Pay to not play

Providing some shelter and resources for people without stable housing is generally supported here.  But  that means just as long as those services are not nearby. To date, four proposed sites have been tabled by neighborhood objections.

How about neighborhoods paying to NOT have emergency shelter, housing, services, nearby?

Neighborhoods could compete - the ones that pay the least get the shelters; the proceeds from others who pay to not have services nearby fund and operate the resources.

Inequity at its finest - but gee, it would raise money, locate sites by an agreed-upon method, and objecting neighbors could put up their dollars without nixing much-needed resources.  I can hear the cries and objections, but bottom line, it could work.

Because, like it or not, money gives one power and influence to help get things done.  And choosing a service site needs to get done.

Something's Wrong

fences and walls and guards and closures
claiming
mine
you can't have
not yours

locks alarms cameras
the more boundaries, the more invasion
hacking
because we can
because we want more

Truth is red-tagged

If the first casualty of war is truth, and since truth is red-tagged, even though it's a logically inaccurate conclusion, I'd say we are a war - Donald Trump v [    ].  Even more disturbing is wondering why I am surprised.

Obituaries

My college classmates have a project, to draft our own obituaries and share them with each other now, online, while we are still here. 

The obits of others that I read seem of a piece, reflecting lives with a consistency and focus. And maybe after I'm dead, my life will also look that way. 

But now, from my perspective, the lead keeps changing. 

If I had been writing ten years ago, my emphasis would have been my global advocacy. If I were to write tomorrow, I would start with my involvement in solutions to our local shelter crisis. And if I'd written six months ago, I would have underscored how I'd reflected and chosen localism as my best resistance and had decided to participate actively in (almost only) city politics and projects. 

So I'm stuck.

I've written the middle years part. I've not yet added family. I'm wanting an organizing thread. Mark me incomplete.

Balance

Global warming is self-organizing's response to human over-population.

One nation, indivisible ...

I sat with my back to the large window at the rectangular table in the room where my family took our meals. My father sat at the head, a direct view outside. “Oh, look, there's a squirrel, “ he would say, and I would twist around and look out and he would reach over a take a teaspoonful of my ice cream. And I'd turn back, no squirrel and less dessert, feeling fooled and shamed and consistently gullible. Now I do not trust easily, I do not hope, disappointment is too painful.

But when we, we, everyone, on January 21, spontaneously gathered in protest, marched and hugged and gathered and shared, I did think that perhaps we were ready to update this very sluggish and unresponsive governance system we endorse. I thought: we are here, we have critical mass, what an amazing result from this presidential election. I had expectations.

And I was wrong. And my sadness hurts, is becoming despair. A playbook of tools and techniques that have guided us to this point, this point of system failure, that playbook like a magnet has captured all the individual filings, the energy, and focused it on shifting the electeds balance scale. Mottos and initiatives about defeating the other - swing left, block, impeach, sue, 50% + 1 … reward action now, and in lock step, and reflection, well, maybe later, maybe not at all. Here in Santa Cruz, we have five indivisibles, regressing to the mean. I know, I know, introverts just feel alienated, and extroverts aren't pushed to reflect more deeply. 

The Women's March, a careful balance of collective values and personal engagement has been turned into structured choices, channeling the energy into grooves exhaustively well-worn, for instance subsuming the huddle I was part of from reflection into already defined activity and here the local women's march leaders broke away from the national values, muted the international women's day history, the garment worker women burned alive in the Triangle Fire, … We lunched.

One nation indivisible, indivisible indeed, stuck together in a massive clump of insistent perpetuating dysfunction. Phoning and signing and posting and liking … rallying with rules about what to wear, what to say, how to say it. while leaders order ...

Bidding on the wall

There's a report on Facebook that Granite Rock Construction, based in Watsonville, CA, is bidding on the anti-immigration wall that has been proposed. Please don't. We hope Santa Cruz will have sanctuary cities and a sanctuary county, in deed even if not in law. Immigrant labor is essential to agriculture which a bedrock of this community's economy, as it is to the construction industry, your industry. Granite has a good reputation; ethics are featured on your home page. Just say no; don't bid.   

Street feeding

Public spaces are public places. Displacing those who are less entitled and restricting access for some to public places enables the haves while the have-nots stay lonely and go hungry

About enshrining values in law

Utilitarian cost-benefit analyses bend and stretch ethics until they obscure the values of our community, elide our relationships with each other, and dissolve the social bonds on which concepts of state and governance are built.

Yes, you are responsible for fiscal stability. And you also must set an ethical, honorable dignified example that reflects the deeply held social values of we who have elected you ...honesty, caring, family, service, fairness, ...

Because this is not really about illegality and crime and lack of documents. It is about equity and goodness and doing what in all our hearts we know is right.

I resist fiscal threats used to bully obedience.

Equity

Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/

I note that of these four, if warfare becomes nuclear warfare, the rest doesn't matter, and if not, it won't create a global shock; revolutions have been and will be quickly suppressed -- tech monitoring, armored tanks, ... ; medicine is stopping epidemics before they are catastrophic, and maybe we are now experiencing US state collapse. 

My bet is on a plague or a global climate event.

Hyperbolic space

Underwater self-organizing is hyperbolic.

When water hits air, ocean wave interval patterns are a Fibonacci series.

Some land self-organizing follows Fibonacci patterns (sunflower). Some land self-organizing is fractal.

Might there be a parallel in physics where the quantum rules differ from the every day rules. Underwater evolving is hyperbolic; land evolving is fractal and Fibonaccial.

Call 911

Call 911

 Be afraid.
      So you will turn to me
     To PD
Be afraid.
     So that you forget your own strength
     So that you forget how to create agreements
     So that you lose discernment
     So that you become helpless without me PD Be afraid
     So as not to have any other feelings
Be afraid.
     So that I replace you.
Be afraid
     So that I grow strong, have tanks and armor and become many
Be afraid.
     Be weak.

Call 911

On diagnosing mental illness

It used to be that diagnosing illness was the responsibility of medical professionals. But now anyone can call public difference illness and delegate quick removal to conformity enforcement services. Now we have a more bland mix in our melting pot.

naive activism

... a lobby which has chosen disease as the simple explanation and restraint as the simple intervention for behaviors without a simple cause ...

Wearables and more

Let us start to use emerging technologies and approaches which have the potential to shift health, medicine and biopharma from an intermittent and reactive physician-centric mode, to an era of more continuous data and a proactive approach in which the individual is increasingly empowered and integrated into personalized wellness, diagnosis and therapy.

Thinking?

The more rules and laws, the more people delegate analysis and choice and common sense to compliance The existence of rules and laws lessens selecting the option to use analysis to determine one's own responsibility, to choose for oneself, so that soon the ability to compare has atrophied. Rebels know this, delight in work-arounds. Hackers know this, delight in beating the code. Those hungry for power know this, delight in loopholes. When laws and computer code rule, who will be left who can think?

Debt

About Greece, and defaulting on debt, ... I've been thinking about the news about debt, Greece, defaulting, student loans, who can and who can't just wipe away a debt. There's a piece missing! Payment is a return on the use of the lender's asset. And included in the interest rate charged is insurance to the lender against default. Built into how much a lender charges the borrower for a loan – mortgages at 4%, credit cards at 18% - is the expectation of getting the whole loaned amount back, and the risk to the lender of default. So if the lender isn't paid back, that's just part of the expectation, and the cost of not getting paid back is built into the rate. So I don't understand why there is so much noise about defaulting. It seems to me all that means is the interest rate wasn't set high enough, that it's on the lender, not the defaulter!

Race v poverty

Both discrimination based on race and exclusion based on poverty have the same purpose, shoring up one group by diminishing another. Some groups have become white/acceptable (Irish, Catholics, some Latinos, Jews (maybe), … ); some individuals and groups have climbed out of poverty. Lots of people are left to 'other', to stoke up one's own sense of self by assuming one is better than another based on a category (women, blacks, immigrants, … ). Instead of some in, some out, all in.

Just Blame The Victim

… so much attention to the abuse of prescription drugs, using heroin as an alternative when opiods are restricted, ... and no attention to the systemic causes of so much pain – poverty, diet, environmental pollution …

Can there be autonomy without obligation?

To whom does my life belong: God (creator), the State (which invested in me through schooling, protections, … ), my smaller community (family, friends, colleagues who would all miss me and hurt at the loss), or myself (freedom/liberty … ). Can there be autonomy without obligation? I answer no. However, I still wonder what are my obligations now.