Tag: Politics & Causes

America Collection/End-of-Life/General interest
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Holiday Report: One Fine Day

by Fran Johns

GRIEF, FRIENDSHIP, JOY AND A COLONY OF CORMORANTS. WHO COULD ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE?

Cormorants and friends enjoying the sunshine (Author photo)

Hope your holiday was this fulfilling. This full of Life.

I hadn’t actually realized it was Labor Day. Just wanted to visit a friend who’s dealing with Bulbar ALS. Another mutual friend had lost her widely beloved husband several weeks ago and agreed to make the quick trip from San Francisco to Southern California so we could all do a little grieving — and a bit of talking, laughing and more — together.

This meant booking an early morning flight on Friday, beginning with figuring out how to summon a Lyft from Judith’s house to my place and thence to the airport. OK, everybody else in the world knows you just click on that little plus sign and a ‘second stop’ line appears. But those of us who grew up using a dial phone to call a taxi have to figure this out. By Googling “How to call a Lyft with extra stop,” watching a couple of bewildering, more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-hear videos made by people talking too loud and too fast — and finally discovering the little plus sign purely by accident.

It is not easy being Elderly (me, not Judith) in the Age of Technology.

It is, though, a wonder and a delight to discover a travel soulmate. We both just love airports. We know it’s weird. But we have loved airports forever. Judith, because she traveled alone when young and thus quickly learned to slip into the restroom, apply lipstick and go from there. Me, because airports have been associated with pure joy and adventure from the first one I ever met — a quonset hut in a Richmond, VA field — regardless of whether I was there for a harried business trip or a vacation in Amsterdam.

So we began with a leisurely latte and airport-special snack — gag, if you must — before taking off for a flight along the California coast. If a flight along the California coast doesn’t do your heart good, something is seriously wrong with your heart.

Early morning sunshine above San Francisco (Author photo)

We found our friend, who weighs about as much as two cormorants (more about them later; they don’t weight a lot) looking like she just stepped out of a fashion photo, and with a smile to match the sun.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Bulbar ALS, it robs you of the ability to swallow and, eventually, talk or eat — little things like that which would diminish enthusiasm for dressing beautifully, or smiling, for that matter, for most of us. My friend Lynne is not most of us.

Can you find anybody who looks sick? Or bereaved? (Author photo)

We had a brief visit in the sunshine of Lynne’s garden before heading to our hotel in La Jolla. Which brings me to the excuse for this brief essay, other than showing off my gorgeous friends, mentioning a lovely dinner with the two people who make End of Life Choices CA work, and sharing the view from Seat 34-A:

How can you not share a photo such as this one with the waves breaking toward nonchalant cormorants? Not to mention the other hundreds of nonchalant smaller birds on their own adjacent bit of beautiful coastline?

So impressed was I with my photographic skills (thanks, iPhone 16) that I looked up the species to make sure these are actually cormorants. (If they’re not, please do not deal that crushing blow in the comments.) Cormorants, of which there are about 40 species, go back to roughly the beginning of time as we know it. They are just about everywhere on planet earth they can hang out, dive underwater for their dinner (just about any kind of fish, including eels thankyouverymuch) and sun themselves at their leisure.

Although Wikipedia informs us that “the origin of the family is shrouded in uncertainties,” cormorants have been around since at least the Early Oligocene or the Late Paleogene, whichever came first — I’ve already admitted that it took a long time to figure out how to order a two-stop Lyft; I will not go into how ignorant I am of paleontology.

But what I do know is that these fascinating birds have populated the planet since long before we humans started warming up their oceans, and will in all probability be around long after we have all washed away. Or turned to dust, whichever you choose.

It is somehow comforting to think how little it matters that stupid men build golden monuments to themselves, or cruel men seek to dominate their fellow humans when Mother Nature, or the divinity of your choice, ordains that there will always be deep blue oceans crashing gracefully onto endless shorelines. And always, cormorants soaring above.

The rest is just noise.

* * *

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General interest
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Things that matter

by Fran Johns

My daughter, having survived intact when her truck was totaled on Christmas Eve, mourned the absence of her pit/Great Pyrenees puppy, who took off when the truck flipped. Apple the dog apparently decided things might be calmer in the wilds of suburban Atlanta. (Flo the very old part-Lab, opted to stay put; a two-dog loss might have been too much for Mom.)

Apple’s disappearance was the bad news. Here’s the good news: the outpouring of support, in the form of e-mails, Facebook postings and offers from childhood friends who hadn’t been seen in years to go search local pounds was overwhelming. It gets REALLY hard to stay forlorn in the face of love and support from friends, family and people you never heard of who are offering comfort and help.

At Nancy Pelosi‘s annual January gathering there was another kind of support in evidence — and for me another reminder of the value of lasting friendship. I got a quick hug from my favorite star Democrat, California senator Mark Leno, who is often talked about as a potential successor to Pelosi. He gets my vote: Mark Leno is smart, level-headed, perceptive and impeccably ethical. (We could do with more politicians who’ve had rabbinical training.) He is also still graciously loyal to his life partner Doug Jackson, who died of AIDS decades ago in the early years of that grim time. Doug was the son of old friends of mine in Decatur, Georgia, so my affection for the good senator goes far beyond politics.

The bad news is that wars and sadness are everywhere. (Though Pelosi listed her priorities: jobs, safety — read: gun control, immigration reform and overturn Citizens United; that would spread joy.) The good news is that friendships are more powerful than all of the above. And if you hang onto them you can nearly always get a hug when you need one.

California/General interest/Health/Politics & Causes/USA
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Health reform: Are we there yet?

by Fran Johns

Nancy Pelosi is known around San Francisco — and in a few other spots — as one tough politician. She likes being Speaker of the House, and she doesn’t much like losing. So this week’s do-or-die health reform bill is going to get all the muscle she can manage. It is, Pelosi has declared, “a moral and political imperative.”

Okay, it’s not what we hoped, it’s too complicated and too fraught, it’s going to be full of little gifties given to get votes. If we don’t get something America will be stuck with a non-functional system and millions will remain without health care at all. So I for one am on Pelosi’s side.

The plan is for the House to pass the Senate version and send it to Obama for his signature and enactment. Certain fixes the House is demanding for passage of the more conservative Senate bill will be included in a separate, special measure that will go to the Senate for an up-or-down vote that avoids a filibuster.

But once the House passes the base legislation and Obama signs it, the measure becomes law regardless of what the Senate does.

Democrats do not yet have the votes in hand and Pelosi will not call a vote until they do. Liberal lawmakers have deep reservations about the Senate bill, and fights over abortion and immigration have yet to be resolved. But Pelosi has set the legislative train in motion, even as Republicans have publicly begun to express doubt that they can stop it.

Pelosi laid down the law to wavering Democrats who are threatening to bolt. “It’s not about abortion, it’s not about immigration,” she said. “The only reason, therefore, to oppose the bill is that you do not support health care reform.”

A lot of people don’t support health care reform. The Republicans, the insurance industry, the anti-abortion folks and the anti-immigration folks and more than a few people who feel pretty much okay with what they’ve got and frankly don’t care a lot about what others don’t have.

But health care reform is a moral imperative.

Pelosi: Dems will have votes to OK health care.