Fragile Industries

Smoky (cough cough), but fine

Yup.  Nothing is burning in My Little Town, or in the county of My Little Town.  Fire crews seem to be getting a handle on the various conflagrations in the absence of the Santa Ana winds.  Now the air seems to be moving in its normal pattern from water inland, good news for those of us near the water, not so good for those in one of those impacted inland areas near the foothills.  Mom woke up this morning with a horrendous cough, even for her, and so did I.  Last week's fire smoke is a culprit, but Mom's 50 years of cigarettes and current pulmonary fibrosis, may play a role, as might my own renewed enthusiasm (suicidal and foolhardy) for the inhalation of burning tobacco.

Boy, how dumb can you get?

I have to blame Katrina.  Were it not for that hurricane, I would not have come in nearly 24/7 contact with my dear friend and fellow Red Cross veteran Steve.  I've blogged about him before.  I adore Steve.  We've stayed in touch these two years and it seems mutual.  When we had adjacent cots (NOT adjoining, mind you) to minister to the dispossessed in Alabama, he'd crow to me morning and evening, "Ah wanna adop tchew!" in his Kentucky accent, then tell me the latest nefarious scheme on the part of the Powers That Be to screw the people we were trying to help.  He was and is an ordained, seminary trained Baptist minister who worked 30+ years on the Ford assembly line and diehard supporter of underdogs to the point that Ford, in the last years of his career, kicked him upstairs to being a diversity and tolerance educator for the other employers.  He was and is also a complete tobacco addict, regularly taking 5-minute breaks between "clients" (the folks we wrote checks/vouchers for) to "check the tires," i.e., sucking down another Marlboro in the parking lot.  Not that he shirked.  He managed to give out more money than I did, with perfect paperwork and completly charming everyone within a 50 yard radius, usually by asking female clients Of A Certain Age for their birthdate (required by paperwork) then erupting in a frenzy of disbelief.  It works.  It worked on me, every day for two weeks.

I was immune to the lure of his tobacco.  I hadn't smoked in over 12 years.  By my mid-thirties, I had tried every method of quitting and failed until late 1993, with a combination of nicotine patches and being head-over-heels in love with a righteously devoted non-smoker.  Between tobacco and my future ex-husband, I chose my future ex and never regretted that choice.  (Even if it didn't work out, he was still better for me than cigarettes.)  Then after Katrina, I was thrust into a situation when it seemed the world was ending, and we should all play, "Ashes, ashes, all fall down," along with those enduring the 13th and 17th century eruptions of the Black Plague.  I still would not have smoked except for one client, name forgotten but not particulars.

An elderly woman of regal bearing, fragile but with PERFECT hair, was escorted by a nice young man into the relief center.  She reminded me of my mother's mother -- a gracious, perfect gentlewoman, soft-spoken and very bright.  I greeted her and we got down to business.  Before Katrina, she had owned her own home outside of Biloxi, and ran it efficiently, even caring for her (younger) sister who was incapacitated with Alzheimer's.  Just the day before Katrina hit, she placed her sister in an inland nursing home just in case the hurricane came ashore.  When it was hours away, the nursing home sent a car for her and insisted she evacuate, so she packed an overnight bag, locked up, and weathered the storm with her sister.  A few days later, she learned that She Had Lost Everything.  Her house and everything in it, her car, everything, was simply GONE.  She was sharp, competent, and had all her paperwork, but her hands trembled slightly as she handed over her driver's license.  I filled in the info, and came to a dead halt when I saw that she was born on my birthday, July 5 ...

... in 1915.

This lovely woman was 90 years old.  Suddenly I was doing an imitation of Steve's flattery, but for real.  "This CAN'T be right!" I exclaimed.  With some pride, she affirmed that she was indeed 90 years old.  With a current, valid driver's license yet.  For some reason, after 10 days of hearing terrifying stories, tragic stories, inspiring stories, THIS story tore out my heart completely.  Neither she nor her sister had children.  There was no one to take her in.  Everyone else that had appeared before me had a determined gleam to rebuild in their eyes, even if their eyes were haunted with tragedy.  This fine lady, who could be my grandma, how could she start over at NINETY?  How could someone build her life for ninety years, survive two world wars, the Depression, care for an ailing sister and then at the hard-earned sunset of her days have all her security ripped away?  The WRONGNESS of it all.

I fudged the Red Cross form and gave her AND her sister full allowances, even though her sister's paperwork was not before me, and handed her the pittance.  I could tell she had NEVER asked for this kind of help from anyone.  She mentioned several times that it had been the idea of the the nice young man (he worked at the nursing home and seemed to take very good care of her).  I looked her dead in the eye at the end and told her that it had been an honor to talk with her and that I would pray for her and her sister.  Her eyes and mine misted over for a second, then she shook my hand briskly, and left.

I had 15 minutes until my next scheduled client, and I raced to the bathroom and sobbed for 5 minutes.  All the stories cascaded in my mind, but I kept coming back to this fine woman, who reminded me so much of my Nanny, my grandmother.  I splashed water on my face and stepped out back, where Steve was "checking the tires."  "Hand me one of those," I said, Steve took one look at my swollen eyes, and without a word, lit me up.  Don't let the do-gooders lie to you.  It tasted WONDERFUL.

But enough is enough, already.  A dumb way to grieve, and after two years, it's not even a barely understandable excuse any more.  I will quit.  I will, I promise.  I say that every time I sneak outside for another one.  "Just checking the tires," I call to my mother as she sucks down her oxygen.  She gives me a gimlet eye and says, "I really enjoyed all my cigarettes too, look where it got me."  Yeah.

Why I Wake Up Early (thanks, Houston)

Separated at Birth? 1970 Edition.

Both pictures taken exactly 37 years ago.  A bad year for haircuts and glasses.

Name the geeks and win a prize.

Hint: They both aged pretty well.

Tired, Quick Update

Today's update is that although the Red Cross won't let me help humans, I'm considered OK for animals, so I'm working with the animal shelters as a volunteer -- I'm on call to the Ventura County shelters, the Humane Society about half an hour away, and the Los Angeles ASPCA (about an hour and a half away, and it's surprisingly shabby). 

The hardest hit are the displaced horses from the foothill areas; most people take house pets with them, but there is no room for horses except in equestrian centers and most are in the very areas most affected.  I can't help, as I'm not a horse person and there's no room in my garage for a horse.  However, the shelters are being inundated by lost pets, so today I was in the LA ASPCA tending to the many rescued cats and dogs.  They are stretched to capacity, so I may end up fostering some cats.  None I dealt with are injured, thank god, just scared and disoriented.  I hope they link up with their owners.

By the way, I found out that the new head of the American Red Cross, as of this July, is the former director of the IRS.  That explains a lot.

That's the news from the front, and thanks for your concern from all who've inquired. 

Respite from fire news: Dumbledore Is Gay

My friend at Everybody Knows wonders why JK's announcement causes such consternation: "Did people not read the bits where nasty Rita Skeeter accused Dumbledore of having an "unnatural interest" in Harry? I thought that innuendo was pretty unmistakable. Sure, Rowling couldn't have made Dumbledore overtly gay and more's the pity. But why the great surprise?

"And, at some point soon, doesn't Ms. Rowling have to let the books speak for themselves and stop writing her own fan fiction?"

Good point.

As one of the Homeland-Security-registered Harry Potter geeks, and a 3 on the Kinsey scale, I have spent actual time considering Dumbldore's sexuality.  Not because of Rita Skeeter's comments, although that may have set up some subliminal gaydar.  But in "Deathly Hallows," Dumbledore's own description of his adolescent relationship with Grindelwald seemed so familiar, that I remembered my own adolescent crushes on both sexes.  Also, I always thought the perfect Dumbledore would be played by the openly gay actor Sir Ian McKellen.  The thought came and went in about 30 seconds, because Dumbledore's sexuality was so incidental to the story and its larger issues.  I find much more interesting the other comment by JK: that one of the messages to youth of the story is "Question Authority."  If I still had my first car, lo those ages ago, it would have a tattered remnant of a bumper sticker reading just that.  I heard that pertinent message loud and clear in the last 3 books.  Not only pertinent, but timeless. 

I don't want to deny JK her time to demystify her personal universe which has become a global destination.  But I do agree, the time draws near when she should simply say, "res ipsa loquitor," or "the thing speaks for itself."

Red Cross to Fragile Industries: Not Good Enough For Malibu

Today's events have overtaken even blogging speed.  Fires rage out of control throughout Southern California, including areas in the county which includes My Little Town, and just over the LA line in Malibu.  I jested in this morning's post about being sent to the Malibu Colony disaster shelter, with valet parking for the Porches.  As ripe for black humor as that scenario may be, the current situation has affected less affluent areas, over a quarter of a million Southland residents have evacuated, and Red Cross shelters are taking in the threatened and dispossessed.  The damage and fear these people are currently suffering is unimaginable.

I have responded like an old fire dog to previous calamities through the auspices of the Red Cross: over two weeks in the Gulf Coast immediately post-Katrina two years ago, and last year at about this time to local fire shelters when Ojai and Santa Paula were burning.  I had a full day of classes, taught at breakneck speed, before Katrina -- a mash-up of two classes in Mass Care and Disaster Response.  I then had two weeks of actual experience in shelters and issuing emergency aid near Mobile, and even mastered the gobbledygook of Red Cross forms in every shape and size, in quadruplicate.  After my return from Alabama, I've taken two more classes from the ARC, after being told that my emergency worker status from Katrina was provisional only, and formal training was necessary for continued work.  I left those classes with no new information but a great deal of frustration with the red tape of the Red Cross.  See posts here and here (the Red Cross part comes in about halfway through that last one, if you're the impatient sort).

But still, I thought I had it down, because last October, after the classes, they did send me to fire emergency shelters, where again, I walked the talk.  I set up and broke down more cots than I can count, brewed hundreds of gallons of coffee, and manned sign-in tables where I greeted people with haunted eyes and ashes in their hair.  I just love the doing of it.  There's probably something incredibly twisted in me that responds to the bacon-scented smell of disaster.  I get a sex flush when cooking in mass quantities.  Hand me a clipboard and I'm fresh as a daisy for days without sleep.  Put me in a Red Cross classroom, though, and I'm gnawing at my own paws to get away from the bear-trap boredom of it all. 

I called and left a message at county ARC headquarters that I was ready, willing and able.  Put me in, coach, I came to play.  My phone call was returned by a honey-voiced functionary this afternoon.  In short, I was told that my credentials were inadequate.  I hadn't had Intro to Mass Care and ... I forget, some Disaster 101 class.  I said I had taken the two classes in '06 that I thought were required, had two weeks of Katrina experience and was thereafter deployed in last year's fires for more shelter experience.  She admitted that I shouldn't have been sent out, actually, that was their mistake and they damn well weren't going to repeat it this year.  My pre-Katrina training (the mash-up full-day version of the exact half-day classes needed) didn't count because now the course numbers had changed.  To date, I have caused no fatalities by inadequate coffeemaking, I joked, but the humorless chirping noise continued at the other end of the line.  She would be happy to sign me up for the necessary classes right now.  Holding on to the last of my courtesy, I said my calendar wasn't in front of me, but the next time I was at my desk, I'd sign up online.  Well, she said, that wouldn't do, because the online class dates were wrong, but Intro to Mass Care would be offered on November 23rd.  Would I care to sign up now?

So a month from now, I'll be halfway to helping these folks.

I lost it.

"That will be a great big comfort to the people who right this very minute are watching their houses burn down," I snapped.  "Thanks for calling to tell me I'm good enough for Katrina, but not good enough for California because of some damn paperwork formality."   Outraged squawking was heard as I pressed the "end call" button.  (You can't really say, "I hung up the phone" anymore, can you?)

Words fail me.  (Hah, hardly.  I continue:) I give up.  The Red Cross really is the great stinky beached whale of compassion it's made out to be.  I'd like to set up an Anti-Red Cross shelter, across the street from the real one.  Sort of a lemonade stand offering free highballs and hugs, with a great big sign reading: "Unqualified Succor Here."  A Michael Moore gesture, and I won't do it really, but what a fucking waste.

I said privately to a friend a few weeks ago that I had my own name for the ARC acronym: Angry Retired C---s.  (That's not to preserve a PG rating, it's just my least favorite word in the world and I hate seeing it in print.)  The Red Cross is heavily populated and top-heavy with bitter old nurses, who spent their careers doing the real healing while being put down by doctors.  Now that they're in charge, no one escapes their draconian superiority and bean counting.   The other evil, as I perceive it, is the fear of bad press and lawsuits, so they cover their asses in even more meaningless paperwork, crossing every "i" and dotting every "t".  That last is intentionally wrong.  As wrong-headed as turning away proven willing hands.

My heart goes out to all who are affected by this year's blazes.  Let's all send them our prayers, good vibes and virtual hugs.

Dude! Gnarly fire.

The annual October disaster season is upon us in So Cal.  It affects us even in Northern So Cal or Southern Central Cal, wherever you place My Little Town.  A year of drought, followed by Indian summer heat (currently low '80's) and the arrival of the Santa Ana winds brings the predictable result.  All of California, especially the Cadillac Desert that is all points south of Morro Bay, approximately, is the topographical equivalent of a powder keg.  Sitting next to a pyromaniac with a fresh, sulfur-scented box of matches.  Whether by human design or nature's accident, October is Fire Month.

Yesterday I woke before dawn as the Santa Anas began to roar.  At first, the winds whipped sand from the nearby beach through every crevice, and my path to the coffeemaker was crunchy with grit.  The dry air made my eyes sting and my sinuses drain.  I had an immediate sense memory of October 2003, when events conspired to bring me to Southern California from my (then) San Francisco home.  Mom was having her second operation of five (so far) for various cancers that have flared up in the last few years.  Although this was not a major surgery requiring an overnight in hospital, she needed someone to drive her back and forth and stay with her for the next few days.  That year's particularly harsh fire season had just started, and I landed in Burbank into a thick brown gravy of smoke.  My memories of those days are somewhat Biblical in tone, all the personal worry and discomfort seen in a hellish, unnatural orange light.  On every trip between home and hospital, the windshield would cloud with sticky ash, and Mom's shiny black Mafia car soon turned a fuzzy gray.  The local channels went to wall-to-wall fire coverage, and Mom took it personally.  How was she to recuperate comfortably without the soothing tones of "People's Court" and "Judge Judy," her daily fare?  It was an odd time of crisis for both of us -- my marriage and life in San Francisco was skidding out control and by next May was rather cataclysmically over.  Mom was at the beginning of her health issues.  And it seemed the world was ending around us.  The sun, when visible at all, was a vague dirty penny glowing dull and baleful in a muddy sky and the air was nearly unbreathable.  I was recovering from some voluntary vanity surgery myself, a last-ditch gesture towards being young and desirable, wearing a compression bandage around my face, a sort of latter-day wimple. 

With all that in mind four years later nearly to the day, I knew that something would be burning soon, if it wasn't already.  Sure enough, a few hours later, the wind shifted and drove the Malibu fire smoke north into My Little Town.  Same orange Halloween light, smell, drifting ash.  I'm in a much better place now, emotionally and geographically, though I've traded my wimple for a monastic remove from the relationship wars.  Mom seems cancer-free for now, at least.  We're next to the beach and miles from any flammable hillsides.  If the Red Cross calls today, I'll be available for coffee and food service for the firefighters or shelter duty, although the notion of the Malibu Colony residents pulling up in their Porsches to claim a cot seems unlikely.  The Beverly Hills Four Seasons is probably booked solid with refugees.

Disaster, Hollywood-style, is a different proposition.

Photos, above and below, courtesy of LA Times.

Biblical times, indeed:

Cherubs in the remnants of a Malibu Castle:

Not everyone lives in a castle:

Not Just a Natural D-Cup, But a Philosopher As Well

I have had various aspirations along the way, but if you asked me (few have, BTW) what I'd want to end up with, bottom line, I would have said "wisdom."  The fundamental hard-wired human wish and motivation is the seeking of love, but I think in my heart of hearts I want wisdom just a smidge more.  If you asked me (again, few have) what wisdom I've come up with, it's that I have to un-learn more than I have to learn.  Every time I say, "I'll NEVER _______ (fill in the blank)" or have a hard and fast pronouncement that somehow is a promise about the future or the reality of things, it turns around and bites me on the ass eventually.  I could set out examples, but you have your own and can identify.  My list is too long for me to set out even for my own amusement, musing though I may be.  "Never say never" sums up the conundrum.  Each and every time another assumption, predicition, promise, prejudice, judgment falls in ruins about my ears, I feel betrayed.  I feel I've been let down by God, Shiva, Inana, the Higher Power, Aslan, or The Giant Rat of Sumatra, may she enfold me in her holy whiskers.  And yet, as the pain fades, I've learned yet again not to put my faith in MY OWN absolutes.  Maybe that's the essense of wisdom.

.

Hardly an original realization.  Nor does it prevent me (yet) from still further disappointments.  Still, it somehow is pertinent to your quote above.  I'm hardly wise enough to figure out how and maybe the wisdom I hope for will elude me even at the end.  Still, these musings bring a rich calm where there was bitterness, a comfort.

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Sorry if this all sounds like twaddle, new-agey BS.  I can discuss this at a certain level with my mother, and at 76 she agrees that every youthful pronouncement has been shattered for her as well, and it's not the end of the world.  I don't know, though, that as she stares confidently at her own death that she has my drive for wisdom or understanding or explanation, I think she's made peace with her questions.  My wisdom, thus far, is very middle-aged.  If I manage to have a few brain cells on speaking terms with one another when/if I reach Old Crone status, maybe there's a third level: Youthful Certainty>Mid-Life Disappointment>Aged _________ ?  Maybe there's something to be said for releasing the wish for wisdom itself?  "Oh, It Can't Be That!" I exclaim, another certainty.  Is that my ultimate enlightenment, that there's none to be had?  That just seems too cynical for me to accept.  (Yet.)

.

Really, it's all hysterically funny, this feeble human search for meaning.  I just don't know what the punchline is, none of us do.

Coming to you in REM State

Speak quietly, I'm still not awake.

This morning I got out of bed even more fuzzy-headed that usual.  I've always woken up ... SLOWLY ... and putter about until the fog lifts, about half an hour and a cup of coffee later.  I prefer to do this alone.  Conversation in this state, if possible at all, annoys me no end. 

I had slept quite late for no discernable reason.  The last wispy fragments of a dream were still floating on the fringes of consciousness.  In my dream, I was a successful jewelry and fashion designer, Tim Gunn had something to do with this (I have a huge crush on him) and my specialty was called "interstitial jewelry."  I still can picture the end result and it looks, well, odd, but like something I'd make.  Very assemblage.  The clothes I made looked like what Little Edie Beale might wear if she rummaged through a bag of old table linens and bedding made by an elderly relative with an obsession for cross-stitch and crude embroidery.   The end result was a look I'd call "milkmaid bag lady."

Mom had beat me to the kitchen and had coffee started, a clear indication that I'd overslept.  Usually I'm up for hours before she stirs and begins reading the paper to me.  I'll write later about our usual morning dance.  Today was different.  I caromed randomly around the kitchen fumbling for a cup and milk, and asked, "What does 'interstitial' mean?"  She looked up and said gently, "I think it has something to do with spaces."  She's used to my first-thing-in-the-morning state and treats me with the utmost delicacy, like a sleepwalker.  Spaces, yup, that's what I thought.  Shuffling to my computer, I googled "interstitial jewelry." 

Eureka, I'd won a game of __________.  I forget what it's called, but there's some sort of Google excercise that involves submitting two words in quotes and finding a single instance of it on the entire internet.  Quite hard to do.  A very strange blog popped up -- I have the feeling it's a spamblog designed to catch the unwary internet traveler because it's entirely gibberish that ALMOST makes sense, full of random word strings and peppered with C!alis and Viagr@ ads.  Disturbing to read it in this state because even the most measured, precise prose reads this sensibly when I'm not fully awake.  I puzzled at it for at least five minutes before I realized that, no, it wasn't me, it really didn't have any meaning at all.

Of course, now that I've put those two words together, I've ruined one of the few remaining winning combos in that game.  Once the googlebots find this.

Anyway, I think I've found a term for some of my artistic creations.  "Interstitial Jewlery" from Fragile Industries Studios.  I'm sketching out what I remember from the dream, even though I can't imagine who would wear it.  For some reason, my subconscious wants me to make this stuff, and Tim Gunn approves.  Who am I to disagree, even when I wake up?

Poetry Corner: Maya Angelou

This poem just makes me glad to be a woman.  "...diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs..."  And the hope to carry it off with a fraction of Dr. Angelou's dignity.  Oh yeah.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. Maya Angelou