Author Archives: shrinkrapped

Women of a Certain Age

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My mother and me, both so much younger!

“Don’t grow old,” my mother unhelpfully advised.

Ever since I was diagnosed with cancer at age 57, there has been nothing I’ve wanted more than to grow old. It’s my aspiration, not something to avoid. I relish celebrating one birthday after another.

I just celebrated another one—my 71st. Although now seen as the younger side of old, reaching this age officially counts as having disregarded my mother’s advice.

Seventy-one is also the age she never lived beyond.

My mother smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and was also at least 150 pounds overweight for most of her life. Even when I was a kid, I remember my parents driving around and around the block to find a parking space right in front of wherever we were going because she couldn’t walk far. In my mother’s later years, she could barely cross the living room without stopping several times to catch her breath, and eventually was tethered to an oxygen machine. The aging process she exemplified struck me as an ever-tightening spiral of constriction, oppressed by living but afraid of dying (and nursing homes).  As my brother put it, “If you wake up every day for 10 years saying that this will be the day you’re going to die, eventually you’ll be right.” When that day finally came, it wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was mercifully quick and gentle—my mother’s heart gave out and she died instantly in her beloved home, her lovely Jamaican caregiver by her side and my brother downstairs.

My trajectory toward old age bears no resemblance to hers. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life, am a normal-ish weight, and walk two or three hours every day. I have had no further cancer scares or really any significant health challenges. Although I feel myself slowing down some and am on the list for cataract surgery, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll die anytime soon. Still, it’s freaky to have reached the milestone of my mother’s final age.

I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately, missing her salty humor, her devotion and love despite her suffering. Longevity is not in my genes—my father died when he was 72, and my brother when he was only 65! Aging quickly and poorly was the model I more or less assumed would be my fate, even though I’ve clearly made different choices to alter the outcome.

And I have succeeded (I hope—my mother made it more than halfway to 72, so I’m not out of the woods yet). Will my aging be a time of expansion or an ever-narrowing constriction as it too soon was for my mother? Luckily, I had some other great models to emulate, such as my in-laws, vital and mostly not caught in a downward spiral until their deaths at almost 97 and almost 90.

Do I have 20 more years left in me? Fifteen? I used to think I’d be lucky to make it to 75, but now I think it’s a reasonable hope that my husband and I will celebrate our golden anniversary when we’re 81. That’s only a decade away.

Dying together at age 85—holding hands in bed as we sleep, of course!—feels like a worthy goal. But 85 is so soon–the closer I get, the more I want to move the goal posts farther away. Will I see my 9-month-old granddaughter graduate from high school and college, or be lucky enough to attend her wedding?  What will it be like to have the years my mother missed out on?

I hope to receive them as the gift that they are, and to make the most of them, for my sake and for hers.

Soul on ICE

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When I first heard of Renee Good’s death, I immediately thought of a conversation I’d had with my brother a couple of months ago. “Stay away from ICE,” he’d warned as we talked about Trump’s escalating war on immigrants. Not because my brother agreed with the crackdown, but because he feared for my safety.

I had been telling him about training as a volunteer legal observer to document ICE activity in my county. Good was also a volunteer legal observer, though she was living in what has become a war zone under siege by Trump’s private paramilitary force while I live in a quiet suburb just north of San Francisco that so far has seen almost no ICE activity.

I identified with Good in another way, too. When I saw the New York Times’s analysis of bystander video that captured the incident, my first thought was that aside from stopping sideways in the middle of the road, Good was carefully maneuvering her car exactly as I do in every busy parking lot I’ve ever been in—slowly inching out, letting people pass, trying hard not to hit anyone, exiting a tight spot as safely as possible.

So much for safety. Now a mother who had only recently dropped her six-year-old off at school, then stopped because her neighbors were in distress, is dead and being demonized by Trump and his enablers despite widespread evidence that Renee Good posed no threat to ICE agents.

My husband’s cousin in Minnesota’s Twin Cities has volunteered for years with refugee resettlement. He reports,

What’s happening here is unbelievable. This is like late 1930s Europe. Immigrants, legal and illegal, are afraid to leave their homes. Restaurants have closed temporarily to discourage ICE raids and to keep customers and employees safe. Some schools have closed temporarily to prevent confrontations with ICE as students are picked up at the end of the school day. People are organizing grocery shopping runs for immigrants who are “sheltering in place.”

The senseless killing of Renee Nicole Good has really solidified the resistance to ICE here. It is truly sad that every day about 60 to 80 people are hauled off to the Minneapolis airport and flown to out-of-state detention centers. My mission is to keep the immigrants who I know off of those planes . . . there is no end in sight to this madness. The number of ICE agents in Minnesota is increasing from 2000 to 3000 so I expect a lot more trouble. It’s like a war between the executive branch of the federal government and one resistant state in the middle of the country that refuses to be bullied.

Refusing to be bullied is the right thing to do, and the best way to put an end to terror. It is also easier said than done, particularly when the bully is not some middle-school kid but the head of a vast and deadly power apparatus with many willing enablers. The cruelty and the chilling effect are the point.

I feel the chill, too. In truth, even though I am not remotely close to any active danger or hotspots, I am scared, and also relieved that I’ve only gotten one text from the Rapid Response Network. I have to fight my impulse to retreat, and strive to channel the spirit of resistance that has only strengthened Minnesotans in the face of real danger. I hope that owning up to my fear and relief paradoxically keeps me in a state of courage, even weak courage.

And so I show up intermittently at local demonstrations, donate money to grassroots organizations, contact my representatives in Congress who already speak out and vote the way I want them to. Standing at intersections with clever signs in the brilliant Californian sunshine while passing motorists honk their approval (except for the woman who yelled “Go Home”) feels mostly like a feel-good exercise of little consequence. But it’s not nothing, and sometimes enlivens my too-numb soul.

The other day I found inspiration in an unlikely place: a letter to the editor of my local paper by a gentleman named Igor Sill. I’ve read a lot of pieces urging hope, persistence, and a Never Give Up bravado. Mostly they make me feel chastised and ashamed of my despair and wish to retreat. Mr. Sill’s letter struck me differently:

As a new year emerges, there is a natural pause — a moment to reflect on what has endured and to look forward with intention. It is a time to measure not only what was gained or lost, but how we carried ourselves through uncertainty. None of us is tasked with fixing the entire world. Our responsibility is more attainable: to mend the portion within our reach. Any small act that helps another — relieving suffering, restoring dignity, steadying fear — matters immediately. In a turbulent world, one of the most powerful choices available to us is to remain present, do the right thing and show our spirit.

This distinction matters as 2026 begins. Optimism is the belief that the future will be better.

Hope is harder: the belief that we have a role in making it so. Optimism waits. Hope acts.

One of hope’s greatest adversaries is cynicism. Cynicism assumes bad faith and inevitable failure. It can feel sophisticated, even protective, but it quietly erodes engagement. A healthier posture is skepticism: the willingness to question without surrendering to despair. Skepticism keeps us alert; cynicism shuts us down.

We were reminded of that truth this past year through widely shared footage from Australia’s Bondi Beach, where a bystander ran toward danger during a violent attack rather than away from it. There was no plan and no guarantee of success — only courage that was improvised and deeply human.

Moments like this clarify something essential: hope does not originate in institutions alone. It emerges when individuals decide that disengagement is not an option their conscience will accept. Acts of unscripted courage are not anomalies. They echo an enduring truth: Meaning survives when people stay engaged. Hope does not deny hardship. It accepts it and insists that effort still matters.

Hope is not the belief that the future will be kinder; it is the decision to remain responsible for it, even when the outcome is uncertain. As a new year begins, that choice to stay engaged may be the most consequential one we make.

Less than three weeks ago, I said good riddance to 2025. The new year feels even worse. The brave people of Minnesota and Mr. Sill’s words help me resolve not to renounce my true feelings of fear, exhaustion, and despair, but to let them accompany me as I decide to remain responsible for the future, even when the outcome is uncertain. Effort still matters. Disengagement is not an option my conscience will accept.

Good Riddance

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Has it been only a year since the Times Square ball last dropped? It feels like a decade, one characterized more by wrecking balls both literal and figurative. To top off a hard year, Tatiana Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s 35-year-old daughter, succumbed to terminal cancer just yesterday, although not without leaving us the gift of her grace and her final essay.

But that heartbreak notwithstanding, at last it’s time to turn the page on 2025.

It’s been quite something perusing the commentary this year. Hope is necessary for carrying on, but it’s sometimes been hard to keep despair at bay. First came gentle encouragement to breathe, step back, take care of yourself, but not give up. Then, with apparently too many people following the first three but not the last pieces of advice, sterner exhortations about the treachery of disengagement emerged. Always, there was the cheer brought by brave resisters, small victories, federal judges not part of the US Supreme Court majority, and the good feelings of solidarity that came with the massive No Kings protests throughout the year. Many times, I found solace in schadenfreude, such as the end of the Trump/Musk bromance and MAGA infighting at this year’s Turning Point conference.

Then, after one too many tacky gilt pieces were affixed to the Oval Office and Trump and his enablers did everything in their power not only to strip healthcare but also food from millions of Americans, solid evidence emerged that the tide was turning. Following a promising string of special-election overperformance, in November, we saw stunning widespread electoral victories for Democrats (apparently still hated, but preferred). Finally, Trump’s “plummeting” poll numbers, which declined in infinitesimally tiny increments for months, fell below 40%. I find it alarming that anyone supports this regime, but still, I’ll take it. Just as I’ll take having complicated instead of merely contemptuous feelings toward Marjorie Taylor Green.

It’s been a hard year to sum up, to assess the damage while still finding reasons for optimism. Mainstream commentators are valiantly trying. Just last week in the New York Times, I read back-to-back opinion pieces. One, by UC Professor David G. Victor, began, “On its face, 2025 looks like a year of relentless backsliding in the fight against climate change.” You don’t say. Through some unconvincing jujitsu, Victor attempts to make a case for optimism. Commenters raked him over the coals, which are at least easier to come by with Trump’s avowed resurrection of the deservedly dying industry.

Nicholas Kristof was more honest in proving that he understood his year-end assignment of offering hope without delusion. In Which I Valiantly Try to Cheer You Up took the long view, acknowledging the massive damage wrought by the first year of Trump 2.0 but urging perspective that in the arc of human history, things aren’t so bad and will likely get better.

All in all, it seems everyone is ready to bid adieu to 2025. Although personally I experienced many joys this year—a new granddaughter, loving and happily married children, several nice trips, and the good fortune not to be in the direct line of fire for any of the atrocities befalling our country, I can’t wait to turn the page. Usually, I like to let the good feelings of the holidays linger after January 1, but this year we hurried to dismantle Christmas.

Into the recycling bin of history you go, 2025. Good riddance.

Onward to 2026!

The Cruelty is the Point

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“The problem,” said my friend, “is that Republicans are willing to let people die, and Democrats are not.”

You might think we had this conversation just a few days ago, after a group of eight Senate moderates brokered a deal with their Republican counterparts to end the government shutdown.

But my friend and I actually discussed this a good fifteen years ago, during another chapter in the long saga of asymmetrical political battle between Democrats, who believe that the purpose of government is to improve people’s lives, versus Republicans, who want to shrink government down small enough so it can be drowned in the bathtub, as anti-tax Republican Grover Norquist famously put it.

Here we are again. This time, starving government isn’t enough. Trump and his GOP enablers have literally been starving people, depriving 42 million of SNAP benefits. Trump wasted no time in exploiting the shutdown to further the rampage he’s enthusiastically executed from the jump of his second term, vowing to use it to “get rid of a lot of the things we didn’t want,” targeting, of course, “Democrat things.”

Apparently, one of those Democrat things is food.

Turns out, plenty of non-Democrats also need food. Who knew?

Unmoved by this reality, Trump refused to utilize an emergency fund expressly meant to feed people during crises, defied federal courts ordering him to do so, appealed their attempts to make him comply with the law not once but twice to the Supreme Court, and threatened to punish states who had made alternative arrangements to keep their residents from going hungry. As a New York Times reader commented, “The past few weeks have been eye-opening. I have never seen anyone work so hard to deny food to those who need help getting it. That will not be forgotten.”

The cruelty is the point. Whatever your feelings about how a few Democrats helped end the shutdown with a whimper instead of a bang, this essential truth remains.  Trump, showman that he is, has merely escalated a long-standing GOP tendency to hurt vulnerable people with his brazen relish for causing harm.

Before Trump was even re-elected, Russ Vought, the Project 2025 architect whom Trump pretended not to know, said about federal workers, “We want to put them in trauma.” Right after the election, Trump rewarded Vought with the powerful directorship of the Office of Management and Budget. Many consider Vought, along with fellow-sadist Stephen Miller, to actually be calling the shots in Washington.

In February, DOGE head Elon Musk wielded a chainsaw signaling the destruction in store for federal workers soon after bragging about “feeding USAID through the woodchipper.” A recent New Yorker article cites a respected estimate that 600,000 people—two-thirds of them children—have already died since the demise of USAID.

For months, Trump and his cronies have been firing federal workers, terrorizing immigrant communities, slashing funding for programs that help ordinary people so billionaires can have bigger tax cuts, and blowing people to bits in international waters, apparently just to get their manly rocks off. But these guys aren’t just dicking around. They’re gleefully taking a wrecking ball to the economy, the rule of law, and, in the metaphor of the century, the East Wing of the White House:

Busy destroying things, blaming others, filing appeals, increasing and decreasing tariffs on a whim, and feasting on the empty praise of world leaders, Trump naturally couldn’t be expected to sit down with congressional leaders to address problems behind the shutdown, like hunger and skyrocketing healthcare costs. He did, however, find the time to brag about his new marble bathroom and 90,000 square-foot gilded ballroom, and to host a Great-Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago:

The grotesque optics only magnify the callous cruelty. Melania’s jacket from Trump 1.0 (at the top of this post) says it all: They really don’t care who gets hurt.

That’s the very problem my friend pointed out so long ago. Ezra Klein, commenting on what led Democrats to end the shutdown, said the same thing, but more nicely:

Trump himself has shown no interest in a deal. Rather than negotiating over health care spending, Trump has been ratcheting up the pain the shutdown is causing . . . More than anything else, this is what led some Senate Democrats to cut a deal: Trump’s willingness to hurt people exceeds their willingness to see people get hurt.

Democrats did not succeed in getting Republicans to extend healthcare premium subsidies as a condition for ending the shutdown (if they had, as Ezra Klein and others have pointed out, they would have saved Republicans from themselves and taken Democrats’ best electoral issue off the table for the mid-terms). But they did succeed in elevating to prolonged national attention the fact that Republicans could care less about the well-being of ordinary Americans and are responsible for skyrocketing healthcare premiums. There’s a whole lot more that can and should be hung around Republicans’ necks, but this was the ticket, and it worked surprisingly well and quite probably for as long as it could. Republicans were never going to capitulate, and had the shutdown and the increasing suffering it caused continued, public opinion on who’s to blame would have switched on a dime from Republicans to Democrats. As it stands, Republicans own the shutdown, the escalating cost of living, the chaos, greed, and indifference to suffering. They own the cruelty.

That’s a message we can and should take all the way to the mid-terms. It’s time for Democrats to step away from the circular firing squad and get to work. We have lots more elections to win.

Hola!

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Almost 45 years ago, when I was a social work graduate student at UC Berkeley, I took a year of Spanish, along with my usual classes on community mental health, psychopathology, family and the law. Why not? I was there on campus anyway, and there weren’t so many hoops to jump through back then. I had a massive crush on the teacher, who regaled us with stories of his rum-soaked nights in various Caribbean countries. I took the class with my then-boyfriend’s mother, and remember her saying in class, “Soy muy cariñosa.” (“I am very loving/affectionate.”) This was not my boyfriend’s experience of his mother, but I was not going to get into it, especially in a foreign language.

Since then, I have used my very broken Spanish to communicate with the lovely women who clean our house. Their even more broken English and our elaborate gesticulations have served us well. But as things started ramping up with Trump’s terror campaign against immigrants, I wanted to resurrect my Spanish skills from the pile of rusty flakes they’d become in case I was ever called upon to use my Legal Observer training to actually help my fellow brown-skinned community members.

I was also trying to do what us older folks are supposed to do, which is to stay engaged and learn new things. This seemed even more important as my political dread and anxiety deepened my depression. To counter this, I’d tried my hand at watercolor through community ed, but each class escalated my dread and despair more than the daily headlines I was trying to distract myself from.

When the next community ed schedule emerged, a conversational Spanish class caught my eye. It was only six sessions long, met during dinnertime, and cost about three times what a regular semester-long community college class cost. I didn’t think I’d get much out of it besides hunger and the hassle of night-time driving, but at least it had nothing to do with art! Then I got the brilliant idea of trying something that was more of a commitment, and instead enrolled in a regular semester-long section of Spanish 101 that met twice a week.

It’s been the best thing I’ve done all year (besides becoming a grandmother). The teacher is warm, fun, and encouraging, and moves us along at a brisk pace. Except for the students from bilingual families, most of us sound like garbage disposals grinding down rocks as we try to converse in Spanish, but our teacher is adept at creating a safe and bonding experience. There are a few other gray-haired people in the class, but mostly it’s a diverse group of young people. We range in age from 16-77, from all different walks of life. I sit in the front row so I can see the board, along with three other gray-haired ladies, but a lovely 20-year-old woman from Uganda sits with us, and we’re all diligent about our homework and group exercises. “So you like hanging out with the old ladies?” I ask her. Yes, she does—she misses her elders back home, and wonders about our American culture’s lack of reverence for the aged.

I’m learning Spanish—“iEstudio español!” I told my housecleaners. “Oh, your Spanish is so good!” they exclaimed. At least I think that’s what they said. By the time I speak well enough to be of any use to our immigrant community, it will either be illegal to learn Spanish or we’ll be through this nightmarish time, but I’m loving the process.

As it turns out, the actual grammar and vocabulary, listening and speaking—you know, learning Spanish—is the easy part. I used to be good at languages, and I have a certain amount of muscle memory from 45 years ago. The real challenges have been:

  • Figuring out how to get onto the College of Marin site and register in the first place
  • Figuring out how to log onto campus wi-fi for all my devices
  • Figuring out Canvas, the learning platform we use as well as COM’s webmail and the virtual textbook
  • Figuring out how to do a Google Slideshow so I can submit my many homework projects on famous Latinos, “My Family,” a tour of our campus.

But the biggest and most hilarious challenge is when we’re supposed to identify pop-culture figures and say what they do and where they’re from. Bad Bunny, Selena Gomez, BeyĂłnce. I know exactly none of them by face, and others I’ve never even heard of. My one triumph was being the only person in the class who recognized Michael Jordan, of Black Panther fame. When in small groups we had to show an image of a famous person for others to identify, I was mystified by my groupmates’ choices. On the other hand, no one had the slightest idea who my pick was–Virginia Woolf, of course!

Life-long learning—what a gas, as long as it doesn’t involve picking up a paintbrush or night-time driving. Plus, I spend so much time in class and doing homework that my time to fret about the state of the country has diminished. But being around my younger, diverse, smart, and caring classmates gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Signs of Solidarity

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There are so many horrors perpetrated by the Trump Administration, it can be difficult to choose which to focus on. Right now the hair-on-fire moment is Trump’s and his minions’ weaponization of government against everyone they dislike, including rich and powerful people like Jimmy Kimmel and James Comey. This is indeed an alarming escalation.

But the assault on the most vulnerable people also continues; the reign of terror visited upon immigrants may have dropped from the headlines, but not from reality. We’ve witnessed masked agents abducting brown people off the streets and sending them to foreign gulags, gardeners who have lived here for over 20 years chased down, citizens and legal residents detained, American-born children terrified they’ll come home to vanished parents after a day at school. The Guardian reports that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in ICE detention. So much for prioritizing deporting “the worst of the worst.”

That’s why I’ve joined Signs of Solidarity (SoS), a campaign devised by Indivisible to help immigrants feel safe and welcome in our communities, to educate workers and their employers about their rights, and most importantly to communicate that we see and condemn what’s going on. As an SoS volunteer, I’ve been going around to local businesses offering free, public-facing signs in support of immigrants as well as signs designating a private space that ICE and other immigration enforcement can’t legally enter without a signed judicial warrant:

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Even when someone doesn’t want a sign because of a blanket policy against posting anything in their windows, they almost always appreciate the cause. One restaurant manager in a shopping center that doesn’t allow posting proudly put up a big flyer by the front door anyway. His neighbor, born in America but raised in Iran until the war there caused his parents to send him back to the US alone at the age of 14, was nervous about crossing his landlord, but prominently displayed a flyer on the inside counter. Customers standing in line while the cashier explained to me that she’d need to run it by the owners called out, “Thank you so much for what you’re doing.” One customer coming in for her treatment at a high-end beauty salon asked for signs to post in her own business a few towns over. A pizzeria owner, taping a sign to her window, handed me her staple gun saying, “Here, you’ll need this to make sure your other sign is secure on the outside bulletin board.”

I should say that my small town has not been a hotbed of immigration enforcement. I live in an affluent, mostly white community in one of the deepest blue counties in the country. Signs proclaiming “No Human is Illegal” bloom in people’s yards. The warm reception I’ve encountered is hardly surprising here. Possibly it would be different in a more conservative part of the country, particularly if business owners feared antagonizing a broader swath of their customer base than is likely here. There’s a natural tendency to not want to stick your neck out in dangerous times.

But if I, a mild-mannered, 70-year-old white citizen not the least bit in the direct line of fire when it comes to the more sadistic oppressions of the current administration, is unwilling to do something simple to stand up to the abuses of power all around us, then what hope do we have? We’ve seen how corporate leaders, media, universities, and law firms who capitulate to Trump only embolden him further.

I’ve been heartened by the conversations I’ve had, cheered by the growing number of signs popping up in windows downtown.

They help people feel less alone, less hopeless. They give people courage. The more we stand in solidarity, the sooner we can bring this nightmare to an end.

Fight Fire with Fire

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Full disclosure: I’m the type of person who would bring an NPR bookbag to a gunfight. Actually, I wouldn’t knowingly go anywhere featuring guns, so most likely I’d just stay home and read a book.

But suppose somebody burst into my house, threatening everything and everyone I hold dear, while I sat reading? I’d fight back however I could. An attack on my house calls for self-defense.

That’s what’s happening now with a literal attack on the House of Representatives. Republicans know that they are likely to lose control of the US House in the 2026 midterms. That’s why Donald Trump and his enablers, in an unprecedented power grab, have redrawn Congressional district maps in Texas to try to snatch five more House seats from Democrats in the 2026 mid-terms.

To counter Texas, California is fighting fire with fire with the Election Rigging Response Act, aka Proposition 50, a thoughtful counter to the Republicans’ bad-faith maneuvers. It asks voters to allow temporarily replacing maps approved by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission with new maps favoring Democrats, reverting back to CRC-drawn maps following the 2030 census. Additionally, the temporary maps would only take effect if and only if a Republican-led state redraws their maps first.

That’s the trigger Texas just pulled, with other red states soon to follow.

So it’s time to put down that NPR bookbag and fight back by voting for and spreading the word about Proposition 50, on the ballot in California’s special election on November 4. It’s the best way to stop the steal of the US House in the 2026 midterms.

Yet there’s well-funded opposition to Proposition 50: Before the ink was even dry on the state legislature’s approval for placing it on the ballot, I received three glossy mailers warning against it as a dire threat to democracy. Opponents misleadingly gave the impression that the widely respected League of Women Voters opposes this bill by quoting the League’s California President out of context. Her remarks against mid-cycle redistricting and for independent commissions were made in response to Texas’s plans to redraw their maps. In fact, California’s LVW has forcefully repudiated the unauthorized misuse of their President’s words, and has made clear that they are not taking a position on Proposition 50 in keeping with their non-partisan stance.

Californians are rightly proud of their independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (whose maps will be temporarily replaced if Proposition 50 passes). It pains many of us that the scorched-earth fanaticism and/or cowardice of today’s Republican Party has led to this point. Yet here we are.

In discussing this with friends, most see a “Yes” vote as a no-brainer. But not all (I know a lot of people with NPR bookbags). I’ve heard worries about hypocrisy, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” and other slippery-slope concerns. Some are mad at Democrats for not doing enough to fight Trump, and now appear equally mad that the party of extremely limited power is exercising one of the few options of power they actually possess. One friend is mulling over the choice between “pragmatism vs. principle,” and is leaning toward principle. I understand all of these impulses.

But there is nothing principled about letting the unpopular, destructive, and often lawless policies of the current administration continue when we have the power to thwart it. We did not ask for this fight, but since it’s been foisted upon us, we have two choices: Do nothing and let Republicans continue their assault on America, or stand up and fight.

Vote YES on Proposition 50 in the special election on November 4.

*

Make sure you are registered to vote (and tell your friends and family, too)!

Want to volunteer to help pass Proposition 50?

–Bay Area Coalition is my home base, and we’ve been movers and shakers in key elections nationwide for many years

–Stop Election Rigging

-Most importantly, talk up the importance of voting in this and other elections among your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and everybody you can think of.

Respite

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Ever feel this way? The other day, my friend, one of the loveliest and most even-keeled women I know, calmly said, “I feel enraged all the time.” She recounted a recent dream, in which she was offered two bottles of pills, one labeled “Sorrow” and the other “Aggression.” Were the pills meant to cure these afflictions, or pile on more? My friend’s antidote is knitting. Mine is hiking. So rest, weary doom-scroller, and enjoy vicariously–without the jet lag or record-breaking heat–my husband’s and my recent trip to the Austrian Tyrol. Knitting is optional.

We spent the first week in Achensee, its verdant green. lush wildflowers, and turquoise waters a welcome change from the sun-baked golden hills of California. After slipping and sliding down steep, gravelly trails, we sought refreshment from the many huttes along the way:

Next up was Innsbruck, which we had visited in September 2017, when it was under snow. The large peach hotel in the first photo is where we stayed then, but this time we were in the Old City, home of Innsbruck’s most famed sight, the Golden Roof, composed of 2,657 fire-gilded copper tiles and completed in 1500 by Emperor Maximilian I in honor of his wedding.

We stayed in the Maximilian Hotel, which didn’t have old gilded tiles, but did have air conditioning, a rare and welcome treat to cool us off after our daily hikes in and around Innsbruck.

First we took a bus to the nearby town of Zirl, and hiked a long loop starting with the Ehnbeckklamm Gorge, enjoying the ants near the Hoch Zirl train station far more than the sugar ants that took up residence in our kitchen while we were away, and coming back down past some old castle ruins from the 13th century:

Next up was the Seefeld, pastoral with a posh town and nice church, and then a hike at Patscherkopfel with a great overview of Innsbruck:

Our very favorite hike was from the town of Grizens, to Kemater Alm and the valley beyond. The trail started by traversing a long, narrow cow pasture, and the cows, protective of their young ones, were not happy to see us. Polite but insistent, they walked alongside and behind us on the trail, mooing urgently to the next group of cows to take over as they ushered us through the territory. We hurried as best we could, but I was desperate to pee and had to stop. Soon I was encircled by cows, two of whom were real ass-lickers, as I quickly learned. But really, it was a gentle tickle, quite kind treatment for an invader. We hustled out of the pasture with their persuasive accompaniment as fast as we could (and returned on the road the cars take on the way down).

Our final week was in the Stubaital, a stunning valley with the beautiful Grawa Falls, a glacier, a hanging bridge, and many arduous hikes (one Gasthaus strategically placed painted stones along the steep and narrow trail to entice children onward, but our kids wouldn’t have fallen for it):

Hang gliders were everywhere, as were gorgeous wildflowers and vistas, and even some Stone Men, an art installation in the Pinnistal a bit more sophisticated though less charming than our sleeping frog:

Here’s the view from our balcony in Neustift and the town church.

Now it’s home, sweet, home, where I need only look at this picture of our two-month-old granddaughter whenever I need a break from the world:

Another Pizza Anniversary

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My husband and I met on a Sierra Singles hike in Marin County 41 years ago today, after which we went with the entire group to Red Boy Pizza in Fairfax. Unlike the Ethiopian restaurant where Jonathan proposed and the Bed and Breakfast where we married, Red Boy is still going strong, just like us. It’s where we celebrate every June 2, always ordering a pepperoni and green pepper pizza and inflicting our history on the bored teenager taking our order.

We are not as fresh and ebullient as we were when we met, with the wear and tear long-term marriages acquire, the sometimes alarming aspects of being 70, and the outside world pressing hard on us all right now. So it was a special gift to listen today to Ezra Klein’s conversation with the writer Kathryn Schulz about how to hold radically different feelings at once.

The podcast springs from Schulz’s memoir, Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness, about the intense grief of losing her father while simultaneously falling in love with her partner. They’ve been together 10 years now, and have two kids–long past the bliss of love’s initial rush, well into the middle. The advanced middle is where Jonathan and I now live, and Shulz really captures the deeper appreciation and commitment that comes from living within those intertwining contradictions of life and love:

Most of what we read and hear and watch of love stories is either the beginning or the ending. . . . When you are happily together with someone, what actually matters to you is the middle. And actually what you want to have go on and on and on is the middle. But nobody writes about the middle. There’s very little about the day-to-day happiness and texture of a happy life, which isn’t just happy. . . . A lot of this book is about the endless overlap and contradiction and friction in different emotions. And a lot of happiness is infused with annoyance or frustration or bad days or whatever it may be, but still somehow, fundamentally feels for us that the deep and essential name you would give to it is happiness. 

Happiness is a state of profound appreciation for what you have in that exact moment.

At this exact moment, I have had 41 years with a man who sometimes drives me crazy and whom I deeply love and appreciate. I’m sure he feels the same way. And tonight we’ll both savor those radically different feelings along with our pepperoni and green pepper pizza.

Mayday, May Day

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What we’re experiencing under Trump 2.0 certainly qualifies for the universally recognized signal for distress. The first day of May is also International Worker’s Day, so what better time for a robust rally? My husband Jonathan and I happen to be retired, so we took our non-working selves up California’s North Coast for a few days of R&R, where we were lucky enough to join the tiny town of Fort Bragg’s May Day protest. My unofficial count was that well over 200 people lined Main Street, with almost all passing cars honking in loud support. Not bad for a population of 6,919, especially when you consider that the economically decimated white working class town is ripe for MAGA’s siren call.

Luckily, I had packed my portable sign, which matches my mood most days:

Several people nodded approvingly. One man told me The Scream was being used in protests all over the world. A woman remarked, “I finally understand what that painting means.” The meaning of the May Day protests–several hundred thousand participants in over 1,000 American cities and towns, large and small–is clear: People are fed up with Trump and his GOP enablers’ War on America, and the discontent is growing.

This sign was my favorite:

Happy to oblige!