Item:

“Orinda has some of the Bay Area’s worst roads, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, but how to repair them—and the storm drains beneath—has proved elusive.

“The city has spent $15.5 million on roads since 2000, enough to repave arterial and collector streets but not residential roads. Bond measures in 2006 and 2007, for $59.1 million and $58.6 million, respectively, fell short of voter approval…

“…Roads are rated from 0 to 100 on what is known as the “pavement condition index,” or PCI. A rating above 80 qualifies a street as “excellent.” Less than 50 is “at risk.” Less than 30 is “failed.”

“Orinda’s overall PCI is 49.”

– West County Times, 10/25/11

Having grown up in Orinda, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Orinda’s residential roads snake for miles over and around so many hills and through such a tumble of enchanted glades that the greater surprise would be if civilization had indeed succeeded in taming them all. Two roads on the route from the Village up to the Tilden Park stables, which I became acquainted with during my first few years of driving, fell to nature years ago. One connects El Toyonal, the main thoroughfare, to Wildcat Canyon Road, and is probably fenced off for safety reasons to reduce wear and tear. From outward appearance it’s not in too bad shape, and I expect it could be opened in case emergency exit routes from the densely packed neighborhood were needed.

The other road, last time I was up there, looked straight out of a Disney cartoon, the sort of setting where dark branches loom overhead, spooky eyes wink open and shut from the shadows, and a motley assortment of signs warns TURN BACK! or DANGER! or BRIDGE OUT—ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! It used to be an innocuous little arc of a shortcut that shaved about five minutes’ driving time off El Toyonal’s sinuous loops, but somewhere along the way the Orindans failed to maintain it, and the elements took over. Now both ends are blocked off with ROAD OUT notices posted, and tree roots creep around broken chunks of what used to be pavement.

Back during the housing boom in the 1960s, some developer got the idea to build a bypass route from Highway 24 out to Moraga, in the open space between the Caldecott Tunnel and the Orinda exit that backs up to Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve in the Oakland hills. The theory was that an alternate route would ease the commute bottleneck on Moraga Road’s two lanes, but the tradeoff was that yet another housing development would sprawl over the rolling hills through which the new road would run. The project was to be a “gateway” out to the Moraga/Rheem area, and, amidst much fanfare, freeway on-ramps and off-ramps for the proposed “Gateway Boulevard” through what was to be “Gateway Valley” were constructed. Then the development plans hit a snag, and the Gateway Boulevard exits sat for decades as roads to nowhere—except for the use of the exit in one direction as a quick detour around freeway traffic. If cars were backed up going west on Highway 24 after the Orinda exit, those in the know would exit at Gateway Blvd., take a left at the stop sign, and then merge right back into the traffic just before the tunnel entrance, thereby avoiding about a ten-minute delay (a practice that continues to this day).

Things began to pick up after Orinda incorporated in the mid 1980s. A few years later, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival pulled up its roots from John Hinkel Park, renamed itself the California Shakespeare Festival, and built a new outdoor theater in the valley across the freeway from Gateway Valley. The formerly unnamed location was dubbed “Siesta Valley,” and the Gateway Blvd. signs on that side of the freeway were renamed “Shakespeare Theater Way.”

In 2004, after years of litigation hard-fought by a group of longtime Orindans led by a feisty, 70-something environmentalist, development in Gateway Valley finally started up again. Under a settlement agreement that the Golden Gate Audubon Society and the Sierra Club signed onto, 80% of the lavish proposed designs, which included a golf course and conference center, were ditched in favor of a scaled-back development that would cede the majority of the open space to the East Bay Regional Parks District and East Bay MUD in perpetuity. It was the best arrangement that could be hoped for, under the circumstances.

Now, amidst the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, as mass protests about economic injustice sweep the land, homes are being pitched to young professionals with prices starting at a baseline of $1.5 million. A polished marketing campaign promotes the idea that the right price will unlock a gateway to having it all—a safe, old-fashioned, small town community, country club amenities nearby, close access to unspoiled nature AND the freeway, and state-of-the art luxury homes. In the sort of cosmic joke that makes it difficult for honest, hard-working satirists to earn a living, the development has been named “Wilder.” The former Gateway Blvd. signs have been upgraded to read “Wilder Road.”

I suppose there’s a poetic justice, of sorts, in the idea that at least some of the proportionally higher property taxes the people buying into the “Wilder” brand will pay will go towards subsidizing repair of some wilder areas of old Orinda. At the end of a long, winding, cracked and pothole-strewn road into some interior canyon, under an oak canopy where California laurel scents the air and the locals know to tread lightly, I imagine the dryads and other folk of the woodland realm are enjoying a good laugh.

Tiamat, the chaos dragon, is the Great Mother. She has a dual character. As the origin of good she is the creatrix of the gods. Her beneficent form survived as the Sumerian goddess Bau, who was obviously identical with the Phœnician Baau, mother of the first man. Another name of Bau was Ma, and Nintu, “a form of the goddess Ma”, was half a woman and half a serpent, and was depicted with “a babe suckling her breast”. The Egyptian goddesses Neheb-kau and Uazit were serpents, and the goddesses Isis and Nepthys had also serpent forms. The serpent was a symbol of fertility, and as a mother was a protector. Vishnu, the Preserver of the Hindu Trinity, sleeps on the world-serpent’s body. Serpent charms are protective and fertility charms.

As the origin of evil Tiamat personified the deep and tempests. In this character she was the enemy of order and good, and strove to destroy the world.

– from Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, by Donald A. MacKenzie [1915]

If ever a corporate scumbag deserved to fall far and fast, it has to be Rupert Murdoch, the man who has singlehandedly spent the past several decades poisoning the well of global communications on an epic scale. By all accounts, the soap opera currently topping the headlines in Britain — which has already spilled over onto our fair shores with the FBI opening an investigation into possible criminal activity — is only the tip of the iceberg. This is the juiciest news story to come along in ages.

I went to a symposium on “Arts Relation to News” this weekend. It was held in conjunction with an exhibit at the Benicia Public Library called “I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!,” which brought together poets and visual artists to form pairs and create responses in their respective media to news stories of their choosing. The exhibit serves up wonderful food for thought on every level – visual, intellectual and emotional. One could easily spend a couple of hours feasting on the thoughtful, in-depth, high quality material on display. It’s a veritable Rupert Murdoch antidote.

The symposium panelists included artists, activists and journalists across a range of media. I enjoyed their discussion, but my primary takeaway was the thought that not enough concern was expressed about the extent to which straight, unbiased news reporting and high quality journalism have been steadily degraded in our society ever since the Vietnam/Watergate era. We’re getting dangerously close to a place where people taking over the prominent soapboxes aren’t old enough to remember a time when “fair and balanced” wasn’t just an empty slogan used to tout unabashed propaganda. Somehow, we need to find a way to restore the concept of good faith in the public commons. It’s refreshing to see artists and activists banding together to take things in a constructive new direction.

I was holding off on buying an e-reader, as I have a long-established pattern of waiting for new technologies to settle in before adopting them and I already have a zillion things on hand to read. The first chink in my resistance came when a friend mentioned that he thought e-readers would end up replacing mass market paperbacks. That made sense, simply on the basis of ease of portability. This point was driven home when I flew to Washington DC at the beginning of last month, laden down as usual with too many books, magazines, etc. crammed into my carry-on luggage. My seatmate carried on a Kindle and a bottle of water, and seemed perfectly at ease for the five hour flight. Hmmm, I thought.

The light bulb finally went on when I looked up an obscure Joel Chandler Harris title on Amazon a few weeks ago. The listing showed it was available on Kindle for $0.00. Duh. Anything published in the 1900s is in the public domain. That was the breaking point. I had balked at the idea of paying for a book in the Kindle format as opposed to having an old-fashioned hard copy to read, but free content is another matter entirely. A whole new world has opened up, as all kinds of little known works of famous writers are out there in the aether waiting to be downloaded. I am in cloud heaven. I bought a Kindle after my Joel Chandler Harris revelation, and immediately downloaded the beginnings of a fine library of old literature. Tonight I’m going to kick off actually reading from the thing with Treasure Island, which a book group I recently joined plans to begin reading aloud.

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

6/14/03, Savannakhet, Laos — I’ve now spent a week cycling south from Vientien and am now in Savannakhet, where I will rest for a few days before heading south again for Pakse, which is close to the Cambodian border. I’ve been told that this is a hippie haven, so I might just spend some time there.

Laos doesn’t have any big cities. Vientien, the capitol, is the largest, and it really isn’t much bigger than Azusa. Savannakhet is the next largest city. This is a pretty, though somewhat run down, former French colony, and I really like it here. That’s a good thing, because I need a few days rest before cycling any more. Even though the roads here have been good (paved and flat) so far, I don’t think I’m in much danger of getting too many speeding tickets in this heat.

Not only is this a quaint little former colony, but I find the cost of living to be quite reasonable—not nearly as expensive as that yuppie-infested Mexico. I’m paying $2.25 a night for a luxury suite at the Santyphab Hotel, which boasts of having the cleanest outhouse of all hotels in town. Not only that, but it is on the bank of the crystal clear and sparkling Mekong River, which looks almost as inviting as the Ganges. I just can’t wait to go skinny dipping.

My impression of Laos so far is that it is an Asian version of Mayberry RFD. Everyone I cycle past in the small villages smiles, waves and says “sabaidii.” I certainly hope that “sabaidii” doesn’t mean “fuck you.”

Whenever I stop for water or noodles, it is quite common for most of the village to come over to meet the foreigner who is cycling through town. You would almost think that white people riding through rural Laos were a rarity, the way people act. I have a poor quality Lao phrase book, and a few of the villagers can speak some very limited English, so I am able to attempt to make some friendly conversation.

“I teacher from America. Teacher America no work three month in year. I vacation. I bicycle Vientien to Singapore.”

The idea of an exotic and adventurous vacation seems to be a totally alien and incomprehensible idea to the local villagers, and I think they are saying to each other, “No wonder those crazy Americans lost the war”.

Actually, I am having less problem communicating here than I did in France. No matter what people say, I still think that for a Frenchman to be caught speaking or understanding English is a guillotine offense.

The latest item of high tech gadgetry that I installed on the Holy Skinkmobile before I left for this trip is a Donald Duck tricycle horn that I bought at Toys R US. When a group of kids, and frequently even adults, wave at me as I ride past and I toot the horn, this frequently causes such laughter that they are actually rolling over on the ground.

One big difference I’ve noticed about cycling in a third world country as compared to Europe is that almost all of the good road kill has been taken off by the locals before I can get to it. This is causing me to spend a fortune on food that I had not anticipated. Did you know that a bowl of noodles over here can cost as much as 80 cents? One class of road kill that seems to have been totally overlooked by the locals is small and unidentifiable animals that have been stepped on by elephants. This is starting me to think of creative recipes for crepes. Because of all of the elephants, water buffalo, crazy tuk-tuks and tigers, about half the road kill is some poor guy on a motorscooter. But this somehow doesn’t look appetizing.

In Pakse, which I hear is somewhat of a hippie haven, I might spend four or five days before heading west back into Thailand, just north of the Cambodian border. I think I will avoid cycling in Cambodia because of steep hills with muddy roads and extreme distances between villages. I do hope to be able to find a way to leave the Holy Skinkmobile at a hotel in Thailand and travel by bus to Angkor Wat for a few days. This would really be an experience.

I still don’t have any travel schedule except that in about a month I want to be in southern Thailand near Surat Thani, where I want to spend several weeks in a Buddhist monastery studying meditation. From there I will return to my old home of Malaysia, leisurely cycling toward Singapore for the rest of the vacation. I still have friends in Jahore, which is just across the border from Singapore.

Many years ago, Alice Walker published an essay with the title “Only Justice Can Stop a Curse.” It opens with an old curse-prayer that the writer Zora Neale Hurston came across in the 1920s, and is probably the most powerful example I’ve ever come across of language used as a tool of fury. On behalf of women of color around the globe, Walker turns the full force of her rage against “the white man’s crimes against humanity.” Only at the end does she let up, with an invocation of the delight of fresh peaches as a reason to greet each new day and keep going.

At some point, I became more concerned with the idea of articulating a constructive way forward than with dwelling on the sins of the past. This is not to diminish the latter, just a recognition that, sooner or later, one faces a choice of either wallowing in unhappiness or taking steps to change the causes of the unhappiness.  Life is a rushing river. The past cannot be undone, but working to bring justice is always worthwhile. The trick lies in recognizing and appreciating reasonable acts of justice, because they will always change with the eye of the beholder. Circa 2011, it simply doesn’t work to ascribe crimes against humanity to “white men” as a unified class of people. But that doesn’t change the power of Walker’s example of how to really let rip when the mood strikes. Different arenas.

Anyway, in that light, I was glad to read yesterday that a federal judge on Monday approved a $3.4 billion settlement against the U.S. government, to be paid to Indian tribes who were cheated out of royalties owed for various land use leases over the course of more than a century. Our government’s treatment of Native Americans is one of the more sordid chapters in our nation’s history, and this is an important step that should be noted as such.

In wading into matters such as American foreign policy, it’s important to maintain a sense of humor. It can be a life preserver when currents threaten to become turbulent.

In that spirit, as the madness of the Iraq war was getting underway several years ago, a writer with Slate Magazine compiled some of the verbatim utterances of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and presented them in the form of poetry. It was published a few months later as a book entitled Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld. Here’s a taste, taken from a Department of Defense news briefing in February 2002:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

We’re wa-a-a-ayyy down the road from the Twilight of Post-Modernism, here.

Moderates who traffic in objective truth have become the radicals of the day. Such is the legacy of post-modernism, I guess. I’m ready to move on to reality-based narratives, myself.

Yesterday I took the plunge and placed my first order with iTunes.  I’ve been meaning to do that for awhile, but have just been busy with other things.  I have long enjoyed making my own music compilations, starting with cassette tape mixes that I played while driving or working out at the gym. But the iTunes business model of being able to get single tracks without having to shell out for an entire album is a game-changer.

The catalyst was actually a catchy old song called “Smoke From a Distant Fire” that I wanted to get on my iPod but couldn’t find in record stores. I did some research and learned that it was a one hit wonder done by a couple of studio musicians who briefly formed their own band. It’s a fun piece of music with sophisticated lyrics – the refrain includes the line “Girl, your eyes have a mist from the smoke of a distant fire,” referring to the singer’s suspicion that his girlfriend is having an affair. I have learned enough about epic poetry form through my familiarity with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work to appreciate the sophistication of the rhyming of “mist” with the first syllable in “distant.” It plays real smooth.

I took advantage of the situation to compile a list of old favorites, and downloaded about thirty songs for my initial foray into this brave new world. I noted in passing how weird the whole consumer culture emphasis on instant gratification has become, but I’m picking my battles these days. It’s a fun new toy to play with, and that’s enough for now.