Please take a moment to remember this man, whose eloquent and passionate service catalyzed a season of positive change in the land. I’m not posting any quotes – that would be too easy. But I’ll suggest that we consider what civil rights means to each of us.

“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in

the forced contemplation of their own works.”

— John Dos Passos

It’s a different way of looking at things,

of celebrating half-light and fog.

For instance, a bee I saw, just

for an instant, fumbling among

the camellias and darting past

the dog’s head. You’d almost believe

it was Spring, forgetting the windmills

droning all night to save the lemon

trees from frost. But the chiminea,

warming in compassionate sunlight,

is half full of rain. And in January,

I prefer fog. I would rather have

a morning with the houses gray

and almost lost in it. With Papa

standing by the pickup, asking

if I’ve got good tires, a full tank

of gas, a map, some cash.

They called him Bee. He liked

a Timex watch, a good pen

in his pocket. Ballpoint, blue.

I had everything I needed, checked

everything but the weather.

So he stood there by his house

in the long, cold January, foggy

San Joaquin, breathing gray exhaust

in the gray world. He stood there,

waving as I disappeared.

Kyle Kimberlin

January 15, 2005

with Grandma & Papa on my way to CSU, Chico, January 1983. Click on the image to enlarge.

My anti-war blog is active again. Just thought I’d mention it.

My uncle, a rancher in Arkansas, used to talk about how he always had to remind his sons to “get the gate;” to close the gates behind them, so that cattle didn’t escape. I’m reminded of this by the fact that the barriers came down here in Carpinteria this morning. The freeway is open again at La Conchita. The thundering herd is with us again.

I’m told that the cupboards were getting pretty bare at our stores, though I hadn’t needed to shop lately. And I noticed the gas station was closed yesterday for lack of deliveries. I haven’t seen my Time magazine yet this week, though I haven’t checked today. Other than that, and the fact that all our police cars got dirty, I wasn’t effected much. Well, there is this abiding sadness, a sense of the abject fragility of human life, and that massive scar on the hills. You can see it from Summerland, eight miles west.

To my neighbors in La Conchita: I understand it’s Home, but you’re worth more than a pretty place to live. The true vista is in you, not from your living room windows. The rest of that slide will fall on that town. Please don’t be there when it does.

Last month, I mentioned taking Papa’s clock down to the shop for repair, as it came to me from their home when Grandma passed away. It hadn’t been wound in a few years. It’s three times older than I am, and let me tell you, after that much time on the job a vacation is in order. Well, it’s back on duty, with its steady tick-tock resounding through my living room.

It’s really nice. I’m very glad to have it, and the other things that make it seem on some level as though these people I loved are still with me. When it chimes, it’s beautiful. But I have to be honest. A small antique table in my condo doesn’t give its voice the same resonnance as Papa’s mantle.

click to enlarge

The clock, the photo of cousin Tim beside it, and the one of me on the TV, barely moved in a quarter century. Our grandparents thought a lot of us, they truly did.

Did I mention that when I was little sometimes I got to climb up there on the hearth and wind it? Yeah, it took ten half-turns for the chime and ten for the movement. When I wound it tonight, it was the same. As a kid I loved clocks; I had a thing for them. I loved winding them, and setting them just so. Even now, I set my computer clock via the Net, then a watch to that, then the clocks in the house. I got this from Papa you know, who liked time to be just so. Though in the end, it’s the most great common divisor of souls.

When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.

I’ll take good care of it, Papa.

Have you been giving some thought to the quote I posted about faith? I have. Yes, quite a lot of thought. Here, I think is the next step on this path:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

John 14:1-6

I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot about moral and spiritual relativism and the bad taste that Christianity seems to be leaving in the mouths of Americans these days. I’m a Christian, and I’m troubled by the trend. Something to ponder, because I have to something besides sit here for a while.

I admit that my experiment of not posting my latest short story has failed decisvely. Oh well.

A few quotes from the estimable, if presidentially inept, H. Ross Perot, who famously brought us the Giant Sucking Sound.

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

If you see a snake, just kill it – don’t appoint a committee on snakes.

The death toll is up to 10 in La Conchita now. I feel so bad for that guy who lost his wife and 3 children. Thank God he has a daughter who wasn’t home when it happened. His heart must be broken forever.

The death toll in the La Conchita mudslide has risen to six. A friend of a friend of my Dad’s is among the dead. The rain has stopped. The radar is clear, the stars are out. It’s cold. Tomorrow, the forecast is sunny.

You can’t get here from anywhere else. If you do, the motels are probably all full. The freeways are closed, the back roads are washed out or washed over.

You know the old cliche b-movie line, “I’m afraid no one can leave tonight. The bridge is washed out.” Well, the bridge really is washed out. About a mile from my house, there was a cool little 1927 bridge of green steel, over a trickle of a stream. Really, just a drainage ditch. The bridge looks like somebody very large smashed it with a ballpean hammer. And in betrayal of the implication of that movie line – that the bridge would be fixed the next day – it will be months before it’s replaced.

Typically me, I wonder how bare the shelves are getting at the Vons. And how the heck did the mail get through?

I’m sorry for the six lives lost, and the broken hearts that reality leaves in its wake. I’m afraid that number will get bigger, before this deal goes down.

It’s raining again, here in Carpinteria, where I live. It’s raining pretty hard. I’m listening to the water drumming down the rain gutters of my building. The dog is sleeping on the floor, behind me. It’s warm and dry in my study. I’m thinking about the people down in La Conchita. Rescuers are still digging for survivors. People who live there are either grieving or worrying.

As you can see, it’s not very far from where I am right now, and the site of this terrible event.

click to enlarge

Yesterday, driving home from Ventura, I looked at the scar on the hillside above La Conchita; the scar left from a landslide 10 years ago. I thought the hillside looked swollen, ominous. I want you to look at this photo of La Conchita.

You won’t see anything like that on CNN. That’s not from the slide that happened today. That’s a USGS photo of the slide that happened in 1995. See that big lump of earth in the middle of that gouge in the bluff? That stuff that looks like it’s sliding? That’s what slid in 95, and it’s been sitting there just that way until today, when it finished going down. There were four or five houses under the bottom of that slide. Now there are about a dozen more. And people.

This is a painful thing for our community. I feel just awful for those involved. La Conchita – the little shell – is such a small, quiet place – just homes and a gas station. They don’t have a supermarket or anything, so I know the people there come into Carpinteria a lot. So I guess I’ve sort of thought of it as a little brother to Carpinteria, as we are to Santa Barbara. I wish there was something I could do.

Here’s a site with lots of photos from La Conchita today. The link to them is in the center column.