Dear Certain Radical Left-Wing Activists,

Last night you finally managed something that, a few years ago, would have been impossible. Last night you made yourselves a new and surprising enemy.

Me.

It's been many years, now, since I worked defense at the Planned Parenthood clinics in my area, but when things were hairy, and a bit scary (and they still are in too many places), I spent many a Friday and Saturday morning escorting stressed, tense women from their cars to the front doors of clinics, putting my body between them and the wild-eyed, screaming, hostile radicals who felt it their perfect right - some of them their reason for being - to keep women from getting safe, legal abortions. They were absolutely convinced that what these women and their doctors and us were doing was patently wrong, and they were deeply committed to stopping us by whatever means they felt necessary. For the most part, they didn't and wouldn't cross the line into violence, but some of them did, and those Fridays and Saturdays were tense for all of the clinic escorts who knew that things could get ugly.

These were also the years I was deeply involved with liberal and progressive causes, donating a great deal of my time and not a small amount of money. I participated in marches, rallies, vigils and counter-demonstrations. I wrote letters to the editor, letters to legislators. I lobbied in Sacramento. In my capacity as chapter president for NOW, I spoke with the local media constantly, wrote press releases, made speeches, attended and spoke at city council meetings, met with mayors and legislators, ran and participated in fund raisers, campaigned.

I loved it, and I loved the people who were involved along with me. Some of them were to the right of me, some of them to the far left of me, and we could have wonderful, vociferous, non-hostile arguments long into many a night about the issues dear to our hearts and the ways in which we could try to make change, the ways in which we could convince people, the ways in which we could use the means at our disposal to get our message out, and to get it out well. Despite the fact that I wasn't working in the press at the time, I was married to the television news business, and I had print and electronic media friends and contacts all over the country. I used them, honestly and unabashedly, and they helped us a great deal. Many events which would have gone uncovered were covered, and with the articulate spokespeople we had, we were able to get our message out and get it out effectively.

What I and the people with whom I worked understood was that image is important. Words are important. Let the right-wing radical wild-eyed anti-choice ranters get all the face-time in front of the television cameras that they could eat, because they were doing nothing but preaching to the choir and hurting their own cause. We strived always to appear calm and reasonable, our message clear and never hostile, but firm and unrelenting and we took every opportunity there was to get that message out by whatever means we could find or were presented to us.

One of the things I have been adamantly against my entire politically aware life is the death penalty. I won't go into my reasons, they are many and they are mine, and I imagine there are plenty of people reading this who agree with me, and I imagine there are some who do not. But as most of you know, I was looking at covering the execution of Stanley Williams with as much enthusiasm as... no, there is no simile. It was one of those times when I had to partition off a part of my brain, lock it away, and just breathe.

Just outside the East Gate of San Quentin Prison is a post office and gift shop (yes, a gift shop). Heading east from that point is San Quentin Village, a community of 116 houses, some with a magnificent Bay view; nearly the same view you get from the south side of the prison. The news media negotiated with owners of some of the houses along the main road to the East Gate to rent parking and work space for covering this part of the story. Where the protests and vigils and rally were held, however, is a relatively small area just in front of the post office. At 6 PM, CHP officers placed orange cones in a line, restricting anyone but authorized personnel from getting within 100 feet of the actual gate, making the area even smaller. We, the television news crews, were granted a small piece of real estate close enough to the area of the rally stage to be able to see and hear and record the speeches and music, but far enough away to make room for people in front of us. We were given no fencing, there were no lines demarcating our work space; for that, we were on our own.

Understand that a television set is a television set, whether it's news or documentary or a sitcom or a drama or a talk show; whether it's in a studio or in a parking lot or in the middle of a closed-off street in front of a prison. There are cameras on tripods, light stands and arms at exactly the height of your head. There is hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and in our case and in the case of quite a few others, it's equipment we own, not the network, and it's equipment we have to replace, at great cost, if it gets damaged. There are audio cables and video cables and power cables, snaking and running and tangling over nearly every surface that isn't covered by chairs and tripods and light stands. There are lights hot enough to take the skin right off your hand at a touch, and there are cases and bags and ballasts and reels and any number of hazards horrific enough to injure you badly. I work around and in them all the time, and I still have a permanent bruise on my forehead from walking into a lightstand arm over and over and over again. I have knots on my knees from tripping and falling. Last night I banged my shin on the same case, in the same way, three times. They are, in essence, miniature movie sets, and people who work on movie sets get the hell off them when they don't have to be there. There's a reason for those fold-up chairs for the actors and the director; to get them the hell out of the way and out of the danger zone. It is a danger zone.

So, in a situation like the one we found ourselves in yesterday, the first thing we do is establish a perimeter, and if we can't get fenced, or can't put up yellow tape, we pile up empty cases and make our own fence. This is not, as we have been accused of time and time again, some kind of dick-waving demonstration of our "privilege" (oh, how many times was that word screamed at me last night); it's a safety measure to keep the unaware and uneducated from getting badly hurt, and it's a measure to allow myself and my colleagues to, ourselves, work in safety.

So, when I politely tell you that, no, I'm sorry, could you please go around this way to get to your destination, you're not going to get anywhere with me by calling me a bitch, or lecturing me on the privileges of the press, or screaming at me that I'm a tool of The Man or otherwise victimizing you. If you run at me, thinking because I'm a girl I'm going to get out of your way, and shove me, thinking because I'm a girl I won't fight back, well, at least three of you found out, last night, that I'm stronger than I look, and that fear and adrenaline are powerful forces. That two of you had enough alcohol on your breath that I got a contact high didn't help your cases any. Grow the fuck up.

(And if that radio reporter is, by any chance, reading this, well, hon, when you called me a fucking cunt, you broke my heart for about two nanoseconds, but I got over it. In other words, I am an equal-opportunity repeller. The only people who were going to get inside that perimeter were the people who belonged inside that perimeter, and no one else. Not still photographers, not radio reporters, not protesters, not roving camera crews.)

Let me give you a gentle clue; I won't bother you if you don't bother me. Play nice, be a grownup, and understand that during that vigil and rally, what I was doing was making it possible for the entire country to hear what your people were saying at that podium, and that what my cameraman was doing was making it possible for the entire country to see what your people were doing at that podium. Every time you got in front of the camera and blocked it with a sign, you made it impossible for your people to get their message out. Every time you started shouting things into my microphone, your invective covered up the words your people were using to try to get their message out. In other words, it was stupid and it was counter-productive to what was being attempted there.

This seemed especially counter-productive when we had the likes of Mike Farrell or the Reverend Jackson in our chairs, trying to interview them, have them speak their piece. Your antics were self-serving and childish.

Afterwards, when a crowd of one thousand, crammed into a small space, then tries to leave that space, your hurry is not my problem. My problem is to keep you all from surging into my area and breaking my gear, tripping and falling over cables, burning yourself on the lights, knocking over $60,000 cameras and otherwise wreaking havoc. Screaming invectives at me and threatening to have your buddies beat me up while holding your sign telling me how the Buddha preached love is deeply ironic, but I wasn't appreciating the irony at the time. I was standing between you, threatening to have your buddies make a grease spot of me, and Tim, who was more than ready to make a grease spot of you.

Then there was the charming fellow sitting on the fence with spray paint, a mocked up American flag and matches. Sir, when you commenced your tirade against the press, to calling us a lot of foul names, and to burning your version of the American flag, not ten feet from me, there was still a huge crowd of people trying to get out. You set a fucking fire in the middle of a crowd of people. I don't know if you're congenitally stupid or if you just don't give a shit, but when you fell off the fence and down the hill, and your bottle of Southern Comfort shattered, splattering the little bit that was left of it onto the ground, I guess I should have just been thankful that you didn't set the spray paint cans or yourself on fire. Honestly, by that time I was pretty much on my last nerve; I wasn't in any shape to see self-immolation.

I want to, I must, take a moment to mention that the vast majority of folks, especially many who witnessed the constant spew of hostility and hatred heading our way, were kind and apologetic and concerned that the focus would end up on the confrontations and not on the message. One very gentle woman came up to me and expressed such a concern about the flag-burner at a moment when Tim was nearby, and he leaned in and told her that at least as far as he was concerned, it never happened, as he was busy shooting something else at the time. The vast majority of folks were sober, committed, rational and persuasive.

As for the rest of you - the violent, hostile, destructive, egotistical hypocrites who thought that a lot of people didn't notice that your signs preached love but your actions preached hate - I don't know who you think I am, or who you think you are. But more and more, you are reminding me of the wild-eyed, hostile, screaming radicals at the Planned Parenthood clinics. You are reminding me of the idiots I ran into during the 1996 Presidential campaign, the Dole devotees, who thought they were being oh-so-smart when they screamed about the Press having a favored place in the auditoriums, and thought they were being oh-so-clever when they blocked the television cameras with their signs when, in fact, all they were doing was keeping their candidate off national television. In other words, you are every bit as awful, stupid, bigoted and destructive as the people you want us to think you're fighting against. Grow some god damned brains.

You have to decide what it is you want. Do you want to get your message out to the largest number of people possible, or do you want only to preach to the choir and have your message to the rest of the world be your version of a toddler's temper tantrum?

Whatever it is you decide to do, I'll be there to record it. You, not I, get to decide what kind of message to send when I do. But until the time comes when you treat me with the same kind of respect with which I tried to treat you, until the time comes when I don't feel physically threatened by you, until the time comes when you no longer remind me of the wild-eyed, hostile, screaming radicals of the far right, I will, for my own safety, consider you my enemy.

And you can consider me yours.

In psychological circles, would this be called denial?

Governor's camp says his ideas didn't lose
Special election blamed -- opponents demand apology

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's aides argued Wednesday that the crushing defeat of the governor's measures at the polls meant California voters had rejected the need for the special election -- not his calls for reform.

Oh, you know, what can I say? Tim and I covered the recall campaign, dealt with his people and the whole Arnie as Politician parade. The stage-managed events full of hand-selected True Believers were reminiscent of the Bush 2000 campaign; clearly his people had taken a page or two out of Karl Rove' s playbook. We cringed the night of the debate in Sacramento, at Arnold's after-debate event, as we listened to the racist hate speech of Dennis Miller - I don't think he actually used the term "wetback", but the fact that I'm not sure is telling.

I felt then that there was no substance, no solidity, to either Schwarzenegger or his campaign. Even adjusting for my very liberal bias, I could find no finger hold, nothing to touch and say, "This is what he stands for." He didn't stand for anything, he simply campaigned on what he was not - a politician.

You know, there really is a place in this world for politicians. "Politician" need not be a dirty word, and the skills of a politician can make for good governance. Arnold Schwarzenegger is no politician. Nor is he a diplomat. He is a not-great actor who thought his popularity would give him a breezy ride through Sacramento, and when he found that wasn't the case - when he found that he didn't get to write the script or direct the show and that folks in the marble hallways of the Capitol play hardball - he called people names and went after nurses and firefighters and schoolteachers, for god's sake. Any hope for political dialog on any of the issues brought up in this special election died in a shitstorm of hype and hullabaloo. Talk about pissing away your political capital.

Now he wants us to think his ideas didn't lose?

From Spiegel Online:

THE TERMINATOR'S FALL FROM GRACE
Schwarzenegger Goes Down in California

A year ago, he was the state's wunderkind. Now, though, Californians are tired of their action-film-actor-turned-governor. He failed miserably in Tuesday's referendum and seems to have lost his touch. His approval ratings are even lower than Bush's.

So, your ideas didn't lose, Arnold? Okay. I'll try to take comfort from the fact that your utter cluelessness will render you ineffective. Ineffective people do less damage. And I'll hope that come next November there are some real candidates on the ballot. Then we can get rid of the velvet rope now strung across the doorway to the Governor's office, and lose the "Arnold Schwarzenegger" in gold leaf stick-on letters above that doorway, where never before was there someone's name; just the word, "Governor".

That wacky holiday season is upon us

While ambling around my local Safeway yesterday afternoon, I noticed a new product in the poultry case; Jennie-O Oven Ready Turkey. The gist of it is that it's super-convenient. I just ran across a print ad for it in, ironically, a pamphlet with Sunset magazine's 2005 Recipe Contest winners.

The ad copy reads thus:

Thawing and cleaning a turkey sounds ridiculous to us, too.

Why would you go to the trouble of thawing and cleaning a turkey if you didn't have to? JENNIE-O TURKEY STORE® Oven Ready is the frozen turkey that comes already cleaned, seasoned and sealed in our FOOL-PROOF™ cooking bag. Just take it from the freezer and put it in the oven -- no thawing, no cleaning, no hassles. It's yet another way we're making it easier than ever to enjoy the great taste of turkey.

As you can imagine, it was freaking expensive (I don't remember the exact figure, but looking at it made my eyebrows meet my hairline). And I found myself shaking my head.

You know, roasting a turkey is just not that complicated. In fact, it's pretty darn easy. All you really need is a turkey, some salt, pepper, a roasting pan, a big spoon, a working oven and a meat thermometer (and the meat thermometer is arguable). You can get fancy with brining and basting substances and stuffing and seasoning and all that, and that makes the procedure slightly more complicated. But, really, a basic roasted turkey, like a basic roasted chicken, is a lesson in simplicity. The only thing you don't do with the turkey-in-a-bag that you have to do with a good old Butterball (or a seasonally cheap store-brand turkey) is wash it (this is complicated?), season it (salt and pepper really will do) and baste it (which you can do with butter or with the turkey's own rendered fat). Am I missing something here?

I don't know when the idea of roasting a turkey became so scary and complicated. But it has. Every year when Thanksgiving rolls around the nervous inundate the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line and on-line cooking communities and their mothers and grandmothers, looking for the best advice on buying, thawing, preparing and roasting the bulbous-breasted beasties.

I won't speak for anyone but myself, and I understand that some people really don't like to cook, don't find a sense of satisfaction in taking raw ingredients and making something splendid with which to feed their favorite people. I suppose a turkey-in-a-bag, a turkey you don't handle in any way except to haul it from the freezer and toss it in the oven, a turkey you don't even peek at until it's done cooking, is an awfully great idea for folks who really don't like to cook. But I just can't wrap my head around it. It's beyond my understanding.

Is it just me, or is there a sort of strange, parallel evolution going on?

On the one hand, people are demanding better, fresher ingredients from their grocery stores, and farmer's markets are springing up everywhere, offering the best and the freshest of everything under the sun; fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, breads, seafood. Heirloom produce is enjoying a renaissance, from apples to tomatoes to potatoes. Ingredients that 20 years ago were exotic and hard to find are now as commonplace as Campbell's soup. Food TV is making money hand-over-fist, and cooking shows are proliferating like rodents on an already cooking-show-heavy PBS.

On the other hand, my Safeway's poultry department is selling turkey-in-a-bag.

I guess it's not all that different from the already seasoned and cooked, heat-and-eat pot roasts and tri-tip and stews and such which have invaded the meat department's shelves. And I freely admit that I buy chopped up lettuce in a bag for five or six times the amount of money an intact head of lettuce would cost. I have even been known to make chicken gravy with a packet of Knorr Swiss instead of the chicken drippings.

But for some reason, I am totally bemused by turkey-in-a-bag.

Have I really lived here for 38 years?

We live in a court.

Let me elaborate.

We live in a town that screams "Suburbia!" We moved here when I was ten years old. This town consists of five towns, now districts - Niles, Centerville, Mission San Jose, Warm Springs and Irvington - which incorporated in 1956 and became Fremont. Newark declined to join in, and is, looking on a map, the hole of the donut which is Fremont.

I grew up in Mission San Jose, a sort of rich section of town. We lived in a court right down the street from the swim club, and my first job ever was as a lifeguard at the swim club. We knew every other family on that court very, very well, and summer evenings were often spent congregating in the court, with lawn chairs and beer for the adults and lemonade for the kids and the dogs running around (in the days before leash laws) and kids in bathing suits playing and running and just being kids.

I have memories of block parties and summer nights spent in tents on someone's lawn, and dogs, we always had dogs, and living in a Speedo and fishing in the lake which we got to by climbing over a cyclone fence and crossing the railroad tracks, and touch football in the street and never going anywhere without at least four or five companions and *always* sharing the loot we bought with our allowance and as much as I detested my sister, woe betide anyone else who said something awful about her because war would have to be declared and there was always an army willing to fight my wars, as I was ready to fight theirs.

I married a Niles boy, which means I married a Bad Boy from the Wrong Side of the Tracks. Seriously, that's how it was seen, especially by my friends from high school.

For awhile we lived in Warm Springs, on a street right off the main drag of the district, and I worried about my kids getting hit by a car driven by the asshats who used to zoom up and down that street, but for the last 18+ years we've lived in Centerville, in a court, and I shop at the nearby Safeway, where it's an unusual day when I don't run into someone with whom I went to high school, or college, or at least someone I've known for 20 years. People *stay* here. I know families of three or four generations, people who know my parents, people who watched me grow up. I've, more than once, run into my very first boyfriend, looking for ripe avocados at Safeway :). And you know something? He's just as cute as he was when we were at Hopkins Junior High School. But he's Irish and has a dimple in his right cheek, and a smile to make the angels sing, and I am a sucker for dimples.

I've been to an awful lot of funerals, lately. Funerals of people who were part of the village of adults who raised me. I've also been to an awful lot of weddings, lately. Children of my peers. Or of Tim's peers. He grew up here, too. He was two when his family moved to Niles. He's lived here for more than 50 years. If we don't run into someone I grew up with, we run into someone Tim grew up with. It's that kind of place.

I love this aspect of my life. I love living here. On the surface, it's a bland town, a bedroom community, nothing colorful or hip or fascinating or artsy about it. But it's the place I grew up, and I know every square inch of her. I can hike her hills without a map, and know the hidden beautiful places only we natives know. There are memories here of swim teams and ice cream and first real kisses and first sex and doctors who knew me from when I was a kid and midnight bowling and first jobs and my life weaving with other lives, the lives of people who are still here, who have children the age of my children, and we talk, now, of grandchildren.

My youngest son works in the coffee shop in the bowling alley where I used to go midnight bowling on Fridays after we closed the Der Wienerschnitzel where I worked when I was 16. My eldest daughter lives in a house where I used to go to parties when I was at Ohlone Junior College.

So, I live in a court. When we moved here, needing a larger house when Danny was born, there were 18 kids under 12 living here. In nine houses. In two of those houses lived retirees. In one house lived a childless couple.

It was *wonderful*. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and I loved every single minute of every single day, with kids running in and out of this house all the time. It was a time when I was the coolest mom on the block because I got through Super Mario Bros with *one* Mario. We were inundated, all the time, with kids. It didn't hurt that we have a swimming pool, and I always had cookies and Cokes and video games and loved every single one of those kids and they knew that I loved having them around and was interested in every joy and every sorrow.

Birthday parties were cacophonous and crowded and crazy and today, when I look at the videotapes of those times (yes, we have video, thank heavens!) I smile, I laugh, I cry. And I want to tell every single person I know that they must capture these moments in any way they possibly can, because those times move on so quickly. You have them right here, in the palm of your hand, and then they're gone.

The older kids loved baby-sitting my kids, not least because I paid outrageously well, so Tim and I were able to get out often, knowing that our children were with people we loved and trusted and who cared about our kids.

At Christmas time Tim would dress up as Santa Claus and as night would fall on Christmas Eve he would walk up and down the court, admonishing the wee ones to go to bed, because he wouldn't visit until they were fast asleep.

There was a time when Halloween was the biggest deal of the year, here, and everyone would decorate elaborately. Those were the days when we'd buy bags and bags of candy, and still, sometimes, we'd run out, because there would be hundreds of kids coming through, More often than not, Halloween evening would be pleasant and warm, and on more than one occasion we would find ourselves, late in the evening, after the influx of costumed kids slowed down to a trickle, on one front porch or another, enjoying a beverage and the company of our neighbors.

There aren't any kids under 12 living on this court anymore. There aren't any kids under *18* living on this court anymore - my Danny is (still) the youngest. One of the retirees is still here, but the other one died, and that house belongs to another family now. I remember, a few years after we first moved in, celebrating Berta's 50th birthday with a block party. She used to help me out by rocking Danny in her rocking chair when he was fussy. He was three months old. Now he's eighteen and in a couple of years it'll be *my* 50th birthday.

Tonight Berta and Tony brought a bottle of wine across the street, after the influx of kids became a trickle, and we sat on my front porch and shared that wine - Viña Concha y Toro's Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, in honor of Tim's devilish turn as Jason tonight :). And we shared memories of Halloweens past, and years past, and how quickly it goes by, and how wonderful it's been.



And how much we love living in a court.

Blogging

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time. By “this”, I mean start a writing blog. Not a social blog. Not another email list. Not a diary or journal. But a place and a space for writing. Really writing. Which means that the entire thing will be set up to self-destruct should I die suddenly (she said, smiling), or even not-so-suddenly, although I would hope I would have time to send this into the ether should the not-so-suddenly scenario be the case. In any case, enough with the awkward first post. It’s set up, it’s started, and if a picture conveys a mood, I’m feeling some of the anxiety pictured in the pooch.

Welcome to my brain. I hope you enjoy the trip.