Parking While Black in Orinda, Part Deux

If you have not read Parking While Black in Orinda, please read that first so I don't have to recap the whole ugly story. Suffice to say that the African American cleaning people we hired were humiliated by the Orinda police, for no ostensible reason, right in front of our house and our neighbors. Now, we had been stewing over this for days and my husband decided to go to the police station and talk to them about it. At the very least, we hoped to find out which neighbor had called the police and why.

Calmly and politely, my husband recapped the entire story to the friendly station clerk. In the course of the conversation, he managed to learn that there was no record of a call or complaint pertaining to the cleaners (We had suspected an unfriendly, suspicious neighbor across the street). Of course, the only conclusion we could draw was that the police noticed two people driving while black, followed them to our house and harassed them, just because.

The police chief was unavailable to talk, but after about twelve minutes a sergeant came out. The kind of big mean SOB who thrives on having authority over people. My husband started to recount what had happened. Unfortunately, having just told the story to the clerk, he had gotten himself worked up all over again. He is sixty one, and had witnessed two people his age, plus or minus two years, falling apart in our kitchen. He still gets emotional every time he talks about it. So when asked to describe the officer who came to the door, he took an unnecessary tangent and replied "I see him all the time outside Starbucks, drinking lattes. He likes to ogle my daughter." That was all it took to set the Sergeant off. "I don't need you. " the officer bellowed. "Who needs you? Get the hell out of my station."

Shocked at the way he was being addressed, my husband sprang from his chair with such vigor that he knocked it over. "Pick it up! You pick that up." the policeman roared. "And get the hell out of here." But my husband had worked himself up and wouldn't back down. "You're just like them - You're all the same. I just want to know, do you have a policy of stopping people for parking while black, for driving while black?"

At that, the enraged cop ordered my husband to leave, escorted him out of the police station and followed him to the parking lot, badgering him the entire time. And then the guy did something truly astounding: he threatened us. "Don't bother calling us if anything happens. If you have a burglary or something. Because we're not coming out."

"Don't worry," my old man shot back. "Someone could be killing me, and I still wouldn't want you to come out."

Now that is what I call a positive police presence. You treat visitors like criminals and residents like crap. Did my husband lose his cool? A little. Who wouldn't? That was a disgusting thing to witness and it happened right in front of our house. Not only was it racial profiling, it was STOOPID racial profiling: they harassed two people in their sixties with buckets and mops and wouldn't drop it after we vouched for them. And now, to top it all off, Orinda's finest, who technically work for us and whose salaries we help pay, have abdicated their responsibility to protect us.

Cross-pollination

If you like this blog, you might like my other blog too. If I haven't posted here in a while, chances are I've posted there instead.

Parking While Black in Orinda, California

You know the rant. I've written about our exile in the wonder-bread-white suburban enclave of Orinda before. We didn't want to move here. We hate the suburbs, we don't play golf, we're not the country club type and we just don't fit in. We moved here out of desperation to get our wayward son away from the disaster that is Berkeley High, a school that makes it absurdly simple for a troubled teen to add another helping of trouble to his plate. Orinda was easy - just over the hill, and with some of the state's highest-rated schools. Suffice to say that the school thing didn't work out. The young ball-and-chain lasted three days before ending up in an alternative school and we were stuck with a two-year lease on a too-big house in Stepford.

It's a quiet neighborhood. Sepulchrally quiet. There are elderly people across the street with caregivers who come and go. Our neighbors on one side are a wholesome looking young couple with two children. The kids are blonde and around 6 and 8 years old. As for the parents, they are so elusive that I wouldn't be able to identify them in a police lineup, not that that would ever happen. The house on the other side is a dump that's taken two years to sell. Lately I hear signs of life from behind the fence so I am guessing someone moved in while we were in Hawaii. Across the street one door down is a constipated bitch whose gated yard is always locked. When we first moved in, some neighbors left us a plate of cupcakes while we were out. I had no idea where to return the plate, so I put a little note in all the mailboxes closest to our house. The bee-yatch was no doubt peering out the window, and saw me violating her mail box. She stepped outside her front door (walking across the yard to introduce herself and acknowledge my humanity was out of the question) and asked what I was doing. I explained. Was she the nice neighbor who had left the cupcakes...? She gave me a curt no and went back inside without another word.

The fact is, Orinda is a great place to be a cop. As far as I can tell, all they do is sit outside the local Starbucks, chugging lattes and ogling high school girls. That and hide along Camino Pablo, where there's no traffic and the speed limit randomly goes from 45 to 35 to 30, so they can hand out speeding tickets (2) to nice middle aged ladies.

Anyway, our daughter was about to come out for the summer, having just finished her first year of law school and snagged an internship with the San Francisco ACLU, and the house needed a good cleaning. Usually, my husband does it. We're both self-employed, and that's our division of labor. I shop and cook, he cleans. Both my better half and I were raised by meticulous cleaning freaks. He learned from his mother, I rebelled against mine. So he's in charge of the vacuum and I handle food, and since he breaks out in hives if he has to spend more that five minutes at the Safeway, it works out for both of us. But this time, we needed a really deep end-of-Spring cleaning and we decided to splurge and get a cleaning crew.

The cleaning people, a sixtyish African American gentleman and his sister, showed up on the dot. The guy called to notify us that they were parked out front, and we let them in. They gave us a quick estimate and went back to their old van to get their supplies. The brother was a talkative fellow with a rich baritone voice that would have served him well in radio. The sister was a reserved, big-boned lady who looked like she might have acromegaly and was likely never diagnosed for lack of insurance. ( I know these things - my dad's an endocrinologist and my aunt actually developed the condition due to a pituitary tumor).They commenced cleaning and my husband went back to his office to work. I jumped in the shower to get ready for a business meeting.

Meanwhile, someone on the block noticed an old, beat-up car with two black people inside parked in front of our house and called the police. (In case you haven't picked up on my subtle hints above, my prime suspect is the bitch with the locked gate). Three squad cars pulled up in front of the house and parked so as to close off the street, just in case the cleaning crew decided to make a run for it. When the poor cleaner went back to his car, they moved in on him. Who are you, what are you doing here, can we see some ID. So the cleaner knocked at our door (again) and my husband came out. Of course, he told the police we had hired these folks to clean our house, but that was not enough. The officer slowly stared my husband up and down. Between the old black guy holding a mop, the old black lady with the bucket and the old, bald white guy in shorts and a Lands End T shirt, it was hard to determine who looked more suspicious. "Are you sure you live here?" the cop asked my husband. At least he didn't ask to see a copy of the lease.

Despite our assurances that we had hired the cleaning crew, Orinda's Finest proceeded to stage fifteen minutes of outdoor theater. This gave my husband an opportunity to finally see some of our neighbors, as three housewives came out of their homes to gawk. The cops ran checks on both the cleaners' IDs. Then, they found out the brother's registration had expired and threatened to impound his car. They kept the street blocked off the entire time. It was all a big show to demonstrate to the neighborhood that our police force is on the job. The fact that two nice innocent people were publicly humiliated in front of our home was besides the point. After all, none of this would have happened had they had the sense to bleach their faces and drive a beamer.

I came out of the bathroom, ready to leave and oblivious to what had just occurred. The cops were gone, but my husband filled me in. The cleaners were justifiably upset. The sister kept saying how embarrassed she was. I told her it was the neighbor who had called the police, and of course the cops themselves, who should be embarrassed, but I was embarrassed too. I apologized to her and her husband and left for my meeting. Two women were still out on the street, watching our house. They scowled as I drove past.

The brother got increasingly riled up after I left. "I beat Sugar Ray Leonard in an exhibition match before he went to the Olympics," he told my husband. "I'm sixty years old and I have to clean houses for a living. I don't deserve this." No argument here. None what-so-fucking-ever. The fellow did a slow burn over the next hour. Every time he took out some trash or went to his car for some supplies, he felt like he was being observed. He was sweating heavily and his movements became increasingly abrupt as he grew more distraught. The sister was visibly devastated. My husband could plainly see that both were experiencing profound emotional pain, and a powerful case of deja vu.

You don't get to be a sixty year old working class African American without having experienced racism. Repeatedly. And, black man in the White House notwithstanding, it was happening again. Finally, they got so mad, they just had to leave.
"I'm sorry, but we have to go. It's obvious we're not wanted here."
They hadn't quite finished cleaning, but my husband understood.
"Nice neighbors you have," the man added. "Bet you don't like them any more than we do."
"No," my husband replied, "We don't. We're moving back to Berkeley when our lease is up in July."
"If you need cleaning, we'll come work for you there," the cleaner promised, "But we're never coming back to Orinda."

Archipelago

Aloha!

Sorry to resort to the default opener, but my husband and I just took a week's vacation at our president's birth place, and I don't mean Kenya. It was a syncopated vacation. We started with a couple of days in Oahu in order to see Pearl Harbor. Then, we moved on to the Big Island, to swim in the ocean and chase my lava dreams. We drove too much and chilled too little, but of course we're glad we went. I am too pressed for time to craft a chronological chronicle here, so I've thrown together an archipelago of impressions instead.

Thinking about making a trip to the Aloha state? Don't buy the Frommer guide. We usually like that series, but this time, the writer phoned it in. I suspect he sat on a beach chair on Waikiki beach with a lap top and cribbed from a pile of rival guides. Thanks to this book, we drove half way around Oahu to see some "spectacular" surfing beach that turned out to be border-line ugly, and frequented by tweekers and shiftless young men with really loud car radios. Frommer's surrogate also induced us to eat in a couple of lousy Waikiki restaurants and book rooms at a lodge with three weeks worth of dirt on the floor and a major mildew problem. Meanwhile, the guide doesn't even mention the dramatic rocky surfer beaches, with natural hot springs, that we discovered on the Eastern Puna region of the big Island.

If there's one thing I despise, it's a beach full of high rises. The degraded environment in Waikiki gives me the same sad feeling I get from watching neurotic, incarcerated animals at the zoo. My husband knows this and felt compelled to point out, before, during and after our Waikiki stay, that he had only brought me here so I could see Pearl Harbor. Waikiki was sunny but shabby. Like Miami Beach, it has definitely seen better days, but whereas Miami has a certain dangerous edge, all Waikiki can muster is a faint melancholia. We strolled down the artificial beach (that's right, all that velvety sand is imported), stopped for the requisite umbrella drink, and walked back. There were as many locals on the beach as there were tourists. Lots of big bellies, bad sunburns, blurry tattoos and bikinis on broads who had no business wearing them.

Waikiki is a party town, and a group of party animals were camped in the room directly above us. We waited until 2 am before finally calling security to shut them up. The following morning, when I went to shower, I noticed a faint cigarette smell. I wondered whether our upstairs neighbors had been smoking in the bathroom and briefly considered narking on them so we wouldn't be tagged as the couple who violated hotel policy. I should have tattled. When we returned that evening, we were greeted by a stern form letter informing us that "Evidence of Smoking" had been found in our room, and we would be subject to a $200 fine. My irritation index instantly went from zero to a hundred. Letter in hand, I marched downstairs to talk to the manager, who was too busy talking to the cops. There were six police cars parked out front, and they hadn't come to take us away for evidence of smoking. A psychotic street person had wandered into the hotel unnoticed, taken the elevator to the fourth floor and commandeered the tiny swimming pool. He was now standing in the water fully clothed, with a wet towel on his head, howling at the moon. I don't know how many men in blue it took to get the poor guy out of the water, but I'm pretty sure someone got wet.

Every American should make a pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor once in their lives, preferably after a brief review of the historical context. It helped that my husband had made me sit through Tora Tora Tora last year, although at the time my daughter and I were debating whether to rechristen it Bora Bora Bora or Snora Snora Snora. (What can I say, we don't like war movies). Still, it's impossible not to be moved by the Pearl Harbor exhibits, staffed with friendly vets from the Korean and Viet Nam wars. Seventy years after she was shot down with 1177 men on board, the submerged USS Arizona still weeps oil. You can tour the battleship USS Missouri and visit a Bowfin submarine, both marvels of old school mechanical engineering. One thing I learned from the various exhibits was that Dr. Seuss started out as a political cartoonist, and by today's standards, his drawings of the Japanese are about as racist as Nazi propaganda depictions of Jews. As for the Japanese, there were quite a few of them touring the site and I had to wonder what they were thinking. After all, they did pull off the biggest surprise attack in history.

With its ukeleles, mellow song stylings and gentle rhythms reminiscent of ocean breezes, Hawaiian music has its charms. But there is something terribly wrong about an island arrangement of John Denver's "Country Road". I think it's the part about the West Virginia Mountain Highways...

The Kohala coast is a lot less costly when you stay in Waimea: You can access the beach in twenty minutes, without shelling out for a luxury resort. Just beyond the outskirts of town is the main entrance to the 160 year old Parker Ranch, one of the nation's largest ranches. 35,000 head of cattle graze the vast Parker lands. The ranch's last individual owner, one Richard Smart, lived up to his surname by leaving his holdings, including an extensive art collection, in trust to support healthcare, education and charitable giving for the region. Cattle ranching is not the ranch's only source of income. Visitors can book a 3-hour horseback tour of the hilly lands at the base of Mauna Kea. Or they can go on a big game hunt. $3,500 buys you the Grand Slam, a two-day hunt for wild boar, "meat pig" (as opposed to the meatless kind?), feral goat and something called "wild cattle" - probably the same breed as that crazy laughing cow. Since we're more used to hunting for things like car keys, cell phones and reading glasses, we did not answer the call of the wild.

The cow town of Waimea has a unique charm, like the old TV series Northern Exposure only with better weather. Waimea appears to be home to an eccentric or three. The town tranny, a dead ringer for Renee Richards, likes to have coffee at the restaurant next to the lodge where we stayed. We noticed her two mornings in a row, lingering over the local paper as she twisted a synthetic auburn curl around her manicured index finger. In the evening, we ate at the Pakini Grill, which the sign outside described as the "Best Restaurant in the world, according to our mother." Mom, or maybe grandma, greeted us at the door. She was a tiny little white haired Island lady in a floor length brown print mumu and a ridiculous pair of glasses with a giant 2011 jutting from the top of the frames. When I asked about the eyewear, the old girl explained that she's trying to set a world record by wearing a different pair of outrageous specs each day. (Like most crazy things people do to get into the Guiness book, there is no previous record to break here). With tourists and regulars providing a steady supply of preposterous eyewear, Mom-or-Grammy is approaching 1000 uninterrupted days of new spectacles.

Mostly, we ate on the cheap, but we did manage to get in a couple of polar opposite fancy meals. The first dinner was at Merriman's in Waimea. The chef was a militant locavore, a concept I can embrace, and the menu detailed the source of all the ingredients. Unfortunately, green beans were not only local and in season, they were apparently the only available vegetable. We had an appetizer and a main dish each, and all four came with large quantities of barely cooked haricots verts. Beans with eel. Beans with scallops. Beans with lamb shank. Beans with Mahi Mahi. By the end of the meal, we had a bad case of bean there, ate that. We didn't order dessert - the words vanilla bean killed what was left of our appetites. The other fancy meal, we enjoyed on our last day, at the Kilauea Lodge in the town of Volcano. The lodge was founded by Albert Jeyte, the German former makeup artist from the 80s TV show, Magnum PI. Like many cast and crew members from that Hawaii-based series, Herr Jeyte couldn't bring himself to return to the mainland after the network pulled the plug on the program. So he married a local girl, bought an abandoned Y.M.C.A. summer camp and turned it into a delightful bed and breakfast. Mr. Jeyte then put himself through a Parisian cooking school and now serves up continental food with a Teutonic flair, and decidedly un-locavore ingredients. As in South African Lobster (who traveled 3 times as long as we did to reach Hawaii) and antelope schnitzel (I swear, I kid you not).

I am married to a gentleman of Irish descent with an aspirin-white complexion. He doesn't tan: he broils. That means we can only go to the beach for so long - maybe ten minutes – before seeking shade. So instead of plopping our butts on one patch of sand, we spent a day driving around Oahu, marveling at the variety of beaches. Lanikai and Kailua beaches on Oahu, where the Obamas vacation, had beautiful white sand and calm, swimmable waters. On the Big Island, we loved the beach near the Marriot on the Kohala coast, shaded by palm trees and featuring two ancient fish ponds where the native Hawaiian people practiced aquaculture centuries ago. But the best part about the Kohala beach was that it was sea turtle nesting season. The eggs were buried in the sand, and the parents were playing right off shore - no snorkeliing equipment necessary. I plan on blogging about these serene creatures in greater detail soon.

Remember Rush Limbaugh's hawaiian heart attack scare? He praised the excellent care he received, and was embarrassed to learn that the island system is somewhat, er, socialized! As far as the mind-body connection goes, I'd say many Hawaiians have a permanent case of the Aloha spirit. The locals call everybody "my dear," smile a lot and often sing to themselves. Other than the melanoma risk, all that sunshine seems to have a positive effect on people's health - unless they have fallen prey to the ongoing meth epidemic. Talk about trouble in paradise! We saw several large, frightening anti-meth posters outside of bars, restaurants and gas stations. We also noticed a good deal of public awareness communication about type 2 Diabetes, not surprising in light of the dangerous native diet. Shrimp trucks, barbecue wagons, shaved ice mobiles – there is fantastic street food everywhere, all of it heavy on the sugar, hot sauce and animal fat. We enjoyed sweet short ribs, plump shrimp sauteed in excessive amounts of garlic butter, creamy cold slaw drenched in mayonnaise, buckwheat macadamia pancakes with coconut syrup...it's a wonder we didn't end up in the ER with Rush.

I wish I didn't have to diss a sensible, green technology, but the cistern system at the Kilauea Lodge had noise issues. It rains every day in the town of Volcano, so outfitting the inn with cisterns must have seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, the metal pipes collecting rainwater on the roof of our room magnified the drip drip dripping of the rain – not all that soothing at 3 a.m. Being half way to Japan, we also couldn't help but worry about radioactive precipitation. Fortunately, our bathroom was equipped with a water cooler. Besides my politically incorrect quibbling about the water system, I loved the Kilauea Lodge - just ask for a room away from the cisterns.

Call me naive, but here's what Fromer, or his slacker ghostwriter, would have us believe: "Since Kilauea's ongoing eruption began in 1983, lava has been bubbling and oozing in a mild mannered way that lets you walk right up to the creeping flow for an up close encounter." Now, if you read this, wouldn't you think you were going to see some fireworks? I am a volcano freak, and witnessing volcanic activity, preferably including lava, is at the top of my bucket list. The first time we were on the Big Island, nearly 18 years ago, we couldn't do too much exploring. Our son was an infant and my husband was hobbled by a torn anterior cruciate ligament. This time, I was convinced we were going to see rivers of molten rock hitting the sea in a giant cloud of steam. We did not. Volcanoes National Park, with its coal black lava fields, steam vents, craters and lava tubes, is worth the trip regardless. We drove all the way to the bottom of the chain of craters road, which ends abruptly where it was cut off by the latest lava flow. Sunset was imminent, and we took a lonesome, mystical hike across the lava beds to a sacred site, marked by petroglyphs, where the ancient Hawaiians ritually buried the umbilical cords of their newborns. (This tradition, still practiced by a few indigenous folk, is intended to keep the baby from harm and promote longevity). Night had fallen by the time we got back to the park entrance, but I was not ready to leave. The manager at the Kilauea Lodge had told us that one could see Hale Mau Mau, the smaller crater within Kilauea's summit caldera, glow in the dark at night. My hungry husband was less than enthusiastic when I begged him to take me back to the park's Jagger museum, on the giant caldera's edge.
- There won't be any glow.
- Oh please, oh please. I just have to see.
- I'm telling you, there won't be any glow.
- Can't we just SEE? If there’s no glow, you can say I told you so.
- Alright, I'll take you, just so you can see that there isn't any glow.
He took me, bless his heart and there WAS a glow! The gas cloud that hovers over the crater reflects light from the lake of fire below, and after dark, you can see a pink cloud hovering over Hale Mau Mau. That little detour turned out to be a big sacrifice on my husband's part. In the tiny town of Volcano, restaurants stop serving when they feel like it. The door may say nine, but the chef says no. We ended up driving 30 miles round trip to find a McDonalds. But McFood poisoning was a fair trade off to see the evening glow over Hale Mau Mau. Just enough of a tease to make me want to come back the next time Kilauea acts up.

I am woman, hear me vent.

Yes, Vagina, that is you, in satin effigy. And that pillow is precisely the sort of new age wierdness I feared I would encounter when I ventured forth to participate in my very first women's circle. I had never heard of such gatherings until I got an email from the women's business network I belong to, notifying us of a new circle starting up in Oakland. When I contacted the circle lady and asked for details, she suggested I just show up and see for myself.

So what prompted me to attend a women's circle?

1.) I have a deficit of homegirls out here and thought perhaps I'd meet some nice ladies.

2.) I could use some therapy but it's not in the family budget.

3.) My husband and I have been catching up on three years of In Treatment and we just watched the last DVD.

4.) I figured even if I didn't experience sisterhood, catharsis, or enlightenment, I could at least get a blog post out of it.

I did not know what to expect. In an effort to meet people in my relatively new stomping grounds, I have joined maybe twenty meetup groups and attended all of 3 gatherings in nearly 3 years. The knitting group proved that I can't talk and count stitches at the same time. The Berkeley social club was fun but oriented towards younger, unmarried people. The culture group was peopled with dull, ossified fogies, the sort of folk who engage in cultural activities because they think it's good for them and non-commitally pronounce everything they see "interesting". The art, hiking and book clubs, I kept up with voyeuristically by reading their email updates. I tried to go on a group hike once, but it decided to rain. I never felt like reading any of the book club's books. After a year or so of inactivity, I got booted off their distribution lists.

As long as there have been females, there has been female bonding. Clusters of women sitting together, making meals, pots, lace, baskets, quilts and, of course, conversation. Still, I was a little apprehensive about this circle business.Would I be getting in touch with my prehistoric roots, when the mitochondrial mother sat around the fire with her homegirls, cooking and nursing babies while the men folk hunted mammoth? Was I setting myself up for some sort of new age freak show involving chanting, incense, crystals and yoni- inspired knick knacks like the vagina pillow? I hoped to Goddess I wouldn't have to hug any strangers. I wondered whether the circle would be more like group therapy, which could at least have some entertainment value. Perhaps it might even tide me over until Gabriel Byrne came back from hiatus. I decided to give this circle thing a shot.

It was an evening meeting in a small, run-down commercial building. Our group leader Calista (not her real name) had talked the owner into letting her use an empty office. The space was arranged like a makeshift living room - two mismatched, scratchy couches and a half dozen uncomfortable chairs. A plug-in tea kettle sat atop a thrift shop end table, along with an assortment of teas. On the floor in the middle of the room was a piece of colorful fabric on top of which Calista had arranged an array of objects. Candles, shells, a supermarket bouquet, a green ceramic heart. It was a sad assortment. It reminded me of Sarah in The Little Princess trying to make her garret look homey.

Calista is a charismatic middle aged woman with an intelligent face framed by a leonine, shoulder length mass of grey curls. She took stock of the attendees. There were six of us, ranging from 30 to 60, sipping tea as we waited for her to take the lead. Right away, Calista informed us that she was not a therapist. Heck, the woman isn't even a clinical social worker. She specializes in conflict resolution and non violent communication.(I'm not completely clear what that is but I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve calling your husband an idiot or wacking him upside the head with a blunt object.) Calista explained the rules, probably for my benefit as I was the only newbie:

1. We were here to "share our truth," and anything that gets shared must not leave the room. East Coast smart aleck that I am, I had to make a funny."It's like Vegas!" I cried. The ladies looked confused, as often happens out here when I crack a joke. I tried to explain." You know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...". Calista wisely pressed on.

2. Everyone gets the same amount of time to talk. Calista would be watching the clock. The green ceramic heart I had noticed on her makeshift altar would get passed around from one woman to the next. Whoever held it had the floor until she had said her piece, or her turn was up, whichever came first. We were not allowed to interrupt each other but as long as we were supportive and nurturing, we could comment on what other people had said once it was our turn to speak.

3. Any and all displays of emotion were welcome. Feel free to cry, swear, raise your voice.

4. We were each expected to leave a $10-$20 donation at the end of the session. Compared to therapy, that's a bargain.

(At this point, I'd like to reassure you that I will not, repeat, will not break rule number one. I won't divulge anything that might jeopardize anyone's privacy, even though, trust me, it would make this post waaaaaay more entertaining.)

Calista passed the ceramic heart to the woman on her left, and so the venting began. It was a mishmash of serious life issues and serious navel-gazing. Insensitive husbands. Fruitless job searches. Narcissistic mothers. Ungrateful spawn. Ageist interviewers. Troubled teens. Depressed mates. Demanding children. Abusive fathers. Career burn out. Money problems. Sexual confusion. Old wounds. New wounds. Excess scar tissue. Protocol seems to be to just let people weep without intervening, and there was a fair amount of crying. The hardest part was staying neutral. Some women, you wanted to hug. Others, shake. One was a circle junky - this was her third circle in two days. It didn't seem to be helping. Like Calista, I'm not a mental health professional, but I do know wackadoodle when I see it.

As it turns out, the circle process is not like therapy at all. When you talk to a shrink, it's a given that your perspective needs altering. That's why you're there. You speak your truth, but you and your therapist both know how relative that notion is. Growth comes from understanding that your experience is subjective, and not necessarily accurate. A woman's circle is quite the opposite. Nothing you say is parsed, analyzed, questioned or refuted. You unload your story like a fishmonger tossing a sixty pound salmon onto a pile of grey ice. And there it sits, all stinky, slippery and just a little fishy, waiting for someone to buy it.

In her excellent book, You just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen describes a woman who comes home from work and starts telling her husband what a horrendous day she had. The husband, in typical male fashion, immediately goes into Mr. Fix-It mode. She should have a come-to-Jesus with her assistant. Ask her boss for a raise. Do something about her workload. He thinks his wife is asking for suggestions and solutions, but she feels patronized. All she really wanted was a sympathetic ear. This female need to vent is the basis for Women's Circles. But a women's circle is no replacement for an actual girl's night out, and not just because there's no wine involved. Your real homegirls will listen to you and support you. But they'll also call you on your bullshit. A good friend will tell you if you're overreacting, or stuck in a destructive pattern, or being too hard on your spouse. Most importantly, your buddies will make you laugh, maybe even at yourself. Compared to an actual circle of friends, an ersatz women's circle is more like the Post Secret project, in which people unburden themselves by anonymously writing their secrets on a postcard.

When my turn came to hold the green ceramic heart, I didn't hold back. I bitched, I moaned, I spewed. It felt awkward: vaguely cathartic but also slightly disloyal. I didn't experience any epiphanies, although the entertainment value of listening to everyone else's problems beat the heck out of the Lifetime Chanel. Still, based on the immediate results of my circle experience, I don't think I'll be going back.

I went home and yelled at my husband.

Distance Vision

Well, there is no more wandering this earth without glasses for me. I am at the threshold of must-wear-glasses-to-drive. And I have been camped in must-wear-glasses-to-read for well over a decade. Now, I have to get around with two pairs of glasses, at least one of which is usually sitting on my head.

I've never studied optics, or even thought about the subject. And I have an idiot streak. For years, I wondered why restaurants would pile the chairs on the tables at the end of the day. Seemed like a lot of choreography just to signify that the restaurant was closed. I think I was in my mid twenties when I finally figured out the purpose of this Sisyphean task. I was out to dinner with some chatty people and we closed the joint. The owner turned up the overhead lights and the bus boy put some chairs up and started sweeping. Which is when I had my epiphany. So THAT's why they pile those chairs up. (OK, so I have an idiot streak AND, as my poor husband will attest, I suck at cleaning).

All this to say that I have been under the mistaken belief that distance glasses are somehow different from reading glasses and must be hand-crafted to one's exact prescription. I've had multiple pairs of $16 rainbow-colored readers stashed all over the house for years. But the distance glasses were another story. I spent a lot of money on fragile Italian frames so funky, they should have come with an expiration date – the optical version of those idiotic boob-warmer sweaters all the young things were rocking back in 2006.

However passé those frames were starting to look, I was damn well getting my money's worth. Over the course of 6 years, I had the lenses replaced three times, until the delicate frames finally broke. I then spent six months squinting at road signs and complaining about the blurred TV set.

Finally, I stopped procrastinating and went in for an eye exam with a new ophthalmologist – an honest one. "Look," she admitted, "I'd love to make money off of you, but the fact is, all you need to see far is a 1.25 reader." It took a while for my sluggish brain to wrap itself around the concept of over-the-counter distance glasses. "Are you sure?" I asked the doctor. She was sure. Incredibly, no vision professional, opthalmologist or optometrist, had ever explained to me that over-the-counter glasses could also boost my distance vision, and I didn't have to shell out for those stupid designer frames.

The eye doctor did half-heartedly try to sell me on a few other options. Bifocals, contacts, prescription sun glasses, light-sensitive-prescription-sun-glasses-that-turn-clear-indoors and of course, eye surgery. I wasn't buying any of it, which was OK with her. She doesn't need the income: she's a renowned specialist in focusing issues. Patients come from all over the country to work with her. There's an autographed picture of Christopher from The Sopranos on her wall, thanking her for helping him read like a normal person. Full disclosure: my daughter went to this doctor for vision training. In addition to their sessions together, she had to buy special software to practice at home. Daily, diligently, she sat in front of the computer, wearing old timey 3-D glasses with a red lens and a green one, exercising her eyeballs. No doubt the training has made her a more efficient reader, but I could have bought a pair of designer distance specs for every day of the week with what she spent on her vision workouts.

So now I have added two pairs of distance glasses to my collection. Theoretically, one lives in the car, although it has a tendency to plant itself on my cranium and hitch a ride into the house. The other pair hangs out on my night stand, so I can watch TV. I do my best to remember to take them off before I get up and walk around. I'm trying not to notice the dust bunnies.

Wanderlust

Once upon a time, when we were resentfully living in Cleveland, my husband and I took a ten-year anniversary trip to Paris. As we strolled through the left bank, we fantasized about relocating to France, as my sister had recently done. I came up with the notion of opening an American style cookie store. Yes, I know, France Land of Pastry, but cookies, plain old easy to bake chocolate chip cookies, not to mention snickerdoodles, were unknown in the City of Lights. (This was years ago and I have no doubt that today you can find a cookie on every coin de rue).

By the time we got back to our hotel, we had already franchised our cookie business and were poised to expand into Italy. Would we ever have really done it? Probably not. My husband is hopeless at languages and I would have been condemned to life as an interpreter. But mental and, occasionally, actual relocation has been a leitmotif in our relationship since we first met. I had just moved to Los Angeles and he had been pondering spending a few years in Saudi Arabia, where there was an overabundance of overpaid contract work. Due to my lack of enthusiasm for gender apartheid, we didn't riff on that notion for very long.

There were other near-moves and actual relocations. We moved from LA to Cleveland for my husband's job and spent five years fantasizing about getting the bleep outa'there, which we finally did, settling on my home town of Washington DC so my parents could be near their grandchildren. We lived there for a good long while, but my husband hated the climate and pined for Los Angeles. As far as I was concerned, that was not an option. Too much asphalt, too much sprawl, too much time gone by. Still, the wanderlust never fully dissipated. We took a family trip to Costa Rica and marveled at the lush scenery, tropical climate and enticingly low cost of living, but couldn't quite see ourselves as gringo neocolonials. After an Alaska vacation, we seriously contemplated a move to Seattle. We pictured ourselves boating in Puget Sound and salmon fishing in the Inside Passage. We'd get a large freezer to store our catch after it was flash-frozen and shipped. I even looked into a Winter dogsledding trip in Denali, which my husband informed me I'd have to take, and pay for, by myself. The wilderness beckoned - the Olympic mountain range, the Cascade volcanos, the alpine lakes of British Columbia.

Three years ago we did move West, but adjusted our destination to the Bay Area. We thought it would be a better advertising market. The HR person in my old job told me I was so talented, I'd have no problem finding a job. (She lied). Our son was (is) having a difficult adolescence, and the therapist recommended boarding school and a change of scene. I was mad at my parents, who didn't believe in ADHD and blamed all of our son's issues on our lousy parenting.

The first year was a romantic empty nest experience. We lived an unfettered adult life, went out when we felt like it, read lots of books, took walks and worried slightly less about our kid, mostly because we hadn't yet realized that the the artsy Ojai school we had chosen for him was a holding pen for spoiled Hollywood brats. My old boss kept feeding me freelance work. Our daughter graduated from college, moved to San Francisco and quickly found a job. Everything was falling into place like level 2 tetris.

And then it all went to hell. The kid, the economy, our daughter's career and grad school plans and my poor husband's joints. The long nature walks I'd envisaged as our bonding activity became solo meditations on hubris and loss. Our son got into all kinds of trouble. Our daughter left her boyfriend and moved back East. The lucrative freelance dried up when my old boss got down-sized. And my guilt at having moved away from my parents came crashing down on me like a cartoon anvil.

I eventually found a part time job telecommuting, ironically, for a Seattle agency and I get regular assignments from freelance contacts in DC, Philadelphia and New York. I work at home, in my pajamas, with only the dog for company. After checking off every possible transgression on the teen age hellion to-do list, our son is slowly turning himself around. I miss my women friends terribly. My daughter is a first year law student on the other side of the continent. My husband and I have no social life: It's hard to meet people when you both work at home and no longer have young children.

Why am I telling you all this? Because Joni was right. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. A home of your own, where you have a history. Parents who are predictably, charmingly annoying and turn out to be right about things like the dangers of uprooting yourself when you're not so young anymore. Comrades who know you and your life story, who get your jokes, who are actually willing to provide a sympathetic ear even if your story bums them out, because it's understood that sooner or later, you'll do the same for them.

You want someone to tell you to make your move and follow your dream? Go watch Oprah. Of course, if you have a job to move for, or you're young and unencumbered by family responsibilities, relocation can be an exciting possibility. But beware of wanderlust. It could be naive romanticism in disguise. An adult ADD impulse. A desperate need to believe that you're still young and daring. A subconscious desire to escape things that will hitch a ride on the moving van and resume tormenting you after you unpack. My advice to you is bloom where you're planted - as long as it's not Cleveland.

Old Times

It was lunchtime at Bellini's, a Harry's Bar wannabe in Cleveland, Ohio. I don't recall whether it was business or pleasure or who I was meeting, but I remember having to wait, always a good excuse for alcohol. I'm normally a sapphire-gin-and-tonic-two-limes person, but this time, I'd gone for the girly drink: one of Bellini's eponymous slushy peach cocktails. I glanced above the bar at the TV, on mute and tuned to an ancient rerun of Mayberry RFD. And then my head exploded.

No, it was not brain freeze from the frozen bellini. It was the stunning revelation that I looked older than Andy Griffith.

We all have our Andy Griffith moments, those holy-shit-am-I-really-that-old awareness flashes. Anything can trigger one, from catching an unexpected glimpse of your reflection to dealing with some horrendous, life altering problem and wondering how did I get here? (Cue Talking Heads). Any way, your age is your age. You can let it trip you out or you can shrug it off. Or, I suppose, you can lie.

I recently saw the profile of a childhood acquaintance on a social media site. She lists her age as ten years younger than my sister. Who, in turn, is four years younger than me. Which would make this lady (yes, math face, this was a test) fourteen years younger than yours truly. I'd be jealous but for the fact that, back when we were in school together, our age difference was only three months. I don't get this. Fourteen years is hard to pull off. People from your past know your real age. And personally, I would rather have people say I look "good for my age" than exclaim "Oh my God what happened to HER?"

Now, money is the great equalizer and Madonna has plenty of it. She is throwing massive amounts of cash at preserving her hotness. She has incredible hulk veins from excessive working out. Her forehead is smooth and shiny as Olympic ice. Bony spurs have sprouted beneath her eyes. I think they are supposed to be cheekbones. The poor thing has to work so hard to work it, you almost feel sorry for her. Madonna, here's a little creative direction for you. Take a step back and stop art directing yourself. Get back in touch with your original spontaneous, brash Italian self. Wear elegant cocktail dresses. Tone down the makeup. Eat some pasta and gain twenty pounds. Be real. Be entertaining. Have ideas and opinions or you will fast become an immaterial girl. As a performer, you are at an age where you either have substance or you start to come off like the drag version of your former self.

Yes, folks, we're all on the same subway – some of us got on early and some just two stops back. Fading isn't fun. No woman likes to look in the mirror and see her mother staring back. No man enjoys throwing his back out performing some heretofore routine task. And whatever your gender, having to wear reading glasses really sucks. So yeah, you can throw money at plastic surgeons and personal trainers and colorists and aestheticians and that may work for a while. Just try to maintain some perspective. Think about charitable things your money could do. Remember your bucket list. Wouldn't you rather cross off Tibet than have a tummy tuck? Take a long hard look at Joan Rivers and see if you don't get a little queasy. (Which isn't to say it doesn't suck to age out of, say, your staple clothing stores. I remember thinking The Limited and Express would get me through the rest of my natural life. Now, I don't even go in those stores: I rely on J. Jill and Chicos and hope to God I don't look like Michael Phelps' mother.)

Life, unless you're very lucky, gives you perspective on the vanity thing. A father with a troubled teen isn't too preoccupied with his own bald pate. A middle-aged mom doesn't tend to focused on the size of her butt when her own mother starts to show signs of Alzheimer's. Cliches like "Count your blessings" and "As long as you have your health" start to sound like the wisdom of the ages (or maybe the aged). The latest wrinkle on your face may be annoying, but rarely more so than the latest wrinkle in your life.



For the record, I meant THIS Andy Griffith...

Not THIS one. And no, I won't tell you my age, but I ain't lying about it either.

Talking Up Serpents

I was speed-walking distractedly down a ridgetop in Briones Park, pumping my arms and kicking up dirt. The light was long past golden, and I was determined to get back to my car before sundown, when the bobcats, coyotes and mountain lions come out. My mini-back pack was starting to dig into my shoulders, and as I stopped to adjust the straps, I noticed something long and white flapping in the brush. I crouched down to get a closer look. Draped over a shrub was a discarded snake skin, paper thin and rustling in the wind. It had obviously been shed by a rattler of impressive proportions. The head and tail end were missing, but the skin was still over a foot long and maybe one and half inches wide. I picked it up for a closer look. I could see the fishnet pattern of the snake's back scales, and the parallel ridges that had once girded its belly.

I tucked what appeared to be the least fragile end of my find into the back pocket of my daypack and resumed walking, the snakeskin flapping behind me like a banner. A couple of hikers were coming down the dip in the path ahead, towards me. Of course, I had to ask if they would like to see my snakeskin - an invitation that, were I a man, could have made me sound like what my daughter calls "a huge perv". But I am an eccentric middle aged lady, and if they thought I was insane, they did a good job of hiding it. They paused for a quick look - I think they were impressed.

I had seen rattlesnakes at Briones a couple of times before. Now, I watch my step. Especially since I broke my distance glasses about six months ago and have a tendency to confuse cow pies with coiled serpents. (One smells, the other hisses). But I made it safely back to my car. Despite its fragile appearance, the skin held up quite well and currently adorns my office bulletin board.

Once I had done a little research, I was less impressed with myself for finding that snakeskin. It seems rattlers molt three or four times a year, depending on how well-fed they are (strictly a function of the size of the rodent population). Out of 16 varieties of rattlesnake indigenous to the United States, a grand total of ten can be found in California. It is likely that my souvenir was shed by the redundantly named Crotalus oreganus oreganus, or Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. And now, a few fast facts about rattlesnakes:



• They are easily identifiable. That signature tail is just one of the rattlesnake's distinguishing characteristics. Rattlers have thicker bodies than most snakes and triangular-shaped heads with a distinct “neck”. Their lidless eyes are hooded, with elliptical pupils. Don't get close enough look into them or you might discover that rattlesnakes strike at a speed faster than the human eye can process! While rattlers have much better night vision than we do, they are profoundly deaf. However, they are exquisitely sensitive to vibrations, such as those caused by your approaching footsteps.



• They give birth to live young. Yes, I realize the photo is about as gross as the extra-terrestrial hatchery uncovered by Sigourney Weaver in Alien 2. No, I did not take this picture: I would have dropped my camera and run screaming from the room. Rattlers are ovoviparous, which means that their eggs hatch inside the mother's body and the young are born live. The 10-inch long snakelets are already venomous at birth, living proof that not all baby animals are cute. These babies won't get their first rattle until their first molt, roughly ten days after they are born. They compensate by being more aggressive than their elders. Fortunately for us hikers, many rattlesnake young are gobbled up by hawks, eagles, badgers, or coyotes.



• They add on a rattle every time they shed. However, the rattles eventually break off, and it's rare to see more than ten of them on a single snake. The notion that you can tell a snake's age by the number of rattles on its tail is simply not true – rattlers can live for as long as thirty years, but you never see one with thirty rattles. The rattles consist of keratin "beads" of hardened skin around the snake's tail. When the serpent shakes its rear, the beads bump against each other and make that signature warning sound.

If you see this florid organ on a rattlesnake, it means he's glad to see you.


• They have strange body parts. Rattlesnakes are pit vipers. This term refers to a pair of openings, called loreal pits, located on the sides of their heads. Loreal pits are an infrared sensing device, enabling the snake to sense the temperature difference between the cool night air and a nice, fat chipmunk. (Remember the alien's heat-seeking vision in Predator with Arnold Schwarzeneger? Same concept). Snakes, including rattlers, don't smell with their snouts. They flick their tongues in and out to sample odors in the atmosphere. Inside their mouths is the "Jabobsen's organ", which relays smell information from the tongue to the brain. The forked tongue is a directional aid that lets the snake know whether those tempting field mouse pheromones are wafting from the left or the right. The lucky male rattlesnake has two penises (or is that penii?), called hemipenes. (The bad news is he's hung like a sea anemone - see photo above). He only uses one hemipene at a time, and both remain inverted inside his body until it's time to get busy.



• They have retractable teeth. If a rattler is busy sunning itself while digesting some hapless quail, its fangs lie flat inside its mouth. But when it gets ready to strike, they rotate downward 90 degrees, into stabbing position. Like little hypodermic needles, the snake's hollow fangs inject venom into its prey. Designed to fall out and grow back several times a year, the fangs break off easily, sometimes getting swallowed right along with dinner. The snake's hinged jaw can literally drop out of its socket, enabling it to swallow prey as large as a cottontail rabbit.


Slumber party!

• They take the winter off. Rattlesnakes hibernate from November to April, usually in large groups. They like rocks or rodent burrows but have been known to camp out in the basements of buildings. In the summer, they spend their days chilling under rocks and shrubs. Hunting happens at night, with the help of those heat-seaking Jacobsen's organs.

• Their bite rarely kills a healthy adult human. Rattlesnakes can actually regulate the amount of venom they release. They may bite "dry" in self-defense - why waste perfectly good venom on something that's too big to eat? If you do get a shot of venom, you could be in big trouble. The poison disrupts blood clotting and destroys tissue. Even with prompt treatment, scarring is inevitable. Read about 13 year old Justin's snake bite and look at the hideous photos of his surgery, if you dare. (I'm actually sorry I looked - the poor kid's arm looks like a detail from an anatomical drawing of a flayed man.)

• Which brings us back to shedding. Rattlesnakes slip out of their outgrown epidermis as soon as they emerge from hibernation, and they shed two or three additional times each year. The snake rubs its nose against a rock or branch until it creates a big enough tear to start slipping out of his skin, which turns inside out in the process. It would be nice if people could do the same - simply shed our exterior when it starts to cramp our style. Wriggle out of our past. Grow a new skin. Of course, any human who can pull this off is probably already a snake.


More fun with Northern California fauna:

elephant seals
Berkeley-ites
Ravens
cougars
newts
goats
clown perverts


P.S. Happy Halloween!

No words.

I'm sorry, I can't talk now. It's August. I have been working like a dog for the past three months, including weekends. I have been writing non stop about things like hip replacements, multiple sclerosis and gynecological surgery. I'm about to devote my entire weekend to a website for a PR firm. Am I grateful for the income? Very. Am I having interesting, potentially blog-worthy experiences? Nope. That would require leaving the house.

Now, my daughter is here visiting for a month before she starts law school. Or doesn't start law school. She is getting cold feet because she's having such a great time as a freelance writer and would rather become a journalist. I alternate between the you-will-never-make-a-living-in-that-dying-industry speech and the follow-your-heart-and-do-what-you-love speech. Truth is, I know she will have regrets no matter what she chooses. She is a glass half-empty kind of gal. That is not my daughter in the photo, by the way. I was looking for gag visuals to illustrate the concept of "no words." I picked that girl because she wasn't trussed and leather clad. Don't do a visual google on "gag" or you just might.

Anyway, since I have had no life recently, I have nothing to say. I need a break, and I need to spend some time with my kids and my husband. So I am officially going on hiatus for the rest of the Summer. See ya' in September.