Three Sunrises and a Cup of Joy

 

                 It’s November, 2021, about a week before Thanksgiving.  Cheri and I have been living in Tahoe City, Lake Tahoe, California, for almost two years now.  We’ve learned, and everyone who lives in the area and pays attention knows, the cold months are the months when sunrises and sunsets at Lake Tahoe are popping with vibrant color.  We live in a house that faces southeast, so we can see the sunrises, but we only get the reflections of the sunsets in the eastern sky.  That’s okay with me because I prefer a good sunrise to a good sunset. Sunsets, while nice, represent the end of something.  They are light fading to darkness.  Sunrises, on the other hand, represent the beginning.  Sunrises are light overcoming darkness. Sunrises represent hope and expectation and possibilities. We usually wake up before sunrise and start a pot of ground whole-bean coffee, so we’ve seen some spectacular sunrises, and each one brings its own measure of happiness.        

I’ve been getting similar sunrise happiness feelings watching this years’ version of the Golden State Warriors play basketball.  They play stellar defense.  They move the ball with purpose and quickness.  All the players – even the stars -- are unselfish, they share the basketball, they work hard, they work together, and they believe in each other.  They are good.  They have a lot of fun.  And they are winning. It doesn’t always work, but when it does all come together it’s fun and uplifting to watch. Warriors Coach, Steve Kerr, has been promoting this style of basketball ever since he became the head coach of the Warriors back in 2014.  The mindset of the team flows from Kerr’s four core values: Joy, Mindfuless, Compassion, and Competition.

                I usually start my day with coffee and end it with red wine.  I have a wine barrel stave that is painted with this saying: "life is what happens between coffee and wine."  These delightful beverages book-end my day with joy and comfort.  Pick me up in the morning, settle me down in the evening.  Sunrise, sunset.  Sunrise, sunset.  I probably overdo the coffee.  I have two or three cups of black coffee, then take a hot shower and walk down to our local coffee spot, Tahoe House, and get a double shot medium latte and a fresh pastry.  Now that double shot latte is a pure cup of joy.

                Last Thursday, exactly a week before Thanksgiving, I drove down to Madera, in the central San Joaquin Valley of California, for a business meeting.  I left before sunrise, stopped at Tahoe House for my usual cup of joy, and headed down the mountain.  From Tahoe City, before you head down the mountain you meander 13 scenic miles along the Truckee River to pick up the I-80 in Truckee.  Heading west on Interstate 80 from Truckee, before you can head down the mountain, you have to climb up to Donner Summit.  Heading west up the mountains between Donner Lake and Donner Summit I watched the sun rise over the mountains behind me, lighting up the valley cradling Donner Lake.  A few miles later I crested over Donner Summit, and lost the sun as I started downhill toward Sacramento.  Twenty minutes later, as I was coming up on Big Bend, I saw a second sunrise cresting over Donner Summit and lighting up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.  But after I passed Big Bend I got down in a trough heading Southwest toward Colfax and lost the sun again.  Just before I got to Colfax, I saw the sun rise for a third time over my left shoulder out my driver's side window.  Not all sunrises are created equal, but every sunrise is a thrill of light and hope and possibilities.  This day I got three sunrises with my cup of joy.  Wow.  That’s a good day.

                But the joyful, happy feelings, powerful as they were, didn’t last too long.  Just before Auburn the road descended into heavy fog that persisted all the way down to Sacramento.  Around Roseville I started seeing homeless camps all along the freeway, along fences, fields and underpasses.  Almost all of the homeless encampments were ramshackle and full of trash.  I’m not talking about the people, which at sunrise I didn’t see too many of, but about the proliferation of garbage.  Paper bags, plastic bags, bottles, cans, containers, fast food wrappers, shopping carts, abandoned clothes and shoes.  Just a lot of garbage.  So depressing to see so many homeless encampments – representing so many people unable to afford to live in a real house or apartment.  So depressing to see such awful conditions and so much garbage.  I thanked God for the blessings of my life and the plenty in my life.  I can’t imagine being homeless, but if I was, I believe I would at least want to have a neat and clean and tidy homeless camp.

                When you come to the Watt Avenue exit off the westbound I-80 you see the Haggin Oaks Golf Course on your right out on the north side of the freeway.  I looked over and saw a flock of wild turkeys out on one of the fairways, and a couple of Toms in the flock had their tail feathers fully arrayed.  We can assume this flock was all Toms, since I am informed that, in the fall, male turkeys flock together and female turkeys flock together, but usually they don’t mix. https://blog.nature.org/science/2017/11/21/the-fascinating-fall-behavior-of-wild-turkeys/    Also, generally only the males will fan their tail feathers.   https://askinglot.com/do-female-turkeys-fan-their-tail-feathers  So this was probably just a normal gathering of male turkeys strutting their stuff on the golf course. 

It struck me as ironic, though, that a week before Thanksgiving, with homeless people all around, and almost certainly, a number of them not having enough to eat, that here on the golf course near them, a rafter of wild turkeys was cavorting unmolested.

                Before we moved to Lake Tahoe I bought a hybrid Honda Accord.  The car is rated to get up to 48 miles per gallon.  My plan was to have a car that we could take on road trips and to have a car that was more ecologically responsible than my gas-guzzling Ford F-150 4x4  pickup. I still need the truck, but I drive the hybrid Honda when I’m not needing a truck or a 4x4.  I am concerned and anxious about climate change and global warming.  The effects and evidence of climate change are undeniable and, frankly, frightening.  I thought of the terrible wildfires and wildfire smoke that have been getting worse each year, plaguing us every summer from July to September.  So when traffic slowed to a crawl through Sacramento, and I was surrounded by thousands of carbon coughing cars and trucks on the morning commute, I was thinking: Shit! This environmental suicide is taking place all around the world every single day.  Morning and evening.  We are doomed!

We are killing the planet that sustains us.  We are like a cancer slowly killing our host.  I feel sorry for my kids and the next generations following us, and I am a little ashamed that I have been an unwitting, and also a knowing, contributor to this f-ing disaster and planet-wide ecological suicide.  Every week now I read articles about where you can move to if you want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.  Of course, options like this will only be available to the rich.  So in the future, we will have even more homeless and miserable people -- some economically displaced, and some ecologically displaced.

                I continued to see many homeless encampments all the way down through Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley.  All dismal and disorganized and depressing and ramshackle with tents and tarps and garbage.  Then, around Lodi, I passed one encampment that was organized and neat and free of garbage.  Seeing it was like a breath of fresh air in a Covid world; like a hopeful sunrise after a dark night.  I thought, if I am ever homeless, these are the kind of homeless people I want to associate with.  I mean, how hard is it to pick up the garbage surrounding you so you don’t have to live in the middle of it?  I used to preach this to my employees; you don’t have to, and in fact you can’t, solve all the problems of the world; but every day you should do at least one thing to make your life and your environment better.  It doesn’t take much time or effort, and doesn’t have to cost anything.

                I resolved to stop at a Starbucks in Lodi for another cup of joy – the good ol’ double tall latte.  The Starbucks parking lot I stopped at was packed with uniformed police officers.  I overheard that they were gathering for the funeral of a fallen co-worker.  I thought of my favorite scene from the Harry Potter movies.  It’s near the end of the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, where Voldemort and the death eaters are presenting a dead Harry Potter to the remnants of the resistance group outside of Hogwarts school, and Voldemort invites them to “join us or die.”  Unlikely hero Neville Longbottom limps forward and says:  “It doesn’t matter.  People die every day.  Friends, family. Yeah, we lost Harry tonight.  But he’s still with us-in here.”  (motioning to his heart)  It’s true; People do die every day.

                The Harry Potter books (movies) are a classic kind of tale about the struggle between good and evil. In this context, good wants what is best for all and evil only wants what is best for the evil ones. It seems to me that, in my lifetime, and particularly over the past 20 years or so, the people of the United States have become more divided, more polarized, and more uncivil.  Despite a lot of flag-waving and talk about “this great country,” it sometimes seems like this great country is falling apart. 

People seem to be redefining good and evil as, if you believe like me, you are good; if you don’t, you are evil.  We have flipped the definitions of good and evil around to define good as wanting what is best for me.  If we see you as evil, we don’t feel any compulsion to act civilly toward you, or to actually be good in regard to our own actions in dealing with you.  Driven, in part, by the algorithms of social media, we have fallen into the trap of group think, and we have become inwardly focused, selfish and self-centered.  We no longer have empathy or compassion for others who are not like us.  It seems to me that what we need to bring the U.S. back together is a good war.  I always like to say, if you want people to get along and work together, you have to give them a common enemy.  I used this psychology on my own daughters with a high degree of success (I was the common enemy).

                Maybe we could turn things around and still avoid the ugliness of war if we could just get a good, national leader like Steve Kerr who will coach us all to work hard, work together, believe in each other, compete hard but also be unselfish, and to have fun.  Maybe we can all be coached to care about each other and the planet, and through an all-for-one-and-one-for-all approach, and hard work, we can solve seemingly unsolvable problems like global warming, trash in our environments, poverty and homelessness.

                It’s Thanksgiving, dammit!! Damn meanness and incivility.  Damn laziness and selfishness.  Damn trash and global warming.  Damn homelessness and hunger.  Damn wildfires and wildfire smoke, and damn the fog.  I want clean air and a clean planet.  I want goodness and niceness.  I want everyone to work hard, work together, and have enough and a good place to live.  I want to live a life full of the thrill of light overcoming darkness; a life of hope and possibilities.  I want to live a life of fun and joy.  I want to be happy and thankful.  Give me three sunrises and a cup of joy, please and thank you. 

Shop Conversion

My project this summer was the conversion of a 600 sq. ft. shop into living space.  It was a good challenge for a newly retired guy.  All interior decorations, including the choice of paint colors, tile, flooring, etc. were done by my better half.

We went from this:

            

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From this:

        

to this:

      

to this:

From this:                                          

 

to this:

to this: 

From this:

                            To this:

      

to this:

to this:

From this:                                                

to this:

  

                    

I love it when a good plan comes to fruition. 

What We Are Not Now

Six decades is a long time.  I know this, having lived a little bit longer than that now.  Well, it is and it isn't.  60 years is certainly long enough to have been through a lot of things that are well back in my yesterdays, and to have been a lot of things that I am not anymore.  I was young once.  Energetic.  Bright.  Thin.  Poor but not impoverished.  Practically everything was a first.  Life was exciting and interesting and new, and I had time enough and hope enough to think I could conquer the world, or at least a little part of it.

Whatever hasn't been conquered, well, to hell with it.  Just give me a cold beer and a place to sit down.  I'm not dead yet, but I'm not what I used to be.  Crosby Stills & Nash used to sing: "Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now."  But really, until we are also plagued with dementia, how can we not?  

Don't misunderstand me, I am not complaining.  I have nothing to complain about.  Life is good.  My life is good.  I have been very blessed.  Still, one thinks about the ironies.  Like, once I spent a lot of time chasing after money on the theory that having money would make me happier.  And I am happy to have some money, but looking back on it, the happiest times of my life were those days before I had any money.  And now?  Like so many others, I'd gladly trade some of my money to get back some of the time I spent chasing the money.  The good years.  The healthy years.  The by-gone years.  Huh?  Talk about post-purchase dissonance.

Fishing has been an important part of my life, and an important occupier of my time.  So I like the fishing metaphors.  Like, if you spent the whole day fishing but didn't catch any fish, was it time well spent?  Did you enjoy it?  You know, a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.  But you know, the best days of fishing were the ones when you caught a lot of fish, and the super special ones when you caught  a monster!  

It makes me tired to think about how hard I used to work to get to some of the best fishing spots.  Hiking in the mountains for days with a 50 pound backpack.  Crawling through brush on my hands and knees.  Hauling boats and gear to hard-to-reach water.  Shoot, I can't even lift the 50 pound pack anymore without getting a hernia.  I ain't crawling through brush to get fish! And I ain't sitting squished all day in a tiny boat smaller than my bathtub. We can just buy some fish at Alioto's or Stagnaro Brothers or Save Mart or Long John Silver's, or wherever we can get fish without hauling or crawling or squishing.

I am reminded of a time, about 15 years ago, when I was fishing at Huntington Lake with my late father-in-law.  He was about 75 years old, then, but not in good health.  When the pole I set up for him started bouncing with a Rainbow he got up from his lawn chair to go reel it in, and I stood with him because he wasn't too stable on his feet then, and the ground sloped pretty steeply toward the lake.  When he reeled the fish up to the edge of the shore he started to take a step forward to go get the fish, and would have fallen if I hadn't grabbed his belt loop and pulled him back.  

So this is what I see: I am headed inexorably down this slippery slope, from 50 pound packs to 50 extra pounds; from crawling through brush in the wilderness to limping around the house wishin' I was fishin'; from sitting in small boats hard-hauled in to exotic waters to sitting in lawn chairs by the road around the lake with the rest of the ho-hum crowd too lazy or unable to work for it; from let's go catch a big one to lets go get some Long John Silver's fish and chips from their drive-through.

Sixty some years gone by and, for sure I am not now what I used to be.  Of course, I never was, and probably never will be.  I finally see clearly that I am headed down the slippery slope of decline into the abyss, and today I have decided to  answer one of the age-old questions that occupy the minds of philosophers:  Why Are We Here?  Or, more personally, why am I here?

Aw hell!  Just rushed into the kitchen to get something, then stood there for a minute trying to remember what, couldn't remember, and came back.  This figuring and philosophizing is too much for me now.  I think I'll just go throw my lawn chair in the back of the truck and head out to the fishing hole.   You know, the one by the road.