A lesson in packing, like it or not

   In Texas, if you want to go to school, you have to have a gun. 

   Sure as shooting, that’s what it looks like, with a new law recently enacted in the Lone Star State. In fact, you may need to have a gun with you are at school. 

   When the so-called campus-carry law passed by the Republican-dominated state Legislature takes effect in August, public colleges will no longer be able to ban the concealed carrying of handguns on campus. Though the schools can impose some restrictions, they must generally honor a state-issued concealed handgun license on campus. 

   This means that, whether they like it or not, state universities and colleges have to buy into Texas’ wild, wild west packing culture.  Except in certain spaces, like a chemistry lab, there is no escape from firearms that can be used. 

   Lots of students and professors don’t like it, especially at the state university in Austin.  In a photograph accompanying a Los Angeles Times article, protesting students in the liberal community appear to be pleading, begging to be safe, to feel safe, in their classrooms, free of guns. That doesn’t matter. 

   It also doesn’t matter that professors don’t feel safe with the new arrangement and that some are leaving or turning down positions at Texas public colleges.  Never mind the concern that, as one professor noted, “a disgruntled student with a gun would ‘lose it,’ pull out the gun and shoot the instructor” or, as another mentioned, “Students get very angry if they feel they’re getting a grade they don’t deserve.  I have students who come in absolutely red-faced… ‘Why did I get this grade?’”

   There is concern that grading will be effected, most likely inflated.  Faculty have been warned to “Be careful discussing sensitive topics” and “Drop certain topics from your curriculum; not ‘go there’ if you sense anger; limit student access off hours…only meet ‘that student’ in controlled circumstances.”

   Never mind what this means about teaching and education.  Never mind about challenging ideas and opening minds.  Proponents say the new law will make colleges safer, with people able to take down a shooter.  (They also probably like it that ideas won’t be challenged and minds won’t be opened.)

   Never mind that education will be watered down to meaningless drivel.  What’s even sadder is that, in Texas, you’ll need to take a gun to school – to be safe.        

Just plain folk - and more

   Last Friday, I saw in the Claremont Courier that Marley’s Ghost was playing the next night at the Folk Music Center.  I was delighted, feeling that I was in luck.  Marley’s Ghost is one of my favorite bands, and I happened to not have plans for Saturday night.  Plus it would be a nice way to celebrate getting over a horrible cold that I had had for two and a half weeks.  I went by the store the next afternoon and snagged a ticket. Sweet! 

   The group put on a great show, as always.  I have seen this folk band – there are six guys – four or five times, and they are wonderful.  I like folk music, old-time music, and these guys play and sing with lots of soul.  The trick, for me, is that they infuse a lot of their stuff with reggae and also borrow a lot from the Grateful Dead.  So they are right up my alley. I once heard them play a song about love being like jelly in your belly that was just magic, deeply feel-good.  Also, as with many folk bands, they feature much humorous, corny banter, and it’s a kick to see these white guys my age – in their 50’s – jamming and singing so sweetly in harmony and doing it so superbly. 

   Also, seeing them at the Folk Music Center was a real treat.  The Folk Music Center is in Claremont and is practically a museum in addition to a store, with all kinds of acoustic guitars, violins, drums, xylophones and other folk instruments from all over the world lining the walls, literally from floor to ceiling, and visitors encouraged to try out some of them.  It was founded by Charles and Dorothy Chase, the grandparents of Ben Harper, and it is sort of legendary around here and probably at least in the wider folk world. 

   The store puts on in-store concerts usually about once or twice a month, and, over the years, I’ve seen a number of groups there, from the pretty traditional Wicher Brothers to the punk-folk I See Hawks in L.A, and this wasn’t the first time I saw Marley’s Ghost there.  The back half of the store, which is relatively small, is cleared, with folding chairs set up.  It is like going to a concert in someone’s living room, an intimate jam session with top-notch musicians surrounded by beloved instruments.  What’s more, tickets go for $10 or $15.

   Like I said, a real treat – and all the more so with Marley’s Ghost! 

Rioting at the polls

   “We’re voting with our middle finger.”

   It certainly looks like that’s what’s happening in the primary elections, with Donald Trump piling up win after win.  As the blowhard, bullying, ignorant billionaire, who everyone in polite company says they hate, appears to have nearly a insurmountable lead in the Republican presidential nomination race after this week’s Super Tuesday elections and caucuses, it looks like there’s a lot to this quote from a retired truck driver before voting in the South Carolina Republican primary last month. 

   No matter how much the Republican party itself says that this would be a disaster, with Mitt Romney joining in in a big way yesterday, Trump for president seems to be what folks want. The people voting for Trump have one thing in common: they’re angry, angry at how government operates, and they like it that Trump “tells it like it is” and expresses this anger. 

   The Trump voters, many but notably not all of whom are white, blue-collar, non-college-educated workers, don’t care about the usual conservative values.  They don’t want big military spending, and I read that many don’t mind large government programs, as long as they benefit (they don’t like others getting welfare). They want an outsider, someone angry like them, to go in and take charge. 

   Some commentators argue that this same anger fuels the same passion behind Bernie Sanders, with his anti-big money platform.  This may sound like an unfair and nonsensical comparison (after all, isn’t Trump big money?), but, in what is a truly alarming development, I have read about Sanders voters saying that, if he doesn’t get the nomination, they’ll vote for Trump if he’s on the November ballot rather than Hilary Clinton, who they see as slick politics as usual. 

   All this is fascinating, and it’s great theater.  It is fascinating to see what happens when people say what they want, when things are not going the usual way – so much for Jeb and for Hilary’s glide to the nomination (although that now be more likely) – and, for a Democrat, it’s fun to see the Republican party coming apart at the seams.  This is all quite heady stuff. 

   The trouble is that this is not theater.  This is our society, our life, and it may be how we live in this country, and how others see us in this country, for the next four years.  The people voting for Trump are certainly giving the finger – to themselves.  In voting with their middle finger, they are like rioters, burning and looting their own neighborhood.  Sticking it may feel good now, but it will cause great destruction and may well destroy their life. 

   It is not unlike poor people who agree that Obamacare is bad, even as it is making or can make their lives easier and better.  Except, in that case, it’s more rhetoric, and they are the only one getting hurt.

Goodbye to El Nino?

   I was raining yesterday morning.

   Or, it was finishing up raining.  It started raining the previous  afternoon and rained much of the night.  The rain was supposed to done byby noon.  Which is what happened.  Which is good, because I was going out in the afternoon, and faithful readers will know that, for me in my wheelchair, rain is more than an inconvenience. 

   At the same time, this rain was a good thing.  And it was kind of big news, even in February, here in Southern California.  Before the rain came, we had a 5-day heat wave, with temperatures in the high eighties.  And it hadn’t rained all month. 

   Yes, I was going around in my short overalls with no shirt.  Even after 5. In February.  Something was wrong, very wrong.  I was complaining, even as I was glad it wasn’t raining.  And I could hear my friend John in Vermont laughing at my whining, as he and his fellow Easterners experienced record sub-zero temperatures while we had our glorious hot weather here earlier this week. 

   It will supposedly heat up again this weekend, but it really should be raining.  Not just because it’s winter and February.  We are having a big El Nino here, and it’s supposed to bring a lot of rain. 

   So is this El Nino a bust?  They keep saying the big rains are coming and may last into May, but I don’t know.  However, like my dreading rain and not wanting it to be hot and dry, the situation is more nuanced than that, as I mused over in my Claremont Courier column earlier this month. 

           WATCHING AND WAITING FOR THE RAIN AND THE DRAMA

   It came right on time.  Like clockwork. 

   Not only that, but the rain waited until we were ready.  Or at least until it wasn’t too much of a damper. 

   It didn’t come on New Year’s Day.  The sky was left picture-perfect clear for the Rose Parade, just as it should be and everyone, the whole world, expects.  And it waited another two days, giving us blue skies for the last weekend of the holidays. 

   The rain came on that Monday, the first Monday in January, right when the holidays were over and most of us were back to business as usual. It was here. Indeed, rain was going to be business as usual. 

   El Nino was here, just as we had been told it would be.  All the reports said that we would be getting a remarkable amount of rain with the unique weather system this winter.  It would bring some relief, if not complete relief, to the state’s troubling four-year drought.  It would also bring problems, like flooding.  And it would most likely come in January, not December, when, as was explained, the rain we got was “normal” rain, not El Nino rain.

   Well, it was January, and El Nino was here. The first workweek of the month included several days of rain – unusual for this area, at least in recent years.  There were also all the news stories, about flooded road and freeways, about feet of snow in the local mountains, about the efforts to get homeless people out of the rain.

   There were articles about how to prepare for a lot of rain, and one article mentioned the two Pomona College students who were killed when a big tree fell on them on College Avenue during the last big El Nino in 1998. And Steve Lopez had a column on the front page of the Los Angeles Times on the day after the first day of rain about a homeless man who had a bed set up, complete with box-springs and a comforter, along with a dining area with a small Christmas tree, under a freeway, only to see it all float away when a downpour came.  After refusing an offer of lunch, the man was proudly serving up burritos to the columnist when the water came. 

   El Nino was here, with all its promise and danger, with all its drama, just liked it was predicted. 

   And then it wasn’t. 

   When it looked like it would rain the next Saturday during the dedication celebration for the new Claremont Lincoln University Community Performance Stage and the renovated Shelton Park in the Village, I thought we caught a lucky break when it didn’t.  I thought it was just fortunate that there was a break in the rain that day or weekend. 

   Except it wasn’t a break. It was, it turned out, the way it was. 

   That was it for all the rain.  Other than a day of rain to close out the month and a brief shower and some sprinkling now and then, the storms stopped after that first week of January.  And the storms during that week really weren’t, in general, that dramatic and extraordinary. 

   So much for El Nino. 

   Or was it?  Is it? 

   Did we get lucky and escape the ravages of a monster El Nino?  Were we safe from giant sinkholes and from random trees falling on us?  Look, we didn’t have to deal with extreme weather, like the folks on the East coast who had two feet of snow in one weekend, when New York City got just .2 inches less than the largest amount of snow that it ever got in a storm, which was almost a century ago. Not to mention the gorgeous, clear days, complete with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop, that we’ve been having. 

   But did this also mean that we are also in for another dry year, a fifth year of drought?  Did it mean another year of cutting back on water, another year of brown lawns and dying trees and wondering if fountains and swimming pools are cool?

   Not necessarily.  At least, that what we keep being told. 

   Appearantly, we haven’t escaped the ravages of El Nino, and we still may have to live with drought conditions. 

   For one thing, we are told that the biggest part of El Nino is yet to come.  Just as it was explained that the rain in December was normal and that El Nino most likely wouldn’t hit until January, the explanation now is that it won’t really hit until February and could even last into April or May. 

   When it was discovered last year that a big El Nino was on tap for this Winter, we were cautioned that it wouldn’t end the drought.  We were told that ending the drought would take an unprecedented or maybe impossible amount of rain.  It was almost enough to make us think that this big El Nino is no big deal. 

   It was also explained at the time that the El Nino rains would hit us here in Southern California and probably wouldn’t reach Northern California and that, even if they did, because it involves a warming, there wouldn’t be much snow.  Snow, it was explained, is what’s critical in ending the drought, since it melts off slowly, allowing the water to be more easily captured and not just drained into the ocean. In an average year, melting snowpack provides roughly a third of the water used by California cities and farms. 

   Now, something different has been happening.  At least it was happening last month.  The El Nino rains, with all their drama, have been hitting up north. In Pacifica, south of San Francisco, cliffs have been eroded by pounding surf, and people here been evaluated from apartments? Or have those rains been the usual storms from Alaska – just more than usual?  In any case, most of the storms have been “wrung out” by the time they reach us. What’s more, there has been plenty of snow – more than usual. Even with the storms here only during the first week of January, there has been more snow on Mt. Baldy than we’ve seen in more than a year.  There have been articles about the unusual snow here and people flocking to it. 

   But whether all the rain up north and all the snow is from El Nino or not, is it enough? Yes, there has been a higher-than-usual amount of snow so far – the deepest in five years - but we keep being told that April 1 is the critical date, that it all depends on how much snow there is on the state’s mountains – mainly up north - on that day. In some places, there is 115% of the normal amount of snow, but it is said that the average amount needs to be 150%. And as a recent Los Angeles Times article pointed out in what is getting to be a refrain, “Water levels in the state’s reservoirs have risen since December 1, but storage is still far below historical averages.”

   That goes right along nicely with the other now-all-too-familiar refrains in the same article: “a modest yet encouraging milestone in a period of extended drought” and “it is too early to determine whether winter rains will be enough to make any major dent in California’s drought.”

   Is this all good news, or is it bad news?  Maybe we should take whatever rain we get and make it better news.  That is, until it gets to be worst news.

Not much to stand on

   My footrest broke off. 

   The other day, I was at my computer, typing, just like I am now, when I wanted to sit back farther in my chair, as I often do.  I pressed my feet down on my footrests, like I always do, to raise my butt up and back, and there was a snap, and the left pedal wasn’t there.  It was something like a glass breaking in your hand or, as I imagine would be more the case, a step breaking when you put your foot on it. 

   I had another footrest that I had put on while waiting for the pedal to be put back on, but now I’m afraid to press down on the footrests.  The trouble is that I have to, and I do it all the time, to adjust myself in my chair.  And this isn’t the first time this has happened. 

   By far the majority of problems I’ve had with my power wheelchair in recent years have been with the footrests – usually with the petals snapping off.  It is sort of a hot mess.  The crazy thing is that these footrests cost about $600 for the pair – that’s right, $300 for a footrest.  What’s crazier is that the footrests I now have, including the one that broke, is a mismatched pair the vendor gave me when the new ones took forever to come from the factory.  And it’s still unclear if the $600 was still charged. 

   I wonder how much will be charged to repair the petal.  Or if I will be given, at last, the new footrests. 

   I can rant about the vendor and how I would go to another one, except that most other wheelchair vendors I’ve gone to and seen are even more of a scam. These places know they have a niche market, a captive market, with no competition to speak of and with many products and services paid for by the state. But the real problem is that the footrests are bad.  Yes, I’m tough on footrests – I literally stand on them when I adjust myself in my chair – but is that my fault, my problem?  It shouldn’t be.    

   I love Quickie power wheelchairs.  They are the best.  I have been using Quickie power chairs for about 25 years, and I’ve had fewer mechanical problems with them.  My other power chairs were always having mechanical problems.  They would break down constantly, leaving my stranded.  Yes, I’m tough on my power chair, driving miles every day (the odometer on my chair now says I’ve gone 2350.8 miles in a bit more than two years), but Quickie power chairs are tough, like I am.

   But their footrests are crap.  I’m sorry to say this, but they are.  They are cheap (even at $600 a pair!).  It is like Quickie made their chair(s) and realized they forgot about the footrests and tacked some on. 

   Just saying.