The average cat sleeps 15 to 20 hours a day.  But that doesn’t mean a cat can’t get lonely.  Especially when its servants (some would say owners, but let’s be real) aren’t around much.

Earlier this year Rhumba spent two months in hospital and rehab.  It proved rough for both of us.  Between tending to work and tending to Rhumba, I spent all but one or two waking hours each day away from home.  And from the cat.

She’s a  meaty 13-year-old Siamese/Burmese mix with muscles of steel and an attitude.  But when our other cat died last year, our tough cat became more — needy.  And then, with neither Rhumba and I around much, almost desperate.

I gave her what attention I could. I knew that she enjoyed being brushed.  So I brushed her until she rolled on the floor and purred.  I brushed her before work.  I brushed her when I fed her dinner.  I brushed her late at night, three-quarters asleep after tending Rhumba all evening.  I brushed enough fur off her to make another cat.

But she didn’t care. She’d flop from side to side on the floor so that I could brush both sides equally.  She purred.  And she purred.   And she PURRRRED.  Until you could hear it  ten feet away while the neighbors used power tools.

And when Rhumba came home, she asked: “Why is the cat going bald?”  I hadn’t even noticed.  The cat hadn’t complained.

We’re both at home now, and Rhumba is back to at her job.  We come home every evening. But the cat still wants to be brushed.  Constantly.  When I come downstairs to feed her in the morning, she runs to her brush, not her food bowl.  I have suspicions that she’s learned to live off the kinetic energy transmitted through the brushing motions.  That, and solar energy from her daily sunbaths.

And I wonder if she will gradually fade away under the ceaseless brushing, until there is nothing left but an eternal purr — a standing wave of sound that never dissipates.  When it wanders near, I’ll run a brush through the heart of the purr, back and forth until the kinetic energy from the motion tops off its power levels.   Then it will float into my lap and PURRRRRRRRR far into the night.

And if we should ever sell our place or pass away, the disembodied purr will wander out of the house onto the highway and let the cars run through it for the sheer love of energy.  Until it is the size of an elephant, and the PURRRR measures on seismographs.  And people will come to wave their hands through it and feel the PURRRRRRR for thousands of years to come.

PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  Damn!  She wants to be brushed again.

This blog will experience a slight delay because of coffee.

On Labor Day, in an effort to be cool and suave and get out of the house, Rhumba and I took our act and our personal electronics to a coffee house.

I set up my laptop on a big table in the middle of the room and, after a few productive minutes of writing, knocked a glass of cold-brew coffee right into the keyboard.

I hefted the thing into the air and turned it upside down.  Brown liquid streamed from the cracks between the keys.  No cause for alarm; I’d backed the thing up a mere — six months ago.

“Turn it off before it shorts!” somebody called out. Good advice. I shut down the laptop without incident, half-closed the clamshell and stood the laptop up on its “legs,” so that it dripped and drained for another 20 minutes.  I made no attempt to turn it on. It went home with us, smelling strongly of coffee.

Knocking things over is a sort of unintentional hobby with me, but I actually haven’t spilled fluid into data processing equipment since the ‘80s, when I sloshed a can of Diet Coke into a computer terminal.  It did not survive.   I hoped for a better outcome this time around.

Fortunately Rhumba has a laptop, also, and the Internet is a fine source of information on anything trivial.  We were not surprised to find an extensive literature on the ramifications of pouring coffee into laptops.  The wise heads advised putting it on its legs and letting it dry out.  Preferable for a couple of days; a minimum of one, you mad fool.

I waited one.

My laptop booted alright, but the fan wouldn’t turn off.  After a couple of minutes the screen went black.  Then it tried to boot again. Then it went black.  Then it tried to boot again.

Finally, it just sat there and looked at me.  And then it spoke:

“BoopBoopBoop.”

“What?”

“BoopBoopBoop.”

“What does that mean?!”

“BoopBoopBoop.”

What it meant, the Internet told me, was that I had a RAM problem.  Either one of the RAM modules had gone bad; or, it wasn’t seated correctly in its sockets.  Or some foreign substance had gotten into the socket.

Was this substance brown, liquid, and of robust flavor?  I can only surmise.

So the laptop goes back on its legs to dry out for yet another day. We shall see if the morrow brings happy sockets to its motherboard.

And if not, I’ll hunt through our rolodex for the number of a certain bearded yeti who lives in the hills, descending only to buy supplies and fix ailing computers for cheap or free.  And to occasionally play the marimba at parties.

In the meantime I have Rhumba’s computer, but none of my files.  Who would think that something like this could happen in this day and age?

BoopBoopBoop.

(Update, 24 hours later:  It’s back from the dead, by God! Happy sockets fer sure!)

For your abbreviated reading pleasure, here are a few more police blotter haiku.  A year has passed since I’ve published new ones.  Life’s been a little hard lately.  But every one in awhile I’m inspired to spit a few out.  I almost have enough for another book.  Almost.

Rest assured that America has not changed; and in newspapers large and small, harried city editors continue to publish  three-line crime stories about people who are neither too good nor too bad but simply, at a key moment, out of touch with good sense and impulse control.  Enjoy.

“So, what shall we eat?”
It seems a harmless question.
Yet police were called.

I’m fine, she told them
And ran down the street laughing
in her underwear.

Go home, sleep it off,
the cop said, but hours later
their paths crossed again.

Too many shrooms, man.
He needs some help, plus help for
his spectral girlfriend.

As he ran the reds,
they noticed from the sidewalk
that his eyes were closed.

He can’t find his wife!
And his wife is fine with that,
the police would learn.

At the wheel, asleep.
As a cold rain bathes her through
the open sunroof.

Sex on the white line.
While their bicycles rest by
the side of the road.

He and his vodka
watched movies all day at the
Elvis Cinema

Inside Laundry Land
a hand scrawls swear words backwards
‘cross the fogged windows.

It’s a cool Thursday evening, and I’m standing in the parking lot outside St. Bob the Informal’s Presbymethertarian Church.  Inside, my wife Rhumba hosts a meeting of her knitting group.

St. Bob’s is well off the street.  Most of the campus lays beyond the view of passing motorists; and the parking lot is barely lit at night. I like to hover outside as the ladies come and go.  Just in case.

I also put out the tea and cookies.  I’m versatile.

Churches aren’t really public spaces, but they stand empty most of the time and as long as your dog isn’t digging in the geraniums or you’re not obviously casing the joint, we don’t say much.  A few Thursdays ago I had to gently persuade a homeless man to move his camp away from the front door so that we could enter.  No sir, the building’s not deserted, it just looks that way sometimes.  St. Bob’s is a small church getting smaller, as old members die and new ones fail to materialize.

But tonight, as usual, all is well.  A while ago, an old man wandered onto the campus and disappeared behind the parish hall.  But I’m not worried.  He had a newspaper under one arm, and there’s a little concrete patio back there with a chair or two.  It catches light and warmth from the setting sun. Not a bad place for an old man with cold bones to sit for a bit, and read.

The old man reappears from behind the parish hall and walks toward to the rear of the campus.  He sees me and says, a little defensively, “I like to come back here and check how the construction’s going.”

“And we’re very happy for you to do that,” I answer.

“The construction” fills the whole back half of the campus. Where once stretched a derelict field of weeds, now stands a substantial building, or what will soon be one.  The roof’s not on yet, but the framing stands tall.  And it’s big; two stories high, easily 100 yards wide.  They’ll have it buttoned up in a few weeks, and ready for business by spring.

“What’s it gonna be?” the old man asked.  His face was all vertical creases, like the shell of a walnut with human features superimposed.

“Subsidized senior citizen housing,” I told him.  He nodded.  “Forty-six units. You could apply, maybe, if you qualify.”

Just briefly: I live in a small, beautiful city that’s become too desirable. Investors from near and far swoop in to scoop up income properties.  Enrollment at the local university is up by 1000 students, and there’s little room for new housing.

Wealthy folks from Silicon Valley are buying second homes near the beach — which then stand empty 29 days a month.  We have a housing crisis, yet whole neighborhoods show but one or two lights after dark.

And the rents are crushing, and if you lose your rental you may never get another one.   Meanwhile, where do regular folks live?  And how can the town live, if regular folks cannot?

So St. Bob’s teamed up with a nonprofit housing agency and, after years of bureaucratic wrangling, put together the senior housing project. St. Bob’s gets a small chunk of change for a 99 year lease, and the nonprofit handles the rest.  Upwards of 50 seniors will live there. In what was once a messy wasteland, there’ll be lights and life and activity at all hours.

And St. Bob’s campus will no longer be dark and forbidding at night. To me that’s better than the money.  The money is welcome, but simply makes St. Bob’s a shrinking congregation with a nice bank balance.  Young families are the lifeblood of a church; and most of ours moved elsewhere years ago.

“The rent’s not all that cheap,” I tell the old man.  “Just cheap by local standards.  You know, you’ve got investors buying all the apartments and doubling the rents  And then everybody has to move out. Investors don’t care, it’s all about the money to those guys.”

The old man nods.  “You know what’s going to happen to them,” he told me. “They’re going to go to the court house, the big house, and the big man there, he won’t mess around with them, he won’t take any crap from them, because you don’t mess around with the big man, no you don’t.

“And the big man, at the big house, the court house, he’ll bring them down low.  Real low. Lower than the street. Lower than the ground.  Low, low, Low. And all their properties will be given to others.  You don’t mess with the big man, at the big house.  He’s tough, he’ll take them all down. Low, lower than the ground, and….”

And he repeats himself, and repeats himself again, and suddenly he is chanting to the air.  Over and over: the big man, the court house, the big house, the mighty brought down low, low, low.

Later I’d tell all this to my Rhumba, who knows three or four hundred thousand things about religion.  And she laughed and said, “You met Jeremiah!”

Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, even though he asked his God to shut it for him.  And God wouldn’t.  Jeremiah, who for decades looks the people of Judea in the face and condemned them for their sins. He condemned them for turning to idols, to sacrificing their children to Baal, for ignoring the wisdom of a demanding God for the selfish good times of a pagan god.

God would send the Babylonians to bring the Judeans low, Jeremiah preached endlessly.  He frightened the people.  He made uncertain the soldiers.  He enraged the priests.  The powerful put him in the stocks.  They threw him down a well.  They sent the establishment prophets to discredit him. They imprisoned him. But he couldn’t stop preaching.  He wanted to, but his God wouldn’t let him.

Now, when random strangers like the old man rant at me on the street, I never interrupt.  Listening isn’t what they want to do.  I just move on. But I stood and listened to the old man carry on and on, about the Big Man and the court house and the mighty brought low.  I liked his message.  I agreed with it.

But he does go on, that old man; and the darkness comes on, and I haven’t brought my coat.  It seems to me, by his body language and the way he shuffles his feet, that the old man himself wants to leave.  But he can’t. He can’t stop talking.

So finally I say, “Look, it’s getting a little cold, so I’d better go back inside.”

And he ends his rant at once. “Don’t get cold, don’t get cold,” he says, shaking his head.  “Nossir, don’t get cold.” He turns and walked back to the street, paper under his arm.

“You neither.  Stay warm!”

Now, old Jeremiah’s dire predictions landed him in jail.  But they came true.  The Babylonians did come. They destroyed the kingdom of Judea forever and sent its people, or many of them, into exile — where they mended their ways and made a new, righteous form of Judaism that lasts to this day.  And birthed other great religions.

And lo, the Babylonians were very kind to Jeremiah.  You tend to approve of people who’ve told others that God sent you.  They set Jeremiah up in a comfortable home, and let him be.  His preaching done, Jeremiah set to writing down his teachings.

It seems to me this year that Jeremiahs are popping up everywhere.  Things are wrong, they say.  The old truths are now lies, they say.  And unlike in old Judea, people are beginning to listen.

A Jeremiah ran for president.  He did not win, but he carries on, as do his followers: some still walk behind him, while other find new paths.  Right here, right now, plans are under way to breach the walls of old Washington: once the center of justice, now a place of false prophets where lies are called “spin,” and evil gets a free pass.

And the battle may be long, but the Jeremiahs won’t stop.  They can’t. And someday, down at the court house, the big house, the Big Man will deal with the mighty.  You don’t mess with the Big Man, because he’ll bring you down low, lower, lower than the ground.  And your property will be given to others.

I don’t know who the Big Man is.  Justice, perhaps.  Perhaps, just us.  Perhaps we are our own Babylonians, waiting for Jeremiah to summon us.  But whatever happens, in the end, I hope that my old Jeremiah gets a nice one-bedroom apartment out of it. With a sit-down shower.

I ran into Ruth the other day — not literally, thank God because she’s a parking control officer, and that would be awkward. I’ve known her since I moved here 30 years ago; she was the only teller at the Bank of America who knew the answer to anything. When they fired all the full-time tellers and replaced them with college students, Ruth joined the meter maids and I got another bank.

I see her every six months or so, cruising the streets in her Interceptor III ticket bomber. She always pulls over when I wave. But it seemed, the other day, that more time had passed than usual.

“How ya been?”

“Oh fine,” she said. “I dropped dead last year.”

And not at home in front of the computer or at the dinner table, either. No, Ruth dropped dead at the 12K mark of the Bay to Breakers, the San Francisco clothing-optional fun run for 50,000. One of her coronary arteries called a strike, and Ruth hit the ground like a stone.

But if you’ve got to have a coronary, Bay to Breakers is a great place to have one. Few of the runners are professional, much less in good shape or sober, and so paramedics lay in wait on every corner. They had Ruth in hand before she even bounced. Which was good, because seven full minutes passed before they could jump-start her heart She remembers watching the ambulance and its motorcycle escort drive away with her body in it. It was one of those memories that you’re not supposed to have.

Anyway, she looks really good for a former corpse, and she’s running again. She’ll retire one of these days. One of these days. Yep. One of these days.

The thing is, that a lot of people hope to die like Ruth. They just want to go till they stop: one minute, all systems go: then, shutdown; lights out; oblivion. The darkness. No muss, no fuss, no bother. Even more so if they’re broke. I’ll work till I die, they say. I’ve got no choice, so that’s what I’ll do. They want to die like Ruth.

Only, Ruth didn’t stay dead. Remember? The medics pulled her back in time. And she’s alive and well.

But what if she was alive but not well? Mobility impaired, perhaps even brain damaged. Maybe a stroke? Laid up for life? Who’d have taken care of her?

That is, by the way, an awfully popular question these days.

Everywhere I look, people of my age group, in their 50s and 60s, struggle to take care of elderly parents. The competent adults who raised them are now weak, unable to take care of themselves or manage their own affairs alone. Their aging children must see them through the hellmaze of modern medicine and make the decisions that their parents can no longer make or understand. As medicine keeps them alive, but not well.

Many of these struggling children, the ones that I know, have no children of their own. And to a man, and a woman, they see what their parents are going through, and have become, and wonder, who’s going to take care of ME? Who’s going to do this for ME? Because there is no one, no relative, whose duty that it will be. And their own years of decline loom in the middle distance.

My office mate has dealt with this for over a year now. I’ve heard her end of many calls. Endless arrangements for treatment. Loss of a father to Alzheimers. Endless, fruitless discussions on the phone with an angry distressed, 88-year-old mother who wants out, out, OUT of rehab and back to assisted living, even though she’s just had a stroke and is nowhere near ready. She’s be fine on her own, she’s sure. Meanwhile, all her complaints about life in rehab are completely true. Even when rehab’s not evil — usually, they try — it sucks.

And her daughter, my office mate, calms her down, for the nth time and all is well. Until tonight or tomorrow when she calls again and wants out, out OUT, right now! Come and get me! And my co-workers is in her 50s with little money and lives alone in a mobile home; and when her body and mind start to fail her, her only support will be a younger brother who can’t stand the sight of illness. And she asks herself, “Who’s going to take care of ME?”

Rhumba and I ask ourselves the same question. She’s just out of hospital and rehab, where we both had our hands full watching out for her. We made sense of the bureaucratic tangles. We turned back the nurses who kept bringing drugs she was allergic to, even after the orders had been changed. I put on gloves and helped the nurses treat her. I roamed the halls at night hunting down the staff who’d promised to change her dressings but were nowhere to be found. And, sometimes, roamed them with a box of fresh-baked cookies from the bakery down the road, just for the good PR: “Look, nurses, COOKIES. Courtesy of that kindly woman in Room 35, Bed B who so appreciates your attention.” I’ve got no shame at all.

And there was that horrible day when the rehab staff dispatched us by handi-cab to a long-awaited specialist appointment, and gave Rhumba a malfunctioning wheelchair to ride in. They fiddled with it a bit, gave up, and took us to the front door. And once we were outside the nurses turned back. We were on our own. Apparently, by policy and law.

One of Rhumba’s legs burned like fire; had been doing so for days thanks to an allergic reaction to blood thinners. I tried to roll her chair out to the street where the cab waited, but she wailed in pain every time that her foot slipped from the wobbly footrests and hit the ground. I dropped to my knees in front of the chair, bear-hugged the damned thing’s loose parts back into position and literally knee-walked it, and Rhumba, all the way to the cab. We had to get to that appointment. The specialist might be able to stop Rhumba’s pain. I would have done anything.

And yes, the specialist did treat her wounds, and her pain. Though when we got to his facility, we had to get Rhumba’s bad chair another 100 yards from the cab, through a hospital, to his office. Again, with no one authorized to help us. I’ll spare you that part of the ordeal. It was absurd and awful. It was modern medical bureaucracy at its worst.

So tell me; fifteen years from now, when we’re both a lot older and creakier, can we do all that again? Can we defend ourselves again? And if not — as I suspect — who’s going to take care of US?

“Maybe we should band together,” Rhumba’s boss said to me. She’s our age. She’s just seen her husband through a bad patch in a bad hospital; and if not for her intervention he might be dead now. “If there’s no one else to look after us, maybe we can look after one another.

“It’s an attractive thought, and I’ve heard it from others. There are volunteers who look after foster kids and make sure that they don’t get eaten by the welfare system. This would be the same. Is it workable? I have no idea. Is there an alternative besides, “trust the system?” I haven’t seen one, outside of never getting sick and then dying quickly.

God. Old age is supposed to be the time to ramp down, not ramp up. But the times are different now. More will be asked of us. Of that, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll be better for it. Or broken by it. I don’t know.

What I do know is that, hoping to die like Ruth, quickly and simply, isn’t enough. Old age and death is a process, a long one. Modern medicine makes it even longer, and also more difficult. It might be simpler to die quickly, but most of us will fade gradually. And we will need help along the way. It is past time to start thinking about that help, and how to get it to everyone.

Somebody’s got to take care of all of us. Even if that someone is us.

The last four months have been tough. Rhumba came down with a nasty infection that turned into an abscess, picked up collateral damage from “health” workers, was overly treated for the wrong problems and spent a miserable two months in the hospital and rehab. For much of that time she was in serious pain.

We are not convinced that most of it was necessary.  We are completely convinced that it was avoidable.  And can prove that it didn’t need to be anywhere near as  bad as it was.

She’s better. I’m better.  But for many weeks I would put in a full day’s work, come home for half an hour to feed the cat, and rush off to the hospital or rehab to help keep Rhumba’s head straight.  She hates modern medicine.  She has never been in a hospital before, or been seriously ill; and she fears illness.   At the many points when odd symptoms mysteriously appears and no one would pay attention, it took everything I had to keep her fears under control.  Even though I myself knew no truth except that panic is bad.

I had no strength left to write anything.  I just went on and on.  Stayed till 9 or 10 every night and drove home so bone tired that I had to narrate my route to myself aloud to stay awake.  Come home, sit in a stupor in front of the laptop for an hour or two, grab five hours, go to work and do it again.

The only thing that worked right, was work. I was too shaken to concentrate, so management switched me to easy tasks.  They gave me lots of time.  They told me to ignore the looming deadlines.  That place is anything but perfect, but the people are pretty decent. Thank God.

And things gradually got better, and Rhumba’s home now and even back at work.  But in about ten minutes I’ll put this down and go change her dressings for her.  The wound she went to the hospital for is pretty much cured; this is for the much more painful wound she picked up thanks to modern medical care.

I’ll snip off the rolled gauze and the old dressing, cleanse the wound, apply triple antibiotic, then translucent oil bandages, an ADB pad, a gauze wrap, and I’m done.  There’s an outer layer, too, an Ace-style bandage, but Rhumba handles that herself.  That’s the evening ritual, and will be for some time.

I learned how to do it while helping the rehab nurses change the dressing every night.  It was a half-hour, two-person job at first, and they rarely had enough staff.  That’s another reason I stayed late at night: to make sure that it was done right.  Otherwise, it might not be, and Rhumba’s fragile morale would go down the drain.

I’m less stressed now, and I’ve tried to write up everything that happened, but I can’t.  It’s too big.  I’m too close to it, still inside of it in fact.  Can’t come up with a witty, well-structured essay with a surprise conclusion at the end.  Too big.

Meanwhile I’m doing a few haiku, because those I can handle.  I still watch Rhumba like she’s a rare and fragile flower, which I do anyway but when you’ve been on high alert for three months, you don’t relax well.  I may get there.  Someday.

I’ll keep you posted.  Maybe even start writing about small things. Write if you’re out there.

I hear crickets.  Hundreds of them out there in the darkness, singing.  It’s a warm March evening.  The earth is damp and fragrant; the plans are growing like, well, weeds. I smell jasmine on the breeze. It’s cricket heaven.

I’m sitting on a bench outside St. Bob the Informal’s Presbymethertarian Church on a quiet Thursday night.  The sun set hours ago. I’m informal security for my wife Rhumba’s knitting group, which is meeting inside.  They keep the door open for latecomers, but the parking lot is poorly lit: a good place to lurk.

The ladies feel more secure if I hang out and see them through the parking lot; tonight’s mild air makes it a pleasure.  Besides, someone’s riffling through the dumpster at the far edge of the lot.  I can’t see him, but I hear him  So I sit here by the church door and fly the flag. Like the intruder, I lurk in shadow; but the light from my laptop screen makes my face glow like a zombie’s.

He’s no personal danger, I think, but the church door is unlocked, and he might like to slide in and make himself at home.  It’s been done.

Do I seem unChristian?  When I’ve tried to do the Christian thing with the drifters who wander or bicycle back here, out of sight of the street, I’ve always regretted it.  As has Pastor Biff.  So I don’t do that anymore.

Yesterday, in a cafe, I idly watched a scrolling LED sign display a string of witty aphorisms.  One of them stuck with me: “Without private property, there would be no crime.”

It’s somewhat true.  In tribal societies private property can be only conditionally private.  Neighbors may come by when you’re not around and carry off whatever you have that they need.  And when you need it back, you just go get it again.  Or get someone else’s.

Nobody goes to jail. What’s jail? If anyone gets angry, the neighbors hash it out with the two of you until you settle it. Problems were solved like that in rural America, too, not so many decades ago.

It does occur to me that in a society based on private property and ownership of things, most crime involves taking things from someone and selling them to someone else.  Because you don’t have a job.  Because you’re hungry.  Because you child is hungry. Because you need a fix. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Because you’re living on someone else’s couch, and life is hard.

What if life wasn’t hard?  What if everyone was guaranteed the basics of a secure life:  food, housing, security, education, maybe even a little tough love if needed.  But always forgiveness, too, and compassion.

How much crime would we have?  Crime of passion, always, and crime of really bad judgment.  But crime of moving stuff from my pocket to yours without my permission?  Not as much.  Certainly no crimes of debt, no bad credit ratings that keep you from renting a house or getting a job.

I’m not even sure we’d even have hate crimes, or at least not as many.  Economics so often lurks behind racism — the need for cheap labor desperate enough to do anything for a pittance;  or for a scapegoat to take the blame for the mischief of the ruling class. When everyone’s secure, that sort of hatred tends to back off.

I see the intruder now: a moving spot of slightly lighter darkness. He’s done with the dumpster, and is heading back to the street. He hugs the fence for concealment.

He may have gotten a few cans or bottles.  Why shouldn’t he?  But because he lacks things, and because I sit by of an open door beyond which lies many things, we are naturally in opposition.  Because of the world we live in, which is not natural. There’s plenty for everybody.

I think we can’t solve the world’s problems until we get this fair-allocation-of-resources thing out of the way. Until we do, we’re all enemies to each other.  And the people who profit from that state of affairs, like it just fine.

I’m in Seattle on business.  And I am reminded that I hate air travel.

But there was an industry conference in Seattle that everyone in my department has gone to, except me.  And as a 60-year-old employed person in a harsh world who needs to keep working, it behooved me to be a Team Player.

What my mostly-younger coworkers did not understand is that I last flew in the previous millennium.  TSA checkpoints, variable pricing, print yer own boarding pass, showing up two hours early — all new to me.  I’ve been guided through it all like doddering Uncle Boomer. We used to have travel agents for these things.  I miss them.

On the other hand, I have a time-traveler’s viewpoint of the air travel process.  You all have been herded through airport security checks for 15 years now, post-911.  You’re used to it.  But it’s all new to me.  It most reminds me of boarding planes in Central America back in the ’90s:

Poorly paid officers brusquely enforcing incomprehensible rules, barking orders to keep the cattle moving through — you didn’t hear me say “banana republic.”  I didn’t write it, either. Trust me. But it felt like it.

I don’t love the actual flying part, either — I have an overactive imagination.  But I can do it.  The much-maligned tiny seats weren’t really that bad.  The crew did its job. The pilot landed well, even through turbulence.

Then, on the other end, there was the joy of discovering a new airport, walking half a mile to luggage pickup, walking another half mile to the shuttle, waiting in the bus half an hour because of some snafu.  Confused and uncertain all the time.

Honestly, why do you people put up with this ordeal?.

Yes, I am slipping into crotchety-old-manhood. Sorry.  But still — why? Rhumba and I traveled to Seattle in the 90s, and enjoyed it.  We took the train, still the most civilized form of transport off the water.

Seattle was less glossy then, less noticeably hip, but a place of physical and man-made beauty nontheless.  And the people were as laid back as small-town old-timers, and as friendly.  We had to love it.

Seattle’s still Seattle in 2016 — but more.  More buildings, more art, more hipness, more everything. The airport terminal had a huge exhibit of Seattle grunge band rock posters going on, mounted like fine art.  (“Look, Pearl Jam!”)

There were irridescent accent tiles in the men’s room floor and abstract tile patterns on the wall.  There were “green” notices everywhere about this or that eco-friendly practice that was going on around you. Outside, the taxicabs were mostly Prius hybrids.

Seattle wants you to know where you are as soon as you get off the plane. And yes, you’ll know.  It’s March in Seattle, and cold.  But the air is fresh and yes, actually invigorating, and you don’t mind; 45 in Seattle fits you like 60 in the Bay Area. At least, if you don’t have to sleep in it.

Downtown Seattle, where I’ve been trapped in a  conference center for three days, is a massive cluster of tall glass boxes with national chain stores on the bottom floors. But many older buildings remain, and the clear clean light of a Seattle sunset makes even glass boxes look good.

There’s a Seattle “look,” downtown and everywhere. Cool. Streamlined.  Arty; but only in a cool streamlined way.  The people have it; many restaurants have it; some of the food has it.

I’m staying downtown at Sixth and Pike; Hordes of Prius cabs swarm around the hotels.  Public art climbs the sides of buildings. Skybridges cross the streets 100 feet up.

The sidewalks gleam. Many of the pedestrians do, as wekk.

“How can it be so clean downtown?” I asked Rhumba over the phone. “San Francisco would be filthy. Where are the homeless people?”

She answered.  “They’re keeping them away from the city center.  They’re out there somewhere.”

Rhumba was correct. As you walk west toward Puget Sound, the homeless appear promptly at Third.  It’s like crossing a line; no doubt there is an actual line of some sort, at least on the maps used by police and the chamber of commerce.

But it’s still — Seattle. Maybe more Seattle than the cleaner, corporate parts.  Grizzled beggars bark into cell phones as if they were CEOs. An old man in a three-piece suit wears his “tech work wanted” sign on a sandwich board, along with his resume and his social media contacts.  Good restaurants and expensive suits exist side-by-side with rags and multiple overcoats and angry wanderers. Here, a basement supermarket; there, the art museum.

Did I mention escalators? Seattle is mad for them. And basements. Especially if there are bar/restaurants in them. Or a supermarket.

And then you get to First Street, and Pike Place Market, and you’re among the tourists and food shoppers watching the fish-mongers throw halibut at each other.  It’s a thing.  Surprisingly, they catch them. Pike Place Market is a tourist spot but also a real public market; the price of admission is zip, the view is supreme, and the prices aren’t extreme.

Seattle is a great city, and while I usually at this point start snarking about the dark side behind the beauty of anything that I like, I say it again: Seattle is truly a great city, and I got around in it as much as I had time for. It’s beautiful — nature gets some of the credit — friendly, creative. They know how to live a good life in Seattle.

Hate to say it, but Seattle’s got more going than San Francisco.  Both are way expensive to live in, but Seattle still manufactures its own culture.  San Francisco has to send out.

A tidal wave of high-tech money hit Seattle 20-odd years ago and hasn’t yet subsided. And Seattle spent it well, on urban renewal and good transit and infrastructure and, yes, art.  When a city has the money to put art everywhere — or mandate others to do so — that’s a rich city.

And when big money comes to a city, it changes that city.  Seattle is changing: more expensive, more crowded, more exclusive, more global, a tad more affected, a tad less unique. Seattle has a huge reserve of unique to draw on, true, but it’s going to need all of it.

Because one thing I’ve noticed, at least downtown, is that free-spirited Seattle is a city of guards. As an out-of-town conventioneer, I saw guards wherever I was likely to go: there not just to ensure my safety, but to make sure that my “Seattle experience” wasn’t overwhelmed by some pesky real-world distraction like a homeless junkie.

I’m just back from the closing night festivities at the convention center. The theme was “Seattle and the 90s.”  They had a 90’s grunge tribute band.  There was free tarot and numerology; you could make your own dream-catcher, too, or play 90s-era video games while downing kobe beef sliders and gourmet mac and cheese topped with crab and bacon. And fresh sushi, of course.

They even set up a fish market stall, where authentic Seattle fishmongers tossed fish back and forth.  It was the whole “Seattle experience” for the people who never had time to leave the convention center.  And the convention guards were everywhere.

Good luck, Seattle, I’m leaving tomorrow and don’t plan to return.  I truly hope that you staya great city, and not an “experience” like that city in California with the bridges and cable cars. It’ll be tough.

Blackbirds are trouble.  Never more than at a sidewalk bakery, when they swoop down to lay claim to the crumbs on your plate: “You WERE done with that — you know that, don’t you?”

I sometime wonder how nature packaged so much attitude into two ounces of bird.  I’m 1500 times their weight, and do they care?  “Gimme those croissant crumbs, ape, or there’ll be trouble.”

Blackbirds have to be trouble. They are small, and life is hard.  If they were meek, they’d be gone.  So they are not meek. They’ve got a few years to live, if they’re lucky, and they make the most of them.

We have Brewer’s Blackbirds out here — compact, basic-black males with purple highlights, and winsome light-brown females.  If there are crumbs on the ground, you have blackbirds.  If you seed your lawn, or spread wildflower seeds, you’ve erected a buffet for a hundred of them. I’ve been there.

When rain forces the earthworms in your yard to the surface, the blackbirds will pick ’em all off.  If you walk too near their nests, they’ll fly right at you.  Mind you, you’ll only know you’re near a nest when a raging blackbird charges you from 12 o’clock high.  You will flinch, protect your eyes and scalp, and get the hell out of there.  Everybody does.

Anything that threatens their eggs, they attack or try to scare off: humans, jays, crows, even hawks.  I once saw a blackbird chase a rat down the street.  That rat was hoofing it, too.

Brewer’s Blackbirds tend to settle down with one mate, eventually — when you weight two ounces, you need someone to depend on — but they live large.  Outside of mating season, they form dense flocks that twist and turn through the sky like deforming rubber.

Two, three, four hundred of them will land on the power lines and scream their heads off. Then they’ll all take to the air, circle the ‘hood, come back to the lines and scream all over again.  I think they’re dating.

When the pyracantha bushes put out their bright red berries, the blackbirds gorge on them and get blind drunk. Good times.

And they do good for us, too, though mostly we don’t know it.  Brewer’s Blackbirds rarely meet a new insect they wouldn’t eat — immediately.  When the grasshoppers invade, or the weevils or tent caterpillars, Brewer’s Blackbirds are there to slow them down (burp).

All this — and you don’t give a damn about blackbirds.  They’re live in the background, except when they land on your table and try to eat your bread.  You’ve got more important things to think about.

Now: imagine that you’re  like a blackbird — but still human.  You might say, well, I don’t live among creatures 1500 times my size.

But if you make $50K a year, somebody who makes $75 million a year — 1500 times your salary — is a giant compared to you.  That clan of giants almost runs the country; and they’re getting more gigantic every year.  As you have no time for the blackbird that hopped onto your table,  so do they have little thought for you.  You’re in the background. They move, you get out of the way.

Oh, you do good things: pay your taxes (while they don’t); volunteer; give to charity without expecting to see your name on the side of a building; work productively and well to earn your own keep; even serve in the armed forces, or send your kids.

But the giants just don’t see it from their lofty heights.  They own the country — but the people who live in it, and make it run, are not their problem.  It’s an interesting form of blindness that may destroy them — but not without much pain and suffering for us.

That’s why I think that we need to learn from blackbirds.  They don’t sit and wait for the giants to have a change of heart and care about them; if they did, they’d be dead.
They go out every day to make the world a better place for blackbirds.

So be a good blackbird: take care of you, and your flock, and the greater good of all blackbirds. Don’t worry about trouble:  trouble for the giants is justice, life, and freedom for you.  Dodo birds weren’t a lot of trouble; where are they now?