, then fog bank, then we decided, all of us committed to the one and the same eye-witnessed proposition, that by all in attendance none had seen a more phenomenal sky— ever— that night sky was a glory.

There was dinner for two at Jack’s— this a classic fine dining joint on Sacramento in San Francisco. First opened in 1863 frequented by Mark Twain, Clark Gable and Cary Grant— all and many more famous and celebrated enjoyed dinner for two at this fabled white linen establishment. The summer of 1980 I would have dinner for two at Jack’s, and since I was a street performer I paid my bill with a stack of one dollar bills— the staff all promised to come down to the wharf to see my show— they meant it at the time even if they never showed for my act. That evening a woman from London accompanied me to dinner, her name was Marigo, she was privileged and pampered and she was fond of this street performer. Together we went out on the town— it was a near miss that summer night, we came close to never being seen again, lost in the after hours, somewhere out there on the sidewalks, gallivanting by whim and wonder. It was a rare and spellbound summer night. Whatever magic means there was some of its mystery in the night air.

There’s only one path to summer— take this one

The best of my life has been found working during the hot days of summer. The street act was designed to take advantage of this season. Warm weather in the shade if there was sun, if it was too hot we do shows at night, always in shirts, shorts, skirts and sandals. Summertime was for fat hats and squirreling away a nut to make it through next winter. By spring you could see you might make it, that the season you love most is near at hand, that soon you’ll be dancing with her, stealing her charm, touched by her heartwarming light touching the skin on your face.

Like you I can remember the songs, the parties, the people. I remember sleeping under trees. I can remember wishing for more days like these. There’s still more, still more summer to spend and no time to lose. Be quick my friends these chances are short and misjudgment the thief can steal your chance in a flash. Today I’m planting my parasol in the sand. I’ve a book to read and a swim to take, and forgive the harmless glance at the bikini clad women and all the pleasures that come in the simplicity of enjoying such natural beauty— and appreciate that there are those who are so willing to share a simple pleasing passing feminine line and curve, a bit of the sublime, rumor has it that the bikini and martini are equally intoxicating— beauty on a beach is peak summertime fun.

Books

Dusty Days on the Klamath

20 Jul 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

North of Yreka the Klamath River passes beneath Interstate 5 while flowing west through the Siskiyou’s to the Pacific Ocean. Over the last two decades the megadrought has pummeled the region. For 13 of the last 20 years the governors of Oregon have declared a drought emergency east of where I am standing in the Klamath Basin. Fish runs are going extinct, farm fields are left fallow, and ranchers livestock have been sold off. Last years fire season was record setting, the Bootleg Fire one of Southern Oregons all time biggest, resulted in the nearby Klamath Basin forests being severely damaged, the intensity of the regional 1 million acres burned leaves one to see the region in an almost Biblical end times sense. Nothing about this new century resembles the serenity, peace and productivity of the last century. The global climate emergency has battered this region with a procession of no rain, low humidity and ever higher temperatures.

This morning I’m looking out upon the Klamath and I see a benign and otherwise unremarkable river— nothing appears amiss. To my eye the water appears neither too high or too low. But, this visual observation does not account for the fallibility of the mind’s inability to size what we see to the scale necessary to arrive at a workable fact. If you’ve ever driven across California’s Mojave Desert while cresting one mountain you’ll see a valley before you then another mountain range in the distance. Guessing how far it is in miles to the crest of the other an observer tends to find their best guess can be off by miles— you’ll guess 20 then discover that next mountain range is 50 miles off in the distance. Scale, time and distance can play tricks on us.

Up and down the Klamath River fishermen, farmers and ranchers attempt to read the river, estimate its resource, try to predict by Farmer’s Almanac the appearance of La Niña, and way too many of the stakeholders misjudge the bounty of the river. That is the nature of a hope and dream, giving up on a life you’ve made, handed down to you by a self sufficient mother and father goes against our own inner nature. People do not give up so easily.

The hard times have come to the Klamath, one piece of the challenge has to do with 200,000 irrigated acres up on the Klamath Basin. These are hard facts to swallow, folk in Southern Oregon have held out hope, if it would only just start to rain again.

Circumstances on the much larger Colorado River touch the lives of 40 million people and as many as 50 million acres of farmland. You’d still need another 800,000 acres to get to your first million acres in the Klamath Basin and you’d still be shy of the unfolding crisis further south on the Colorado River. If you read about the drought that has gripped the American West it is on these smaller watersheds where journalists focus, where the size, scale and scope of the tragedy remains imaginable. The unfolding disaster on the Colorado River, the crisis taking hold on Lake Powell and Lake Mead overwhelm, the immensity of the problem is astronomical. The Klamath River is the same drought driven tragedy scaled to be approached by the concerned mind of a citizen giving the regional crisis thoughtful time and consideration.

A man or woman that works land for hay or row crop will be hard pressed to accept their land being removed from production. Putting aside all the variety of options, to grow a less water thirsty crop, to only grow food destined for the kitchen table, rolling back and then eliminating livestock— these possible solutions are so far inconceivable compromises to the changes this region faces. What the Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Reclamation have been doing is waiting, hoping against hope that it will rain again. Stopgap measures like paying farmers a stipend for a crop they don’t grow, then compensating them for water that is no longer available only kicks the can down the road, puts off for another year the hard decisions, allowing time for reality to sink into the minds of those still desperate to hold on. We’ve done pretty near darn everything but what needs to be done— this first kind of suffering is about trying to survive the next kind is the pain of letting go.

Eats a man or woman’s heart out to near dust in the Klamath Basin remembering the old days, back when irrigation ditches ran full and crops yielded commodities for market measured to the hilt. Some folk drive north to see family or farming friends. They’ll get out of the drought and circumstances faced up there are different, there’s water still, not near enough, but that’s in the educated eye of a scientist, to the Klamath Basin farmer it appears the region north is drowning in water abundance.

Just prior to my arriving at the Klamath River we’d driven past Lake Shasta, the reservoir is 1/3 full, you can see the situation with your own eyes, it’s right there, and hard to take. Most of what is happening in the Klamath Basin happens by no-see-um water, this is groundwater, sometimes they’ll describe the aquifer as a water bank, but that only makes the challenge that much harder— the basin’s water is getting drawn down, the underground water is running out, there is no bank where things are being saved, things are getting close to empty. Sometimes the big operators drill deeper and pump more water with larger pumps, but that only forces the water level lower and smaller operators wells go dry and the misery and bankruptcies only make matters more heartbreaking.

There is no changing minds when a well runs dry. Telling your neighbor there has got to be water same as there ever was, same as there always will be won’t get you one more drop when a drought turns a working farm into a dustbowl. Foreclosures return the waterless land to banks. When money is available the government buys the depleted land back. If you are out hunting for prosperous future for you and yours you’ll want to reconsider if your plan is farming and ranching along the Klamath. Odds have run out up here.

The United States has signed and senate ratified treaty obligations with the tribes that live along the Klamath. The tribal narrative is complex, no two tribes fate is the same. America’s first people live on land that has been reserved for their people for all time. When we entered into these agreements the United States by law transferred water rights to the tribes so that they would have enough water to guarantee their land would be workable. Ninety percent of the tribal lands were surrendered with the promise by the United States that the 10% the Native Americans would be confined to would be by deed and force of law receive enough water to make their ancestral homelands viable. Imagine life 150 years ago and being forced to give up 9 out of every 10 acres of your own land and now all these decades later having some agent from the government deciding that circumstances have changed you can keep the land but they want the water they promised back.

The Klamath Basin and Klamath Falls are distinct tales of two fated pieces of the same place. Oregon Institute of Technology is an important player in this economy. Still, the surrounding agricultural activities have been the most important part of what happens here. Sailing friend has retired here with his wife and family. There is a good hospital here. The drought crisis reverberates up and down Main Street. Retail businesses are all impacted. Klamath Falls won’t collapse but opportunity is hollowed out, there are easier places to build a life, here is going to be defined by hardship until the transition to new economy is complete.

Here is a glimmer of hope and a likely path out of the crisis here in the Klamath Basin. The economy will need to be reimagined and account for every last drop of water allocated to each and every stakeholder. Farmers and ranchers will be fewer, where land can be removed from production agencies will expedite such acquisitions, where crops are grown they’ll need to pass a test to be sure they do not use too much water and that what water is used is delivered with the latest high technology irrigation equipment. Such industries as deep well geothermal power plants need to be considered. More citizens that can work remotely need to be recruited to the region. We’ll want to get the community involved with the development of laboratory meat industry and see if local agencies can attract new industries to the region. What logging that is done should be scaled to pay a living wage and the cutting of logs should be done selectively not by clear cut. I’m especially partial to horse-logging and a team of horses and a skilled woodsman can do wonders for a community both economically and emotionally. Horse-loggers are some of the happiest of all the variety of woodmen I know. Logs shouldn’t be shipped out without milling. Better still would be to have local labor use the lumber to build prefabricated trusses and walls for modular homes. It’s estimated California needs to build between 3 to 5 million new homes to meet the demand of a growing population and it is up here in the Klamath that imagineers, investors and entrepreneurs need to focus their talents. Our climate emergency is moving faster than forecast. Time is of the essence and the scale of these changes touch the lives of all of us.

The fate of every outpost in the American West is bound by water. The Klamath has been a dream killer— an out late with the boys and never came home— a hope for something more than what one river can provide. Here is the searing edge of the limits to what is possible. Mother Nature and human nature have squared off— the limits to what is possible have landed square in the heart of the climate emergency— this painful fate is local the cure for its problems global. Easy answers are none, the hard work to a better world is everything—

Books, Performances

Rehearsals with Jennifer Lawrence

8 Jul 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

Add bears that can open car doors to the good reasons you may have for being sure you keep your car locked. Consider yourself warned. Hardboiled type outdoorsman I am only casually acquainted with is prepping his Sprinter van for expeditionary holiday north to Alaska. Bears up near Lake Tahoe have been testing his preparations.

Too many expeditionary types pack rifles or large caliber handguns. My experience suggests its bug spray you’ll need. Mosquitos in Alaska, Yukon and Northwest Territories make for a memorable misadventure. Expert Arctic Circle types I know swear the best way to beat the bugs is get there before they hatch and leave before they are organized into a posse and come looking for your sorry carcass. Basically, by Memorial Day think of getting south— summers are overrated.

Late in the day atop Rogers Pass in British Columbia I took a space in a provincial park campground. All in all, I had a terrific false sense of security. I was between dates for shows traveling from Edmonton to Whistler. Dinner was prepared and plates were cleaned and put away. There was a horrendous commotion in the hours before dawn. I heard horns honking, people yelling, I didn’t know what to do I was asleep on my bunk beneath my camper shell in the back of my pickup truck. At dawn I walked the campground and found the side of a huge self-contained camper had been attacked by a bear. It must have been corn fed, it was a whopping big animal. The bear clawed off the side of the camper like a sardine can. In its voracious search of food, the contents of the camper were strewn across most of British Columbia. The campers had fled, and it would be a few hours before they arrived with a ranger to assess the natural disaster.

I have since heard it advised if you are traveling in bear country to mount a powerful air powered horn in your vehicle and to arm it with a motion detector that will trigger its blast should the vehicle begin to be broken into. Isn’t that a great idea— you want to play around grizzly bears you had best come prepared to play to win.

The world’s largest particle collider, the Hadron Collider, the very same device that had a decade ago discovered the famous— so called God Particle— is in France and is at it again— looking for things no particle research scientist has ever seen, only this time the beam they’re using is many times more powerful than the beam used in their last experiment. Which begs the question if indeed it was a God Particle that was discovered back then perhaps this next discovery would be the particle that created the God Particle’s Super-Duper Particle of All Particles right? The first most obvious question we’ll want an answer to the question nobody has yet thought to ask— is it theoretically possible that science will ever get to the bottom of this mystery— what if there is no master particle. What if it was a one off, you know entirely spontaneous, that somehow the Universe simply stumbled upon the singularity and for at least the next 30 billion years the cosmos will continue to expand until it reverses direction and the entire thing collapses back into and upon itself where it will wait in dormancy for another spontaneous spark that triggers the whole dance again and again— think an infinite number of universes that all happen one at a time— we are talking the largest feedback loop in the history of everything under this and all suns. Insurance coverage by State Farm is available— I’m sure.

For sure conspiratorial excess we need to shift our attention and quantum physical theory of dark matter to the East Coast of the United States. Something or someone blew up the Georgia Guidestones this week— I’m betting it was someone, others suspect it may have been spontaneous much like the creation of the universe— come on man, work with me. This theory goes it was spontaneous and the result of the tiny particles unleashed by the Hadron Collider that did it. Maybe the particles zipped through and around the globe entered the delicate tissue of an unsuspecting victim that then directed the suspect to go to the monument and detonate an improvised explosive device. I think I know a sports bar where such victims are currently well-oiled and long past the point of no return.

I’m just a plain talking ordinary California native really. I do not tend to allow my feet to leave the ground, flights of fancy are taken in rare instances but usually I remain tethered to something solid, something reliable, that I can count on, that will be there for me, and then I can show up and I can be there too. I like to agree with other people. If I see a car, and then say it’s a car and someone agrees with me I take that as a place to start from, we can agree on that much, from there we can proceed.

I’m chasing down a thermal gremlin aboard the boat. Turns out that my engine compartment came installed with ducting plumbed to both bring in and take out fresh air and that without this flow the engine compartment heats up and the engine then runs too hot setting off the alarm and then I must shut off the engine. None of this is visible, I like to see it so I may say I can believe it. In this case my weapon of choice is a thermal heat gun that I can use to take the engines temperature.

If for example you have ever been in love, really fallen head over heels for someone, then you know as we all know that there is no surefire method of knowing if it is the real thing, will it last or will it go away, is it the real McCoy or some kind of mirage, an illusion, a little trick your heart is playing on you, and someone please tell me exactly how in the hell it is the heart and not the head or some other extraneous body part leading us around by love’s nose—

One more example. What goes on behind closed doors stays behind those doors. I’m good with that, but I’m wondering how it is we all seem to know so little or way too much about such human behavior. I guess we all must be doing it much the same as others are doing it. What if you are an outlier, what if your way of doing isn’t remotely like the way you imagine the vast overwhelming others are doing it. I’d like to think we’re all doing basically the same thing within the margins of error. I’m not sure we can be sure.

Still, I wonder if we can know. What if you are a true inventor, an originalist, a creator, a titan of imagination, a veritable carnal astronaut, the kind that is willing to journey to furthest reaches of the known explored physical boundaries of humankind.

It is not knowable, you know that right— we think we might know but we don’t, do we— what we can pin down and know for certain is written down on a short list. Entering a darkened room with a heart filled with phantoms you can only see ghosts and shadows of, that cannot be proven to be true, or even know if they are mere mental fictions you’ve manufactured and then you go into this odd chamber one on one, and what can any of us truly know, when we unlock the fun lover and love seeker in our heart that has suddenly to be found not located in our instincts, I’d like to believe they are coded instructions from genes, and everything you need to know is quite suddenly located— and we know we’re where we are supposed to be because it feels right, consensual and fulfilling.

Never mind that most of us don’t tape these affairs, there are no still photographs, no vocal recordings to consider erasing. We’ve spent our lives left to wonder. I suppose if you have a kid or two, you’ll take some satisfaction knowing some part of the project worked out. I’m happy most of what I’ve done for fun was in a dark room with my eyes closed. Imagine you were always on a movie set, there was always a crew there, your co-star is ready to shoot the scene, and you’ve got all this pressure on you, this new movie has got to be the best. If I’m thankful for anything this would be as a good a place to start as any. I’m thankful I don’t have to shoot a love scene, all these rehearsals have been hard enough.

Books, Performances

Jerry Hall Dumps Murdoch

4 Jul 2022 Dana Smith 1 Comment

Forces in the Universe seem to have come untethered. Every nook and cranny packed with fascists and their misguided sympathizers, our scrimmaging is misbegotten, discourse is unbearable, burdened with a despairing lack of civic imagination.

California isn’t the same place The Mamas and the Papas sang about at the Monterey Pops Festival— 1967 is long gone— that loving feeling has been lost, civility has vanished into rear view mirror. Whatever phase our imperfect world was in then is not the world we face now.

There is no consensus, there’s no mainstream, there is no functionally productive counterculture, there are various factions, these different groups dismiss the legitimacy of all the other groups. Hell, Nancy Pelosi had to go to all the way to prove her point— she had to go to the Vatican to receive the sacrament from the Pope himself because all his disobedient bishops in America wouldn’t allow Madam Speaker to set foot in their churches because of her position on abortion. Disobedience by Bishops in the Catholic Church takes hypocrisy to everlasting heights of pure contradiction.

My contacts in the Navajo Nation all point at the outrage-du-jour and remind non-indigenous citizens that stripping away rights, resources and property that Americans may be suffering now is nothing compared to what the government has done to the Navajo since the founding of the United States.

I’m in the narrative business, storytellers are always on the lookout for a crackin’ good yarn to spin. Journalists go to the assignment desk and are sent out to cover breaking news. Let’s keep it simple, you know they cover a plane crash, car wreck or a fire. A nice easy to understand honest to God tale of loss and tragedy. Guy smoking in bed falls asleep and is killed when he accidentally starts a fire. The LA Times reporter writes that item up then by 4 that same afternoon is across the street from the LA Times Building knocking the first one back at the legendary Redwood Bar and Grill. Journalists are nothing if not well-oiled dispassionate observers.

Maybe that’s the best work for another writer, but that’s not my scene, that’s not the pig I want to roast. Take the lobbyists working for the fossil fuel industry, they went out found a bunch of unemployed lawyers that could no longer find work that can still pay the bills representing tobacco companies. These amoral disinformation operators go ahead and pick up this pack of hounds to run a climate change is in doubt operation on low information Americans. Fossil fuel companies run things not just here in America, Big Oil runs the world. You get in the carbon extraction industry’s way, and they’ll be happy to chop you into little pieces and dispose of your remains in a pizza oven.

But even that very well understood fossil fuel disinformation operation doesn’t quite get at the unfathomable fucking story of story’s the world finds itself waiting for. The biggest story of them all is hard to put your finger on. You want to be invited to the rubber room, you want to get fit for a straitjacket, go ahead and start explaining how you think there’s something rotten in Denmark and that you have a big idea, that you alone know who is responsible, where they are located, and how it is that nobody goes and gets those bastards and brings them in for all that is good and right and staving off the world from cataclysmic chaos and death. Where’s Batman when you need him?

Putin is a miserable dictator, his act is wearing thin, his insights and instincts have gone haywire, he’s still doing the same world domination crap he’s always done its just more tone deaf— he no longer has the touch, and the one time KGB spy now has another 800 miles of border to defend having driven Finland into the outstretched arms of NATO. The pariah that is Putin will live out his days trapped in a monochromatic banal kingdom that tried to reclaim its lost glory by reviving a century old narrative that is gone— the Soviet Union’s time is over.

That Vladimir helped get Donny Two-Thumbs elected President over here has more to do with dumb luck than any master force he may or may not have unleashed in the run up to the 2016 election.

An unrepentant Zuckerberg can place no claim to being the big boss of bosses. Elon’s act is thin gruel, I’m losing patience with his juvenile tweets, takeovers and unending holes he is always digging. This guy Peter Thiel seems to come up on everyone’s list of potential mischief makers— his pungent flavor of gay does such dishonor to my favorite Edith Piaf fans.

Go figure it’s Jerry Hall dumping Rupert Murdoch that has finally kicked this miserable news baron of a man to the curb. Vicariously all of us have wanted to divorce this democracy menacing media mogul. As Mick bellowed between pouting lips decades now long gone— what a drag it is getting old— Murdoch’s old is the most wretched of all I’ve witnessed. King Lear’s doom was more cheerful.

Maybe the Federalist Society gets close to holding the key to unlocking the door to domination and unleashing the monster of all monster’s, their pursuit of being masters of the universe isn’t a done deal— but you know as nominees for the most powerful awful in the universe— Leo Leonard and his ilk are playing one hell of a game. Toxic evangelicalism does not look pretty in a gown worn by a justice on the court.

The year was 1939, it was a Broadway musical, Very Warm for May, Jerome Kern composed the music, Oscar Hammerstein’s wrote lyrics— the intro to All in Fun— (you can look them up on line… or better yet stream Tony Bennett’s version.(

Since the center doesn’t seem to be holding, perhaps it is time to remind friend and not friend alike that it is a livable world, peace, clean air and pure water that is in play and at risk. It is All in Fun that is hanging in the balance, those of us with a few miles on our odometers have a responsibility to pass along to our children and their children a better world. It’s all on the line now, come November vote for the truth, vote for democracy. I’m going all in with fun— I tell you it beats the rest—

Books, Performances

Canada Day Celebration—Congratulations

1 Jul 2022 Dana Smith 1 Comment

Faithful San Francisco Busker celebrating Canada Day 1990

To our friends to the north a very happy day of celebrations—

Books

Call for a General Strike

25 Jun 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

The ruins of Chaco Canyon give us a glimpse into the life of one of America’s earliest civilizations. There is evidence the first people prevailed as a culture and economy for 1000 years, the tribes of the desert southwest of Arizona and New Mexico thrived here. After years of abundant rain our first people were unprepared for drought and the food insecurity that resulted. Corn, squash and beans depleted the already marginal soils. By 1230 Chacoans, the people that lived in the canyon had built the tallest buildings in North America, a feat that would not be eclipsed until 1830 in New York City—

Our current circumstances, our present civilization, feels fragile, supply chains are strained, water in the American West is scarce and millions of acres are under threat of collapse. Our inability to organize in the face of these environmental threats is cause for concern. Let the record show that the first people, those who came before us, discovered that out here the rural west can become inhospitable, unpredictable and spark conflict among the stakeholders.

The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has shattered a tenuous peace in Europe. A Stalin like leader Putin without warning or reason invades a sovereign neighboring nation. Trump likely advised by the transnational organized crime syndicate was urged to abandon democracy and remain in power. To pull the insurrection off he would need knowledgeable insiders, enemies of democracy that understood how our interlocking institutions worked. If it feels as if our nation has been taken over by a out of this world Manchurian candidate you would not be wrong.

This weeks rulings by the Supreme Court feel anti-majoritarian, the decisions feel Medieval, subjugating women and terrorizing citizens by allowing weapons to be legally concealed and carried.

California where I live is home to 40 million people. This is a complex, economically productive state. To make the Golden State work the citizens have had to organize. The world’s largest system of aqueducts have been constructed. California produces more food than any other state in the nation. Yes, it is a jumble of water districts, billions of dollars were spent building dams for reservoirs, farmers have squabbled over who would get to use this water and who wouldn’t. The fighting continues to this day even if the writing is on the wall and the resources we fight over are clearly diminishing just as our population is growing.

Air Flight Controllers, certified aviation mechanics, and a host of federal safety inspectors work to keep us safe should we need to travel by air. We use supervision and regulatory agencies to manage our private sectors airline companies. When we talk about collapse we need to think about the very serious responsibilities our government is charged with carrying out. Drinking water, sewage treatment, food inspections, communicable disease control and our well regulated stock markets— all of these different areas of national importance remain bound to the rule of law. The collapse of democracy would threaten all of this.

Our climate is getting hotter. Science has found the causes of our problems as we continue to quarrel about the solutions. The wealthiest fossil fuel enterprises in the world are not going to be shutdown without a fight. Likely much of their money is going into the pockets of an unhinged Republican Party that has been all too eager to pander to these oil barons. The energy transition needs move with speed and instead an obstacle course is thrown in its way. If you want a piece of good news last week California for a brief time, a few minutes to an hour actually produced 100% of its power from renewable sources. Just as a civilization can be brought to an end, it can respond to its challenges, make changes and fend off a collapse and continue to prosper.

Hearings underway by the January 6th Committee have revealed there was a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the results of our last election. A few weeks ago 19 children in Uvalde, Texas were massacred, shot to death with an assault rifle, some of the bullets hit with such force as to decapitate these innocent victims. Friday the Supreme Court stripped constitutionally guaranteed rights from women. Many current members of Congress, Republicans all were actively participating in the attempted coup and the evidence of their seeking Presidential pardons for their crimes has come to light.

So, here we find ourselves and what to do— I’d like to see the nations women call for a general strike, I’d bet a majority of the men in this nation would back this call to resist. We need to inflict economic pain, the business leaders have to understand that there are two parties in our nation but only one that is bound by the truth while the other has devolved into a mad pack of petty liars. The liars have sown chaos, their allies in the media have aided and abetted their misconduct, and now the very fabric of our governance is threatened.

Stripping women of their right to an abortion, to have access to family planning services, to be treated as a second class person that the state holds dominion over is beyond outrageous. What is before us is a choice to either abandon this experiment in self governance and descend into the hell that the Republican authoritarians seek— or we recommit to the work of building a more perfect union— there is not a second to waste.

One hell of a week—

Books, Performances

Vet Showmen Pay Lip Service

22 Jun 2022 Dana Smith 1 Comment

Trip to Kona has been a bit of a tale. A carrying cart failed just before coming over to the islands resulting in a propane tank landing square on my big toe. That kind of changed the last two weeks. An urgent care doctor glued the gash back together slapped me on the butt and told me to get back in the game.

Then my buddy Waldo hobbled by a motorcycle accident comes to the Kona side of the island to visit. Hobbling together we got out and about the two showmen not accustomed to being on injured reserve. Gallows humor ensued well into the wee hours of the early morning.

Street show veteran get togethers are like comfort food for the soul. I can still do this but I can’t do that. There are the favorite shows to review, some performed together some solo. It goes on and on like this. There is the part where we brag about how few props we needed to do a show. Waldo made his living as a suave, dashing and lightening quick juggler that never dropped. I was every bit of Waldo’s equal (allow me to amuse myself) but for the drops— I am perhaps best known for my trouble with this minor detail— Try not to applaud when I make a mistake, you’re only reinforcing my bad habits—

Our careers were long. I like Wally to tell me his Perth, Australia stories. He likes our time together in Arizona and gets a kick talking about those adventures. Street performers are not sentimental, but we have lived privileged lives traveling both here and abroad and earning a pretty penny along the way. The present and future we imagine is framed as a life beyond our work as showmen.

Two months ago I visited with Sean Laughlin and Lee Ross. Conversations between all of us track by topic to do with shows, love and a bite at life lived with no regrets. A performance happens in a particular time and place and after— like that— vanishes into the slipstream of time. We might improve the show, we might do better shows, there may be advances in our skills, better costumes, bigger paychecks and fancier stages. Of the many tens of thousands of shows all of us have under our belts most are now in the rear view mirror. Any of us might still do a show, but none of us are likely to do anywhere near as many as we have left behind to the sands of time.

One benefit of not having a demanding show schedule is that it gives your head the space to consider the less examined parts of your life. This is to the good. A bad show is like a losing game and after back in the locker room a showman can suffer pangs of regret. Climbing that hill day in and day out is in one sense about being ready to defend your emotional life. A good show pumps you up and lousy show lets you down. Without having to deal with that rollercoaster our offstage time isn’t ordinary time, it is human time, we are allowed the chance to be back in touch with our most ordinary day to day self. The more selfless we can live, the less stuck in our heads the better. This is our occupational hazard.

Where we live and who we love is always a topic that hovers near our meetups. Some of us are in, some out, some up, some down. The funniest are on the ropes getting a pretty good pummeling by the object of their desire. Most interesting to my way of seeing things is my showmen friends have had a life full of love and it shows they have skills they know how to be in a relationship. Some of what causes so much trouble is our time away from our partners while we are on tour. Our finances are what they are, like any self-employed sole proprietor there’s a lot of ups and downs in a business famous for uncertainty. This isn’t a common circumstance and while the romance of loving a showman is second to none the practicality of such relationships requires a dash of courage with a twist of letting go—

Sore toe and all being here on Kona turns out to be a good thing. Waldo and I will see each other over on the mainland later this summer. We can continue to build on our extended conversation. There will by then be new information. Waldo is slated to speak with many of our peers in the weeks ahead. By the time I see him again he’ll have ten new next things to do. Sean’s still got his place in Silver City, Nevada to wrangle into shape, most of that work is done but not all of it, and then there’s the matter of what’s next to do that isn’t about a show or a house— I think he’s interested in finding a path for his heart. Lee has slated a shoot of a short feature he hopes to complete before September. Editing will consume his autumn. I know his family is coming out to Colorado for his birthday. He’s got a lot up in the air right now and how any of it sorts itself out remains wrapped up in the creative mystery.I’ve been stuck restructuring my office where I write and have had to clear my desk of the chaos I’ve allowed to place a gauzy haze on the clarity good writing demands.

Right now as of this moment the project is to do with a pesto made with pistachios— highly recommended. Then, when I get back to California I’ve got raspberries, figs and a melon patch to work into our meals. That’s likely where my focus will be tied up. Eating good food, cooking interesting dishes, having fun playing in the kitchen with food grown from our garden is its own simple pleasure. Yesterday was the solstice and the long days are all to the good. Life isn’t that complicated if you don’t let this one visit to earth run you off into the intractable pieces beyond a showman’s ability to fix.

Books, Performances

No Service Might Be Best

12 Jun 2022 Dana Smith Leave a comment

Watched the Giants play the Dodgers Saturday. Hospitals are filling up— the virus is on the rise again. There was life before Covid-19, there was the life we lived waiting for a vaccine, and now we live some version of a safer yet not entirely safe inoculated life in the aftermath of this pathogenic crisis.

What is clear is that whatever we had in the before times, before this fiasco is never going to return, there is no getting back to that way of life. I know people in show business that are trying their best to resume a full schedule. Some have been infected even though vaccinated. There haven’t been any fatalities I know of, but the work is not hazard free, there is no going back to the before times. I worry about my friends still in the business, like being a school teacher the work shouldn’t be this dangerous.

Best thing to happen here is watching the NBA playoffs. Scattered here and there among the players and fans are the few that mask up. I know of two that said they came down with Covid after going to the game at Chase in San Francisco last week. Watching the playoffs at home is on my list of safe activities. I’m still trying to pick a matinee to sneak in to see Maverick’s Top Gun on the big screen. Hopefully few will be there. And while we’re here, Steph Curry’s performance in Game 4 has been written up as this great player’s greatest performance in a playoff game ever. San Francisco is host to one of basketball’s best to ever play the game. That’s antidote to some inner malady we are all trying to get well from.

The Proud Boys showing up early on January 6^th to scout potential entry points for that afternoon’s insurrection was something, full on seditious conspiracies are like that. Not that I’m into paramilitary maneuvers, but the Proud Boys forming stacks that would probe for weak points around the Capitol seems like there was some preplanning going on. Can’t we agree on that much—

Giants play the Dodgers this afternoon. This morning I’ll do some maintenance on the drip irrigation system. Water here is tight— this little thing called a megadrought has been on a rampage. Manzanita is the answer to this problem. We’ve got a variety of different types, they are native plants that requires little to any water, deer pass them by, the manzanita are a perfect one-two punch to go along with the cork oak trees.

Since their extinction event we don’t have dinosaurs, that Yucatan asteroid took care of all those pesky critters, but the world seems to miss its monsters and has gone ahead and invented its own. Putin is the new most awful person in the world, and that’s saying something because he does have some stiff competition. I can’t help read the sick with cancer stories

Listening to the dry economic analysis of why inflation has taken off is a bit too perfect and flawless hindsight. Locking an entire world down and then trying to reopen has never been attempted before. This was all new and as it happens things have gone a bit haywire. Invading Ukraine has been no help, and you think gas is expensive try buying a bushel of wheat.

Locking down Shanghai for a month hasn’t helped. Turns out creating global supply chains that depend upon the policy swings of a totalitarian nation does have its drawbacks. Trading oil with the Russian dictator Putin has proven to be as stupid a thing to do as paying Stormy Daniels off after giving her a poke at a party and wanting to keep the random entry hush-hush.

Elon Musk has lost his patience with wealth and fame has traded in his burnished reputation for a more tarnished look. And no President Biden should not be arranging to go to Saudi Arabia, using a bone saw to dismember a journalist from the Washington Post has cemented MBS’s reputation as a royal punk and tyrant.

Getting off fossil fuels has the potential of decentralizing our energy market. Instead of trading with tyrants each region of the world can deploy renewable energy systems. This is the old think global act local strategy.

The wheels feel like they are falling off this empire we’ve built. Favorite seditionist in the category of supporting nitwit wife goes to Ginni Thomas. Our Supreme Court’s Clarence Thomas’s main squeeze turns out to be a foe of democracy. If we had a calvary I’d order the soldiers to ride on her whereabouts and bring her in, but bring her in alive, we do want to have a few choice words with this deranged woman.

March for our Lives was out in force on our streets this weekend. Turns out spreading 20 million military style assault weapons on our fruited plain has turned our nation into the world’s laughingstock. Death by gun shot is the number one cause of death for American children. That’s one hell of a way to welcome a new citizen into the new world.

Weird times indeed. Watching the Giants-Dodgers this afternoon I’ll put all my troubles out of mind and enjoy a good long slow game that no longer really meets the moment. Like a long coastal sail the world is no longer set up for us to waste so much of our precious time.

I’m hoping the day the Supreme Court announces they are overturning our abortion laws that at least the Department of Justice can get into the swing of things and indict the former President for his leading role in the attempted coup. I mean if we are all going to be upset why not get the whole nation pissed off all at once, get it over with, we can get on with trying to preserve democracy or buying those one-way tickets to paradise.

Lovely little pickle said Stormy to the Fat Man.

Author-Entertainer