IMMAGRUNTS

THE REVISED “COLLOSSUS”
It appears time to update Emma Lazarus’s sonnet on the Statue of Liberty as we have
certainly revised our concept about immigration.
Let’s just take the last part of the poem:
....”“Bring, ancient lands, your storied pomp for our Empire” cries she with silent lips
“Give me your fired-up, your super rich, (Keep your fucking poor) your educated
masses yearning to earn more and usurp our scientists, their white collar criminals of
your teeming shore. Send these, the world travelers, luxury laden to me, I lift my lamp
beside the golden door!”

KLEENEX
As the old saw goes; We can land a man on the fucking Moon, but can’t get a box of
Kleenex to give up a sheet of tissue without ripping it all to shreds! Maybe we can give
NASA a contract to see if they can overcome this incredible problem. Now an engineer
would know enough about the tensile stresses in paper to align the fibers in the proper
direction that would give the strongest tissues and not disintegrate when you pull it out
of the box.

FAKE TREES
Why do we Americans have such an antipathy to innovation and science? If we allow
cell phone towers at all (Bodega Bay has no service) we have to disguise them into a
fake tree or something . A tower in itself is just a clean artifact that is pretty innocuous,
but these trees, they must cost a fortune, which of course, we will pay for in our service.
They do not appear to be anything like the nearby trees, they are the wrong color, the
wrong shape, and a totally wrong idea!
We have become the keeper of the flame of fake shit, e.i. every local tourist bus is a
terrible reproduction of a SF cable car, every little tourist train is a crappy little white
replica of a choo choo train. (Although I have to admit, they have the same damn train
in Marsielle).

DICTIONARY
Bourgeoise = Commercial Class, a Capitalist, that’s us, folks!
Bolsheviks = The majority who seized power (Bush II)
Proletarian = Workers of the World, Unite!

THE SACRED DEFENSE (OFFENSE) BUDGET
There are rumblings from the White House that to reduce spending we may even
take a look at our Defense Budget of 700 Billion a year. What? Reduce our hundreds of
bases around the world? Stop building our Posh Palaces of Embassies around the
world? What madness is this? How are we to keep our Empire together if we reduce
the massive spending? What kind of crazy ideas would we use the money for? A health
care system similar to most of the other developed countries? Maybe we could increase
THE WAR ON DRUGS, or THE WAR ON POVERTY! (But never a WAR on WAR!).
But let’s be real, we are so embedded in a Military-Industrial Complex our citizens
would never go for it. Why? Because we have too many citizen workers who make a
good living off military spending. Why are we still building zillion dollar aircraft carriers,
zillion dollar nuclear submarines? How is it that these giant machines help in door to
door guerrilla fighting which is the closest thing we get to fighting these days. I know
why we build super fighter jets, so we can sell them to other countries so everyone can
stay on a war mentality. I believe we don’t count the money it takes to care for our
wounded, amputees for the rest of their lives, which may be 50 years as most wounded
are about 20 years old. Bush didn’t include the costs of his two wars in the budget, at
least Obama includes it. How do we justify we spend nearly 50% of the entire world’s
defense spending? That’s a pretty big stick, isn’t it? And if you believe we can impose
a republican government on a middle eastern country that has been killing each other’s
clans and tribes for thousands of years, you’ve been smoking the good stuff.

BOOK REPORT
I’ve just finished (for the second time) THE SABRES OF PARADISE by L. Blanch. It’s
the story of Shamyl, an incredible warrior and leader of the fight against the Russians
in about 1850 who wanted to wrest the Caucasus from the mountain people. I guess
we never learn as the fight is reminiscent of our current wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. The
Russians had unlimited fighters with all the latest technology (Cannons, guns, etc.)
while the Tchechins had only sabres & old rifles but an indomitable spirit to defend their
towns in nearly inaccessible mountain country. Of course, the biggest help was they
were driven by a fanatic religion called Islam. This incredible war went on for 25 years,
during which hundreds of thousands died on both sides, (some very painfully) including
women and children. This was called collateral damage. Sound familiar?
I also learned the word “Bistro” came from the Russian officers who were in a hurry
when stopping at a small café and hollering “Bistro” which means “hurry!”. This should
get me a free glass of wine from Mathew of Underwood bar & Bistro here in Graton.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

HOW TO GET MARRIED THE HARD WAY

In 1988, bereft any reason, I made a deal with Joy to get us to Greece if I agreed to marriage. Joy was keeping a pretty tight leash on me and after her divorce we decided for some insane reason to find out how difficult it would be to get married in Greece. Being a fan of Socrates and Plato, I really needed to walk on the same stones they did in the Agora so many thousand years ago. We prepared months ahead before embarking for Greece by visiting the Greek Embassy in San Francisco, filling out several long forms. When we did arrive in Athens for only two weeks, we began a long round of searching out various public buildings, then the American Embassy, waiting in lines, buying small postage like stamps that had a perforated corner that certain officials would tear off and keep. Never did know what that was all about. At one point we had to find the Athens newspaper, place an ad about our impending fiasco, then wait a couple of days to search thru the paper where the want ads and notices all look alike to try and find our notice. They don’t use the same alphabet as it looks similar to Russian, but we finally spotted the name of my father, Harry, kind of written mostly in English. That tipped us off and we cut it out and ran (well, took a bus) back to the official who told us we would have to wait a month as they only marry folks once a month. This was not becoming fun anymore, why didn’t we just go to Tijuana Mexico where we could do the whole thing in an hour? During our panic period (We were scheduled to get to France) we were told by someone that one of the suburban towns might be able to do it. A friend called around and found that the town of Palio Pasihiko would be able to do the deed.
We found the town, a suburb of Athens, where the town hall was in an older mansion. Fortunately a Brit expat worked there as a secretary and she really got excited about the whole affair as she didn’t think they had ever had a wedding there. Bully! However, the Mayor could do it but wouldn’t be back for a week .That would work, as we wanted to stay on the idyllic island of Santorini anyway. We’ll be back in a week.
We trained to Piraeus, the ancient port nearby and caught a huge ferry to the island, checked into the Atlantis Hotel, the largest there. It didn’t take us but a few hours to realize there was an idyllic small Hotel Fira, cascading over the edge of the caldera for the same price. We bailed out of the Atlantis, hired a donkey to carry our bags down to our new fabulous digs. Here we stayed for a week sipping Ouzo, watching the tiny cruise ships a thousand feet straight down in the caldera.
During this time all was not bliss as we had to fill out more papers, where we ran into a couple of snags. Number one, you can’t get married more than three times and there was some concern of how many times I was. This would be my third. The next problem, in this Catholic nation, Joy and I had written Atheist and agnostic under religion. We quickly changed our status and although this would be my third, it was barely OK. Fortunately, we had spent a lot of time in a local cantina and befriended the owner, Papadakulas, who had the hots for Joy,(Shirley Valentine?) whose wife worked in the American Embassy in Athens. She managed to straighten the mess out and by the time we got back to Athens, everything was cool.
The mayor duly wed us, although he spoke no English, with the secretary spouting “Bully!” every few minutes. A short ceremony, I signed the document after Mr. Mayor, and Joy stepped up to the desk to sign but was rebuffed, the mayor looking at her as if she was crazy and informed us the wife does not participate to that extent. Oh well, at least we did the whole thing, Joy will just have to learn to walk ten feet behind me. Time to get out of Dodge as our boat to Brindisi, Italy is due to shove off that evening. We ran to the nearest taxi stand, a couple of blocks, where there stood several Mercedes. However, today was a smog day in Athens and only even numbered taxis were allowed in the city, and all these at this stand were odd numbered. We were frothing at the mouth by the time they found out we were newlyweds, made some calls, and got one to come by and directly pick up our bags at the hotel and drive the hundred kilometers to the port of Patras. It’s really hot in summer Greece and our driver kept falling asleep at the wheel. I had to constantly holler at him, punch him on the arm, to keep him awake long enough to get us to the port.
We arrived just in time to find out that the ship company was on strike . It would be hours before they got that resolved and were admitted to a small, Spartan stateroom with a couple of small bunks. We sailed off into the sunset, stopping at Corfu where Joy tossed her flower tiara onto the waters of the harbor. That was just too romantic!
However, the worst was over, and the happy couple pretty much lived happily ever after, bickering majestically.

WORLD CHUMPS

ALLAH
Einstien believes in -Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists (laws), not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

JUDGE JUDY
I’ve always wondered how she worked. Well, here’s the skinny from my humorous friend Judge Beds. First of all, she is not a judge. Her parties agree to take their case out of the court system & have them heard by Judy. This is all small claims stuff. This is like how a mediation or arbitrations works, except in her case, the show pays all the claims (small claims is what now? $5,000 max.?),. Naturally, there is no shortage of “contestants” as they can’t loose, even if they lose. And I guess there are lots of shows that emulate hers. The California Commission on Judicial Performance gets more complaints about Ms Judy than all the other judges in the state combined, but she’s not under their jurisdiction. She probably makes more money than all of the combined judges also in the state.

HERE’S GOOD NEWS (Belatedly)
The struggle for our minds is not only here in the U.S. The Christians and Muslims are just as active over there.
On October, 2007, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution recommending that it’s member governments oppose the teaching of creationism as science. The creationist movements possess real political power, especially here in US. The fact of the matter is that some advocates of strict creationsm are out to replace democracy by a theocracy. We must remain vigilant! (God willing?).

BELATED SURPRISE
I was apprenticing with architect DK Taylor during 1958 in Scottsdale, AZ and did work on the drawings of the O’Conner house,( mostly the details). As far as I remember, this was the only project Don was able to get built, except for the concrete deck panels for the Westward Ho Hotel in Scottsdale. Also, I built the model for their house (An earlier version) which FLL Wright saw in the window of Don’s office and commended me on my work, which pretty much stoked me.
This is all pretty trippy as just last week I started reading “CLOSED CHAMBERS” an insider’s view of the workings of the Supreme Court as I wanted to know more about how it Worked and the part Sandra Day O’Conner had in it.
Also thought you’d get a kick out of the house I worked on for Paolo, surrounded with his future. I was paid a dollar an hour from Paolo, then paid it back to Taylor so I could work for him due to some complicated work laws we were doing. Of course, this was the economic model I used for the rest of my career.
I’m interested to know why & how they moved the entire house, adobe blocks and all to another location at the Arizona Historical Society. At the time, I didn’t know Sandra Day O’Conner was the wife of the client, John Jay.

MUSLIM DICTIONARY (From Allah, the beneficient and most merciful)
I’ve learned a couple of new words while reviewing the Koran.
Lapidation Stoning her to death
Imurred House arrest for life.

PALIN?
A politician is one who promises you a bridge, when there is no river.

JUSTICE FROM THE SLUMS OF BOMBAY
Justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.

SCULPTOR’S DILEMMA
Have you ever tried to capture the essence of flame in a solid material ? Bertoli did a pretty good job of the flame held in the Statue of Liberty’s torch, a replica which stands in a small square in Paris. (Just the cold leafed flame. I spent endless hours stoned in Big Sur before attempting a 6 foot high concrete flame. It stood in front of Deetjin’s Big Sur Inn for many years.

FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM
Like the one at the SF Academy of Sciences. I observed his original one at the Musee des Arts & Mietiers in Paris a couple of years ago. . He built this in the old Pantheon church dome with a 67 meter wire and a 28 kg bob in 1851. This was the first proof that the earth was round and rotated every 24 hours. I never was able to figure out why this was the proof until today (Eureka!) . All I had to do was Google ”About Foucault’s Pendulum” to find the answer. Essentially, the pendulum ball does not move in a circle but the floor (And the tutelage, ergo, process earth, of course) rotates! in San Francisco, it rotates 220 degrees in 24 hours. At the poles it rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, while at the equator, there is no rotation. The real trick was at the top where Foucault put a magnetic ring that keeps it going (It switches on & off each swing) to overcome air resistance as it is not in a vacuum .

COOKIN’
Anthony Bourdan, the chef, is promoting the idea that every boy and girl should be taught basic cooking skills in high school. He feels it should be one of our fundamental skills, like crossing the street or being trusted with money. As I’m learning some of these skills late in life, I realize what a wonderful asset that would have been in my life. During my high school days, girls were taught “Home Ec” or how to open cans and stuff. Until it became a glaring illustration of everything wrong with gender politics, and finally rejected. Now, no one cooks. At college, knowing how to cook would be a real method for impressing your classmate to get them in bed. (Foreplay!) And what better way, in the morning, to make a simple, beautiful omelet for her.
Things kids need to know are such basic skills as chopping an onion (Although most of our young Chicanos are pretty proficient at this). Rudimentary knife handling, sharpening,

THE GRATON DECAPITATION SOCIETY
When I discovered my client, Harry, had a plethora of bottles of champagne of questionable pedigree, and simultaneously that my friend Dodson knew how to break into a bottle of champagne, just like the Lieutenants of Napoleon’s Grand Armee, I got a small group together to observe the process. Under the expert tutelage of Bill, each of us wacked off the head of a bottle of old champagne, about half of which were drinkable. From now on, I think I’ll use that method instead of agonizingly trying to extricate the cork, to get at the bubbly.

BIG FROG IN SMALL POND
What do you mean, WORLD CHAMPIONS? Are we Americans so out of touch with reality that we believe our Empire is the world? These left over from high school games, these ball games (Base, Foot, Basket, etc,) are only played here in the US, which is a tiny portion of the America’s and a smaller portion of the world. Your Giants are not World Champs, but merely National Champs as this game is basically not taken seriously anywhere else on the Globe. Now the Soccer World games are exactly that, they have teams from all over the planet, (Actually even a bunch of losers from the US). The winner of those games are truly WORLD CHAMPIONS.