Changes advance on Homestead. (Sound the Alarm!!)
We begin this edition of Ray on the Beam with deep gratitude to today's
San Francisco Chronicle (Monday, January 03, 2011). Check it out. Front
page, under "Governor's Inauguration. For Brown and California, much has
changed."
Amen. (Great stats.)
I was born in 1930 into a world of abundance. I live in 2011 in a world
that squandered it. Something is wrong with the planetary operating
instructions, if the honchos who call themselves our leaders are reading
them right.
"Long Fingered Economics" and "Disciples of Progress" are terms I invented
to describe to myself an utterly baffling phenomenon around me that I do
not understand but which is the naturalest thing on earth to many of my
fellow s p a c e travelers, namely, "More! More!! MORE!!"
What I'm getting at here is that my view of things is from the inside out
because I am a Provincial (that's what we call Hillbillies in polite
company) and that my wife's view is from the outside in, which is
different, because she's from the Big City, and a European Big City to
boot. This important distinction explains my rather obvious bias about
things that go on around me in HOMESTEAD. I am a Westerner. That part of
the earth I call home lies in North America between the Rocky Mountains
and the Pacific Ocean. Translation: I am a Homestead Valleyer. Anything
outside of that don't count. My wife on the other hand, is not a
Westerner. Where she comes from people regard and have always regarded the
Western Hemisphere as some place to migrate TO. Get the picture? I'm
already here. I have no intention of migrating, EVER! So when things go on
around me that upset the serenity I had expected in my dotage, my
fingernails begin to itch, my skin tingles, my baby blues start whirling
in opposite directions, I break out in rashes, and on and on.
I wince for those who are content in their belief that Ray the Queer Old
Duck would be a lot happier if only he would consult the statistics on
financial growth and the number of minutes per week he waits for
stoplights. And I think of the "public improvement projects" built all
over the West that I was taught to cheer about when I was young - Hoover
Dam. Bonneville Dam. Grand Coulee Dam. Hell's Canyon Dam. Oxbow Dam.
Brownlee Dam. Glen Canyon Dam. But where are all the jackrabbits now? And
in what sad state is the salmon run? Our forests look like mangy dogs,
dam, dam.
Yes, Time Marches On, but lemme try to explain something I sorely miss
about the old days: I miss buying old fashioned milk and cream in any
neighborhood store. For the uninitiated, that's the stuff that comes from
the udders of cows when you pull on their teats. In its natural state the
cream rises to the top, even when pasteurized. The cream on the milk from
our Jersey cow was so thick in the earthen crock where it was stored in
the refrigerator it would support a coin tossed onto it. (And yes, until
1937 we only had an ice box, and yes, I prefer the refrigerator.)
Let me recite to you here the ingredients of a spray can of stuff called
Natural Whipped Cream that I saw in a local store not long ago: "Organic
Cream, organic non fat milk, organic cane sugar, organic vanilla
flavoring, sorbitan monostearate, carrageenan and nitrous oxide as
whipping propellant. CONTAINS MILK. For best results point the tip of the
can straight down. Packed for Natural by Nature, West Grove, PA 19390."
The tag attached to this can of stuff read, "Whole Foods Market - natural
by nature – Natural Whipped Cream $4.49 ea. 7 oz." (I transcribed that
directly from a picture I made of it, August 22, 2009, 8:11 a.m. at Whole
Foods Market on the corner of Miller and Evergreen.)
Pity the children who see that, whose innocent minds are sacrificed on the
altar of Texas profits, right here in Homestead.
Later there will be more about the Homestead Valley Community Association,
their intimate neighbor Marin Horizon School, and then if I have anything
left, the Evergreen Avenue dam dam project.
But first, a quickie ray of hope: Many years ago, about the time Jerry
Brown was thinking of making his first bid for Governor I attended an
evening seminar on population growth in Olney Hall at the College of
Marin. One of the panelists who was an Associate Professor of Biology or
something like that from Stanford had been haranguing us about
overpopulation and somebody from the audience hollered, "Hey, Doc, you got
any kids?" Long pause. A softer and rather disarming change of pace,
"I have four daughters." Hoots and waves of raucous laughter! Then this
guy, about 40 years old with sort of tight blond curls growing sparser
behind a receding hairline, cleared his throat, leaned over close to the
microphone and with an emotion tensed voice said, "I am proud of THEM, but
I am not proud of IT."
More later, but right now I gotta run! (You guess where.)
Ray Cook
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