Category Archives: society

Welcome…

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Greetings to recent visitors to Metaphor from Bulgaria, Saskatchewan, and Mountain View, California. Could it be that the Googlers from Google dropped by to see what’s up? Maybe they’re checking the blogosphere to see what’s being said about the g-mail outage the other day. I think I said it’s no big deal, and it’s not.

Hey, Bulgaria, bogdaproste, dudes! That’s Romanian, it’s phonetic, and it’s probably wrong, but I’m just a provoslavny kid from Carpinteria, so my tricks are limited.

Keep coming back. Take what you like and leave the rest.

do something

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All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause — there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once.

– Joss Whedon, writer and film director (b. 1964) 

Now how could anybody disagree with that? I would add one caveat: do a little reading and thinking first.  Try to clear off a small plot of mind for the task at hand. Stupidity is one of the most contagious diseases threatening our species. Here’s a particularly serious case, by the name of Mark Williams. Seriously, wow.

poor little moron

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We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old — reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

He’s right, you know; at least, he has me down. I don’t usually discuss my politics on this blog, but they are a motley stew. For the most part, change that bears at its core a sense of compassion is a good thing, because things as they are kinda suck.

Which reminds me of something I saw on the freeway yesterday. There was a white van in the slow lane, going slow, and bearing on its back end, in large lettering, this:

Slow Driver
Please Be Kind

And I thought What an amazing idea. He’s not arguing for his right to go slower than the rest of us, or insisting that we’re all going too fast, or in some other way saying bite me. He’s just asking for kindness. It’s something that in our culture – no, we don’t actually have a culture – in our population, we don’t seem to value highly. Unless someone is kind in some very heartwarming way and it winds up on the news, we could scarcely care less.

In my life, I have adopted the phrase Gentle hands, kind words, which I thought was a quote of Albert Schweitzer, though it does not Google well. So I don’t know. But it has become a mantra for me, which I apply to my relationships with small animals. You are not a small animal, so if you cut me off in traffic then Heaven defend your ass.

I’m kidding. I have a phrase for you, if you stumble upon the thoroughfare and cause us all some calamity:

Poor little moron.

It’s the same thing I say of myself when I mess things up. Like the time, not long ago, when I was trying to make myself a blueberry smoothie with my blender. I put in the ice and water, the low-calorie mix, the blueberries, and hit ON. But had a forgotten the lid. Kablooie! All over the kitchen. Poor little moron.

It has a ring of pity or sympathy, right?  I think it’s something my grandpa used to say. And it reminds me of the Nasrudin jokes I’ve heard from Coleman Barks. That’s the best I can do. But sometime in the future, we should ponder this one from old Doc Schweitzer:

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

not a drop to drink

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Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right?

“UNITED NATIONS – The growing commercialisation of water – and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide – is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.

‘We definitely need a covenant or [an international] treaty on the right to water so as to establish once and for all that no one on earth must be denied water because of inability to pay,’ says Maude Barlow, a senior adviser to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, on water issues.

‘We’ve got to protect water as a human right,’ she said, pointing out that the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva would be the most likely venue to propose such a covenant.”

My initial reaction to this was Yes, of course it should be an established human right. Companies that investment in the means of pumping, purification, storage and transport should be compensated by the public. That’s only fair. But people who can’t pay should have clean water to drink.

My second reaction was OK, what other enumerated human rights do we need to establish? Food comes to mind, and shelter. Health care. And how about … call me crazy, but what about Peace?

speaking of coffee

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Something is wrong with the coffee, gentle readers. Terribly wrong, with all of it. Coffee doesn’t smell like itself anymore. It has no flavor. I used to like opening a can of coffee and taking a nice, long sniff. It smelled wonderful. Not anymore. No matter where I go for it, or if I brew it here at home, it’s the same. It’s bland, it tastes like hot water with sweetener and milk. It must be a communist plot.

Surely I can’t be alone in this grave, portentious observation, right?

If you’re looking for a cup of coffee here in Carpinteria, my home town, I’m afraid your options are limited. You want to avoid the Starbucks on Casitas Pass Road. Just stay away. Although once you get inside, you’ll find a nicely remodled store and the coffee is fine (bland, but fine), and the service is good, the space around it simply sucks. You have to brave a gauntlet of people smoking at the tables just outside the door. And if you sit at one of the few outside tables, you’ll find yourself seated in a large and bushy ashtray. Seriously, the area around this place is disgusting, dirty, and unkept. It is never swept or hosed down at all. No pride. And the inside is only nice because it’s new; the interior reflects what I presume to be a Starbucks trend of trying to keep their customers moving. There are only a few places to sit; most of the tables were removed and the barristas’ work area greatly enlarged. This is not a coffeehouse where a writer can set his cup of drip beside his laptop and get a little work done. I don’t think Starbucks loves writers anymore at all.

There is a Coffee Bean at the corner of Linden and Carpinteria Avenue, and it’s nice enough. Good service, decent bland coffee. But again, there are problems. Parking is the first you’ll notice. This store has no parking lot. There is a public lot behind the block, but it’s not very close. Kind of a pain. Worse, there are not nearly enough tables and chairs for the clientele. I’d guess about 4 small tables inside, and about the same outside. Another coffeehouse that doesn’t want its customers dawdling. I’d give it a pass.

On Casitas Pass Road near the Blockbuster and Subway, there’s a little coffee place called Caje. The coffee is really good, for organic bland stuff. There’s wi-fi. There’s one sofa and one table, I believe.

What is it with this town? They don’t want their customers hanging around, talking with friends, doing some work, buying another cup?

In short, skip Carpinteria for coffee. Head on in to Montecito or Santa Barbara for your cup of joe. More on the opportunities there in a later post.

seeds

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Well, here we are, another
Friday in paradise. And on
this soft and muted day
of high gray air, in which
the birds have gone to ground,
sleeping off the seeds pecked
from the good earth in yesterday’s sun,
our property taxes are due.
Dead line.
Just thought I’d bring it up,
to help you out.

Here’s a real poem now:

Rondelet
by Anonymous

I never meant
For you to go. The thing you heard
I never meant
for you to hear. The night you went
away I knew our whole absurd
sweet world had fallen with a word
I never meant.

Bye W!

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Well, that’s it. The long, sad, sordid, sick and twisted, destructive and desperately fearful reign of George the Lesser is shuffling out the back door, not a moment too soon.

It doesn’t surprise me that he still doesn’t understand what he’s done. The Decider to the end.

I guess it’s time to move on, having acknowledged that Inauguration Day will dawn with at least 4229 Americans dead in the Iraq Oil War.

It is important to note that, though solidiers will be on hand, power is expected to pass to Barak Obama in a matter of hours, without bloodshed. A peaceful revolution has taken place, to the extent that the moral character of our government has the potential to project our morality as a society in a much different way. That’s wonderful, a cause for gratitude, a testimony to the spirit of our people.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
– John F. Kennedy

wait!

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So I’m hanging out in Coffee Bean in Montecito, down the hill from the burn. I’m talking to Bill, a retired professor of English. He lost his home in the Tea Fire a few days ago. I’m drinking apricot ceylon tea. It has an aftertaste that makes my mouth feel arid.

Bill says he’s a happy man. It’s not death, he says. He “learned about life and death and evil on Iwo,” when he was eighteen.” This fire, he implies, is not death or evil. I guess he must mean that it’s life. I have trouble accessing this level of stoicism, and offer my best, mostly-sincere, bright autumn day sympathies. He shrugs them off. What good is, “I am so sorry to hear that,” amidst the potsherds and ash? To face it is a difficult Job.

I sit with my laptop and look around: pretty girls, mauve walls, tile floors, Christmas decorations, packages of coffee and tea priced to make you proud you can afford it.

Wait … Christmas decorations? I shit you not, gentle reader.


That’s just not right. In the midst of all this life and death and evil, whatever you might imagine giving you defense or consolation in it, it is not by God Christmas time. Not yet. No sir.

Christmas comes after Thanksgiving, on any calendar you can find. Halloween, Thanksgiving, then Christmas. Add in any holidays – Hanukkah, for example – that you like, but don’t move Christmas up a month or change the order of things. It’s not offensive or sacrilegious so must as a pallid, insipid, dumbass way to enter the culture around you.

Take a step back, Jack. Let it be, is my point.