The Final Winner of the Blue Riband

The garage in my childhood home was the unfinished kind.  Sure, it had exterior walls, a floor, and a roof, but no interior walls.  Instead there were exposed studs in front of the lath, which was in front of tar paper, which was in front of the chicken wire of the outside stucco.  At some point horizontal boards were nailed in between the studs here and there to provide convenient shelves.  These “shelves” held an assortment of family relics like old patina door knobs, ancient duplex-headed nails rusted in their boxes, and for some reason used spark plugs that Dad would slip into the little boxes of the new ones.  Other items were stacked on the shoulders of the chimney or stuffed in the spaces between the 2x4’s of the one window frame.

One of those things stuffed between a couple of boards near the window were some drawings that looked like the blueprints of the SS United States.  How, or even why the blueprints of that ship were there escapes me, and they were likely not actual blueprints you might use to build a ship, but more likely more of a floor plan drawing of the ship someone might frame and hang in their den, and then gaze at while holding a cigar in one hand and a brandy snifter in the other.  I know our great-grandfather invented some type or propeller system for ships, but seeing as how we are not gazillionaires, it’s unlikely that the United States or the United States employed them.  I don’t remember a lot of what the drawings looked like, in fact, I only remember the name of the ship, which is why it caught my attention when it showed up in the news this week.

But first some history.

The SS United States was and ocean liner jointly built, in the early 1950’s, by an American shipping company and the U.S. Government.  The government wanted a ship that could be easily converted into a troop or hospital ship in case another big war broke out, so they paid for most of it.  Maybe they got to choose the unimaginative name too.  Perhaps “Ship Built in 1951” was already taken.  Uncle Sam also had specific requirements; more compartmentalization to make it harder to sink, almost zero wood in any of it to lessen the chance of fire, and strong engines and a light weight for speed.  It was more of a cruiser than a cruise ship, and she could move.

Before airliners between the U.S. and Europe replaced them, people took ships, but they still wanted to get there quick.  Don’t forget, even though it was spectacularly elegant, the Titanic was going pretty fast when she traded paint with that iceberg.  There was an award was given to the fastest ship to make the crossing but only going west, something to do with the Gulf Stream.  Going east you could break speed records, but not get so much as a bowling trophy for your  troubles.  It’s complicated.  The United States broke the speed record on her maiden voyage heading east, and was awarded the award, the Blue Riband, when she returned.  She was the last ship to do so, so technically she still holds it.

Over the years since her decommissioning she has traded hands from shipping company to shipping company, has been ported in both Turkey and the Ukraine, and has been proposed to be used as a everything from a floating hotel to an island-hopper in Hawaii.  Currently she sits in Philadelphia Harbor, where, while still looking as proud and regal as a ship named after a democracy can look, she has a death sentence hanging over her.  She is owned by something called SS United States Conservancy.  This group wants to save her but the cost of just keeping her at her current level of disrepair is prohibitive.  Which is why she was in the news this week.  I guess all that Blue Riband money got spent.

The United States didn’t sink tragically in a famous maritime disaster, she wasn’t torpedoed to prompt us into joining our allies in war, she had no movie featuring a couple of flavor-of-the-month teen actors made about her.  She simply did what she was designed to do, and did it better than any ship that came before, or after actually.  She just isn’t famous enough to save.  She will probably end her life as a pile of unrecognizable pieces of steel and aluminum that will be melted down.  I guess I’m just not a fan of throwing something out just because you don’t have a use for it right now, or because it’s been replaced with something newer.  Maybe I’m starting to understand why Dad kept those old spark plugs.     

Photo is the Google Street View of the United States in Philadelphia Harbor.

Painted Dogs and Useless H's

 

 

Most of the events took place months ago.  No names were changed to protect the innocent because it seemed pointless and silly.

 

 

Andrea texted me as I was walking up Forth Street toward BART, “Find us a place for a cocktail.”  Quickly I went through my go-to list of great places to have a drink in San Francisco.  Very quickly actually, because I have no such list.  But being attracted to shiny things I soon found Annabelle’s Bar and Bistro, because 1) I walk past it every day and it has a large neon sign and 2) neon is shiny. 

                When I entered the place I grabbed a seat at the only empty table in the bar; a table for five.  The waitress’s raised eyebrow drew an assurance from me that my wife would soon be joining me, but she still left the drink menu with a side of surly glance.  I ordered a Stella Artois, not because I think it’s the best beer ever, but because I like saying Artois (ar-twa).

                It was only a few minutes later when an older gentleman came in and asked if he could share my table until the rest of his party arrived.  Thinking that his presence would help soften the waitress’s unease about seats sans butts, I pointed to a chair and said, “Please.”  He was dressed in tan cargo pants, a denim shirt, brown leather jacket and a baseball cap with Gigantes stitched across it.  He had a shock of gray hair and the natural-looking tan of someone who spends time outdoors for reasons other than getting a tan.  He said his name was Jon, “Without the H, I hate the H.”  I decided not to tell him that I have an H in my last name that I don’t even really use.

We fell into a conversation about books when I noted he was using a Kindle.  He was reading a book about the Selma and I one about William Tecumseh Sherman; both about people who performed an important march in the southeastern United States in the sixth decade of their respective centuries.    I found out he had been in Marin visiting friends who he had graduated from a New York high school with in 1963, which puts him at about 70-years-old.  I also learned that later he was going to head out on a multi-hop flight to Africa to meet with some people he was working with to stop the poaching of what he called The Painted Dogs.  Later he would be speaking to people about saving the Northern White Rhino.  Basically I was sitting across the table from Indiana Jones (Notice, no H in Indiana or Jones).

The Painted Dogs, also known as African Wild Dogs, are an endangered animal whose numbers used to be over a half million in 39 countries.  They are hunted (illegally) for food and sport.  Now there are about 6,000 left, mostly in Zimbabwe, yes that Zimbabwe, the same Zimbabwe where if you’re wealthy enough you can hunt lions right out of a zoo.  Seeing that these animals can only be found in a country so corrupt and so poor, means when American dentists and beauty queens have finished killing all the lions and giraffes respectively, not respectfully, the Painted Dogs will undoubtedly fall into their crosshairs next.  At least they may prove more difficult to hit since they are faster than giraffes who are basically very tall cows, or a lion with an arrow sticking out of him.

Painted Dogs are basically extinct in every place that isn’t Zimbabwe.  So when they are gone from there, they are gone.  Painted Dogs live in packs and their social bonds are considered stronger than those of lions; solitary living/hunting is almost unheard of.

Jon, without the useless H, said that when he retired he decided that instead of golfing or watching FOX “News”, he would go to Africa to help protect endangered animals.  Why rhinos along with dogs?  You see rhinos have nearly been hunted to extension too, but not for food or even sport.  They are hunted for their horns.

In fact there is just one male Northern White Rhino left.  One.  There are three females.  Our male is under constant guard by armed rangers, and his horn has been removed to discourage poaching.  Let me repeat that; his horn has been removed yet this animal is still under armed guard.  Perhaps the poachers think it will grow back, or maybe some people just like to kill things.  So, why do poachers want the rhino’s horn?

Because…in some parts of Asia the ground up rhino horns are believed to reduce fevers and seizures and sell for $30,000 a pound.  Unlike ancient tradition and superstition, medical research (research that passes testing and peer review) says that taking ground up rhino horn for any reason -reduce fever, stop seizures, cure cancer in Vietnam, or get better boners, yup it’s used for that too- is about as affective as chewing your fingernails.  Because that’s what rhino horns are, fingernails.  If these poachers were smart, they would collect the sweepings from manicure/pedicure shops, grind them up, and get their $30,000 a pound that way.  Plus it would be hilarious to see some old fart snorting up what he’d been told was rhino horn and pretending it was making him healthier or giving him a better…you know, when in fact he was snorting up ground up toenails from the Curl-Up-&-Dye Beauty Salon.

On a side note; Annabelle’s has closed and been replaced by a place called Keystone.  The cool neon sign is gone, along with a name that seemed friendlier and more personal than Keystone.  I have no news on the surly waitress.

Head East

There is something very basic about waiting your turn.  I remember all the way back to kindergarten when we would line up to to get into class, line up for our milk (Producer’s-Hoppy’s Favorite), line up to go out to recess, and line up to get back in when the bell rang.  Who can forget lining up for the drinking fountain while the kid in front of you pretends to drink, smacking his lips and making loud Ahhh sounds just to make you wait? There has to be a reason that waiting one’s turn is one of the very first things we are taught.

You can argue whether or not to pull over for fire trucks but the “no cuts” rule is internationally recognized as one of the basic tenets of civilized society.  It is set in stone.  “First come, first served” should be the motto on every country’s seal or coat of arms, and every sermon in every house of worship on every Sunday should include a reference to Queuing Theory.  

Waiting your turn as logical as red means stop and green means go (which may be logical in two ways).  I’ll bet that more people know that you should wait your turn for things than know how to swim or remember to set their clocks for daylight savings time.  It’s ingrained, it’s more than habit, it’s in our DNA, the same as fight or flight, and The Buffalo Bills will never win the Super Bowl.  

So is it any wonder that the very fabric of the universe seems to be rent asunder when someone does the opposite?  When a person cuts to the front of the line, whether we are queued up for clean water in an earthquake ravaged country or for a free sample of cheese at Costco, we can conceive of no punishment too severe.  

Cut the line to the movies?  Off with his head!

Slip to the front in the grocery line?  Tar and feathers!

Crowd ahead in a restaurant?  Forced listening to the entire Yoko Ono discography.

It is a known fact that line-cutters throughout history have caused immeasurable suffering; Hitler’s tanks cutting around traffic on the Bzura Turnpike in 1939, Captain Smith zooming past other ships to see who could get to the Atlantic ice fields first in April of 1912, and Angelina Jolie being fast-tracked past better movie ideas to create Maleficent just last year.  Seriously, have you seen it?

 

On Monday, March 9th there was a robbery in San Francisco.  The alleged perpetrator, hoping to avoid apprehension, escaped down the BART tunnels.  Not the best escape plan when you consider that the third rail has about a 1.21 gigawatts of electricity in it. This shut down the BART in all directions like someone flipped a switch.  We arrived at our station to head home at 5:20, but we didn’t get on a train until 7:00.  But delays are just part of the system and don’t happen, at least not like this, every day.  We chatted with other riders, looked at our smartphones, and generally waited our turn. Except for this one guy.

With about 60 or so people lined up for each door, one guy milled around the front of the line, pretending to be listening to the official announcements.  Then when a Fremont train finally showed up, he slipped in ahead of everyone.  To make it worse he was an “Upstreamer.”  Upstreamers are riders who get on BART going in the opposite direction they want to go.  They leave a crowded station and get off at less crowded one.  Then they cross the platform for a train heading the direction they want to go that is also less crowded, hoping to get a seat.  This usually works, except when all stations are crowded like on Monday.

So Upstreamer MaGee, I’m pretty sure that was his name, got on that Fremont train and was gone, heading east before those of us either too far back in line for the Fremont train, or waiting for one also going east, but to another destination could board.  When the Pittsburg / Bay Point train showed up, we crowded in among the end of the workday armpits and those guys in spandex biker shorts.  It moved very slowly and at each station had to stop to let people off, where more people squeezed on.  

Seven stops down the line, at an outside station, there were still so many people on the train that some of us had to step out to allow those who wanted to to disembark.  When who should appear to my wondering eyes but Upstreamer MaGee.  He had jumped on the Fremont train just to get outside in the fresh air and now here he was getting on a Pittsburg train, my train.  Technically he was still crowding ahead of all those people behind us and since he was now getting on my train, he was actually crowding ahead of me, albeit just by a few feet.  I wanted to call him out, I really, really wanted to.  But I held my tongue.  This is until a couple of stops later when that tongue was released like a South Carolina Confederate doing the rebel yell.  

When we stopped at that station I, along with Mr. MaGee, stepped off the train momentarily to allow offboarding passengers to...offboard.  As I returned to my spot on the train, I guess I was going too slow and he said, in a shrill voice like a panicked 17th century French nobleman when he finds a tear in his bicycle shorts, something along the lines of, “You must let me back on the train!”  

I said, “I am.  Just wait a second.”  Once on the train the Confederate tongue-wagger in me couldn’t hold back.  Standing just a foot or so behind his head, I said in a loud and booming voice, “I can’t believe the guy who cut in line at Civic Center gave me shit about getting back on the train too slowly.”  He never turned around. Childish I know.  But oh so satisfying.

When he left the train for good I never noticed.  I wanted him to take a parting shot at me and had several sharp retorts in my quiver, but he slunk away.  Of the quips I had prepared, I think, “Enjoy smoking turds in purgatory” may be my favorite.

God May Be Making a Comeback

Having to go without any new written words by Him in thousands of years, fans of God’s work were delighted to hear the announcement today that there will be a new piece written by Him published later this year.  A previously unpublished work has recently been discovered by one of God’s many lawyers in a safe deposit box in the West Bank Bank and Loan, along with a copy of The Odyssey signed by the author, a dog-eared paperback version of Catcher in the Rye, and a dodo bird skeleton.  

When reached for comment God said, “Yea, looks like they found something I wrote very early in my career.  Sort of a draft really, and probably not something you’re going to be reading on the beach this summer.”

God goes on to say that when the document was shown to him and it was suggested he publish it, he was at first reluctant.  “I was afraid that people would think I was just doing it for the money.  And I doubted that anyone was clamoring for yet another previously unpublished work from someone who was famous years and years ago.  But then I found out that there are people who really want to hear from me, a lot of people apparently.  Who knew?  And if they can dredge up unpublished works by Harper Lee and Dr. Seuss, why not God?”

Later this year a sequel to To Kill a Mocking Bird called Go Set a Watchman and a Dr. Seuss work titled What Pet Should I Get? will be published years after they were written.

When asked about those other writer’s “new” publications God said, “I’m pretty excited about the new Dr. Seuss book to tell the truth.  That sucker could write!  You think I created some amazing stuff?  Try saying, ‘When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...’  Ha, ha, man I still can’t get that right unless it’s written down right in front of me, and don’t get me started on turtle stacking.”  As for the Harper Lee book he says, “I’m going to adopt a wait and see attitude on that one.  I mean, it might be great or it might be like Johnny Depp’s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  That movie kinda creeped me out.”

The new work from God is an early version of The Ten Commandments which was much shorter than what was delivered to Moses on Mt. Sanai.  As God puts it, “Originally I had just one commandment; Thou Shalt Not be a Dick.  I’m no Stephen King, but not bad right?  I thought it pretty much covered everything, and I should know because I created...you know...everything.  But Mo said I needed to be more specific.  So he and I hashed out the top ten.”  He seemed to reflect for a moment before going on, “You know, I still think it would work.  I mean if you kill, or steal, or lie, you’re kind of being a dick, right?”  He seemed to get a little angry when He said, “And did we really need to burn a whole commandment just to say you can’t say Goddammit?”  He eventually changed mood back and said, “I even had a great name for it,” as he drew his hand, fingers spread open, across his field of vision as if describing a marque and said, “The Commandment.”

When asked about the other items in the box He said, “I got that Odyssey signed the day before Homer died, but I kind of had the inside track on that one.  It’s probably worth a ton of money now, but I don’t need it.  I’m pretty comfortable financially.  Catcher in the Rye is only in there because I had to read it in high school.  Just forgot to throw it out.”  And the bird skeleton?  “I’m a little embarrassed about that.  It wasn’t a skeleton when I put it in there.  Poor little guy.”

The document will be published as a hardback book, a Kindle book, a special edition from the Franklin Mint on a stone tablet, and on vinyl narrated by Morgan Freeman.  It will not be available on Nook.

Tolerance Town

“...the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

                                                                       -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

There used to be this very funny commercial.  It featured the Earl of Sandwich, holding court in his castle or mansion out in the English countryside, as if he just sat around all day thinking up sandwiches.  They had this actor made up with the blue silk clothes, white hosiery, shiny black shoes with large buckles, powdered wig, the whole getup.  The similarly dressed court would be brought to silence and he would announce a new idea for what to put between two slices of bread.  When the sandwich was presented on a silver platter he would say something like, “Peanut butter...and banana,” pronouncing banana “ba-nah-nah” and delivering the line with a flourish and maybe a lacy handkerchief in his hand.  Very clever.  Probably too clever because I have no memory of the product they were selling.

I often think of this character, or caricature, when I hear the word tolerate.  Someone sitting on a throne, bored with the little problems of the little people, and having to tolerate behavior that is obviously far beneath his station and his important time.  Like he gives a shit.

These days we are told we need to show tolerance.  We are to tolerate political views, religious beliefs, and social behavior other than those to which we subscribe.  But who am I to tolerate, or judge for that matter?  I’m not a real fan of the thinking that there are levels of people.  I’m more in the all men created equal camp.  We’re all on the same journey.  I have no business judging my equals and I could care less how they judge me.  I’m neither the fictitious Earl of Sandwich nor the Grand High Poobah of Upper Buttcrack (Thank you Stephen King from Dolores Claiborne).

Tolerate?  I’ll go you one better and ignore you all together.  

I’m from the school of if it feels good, do it.  If it makes you feel good to pray to this god or that one, if you want to follow that leader or this one, or if you want to slice banahnahs and put them on peanut butter, do it.  Read what you want, write what you want, listen to the music you want, make the music you want, marry whomever you want, make laughless movies about the bat-crazy leaders of the northern half of countries on the other side of the world.  Let your freak flag fly.  I don’t believe it’s my job to tolerate your behavior.  Knock yourself out.  I just have one request; don’t knock anyone else out.

Don’t hurt anyone.  If you hurt someone with your behavior or in the name of your beliefs, whether physically, mentally, verbally, or maybe even financially, that’s the point where you’ve forced me into Tolerance Town.  It’s a place where I now have to decide how I feel about your behavior.  It’s a place where I have no business residing.  It’s a place where I don’t like to be, like Oxnard.  It’s a place from which I will be forced to make a decision on your entitlement to my tolerance and from which I will likely find your credentials sorely lacking.  Basically, by acting the way you did, you’ve made me become the parent and now I have to pull the car over.  And we were making such good time.

So here we all are, sitting in a hot car by the only stretch of California coast that isn’t even a little bit nice, I’m pissed at you and you’re pissed at who knows what, and now no one is happy.  Way to go.  Make me the bad guy?  No, that makes you the bad guy.  You’ve gone from a “fellow traveller” to “another creature” bound to...well to I really don’t give a shit, because now I am the Earl of Sandwich or the Great Grand Poobah...you get it.  You are wrong.  No matter who you “say” you are avenging and no matter how many thousand-plus year old quotes from some long dead court reporter you present to justify your behavior.  No shit will be given from me.  Besides, you’re lying about all that stuff anyway.

Artists and writers died this week in Paris.  Intelligent people who made jokes about everyone, leaving no one safe from their satirical pens.  Had the Earl of Sandwich been around today, and had the version from the commercial not been fictitious, they would have made fun of him.  Jokes.  Just jokes. They heaped ridicule upon the powerful, which is a newspaper's job.  

They died violently and suddenly because some men found their jokes offensive to their poorly tied, twisted-knot view of divinity.  Do you know what I find offensive?  People who walk around with an air of superiority, as if they’ve been given the divine right and duty to root out all those who cast even the slightest aspersion on what they hold dear, or are mildly interested in, or pretend to be devout to in order to quench some blood lust, and then celebrate when the imaginary line only they can see is crossed and they get to kill.  

The writers and cartoonists lives were taken by men who had to exert mere ounces of pressure on a trigger to kill so many (yea guns!).  Their lives were taken by men who faced almost zero threat to their own lives for their opinions, even when they strolled into an office building (on their second attempt because they went into the wrong place at first), clinging to guns and religion, to start their slaughter (there was a police bodyguard and two other French police officers, who were outgunned and stood no chance.  Good guys with a gun easily cut to zero by bad guys with a gun).

Those artists lives were taken by men who contributed ab-so-lute-ly zero in this world and I can only hope that they will receive a reciprocal reward in the next.  But then again, about those men, I don’t give a shit.

It’s Easy Until it Isn't. It Works Until it Doesn't

When it’s easy I walk to the BART station from our place in Walnut Creek.  I move past the shops and restaurants of downtown, most of which are too pricey for me to patronize.  I navigate around the men with leaf blowers, blowing sycamore and magnolia leaves off the sidewalk and into the street where they magically disappear.  (As a side note, what has a longer shelf live than a magnolia leaf, Twinkies?)  Most mornings there are so many people getting on the train, and already on the train, that I don’t get a seat.  When I do it’s a simple pleasure, unless someone more deserving than I comes along; the elderly, a pregnant women, blind people. If an elderly, pregnant, blind woman ever boards the train she'll probably get two seats. When that creepy guy with the filthy beret who won’t stop staring at people shows up, I let him stand.  At the Civic Center Station in San Francisco where I emerge out on to Market Street, if I look over my shoulder I can see the dome of City Hall.  I have a 15 minute walk down Seventh Street past far less pricey shops and restaurants than Walnut Creek, and then I’m at my office.  On the reverse trip when I get to the Civic Center Station I go to the far end of the platform where the train cars are less crowded.  The inexperienced BART rider just gets in line at the bottom of the escalator or steps and finds himself smushed with everyone else, including the creepy beret guy.

                Yup, it’s usually easy and it usually works.  Then history happens, both bright and grim.

                The bright history was the Giants winning their third World Series in the past five years, which prompted a parade down Market Street that ended at City Hall.  The parade started at noonish and ended when the speeches in front of that beautiful dome ended.  Whereupon it was supposed that the fans would make their way to whatever transportation they used to get there.  When five o’clock rolled around and I left my office to go home that day, the speeches were winding down.  My guess was I would be heading for the Civic Center BART Station from the south side just as 100,000 fans were heading to it from the north.  It would be like walking into a tsunami of baseball jackets, caps, and panda hats. 

                When I got to the bottom of the stairs and looked across the station, it was a sea of orange and black.  My first thought was that I’d be lucky to see my front door by midnight.  So I girded my loins and pushed through to the turnstiles, fully expecting to get in a line that moved with all the enthusiasm of a school of fish but the speed of a DMV queue, but then a miracle occurred.  The majority of those in line weren’t waiting to get to the platform, they were waiting to purchase tickets.  For some reason they hadn’t thought to buy the round-trip ticket in advance.  Rookie mistake.

                After I got to the escalator, which was shut off for some reason, I walked slowly toward the platform.  At the bottom an elderly woman was being helped off the last, irregular steps and toward a waiting train.  Someone above me yelled, “Hurry the fuck up!”

                Someone below me responded, “It’s an old lady, shut the fuck up!”

                His reply, “You shut the fuck up.”

                “No, you shut the fuck up.”

                After I got to the bottom and moved to the far end of the platform, they were still volleying no-you-shut-the-fuck-ups, off in the distance.  The BART signage let me know my train, the Pittsburg/Bay Point would be there in a few minutes.

                When that train showed up a second miracle occurred. It was empty.  Not who put the milk back in the fridge with just one gulp kind of empty, but completely empty.  Not a single seat taken.  not a living soul aboard.  It’s the urban myth of the Bay Area commuter; an empty train, fresh out of its original packing, plucked from some sidetrack hidden deep in the tunnels under the city, and put into service because of the unusual circumstances of the parade.  I got on, moved to the back of my car, and – get this - sat down.  When the train left the station it was about 90% full, and about 99% orange and black, it was Halloween after all.  At the next three stations before the Trans-Bay Tunnel people smashed themselves in, stuck together like MilkDuds.  None more deserving than I came close to my seat.

When we popped up in West Oakland we were feeling pretty good until the conductor announced that the train would be taken out of service at Rock Ridge station.  Once there we all de-boarded and stood as the again empty train pulled away.  It was probably a 20 minute wait until the next, fully crowded train show up.  I rode the last few stops standing which wasn’t too bad, but filthy beret guy got a seat.  You can just throw those in the washer right?

The grim history grew out of the shooting of a man by police in the Midwest, and the decision by the grand jury there not to indict that officer for that shooting.  Protests erupted across the country and eventually got to Oakland.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I was taking both boys to San Francisco to meet their aunt and cousin who were touring the ballpark.  We would have lunch and then come back.  It was the boys’ first ride on BART but we only got as far as Rock Ridge.  The same station where I was kicked out on Halloween.  The announcement said trains were stopped at the downtown Oakland station by civil protests.   We waited, waited, and waited. 

The Oakland protests, like other protests across the country, have been coat tailed with violence and looting, so I figured I wouldn’t ride a train with my sons through there, even if they started heading west again.  Eventually a train came from Oakland and took us back to Walnut Creek.  We ended up seeing Auntie Donna and Cousin Sarah that evening at our place and instead of eating at Super Duper Burger in San Francisco, we just got pizza.  As it turned out, the BART closure protests were marked by their peacefulness and the quiet acceptance those that were arrested displayed.  They made their point and moved on.

I do see that the justice system is not applied fairly to all races, in all places.  I fully support everyone’s right to gather, march, and cause disruptions to get their cause noticed.  I don’t support broken windows and looted businesses; people are human and flawed.  I didn’t rant and rave when our trip to the City was curtailed and I told my boy who did that sometimes things happen and we just have to accept that a small inconvenience to us is necessary for a larger point to be made by someone else.  I pointed out that it is historic and likely will not happen the next time we make that trip.

Every morning when I arrive at work I walk past the plaques for officers who have died in the line of service.  Some by accident and some by the violence of others.  The most in one year was 5 in 1906.  All while protecting their neighbors.  Are all cops paragons of virtue? Nope; two San Francisco cops just got sent to prison for theft.  Again, flawed.  Some of the people in my officer are what we call Sworns.  These are sworn police officers who just happen to work on computers and phones.  They joke around, they were bummed when Robin Williams died, and they get frustrated by train delays.

Everything is easier when it works.  Figuring out how to make it work?  Not so much.