“Here’s your pizza,” the healthy young waitress sang out. She leaned over from behind me to place it on the table. Diced tomatoes and basil glowed red and green in the light of sunset. Some works are art are meant to be eaten.

The pizza’s beauty took my mind and eyes off the pair of well-developed mammaries hanging down alongside my nose. The waitress’ bold neckline barely contained them. I visualized ripe honeydew melons rolling off a counter.

And then I gave thanks that I am old. Because I had no strong need to stare, or even sneak a glance.

Matters were not always so. As a young man I knew that the world would certainly end in fire and tragedy if I did not scan every well-exposed set of bosoms that wandered by. No other desperation exceeds that born of unrequited hormones. And you know young men; girlfriend or not, they’re unrequited 23 hours a day.

But I was a polite young man who knew that I wasn’t supposed to stare. Except that most young woman who no man looks at will feel that they’re doing something wrong. American sexual attitudes are something of a minefield.

Still, few women of flamboyant appearance seemed eager for my intimate gaze. So I found ways of pretending not to look while actually looking. Most men do. These days I amuse myself by watching other men pretend not to watch.

Now that I’m older, a bold young woman who catches the corner of my eye,can stay there. I look at the opposite sex, but the sense of urgency is much diminished. Ten years ago I went to teaching school for while and found it refreshing to study with good-looking young women without beating back hormonal fantasies.

On one occasion, a group of us left the lecture hall to meet at a circle of benches outside in the sun. As discussion progressed, a lithe young woman of impulsive disposition reclined on a bench and pulled her top up to her ribs. She spent the rest of the meeting catching rays on her fine, taut belly while talking of child development. I aimed my eyes at her nose, but the earnest young man beside her had to turn his head away. His eyes, which I alone could see, were wild. His thoughts were clear: “I’m in a program that’s full of women and run by women, to teach me to work with children and so I cannot look and I wish she would stop doing that!”

Eventually he sucked it up, as do all men of responsibility. But it’s not always easy.

And it’s getting harder. Were I young today, I’d probably lose my mind. There’s too much on display; thanks to modern materials science, a young woman can buy a pair of denims that clings to every contour like plastic wrap, and hides absolutely nothing anatomical. Cleavage? Everywhere, all the time, often with shaping that makes the blouse look like it’s about to pop off. You young people may have heard stories about the ’60s and ’70s, but in those days even exposed belly buttons were hard to come by and cleavage was for after hours.

I’m not going to tell women how to dress; I just want to know why so many of you under-40s think that extreme and fairly constant tittilation is a good idea? Or did the clothing industry just give you no choice? I could buy that with the cleavage, but nobody forces anyone to wear skin-tight spandex or molecule-thick “exercise” tights that look like body paint.

Does it get you something? Or are you trapped in some sort of fashion arms-race hell with other competitive young women?

Pity the geeky young man with too much adams-apple staring at you out of the corner of his eye; he probably can’t help it. It’s biological. Women, you have the right to dress anyway you want. But I want the right to hover over you with a hot fudge sundae and a huge plate of tiramisu while you poke at your low-cal salad. That might give you a pale image of the male predicament.

Some years ago I discussed all this with a man of the age that I am now. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I asked, “if men were born with some sort of dimmer switch we could use to, you know, tune down the urge when it was a hassle, but turn it back to full strength when the time was right?”

“God, I’d have killed for that,” he said. “It would have kept me out of prison.” As a young naval enlisted man he’d visited San Francisco during the Summer of Love and, well, never reported back for duty. He had a top secret clearance, sadly, and the SP came looking for him. A city park full of willing young women, all the dope you could smoke, and the Grateful Dead for background music? I couldn’t have stood up to that at age 20. Perhaps not even at 30.

Yes, men are tools. I freely admit it. But ladies — especially those of you who are proud of your bodies — use us with care and understanding.

I’m still writing police blotter haiku, for better or worse. You’ll find a new batch (or two) over at Police Blotter Haiku, my other blog. Police Blotter Haiku, the book, sells slowly but steadily. If you’ve read it, and liked it, and care to add a review on Amazon, I’d appreciate it.

Other than that, I’ve started a new job. As you know, I’d been working in the advancement (fundraising) department of a public university. I still work for the university — but in a different department.

I work in the Office of the Registrar (aka, the Rej); could anything sound more boring? I sit in a cube farm of modest size within a room that resembles the bowels of a ship; power conduits and pipes and heating ducts cling to the walls and ceiling in plain sight. Everything is painted the same shade of beige.

The cubicles are unique to my experience, in that each cube wall contains a glass window to the next cube. You can look all the way down each line of cubes in either direction, or even through the rows of cubes in front of you, or in back, straight through to the front and rear walls. Against the front wall is a counter with outward-facing teller stations. The teller windows are closed.

Next week, those windows will open, and long lines of students — and their parents — will queue up to ask questions of the Rej. Some of them will not be happy questions: why can’t I enroll? Why can’t I get my classes? What do you mean, I missed the deadline for submitting transcripts? And occasionally the questioners may let their anger overwhelm them. There are special code words for danger, even panic buttons that call the campus police.

It probably won’t come to that. But sometimes it has. Frightened people are angry people. Flunking out of college, perhaps deeply in debt at the age of 19 or 20? That frightens a lot of people.

Despite the spartan quarters and my position on the front lines, I am happy to be here. And no, I don’t have to man the counter.

While no job is perfect, my new co-workers have actively made me welcome. Everyone’s helpful. If I have a question, someone comes over and answers it immediately. Another person was hired along with me, in the same job classification, and we’ve formed a team of sorts. It is, dare I say it, cozy.

And Rhumba works upstairs. We commute together, walk into the building together, often lunch together. In an ugly concrete building nestled in a redwood forest. But you can barely see the building for the trees.

Life could be a lot worse, right now. We’ll see where the road takes us. In the meantime, I’m learning more about how a university works than I did in eight years with the fundraisers. The Rej is the academic control tower of the university, monitoring every student’s flight path to graduation. The Rej guides every successful touch-down with confirmations and course corrections, and shouts “PULL UP! PULL UP!” when someone comes in too low.

I learn something new every day. Sometimes my eyes go wide as dinner plates.

Want to know about the state of higher education in America? I hope so, because you’ll be hearing about it from time to time.

Stay in touch. More soon.

 

I have a confession to make: for years I have told readers that I work for a hard-charging and stress-making marketing organization. And this was true.  But what is also true is that I worked for a university: in its fundraising arm.  The point is that sales is sales, whether the product is a vacation condo in Tahoe or the warm, fuzzy feeling that you get from donating to a good cause.  The principles are the same, and so are the tactics and techniques. 

And now that I’ve left that job, I am posting an article here that I previously posted elsewhere under another name. My employers might not have liked it.  Some of you have read it.  Now the rest of you can.  Also, new haiku over at my Police Blotter Haiku blog. Enjoy.

By strange ways, my wife and I found ourselves at the dedication ceremony for a unique piece of public art. Amidst a varied group of spectators, we admired an abstract sculpture made entirely of plastic bottle caps. You can give it a good spin and watch it revolve, if you’re gentle with it.

Lest you grumble about how your tax dollars are spent, let me assure you: none of them were.  That was the point.  There were no tax dollars left to spend.  That’s how you get, in America these days, sculptures made of plastic bottle caps in the public parks. Made by school children, at that.

And what kind of park does this sculpture sit in?  A new one: landscaped with dead grass and bare gray dirt. Here and there you will find park benches that were made from old cargo pallets, and look it. You will find a dirt trail or two, cut through the sod, and a corral for dogs to run in.  You will even find a bicycle obstacle course made of piles of dirt.

What you will not find are paved trails, flowers and plantings, trash cans (not that I could find), sports fields, graded land, park employees, or much parking. This is what happens when the money runs out. And people still want a park.

We were in Live Oak, which is not quite a city but resembles one from a distance, like a mirage.  The county has jurisdiction over what was once a semi-rural neighborhood of scattered housing tracts, truck farms, begonia nurseries, trailer parks, and old houses landscaped with derelict cars.

But Live Oak changed; new homes replaced the large lots and nurseries; the derelict cars were sold on craigslist.  And the county put in storm drains and sidewalks, widened roads, and even built a park or six.  They were trying for seven when the money ran out.   An impoverished state government shut off their revenue stream forever.

So the county had the land, but no money left to improve it. The land might have been sold off; but then the park’s neighbors, organized by one of those tireless women who are the heroes of neighborhood action groups everywhere, offered to step in and take charge of it themselves.

So they did. This day’s dedication ceremony was the kick-off of a community work session; the neighbors would soon be spreading wood chips and gravel and hacking and chopping at a variety of organic and inorganic substances.

But before the work began, John Leopold, the county supervisor for this district, got up to address the crowd of neighbors.  He lauded their initiative.  He praised the tireless woman who’d brought them together.

Looking across the stubbly brown landscape, he said, “Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be. I don’t think that the manicured park we’d planned here would have been as true to the spirit of the land and the history of Live Oak as what you’re doing here.”

And he smiled, and we smiled back, because such shameless political bullshit has to be admired. If the money hadn’t run out, we’d all be sitting on soft, green grass that somebody else had watered and mowed.

And then all the neighbors fell to spreading wood chips and other sundry tasks.  Even the county supervisor did a  good long shift with a shovel and a  pile of wood chips. And there was a buffet of packaged food, and activities for the kiddies.  Which is where my wife and I came in.  Through a mutual acquaintance, Tireless Hero Mom had recruited my wife to provide a children’s activity while the physical labor was done.  The children would wrap trees in long, long strips of varicolored knitting.

The kiddies took to the task with all due zest, and soon children and trees and yarn were one large cat’s cradle.  Delighted mothers with smart phones snapped many pictures.

And there was talk of the non-profit organization that the neighbors would found to support the park, and how it would solicit donations to pay for what the park needed.  You have to admire a group of everyday folks for taking on something like this.  It’s inspiring, and no mistake.

But can they keep it up forever and ever? They have lives to lead and money to make and children to raise, all of them, especially Hero Mom. It’s hard to have a life these days and throw yourself into a major volunteer project that’ll last – honestly, all your life.

This sort of job is what government should do: focus the collective wealth of a nation on the well-being of its citizens.  And keep the parks running year after year, decade after decade as part of the public good, not as the personal choice of a few heroes.  If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that any system that needs heroic intervention to get its job done well, is broken.

Well-dressed people on television dispute this; they say that government has no right to take money from some for the good of all.  They tend to be the good friends of billionaires, though they will not say so.

Against them, balance the well-intentioned park neighbors are addressing the public good with no resources but their own sweat and time, used pallet wood, plastic bottle caps, a few piles of wood chips and gravel from the county, and a dream of the money that might be begged from kind strangers. While the very wealthy dodge taxes and become richer.  I think of all this, and I get sad.

I should tell you what I do for a living.

Online I often represent myself as an employee of a sales and marketing organization.  This is completely true – but misleading.  Strictly speaking, I work in the fundraising, or “development”, department of a large public university.  It will remain nameless. Anyone who knows where I live will guess its identity.  But why poke the bear?

University or non-profit fund-raising resembles any sales campaign anywhere; but there are differences.  For one, universities historically sell intangible products. For your money to a scholarship or academic program, you receive satisfaction; a sense of self-worth; the warm glow of helping others who you identify with.

And then there is the ego-stroking, especially for big donors. A big donation that gets your name over the door of a new laboratory? And invitations to intimate dinners with the university president? That’s not just about altruism.  Most big donors expect to be catered to; and they are.  Because though they represent fewer than ten percent of all donors, they also represent over eighty percent of donations.

Development, as opposed to sales, has its own lingo. We have development officers, not salesmen. When it comes time to get serious the DOs make the “ask,” not the pitch.  They do not approach customers, but cultivate “constituents.” And then there is the campaign: in development, a campaign is a pre-planned multi-year program to not only raise a boat-load of money for selected projects, but to polish the university’s image and ramp up annual contributions to a new, higher level.

Fifteen years ago, fundraising wasn’t central to our university’s well-being.  But fifteen years ago, the state footed most of the bill.

And almost every year for fifteen years, our state cut university funding.  Other states did, too. So tuition had  to shoot through the roof.  Classes had to be dropped; whole programs and degrees, too, and academic and support staff.  Students struggle to pay their tuition or get all the classes they need. Some fail. Funding has improved a bit lately, but not much.  And tuition remains too high. We the university are not what we once were.

There’s not enough money to keep all the promises government has made to its citizens; this has been coming for 30 years, since the era of St. Reagan and before. The politicians tell us that raising taxes is bad, but cutting taxes is good.  Letting the wealthy keep all their money is good for us all – in some unexplained way.

And so the schools fundraise to plug what gaps they can.  You would be amazed at what my department does to raise cash and how many months and years of effort we’ll put in for one big gift.   We get paid – unlike Hero Mom – but it’s a near-heroic journey into unknown worlds of fund-raising. We work our butts off to help the school get what the state can no longer give it. We’ll try anything once.  And if it works once – again and again and again.

Data from dozens of sources flows into our computers, which slice and dice it all into into lists: lists of donors; lists of donors by estimated giving capacity; prospective parent donors; donors by estimated assets, by calculated propensity to give annual gifts or major gifts or even to remember us in their will.

Keen-eyed development officers follow the hottest leads wherever the data takes them; to the seaside estates of the wealthy, to the high hills of San Francisco, to Silicon Valley watering holes,  to Tinseltown, to the neo-colonial halls of DC and Boston, and increasingly even to Wall Street itself.

Our servers erupt daily with e-mail “blasts” to smaller donors, non-donors who might become small donors, steady donors who might become large donors.  We even solicit students for small gifts, to inculcate in them “the habit of giving.”

Our phone banks operate most of the year, manned by likable students who’ll call you around dinner hour to discuss the glories of dear old University and solicit, if you would be so kind, a $200 donation. No? What about $150? $100? They’ll take $25 if that’s all they can get because if you give once  – you might give again.

Should a public university do this? Yes – if it want to survive.  The administration is bluntly honest on the matter: as government support diminishes, we must find our money where we can, and accept the priorities of those who give it to us.  This involves chasing donors across the landscape, sure, but also making ourselves valuable to corporations and other powerful folk with money to give us.

Our liberal arts programs and social science research may not get a lot of government or corporate grants, but our burgeoning computer science and biotechnology departments certainly do.  And these days, they’re what we chiefly publicize.

And as the needs of society accumulate – but money does not – every small non-profit group around here is emulating us.  Everyone’s starting their own tiny campaigns.  Talk of “asks” and development and  planned giving floats through conversations at  churches, volunteer organizations, social service providers, community centers, even neighborhood groups like the folks who are building their own park.

Call it a Bake Sale for Civilization.  The rich get to keep all their money now.  So we have to hold things together without them.

Only, we can’t.  If you’ve ever given a dime to charity, you’re now under bombardment from multiple worthy organizations asking you to give, give give. And more of them every day, trying harder and harder.

I am no development officer, though I work with them daily. But I keep my ear to the ground; and in spite all our furious blasting and asking and prospecting, I’m hearing concern, in low tones, that we might be over-grazing our donor base. Is donor fatigue setting in? Have we asked too much, too often, from too many? Nobody knows.  But some worry.

And they ought to. You can’t run a civilization on donations alone; society’s spare change can only do so much. The mass of us are not growing richer; eventually the coin jar by the door will empty completely.

Of course the rich can give, and do. And we ask them more and more often. And why not? To many of them, a million dollar donation hurts far less than a thousand-dollar donation would hurt to you.

But he who pays the piper, picks the tune.  Gifts from the wealthy and grants from corporations reflect their own values and self-interest, not those that are necessarily best for the nation, or most acutely needed.

Our superstar donors, the ones that the president hob-knobs with, include real estate speculators; hedge fund and private equity managers; venture capitalists; and topflight attorneys who defend corporations in court against other companies, the government, and even you.

In the world as it is today, these are the people with money.  Do you want them setting the agenda for higher education?  Because increasingly, they do.  As individuals yes; and also as corporations who throw grant money at the departments they like and the research that they think will make them money, down the road.  They’ve always done this; but now we really need their money badly.  And they know it.

My knee-jerk reaction to life is pessimistic. It’s an emotional predisposition, if supported by the facts more often than not.  Yet it may well be that Hero Mom and her crew will whip that park into shape, plant organic gardens, build facilities for kids and grown-ups alike and found a non-profit which maintains their patch of common ground both well and eternally.  I really hope they do it. I should have faith in them.

But the odds against are tall.  Even if they succeed with their park, there are not enough heroes to go around for all the other things that need doing, and that government should be doing.  Most people struggle just to make it through the week and keep the wolf from the door.  And every week, some of them fail.

This can’t go on.  One way or another, it won’t.  Either America collapses into a third-world country of widespread poverty and small islands of affluence, or the people come to understand what’s happening to them and take back the governance of the nation. Either way, it’s going to be rough.

I have intelligent older friends who know all this – but can’t bear to dwell on it.  They’re comfortable as they are with their pensions and investments and home equity, and just want things to hold together until they die.

And when the little envelopes from the charities arrive, they stuff them with small checks and send them back and hope it’s enough.

It’s not. And it’s never going to be again.

 

Rhumba and I are working stiffs: we go to work, come home, recover, do it again the next day. On the weekend there’s the chance to catch up on private life; we spend much of our precious time on grocery shopping, laundry, chores, prepping food for the coming week, and sleeping late. We don’t get out much or have much of a social life. You might even say that we both have second jobs, though not the kind that pay money.

And that’s why I write, to a certain degree, about restaurant workers. They’re the people we most often see outside work, on those days when we’re too beat to cook. As time passes, such days come more frequently. You could tell me that we should stay home and save the money for the future, but I’ll tell you this, sir or madam: we are not young, and the future is now. We need this, now.

So we see these people, waiters and busboys and counter clerks and managers, a few days a week. We see the same men and women over and over. They’re friendly and solicitous, because their tip depends on it.

And they will welcome you and ask you how you are on this fine day. And you will say, “Fine, thank you.” If you ask in return, “And how are you?” you will receive in exchange a slightly raised eyebrow and a smile that is perhaps more than just professional. Because you are just a tiny bit unusual: most people don’t care to know about the server. They just want to be fed in exchange for money.

But Rhumba and I are old, and a little isolated socially. While the waiter/customer relationship is very ritualized, we are more than willing to engage our server as a person. We have both worked food service; we know that it is hard work for limited reward. So why not be human toward these human beings who may be the only people we talk with today, outside work?

And after you express interest in them a time or two, your servers may tell you who they really are. Many of us feel a bit isolated these days, and isolation’s not always a matter of how many or few people that you talk with.

So on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, the breakfast waitress at the Cafe de Lay bustled over to greet us and talk for a moment. She barely needed to know our order, as it rarely varies; she has in fact has served Rhumba and I more eggs than our mothers ever did. Thirty four countries have been born since the day that Alma signed on at the cafe.

Alma is a middle-aged Latina with high cheekbones and wavy black hair that tumbles down over her shoulders. Her eyes are wise and friendly; her voice, gracious and full of feeling. When she asks me how I am, I’ll tell her the truth She wants to know.

“I need my protein this morning,” I told her. “I’m starting a new job.”

“Oh, how wonderful. Does it pay better than the job you had?”

“Yes,” and we discussed the several reasons that I took the job.

But I also had to say: “Frankly, at my last job, whatever I did? It wasn’t enough.” By that I meant that the demands just kept growing and growing; but Alma interpreted it her own way.

“I know what you mean. I worked here twenty five years for a man who was never happy with me. No matter what I did, he criticized. But now he’s gone” — the restaurant had just changed hands — “and I’m still here.” She smiled wryly.

The new owners were impressed with Alma; she knew how to do practically every job in the place. The old owner? “I guess he had a problem with women.” A toss of the head, an inclined chin: it was his problem, not hers.

We spoke of Labor Day, and how much business the restaurant had gotten. “We were so busy in the morning,” she said, “but everyone went away by noon. I got to go home early, and read my book. And I fell asleep.” A rare afternoon of rest on a busy holiday: Alma smiled at the memory.

Across her blouse Alma wears a collection of pins and brooches: stylized representations of winged angels in silver and bronze and gold and colorful stones. Alma loves angels. And I wondered, in this context, whether she wears her angels as a sort of breastplate: something, anyway, to give Alma the strength to keep on being Alma in the face of bitter bosses and long years of hard work.

One pin outshines all the others; it is costume jewelry, of course, made of stamped and formed metal; but larger than the rest, and brilliant gold in color. The angel smiles from within a halo of fine metal strands. Its wings catch the light. It has come only lately to Alma’s collection.

And if that angel could talk, it could tell you a few things about the nature of reality. It can’t; so I’ll try.

One hot day several weeks before, Rhumba and I found ourselves in a thrift store that she hadn’t particularly wanted to visit. I did, for some reason. Rhumba could have stayed behind, but chose to tag along despite the heat and a sore knee. I ambled to the clothing section, while Rhumba headed for a room of chintz and china and shiny decorative things.

I found nothing that I wanted, and so rejoined Rhumba  in the chintz room. I found her hovering in front of a display case. In the case lay a golden angel pin in a pretty box.

“I’d like to get it for Alma,” she told me, a little hesitantly. “Do you think she’d like it?”

“Don’t see why not.” Even in the flat light of fluorescent tubes, the angel shone. Valuable? Not especially, but it was well made and in perfect condition.

“Is it okay if we spend the money?” Rhumba asked. She seemed almost shy about it.

And yet the angel pin cost less than a decent omelette. I never would have thought to make this gesture to Alma — men need women to compensate for their deficits — but good grief, this was a modest gift if ever there was one. It puzzled me that she wanted my approval.

“Buy it,” I said. And that was that. Rhumba stowed the pin in her purse against the next time we saw Alma.

Unsurprisingly, we saw Alma at breakfast a few days later. She wasn’t our waitress, but Rhumba waved to her and she stopped with us.

“We saw this pin at a store the other day and thought of you,” Rhumba said, “I hope you like it.” Rhumba handed Alma the small box. Alma smiled graciously.

“Oh, how nice,” she crooned. “Thank you.” And then she opened the box.

“THIS PIN!” Alma cried. “HOW did you find THIS PIN?”

She had seen it in a store some time back, and fell in love with it. And yet, she hadn’t bought it. She couldn’t say why; I won’t speculate. Her husband was in a hurry to leave, and she followed him out without the angel pin. She had thought about the golden angel ever since, though she couldn’t even remember where she’d seen it. And now, here it was — or one just like it — freely offered as a gift to her.

“AND IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!” she cried, and literally fell on Rhumba’s head, hugging it and laughing and crying. I will long remember the sight of Rhumba’s helplessly-smiling face — what little was visible — peering out from within Alma’s full-body embrace.

Ever since, the golden angel has ridden Alma’s blouse, the biggest and brightest of the guardian demi-gods perched there. We talked with her about the golden angel one other time, then never mentioned it again. She always gives us a discount; but then again, she’s done that for years. I  tip back half of it.

And this is where people who need an orderly world say, “What a coincidence!” And this is where I sneer at them.

Rhumba and I have discussed the odds against the occurrence of this chain of events; they are so large that belief in Santa Claus would be a more rational conclusion than “coincidence.” Santa Claus — or angels.

When Rhumba looked at the angel at the store, she told me later, it seemed to look back at her. It asked for her attention. She described it as “numinous:” possessing a meaning beyond its physical self, presenting a sense of a connection to someone or something else. And she thought of Alma, the only person we know who would clearly want such a pin.

Say you see someone on the street who somehow reminds you of a childhood friend, someone you haven’t heard from in 30 years. And three days later, he calls you. Most of us have a story like that. Rhumba and I have several. You may, too. And yet most people don’t let such oddities affect their world view. They’re afraid of being thought irrational.

But these events are not irrational at all.

Not in a world where scientists begin to wonder if, on the quantum level, the future influences the past. And not in a world where scientists absolutely know that actions performed on one quantum particle also effect other particles that are related to it, in other places: even though there is no evidence of information transfer. It’s called entanglement.

How do you explain the impossible ways that information can sometimes pass between people? How does, say, a used bookseller accept a set of 70-year-old trading cards as part of a book buy, cards of a type he’s never heard of across 40 years in the business. Only to have a long-time customer come in to ask about those same cards, out of the blue, the very next day?

Or, what about a guy who gets a fortune cookie with his broccoli beef that reads “A short stranger will bring you many blessings.” And, next day, he runs into an elderly woman with odd eyes and a heavy accent who barely comes up to his ribs — holding a box full of unappetizing dried berries. She is a stranger in town, and has lost the way back to her bus.

“The guy” was me, and I helped her. She showed me the berries and explained their medicinal uses. I researched the berries and bought a pound online. They changed my life. Four years later, I eat them daily.

I could tell you odder stories; but you’d wonder what I’ve been smoking. Things happen that everyday logic can’t explain. What we call realism excludes the possibility of a hidden realm where information passes in unknown ways and connections can be made that foretell the future, or call people toward possibilities that they cannot possibly have knowledge of.

These impossible information transfers do not happen often — that I am aware of.  If they work by any rules at all, the rules are unknown and unpredictable, no matter what Sister Miracula promises through her $10/minute 900-number.

Call me a Christian agnostic. I believe in the faith tradition and the teachings, but as far as the nature of reality is concerned, I’m open to possibilities.

That said, I believe that religion at the very least is a sincere attempt to explain a very real part of existence — an over-arching connection that is sensed yet cannot be explained or described. What we call hard-headed realism is a cop-out — unless you are a particle physicist on the hunt for the reality beyond reality, ready to follow your logic straight to the unthinkable and then try to describe it with an equation.

Imagine a pool of water that is entirely opaque. Three shafts begin to rise from its surface; they appear as separate objects. They continue to rise, and now there are four, and finally five. At last you see that they are not separate objects at all, but the fingers of one hand. There is a connection; we do not see it or understand it, but it is there.

Perhaps it’s fair to say that there are angels in the world, indeed; not creatures with wings and robes, but strange and irregular interchanges of information predictable by no man. They occasionally make possible the wildly improbable, if we care to act on them.

I don’t know that belief is a factor, save that rigid disbelief might close you to the possibilities. In short, the world may be an agnostic’s playground.

But even agnostics believe in love, and that love is divine if anything is.  Nothing entangles related particles like love — and not just on the quantum level.

A golden angel smiles from Alma’s blouse, and keeps its own counsel.

It’s “Between Time” in Santa Cruz, that period in late August when the stick-shift of life has slipped out of summer gear to hover briefly in neutral before falling into autumn gear with a resounding thunk. There then comes a change in weather, the return of the university students, and the departure of the summer vacationers.

The seaside amusement park will soon power down, returning all the expatriate summer workers to Ukraine or Greece or wherever the Seaside Company could recruit American-looking foreigners cheaply. I’ll bet that a lot of young Ukrainians were eager to sell deep-fried Twinkies on the Boardwalk this year.

All these matters are in process right now, winding down or just waking up. Though we’ll have one last blast of summer tourism come Labor Day.

In the meantime, many locals are finishing the summer with a vacation — elsewhere. There’s plenty of room on the broad sidewalks downtown. And as befits a time of change, each day a strong wind blows from the ocean to take the edge off the sun’s rays. Blue skies shine overhead, while a mighty fog bank, mountainous and white, hovers just offshore. We live in a brief moment of balance between numerous dynamics. I give it a week at most, and perhaps only one more day. Public school starts tomorrow.

But it is a very good time, after a long hiatus, to return to this blog. As many of you know I took some months off to self-publish my book Police Blotter Haiku. Which is now available on Amazon; an e-book version is coming someday. Don’t hold your breath,.

I’m in the process of mailing out press copies to any newspaper that might give me publicity. I’ve got a phone interview with a very small daily newspaper tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Still, I’m heading back to something like having a life. I spent most weekends and many weeknights sitting still and working on the manuscript — and doing little else. I’m in lousy physical condition, and my back’s giving me trouble. I haven’t touched the yard in six months, and the large coral passion vine has embarked on a program of total global domination. The only shirts I wear to work these days are the three that don’t need ironing. One of the cars needs a jump start — and has needed it for weeks. The cats have gone feral, or as feral as house cats can. They still answer to the sound of a can opener.

Yet I regret nothing, whether the book sells a hundred copies or ten thousand. It’s been a journey, and a journey teaches you a few things about yourself. I wrote them down for future reference.

My thanks to all of you reading this who gave me your support — moral, emotional, monetarily, or all three. It’ll not be forgotten.

And if this is a season of change, there is one more change to announce: I’m taking a new job, after all these years.

I expected to to stay in my current position until they wheeled me out, though not by choice. At my age, in this economy, there didn’t seem much alternative, nor hope of promotion or transfer. And given the pace, and the stress, and the low-level panic that is ever in the air at that place, I wondered whether the day that they wheeled me out might come sooner that I’d want.

Rhumba pointed out an opening with her employer and suggested that I apply for it, so that we could work together. And I did apply, though I didn’t expect much.

And even though I applied after the initial deadline, with a five-year-old resume, Rhumba’s company wanted to see me. I missed two email invitations to come in, and they got on the phone and urged me to come in. I finally met with them — and knocked over a glass of water during the interview. And they still wanted me.

I gave in and took the job. I get to work in the same building as Rhumba. I get a little more money. Rhumba assures me that the company is okay, and that the people are okay. I know a couple of them myself. She’s probably right.

And after it sank in that I would get this job, that I would leave my old job and go on to something better, I was consumed with the fear that I was going to die. I was so wedded to the idea that I would ride my Flying Dutchman of a company all the way to the vanishing point that I couldn’t believe that I could actually put this burden down. Something awful would happen. It would have to.

But I got past the fear, and my last week at the old place lays ahead of me. A goodbye lunch looms large. Easily a third of the company has called or emailed to congratulate me on my escape — in about those words.

A couple of months ago, in a fairly dark week in my life, my three-item lunch special at the Little Shanghai Chinese Restaurant came with a fortune cookie that had this message to transmit: “Despair is criminal.” This was exactly what I needed to hear. So I kept moving forward in my life; and the worst did not happen, and there were people to help me, and things changed for the better.

For although this is a season of change in Santa Cruz, “change” is a season that really never ends. Change can be for the better, and sometimes for worse, but almost always to something new. The worst thing you can do is despair, and grind to a halt. The best thing to do — the only thing — is to keep moving and keep looking for possibilities. It’s hard for me — and for a lot of people. But I’ve got evidence that it works.

And the winds of change blow and bring fog and sunshine alternately. And we will see what comes next.

 

 

“Excuse me, can you take my picture?” I offered the camera to the rotund hardware store clerk. He did not take it;. He said nothing.

“I need a picture of myself standing next to this pressure washer,” I continued. “I’m writing a book of poetry about true crime, and I need illustrations. It turns out that people steal a lot of pressure washers.”

His expression shifted: from suspicion to confusion. But I kept talking, and eventually he snapped a few pics of me standing in the paint s and finishes section next to a bright yellow pressure washer. That night, in a photo editing program, I would swap out my head for the face of Steve Jobs.

And it’s true about the pressure washers. They regularly flee from unlocked cars and trucks, along with laptops, iPhones, loaded pistols, sunglasses, and money. Somebody, I suppose always needs a clean wall at a low, low price.

One photo down, dozens to go.

As my regular readers know — if I have any left after this hiatus — I’m putting together a book called Police Blotter Haiku — seventeen syllable haiku based on crime stories from newspapers around the nation. I got crowdsource funding for it through Kickstarter. All was going well; all I needed was some photos. I obtained a number of them, laid out the book — and it looked like a telephone book with tiny little display ads here and there. Boring.

So I went from having most of the photos I needed, to being short by 100 photos. And I had a tight deadline for delivering the book to my Kickstarter backer. Which I am not going to meet.

So I’ve been out getting more photos over the past month, from whoever I can get to stand still. I  have persuaded individuals to chase invisible peacocks (which were edited in later).

 

I mocked up collision scenes between a pickup truck and recycling containers; made an innocent network engineer to stand in for a dangerous gunman; wandered the streets with a phony bomb, looking for just the right public-looking building to place it in front of — just for photography okay?

I have even photographed hallucinations.

I have made chickens to smoke cigarettes — or appear to. And plopped down on my back in the middle of the street to get just the right shot of a pine tree. I have made men and women to mourn a non-existent dead chihuahua. I have posed as an insufferable husband, about to get his comeuppance from an angry wife with a cup of hot stew.  And no, that’s not my wife Rhumba.

I have done jumping jacks, facing away from the camera, in nothing but work boots and a watch cap. I have  organized office-chair races.

And most every night I process the photos into something like line drawings, and work on the book layout.

Meanwhile, the wild geraniums grow pine tree-tall in the front yard; the beds of ivy are making a break for the sidewalk; the taxes remain undone. Low-grade anxiety is my constant companion. I hate not keeping a promise. My inner five-year-old is sure that such iniquity goes on my Permanent Record.

All I ever wanted to do was write. Project management is not my forte. I’m too busy for all this. Sometimes there’s so much to do that I coast to a stop for a few days; a very human response, and also extremely counter-productive.

My real problem: everyone else is as busy as I am. I’ve got a guardian angel in the Arts Department up at UCSC, but she’s hard pressed to find any likely taken for me. “I’ve contacted some amateur drama clubs,” she wrote me. “But they couldn’t find a time when they could all meet. She put me in touch with a group of student Rotarians who seemed willing — but the only time and place they could commit to was on campus on Easter Day, April 20 — which is coincidentally the day of “420,” the campus’ giant traditional unauthorized marijuana festival. Which the young Rotarians emphatically refused to take part in, unlike most of the rest of the student body. This explained the free time in their schedules.

I couldn’t see myself pushing through throngs of befuddled dopers to meet with a a small group of straight-laced young men and women who I would try to coax into acting like, well, befuddled dopers. And paying for the privilege. Yes, I’m rather desperate for photos. But I gave it a pass.

Everybody’s busy. Way too busy. Rhumba and I are too busy with our own projects to cook, so we eat out too much; inexpensively, but nevertheless. The waitress who served us the other night just got her first day off in several weeks; besides her job, she runs a housecleaning business. Another waitress leads fitness classes as a second job; she’s sore much of the time. And keeps losing weight. I know skinny’s supposed to be good — but not always.

On Palm Sunday, I went to church to run the media projector and display hymn lyrics on the big screen so the parishioners could sing along about the glory of God without glueing their eyes into a hymnbook. Rhumba couldn’t be with me, because she had a class. On Sunday.

As I got things into shape before the service, three church ladies sat nearby and mourned the lack of snacks for coffee hour; nobody had signed up. “Oh well, people won’t really want to stay around after service,” one finally said, putting the best face on things. “They’ll want to rush home for lunch.”

Attendance was light. The congregation’s getting older; but it also faces competition from kids’ sports: soccer practice and the like. Soccer has taken over Sunday morning; used to be that youth athletics could take place on weekday evenings, but everyone’s too scheduled. And the parents don’t get home from the 40-mile commutes in time. So increasingly, soccer practice moves to Sunday morning. And the kids are there, and the parents have to volunteer as well if they want their kids to play. It’s more a day of soccer than a day of rest.

Up on the UC campus, week before last, the graduate students held a two-day strike and attempted to block the entrances. This has been allowed before, for other unions. But this time the administration brought in extra police to keep one gate open — by force, if necessary. They’d never done that.

The grad students teach a lot of classes; they’re getting more students to supervise, more classes to cover, less time to do their own work, and no extra money. Only work is in generous supply; and the overflow is being loaded on whoever can’t complain. The students did complain; some were apparently told that if they struck, their adviser would turn his back on them and their academic careers would be over. If you’ve known enough academics, it’s believable.

But they struck anyway. Rhumba works on campus, and I drove her up there that morning through the west gate. Crowds of skinny grad students held signs and swirled around the entrance, which was held open by a platoon of towering men in black uniforms, helmets, armor, and military gear. University staff videotaped the demonstrations. In the face of this the grad students — looked like kids. Not monsters. Not violent. Not greedy. Just wanting the time to get the good education they were promised, and were paying for. Which their professor/employers don’t leave them enough time for.

Kind of puts my book anxieties into perspective, doesn’t it?

As does the Hindu god Kevin, who continues to orbit through my life at regular intervals. He’s an old co-worker, a seventy-year-old (or near) original hippie who never stopped walking the walk. His long white hair and giant beard have merged into a single godlike mass which surrounds his eyes and nose like the corona of a sun.

When last we met Kevin, he had been pulled out of happy, low-rent retirement in India by a supoena from the local district attorney as witness to a crime he almost saw 25 years ago on Pacific Avenue. After speaking to Kevin briefly, the DA released him and left him to his own devices. And no aid in getting back to India.

Kevin hasn’t yet made it back. A couple of weeks back I found him sitting behind a cup of tea in a courtyard cafe on the West Side. He had no money but a place to stay of some unspecified sort; I didn’t ask what. Without money Kevin could not return to India. He was open to earning money, when the chance came along. In the meantime, he was happy to sit in the sun.

“So you’re waiting to earn money so you can go back to India?” I asked.

“I’m not even owning it that much,” he replied. “I will earn money. And when I’ve earned it I’ll return to India.” He stretched in his seat. “Till then — I’m here.”

Kevin is the wealthiest man I know. He doesn’t need much, or want much. Many things he enjoys, but he doesn’t need things to be “just so” to be happy. Most billionaires can’t say that. Nor can I.

But I could never give up as much as Kevin has. He is a free agent and happy in it. But some chains are precious; I think such thoughts at night as Rhumba and I fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Anyway, the book project goes on. If you’d like to be in it, and can get someone to snap a picture, let me know. I need photos of a man with shaved head (or nearly). If you are a policeman, or can look like one, or know someone who can, talk to me. The police department isn’t returning my calls. I you have an extremely small child you wouldn’t mind posing in a shopping bag, talk to me. And if you’re none of the above, and willing, I’ll find something. Operators are standing by.

I’ll be out on Pacific Avenue this weekend with camera and shot list and a pocket full of small bills, and we’ll just see if anything comes of it. This kind of venturesome behavior doesn’t come easy to me; but how lovely when it works out. I’ll never forget office-chair racing in the office parking lot. Good thing that our receptionist skates in the Roller Derby.

When I was growing up, we always had a vegetable garden out back. Dad fitted pipes together for a living, in oil refineries and power plants and submarines; but he’d been raised on a farm and felt that land was to be put to use. So there were always onions and tomatoes in the yard; sometimes squash and pumpkins and peas. And roses and calas along the fence for my mother.

For one or two years he planted almost all the yard in corn — half-a-dozen rows or so. I allowed that cornstalks didn’t yield as much produce in our small yard as tomatoes might, and he said: “I know. But I like to stand in (the corn) and listen to it move in the wind.”

Sometimes I’d see him standing in the rows before dinner, the wind ruffling his hair like cornsilk. He was not a happy man; but he might have been happier had he stayed on the farm.

The corn rows were for more than atmosphere; Mom and Dad revered fresh corn on the cob as some value caviar or Kobe beef. I was merely tolerant; but anything that you can drown in melted butter has its points. I make an exception for snails.

Mom planted vegetables, too. She didn’t leave it all to my father. And one year two lines of tall, spindly plants appeared out by the onions. Strange jagged leaves, bumpy and green like the skin of alligators, drooped from tough, woody stalks; nothing about them spelled “food.”

“Kale,” Mom explained. “It’s for soup.” Mom was big on soup, if not variety. She had four recipes; soon there would be five.

A few weeks later I sat down to lunch and was served a chicken soup filled with green filaments. I lifted one out with my spoon. It may have been a leaf at some point, but its inherent nature and Mom’s penchant for overcooking vegetables had turned it into green slime.

“It’s the kale,” Mom explained. “It’s good for you.” I did love my mother; I tried it for her sake.

God, it was awful; indifferent in taste, and precisely as slimy as I’d feared. Had I possessed my adult wit in those days, afterwards I would have croaked out, “Tastes as good as it looks.”

But Mom loved it; she was Portuguese, and they favor kale. If you were poor, as her people were, you’d favor it, too. It grows like a weed, and it keeps you alive. Given all that, and the fact that you have nothing else, you’re going to get to like it. What other choice do you have?

I never got to like it, however, even though bowls of Chicken ‘n Slime would appear before me at regular intervals for years to come. I tried eating around the slime: but it couldn’t be done.

Eventually I left home behind, and Chicken ‘n Slime as well, thank God. Although Mom would occasionally ambush me with it when I came home for a visit. Otherwise I never ate kale again. Given a choice, why?

As the years went by I learned to love vegetables, especially when not cooked to mush as was Mom’s preference. The turning point came in college, where our dining hall frequently produced hot entrees so vile that I could not bear to eat them. For me, that’s pretty vile.

The salad bar beckoned, with its greens and beans and vegetables and hard-boiled eggs and shredded cheese – not to mention the garlic croutons. To this day I’ll eat florets of uncooked brocolli with pleasure and no dressing. Raw or lightly-cooked vegetables can be delicious; sorry, Mom.

But there are exceptions. Kale is one.

I cannot say “Kale is back.” Because it had really never been here in the first place. Think back 20 years. Was there much kale in your life? Didn’t think so.

But the snakey, reptilian kale plant is now the media superstar of the vegetable kingdom. And not because of its taste or texture.

Kale, it is now told, will cure all your ills. It’ll skim the crud from your arteries, kick cancer to the curb, pull the plug on high blood pressure, and even soup up your body’s cell repair apparatus so that you will LIVE FOREVER.

Oh, all right. Nobody actually says that last bit. But it’s implied. Kale is the latest miracle bolt-on accessory to your otherwise unhealthy life that will make up for everything else that you do or don’t do. Just like Vitamin C, or grape seed extract, or green tea.

You can’t put kale in a tiny capsule like the other supplements. But you can put it in a big one. Glistening plastic tubs of grab ‘n go kale salad now appear front and center at the local markets. I actually tried some.

And to my amazement, after all these years, I have to cut Mom some slack. As far as kale is concerned, boiling it to slime as she did? That’s the soft option.

Because raw kale has the taste and consistency of heavy-gauge plastic sheeting. With sawtooth edges. I’m not even sure the stuff actually breaks down in your stomach. I’ve eaten collards, a notably chewy green; compared to kale, collards have the consistency of lunch meat.

Nobody eats raw kale it for pleasure; they couldn’t. I’ve had coastal kale salad, kale caesar salad, kale ‘n quinoa salad, and several others. Kale ‘n quinoa was tolerable, but only because there wasn’t much kale in it.

No, people are eating kale as medicine. Hollywood stars and hedge fund managers and professionals of all sorts are choking the stuff down like there’s no tomorrow. Because somebody told them it’d keep them alive and healthy. In a heartless and treacherous time when it is disastrous to be weak or sick.

And they eat it raw because raw is better, right? And they don’t have the time to cook the stuff. Nor care much for slime. There’s a theory that it can be sautéed into something halfway between slime and plastic; you’re welcome to try.

But Mom never did. She boiled the stuff into submission, as she did all other vegetables, and as her ancestors had done before her. She’d no sooner eat raw kale than raw corn. And truth to tell, Mom and the ancestors almost had the right idea about kale. Almost.

Because the experts say, first, that kale is healthier cooked than raw. Cooking disables a chemical in kale (gotrin) which interferes with thyroid function and can cause hypothyroidism in people who guzzle too many glasses of juiced kale per day.

And second, they say that the best way to deal with kale is indeed to put it in thick soups and stews. But only after you have chopped it so finely that you can’t actually tell it’s there.

Poor Mom. If they had only existed at the time, I’d have bought her a Cuisinart. And we’d all have been happy.

Or I would been, at least.

At work, the folks on my floor have access to a perfectly good drip coffee maker. It sits in the kitchen with the microwave, the filtered water dispenser, the refrigerator and sink, and sundry dishes and supplies.

So I was puzzled by the sight of Ms. Biblio, a co-worker, brewing drip coffee in the water dispenser. She’d put a torn bit of filter paper atop her mug and loaded it with ground coffee.

I found her hunched over the machine, goosing the hot water button in short bursts so as not to overwhelm her crude filter. I didn’t understand why this was necessary.

“Why don’t you use the coffee maker?”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“There’s some coffee in it already.” The pot held three of inches of dark fluid.

“Oh it’s old. They probably made it hours ago. I’m sorry to hold you up.” I had come to the water dispenser to simply… get water.

“Oh, no problem, go ahead.” Eventually she filled her mug and walked it carefully away.

Over the next few weeks I noticed that almost no one used the coffee maker. The three inches of brown fluid in the cpffee pot, wretchedly aged, remained untouched for days. The coffee drinkers in our office, it seemed, each made their own coffee with their own equipment and their own supplies.

“There’s no system,” explained Ms. Canadienne. She was feeding hot water into her mug through a single-cup black-plastic drip coffee maker. She’d heated the water in the microwave.

“We don’t have a setup for buying coffee in common, or making it or sharing it out. it’d be really great if we could send an envelope around to buy supplies like they do – upstairs.”

“Upstairs” is the promised land. “Upstairs” possesses receptionists who can be assigned to send around regular donation envelopes for “the coffee club,” and buy supplies. They even make coffee for all on the communal coffee maker when “all” can’t get around to doing it for itself.

It’s a big beautiful world of service “upstairs.” But downstairs, we were wretched egalitarians. We had no receptionists to administer a coffee system for us. The fancy coffee maker remained idle because nobody wanted to take one for the team and collect coffee money or make coffee for everyone else on their own dime and their own time.

So the coffee drinkers struggled along in awkward self-sufficiently. Call it coffee survivalism.

I do remember when there was more time to organize the niceties around the office: not just coffee funds, but potlucks, parties, birthdays, get-well cards, and contribution envelopes.

But most of that has ground to a halt, or is grinding. Workloads increase, staffing does not, or not enough. We’re all too busy to keep the workplace human. Even the fifteen-minute conference-room birthday party is a thing of the past. Somebody just had a child, and the email went out that you might go to the reception desk (“upstairs”) and sign the group card. If you wanted to. If you had the time.

I didn’t bother. I was too busy.

Like everyone else, I’m worn down. People have too much to do and don’t know how to do it. I help them; training and supporting co-workers are two of my duties, but I have others that would make a full-time job in themselves. And sometimes I make mistakes. I blew somebody off last week, unwisely. I was too stressed to handle the situation well. It’s going to take months to rebuild that relationship.

But I persevere; unless my composure fails me, I try to find time for everybody who needs help. And when there’s panic in their voices, or fear, I try to go above and beyond. Not because I’ve got a head full of rainbows and sunshine and pink unicorns; thunderheads and feral cats would be more like it.

No, I keep trying because anybody who thinks a well-functioning business is all about org charts and workflows has got their heads up their anterior orifices. Work is social; when you got out of your way to help somebody, you can mostly count on help in return, down the line. Or at least some slack. No matter what the org chart says.

My job would be a lot harder without people doing things for me that they don’t strictly have to. Or forgiving the occasional error instead of running to management. The Old Boy Network is the only one that never crashes. Pity the fool who can’t log in.

They’ll tell you that work life and social life are separate, and should be kept that way. But that’s bullshit and always has been. Everything people do together is personal, social: work together, yes, but also learn together, plan together, heal together, celebrate together, mourn together. And ceaselessly exchange information.

it’s an endless web of obligation, repayment, and further obligation. The bookkeeping never ends. It can’t; it holds societies together. And workplaces. And the occasional gift card or bottle of wine at the holidays is much appreciated.

The corporate model of the worker as self-sufficient machine? An entity with no need to interact with anything but a workflow? That’s a slave-holder’s vision, from a vile subculture which holds that the one vital interchange between individuals is the passage of money.

So it bothers me when work becomes less social. Besides, we wage slaves have little other chance to be social at all. When the workday’s done, and chores, there’s little free time left in a day. And it’s too easily spent in front of the tube, the tablet, or the screen.

I fear that the humanness is being drained out of society. Drain enough of it, and we devolve into a mass of disconnected individuals communicating through cash flows and social media. This is the future that the news media shows us. And even seem to favor.

But perhaps the end is not nigh; not yet, at least.

On Friday I walked into the kitchen at work and found Ms. Canadienne making coffee. On the coffee machine.

“What happened? You’re making a full pot!”

She grinned and pointed at a small sign on the wall. “They’ve got it all set up now.”

The sign laid out the rules for the new coffee service; an envelope would pass around monthly, contributions would be made, the minions from the Land of Upstairs would stock the coffee and supplies. And everybody who contributed would have coffee. And damned well make a fresh pot for everyone else as needed.

Civilization, and society, staggers on. After all, caffeine is important.

 

This was about five years ago, when the housing bubble well and truly burst and took the stock market and credit and  job security with it to that place where imaginary things go when people stop believing in them.  For many, dreams had already died.   The financial chaos just erected the tombstones.

And there I was, standing in the parking lot of an abandoned coffee shop.  Somebody had parked a battered old Mercedes there and left it. A long time ago.  The lot was otherwise empty, lonely and forlorn. Wind blew dead leaves across the asphalt and piled them up against the coffee shop door.

I walked over and took a good look at the restaurant: locked up tight, “for lease” sign in the window, completely deserted. It had been a Denny’s, typical of its kind: a gaunt structure of metal frame, glass, and dingy stucco. Somebody had covered the Denny’s sign with a cloth banner reading “Scotts Valley Diner.”

I peered in the windows. All the food-service equipment was clean, shiny, and in its proper place. On the dining tables, place settings and salt shakers waited for customers. A stack of menus sat on the cashier’s desk. You could believe that the staff had just stepped out a moment ago.

A discarded water bottle sounded the only sour note; it lay on its side on an otherwise clean and orderly table. Power poles cast black shadows across the worn pavement and up the side of the building. Cars zipped by in the distance, but few passed near.

It was one of those cold, clear mornings when the sun shone so brightly that it burned the color out of everything. The brilliant light and dark shadows turned the restaurant into a set for a film noir: one of those high-contrast, black-and-white, crime movies made right after World War II where evil lurked in inky shadows darker than outer space.

In a good film noir, the protagonist is an average guy who suddenly finds himself isolated and doomed for reasons he can’t begin to understand. His friends abandon him or can’t help him; he’s completely isolated. All he can try to do is find out who’s destroying him and take what revenge he can before going down in a storm of gunfire in some lonely place. Like the parking lot of a vacant coffee shop in the quiet end of Scotts Valley. Early on a Saturday morning, when no one’s around and no cars ever stop.

But that was not my movie. I walked back to my parked car and climbed in next to my wife Rhumba, who was knitting.

We were there to buy a knitting machine. The seller was to meet us there, but was running late. I’d just gotten out of the car to stretch my legs.

If Rhumba lusts for any object besides myself, it is the knitting machine: a strange contraption of shuttles, needles, masts, and gears that allows one to knit at great speed assuming that the blessed thing doesn’t jam. But of course, they all do. A lot.

Rhumba owns a flock of knitting machines, all bought used on craigslist or ebay. The blamed things are so balky and complex that most people give up on them after a couple of projects. So the Internet marketplaces holds a plethora of near-new knitting machines at prices that—let’s just say that there’s no good reason to buy a new one, ever.

Today we were there to buy—just one more. Honest. Just one. Rhumba hooked up with a Los Gatos woman on craigslist who was selling a particular type of machine that Rhumba doesn’t have—like-new, of course—for a couple of hundred bucks. It’d been $300 originally, but by the time Rhumba responded the woman had reposted the ad with a new price of $200. Well—fine.

She’d agreed to bring it to us if we’d meet her halfway. A quick study of Google maps showed that the parking lot of an abandoned Denny’s in Scotts Valley was about as close to halfway as we could find. The restaurant was at a freeway off-ramp, besides.

After I got back in the car, we sat for a few more minutes. The seller was coming from Los Gatos, after all, via ever-unpredictable Highway 17.  Anything might have held her up.

Finally, a smart-looking SUV pulled into the lot. The seller had arrived.

She was a fit, well-put-together woman in her late 50s. Short and slim, she wore the casual clothing of the well-off: down vest and fitted denims, a little tasteful jewelry, good shoes. She wasted no time in producing the machine and presenting it to us. Like most people who bought new knitting machines, she hadn’t used it much. “I made a couple of blankets, and that was it. I got into jewelry.”

“Are you still making jewelry?” Rhumba asked.

“No, that was a long time ago when I lived in Cupertino. I had a house there, but I sold it two years back.”

“2006? At least you got a decent price,” I said. .

“I made a lot of money, but it went to pay my debts,” she said. She shook her head. “Poof, it was gone.” She lived in an apartment now.

Rhumba examined the knitting machine. All was well.

“$200, right?” I took ten twenties out of my wallet. Always cash for these things.

“Thank you,” she said. There was a pause. “I’m behind on my rent.”

I put the knitting machine in the trunk like a good husband, then returned to where Rhumba and the woman chatted. The woman held a cardboard box.

“I wanted to show you some of my jewelry” she said, meaning the jewelry that she used to make. The box held necklaces and earrings made of strung beads. She offered it, not quite looking at us, eyes downcast, head slightly ducked down.

And it came to me that she was pleading, even begging—please buy my stuff. Help me make my rent.

Whatever her situation was now, she’d once been a person of means and resources and position—the car, the clothes, her manner had all said that. And it had come to this. Offering whatever she could spare in exchange for ready cash.

It came out that her landlord had given her a warning: three days’ notice.

The pieces were nice enough, respectable—the sort of thing you see at craft fairs, and rarely buy. And in fact she had made them for sale, years ago. They still carried faded price tags.

But we had just spent $200. Yes, we’d gotten something for it. But there are limits.

We admired it all and said “No, thank you.” The awkward moment passed and we parted on good terms.

I’m not sure what we could have done—spent an extra twenty, an extra forty, all the cash in our pockets? It wouldn’t have gotten her out of whatever spot she was in, I think. Lost job? Investments gone south? Medical bills? Who knows? But she was at the top of a slippery slope, and she knew it. Oh how clearly she knew it.

At that time I had a friend at work in the same kind of trouble. The details don’t matter: she hit a rough patch, lost all her money. And suddenly my friend stood on the edge of eviction. And once you lose your place, and your credit rating along with it, it’s hard to claw your way back to a respectable life that needs first and last month’s rent, a security deposit, and a credit check.

But my friend had friends, including me, who helped her out. Her life remained the stuff of soap operas, but she kept her apartment and her job. It’s good to have friends in hard times. When the roof of your life falls in, it’s good not to be alone.

But what if you are, indeed, alone? And all you’ve got left is a moderately nice car and some spiffy clothes and an empty bank account. And a tiny apartment at a good address that you can’t afford. And no job.

And you’re in a lonely place with no help. And the color leaches out of the world and the shadows turn black as night, and events conspire to destroy you for no reason that you can understand.

So Rhumba and I drove back to Santa Cruz, and the woman drove back to Los Gatos into her personal film noir.  Where happy endings are not to be presumed.

That was five years ago. In that time much has changed, and yet little has changed. We’re several years into an economic recovery – and yet things don’t seem much better.  This world is an uncertain place where security can vanish overnight.  And, for tens of millions, has. And has not yet returned.

The abandoned coffee shop is gone, torn down and replaced by a new and shiny drive-through restaurant that serves truly terrible food.  The “lonely place” no longer exists. And yet inky shadows still fall across the land, influencing events in ways that we cannot understand — and are not meant to.

Rhumba and I both work. Moreover, we carpool. I pick her up each evening, and we head for home.

And, silently, we each review what awaits us there: Two hungry cats with special dietary needs. A freezer-full of plain and healthy casseroles prepared last weekend, which require a half-hour to microwave. A table to set and dishes to clear afterwards. Phone messages to check, mail to bring in, trash to take out.

And if we are weary enough, one of us turns to the other and says one word: “Palomar?”

“Palomar,” the other agrees.

Every town has a venerable, reliable restaurant that its citizens use as surrogate parents: the people who care of you when you’re too busy or weary or fretful to take care of yourself.

The food’s reliable and moderately priced. The wait staff knows you, as they know everybody, and nods companionably as the hostess guides you in. The dining room has character: not calculated by some restaurant designer, but homegrown from disparate elements that melded into a whole as the years passed.

In Santa Cruz, for us, that place is El Palomar. It is a Mexican restaurant. It will serve you crab enchiladas for twenty dollars, or as fine a bowl of beans as you will ever eat, for three. And fresh corn tortillas made on the premises, hot and sweet. And salsa that burns the back of your mouth, and makes you like it.

But if the Palomar stands in for your parents, they are eccentric ones. And there is only one waitress for the entire dining room. Her name is Hydra. Of her, more later.

El Palomar occupies what was the dining room of the Hotel Palomar, as classic a piece of ’30s Moderne architecture as you will ever see. The hotel is long gone; low-income housing occupies the upper floors. But the faces of dead Spaniards still leer down from the eaves.

As you traverse the old hotel lobby, more faces stare at you from the ceiling, lit from below for maximum creepiness.

Then comes the dining room, and suddenly you walk onto a 1930’s movie set. The ceiling lifts 40 feet on titanic arches which preside over a companionable darkness full of booths and balconies, hanging lanterns and potted palms, dark beams and painted panels.

Carmen Miranda might make an entrance from the bar at any moment; Bogart and Bacall could sit in a dark corner booth, plotting the best way to escape a vengeful mob boss.

For years Rhumba and I speculated on the decor; what exactly was it supposed to be? What fantasy fever dream had the decorators brought to life back in 1932? A Moorish theme? Persian? Arabian Nights? Certainly not Egyptian. Then one day we noticed the dragons carved into the green stone fireplace.

Hollywood Chinese. Should have known. Overlaid with a few Mexican touches, but otherwise maintained intact. Who would want to change it?

Dimness is the watchword here; in few other restaurants is the dining room darker than the bar. Servers in black clothing merge with the gloom, unnoticed by you until a disembodied hand throws down a bowl of tortilla chips or a smiling face materializes, floating in air, to inquire about drinks. I exaggerate, but only in a literal way.

And in that same way, there is only one server; I call her Hydra, after the creature of ancient Greek myth that had many heads. Though while the Hydra of legend breathed poison gas, the heads of this Hydra brings salsa and iced tea and tequila drinks. It is one being in many bodies.

One head of Hydra may take your order, but another might bring it. A third may bring your chips and water, or the first will. Iced tea may be topped off by anyone. Your check may appear from any hand: it may appear magically on your table, the departing back of a fast-moving hostess being the only clue to its arrival. Your credit card may vanish and return just as mysteriously, though the sound of “thank you” may be left hanging in the air by unseen forces.

And yet Hydra has your best interests in mind; the order is correct; the glasses, always full. Any complaint, quickly addressed by one person or another. Hydra knows what you like and how you like it, even if you have never met that part of her before. For she is a group mind that shares what it knows among all her component parts. Who are each formidable on their own merits. This is Theresa:

Hydra’s only weakness lies with tortilla chips. She thinks you should have many bowls of them. Truly, the chips are fine: warm and fresh and served with tubs of that scalding salsa that I have been known to drink straight from the container – sometimes to my regret, later.

And when you finish your bowl of chips, Hydra will offer you another; and another; and another. Sometimes she won’t even ask; she just brings. Rhumba and I draw the line at one bowl, or we’d have no room left for dinner. So when our waitress offers a refill, we refuse.

And that should end the matter, but it doesn’t; other arms of Hydra see the empty bowl, and swoop in to fill it.

“No more chips!” we shout: again and again. For it is here that the group mind breaks down; to each head of Hydra, the sight of a table without a full bowl of chips is an obscene, horrible thing that must be erased. We do our best, but sometimes Hydra sneaks a second bowl onto the table and runs away before we can stop her. And then we eat the chips, dammit.

It is a small eccentricity; we almost see it as a game, though I am tempted to bring in a small, battery-operated dome light with “NO MORE CHIPS!” painted across the lens. But in all other ways El Palomar serves us well, and we try to be appreciative, make our menu choices promptly, and run the waitresses as little as possible. Hydra looks out for us, and we try to look out for her as well, though we are old and finicky and eat inexpensively. She doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Things change; so do restaurants. But while the Palomar remains and Hydra lives, it is for us that phenomenon well known to social anthropologists of the modern age: the part of your home that’s not in your house. It makes life a little more bearable for two aging wage slaves; and I hope that wherever you are, if you need her, you have a Hydra of your own.