Bead 29: Me Too

I don’t know why it should matter that Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford went to school right down the road from me. These things happen everywhere; of course they also happen in the wealthy suburbs of Washington, D.C. 

But the more I sit with this, the more I think: These things happen everywhere. It’s just that in the D.C. suburbs, we’re not just talking about men who have power because they are white and have testicles. We’re talking about men—and emerging men—whose power spikes exponentially with their assets, family legacy, and political influence, none of which are in short supply along the Beltway.

These things happen everywhere. But in the D.C. suburbs, they take on an added shade of horror. 

My dad was a doctor, but my family wasn’t rich. There were five of us kids, and we had moved from Georgia to Maryland with reverse buying power. Our new house was smaller than our old one, and cost over twice as much. It was a safe neighborhood, but not fancy. Not like the kids we went to church with, the ones with tennis courts, gymnasiums, home theaters, countless bathrooms.

We went to public school. Of course we went to public school. Multiplied by five, tuition at the private schools in our area—Georgetown Prep, Landon, Bullis, Holton-Arms—would have approximated my father’s annual take-home pay. Public schools in Montgomery County were top-notch, anyway. After abysmal Georgia, there was no question we’d get a proper education.

All around us, though, were families who wanted to give their kids an extra leg up and could afford to do so. Our neighbor went to Georgetown Prep. A couple of fellow swim teamers went to Landon. The kids from church—almost all of them—attended Bullis and Holton-Arms. I didn’t know much about private school life, other than that it seemed to involve skirts for girls and lacrosse for boys.

I did know something about the schools’ reputations, based on what drifted down my own school’s corridors. It wasn’t just baseless pigeonholing; plenty of Wootton kids ended up at parties with private schoolers, and could speak to their strengths and weaknesses. 

Landon boys were hot. Holy Cross girls were sluts. And variations on that theme.

I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I bought the stereotypes. The two Landon boys I swam with were hot, after all. More than likely, Holy Cross girls were sluts.

* * * * * * *

I wasn’t a slut. I was a good Mormon girl. I didn’t drink or smoke or have sex. I barely even dated. In my awkward late adolescence, I still felt nervous around boys I liked. 

My friends, to a certain degree, did drink and smoke and have sex. But we were all wholesome kids. By day, we baked cookies, went for runs, taught each other guitar licks. By night, we hung out in the parking lot at Travilah Square, our school’s unofficial meetup spot. We went dancing. We drove around and stole signs we hoped we’d be allowed to display in our bedrooms. The parties we went to weren’t especially wild. They weren’t in the richest neighborhoods, and didn’t involve many private school kids.

There were plenty of Friday and Saturday nights when we didn’t go out at all. We would instead hole up at my friend’s house, the one with the super-cool dad who seemed more like an extension of our social group than an authority figure. 

* * * * * * *

What if the rumor had been that Georgetown Prep boys were rapists? Could that rumor have even gotten started? Would I have believed it? Would it have made it up and down the hallways? Or would it have gotten turned around, twisted, before it could be passed along, even once?

Georgetown Prep boys can’t be rapists if Holton girls are asking for it.  

* * * * * * * 

On Facebook today, I saw this comment. It was on someone else’s timeline, made by a woman I didn’t know, whom I’ll call Helen.

“I don’t think she would have faced the scrutiny had she not waited 36 years to do the accusing. I find it hard to take an accusation serious when she waited until she could be used by the Democrats before she said anything. I truly believe that a strong woman stands up for herself in the moment or not at all.”

Below Helen’s comment, a revolting amen from another woman I didn’t know:

“Yes. So. Much. Yes.”

My first thought, besides fuck you, was that more than likely, neither of these women have been assaulted. Then I thought, statistically speaking, they probably both have. But through some profound social aberration, they felt empowered enough in the moment to look past shame and denial, raise their voices, fight back, call attention to their perpetrator—whom they almost certainly knew—and themselves. 

Or maybe Helen and the yes woman could be strong because they didn’t know their assailants. Maybe their attacks were the stuff of news stories. They got jumped in a parking garage and narrowly defended their virtue with car keys to the eyeball. They got cornered in an alley and screamed and purse-swatted until help arrived.

Then I reread Helen’s comment, and registered the “not at all” part of the formula. According to Helen, you can be a strong woman even if you don’t stand up for yourself in the moment, provided you keep your violator’s secret forevermore. Possibly, she and the yes woman belong in the latter category.  

By Helen’s definition, as I write these words, I still meet half the criteria of a strong woman. 

* * * * * * *

I had a thing happen in high school. The perpetrator was my friend’s dad. It was a small thing, really. We were all watching a movie, and he was giving us back rubs, as he sometimes did. 

It was a weird time for me; I was in the middle of a ten-day speaking hiatus prescribed by my speech therapist for vocal cord damage I had sustained from singing too loud. I hated to be silent, but I was trying to follow her orders, getting by with notes and gestures as best I could. For urgent communication, I would whisper.

It was my turn for the back rub. I didn’t think anything of it. 

I can’t remember the name of the movie we were watching. I think it had to do with a prison system where the primary method of containment was a collar you wore that had an explosive receiver on it. When you got too far away from the central transmitter, your head would be blown off.

Maybe it was that movie; maybe it was another. I know I watched that movie in that basement at some point during high school, but it might not have been when I was on my speaking hiatus, and my friend’s dad was rubbing my back.

I don’t remember the date. I don’t remember how old I was or what grade I was in.

His hands were on my back, and then suddenly they weren’t; they had slipped over my shoulders and down into my shirt. I froze, let his fingers move around. This wasn’t happening. I had friends on either side of me. It was a giant sectional couch. There must have been six people in that room, and two of them were his kids. It was completely dark, and silent save the movie sounds, which may or may not have been head explosions, but were in any event of no consequence to me because I couldn’t hear anything.

It might have gone on for thirty seconds. It might have gone on for a minute. Time was dimensionless for me. There was only darkness, and silence, and fingers.

I whispered to the room, “I’m going to get a drink. I’ll be right back.” I ducked out of reach of my masseuse and up the stairs. In the kitchen, hands shaking, I poured myself a glass of water.

He showed up in the doorway, looking concerned. He put on an apologetic smile. “Hey,” he said, “I’m sorry about the shirt thing. Can we still be friends?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

* * * * * * *

I told one person about my friend’s dad. Not my parents, not the police, not his wife or his kids—not anyone that could have done anything about it. I told a different friend of mine, and then tried to erase it. What happened in the basement felt less like a violation than an embarrassment. I wanted it to go away. I was a good Mormon girl, and I didn’t want anything to change.

By Helen’s definition, at this point, I am no longer a strong woman. I didn’t stand up for myself in the moment, count one. I had an opportunity to redeem myself by never speaking of it again, by continuing to pretend, as I briefly did on that couch, that it wasn’t real. I could have extended my ten-day speaking hiatus into a lifetime of denial.

But I’ve broken the silence, count two. 

Somebody else, some stronger woman than me, blew the whistle on my friend’s dad. He ended up in jail for child molestation, long before #MeToo. He will never be appointed to the Supreme Court, and I will never have to publicly out him. My credibility will never be called into question because I can’t remember the date, or the year, or the name of the movie, or whether the plot, after all, involved exploding heads. I will never be the subject of Facebook comments made by people like Helen, faulting me for how I handled it as a child and how I’m handling it decades later, in my forties. 

It was a small thing. It was almost nothing. I emerged from high school in Montgomery County, Maryland virtually unscathed.  

* * * * * * *

In a news article, I read that more than half of the women that have graduated from Holton-Arms School since 1984, the year of Christine Blasey Ford’s own graduation, have signed a letter of solidarity with Dr. Ford. They believe her, and applaud her courage in telling her story. They want a thorough investigation of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate’s confirmation vote.

It shouldn’t be political. A woman is assaulted by a man who later appears poised to claim a lifetime seat in our nation’s highest court. For that woman, it would be unconscionable, disgusting, regardless of which party she identified with, and whether that was his party, too. If she was strong enough, she would tell her story. 

Dr. Ford is strong enough. She stepped out of anonymity, her career, her life far away from the D.C. suburbs, to alert the nation to Brett Kavanaugh. In doing so, she had to not only relive what happened to her, but be actively disbelieved, scorned—even mocked by the President. It shouldn’t be political. But right now, everything is political. Sexual assault is evidently no exception.

I love the thousand-plus Holton alumnae supporting Dr. Ford. I love women supporting women. In a society where 81 percent of us have been sexually harassed, and one in three will, at some point in her life, experience contact sexual violence, how can we not support--and believe--one another?

It doesn't matter that she can't remember the date or location. It doesn't matter that she is a Democrat. It doesn't matter that she didn't report it at the time. Of course she didn't report it at the time. She was a little girl, 15 years old, scared, living in a community--and world--that protects its wealthy white men, and raises its women to be nice.

She stood up. She spoke. She did the hard work; as her sisters, we only need to have her back.

To Helen and her friend I say, this is what real strength looks like.

Bead 28: Voting from the Road, and One Last Plug for Jessica Morse

"It's just that most people have a home base," the election official told me. "A place they come back to."

"I know," I replied. "But I don't."

We were at the tail end of a phone conversation in which I had been trying to explain to her that my son and I were truly homeless. Last November, we had whittled our possessions down to what could be held by 65 cubic feet of Subaru and 392 cubic feet of PODS container, and had driven out of the foothills of Madera County, California, where we had lived for eight years.

We weren't homeless in the way that would encourage the election official to invite Child Protective Services into our conversation. It was a nuanced thing; we weren't living on the streets, but on the road. Still, she allowed as how our situation was above her pay grade. She said she would have to refer the matter to Stephanie, the Elections Department manager.

My concern was the upcoming primary. On June 5, California will go to the polls to identify, in the state's peculiar fashion, which "top two" candidates for each office will advance to the November ballot. Although I could register to vote in Palo Alto, where my mother is graciously collecting my mail, I can't make that feel right. I don't know Palo Alto. I have never lived there, and frankly feel no kinship to its wealthy, tech-made populace.

In the past, I could barely be counted on to vote in a general election, much less a primary. But since the Dawn of Trump, I have taken a particular shine to my civic responsibilities. And I've centered my efforts on what was, until November, my home turf: California's Fourth Congressional District.

California's Fourth District (Waterwheel Falls, Yosemite National Park)

California's Fourth District sweeps down the Sierra Nevada from Truckee to Kings Canyon National Park, taking in the state's most rugged landscapes and the high points of ten counties. If the district were a person, its head would be Lake Tahoe, and the Madera County foothills, where my son and I moved in 2010, would be its knobby knees.

Technically speaking, we weren't Fourth District residents right off the bat. We, and all of our foothill neighbors south of Sacramento, were drawn into the district when the California Citizens Redistricting Commission revised California's legislative boundaries in 2013.

Still, the current lines of the Fourth encompass the places and moments most dear to my heart. It's here that my son, in the blink of an eye, went from six to fourteen. It's here that we navigated the public school system, supported local businesses, acquired friends that became family. It's here that I crisscrossed the backcountry, climbing the peaks along the District's eastern front, lingering for days. And it's here that, come Trump, I got involved in politics.

California's Fourth District (Women's March, Oakhurst). Photo courtesy of Bill Klemens.

Last June, I began following the 2018 race for the Fourth District's congressional seat. The seat has, since 2009, been held by one Tom McClintock, antagonist of many a blog post of mine. My problems with McClintock are numerous, but generally have to do with his lack of empathy for low-income Americans, disdain for environmental protections, disregard for science, failure to listen to his constituents, and lockstep adoration of Trump.

Those of us living south of Sacramento inherited McClintock via the 2013 redistricting, and have been stuck with him ever since. Up until now, progressive residents of the Fourth have had little hope of retiring the guy. Despite not even living in the Fourth District, McClintock received between 60 and 63 percent of the vote in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

But then came Jessica Morse, Regina Bateson, Roza Calderon, and Rochelle Wilcox. These four women, all Democrats, were inspired by the ascension of Trump to run for Congress in California's Fourth. When they came to address my community last summer, all but Jessica Morse said they had never intended to seek political office, but felt driven to action by the scary new normal. Jessica, for her part, said she had hoped to serve in Congress someday, but stepped up the timeline after Trump happened.

In the talks I attended, all four women were positive, energetic, and focused on the greater good. Roza's pet issues were the environment and social justice. Jessica promoted the core values of the Democratic Party, with special emphasis on rural development and international relations. Rochelle emphasized working across the aisle to advance the Democratic platform. Regina's focus, in her talk, was no-holds-barred takedown of Tom. I was impressed with all four, and felt that any one of them would brighten the horizons for our District.

But, as those who have read my previous blog posts know, Jessica Morse has always been my top pick. Although I suspect she is politically more moderate than I am, I have had enough interaction with her to vouch for her integrity, humanity, and qualifying experience, the combination of which make her, in my opinion, the best of the bunch.

Circling the country these past six months, my obsession with Fourth District politics has dimmed somewhat. My friends back home have tried to keep me in the loop. For example, I heard that Rochelle Wilcox dropped out of the race when it became clear she was lagging behind. She then began wholeheartedly supporting her former rivals, as she had promised she would do when she spoke to us last August.

More recently, in March, I heard that Jessica Morse had received the endorsement of the California Democratic Party, and appeared poised to carry the progressive vote all the way to the general election.

But then I started hearing the news about Regina Bateson. At the talk she gave in my community last  June, she promised to make way for any Democratic frontrunner that emerged so as to avoid undermining the larger race against Tom. She made similar promises in other venues.

But in fact, Regina has done the exact opposite. Not only did she not drop out after Jessica's CDP endorsement, but in April she filed a legal complaint over Jessica's preferred ballot designation of National Security Strategist. Regina, who is identified on the primary ballot as a Military Security Analyst despite actually being a college professor, took issue with Jessica calling herself a National Security Strategist when she hasn't worked in that capacity since 2015.

The judge presiding over the case ruled in favor of Regina. That means that in the eyes of primary voters, Regina Bateson is a Military Security Analyst, Roza Calderon a Geoscientist/Geographer/Cartographer, Robert Lawton a Businessman, and Jessica Morse a... nothing. Below her name is a conspicuous blank spot.

California's Fourth District (Mt. Goddard, Kings Canyon National Park)

After speaking with Stephanie, the Elections Department manager, I learned that, despite my nomadic ways, I still have the right to vote in my "home of record." A home of record, she explained, doesn't need to be where I physically live at present, and it doesn't need to be where I receive my mail. It just needs to be the place that I declare, under penalty of perjury, to be home.

At present, I physically live in a Subaru. My car has been good to me; since November, it's carried me 15,000 miles. But it's not my home. I've put down no roots here, save the traveling houseplants I've been carting around. Housed in my car, I've known no precinct boundaries. My son and I have covered nineteen states at this point, and will likely see more before we turn off the engine for good.

Palo Alto is not my home either. It contains my mother and grandmother, two of my favorite people in the world. And it contains my mail. But that's about it.

Under penalty of perjury, I declared the Sierra foothills, and California's Fourth District, to be my home. At the time I made my declaration, I was physically present in the Fourth District. In fact, I was physically present in the Fourth for a couple of weeks on either side of my declaration. For a nomad like me, that counts for something.

When finally my son and I turn into a driveway of our own, it may not be in California's Fourth. But until that time, it's the only home we've got--and it's damn fine.

California's Fourth District (Ansel Adams Wilderness)

In a day or two, my primary ballot will arrive in the mail. It will first be delivered to Palo Alto; then, a few days later, it will show up at my next significant stopover, a small farm in northern Idaho that I will be caretaking through July.

When I see Jessica Morse's name on the ballot, it will be followed with a blank space, an enigmatic non-identity. But I will have no problem darkening her box. It's Jessica whose years of civil service and humanitarian work have given her the best grasp, of all the candidates for Congress in California's Fourth, of the issues facing our nation and the world at large.  It's Jessica whose love of, and extensive travel through, the District's wild places make her the best protector of our natural resources. It's Jessica who has run a positive campaign, one that looks past her Democratic contenders into the shifty eyes of Tom McClintock. It's Jessica whose confidence and clarity make her voice our strongest choice for the House floor.

And it's Jessica Morse whose heart I trust. Last summer, when the Detwiler Fire was consuming Mariposa County, Jessica came to stay with me. I had known her only from the talk she gave to our community a couple months before, but I had been so impressed with her that I had reached out to her personally afterward, and we had kept in touch.

After volunteering at the Red Cross shelter together, we sat on my deck and chatted like old friends. She told me about losing her mother. She told me about the book she had been writing with gusto until the day Trump was elected, at which point she traded pen for megaphone. She wanted to hear all about me, little old me, no political aspirations or Ivy League credentials, just a part-time biologist, intermittent blogger, mother, and mountain trekker. We watched the sun set, laughed. We barely talked politics. She wouldn't drink a beer with me, but she happily accepted a bowl of ice cream.

Jessica was unguarded, kindhearted, and real--nothing like what I imagined a politician would be. And I guess that's what I love most about her. She has the knowledge and experience of a career politician, but the spirit of the girl next door.

If you make your home--or your home of record--in California's Fourth District, take some time to learn about Jessica Morse. She needs your vote in the June 5 primary. Let's do all we can to put her on the general election ballot, so that, come November, we can finally give Tom McClintock the drumming out he deserves.

California's Fourth District (Ansel Adams Wilderness)

Bead 27: For the Birds

I wasn't always a birder.  In the beginning, I just wanted to be one.

It started with an undergrad Ornithology class at the University of Montana.  Every week, my classmates and I would trail a small cadre of teaching assistants through the woods outside of town.  We would strain to hear and see the birds that seemed to flit constantly through their collective awareness.  They were forever pausing, smiling, closing their eyes.  "Golden-crowned kinglet!" one would murmur, pointing up.  "Hear the tsee, tsee, tsee-tsee-tsee-tsee?"

I heard it a little bit, sometimes.  But it was hard.  They all sounded the same.  When it came down to it, they all looked the same, too.  At that point in my life, birds varied only according to color scheme; therefore, an American robin was a black-headed grosbeak was a spotted towhee.

Still, I did well in Ornithology class, and soon afterward bought my first pair of binoculars.  They were Leupolds, and they cost me nearly $400.  With these, I mused, I would become a birder, the intellectual peer of my former TAs, a girl who, wherever she went, could name all that flew.

But I was broke.  For weeks after my Leupold purchase, I thought about the myriad more sensible things I could have done with the money.  I took my new binoculars out a time or two, and they were nice.  But they weren't making me a good birder.  Walking through a Ponderosa pine forest with a coworker, I still turned the white tail flashes of a dark-eyed junco into a vesper sparrow.  The western tanagers singing in the trees overhead were still robins to me.

I exchanged my Leupolds for a $150 pair of Bushnells.  They were more my speed, I reasoned.

And then, I forgot about birding.

Northern mockingbird and greater white-fronted geese.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

Ten years later, in California, I started a job as a biological consultant.  In field surveys, I was expected to identify, as best I could, all the plants and animals I encountered.  Plant identification overwhelmed and saddened me.  There were just so many species to know.  And at most of our field sites, even when I got something right, it was only to learn that it was never meant to be there in the first place.  On any given day, invasive species dominated the landscape I roamed, and my accompanying plant list. 

But birds.  Birds were something else altogether.  Birds were colorful and airborne, ubiquitous, singing and jazz-handing their way through the even the dreariest of landscapes.  In barren fields, there were horned larks, rising and falling all as a unit, like sixteenth notes on a musical staff.  On construction sites, there were mockingbirds with their noisy medley of car alarms.  In muddy feedlots, there were cattle egrets.  In cities, there were house finches, the males pigmented according to their appetites, mostly red, but sometimes orange or yellow.  Aided by an avian savant coworker, as well as a new $150 pair of Alpen binoculars, I learned my birds.

Male house finch.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

In addition to inventorying plants and animals, a big part of my job is to educate the people that hire our consulting firm--cities, counties, private developers--about the various environmental regulations their projects must observe.  One of my pet laws has been the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).  In the past, all I really knew about this law was that it was the reason you weren't supposed to keep eagle feathers.  As a biological consultant, I've fleshed out my understanding a bit.

The MBTA, and its various amendments, codify four treaties to which the United States is party.  These treaties--with Canada, Mexico, Russia, and Japan--responded to a string of human-caused avian extinctions by obligating the signatory nations to impose protections for birds.  In the absence of a valid permit, the MBTA makes it illegal "by any means or in any manner, to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill... any migratory bird."  The term migratory bird is somewhat vestigial at this point.  Over the years, the MBTA has been expanded to cover almost all native birds, regardless of whether a particular bird actually travels with the seasons.

With a species list now numbering 1,026, the MBTA protects just about any bird you can think of.  For starters, every bird named or pictured in this post.  Beyond that, nearly every bird in your yard--the jays, the crows, the blackbirds.  The mourning doves that nest in the shrub right outside your front door.  The hummingbirds that sip from your feeder.  The owls you hear at night.

And it's a good thing.  According to the Audubon Society, the MBTA has, over its hundred-year history, saved the lives of billions of individual birds, and has prevented the extinction of such iconic species as the snowy egret, wood duck, and sandhill crane.

Sandhill cranes.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

In the beginning, the MBTA was enforced only against poachers.  But in the 1970s, federal prosecutors began charging oil, gas, timber, mining, and utility companies with unintentionally killing birds during their operational activities.  Although the law has generally only been enforced for repeated such "incidental take" violations, it has for decades served as a powerful incentive for companies to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep their bird deaths to a minimum.  

For industries that kill a lot of birds, this makes a big difference.  For example, an estimated 64 million birds per year are killed by power lines.  This number would be even higher if it weren't for the MBTA, which prompts electricity companies to adopt bird-friendly design strategies like proper circuit spacing and "perch deterrent" structures on distribution poles.

And when industrial disasters happen, the MBTA may be leveraged to ensure the responsible party cleans up their mess.  Violation of the MBTA was among the charges brought against the Exxon Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and the BP Corporation for the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010.  The millions of dollars in criminal fines collected from these companies--in the case of BP, $4 billion--went a long way toward undoing the damage caused by the spills.  Over $2.5 billion of BP's criminal fines went to the National Wildlife Federation for gulf restoration projects.  Other settlements by BP included mandatory contributions to a fund intended to help migratory birds and other wildlife affected by the spill.

Brown pelican.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

Although interpreting the MBTA's prohibitions to include incidental take of birds has been the federal government's practice for over 40 years, it wasn't formalized by a presidential administration until January 10, 2017.  As one of its last acts, President Obama's Department of the Interior issued a legal opinion that synthesized all of the MBTA's legislative and case history up to that point, and concluded that the "prohibitions of the MBTA apply to take incidentally and proximately caused by any activity."

Enter Trump and his toady-on-horseback, Ryan Zinke.  Just before Christmas, in its new role as principal saboteur of America's longstanding environmental protections, the Department of the Interior permanently withdrew its January 2017 memorandum, and issued an antithetical replacement.  Drawing on the same legislative and case history that had been considered in the Obama-era memo, the new memo relied on a common law definition of "take" to conclude that the MBTA "applies only to direct and affirmative purposeful actions that reduce migratory birds... by killing or capturing, to human control."

And with that, industry breathed a collective sigh of relief.  It was its sixtieth such sigh in 2017.  You'd think they'd be hyperventilating by now.

With the Trump administration refusing to prosecute incidental take under the MBTA, where does that leave the birds?  Up a sludge-filled creek without a paddle.  Measures to reduce bird mortality, or to compensate for mortality that has already happened, can be costly.  If there is one thing big business is trying to avoid, it is cost--of the monetary variety, in any case.  Ecological costs aren't as big of a deal.  They are less immediate, less tangible.  Depending on your media diet, they might even be fake.  At any rate, they are nothing to worry the shareholders over. Nothing to disrupt the Dow.

Turkey vulture.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

I consider my media diet to be pretty nutritious.  I subscribe to the online edition of the New York Times, and peruse it via a phone app several times a day.  I cross-reference other sources now and then, like the Washington Post and the L.A. Times.  I sometimes check out Fox News, but only for shits and giggles, or to remind myself to stay infuriated, or both.

The procedural gutting of the MBTA came and went without my noticing.  Every day, the New York Times helped me refine my understanding of #MeToo celebrity offenses.  I learned all about every player, every personality, every motive involved in our nation's ephemeral government shutdown.  I stayed up to date on Trump tweets.  I got all the breaking news on our president's past affair with a porn star.  But I did not hear a single word about migratory birds.

To date, to the best of my Googling, the New York Times has yet to produce an article about the December 2017 blow to the MBTA.  The publication's only mention of the incident appears here, in a regularly updated list of the Trump Administration's environmental overhauls.  Overhaul number 30 refers to the administration's having "rolled back an Obama-era policy aimed at protecting migratory birds."  Reducing the prosecution of incidental take under the MBTA to "an Obama-era policy" dangerously oversimplifies the story.  It's almost like they lifted a headline from Fox News.

Wilson's phalaropes.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

As luck would have it, I am a biological consultant.  That is how I finally came to hear about the Department of the Interior's new anti-bird philosophy.  My boss mentioned it to me on the phone one day, almost in passing.  He probably wasn't prepared for how angry I would get.  He reminded me that in California, all is not lost, because state law also protects native birds.

Currently, though, I am in Kentucky, where the default is no protection for anything.  Every day, I watch birds still new to me, still magical--cardinals, blue jays, Carolina wrens, white-throated sparrows--hop around the yard, unsuspecting.  For these species, and many others, the worst is yet to come.

House finch nest.  Photo courtesy of Susanjoy Aronson.

There are bird lovers on the front lines.  On January 10, 2018, a group of former Department of the Interior officials, hailing from all previous administrations since Richard Nixon, formally decried Interior's about-face on the MBTA, and asked it to reconsider its position.  And environmental advocacy groups are preparing for battle.  Hopefully, with enough pressure on our legislators--and on the corporations we support with our dollars--we can keep Interior's new policy from becoming a death knell for migratory birds.

For Bead 27, I am asking the New York Times why they have failed to cover this important environmental story, and am encouraging them to tell it, even if belatedly.  Should I hear back from their editors, I will update this post to reflect that. 

Bead 26: Halfway There

At one time in my life, I ran marathons.  I hate to say it like that, like it's a door I've closed, and can't reopen.  I can, and I might.  But at this point, it's a small room in the big house of my life, and it's quite a ways back down the hall.

I ran three marathons:  the St. George (2005), the Kentucky Derby Festival (2007), and finally the Boston (2008).  I registered for a fourth, the San Francisco (2013), but nursing a strained piriformis, I elected just to do the first half.  At mile 13, when the road for the runners-of-the-mill diverged from that of the elite, the most masochistic of the bunch, I took the one more traveled by.  My bib identified me as a full marathon runner, and well-meaning race officials tried to steer me back on course.  But I just smiled, shook my head, and headed for the free Bailey's coffee.

Today marks a year since a certain schmuck became President of the United States.  Today was the day I planned to cross the finish line with a whole year's worth of weekly acts of resistance under my belt.  I would be stiff and exhausted, but proud to have stuck it out.  No doubt, after a little Bailey's coffee and a cup of Gatorade, I would be ready for more.

But today, instead of reaching mile 52, I'm only at mile 26.  Halfway there.

My "race," over the past year, is a lot like how the Boston went for me.  I qualified for the Boston unexpectedly, and by the skin of my teeth.  As the daughter of a former Boston runner, I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity to run the race.  But as a grad student and single mom, I had only so much energy and attention to commit to my training.  Mostly, I just went for runs, and trusted it would all work out.

The morning of Patriots' Day, standing there among all the lean, tight-jawed former track stars of the world, I realized I was an impostor.  I watched them hop around in their expensive Lycra gear while I dumbly raised one knee, and then the other.  I cut the shit and found the coffee tent, where no serious runner would go.  I drank half a cup with a heavyset woman who was running for charity, and didn't have to qualify.

The caffeine helped.  By the time the gun went off, I was excited.  This was it!  What a day!  But then I started my usual routine of downing Gatorade at every station.  I didn't think it through; there was math involved, and under the circumstances, it was over my head.  In most races I've run, fluids are available every two miles.  In the Boston, it's every mile.  You are definitely not supposed to drink that much Gatorade.  Fifteen miles in, I had a colossal cramp and a sloshing belly.  I felt like a washing machine about to give out.

Not only that, but I was hitting my proverbial wall.  With a four-year-old at home, it had been hard to make time for 18-mile training runs.  I had only managed one or two of them before race day.  Now, with Heartbreak Hill looming, I felt like I had nothing left.  

I slowed down.  I walked.  I observed the passing Lycra.

In the end, my belly righted itself, my limbs regained strength, and I finished the race at a jog.  But I felt less than victorious, and certainly didn't re-qualify for the Boston.

This year, I ran hard from January to September.  I organized meetings, placed numerous calls to my Senators and Congressman using numbers programmed into my phone, wrote emails and letters, attended rallies, and of course kept up my blog.

And then, without warning, I was done.  It was like I had a finite amount of juice in my system, and I ran it down.  Or maybe it was like I overindulged, accepting way too many cups of this and that, unaware of the impending slosh.  At any rate, although I pulled off a few more actions in the eleventh hour, it was with a distinct lack of heart.  As I've said previously, I couldn't make myself care anymore.  I was ready for my Bailey's coffee, and a long nap.

To be honest, that's where I still am, to an extent.  But today, in Lexington, Kentucky, I'll be attending a rally to commemorate the first anniversary of the Women's March.  I haven't made any signs.  I don't have a special t-shirt to wear.  I don't have a megaphone, or any particular chants in mind.  I do have a pink pussy hat, which I will don for strength.  And I will gather strength from the women, men, and children around me, and try to return it in kind.

Despite my flagging pace, I'm not giving up my 52 Beads project.  I'll keep plugging away.  Maybe I'll reach my fifty-second action at the end of this year, maybe next.  Maybe there will be an impeachment, and my actions won't be necessary anymore.  Maybe they'll become even more necessary.

Sometimes I'll jog, sometimes I'll walk, and sometimes I'll nap.  But I'm keeping this bib on, and I'm staying the course.

 

Bead 25: Notes from the Road + National Park Price Hikes

On November 3, my son and I drove out of our neighborhood and down the road toward Madera.  That felt normal enough.  Living in the Sierra Nevada foothills, there are myriad reasons to descend to the Valley every now and then—Costco, Trader Joe’s, the airport, jury duty.  What didn’t feel normal that day was that, after a quick errand in Madera, we kept driving.  And driving.  And driving.  

We made it to Truckee that night; to Portland a few days later.  Then came Seattle, Bellingham, Ellensburg, La Grande.  Then Utah, New Mexico.  Still we kept driving. 

Five thousand miles later, I am finally catching my breath.  We aren’t home yet.  Actually, we are just the opposite: homeless.  We gave up our rental in California and have assumed a new, mobile life, stitching our way between friends and family all around the country, camping some, springing for Airbnb’s in the blank spots on the map, regions without loved ones.

Six weeks into our indeterminate journey, we have crossed fifteen states.  We have invaded nine households, lingering for two hours or two days; in one case, ten days.  Now we’re with my sister and her family in Kentucky.  The plan is to stay here for a full month, until after the New Year.  For once, I have fully extracted my clothes from my backpack and arranged them on hangers, in drawers.  I have joined a gym.  It feels good.

But the road feels good, too.  It’s what I chose.  Fall came, and like the Sierran songbirds, I knew it was time to move.  Unlike the songbirds, I had no idea where to go.  So I decided just to go around for a while, until our landing spot came into focus.

One of our temporary homes over the last 6 weeks, Gallo Campground in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM

One thing I have not done on the road is be political.  In fact, I’d estimate I fell off the wagon a full month shy of our departure date.  There were so many boxes to pack, logistics to manage, goodbyes to say.  What had earlier in the year felt like end times started to feel more like background noise.  I couldn’t make myself care anymore.  No matter what I did, there would be shitty new news everyday.

I felt a little guilty about letting my Beads lapse.  But just a little.  Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to try lighter writing?  I could start a new blog about our travels.  I would call it Roadstead, named for the fact that we are, amid all the visits and sightseeing, searching for our homestead.  Or I could not start a new blog.  I could just suddenly morph 52 Beads into Roadstead.  “And for my next Bead, I will buy a new traveling houseplant!”  That sort of thing.

But now, with time to breathe, I can feel my engine starting up again.  Not my four-cylinder Subaru engine; that’s thankfully cooling in my sister’s front yard.  My resistance engine.  I can’t say I’m feeling especially indignant or emotional about anything.  I’m not burning to pick up the phone or paint a sign, like before.  But I’m aware that, while I’ve been drifting, the world has continued to burn.  And I’m feeling ready to once again do my part. 

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM

 

Just before Thanksgiving, in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, I renewed my “America the Beautiful” pass.  That’s my annual $80 ticket to any National Park, National Monument, National Forest, or National Recreation Area I care to visit, good for me and whoever I can fit in my car.  It felt especially important to renew my pass right then because of the Department of the Interior’s October 24 proposal to more than double the entrance fees at our 17 top-revenue National Parks during peak visitation season.  I naturally expected price hikes for the annual passes, too.

“I have to buy this now, before it goes up to $150,” I said to the interpretative ranger who was running my debit card.

“Yeah, or $500,” he said.

As it turns out, the America the Beautiful pass will hold steady at $80.  But at Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and Arches, what was once an affordable family outing will become a luxury.  

It’s the latest assault by the Trump Administration on public lands.  It wasn’t enough for them to illegally shrink two of our National Monuments.  It wasn’t enough for them to expedite oil and gas development on BLM land, notwithstanding sluggish markets.  It wasn’t enough for them to tuck into their nearly-enacted tax bill a plan to drill 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, bucking majority American opinion after a four-decade fight.  

The new $70-per-car price tag at our most iconic parks will ensure a subtle demographic shift in park use as a whole.  Greater representation by foreign tourists, retired people, upper income earners.  Less representation by American families, millennials, the working class.

And once the demographics change, what sorts of tweets can we expect from our de facto President?

Real Americans say "been there, done that" to Grand Canyon!  Time to end welfare for washed-up National Parks.  LATER, LOSERS!

There's no doubt our National Parks need money.  The Trump Administration has proposed a budget of $2.6 billion for the National Park Service in fiscal year 2018, about 13 percent lower than the previous year.  The cuts mean less money to deal with maintenance backlogs, less money to keep up with current operations--and 1,200 lost jobs.  It's sink or swim for the NPS, and with the proposed entrance fee hikes, they are presumably trying to recoup their losses.

But there are other ways to get the money, other coffers to draw from.  Why do our parks get $2.6 billion per year while fossil fuel production gets subsidized to the tune of $20 billion?  And what about the U.S. military budget of $825 billion for fiscal year 2018? 

We are long overdue for a shakedown of our American values.

The National Park Service is accepting public comments on the entrance fee increases until December 22.  I submitted my comments today.  If I can come back from my two-month political hiatus and long-distance driving binge to do this, I know you can, too.  Check out this fact sheet on the rate increases and the affected parks.  Tell the National Park Service what your National Parks mean to you, and why they should stay in the hands of all Americans. 

Zac exploring an ancient room at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM

Bead 24: Generation Z

I've had a practice, as a mother, of taking my kid to places one doesn't normally see kids.  When he was born, I still had a couple of weeks left in my school semester.  No matter; I nursed him to sleep in physics class.  Just before his second birthday, he joined his dad and me for a long walk on the Appalachian Trail.  Shrouded in mosquito netting, and wearing diapers made of pack towels, he rode on my back for 700 miles.  As a toddler, he came with me to music festivals.  And while I was in graduate school, I once brought him to a keg party.  As I was tucking him into his sleeping bag in the backyard, a perpetually drunk and creepy classmate of mine leaned over us, and promised Zac a trip to a baseball game, along with his "babysitter" (me).  I stayed close to Zac the rest of the night.

Zac in his pack on the Appalachian Trail.

Zac is fourteen now, and gets more of a say on where he goes.  Since Inauguration Day, I've invited him to attend a dozen or so political affairs, including our local Women's March, a town hall, and numerous meetings of my peace group and environmental action team.  For some reason, he keeps turning me down.  It's not that he's not woke--he does fabulous impressions of our 45th president, cringes at the morning news, and relates with everything uttered by John Oliver.  It's just that he's, well, fourteen.  Meetings and marches are boring.

But a couple of weeks ago, I upped the ante.  I turned Congressman Tom McClintock's satellite office hours into a school assignment, and drug my sleepy-eyed ninth grader along.

My intentions were three-fold.  First, as a new homeschool parent, I was eager to round up real-world lessons for my son, experiences to personalize what would otherwise just be words on a page or screen.  Second, I wanted to get him out of the house.  We are, at this point, not affiliated with any homeschool charters or groups, and I am always conscious of the isolation factor.  Finally, I hoped Zac would find the civic engagement empowering.  Although I have no illusions that McClintock will enact any of my "radical leftist" ideas, I believe that what I say at his satellite office hours actually reaches his desk.  And that counts for something.

The day I brought Zac to McClintock's office hours, there were only six people in attendance, and the vibe was familial.  This many months into the new political renaissance, we mostly knew each other, and felt at home with Matt Reed, McClintock's field representative.  Although Matt's Twitter feed is disappointing, he has always been easy to work with and talk to, and today was no exception.

I had told Zac ahead of time that he wouldn't need to participate in the sound-off if he didn't want to.  After the meeting, to complete his assignment, he would need to email the Congressman about an issue of his choice.  But for now, he could just listen and take notes.

I should have known better.  Zac is opinionated, likes to talk, and is famously not-shy.  There was no scenario in which he would sit at a table buzzing with hot-button discourse, and not take part.

Moreover, Matt included him from the start.  He initiated the discussion by asking Zac what he thought of our government.  Zac answered confidently and precisely, as if he'd had time to prepare a response beforehand.  "I think we should do away with the electoral college," he said.  He went on to provide supporting details--the electoral college was established, many years ago, for an uneducated populace who couldn't be trusted to make informed voting decisions.  It had no place in the modern world, where inventions like the Internet supply a wealth of information on any candidate or issue we want to learn about.  In conclusion, it was obsolete, and should be dissolved.

Matt was impressed.  He complimented me on my homeschooling.  I explained that I couldn't take any credit, as I had only been his teacher for about two weeks.  He owed his big brains to--well, himself, and the good people at his K-8 school, from which he'd graduated in June.

After his initial stump speech, Zac made several quippy contributions.  Over the past few weeks, hurricane after hurricane had been ramming into the Caribbean and southeastern United States.  We naturally wanted to talk about climate change.  Matt naturally wanted to point out that McClintock, as a fiscal conservative, wasn't inclined to wreck the economy over something that was, in his world, still up for debate.  We countered with the reality that renewables are a burgeoning economic sector, and we risk getting edged out by China if we don't move forward.  Whereupon Zac said that favoring the development of fossil fuels over renewables, as most of McClintock's party seems to be doing, is as idiotic as Honda introducing a horse and buggy line. 

He got props for his wit.  One of my fellow cage-rattlers, Charlie, told Matt to "write that down and give it to your boss."

Later, we talked about debt.  Charlie was concerned about what he perceived as massive, and largely unwarranted, military spending.  Our wars in the Middle East had cost trillions of dollars to date.  We still had 30,000 troops in South Korea, a nation both economically stable and capable of defending itself.  And then there was the F35 program, which Charlie considered the poster-child of military waste.

He said that while our countrymen across the aisle liked to gripe about the "tax and spend Democrats," we needed to take a closer look at the "borrow and spend Republicans."

Here, Zac delivered another short treatise.  He said that debt was increasingly being treated as an asset.  Banks lend money to people, and benefit from the debts that accrue.  Similarly, corporations give money to politicians, and benefit when the politicians behave as though they are indebted to them.  He said it was like New Rome.  I am no history buff, and I didn't get the reference.  Possibly others didn't either, as there was no particular response from anyone.

After the fact, though, I did a little surfing, and learned that massive personal debt among Roman citizens contributed to the fall of the Empire.  The ruling class held the debts, and had the military at its disposal. Populist uprisings were quashed, and war tributes levied that only compounded the debts of the people.  By the second century A.D., one-quarter of the population was in bondage for unpaid debts.  Three centuries later, the economy collapsed and the Empire was finished.

It always smarts a little when your kid knows more than you do.

As we disbanded that day, Matt asked Zac what his favorite school subject was.  "Social studies," Zac replied, but quickly qualified that he didn't mean boring social studies, the kind with endless packets of photocopied text and busywork.  He meant homeschool social studies, in which you got to research famous assassinations.

Matt didn't act openly alarmed, but I did wonder if Zac's parting words could have landed us on The List.  Son of an obvious radical leftist issues a handful of his own radical leftist statements at a public forum, then reveals a personal obsession with assassination attempts.

Fortunately, assassination was not the theme of Zac's email to Congressman McClintock.  Instead, he reprised, in careful detail, his argument against the electoral college, and urged McClintock to consider introducing a bill to establish direct representation.

Those of us who live in California's 4th Congressional District know that McClintock only really considers what is already entrenched in his mind.  Still, I thought it was important to show Zac, my very own member of Generation Z, how it feels to get involved.  Speaking out for the first time, you may wonder where the words go once they've left your mouth.  Were they heard?  Do they make a difference?  But with more and more of us choosing to be outspoken, I feel it's only a matter of time.  We'll turn this thing around.

Zac on his last day of eighth grade.