My birthday dinner at Chez Panisse

"The American life-style is non-negotiable," said George H.W. Bush -- and then he and his sons almost immediately proceeded to negotiate away as much of it as they possibly could to bankers, tycoons, weapons manufacturers, lobbyists and Congressmen on the take.

And not only was the Bush family's and the corporatists' enthusiastic deregulation of our public safety guarantees and the wholesale looting of our treasury a huge threat to the American life-style, that but when our oil runs out in a few years, we can forget that life-style completely! According to James Howard Kunstler's book "The Long Emergency," in less years than we would like, we'll all be back to living like the Amish.

But there is one part of the American life-style that I absolutely refuse to negotiate until I absolutely positively have to -- my yearly birthday dinner at Chez Panisse. Even if I have to scrimp and save all year long, even if I have to beg my grown children to treat me, I'm going! Nothing makes getting older more bearable than having a birthday dinner at Chez Panisse.

I can't find the fancy little souvenir menu they gave me which says exactly what me and my son Joe ate, but I can still (vividly!) remember most of it anyway. Salmon carpaccio, rack of lamb and cherry pie. Plus I took plenty of photos. Here they are.

News from Berkeley: The Alameda County Fair, Pick-N-Pull & Chez Panisse

If you are having trouble trying to keep from being driven completely nutso by all the grim, horrible and terrible national and international news headlines that just keep pouring down on our heads, then perhaps it's time to take a break and focus in on some of the good things in life instead. And there actually are a lot of good things happening here, locally, in my own home town -- which happens to be Berkeley.

One good thing about living in Berkeley is that you can never get bored.

For instance, a friend of mine just started working at a new Japanese grilled-chicken restaurant called Ippuku, and on July 15 at 7 pm, I'm going there for dinner -- so that I can compare their grilled chicken kebabs with all those chicken kebabs that I ate daily while in Iran for a month back in 2008. Iran is the Queen of too-dry chicken. Will Ippuku do better? They have to! Here's a review of Ippuku (which is the Japanese word for "Take a break"): http://www.umamimart.com/2010/07/sneak-peak-ippuku-berkeley/

I also have plans to spend the night at Arnieville on Russell Street and Adeline, camping out with the disabled people there who are protesting Governor Schwarzenegger's rather foolish budget cuts to salaries for their home-care workers. Will let you know how that goes.

And here's a trilogy of articles I just wrote about Berkeley -- or at least the East Bay area. Hopefully these places will cheer you up too:

The Alameda County Fair: "We had fun!" http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2010/07/alameda-county-fair-we-had-fun-lets-go.html

Pick-N-Pull: America 50 years from now?
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2010/07/pick-n-pull-america-50-years-from-now.html

My Birthday at Chez Panisse
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-birthday-at-chez-panisse-american.html

Pick-N-Pull: America 50 years from now?

My daughter's friend recently needed some spare parts for his car. "Wanna go to Pick-N-Pull with me?" he asked. Pick-N-Pull? What's that? "It's an Elephant's Graveyard for old cars." Let's go!

Pick-N-Pull is located way out in Richmond, in the Iron Triangle area. Guys (yes, it's a guy thing) go there to pull spare parts out of old cars so they can get used parts on the cheap. The place has HUNDREDS of old cars -- row after row, just sitting there. And looking like what American streets will look like in 50 years after we have run out of oil.

Ashley's friend brought his tool box. A bunch of other guys did too. And, yes, there were a few women there, but not many besides me. And the pickers and the pullers were all leaning over engines with wrenches and stuff. I loved it. Rows and rows and rows of cars -- most were from the 1990s. There were only a few really old cars and trucks. We looked at them all -- but Ashley's friend never did find the right part for his car.

PS: Approximately 40 rows at Pick-N-Pull were devoted to the ruins of American-made cars, mostly Cadillacs, Saturns, Buicks and Fords. And only approximately five rows there were devoted to broken-down foreign-made cars. What does that tell us?

The Alameda County Fair: "We had fun!"

"Let's go to the Alameda County Fair on Wednesday," said my daughter Ashley -- and I, of course, replied, "Yawn." But I was wrong. We went and had a really good time.

Not only was there a carnival with all the rides and monster foot-long corn dogs and all that kind of stuff but this really was a true county fair and there was pie judging and flower judging and demonstrations of gadgets that you never knew that you needed and quilt exhibits as well.

And there were also chickens. We bought chickens. We now have four chickens -- they were four for $20 (and also came with food). We named them Smokey Robinson, Sun Rocker, Mariqa Mustache and Scary Spice.

"Did you like the fair?" I asked my two-year-old granddaughter Mena.

"We had fun!" she replied. And we did.

We are ALL pelicans: The harsh consequences of environmental pollution

Last night I dreamed that I was interviewing Oscar the Grouch. But when I woke up, I discovered that it was only a leg cramp that had caused the dream. Do you know how to cure leg cramps? Here's how. Use an exercise that physical therapists call "The clam shell".

Assuming that this evil cramp is in your right leg, then lie down on your left side, thrust your right hip as far to the left as you can go, bend your right leg half-way, and then move your right knee up to the ceiling and down to the bed or floor a few times -- like a clam shell opening and closing. Voila. End of cramp.

It's the sideways motion of your leg that does it. The muscles get confused. They think that they are only spozed to move back and forth, not sideways.

And clams got me to thinking about pelicans and all that oil-spill mess in the Gulf. If someone doesn't contain that spill soon, our oceans could become hopelessly polluted -- and if the oceans lose their ability to breath oxygen into the atmosphere and our oceans die, then you and me will probably die too.

When our oceans' inability to process oxygen is combined with our disappearing forests' inability to process oxygen plus our reduced oxygen levels caused by car exhaust, air travel and war machines, then any fool can tell that we humans will soon be in big trouble -- not to mention that nobody seems to notice the huge amounts of totally dangerous nuclear waste we are accumulating, along with enough piles, mounds and masses of plastic Coke bottles generated daily to be seen from the moon if they were all in one place.

Am I the only one alive today that notices this stuff?

Anyway, after I woke up from the Oscar the Grouch dream, I got to thinking about pelicans. You know, the ones all covered with oil; the ones with the look in their eyes that says, "What happened? What hit me? Help!" And that "greasy-pelican" look could pretty much become ours soon too, in a shorter amount of time than we would like -- covered with pollution, wondering what the freak had happened to us and slowly dying.

Not only that but there are approximately six billion people on the planet right now and each one of us has added at least one plastic bottle per (week, day, month, check one) to the landfill -- or what used to be our farmland. Dig into the ground almost anywhere 20 years from now and you won't hit oil. You'll hit plastic. And rusted-out old cars. And toxic chemical sludge. And nuclear waste. Unless something changes drastically in the very near future, in less time than we can imagine, we are all gonna be pelicans too.

PS: Actually, the human race does have one saving grace on the horizon -- the end of oil. When we are out of oil in a few decades, at least there won't be so much carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere any more. Who would have thought that being forced to go back to candlelight, horse-drawn buggies, caissons, cavalry and manual typewriters would be just the ticket to save the human race from extinction?

PPS: I was listening to progressive radio talk-show host Mike Malloy the other day and some right-winger commented that, "If only Ronald Reagan was alive today, he would have searched for an answer to the oil spill problem -- and to all of our other problems too." Dream on, wingnut. The only answers that Ronald Reagan ever searched for involved looking for newer and better and more corrupt ways to make him and his rich buddies even richer.

I'm not sure if I got Mike Malloy's quote exactly right here or not -- because I was too busy cleaning my apartment to take notes. Yes, after all these years I've finally found a house-cleaning system that works for me! Every weekday between 6 pm and 8 pm, I listen to Malloy's radio talk-show on Green 960 AM and clean house. Then I get so angry at all the major Republican neo-con screw-ups he tells us about that I take my anger out on my apartment and actually manage to get stuff cleaned up and/or thrown out.

Next I'm going to take on gardening, another task that I hate, and garden from noon to 3 pm every day while listening to Randy Rhodes -- taking my anger out on the weeds.

Currently every kind of right-winger you can imagine is busy telling me that if only America puts Republicans back in office, then they will clean up America's mess. Not! Republicans and their various rich-dude allies are the very ones who made most of this freaking mess in the first place -- as well as getting all us poor sweet victims of their nefarious plans to be all scrambling at each others' throats while they, like the Beagle Boys, clean out the mint.

It's like the old "Hair of the dog that bit you" theory I guess -- that if we only drink more of the Republican neo-con Kool-Aid that got us drunk in the first place, our hangover from the last batch won't hurt quite so badly? How naive do they think that we are?

If we really want to clean house in Washington, perhaps we should do it while listening to Mike Malloy!

Islamic Terrorists: Creating a Frankenstein monster

Back in approximately 1528, when the very first black man was snatched from a village in Africa and shoved onto a slave ship, somehow a ball got rolling that has consequences even down to this day. That single act of brutality began a long, slow process that eventually resulted in the proliferation of violence and crime in America's inner cities four centuries later.

Cruelty always gets the ball rolling, gets the party started -- but in a bad way.

So. What cruelties, exactly, got the Islamic terrorist ball rolling? Was it when Mohammad (PBUH) wrote the Qu'ran? And if it was, then why aren't most American Muslims now terrorists too? And why don't their teenagers run in violent gangs like so many Christian teenagers here do? Dearborn, in Michigan, for instance, has a very large Muslim population and the largest mosque in America. So why aren't the Muslims of Dearborn all terrorists? Obviously it's not their religion per se that is turning Muslims into terrorists. So it must be something else.

"But what could it be?" you might ask. I think you could get an answer to that question from any competent psychologist since Freud. Terrorists aren't shaped by their religion. And terrorist aren't just born that way either. Terrorists are created by their childhood experiences. Terrorists are created by cruelty.

Take Afghanistan for instance -- a country that's known for its terrorists. Those terrorists didn't just suddenly spring full-grown from the head of Zeus. No, they were systematically created by centuries of systematic cruelty.

First the Brits brutally invaded Afghanistan. Then the Russians brutally invaded Afghanistan. Then the Americans brutally invaded Afghanistan. Brutality. Cruelty. Injustice. And now we wonder why that poor country is overrun with terrorists? Duh.

And then there's Iraq. The Brits systematically destroyed democracy in Iraq. And Americans gave Iraq three gifts that kept on giving: Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe and Abu Ghraib. In Iraq, Brits, Americans and their European allies created a Frankenstein monster -- step by step, day by day.

And during approximately the last 90 years, Palestine has been systematically invaded by various forms of Europeans -- not to mention the Crusades. Whether it was Lord Balfour, King Richard or David Ben Gurion who invaded the Holy Land, these Europeans have all worked really hard to create Frankenstein monsters in Palestine too -- and America to this day still keeps footing these invaders' bills.

Sure, a few Palestinians have hijacked some airplanes in protest -- but Europeans and Americans have hijacked their entire region.

And remember how British Petroleum and the CIA worked in tandem to violently destroy democracy in Iran and to replace it with the West's own bloody Shah, king of torture?

Face it, guys. The whole Middle East has been under the jackboots of American and European colonialism, imperialism and cruelty for a long, long, long time. And, keeping that thought in mind, you might also consider the suggestion that perhaps we are looking at Islamic terrorists from the wrong perspective. Perhaps if it hadn't been for the calming and civilizing influences of Islam, all these Frankenstein monsters that the West has cheerfully created in the Middle East might have turned out even worse.

Consider what happened when Europe and America unleashed their cruelty on the Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. At least the Middle East didn't turn out as badly as all that. Maybe Islam actually helped give Muslims something hopeful to cling to in the face of all that Shock and Awe.

PS: As you may have already noticed unless you're brain-dead or watch Fox News, the military-corporatist structure that brought us Rwanda, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib is still in the driver's seat in Washington now and still happily doing all its usual cruel nasty stuff. Which can only make me wonder -- as our democracy dies and so does our economy -- what kind of Frankenstein monsters are they happily creating here at home too?

PPS: And what, exactly, is the justification for all this cruelty? Apparently the justification is greed. Geez Louise! Just how many extra yachts do you guys need? Is it true that Dick Cheney is the world's first trillionaire? And has all this endless supply of big bucks flowing seamlessly into his coffers from faulty oil platforms and endless wars made HIM happy? Yeah right.

PPPS: I am assuming that you do know that the oil spill in the Gulf could be worse than anything even the most fiendish terrorists could ever have done to us, right?

I just read somewhere that there are billions of teeny-tiny little crustaceans in our oceans and they are using all that excess carbon dioxide in sea water (which would otherwise be harmful to us) to build their sweet little teeny-tiny shells. And if they didn't build these shells, there would be too much carbon dioxide in the oceans, it would be released into the air and we would all die. So if the oil spill kills off all these cute little guys in the same way that it is now killing off dolphins and turtles, we will be doomed.

To quote Wilbur the talking pig, "I don't wanna die!"

And speaking of pigs at county fairs, me and my family are going off to the Alameda County Fair next Wednesday. Joe and Ashley are going to buy me a chicken -- to eat all the snails in my postage-stamp-sized yard so that I can plant a victory garden. I'll let you know how that goes.

Arnieville: Cutting CA home-care will cost us six times as much

If you walk or drive down Adeline Street in south Berkeley right now, you will see dozens of disabled people camping out on the median strip in the middle of the street. "We call this place Arnieville," I was told. That, however, is not breaking news. That story has already been covered on TV.

People on crutches and in wheelchairs are out in force, protesting a whole bunch of huge new state budget cuts to their home-care provider's salaries. These care providers allow disabled Californians to live on their own. The disabled protesters have been camping out in protest against these radical and life-endangering cuts since June 22, 2010. But that's not hot news either.

The disabled campers are holding a press conference over the Fourth of July weekend. Is that going to be big news too? Probably not. Nor is it breaking news that someone just dropped off a homemade blackberry pie for the disabled protesters to eat as they camped. But it was good news for me! My two-year-old granddaughter Mena got a slice of the pie -- and she also got a ride on one disabled camper's wheelchair. Mena thought that was totally cool. But then she didn't have to be confined to a wheelchair and totally dependent on her home care provider seven days a week for the rest of her life.

Disabled people are the most courageous people I know.

However, one disabled person disagreed with me regarding wheelchairs. "We are not 'confined' to our wheelchairs per se," she said. "Actually, our wheelchairs liberate us and give us freedom. Without them, we would be forced to spend our lives just lying in bed." I don't think that Mena would like that either. And using one's wheelchair to give oneself freedom is a truly appropriate way to celebrate Independence on the Fourth of July -- far more appropriate than Washington's many attempts in the last ten years to disable the United States Constitution.

Perhaps it is breaking news that people in wheelchairs and with other disabilities are building a life-sized paper mache statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger right here on Adeline Street today. Or perhaps not.

It might be sort of newsworthy that a few dozen disabled people are now out here struggling to keep their protest going, to take care of their camp and to take care of themselves when most of them are physically incapacitated -- up to 80 or 90%. Please! If there are any civic-minded young and strong volunteers out there who can come down and lend a hand at keeping the camp running, you will be totally welcome.

"Can I help do the dishes or something?" I asked one of the organizers, a woman with an obvious degenerative disease. "Oh, that's okay," she replied, perhaps worried that I didn't look much stronger or energetic than she did.

No, it's not news that I'm not as able to do the heavy lifting needed at Arnieville as the Governator himself would be. "Hey Arnie! Come down here and help us pitch some tents!"

What really was the breaking hot news at Arnieville today was when my neighbor Jana Ovebo drove up in her wheelchair and said, "If the state eliminates our home care workers as planned, then I will have to be institutionalized -- just in order to survive." Jana has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was nine years old and can barely even move by herself. And yet she still manages to run her own business, Disability, Resources, Exchange & Mobility Supports (DREAMS). And she still manages to come down to Arnieville and protest.

"The cost of my care if I was institutionalized," stated Jana, "would be SIX TIMES more than what the state is now paying for home care providers." Without her home-care workers, Jana would either have to be immediately institutionalized or be allowed to die on the street. Either choice sucks eggs.

And one home-care provider involved in the protest just informed me that, "It's not only our salaries that are at stake: The Terminator is also trying to eliminate 40% of state funding for the entire disabilities program. This would knock thousands of people off the program all together. Then there's the cuts to Medi-Cal, Adult Day Health and other services that keep seniors and people with disabilities in their communities." And these people would also have to be institutionalized at six times the cost of what we are paying now? Yikes!

Hurray for Arnieville! That's the GOOD news.

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Photos by Bob Patterson