Road Work

Dear J-

Although I typically spend much of the year in shorts and therefore am never at a loss for what to wear* theVet sometimes despairs of my choices with a kind of resigned sigh because compared with me she actually cares about such things as coordinating colors and matching, say, belt to shoes. Although I’m now a hopeless case and my appearance should not be considered an indictment of her efforts, she does freely edit what I’ve chosen for figgy (I suspect she actually buys clothes that are unable to be mis-coordinated — they can all match) because I don’t seem to have been born with a keen sense of color.

My favorite part of the trip north is passing through the San Luis Reservoir on California Highway 152. After coming out of the Grapevine you go through a hundred plus miles of flat flat flat land; once you hop off Interstate 5 onto CA-152 you go through hills and water that puts me in mind of the Europe I know from movies and pictures: lush peaks kissing a cloud-filled sky, winding road to delight and thrill in equal measures. I sometimes wonder if I should take this section to drive myself, as reward for slogging through the long dry straight, or turn it over as I get a chance to take pictures instead. One glance over at theVet is enough to tell me I made the right choice (no matter the choice — we have made both choices at different times).

We make for decent traveling companions when not stressed out by schedule or angry kids (they are at the moment asleep and therefore perfect), pointing out sights and spouting off obscure trivia in playful banter. The longer we spend tracing the routes laid out by the wise traffic planners I’m convinced I’m the luckiest guy in the world, surrounded by people I love and who love me enough to point out what I could be doing better and incredibly happy to do those thousand small courtesies that seem to come more naturally now than ever. The settings change and the pictures too: I could have sworn that college was five years away, not fifteen, but the feelings are constant.

Mike

* The sartorial program is absurdly simple:
If (going to work today)
  Then (khakis and polo shirt) and (stuff I didn’t wear yesterday)
Elseif (penguins show up outside)
  Then (jeans and t-shirt)
Else (shorts and t-shirt) and (sniff shirt to ensure acceptable)

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LEGO Island

Dear J-

My eyelids are heavy tonight.  It’s been a long fun day in the shadow of Monday, and if the best treatment for that is a healthy dose of ignorance and defiance, I’ve got enough banked from today to cruise for the rest of the week, sleep deprivation and all.  We’d been planning a trip to LegoLand since Christmas but it came together nicely today, the surprise was complete and the delight worth talking about over and over.  Even bringing Calcifer along as a nonparticipant worked out, with eyes open and watching us with the grave expression we’ve come to love.

If you forced my hand and made me encapsulate the day into a single episode it would be this:  figgy running amok in Miniland, dashing here to there in as loud and obtrusive a manner as possible, other parents either giving me an eye askance or sympathetic, depending on the verdict rendered.  I didn’t mind.  After five hours in the park she still had the infectious enthusiasm she arrived with.  After five hours of rides and food she still had the wherewithal to ask for a snack and then fall into a deep, trance-like sleep on the way back, secure and sated on the day’s feastings.  It was a boost to our psyches, having brought this day to her and later them; the lessons of giving versus receiving never grow old.

Mike

Race to the Right

Dear J-

It’s election day in much of the country, and here in California the real money has been spent securing the Republican nomination for governor, in an increasingly odious series of ads attacking each others’ conservative credentials (“You’re the liberal.” “No, you are.” “Liberal!” “Nuh uh!” “Yuh!” …&tc.) between Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman. The shameless pandering to voters makes for an uncomfortable political season — between opinion polls (when did they get so long and cumbersome?) and campaign flyers (hey, at least the USPS and printers are benefitting) I’m excited about today almost more as a cessation of hostilities. Scratch that; after today, they start in earnest attacking the other parties (and from the looks of things, it’s going to be Carly Fiorina taking on Barbara Boxer for Senate and Meg against Jerry Brown for Governor, assuming the latest numbers hold up).

Carly Fiorina’s success mystifies me, as her tenure at HP wasn’t marked by wild success (the old “bit off more than you could chew” seems particularly apt, especially when considering the merger with Compaq). Meg Whitman’s strategy has been about personal reserves of cash — the person yelling loudest is often the one that’s heard the best, and US$81M buys a lot of volume — while talking about general banalities voters want to hear, but without detail: job creation, fiscal responsibility. CEO doesn’t always translate into political success or ability, though becoming CEO takes a fair amount of political skill, it’s also (or at least should be) based on merit, whereas politics, like pop music lately, is about image and grooming.

It is undeniably great to see female success in American politics not characterized as solely female: the national scene has long been dominated by crusty old white guys, ever since the founding of the nation (check out our money, for instance), and the same attacks are now being slung at candidates with equal opportunity — for instance, in South Carolina (already stung by one Governor who couldn’t keep it in his pants, Mark Sanford) one of the Repulican candidates, Nikki Haley, has been hit by allegations that she had extramarital affairs. Here the timing is suspect — one week before primaries is to the cynical eye a clear stab of desperation, especially when one of the accusers used to work for a rival candidate — but I’ll admit I learned about it in a story with the eye-catching (and immensely patronizing) headline “Haley Has Bad Week.” Aw. Maybe she’ll pack up her dolls and go home to cry, is that what you were hoping, Establishment? There is, after all, a reason we call it The Man, and I love watching the changing face of the nation collectively spit in its eye.

Mike

P.S. Promise not to make too many political entries because of my clear biases.

Water Ways

Dear J-

Through some sort of strange coincidence we found ourselves at two of the Department of Water’s stations along the I-5 corridor, the San Luis Reservoir and Pyramid Lake. The timing had something to do with the flood in figgy’s pants and something to do with her behavior, as she ran away the restlessness in the visitor’s centers. The total trip takes roughly ten hours each way with all the stops figured in (we made three each time), though we are now running low on unique places to pull over — that middle part north of Santa Clarita and south of Highway 152 is pretty desolate.

The San Luis reservoir is down in volume, as I noted before — when we pulled over the winds were amazingly fierce, in sharp contrast to the baking heat at Pyramid Lake. The Southern California site is more glitzy inside too — blinking lights and animated displays showing the tortuous path water takes from Lake Oroville to Lake Perris. The hours we spent are nothing before the mighty civil works; I grew up not far from Grand Coulee Dam and am constantly amazed at the scale of machines. Yet with all that said, why they can’t make I-5 any wider north of Fullerton to keep traffic faster than a crawl makes no sense at all. Should they eventually build the promised high-speed rail system that’s one stretch of road I won’t miss.

The one constant was figgy running laps at each stop — kid’s got energy to burn and the last thing she needs is to be strapped to a chair for ten hours and forced to sit still or sleep; we’re still trying to get her to fall asleep for the night. We’re still learning about each other, you know, and the more I understand the more we can make sense of the things we do.

Mike

California Notes

Dear J-

One thing that you might want to know for later is that the 34 miles between Highways 46 and 41 along I-5 can be the longest stretch of road in the world if you fail to realize that there are no suitable turnouts or recreational opportunities for active toddlers not used to being cooped up for hours on the road. Lesson received loud and clear; do not plan on explaining that you were wanting In’n Out instead of Carl’s Jr. to a two-year-old — that kind of thinking gets you nowhere.

Thanks to an aggressively merging tractor-trailer, we missed our turnoff onto Highway 152, leading west past a perilously low-looking reservoir (last year I could have sworn it was like a scene out of the Alps; this year it was more like Mad Max) and sun-dried meadows to Gilroy. Instead we made it up to Santa Nella and the moderately famous Andersen’s (notable for their split-pea soup) — intrigued, we went inside to poke at their gift shop; we ended up having to bribe figgy out of the handful of toys she’d collected by offering magical pocket contents — another travel pro-tip, then: don’t travel without a pocket flashlight, as you never know how handy it can be.

Ten hours and nearly five hundred miles later we’re that much closer to swearing off car travel altogether; I sometimes suspect that we bring as much stuff as we do because we can, not because we have to. Yet the distant miles lend a sort of perspective on how far we’ve come. The sense of displacement is magnified by this not being the same house I grew up in — same parents and the same eclectic decorations, but different arrangements and configurations; maddeningly familiar and totally strange, all at once.

Mike

Mind Block

Dear J-

Funny thing about sunsets here — lately they’ve been so regularly spectacular (and being on the west coast, working in spitting distance of the ocean means that every night this month we’ve watched that bloody orb slide into the sea) that I start to gloss over how impressive its been.  So it goes; the slightest rain sends us into timid sulkiness, and temperatures lower than fifty are greeted with grumbling about how global warming can’t come soon enough.  The “Kurt Vonnegut” (really Mary Schmich) Wear Sunscreen speech from a few years ago advocated living in both Northern and Southern California, but leaving before the North made you too soft, and the South made you too hard.

We believe that whatever our faults may be down here in the South, surely everything else must offset those faults:  the laid-back attitude compensates the risk-taking, you’re regularly stuck in traffic but at least you can roll down the window and enjoy the weather, sure there’s earthquakes but at least no hurricanes.  I suppose it comes down to weighing your trade-offs, and what you find important.  With the forest of rumors and the current economic climate I actually find myself weighing options I wouldn’t have guessed at six months ago.

We have the question of relying on public schools — that’s at least a decision that can be deferred another four or so years — or hoping that figgy qualifies to go to a magnet, or contemplating private school.  This leads to the idea of moving for a better district, but trying to sell in this market is akin to cutting off your leg.  For fun.  So if not moving, perhaps a more secure job?  Or am I secure enough and just regretting the commute more with each day?  When I was little it seemed like the more you grew up the more answers you had to all those whys and hows.  Maybe it was just a shell game, this balancing the sheer terror of overwhelming choice with irresistible forces of change.  I believe it was more a simple prioritization and then fitting the pieces into place around that skeleton.

Mike

Who You Marry

Dear J-

Between the longer work schedule and the end of Daylight Savings Time, we’re headed home in the deep dark tonight.  While I appreciate getting some sun on the way in, if I had it my way, the mornings would start later, and the nights could stay away a little longer.  The rising of the dark leads to all sorts of risible arguments about Proposition 8; the latest riposte is from the supporters, refuting the point that schools are not and will not be forced to teach same-sex marriage.

Deprived of the obviously bigoted viewpoint that same-sex marriage is unnatural, all the out-of-state supporters (I’d really like to know who the Knights of Columbus are, and where) have seized on scaring people into thinking their children will be brainwashed into accepting such unions as possible and workable.  It’s ludicrous, of course; every assertion made in support of the proposition — that children are best raised in a family that, short of death or divorce, consists of one female mother and one male father, for instance — falls apart under not-even-close scrutiny.  Take the aforementioned nuclear family; there’s nothing talking about how toxic some parents can be — if the goal of parents is providing and providing good examples (love, diligence, and stability) that’s nothing that gender and sexual plumbing affect.  Or conversely, would you argue that house-husbands, because they fail to conform to the narrow definition of a traditional marriage, confuse the classical masculine role in a relationship?

In exactly the same way, the proponents of Prop 8 underestimate the perceptiveness of children and the narrow bonds of social norms.  So what if children are exposed to same-sex marriage in school?  Are you so willing to provoke years of anguish and denial in the teenagers who remain afraid to come out?  Why do you choose to accept only one defintion of marriage?  How does it affect your marriage?  How does it help you sleep at night, knowing that you perpetuate persecution, repression, and denial?  How does it make for less government when you amend the State Constitution?  What right do you have to abridge the rights of others in the pursuit of happiness?  It is such small-minded wording that keeps us vigilant, ever-wary of the abridgement of personal freedoms.

Mike

Props Revisited

Dear J-

Okay, so the whole Prop 1A analysis didn’t go so well, but in reading some more about it, I think that it’s well-intended, but not sufficiently worded — although it does divide out roughly 10% of the money to administrative costs and 10% to encourage local mass transit, there’s no estimate of actual costs (you’d think that for signing away $10b in bonds, we’d have at least a rough order of magnitude), and there’s little contract language that ensures that we’ll ever see anything tangible out of it.  I want to support it, but I can’t.  It’s exciting, and it’s sexy, but the substance behind the flash isn’t there.

Prop 2, on the other hand, is pretty much a slam-dunk yes to me.  The sample ballot has it phrased as requiring “that certain farm animals be allowed, for the majority of the day, to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down, stand up and turn around.  Perhaps it’s the latent vegetarian in me rising up (I spent a few years chewing brown rice and lentils), but anyone who’s seen factory farms can attest to the conditions.  And yeah, like anyone who buys meat in its glistening, quivering aseptic glory, individually wrapped and presented under fluorescent lights at the grocery, it makes me sound like a huge hypocrite, because I buy the product without any thought to the production.

And doubly so:  here, again, is the government regulating what you can and cannot do.  Yet the regulation of businesses bothers me far less than the abridgment of individual rights; corporations are much harder to hug, and lack faces and emotion.  Plus with the naked greed of de-regulated companies laid bare in the past few months (we’re in business to make money!), protesters at the WTO decrying the influence of companies in politics start to make a lot more sense.  Someday I might get over the thought that a gain for business comes at the expense of the individual, but for this election season it feels like it’s all about us and them.

Mike

Speed Rail

Dear J-

I’m reading the text of the proposed Proposition 1A — in the past I’d contented myself with reading the pro and con arguments and their rebuttals, and maybe the Legislative Analyst’s analysis, if I had the time.  Since there’s just under a month to go, and the only thing that I haven’t quite made my mind up on are the propositions, I figure I might as well exert my mind a little and see what’s worth voting for.  Well, that’s the plan, anyway, as four thin pages of Prop 1A is enough to give me a headache.

So I gave up — for now — and concentrated on plotting the chart of where these high-speed rail links are supposed to go instead.

The nine billion (!) dollars are only for the link from San Francisco to LA, as far as I can tell, and the way up from San Diego avoids the heavily populated centers of Orange County.  So long as it works, I suppose, but with the proposed routes and cities served as it stands on the bill, I would be hard-pressed to find much utility (e.g. the shifting of air passengers from San Diego to Los Angeles) in it, at least from where I live.

Mike

Legoland California

Dear J-

Sunday in Legoland; the less time I have at home it feels like we spend more time finding places to go.  Legoland’s close, the food is good (not just for amusement park food — still overpriced, but at least it’s tasty), and best of all, it’s got LEGOs.  All right, LEGO Bricks and Toys (TM) — thank you, Shop-at-Home service.  We made a beeline for Miniland as soon as we were through the gates and if it wasn’t for picking up and physically dragging figgy from some of the models there, we might have stayed in Miniland all day.

The idea of a Legoland seems odd — after all, you aren’t going to see a Barbie World or Transformer-ville, but somehow it hangs together well.  There’s a charm to seeing the same things you dreamed of as a kid grown large and taking over a whole theme park; you always knew that with enough LEGOs you could make anything, and here’s a place to prove it.  We’ll be back as figgy gets bigger.

Mike