April 8, 2020

If you find a word in a book offensive, should that word prevent you, or me, from reading that book?

The answer to that question is yes, according to my former high school district. Starting in September of this year, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will no longer be on the approved reading list for the four high schools in the Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County.

That means that the great classic by Mark Twain will no longer be taught in the English literature classes at my alma mater, Acalanes High School. And why not? Because it contains the word nigger, which is offensive to African American students. Never mind that there are very few black students in those four high schools. The book will now be censored to prevent all students from being exposed to this one word.

Granted, the word is used over 200 times in Huckleberry Finn. And the book won’t be completely banned, as it will still be available in the school libraries. But Twain’s masterpiece, arguably the greatest American novel of all time, will no longer be part of the curriculum. It has a bad word.

Some schools elsewhere in the U.S. have also taken the same approach. One publishing company has tried to get around the controversy by replacing “nigger” with “slave.” But besides the fact that they are changing the text without the author’s permission, they are also rewriting history, watering down the language, and lessening the impact of the novel.

When Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri in the 1840’s, the same location and time period as Huckleberry Finn, Missouri was a slave state, and the word nigger was a common and sometimes derogatory term for slaves. Twain hated slavery, and later wrote an anti-lynching editorial entitled “Only a Nigger” for a New York newspaper, as well as writing sympathetic portrayals of African Americans such as in his short tale “A True Story.” Huckleberry Finn is one of the most anti-racial bias books ever written in America, so it is especially ironic that a novel about racial compassion and tolerance is targeted by people advocating racial sensitivity.

Huckleberry Finn is about a beautiful friendship between a 14 year old white boy and a middle aged black man. Huck and Jim are both outsiders; Huck is poor, usually homeless, often beaten by his drunken father, and is described as white trash. Jim is a kindly runaway slave who, in the course of their raft journey down the Mississippi, becomes like an older brother to Huck. Huck doesn’t question the institution of slavery, as he has grown up in a society where it was the norm. In fact, much as he comes to love Jim, Huck feels guilty for helping a slave to escape his owner. But in the moral climax to the story, Huck, believing that he will be eternally damned if he violates society’s laws and morality regarding the institution of slavery, nevertheless decides that he cannot betray his friend Jim to slave hunters, and says, “All right, then, I’ll go to Hell.”

When I was younger, I thought that I might someday run for public office. If I did and was elected, I decided that rather than swearing an oath of office on a Bible, I would swear my allegiance on a copy of Huckleberry Finn. What better book could one find to represent the love of friendship and freedom and the appreciation of humor and racial understanding? Plus, it would be fun to make a statement about values that is both reverent and irreverent at the same time. So to learn that my high school is part of a plan to sacrifice this wonderful and at times hilarious story on the altar of political correctness saddens me.

According to the Acalanes Blueprint student newspaper (for which I was once a reporter and editor), “Although removing Huckleberry Finn was a controversial and small step, the district hopes that further measures will be taken to diversify the English curriculum.” Translation: diversity trumps quality. I wonder if they’ll eventually have race quotas for the authors they study. But if they do, they’ll have to leave out The Autobiography of Malcom X by Alex Haley, along with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, because those three books (and many others) contain the word nigger. And while they’re at it, they’ll need to censor all books that contain the word racist, since racist and nigger mean the same thing: I’m superior to you.

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to read Huckleberry Finn uncensored in high school and study it as an English major at Berkeley. And while I may not be as happy go lucky as Hucky (as Tom Sawyer sometimes called him), I do fancy myself to be a bit of a kindred free spirit. So as racial politics and dogmas increase social pressures to conform, I may just follow Huck’s lead at the end of the novel and, in my own way, “light out for the Territory.”

April 1, 2020

I’m down to 14 and a half rolls of toilet paper. Should I panic yet?

The other day I was in Costco, and for the first time in weeks I actually saw packages of TP on the shelves. But I resisted the temptation to participate in apocalypse shopping, because I enjoy feeling morally superior to the rabble who are hoarding TP and guns. Maybe I should consider buying my first gun, so that when I run out of TP I can put myself out of my toileting misery.

To escape the coronavirus twilight zone, I go out almost every day for a long walk on nearby jogging/biking trails. With all city, county, state, and national parks closed, the trails are a welcome respite from cabin fever. Everyone else seems to have the same idea, though, so the paths are relatively crowded even on weekdays. I’m glad to see people out in nature, but my smiles and greetings are not always returned as we all try to avoid each other by engaging in the new dance craze called the Six Feet Shuffle.

With my job on hold and my travel plans on ice, I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go. I’m looking for ways to stay connected to family and friends, so last week I discovered Zoom, the San Jose videoconferencing company. So far I’ve Zoomed my high school reunion committee and my meditation group, and in a couple days I’ll be sheltering in place online with my book club and with a dance party for hiking friends. Yes, that’s right – I’ll be capering alone with 35 other people (so far) in a social distancing sock hop, hiking prom, rump shaking, booty twisting, boogie fest, romp-a-thon.

Which brings me to Aretha Franklin.

My recent Zoom encounters reminded me of Aretha’s 1985 hit, Who’s Zoomin’ Who?, which is a song about flirtation: who’s checking out whom? I enjoyed that song in 1985, though at the time I didn’t know what it meant, so I googled the lyrics just now and was pleased to rediscover the opening lines of the song: “Ooh, boy, uh-huh, ah, yeah, oh, oh, oh, oh, ah, yeah.” I’ll leave it to musical historians to parse the meaning of those profound lyrics. Suffice it to say that the Queen of Soul managed to translate those insightful words into a ton of money. Why can’t I write like that?

I was glad to learn via my guru Google that, in the African American vernacular, zoom also means sexual intercourse. I haven’t tried sexual intercourse on Zoom yet, but if I manage to pull it off, at least it’ll be safe sex. Unless you can get HIV or coronavirus through Zoom. But if I score with a hot babe at my Zoom dance party, I just hope her hotness doesn’t come with a fever.

March 16, 2020

My, my, my. Aren’t these interesting times we live in?

The president of the United States refers to the current worldwide coronavirus pandemic as a hoax, then changes his mind, even as some of his supporters continue to insist that it’s fake news. There’s panic buying of toilet paper, of all things, and store shelves are empty of those products, even though there’s no shortage of toilet paper in the manufacturing and distribution systems. Some Americans are buying even more guns out of fear that civilization as we know it will collapse, leading to a kind of Blade Runner dystopia of every man for himself.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by these developments. In fact, I’ve been expecting some form of mass chaos and disruption for a long time now. We humans have been overpopulating and trashing this planet as if there would be no price to pay for our reckless actions. And now a day of reckoning has arrived.

I didn’t know whether the upheavals I’ve anticipated would come in the form of climate change, plagues, world war, or all three. I didn’t know how, when, or where these game changers would manifest, but I knew that something had to give. We as a species cannot continue to abuse our shared planetary home and abuse each other without some kind of consequences arising from the inevitability of the law of cause and effect.

When I was in high school I learned a lesson that has stayed with me ever since. I used to mow lawns and do yardwork on weekends, and with my earnings I bought three freshwater aquariums and populated them with tropical fish from our local pet store. The tranquility of these little watery worlds was a welcome respite from family turmoil and teenage angst. But the more neon tetras, angelfish, red swordtails, gouramis, eels, guppies, and other aquatic creatures I purchased, the more varieties of them I wanted to have to enliven my tanks. I just loved the bright colors and exotic shapes of my little critters. The pet store had warned me, however, that there was a formula for how many healthy fish you could have per gallon of water, and that to exceed that formula would increase the risk of the fish disease ich (pronounced ick) in the aquarium. Undaunted, I filled my tanks with the maximum number of fish allowable, and enjoyed the serenity and beauty of the animated environments that I had created.

Until disaster struck. First one, then another, then another of my little friends got the telltale white spots of ich on their bodies. The pet store sold me liquid blue ich medicine to treat the tanks, but it was too late: eventually all of my prized fish succumbed to the contagious disease. Devastated at the loss of my tiny charges, I cleaned out the aquariums.

And then, motivated by greed to have even more diversity in my tanks, I started all over. I mowed more lawns, raked more leaves, and pulled more weeds for twenty five cents an hour. Then I bought more fish and once again filled my aquariums with the maximum number of fish. And then one of them got ich and…well, you know what happened next.

I still love variety in fish, and people, but now I know that it is not wise to have too much of anything. Balance and harmony are preferable to an excess of abundance. And we have an excess of people on our Earth.

I’m curious to see where we humans will go from here. I expect more pandemics in the coming years, more wars, more climate change, and more political and economic turmoil, until such time as we bring our population down to more sustainable numbers. In the meantime, I wonder what it will take for us to evolve to the point where we learn to treat each other and different life forms with respect. What is the next step in our evolution as a species?

Whatever else this coronavirus may be, I hope it serves as a wakeup call for a re-imagination of our relationship with our planet.

We may lose many lives in this pandemic. A reduction in the human population would be a welcome development in my view, though paradoxically I don’t want anyone to suffer or die. And though I’m fit and healthy, there’s always the possibility that I’ll be one of those who gets corona ich and transitions up to the great fish tank in the sky. But if so, that’s OK. At least I won’t need toilet paper in the celestial aquarium.

March 12, 2020

I know a lot of Christians, but I don’t know many followers of Jesus. Rick Steves is a follower of Jesus. I’d like to meet him someday. Rick Steves, that is. And I’d be open to meeting Jesus as well.

While I’ve long been a fan of Rick’s European travel books and TV shows, and have traveled with his tour company in England and Ireland, it’s only recently that I’ve become aware of his social activism and philanthropy. In addition to donating a $4 million apartment complex for homeless women and children to the YWCA, and giving generously to a movement to end hunger as well as to many other good causes, Rick is a messenger of hope and optimism during this era of wrenching social, political, and climate challenges.

Last night I had the opportunity to watch Rick’s latest TV special on PBS, “Hunger and Hope: Lessons from Ethiopia and Guatemala” (also available online at http://www.ricksteves.com/hungerandhope). I wouldn’t normally use the words hunger and hope in the same sentence, but Rick does. I don’t know whether Rick’s sunny disposition is rooted in his Lutheran faith or his can-do American spirit, but I appreciate his upbeat reporting on progress being made in the areas of clean water, nutrition, health, and education in Ethiopia, Guatemala, and beyond:

While Ethiopia has long struggled with poverty and famine, it’s making great strides. Ethiopia is becoming a model of development thanks to governmental leadership and NGO’s (non governmental organizations). In the last generation, the world has made dramatic progress against hunger. Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty has dropped by about half, from two billion to less than one billion. We’re on a trajectory to end extreme poverty in our lifetime.

It is encouraging and heart-warming to see so many images of hungry Guatemalan and Ethiopian children being fed, or of eager youth in classrooms and women pumping water at new wells rather than having to carry water long distances. And it is gratifying to see poor people prospering in their home countries instead of migrating to the United States and elsewhere.

To his credit, Rick acknowledges serious obstacles to ending hunger, such as war, bad governance and corruption, and climate change. And he admits that Americans can be cynical about our government’s previous development aid to Third World countries, aid that was not invested wisely. But he claims that “smart development aid” from American and other NGO’s is making a big difference in Guatemala and other locations.

I want to believe him. And after watching his special, I do believe him for the most part. But I must confess that I’m one of the American cynics whose disappointment in past aid efforts has led me to be skeptical not of our good intentions, but of the efficacy of those efforts. If, however, Rick is right that smart development aid from NGO’s is different from and more effective than bureaucratic and wasteful government-to-government assistance, then I’m all for such smart investments.

I don’t trust incompetent, corrupt, and power-hungry dictators in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, or Russia. And I don’t trust big corporations or big religion. But I do trust Rick Steves and NGO’s such as the World Food Program, Bread for the World, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Catholic Charities.

I’m saddened and disappointed by my occasional bouts of despair and judgementalism at the state of the world and of the human race. But I’m animated by the hope and idealism of people like Rick who believe in what Abraham Lincoln once described as the “better angels of our nature.”

And if Jesus can inspire people like Rick Steves and Abraham Lincoln, then he’s OK with me.

February 29, 2020

A few days ago I was visiting the art department at Sonoma State University when I happened to pass by a small room with four white walls, a white ceiling, and a concrete floor. It was empty, and had a sterile, prison-like appearance, as though it were a space set aside for solitary confinement. On the locked glass door were block letters spelling the words Rage Gallery.

Curious, I asked a couple of nearby art students if they knew why the gallery was named Rage. They didn’t know the origin of the name, but one said that she had seen art in that gallery that had depicted chaotic and violent themes. The other student said that it had recently held feminist artwork featuring vaginas, suggesting to her that perhaps the gallery specializes in art installations with angry subject matter. I didn’t know that vaginas are angry. I suppose that my ignorance is just another example of white male privilege.

So I went to the art department office and asked Cindy the office manager if she knew the reason for the name of the gallery. She did, and I’ll share it with you shortly.

Later that night I watched the most recent Democratic presidential debate, broadcast from South Carolina. Talk about rage! Bernie Sanders was furious as always, waving his arms and turning red as he denounced the rich and “racists” and whatever other individuals or groups he considers to be his enemies. Elizabeth Warren and billionaire Tom Steyer joined in the shouting, and even the usually good-natured Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar contributed some yelling to the Rage Gallery festivities. Only Mike Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg seemed to keep their cool in the political free-for-all of giant egos.

In fairness to the seven would-be presidents, they obviously felt pressure to show their toughness in order to convince voters that they can defeat the Ranter-in-Chief, Donald Trump. But in lowering themselves to his level, several of them allowed their ambition and competitive juices to overwhelm whatever wisdom and sense of decency they might otherwise possess.

And arrogance, self righteousness, and fanaticism are contagious. Some of Trump’s and Sanders’ rageaholic followers are verbal thugs, inspired by Bernie (perhaps unconsciously) and Donald (probably intentionally) to hate and threaten anyone who disagrees with them. These left wing and right wing purists are united by at least one quality: feverish intolerance of anyone who is not part of their lunatic fringe.

With the planet inflamed internationally by extremist politicians and their true believers, global warming, and the coronavirus panic, now would probably be a good time for all of us to lighten up and laugh at ourselves and the insane asylum that we are creating on Earth. Better to laugh than to despair.

Which brings me back to Cindy. When I asked her about the reason for the name Rage Gallery, she laughed, then explained that some prankster had peeled off the first three letters of the word “Storage” Gallery.

Sometimes things are not as serious as they seem to be.

February 14, 2020

One of the ways I keep my spirits up in the face of life’s vicissitudes is to sing. This week I’ve needed to sing more than usual. Three family members are suffering: one cousin is recovering after being hit by a truck while walking his dog, another cousin is dealing with her dysfunctional adult children, and my mom is bedridden and depressed.

I try to stay positive no matter what I read in the newspaper or hear on the radio or see on TV, and no matter what is going on in my personal life. And fortunately, other than my family problems, my own life is pretty good these days. Even so, there are times when my Pollyanna optimism needs a booster shot in the butt. Luckily two songs came along this week that lodged in my brain and cheered me up considerably.

Although I’ve never been a Monty Python fan, I found myself laughing and singing and whistling along with their silly song on YouTube, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” This video clip from their “Life of Brian” movie shows a couple of dozen men being crucified in Roman (?) times. One of the men, apparently an incurable optimist, decides to cheer up his fellow sufferers on their crosses by singing and whistling to them. The song is wickedly funny because of the contrast and absurdity of crucified men joining the original vocalist in warbling and whistling an upbeat tune. Even nearby corpses are swaying their feet to the cheery ditty:

Always look on the bright side of life

Always look on the light side of life

If life seems jolly rotten

There’s something you’ve forgotten

And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing

When you’re feeling in the dumps

Don’t be silly chumps

Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing

For life is quite absurd

And death’s the final word

You must always face the curtain with a bow

Forget about your sin

Give the audience a grin

Enjoy it – it’s your last chance anyhow

So always look on the bright side of death

Just before you draw your terminal breath

Life’s a piece of shit

When you look at it

Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke it’s true

You’ll see it’s all a show

Keep ’em laughin’ as you go

Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

Yes, the last laugh is on me, and I’m fine with that because I’m doing the laughing. And the singing.

It’s also interesting that such dark humor can be hilarious and inspirational at the same time.

The other song that came into my life this week is more representative of the kind of cheerful tune that I’m usually drawn to. It’s a beautiful romantic song by John Denver called “Tradewinds”:

Ridin’ on a tradewind

Fillin’ my sails with a soft and southerly breeze

Livin’ on the ocean blue

Dreaming of the islands

Wrappin’ myself in the glow of a tropical moon

I never shiver when the sun goes down

All the earth she sings to me

Every shallow, every tree

Surely my love’s shining like the sea

I love the innocence and joy of Denver’s song and the loveliness of his voice and music. And often I’m more in the mood for this kind of song. But sometimes there’s a part of me – my shadow side? – that needs to acknowledge the truth in the black humor of Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” That truth is that there is terrible suffering in this world, and sooner or later we will all experience some degree of that misery. We can only hope that our share of misery will be minimal and brief.

But I also think that a positive attitude can ameliorate some of that unhappiness. So for as long as I am able, I intend to sing and laugh at life and at death and at suffering.

And do what I can to cheer up my family members and anyone else that I know who needs a ray of hope in the midst of hell. Until it’s my turn to be uplifted.

January 31, 2020

I’ve always enjoyed excellent health. Is such good fortune the result of good genes, or diet and exercise, or random luck, or good karma?

On two separate occasions in the 1980’s I was driving when I was hit by drunk drivers, one of whom totaled my car. I was not injured in either crash. Was I just lucky to survive the accidents, or was it misfortune to be involved in such dangerous incidents to begin with? Were these events examples of good karma or bad karma or neither? Were they really accidents?

In other words, why me? Or, why you? Why do good or bad things happen to us or our loved ones? Do we have any responsibility for the events in our lives, or is it just that good or bad “shit happens” as the bumper sticker says?

These are some of the questions that have occurred to me in the last week after my Thursday night meditation group listened to a recorded talk about karma by the writer and philosopher Eckhart Tolle.

I don’t know how Hindus understand karma, but Buddhists generally view it as an accumulation of causes and effects. That is, you think, say, or do something, and that energy or vibration has consequences that show up in your life sooner or later, in this incarnation or in a future lifetime. Another way of explaining karma is the saying, “What goes around comes around.”

But karma is not about punishment or revenge. It’s an energy imbalance, often between two people, such as myself and each of the drunk drivers who hit me years ago. Maybe those collisions were karmic payback for something I did to them in a previous lifetime, or maybe those guys were simply random agents attracted by my negative karma, or perhaps they will need to repay their karmic debt to me in a future lifetime. I don’t know why those incidents occurred, but I do believe that they happened for a reason. And even if my Dave personality doesn’t understand the lesson involved, I believe that my soul is aware of such a learning opportunity.

So karma can be a valuable teacher in helping us to learn to make wise choices, leading to the further evolution of our souls. For example, those individuals who deny global warming or contribute significantly to it will experience the repercussions of those choices, probably by being reborn in places that have been made unpleasant by climate change. These lessons are not about punishment, but about gaining awareness of the law of causality.

Yet we have to be careful not to rush to judgement about ourselves or others when something bad happens. The reality is that in our physical incarnations we are limited in our understanding of the specifics about why we experience what we do. This was the objection of one of the participants in our Thursday night meditation group after listening to our discussion about karma. She felt that the concept of karma can be used as an excuse to do nothing about what she perceives to be injustice; an excuse to avoid facing social problems. In other words, if we see a homeless person, we could ignore their plight by dismissing it as their karma. And while it may well be their karma to be homeless, that doesn’t mean that we should do nothing to help that person.

In the talk we listened to a week ago, Eckhart Tolle said, “Karma is the unconscious conditioning that runs your life. It’s personal, and collective… Each person is born with certain patterns and predispositions. Then the environment influences you further…You can only understand karma by observing yourself.”

He went on to explain that we are not slaves to our karma, but rather that we can rise above it. “Spiritual awakening is not part of karma. Karma is the complete absence of conscious presence. The only thing that can free you from karma is the arising of presence. Presence frees you from karma; the energy behind it diminishes. In the light of awareness, karma diminishes. Spiritual teachers point out the possibility of awakening out of identification with unconscious patterns. A spiritual teacher teaches you to go beyond karma.”

And intention is a powerful tool in transcending karma. Intending to listen to, and be aligned with, our inner being, our buddha nature, the “true entity of life” as Buddha Nichiren called it.

So while I don’t fully understand my good karma or my bad karma, I appreciate the presence of that part of me that is learning to value the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s so much easier on our karmic consequences. And there’s that much less karma that we have to transcend.

January 18, 2020

This Sunday I’m going to join my tribe in a war dance. We will dance to destroy our enemy. Then on Monday we will attempt to be magnanimous in victory. But should we lose on Sunday, we’ll have to pretend to be magnanimous in defeat.

I don’t want to pretend to be that virtuous. I’d rather privately gloat with a win.

As a Bay Area native, I root for all of our local professional teams. This Sunday my football tribe, the San Francisco 49ers, plays the Green Bay Packers for the National Football Conference championship. The winner will go on to the Super Bowl on February 2.

I must confess that I’m not a true football fan, or even a true 49er fan. It’s not the game that I love, or even the team, but rather the vicarious pleasure I get from having my community (Bay Area) enjoy success. And in recent years we’ve had the pleasure and good fortune of reveling in several national championships: three World Series titles by the San Francisco Giants baseball team, and three NBA crowns by our basketball Golden State Warriors. And now it’s time (we hope) for the 49ers to win their sixth Super Bowl. But first we must vanquish Green Bay.

“We?” Whether the 49ers win or lose, I’ll have nothing to do with it. I’m not on the team. But don’t tell that to my ego.

It’s interesting to me how I and others can allow our identity to be shaped by our affiliation with a sports franchise, a political party, a religion, a racial category, a community, or a nation. Often those identifications are fairly benign. But sometimes they can turn ugly.

In high school I cheered for our football team until their group verbal abuse of a female classmate caused me to criticize their behavior in the school newspaper. A team member then warned me that they intended to assault me after school. Fortunately that never came to pass.

Some fans allow their tribal team identification to lead to violence against opposing fans in the viewing stands. And recently, while reading fan comments online about various football playoff games, I’ve seen denigrating references to opposing teams: the Vikings referred to as Viqueens, the Seahawks called Seahags, and the 49ers dismissed as the Forty Vaginers. Notice that the insults all have an undercurrent of disrespect toward women.

But if sports can bring out the worst in people, they can also bring out the best in them. In a recent New York Times article about the 49ers, the writer reported that General Manager John Lynch and Head Coach Kyle Shanahan hire players who are not just skilled athletes, but who have good “moral fiber” who can contribute to “a harmonious locker room guided by an altruistic culture” that gives back to the community.

And my support of the 49ers is contingent not just on winning, but on character.

Yesterday I had lunch with several fellow hikers, and one of them, Kathie, is a long time faithful 49er fan. She mentioned to me a quote from the revered former 49er coach Bill Walsh: “Playing to one’s full potential is the only purpose of playing.” Kathie says that to her, this means giving it your all, or don’t play. I told Kathie that I agree with her and Bill that doing your best is an important lesson from sports. But I said that I would add one more thing to that quote:

Play (live) to your full potential. And have fun while you do it.

January 3, 2020

Should we worry about the possibility of war between Iran and the U.S.?

This question occurred to me last night when I returned home from my weekly meditation group and learned that the U.S. had used a drone to kill Iran’s top military commander, Major General Qassim Suleimani, as he arrived in Iraq.

At first I was pleased to learn of Suleimani’s death, since he has been the main architect of Iran’s support of various terrorist groups in the Middle East. And I’m also no fan of the religious fanatics that run the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I see the Iranian leadership in very negative terms due to their oppression of their own people and their support of violent groups and actions in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

But I noticed last night and today that I was feeling angry and resentful as I read about Suleimani and the Iranian government. I found myself imagining how this ongoing tension between the U.S. and Iran could escalate, and how I’d want to see the Iranian military destroyed if a war were to break out.

In other words, I bought into the drama.

As I began to notice the toxic effects of that anger in my body – higher blood pressure, and a tightening of my breath and of my stomach muscles – I realized that I was choosing to focus my attention upon an ugly scenario that does not need to be my problem. Yet by giving my energy to this developing crisis, I was making it my problem. I was allowing my emotions to get caught up in the excitement of the moment.

Perhaps I need to learn a lesson in detachment.

Recently I was enjoying a Christmas meal with my longtime friend Joseph, and we found ourselves discussing the problems of a mutual friend. Joseph surprised me by using an expression that I had never heard before to indicate his preference for non-involvement in our friend’s predicament: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” In other words, Joseph chooses not to get drawn into our friend’s soap opera. He cares about her, and wishes her well. He just prefers to focus his attention on more constructive pursuits in the present moment, rather than getting sucked into someone else’s melodrama.

So in the coming days, weeks, and months, I will continue to follow the unfolding events in the Middle East. And I will hope that those events don’t spiral out of control into a full-blown war.

But war or no war, I don’t intend to worry about it.

December 16, 2019

I just came back from a walk in an outdoor psychiatric ward. It’s better known locally as a homeless encampment.

A couple of months ago this long narrow tent campground appeared almost overnight along the Joe Rodota walking and biking trail that parallels Highway 12 and connects the cities of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa here in Sonoma County. Whereas the local homeless population had previously tended to congregate under bridges and other out of the way places, the Rodota Trail tent village is highly visible to anyone driving along Highway 12. I’ve been driving by it for weeks now, and today decided to check it out.

Walking along the paved trail, I first noticed a sign next to piles of garbage. The county sign warns pedestrians and bikers to avoid this section of the trail due to unsafe conditions created by the illegal encampment. Then I saw individual tents, followed by groups of makeshift shelters made of tarps, wooden pallets, and various salvaged pieces of cardboard, bamboo, and sticks. And more piles of garbage, scattered trash, and lots of dogs.

A woman walking ahead of me was carrying a jug of water on her head and a plastic water bottle in her hand, and when she inadvertently dropped the water bottle she couldn’t stoop to pick it up. So I retrieved it for her, and we chatted briefly in front of her tent. A white woman probably in her 4o’s, she was missing most of her teeth. I asked her how she likes living there, and she replied, “I hate it. Everybody steals from you here.”

Another white woman, pushing a shopping cart full of junk, confirmed the statement about thievery while ranting about the trials and tribulations of being homeless. She also told me about watching her grandparents being murdered in front of her when she was a child. A third white woman cheerfully lectured me about the health benefits of coconut oil while she smoked a cigarette.

Amidst all the squalor and negative human energy I did encounter a couple of rays of light. A well dressed woman escorted her young daughter who was handing out candy and bags of nuts to the nutty squatters along the trail. An old man named Bruce was there as a volunteer for the Homeless Action organization to assess the needs of the camp inhabitants. He told me that his group provides wooden pallets for the campers to put under their tents when it rains, and Homeless Action also provides food, socks, and other essentials to the residents.

The overwhelming impression I came away with is that these people are not homeless due to a housing shortage but because of mental illness or substance abuse problems that rob them of any coping skills they might once have had. Even Bruce admitted that drug use is a major cause of the thievery that plagues these destitute squatters. But he went on to explain that often these damaged souls turn to drugs and alcohol to avoid facing their “demons” – sexual abuse or violence that they experienced earlier in life. They can’t face their pain, he said, so they use drugs to escape their demons.

As sorry as I feel for these miserable human beings, I don’t believe that society at large can or should tolerate the garbage, crime, or human waste that these folks create in public spaces. My short term solution would be to make it illegal to sleep in public places, and to institutionalize most homeless people in mental hospitals or rehab centers, permanently if necessary. We might have to raise taxes to pay for such mandatory housing and counseling, but if so, so be it.

The longer term solution is for these suffering people to find healing and a sense of belonging wherever they can. A neighbor of mine was, he jokes, “residentially challenged” until recently, sleeping in his car for several years until he overcame his depression by finding community and stability in a local church.

Homelessness is not, in my view, primarily caused by a lack of money. It is a psychological and emotional problem with a social and spiritual solution: family, community, Jesus, meditation, Buddhism – whatever works.

So I hope that the people I met today on the Rodota Trail of tears can find a path of return to their spirit within, their inner moonlight, their guardian angel, their God or Goddess.

A path to their true, lasting home.

(Note: To read about another encounter I had with a homeless person, read Remorse for a Good Deed in the personal essays section of this website).