I sketched from memory - one of 2 amazing building dogs. Colored pencil.

Identity Theft

I've had a social security number since I was 9 and now someone's using it. And there are 158 women with my exact name, including one who's assumed it.

        My data has been stolen in two data breaches in the last year, as well as the very mean janitor where I used to live threw away three-quarters of my belongings as I was moving. I didn't realize until I was resettled that even two plastic file cabinets containing my personal data had vanished. So this was bound to happen.

        Now 'authorities' tell me countless places to contact, but no way to stop it. I've been told that, in addition to freezing my credit, etc, I should file a report with the police, which seems absurd. The police are local.

        I'd like to offer some advice. But a person can do everything right and still end up with an impossible-to-fix conundrum. Oh, and the person who has allegedly been using my name and social security number is one of only 32 others with her own name. Lucky her. 

        Other victims of identity theft have had it worse. One woman did top secret drops of $200,000 a time to FBI imposters and lost over $600,000. 

        I've never had money to steal.

 

In the Wake of Disaster, How to Rebuild

Steve Martin made a movie L.A. Story which Rotten Tomatoes gave a 98 and dubbed a "love letter" to L.A. I also love Los Angeles. It's so beautiful that when I first saw it from the mountain we were driving in on, I cried. I lived there twice. I've had special friends there. Something about it makes people kind.

         Although magical things can happen, some of which I've written about, it's difficult to live there. Along with the ocean, flowering trees and hummingbirds are the heat and earthquakes. Angelenos always say they're expecting "the big one" (earthquake). And flash floods can catch you off-guard. They can seem innocuous – like water you can drive through. My best friend was almost swept away in one. Sometimes you can just feel the howling of the desert. And there have been water challenges (as chronicled in the incomparable Chinatown). And the wind is wild (as I coincidentally mentioned in my last post). But you just don't expect this kind of disaster at this magnitude. Some call it a "climate disaster shotgun that humans helped load."*

        Not to minimize the loss of so many, which is great and tragic, some consider this is a story of trying to survive in conditions too wild for those adverse to danger. According to L.A. writer Carla Hall, Los Angeles is the “only megacity in the world that has mountain lions roaming the streets.” As proven by researchers, years of climate change have brought dramatic shifts between record-breaking heat and heavy rain. According to UCLA climate scientists, that and drought have become a “perfect storm of risks.” Yet Mayor Karen Bass is promising to “aggressively rebuild....Red tape, bureaucracy, all of it must go.” And Governor Newsom is suspending environmental laws for his proposed 'Marshall Plan' to rebuild.

     

*R. Fonseca, L.A. Times

Sound Can Transform or Destroy

Some of the crowd crouched on the floor holding their ears. I stuffed mine with cotton and covered them with two programs and my hands. Still, most of us just stood and listened. That was The Fillmore West when Lee Michaels opened with "You Know What I Mean" on his 'beefed-up electronic organ' with pre and power amps and JBL speakers so powerful, the walls of that huge auditorium vibrated. Although less amplified Ron Wood, Ronnie Lane and Rod Stewart with The Faces followed, it's still surprising anyone left with their hearing intact.
      I love sound. Here the wind is almost as thrilling as it was in the California desert. And although thunderstorms are not as powerful or frequent as they were, they're still exquisite. Sometimes I can hear the sound of rain on the roof and wonder How can anyone not be enthralled?
     I was raised on music in the nightclubs of childhood and the many accomplished musicians and vocalists I've known. Sound is a transformative sense that can fill a day with wonder.
    So if I say that three of the most ethereal voices I've heard were, coincidentally, where I was living, I know they were extraordinary.
    Unfortunately, we are bombarded with sounds that would be better off unheard, which is when I wear the strongest earplugs and noise-canceling headphones I can find. It is well-documented that noise can not only destroy our hearing but make us ill. So listen when you can to the magic of natural sound. And remember to wear earplugs to rock, hip hop, new wave - anything but classical concerts so that like me you will still be able to appreciate the nuances of the gift of sound.

From War on Poverty to Poverty - Carter to Reagan and Continued Demise of Middle Class

    This section about Carter was from L.Z. Granderson's Tribute to Frankie Beverly. 

 "When Frankie Beverly, lead singer of Maze, passed away, I thought of...his recordings from one November night in 1980 at the Saenger Theater. His album "Live in New Orleans" captured more than a concert. It captured a turning point in history. President Carter had lost his reelection bid barely a week earlier. Nearly 60% of Orleans Parish, where Beverly was recording, voted for Carter. The GDP grew a stunning 4.6% during Carter's only term, but inflation was 13% as was the poverty rate. His opponent, Ronald Reagan, blamed social programs and welfare recipients for the economic woes. 

        When Reagan first workshopped that rhetoric, in his 1966 campaign for governor of California, the war on poverty" had just begun; the overall poverty rate was 17%, but for Black America in 1965 it was more than 40%. By 1980, Reagan and his party had a clear record of dislike for the war on poverty and those it intended to help. He cut more than $22 billion from social programs within his first two years. And when Reagan left the White House, the country's poverty rate was back up to its highest since -- wait for it -- 1965.

     In "New Orleans in 1980, Beverly singing 'we'll get through these changing times' was about all of this and the road ahead. His music was both the calm before the storm and the tool needed to find peace in the middle of it. That is why 'Joy and Pain' -- the fourth track on the live album -- sounds less like an R&B concert and more like a revival."

    "By the time "Live in New Orleans" was released in 1981, nearly 1 in 7 Americans had plunged into poverty, crack was appearing in major cities and the U.S. divorce rate was at its peak. Beverly's music kept the Black community's spirits lifted -- much in the way Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp became voices for the white working class during this same era." (My excerpt from article by LZ Granderson, Los Angeles Times - 9/13/24)

 

 Also, this from Tom Putnam says it best:"Jimmy Carter's Humility Hurt His Political Career. It Also Made Him Remarkable" https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2024/12/30/remembrance-of-president-jimmy-carter-tom-putnam

 

 

Carter Made the World a Better Place

Jimmy Carter never stopped making a difference. Although there were long gas lines and he was often ridiculed during his presidency for being simple, wholesome, and unglamorous, he stayed close to who he was and followed his mission to improve lives. 

    He brokered peace between Egypt and Israel and met throughout his life with world leaders to foster understanding. While he was in office, he proposed alternate energy sources, including solar panels which were installed on the White House roof. But as I've written before, as soon as Reagan took office, they were removed.

     Carter never stopped trying to make things better, physically building homes for Habitat for Humanity, working tirelessly to eliminate NTD's and often succeeding, particularly in Africa. His foundation continues his projects to help humanity. He truly was a man for all seasons.

 *See my Frankie Beverly (9/25) post re: the reaction to Carter's loss, Reagan's win, which ushered in a new era of poverty.

"Jimmy Carter's Humility Hurt His Political Career. It Also Made Him Remarkable": https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2024/12/30/remembrance-of-president-jimmy-carter-tom-putnam 

Writing About Yourself

It's difficult to write about ourselves: about the miracles and tragedies of our own lives because we don't want to seem solipsistic. And for some (like me), we may have a tendency to go within at times, which makes us less visible or memorable to a public near or far that has known us. So who's going to want to read what we write? We never know.
    That comes after. It's the writing that counts.
    And then there's concern about family and friends. Would they want to read about themselves in my stories?
    To address that problem, temporarily make them an image (a label) of whatever they are: a more general brother, friend, mother. This may help relieve the feelings about them that can block self-expression. You can think about what they'll think much later - in the revision process.
    Often, if you want to write or are destined to write, it helps to start by free-writing - just writing what comes - by hand (which as I've posted before) better accesses the creative mind. Think of something overreaching and important to you in your life and follow that feeling with words. They (the words) will come. They always come if you let them.
    As Dorothea Brande wrote in her 1934 classic “Becoming a Writer” Don't judge or reread what you've written, especially while you're writing, because that will block your access to imagination and what needs to be expressed.

In Spite of Mean Bullies

       There was nothing kind that Susan could say. But although she was older than Dona, Dona was supposed to play with her because she was the only child in the neighborhood near her age. And in the morning when 4 year old Dona would walk to school, Susan and the mean boys would follow, chanting her name. “Doonah, Doonah, Doonah” they’d say – like the song – “Doonah, Donut, who has a name like that!”
     All Dona could think was Why didn’t they leave her alone? And How could she avoid them. Every day they would follow her the long way through the park, over the snowbanks, and to the school yard where they all dispersed.
     Then as school let out, the crossing guard would stand in the road to make sure they would all cross safely, and Dona would feel protected for a minute until she had to turn right. Then the only people were the cruel children behind her, following no more than a few feet behind, chanting, jeering with Susan in the lead. Sometimes they'd run up close and shout or throw something hard and hurtful.
     They’d grab up dirt and form it into mud balls and throw them at her. They’d take rocks and stones, and in winter ice balls, and hurl them at her back, her legs, her head. This stung, leaving bruises she couldn’t speak of because no one at home would pay attention except sometimes to say

                “Sticks and stones may break my bones,
                 but names will never hurt me.”

    This went on for one year and then another, and all the time, Dona would think of the beautiful things she hoped to write about as soon as she learned to write: the flowers in gardens on the way, the smell of grass, the rainbow beauty of water as it fell from sprinklers, the sound of cicadas in the trees.      

     But every walk was torture that made Dona dread going to school and leaving school. Every long walk of blocks and blocks was another trial she couldn’t escape. So she just walked on without even looking at them, and this seemed the way to make her world bearable. But in her mind an idea formed: That she would write about this for other children like her who for some reason the regular children disliked. She would write about the beauty of the earth, something the mean children could not destroy, she hoped, no matter how much they ridiculed her and those like her. Mean bullies would always be mean, but they couldn't hurt the beauty she experienced and shared.

    Then one icy day when the bitter air was so cold it burned their faces and they were all surrounded by huge snowbanks, Susan behind her scooped up an ice ball, and running beside her, threw it at her, then ran ahead and fell in the road just as a car skidded to a stop no more than a foot away. Dona walked on and heard herself say to Susan still on the ground, “God did that because of how you've treated me.” Then she walked home, feeling protected no matter how mean people could be.  

*"Dona, Dona" - Hebrew song

Transcendent Voices

Once I rented a room in a Seattle house where one of the other renters was an opera/gospel singer. There in the house, he'd be talking in a group or going about his day and unexpectedly sing out. Or I'd wake to his beautiful voice somewhere in the house and feel so fortunate. You see, I can't sing although I've had extensive instruction. But I'm always singing - sigh. Anyhow, among the many accomplished singers I've known, there are a few voices that can literally lift us above the troubles of the earth – just in hearing them. 

        So in my life, it was later, miles and mountains north of there, when another gifted singer was driving my friends the night they saved me on the road. When I woke the next morning in a sleeping bag on a carpet where I'd slept the first time in weeks, I heard him singing in the kitchen. His voice was so perfect that it transformed the day. I could still hear him singing down the road as he left that morning. That was the last time that I woke to a beautiful voice. And then a month ago in this building around midnight someone came home down the hall, and a beautiful voice -- female this time - sang "Sleep in heavenly peace." Only those four words. But the voice was as golden as the two before, and the air, the room, virtually everything was transformed. 

 

 

 

(Previous story: 'The night my friends saved  me on the road' to be posted again.)

Winter Solstice: Hinge Between Worlds

The Winter Solstice (Northern Hemisphere's longest night of the year) and the nights surrounding it, is a hinge time when we can sense the doors between worlds. In these nights, we can feel the mystery if we stop for a minute, or walk at dusk in a forest. As the energy of the earth's axis shifts, there is a sense of possibility.
        If we listen beyond daily concerns, our connection to the natural world becomes palpable, and with it -- deep understanding. The wise do not ignore or underestimate this.
       The Solstice has been significant to nearly every civilization throughout history. It has occurred on our planet for billions of years. Light a bonfire, or a candle. This is a time to plant seeds, preparing for deep winter and rebirth.

Reprint of my 12/21/15 Solstice post.