Tent Cities

A friend here in the mountains called me this morning and related a story he'd seen on television the other day. A story about tent cities in Sacramento. After explaining that he was channel surfing and just happened to catch the story (and normally does not watch Oprah), he then reiterated the story of the tent city emerging next to the river in Sacramento. A 'community' of the homeless, the jobless, and other victims of hard times, or themselves, or the predatory bankers, or the boogie man. Everybody has a story. The place is growing by 50 tents a day. With the publicity the story has gotten recently, I'm sure it's going to swell.
By coincidence I was watching Larry King last night hosted by Ali Velshi, the CNN money man who has been telling people to ride out the stock market throughout the 7,000 point downfall. He was interviewing Kevin Johnson about, you guessed it, the tent city. I think several of the residents were former clients of Ali, back when they had money... and the real loser is, yes, Sacramento.
I know it's said that any publicity is good publicity, but in this case I respectfully disagree. I could be wrong though; yesterday I watched a story on Detroit property prices, where houses, nice houses, are selling for $10,000 and less. Since then I've been thinking about Detroit real estate. Today, they interviewed a Detroit newsman about the story and, according to him, the nightmare started there about five years ago with automaker layoffs that continue to this day and the property prices that have fallen and now reflect just 10% of what they were. Can you imagine?
Listening to the newsman, I could feel his personal shock and disbelief as he described the residents waiting and waiting and waiting, and yet still no bottom is approaching to their deteriorating world.
And so back to the tent city... let's say, hypothetically, that the tent city grows by 50 tents a day for 5 years.....that's 91,250 tents. Other than the obvious, now would be a good time to invest in canvas, or maybe porta-potties.
I have read a little of the Great Depression and these tent cities were common back then. I remember reading stories about the Federal Government battling the residents over squatting in certain places. Sacramento might eventually have those type of problems; if one were going to squat in a tent, Sacramento would be a lot better climate-wise than other places. The place could be a magnet for the needy. What an opportunity, the whole hippy movement could re-emerge from the city in the valley where the two rivers meet. That probably sounds good to the people who have already met the boogie man and predatory banker, but those that are still in pocket probably aren't so enthusiastic about living in a loser magnet city.
I can't wait to return.

Days of Rain

Cabin fever season. I haven't left the house for two days. The dog and I had dinner about 13:45 today and I'll probably be in bed about 16:00. The dog only gets up to eat or 'go'. After days of rain, the creek behind the house is a bubbling torrent, polishing the rocks at it's bottom where it has eaten the soft topsoil away and now races downhill. Opening the door to the shack one is greeted with the sound of water gurgling by, and it is both pleasant and reassuring. I like the sound of the rain on the roof too! Cozy! Until the water torture affect comes into play.
The shack is completely closed up inside now, meaning the inside walls are built too, and the insulation is no longer showing. Where the rough edges of the boards meet I've used expanding foam insulation for the chinking. Not only is it attractive, but everyday the place has gotten one step closer to being as 'tight as an egg'. I have to be careful not to overfill the wood burning stove or the house gets too hot.
The rain continues to fall steadily. The creek widens and narrows with the fluctuations in the rainfall, and today the waterfalls have been at their full 12 inches. I need a life. I tried to have one, but the Kings are the worst team in the NBA.
It's a shame we can't know that when we agree to buy "NBA Pass". The hated Lakers are winners again. Life is so unfair. Of course, after the referee went to jail and (beforehand) admitted the 2001 playoffs were rigged (you know the hated Lakers were 'supposed' to win), thus robbing the Kings of their championship, I can't believe in the NBA anymore. It might as well be big time wrestling. Commissioner Stern should be tarred and feathered. Really!
The rain has stopped for a moment. The storm, or this storm, must need to take a breath. The Weather Channel says rain for another five days. I am afraid that life in the mountains is too slow for this urbanite. Is the redwood tree, stationary with nothing to worry about save sun and rain and nutrients in the soil, content to observe the world from its platform for thousands of years? It would be a thousand year torture to me. Thus, not having a thousand years, I no longer feel I have time to hermit in the mountains.
I looked at a large trimaran for the second time last week. I'm not getting any younger, it may be time to see the world. I'm not kidding. Every day I wake up and think, "life is so wonderful ...and so finite." There could never be enough time to share with my sons. There isn't now, and it decreases everyday. I need more freedom to be able to spend more time with you both.

The End of Days

Sons and People,

Aren't these exciting times we live in? We might possibly get to be around for The End of Days. Not that I'm wishing the world to an early end, but as I've said before (The Problem of Mortality 09MAY08), I don't like the idea of things going on without me. I can't stand the idea of missing anything: if it all ends at once, it'll be easier to determine the point to start backtracking and catch the whole show inversely.

It's all there, these end of time predictions, encoded in the old testament of the bible. Using computer technology they've discovered a matrix that predicted this, and a matrix that predicted that. I don't know why they can't figure these predictions out before they happen. Did you know that within hours after 9/11 they discovered a matrix in the bible that predicted the whole thing?

Of course, some skeptics have run the same computer analysis on the Hebrew edition of Moby Dick and discovered the same matrices. It's the great debate: almighty God or conscious algae from a warm pond? In the end it seems to be the same; dust to dust.

This whole Biblical Code changes things though. Mankind/life would have a purpose. A purpose to the puzzle. To crack the code.

Have you guessed that I'm watching an episode of The History Channel on "The Bible Code - Apocalypse and Beyond"?

It's the 'beyond' part that concerns me. I hope God likes me enough to rapture my ass out of here on the first ship. I was talking to the boys in the city in the valley where the two rivers meet and according to them if you don't get the first ship out, you've missed the boat. I thought if you missed the first chance, you could still make the second string, IF you make the cut. According to them Rapture is the cut.

All the more reason to decipher that 'biblical code' and be at the station on time. This shit is important, you know? As mankind races to The End of Days, I'm thinking I might actually need to read the Bible, and Moby Dick again. Maybe I can come up with a matrix that ties both stories together and become the bridge between the Almighty and the skeptics.

High Aspirations.

And lets face it, these guys coming up with the matrices, they're way out of my league. They've got Doctorates in mathematics, history, theology, etc. A lot of them have that little round skull cap, too. The hat of 'the Chosen'. Hell, is all I've got is a fitted Kings hat from which I removed the bill. But it says, 'KINGS' on it. And as the descendant of a bastard son of King Richard the Lion Heart, it's all good!

Hey, I ain't worried about being blasphemous, this is a popularity contest, and the only way to heaven is if the BIG girl likes you. 'Hell Explained', explains it. And 'make her laugh' is always a top priority for womanizing young men! I don't care what people think. If she likes me, who is going to override her decision because I didn't make Sunday School. And if she doesn't like you... well, changing images is a lot harder then creating them.

Now, is all I've got to do is crack that code and confidently hang around and wait, I hope.

Anyway, should any of the facts, ideas, or research done on this paper be in error, blame the damn History Channel for putting it on the air and making me think about it. Oh, and correct me if I'm wrong. Otherwise, I would have written about the weather or something.

Raining today in southern Oregon. Good for the Jungle.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

The Holidays, A Body Gotta Live, and Respectable Pursuits

The holidays bring out the best in people. Watching the Sacramento Kings play the Boston Celtics on NBA Pass tonight, The Kings (as part of the half-time broadcast) were showing clips of their 'holiday' public service. The Kings and their owners, The Maloof family, along with other major corporations wanting to take advantage of tax write-offs and a chance for creating positive public relations, are very generous during the Holidays. In this 'community service segment' our heroes were going out in the poorer communities giving away Christmas trees, complete with ornaments to decorate them, as well as holiday meals prepared and ready to eat, 'donated' by Raley's\BelAir (one of the nicer supermarket chains in Northern California). Those meals aren' t cheap (my buddy Guy bought one at Thanksgiving and told me what he paid), but they are a nice meal. I feel relief for those few lucky poor people! I'm a sensitive person.
Stories of holiday goodwill and kindness make me tear up, normally. But there's more to the story... Well, see... the poor people weren't having these gifts delivered to their homes. Instead they were driving up in their cars and waiting in line. Then, with cameras rolling (wouldn't want to be generous and not have it be recorded\acknowledged, huh), the players delivered the necessities of a joyous holiday to the people waiting in their cars, who (as one happy recipient explained) "would not have been able to afford Christmas without the generosity of the Kings organization."
I guess I would have been happier for this 'poor' women except she didn't look older then thirty, nor was she unkempt, or portraying the appearance of someone downtrodden. And I noticed her nails were manicured in holiday colors (seemingly professionally) on the hand gripping the steering wheel of her newish mini-van. I wondered what the criteria was to qualify as poor and pull your car into line. Obviously a recent manicure didn't disqualify you. I could tell that owning a car didn't disqualify you either, because all these people had cars. I noticed that all the cars in line looked newer than mine too. These people gave me the impression the 'poor' had changed in the fourteen months since I left California.
The second recipient was driving what looked like a new Lincoln Navigator, which is a 10 mile per gallon SUV. I'm glad the Kings organization went out to the poor neighborhoods to play Santa, otherwise those poor people might have not been able to afford the gas to receive the necessities for Christmas. Thanks to the Kings organization they can drive in style and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Hallelujah!
Funnily, I didn't see any shopping carts in the line. I was under the impression that is the usual status symbol for the poor. Maybe those poor people got caught in traffic. Just as well, they wouldn't have had a roof to tie their tree on, or put under, for that matter. Those poor people are generally a little too poor for good PR video anyway. Though they know where the shelters are, it looked like they were completely unaware of this charitable event. In that respect, the Holidays bring out the worst in people too, unfortunately.
Every year there is the perennial story of the poor family robbed of their Christmas by thieves, and the gnawing moral question of how could anyone be so cruel? The following day, inevitably, will be the story of the public generously donating gifts, food, decorations: all the necessities of the Christmas celebration. All that love for those poor people, makes everybody feel good! This year there was another chapter to that type of story too.
It seems that a former friend of a poor family that was robbed, while sitting in his new SUV at a Kings Community function for the needy, waiting for a free meal and tree, saw the news clip on the overhead tv/dvd player in his Navigator, and notified the authorities that the same family had been "robbed" two years earlier. Ironically, the guy in the SUV thought it was atrocious his acquaintance would lie about his circumstances in order to take advantage of the public's sympathy. Morally, he felt like he had no choice but to expose him , saying, "that out-pouring of public generosity might have found it's way to the truly Poor, had it not been stolen by [his] unscrupulous buddy." So, the moral of the story?
ALWAYS HAVE A SCUMBAG HANDY TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM YOURSELF
Merry Xmas to One and All

PS The first snow this winter fell today-