I had no idea that Rusty was so good at grief counseling.

“What with the leaking radiator and the water pump problem, your water level is always low. That’s why the car’s overheating all the time.” The mechanic spoke patiently to his customer from behind a counter spread with work orders.

Rusty paused for a moment: it was time for straight talk. “You know,” he said, “when you’ve got a car worth a hundred and fifty dollars and it needs a thousand dollars of repairs… it’s time to make a decision.”

But she wasn’t ready for that.  In the five stages of grieving – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – she was still on “bargaining.”  Perhaps she didn’t have a thousand to spare – but could not live her life without a car.

“Can I at least drive it in town?” she asked plaintively. Sitting across the room with the magazines, I could see her only from behind. But it was clear that she had entered middle age, and not a very prosperous one.

“Yes,” Rusty answered. “But check the radiator a lot. Keep the fluid level right up to the neck.” He sighed. You can go ahead and use water if you want.”

Meaning, the radiator was toast, and the water pump was leaking badly. No use putting in coolant, because it wouldn’t stay around long enough to be useful.

“So, I just pour the water right into the top of the radiator, right?” came the hesitant question.

“That’s right,” Rusty said. “And keep it filled to the top.”

From Rusty’s words she mined a glimmer of hope. “Do you think I could still drive it over the hill… if I went at night?” she ventured.  The Hill” is the 2000-foot-high mountain range between Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley.

“I think so,” Rusty answered, though his face said, ‘I wouldn’t.’ The Hill shows little mercy on cars with weak cooling systems.

The two of them concluded their business, then she left to retrieve her car. I approached the counter and Rusty shoved a work-order at me: $417 for exhaust system repair. Rhumba and I mainly drive just one car, a hybrid; but we also keep a very old Honda Civic for emergencies; and it had failed the smog check. The car is pretty decrepit, but we use it so seldom that we only fix the most serious problems. Rusty’s aware of this, and doesn’t bug us about the many optional repairs that  the car could use.

I wrote him a check; out the window, I could see the woman driving her car off the lot. She peered through the windshield as if she saw trouble ahead; and she was probably right. Her car was a Honda Civic almost as old as ours. Our Civic has seen fire and rain, and bears more dents than a golf ball. Her Civic was very similar.

“I dunno,” I told Rusty. “My car looks as bad as hers; just, maybe we don’t use it as much.”

He grinned crookedly. “I think even your car’s in better shape than hers.”

“You know,” I said, “I work with two women, older women, who don’t have cars anymore. They can’t afford them and still and keep a roof over her head. Been years since a real raise. Maybe this woman can’t afford to replace that car.”

“Yeah,” Rusty said. And that’s all he said. He’s a good man.

This week the news channels reported that Americans were driving less. Those who had cars drove them less, and many young people were not buying cars.

The theories were endless. The American “love affair” with cars was over; or, cars had lost their “macho” appeal; or, cars did’t make sense to the young people who were settling in dense urban areas.

But I know another reason: people are driving fewer miles, in part, because fewer people can afford to keep cars. I think of that woman herding an ailing Honda over the Hill at night to avoid the hot weather, and “desperation” is the only word that comes to mind.

Desperation: among the stages of grieving, that’s similar to “bargaining.” And after bargaining comes depression, and finally acceptance.  If that woman can’t keep her car, I hope she finds a way to make her life work without it.  And I truly pray that she does not take all the blame for her misfortunes upon herself.

Because the ones who rule us depend on that.  The day when enough hard-working people stop accepting all the blame for their failure to be prosperous, is the day when things start to change.

And you can accept that.

 

 

 

 

The age of prophets never ends. There are always prophets. When times are good, they haunt bookstores and coffee houses and publish small-press books that no one’s ready to read. Because when times are good, nobody’s looking for fresh answers. They think they’ve got life all figured out.

But in bad times people do want new answers, and prophets heat up. Their small-press books get good reviews in the thoughtful magazines — in the back pages, but nevertheless. They make short appearances on public television, after 10 pm. The Utne Reader reprints one or two of their essays. Videotapes of their lectures show up on YouTube.

And they make speaking tours. Which is why Rhumba and I were listening to a slender, intense man talk about the union of cosmic consciousness, love, and economic reform.

And he made it work. Money separates us, we were told, because it makes interactions distant and impersonal and even abusive. How much better to have a community of people who you serve, and who serve you. Not for personal gain, but because it’s what’s right. And what we’re built for.

The sound system, sadly, wasn’t built well at all. Rhumba’s hearing lacks clarity; she couldn’t understand the prophet. “I’m going to go buy some shoes,” she whispered. Her completely recyclable dress sandals had, sadly, begun to biodegrade. We were downtown; five shoes stores lay in a two-block radius. This town just loves shoes.

We smacked lips, and off she went. From his seat on the floor, a dreadlocked neo-hippie in a basket hat asked with his eyes, “Is that seat free?” I motioned him into it.

The place was packed. Santa Cruz is a college town, and politically aware. Its citizens believe, many of them, that the current economy rewards and celebrates the worst instincts in mankind – and that civilization suffers for it.

Up on stage, the prophet gathered steam. Our economy should be an endless giving of gifts to one another,he said. We all feel that something is missing in society, and that is the idea that community, and a just economy, are one. Our wealth should not be what we own, but in the talents and resources of the community of which we are a part.

“But it’s a difficult leap to make, isn’t it?” he asked. “To give up the idea of absolute ownership and cast your fate into the hands of others?” He knew his audience: mostly over-50, educated, economically comfortable. A few old and young hippies could be seen, but in the main there were grizzled academics, tanned matrons wearing organic cottons, and alert seniors with snowy hair. Call it “1969” – with the original cast.

Keeping with his own credo, the prophet had charged no admission, taken no fee. But donations were welcome to offset the expense of bringing him from the East Coast. At the door, a basket literally overflowed with twenty-dollar bills, and higher.

I wanted to hear the prophet’s specific prescriptions for a new economy, but it was not to be. Instead, local speakers mounted the stage to describe their own programs to promote community-building and resource-sharing.

There would be a full panel discussion at the end, but we were two hours in; and I have a short attention span. I became restless.

And I did have a complaint, one i have of many well-meaning college-town movements; the community-building efforts all sought to build communities among well-educated, well-heeled white people. I know they don’t intend to stop there, among their own; but so often, it seems like they do.

Rhumba reappeared. The neo-hippieDownt gave up his seat without a word.

“Didn’t you get new sandals?’ I whispered.

“I’m wearing them,” she said. They looked about like her old sandals; but then, sandals generally do.

“What happened to the old ones?”

“I told the manager I didn’t want them,” she said in my ear. “I asked if he’d recycle them. But he said that when people leave their old shoes, he just puts them outside the front door at closing time. They’re always gone the next morning. People need them. So that’s what’ll happen.”

We stayed a little longer, then I motioned to Rhumba that I’d had enough. “Wanna go?” I asked softly? She nodded.

We silently made our way out the door. And I did wonder and hope, as we left, that a utopian world of tight-knit gift-giving communities will have enough heart to give gifts to strangers.

If you’ve read any pulp science fiction and fantasy — and I have, though not for decades — you know all about the Dark Empire.

The Dark Empire is that distant but mighty star empire which swoops down on the peaceful settlers of the planet Zipperdork 3 and suborns them to its plans for galaxy-wide conquest.

Or, in heroic fantasies, the Dark Empire inhabits the chaotic land of Dystopia from which it dispatches hordes of spell-flinging calvary to overrun the peaceful kingdom of Dragonsbane and enslave the heir to the throne inside a tower well secured by charms, demons, and bureaucrats.

The variations are endless. What’s inevitable, though it may take several thousand pages, is that a few plucky starship captains will discover the lost super weapons of the ancient Vleen race and char-broil the empire’s neutronium-plated space fleet.

Or, a ragged slave boy will find the magic sword Phallusia in the lost city of Oxnard and fulfill an ancient prophecy by slicing the Dark Empire’s calvary into flank steaks. And acquire  the throne of Dragonsbane in the meantime, plus an interesting scar.

Whatever. If you’ve seen a Star Wars movie, or a Lord of the Rings flick, you’ve pretty much got it.

The thing is, the thing that really bothers me, is that nobody ever fills in the back-story for the Dark Empire.

Sure, the Dark Empire can field fleets of star destroyers and hordes of well-equipped warriors. But who builds the starships? Who joins the army? Where did these people go to school? Who raises the food? You can’t conquer the galaxy, or even the trackless wastes of Dragsonbane, without a complete civilization to support you.

So, somewhere there must be a Dark Empire homeland. And no doubt you will find there the Dark Empire Missiles and Space Corporation, the First Bank of the Dark Empire, the Dark Empire Unified School District, Dark Empire Mall, and the Dark Empire Parks and Recreation Ministry. There are festivals and patriotic holidays, a Dark Empire Football League, and certified public accountants.

And millions of people who lead normal lives, go to work every day, raise children, and wave the flag. It doesn’t take much to keep them in line; the Dark Emperor just need to use the right words:

The emperor doesn’t “invade,” he “defends the Dark Empire’s strategic interests.” He doesn’t “blackmail” the tiny Kingdom of Twee into giving him their gold and treasure, he “welcomes them into the galactic economy.” It goes without saying that the Dark Empire troops never rape, torture, or pillage. But if someone does say it, the Dark Emperor talks solemnly about “human rights violations,” and finds a low-ranking scapegoat.

And so the Dark Empire’s citizens are reassured and go back to sleep, and to their jobs making Nova Bombs or poisoned daggers for the Dark Empire’s fighting men.

And that’s why, from now on, I will refer to the United States’ armed Predator and Reaper drones as “flying robot assassins.” Which is, up till now, a term used only in the Middle East.

And that’s understandable. The news from Yemen this past week was all about a dozen or more U.S. drone attacks; each one sought out and killed specific people who were terrorist suspects. Plus a fair number of innocent bystanders, but only a few independent Yemeni news sources mention that.

So what’s the different between a drone and a flying robot assassin? Not much; they’re both robots, they both fly, and they both seek out and kill particular people who may or may not be engaged in combat. Which is the definition of assassination.

Just, the word drone is neutral, safe, unexciting. If President Obama talks casually about the need for flying robot assassins to protect U.S. interests abroad — questions will be asked. Those words are dangerous. People might begin to wonder why the world’s leading democracy, its beacon of freedom, needs an ever-growing force of flying robot assassins.

The famous cynic George Orwell wrote that a nation’s gone completely corrupt when nobody dares call anything by its real name. Bribes become “campaign contributions.” Domestic spying is called “anti-terrorist activity.” And flying robot assassins are just, you know, unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones.

Inside the Armed Services, of course, they don’t mince words. The armed drones have model names like “Predator” and “Reaper,” and the military glories in the bloody imagery. Here’s a t-shirt that the Air Force gives to a particular flight of recruits upon passing basic training (321st Training Squadron, Flight 532,”The Predators,” out of Lackland AFB in San Antonio):

For those of you who don’t know me well: I collect t-shirts of significance that show up in local thrift shops. Whatever America does in the world, wherever, it leaves behind a trail of t-shirts. Here is a tee that is all about flying robot assassins, even if it’s not so obvious.

The Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa is the future of anti-terrorism in the Middle East. In large part, it’s also a grim base and airfield called Camp Lemonnier in the baking-hot desert nation of Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden. Djibouti’s natural resources consist of dirt, rock, trash, lizards, camels, and a free trade zone. It is perhaps the poorest nation you’ve never heard of. Desperately poor.

And thus Djibouti was happy to let the U.S. do anything it wanted with Camp Lemonnier, a derelict French Foreign Legion base. Conveniently located near Yemen, Somalia and the underbelly of the Middle East.

Camp Lemonnier is a pit: hot, dry, dusty, drab, desolate. Mind you, it’s a pit with a giant weight room and fitness center. And the Bob Hope Chow Hall where, on Thanksgiving, low-paid Filipino contract workers dress up as Indians and Pilgrims to serve turkey, steak, and crab to beefy men and women in green uniforms.

There’s even a Thanksgiving parade, though I don’t think the real Mayflower ever flew the skull and crossbones.

And the Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) office does what it can, like arranging for traveling rock bands from Northern Iowa (“The Blue Island Tribe”) to play a Christmas Eve gig on the big stage, or putting on volleyball tournaments with free t-shirts – one of which ended up in Santa Cruz.  I wonder whether Camp Lemonnier has on-base silk-screen capability or had to have the tees flown in. And there’s a coffee house, the Green Bean, with two locations and WiFi.

Camp Lemonnier is also home to 400 to 800 Navy Seals, Army Delta Force special ops troops, and intelligence agents; five F-15 fighter-bombers; several spy planes; and a goodly flock of flying robot assassins. I can find very few pictures of all that, though MWR let the Blue Island Tribe play with grenade launchers and hang out in the spy planes.

So when anyone judged to be a terrorist or sympathizer dies in Yemen or Somalia or anywhere nearby, their cause of death likely flew in from Camp Lemmonier. From a flying robot assassin, or from real live assassins working beyond the bounds of law and constitution as we know it. But who believe, or at least are told, that they’re defending their country from terrorism. And they’re going to keep doing it for years to come; Washington is spending over a billion to make Camp Lemonnier a permanent base. The war on terrorism will never end.

And there’s the ghost of George Orwell in the back of the room, waving a finger in the air: if we can’t call things by their real name anymore, what’s the real name of terrorism?

I hate to tell you: it’s “resistance.” Resistance by people who aren’t really awfully wonderful in any way, shape or form. Resistance led, often, by fanatical, hateful religious zealots. But zealots with one valid point: that U.S. and the West have been trampling the region’s sovereignty for the last 70 years in the name of oil and big corporate interests. (Name one other reason we’d care so much about the Middle East.) And they’d like us to leave.

They’ve chosen terror as their weapon, because it’s what you can use when the other guy has all the guns and bombs and planes and body armor. And when your anger and hatred, perhaps, has grown past the edge of madness. So you try to break the will of the enemy nation, because you can’t break their troops. Ramming airliners into the World Trade Center is one way to do that. Especially when some people interpret “World Trade” as a code name for the Dark Empire.

The wiggly thing about a Dark Empire is that it never looks dark from the inside. It can’t, or its own people would begin to disavow it. So the gentle control words are used: “defense against terrorism,” “support our troops,” “spreading democracy.”

And since it’s actually doing none of those things in recent years, from the outside our Dark Empire just seems darker and darker. As it fights not the War on Terror, but the War on Resistance: resistance to a world-girdling oligarchy of power, money, and greed that is based right here in America.

Might be a hell of a pulp novel in it, eventually. Though maybe not one you’d want to be a character in.

As if you had a choice.

The time is 7:05 am. It is a weekday. And from the big table by the front door, we watch the West Side of Santa Cruz drive up for its coffee and bagels.

Outside, an old pickup on giant tires parks jerks to a halt. A weather-beaten, thirtyish man emerges: in hoodie, board shorts and work boots. Back in the cab, the Customary Dog sits erect on the bench seat.

The hoodie man charges into the coffee house and draws an extra-large house brew from the spigot by the register. The word CONTRACTOR is not written across his chest in 100-point type. But it ought to be.

This coffee house is an odd duck, at least at 7 in the morning. Latte orders, cappuccinos: they’re few and far between. It’s a workingman’s joint here and now, and most everybody heads for the giant thermos of pre-brewed coffee. Or, if they’re fancy, to the brew bar where the barista has set up a drip filter and cup for them. She knows her regulars, and preps their brews-of-choice as soon as she sees their cars pull up.

A fat university cop sits at the front table, speaking in low tones to lean, dried-out men with the look of retirees. In the background a worn young woman hovers near the ATM machine. Her tight jeans and low-cut blouse show too much — joylessly, with the feel of someone whose night furnished not enough rest and whose day is an ordeal stretching ahead.

A hulking civil servant stalks past with hollow eyes, shirt half-out of his slacks. We know each other, but for him it’s too early for more conversation than the flick of one eye. I know what his job is like, and his health. I understand.

At two tables near the back, indifferently-dressed women peer at old laptops – apparently here to use the free WiFi on their way to whatever job keeps body and soul together. There is little conversation of any kind; not face-to-face or even on a cell. The mechanical sounds of fans, blowers, steamers and compressors dominate the room. They fracture and neutralize the light jazz drizzling from wall speakers.

More trucks pull up, some with more dogs. More men emerge, in hoodies and boots. Hoodie men have come to our house lately, to fit it for new siding and trim the trees, and paint. I groan when I write the checks, but their hourly pay is little enough for physically demanding work where injury’s a risk and health insurance isn’t so common. The man who trimmed our trees walked with a limp; earlier this year, a chain saw caught him across one thigh.

And yet “the market” – our new god – tells us that these people are less valuable and more dispensable than, say, an advertising executive.  For no reason that would make sense in a sane world.

It is not just coffee that draws the crowds here, but the bagels as well. Bagels of a dozen flavors, split and toasted, fresh from the bakery: with cream cheese, with hummus, with eggs, with bacon, with tomato and onion, or any combination thereof. Carbs, a little fat and protein, a vitamin or two, and a big jolt of caffeine with milk and sugar: it’s the low-priced fuel that launches devalued people into another day in the salt mines.

The coffee house staff works like a machine: serious young women in constant motion. Orders in, orders out, one after another, with rarely a bobble or wasted movement. The cashier passes the coffee order to the barista at her left hand, who probably has already started it. The bagel order, written on a yellow-sticky note, she slaps on the bagel prep station behind her.

The bagel cook endlessly slices, toasts, spreads, fries, and assembles, stopping only to slide the finished sandwiches across the counter in flat black baskets and call out the orders in a steely voice: garlic bagel with easy cream cheese; onion bagel with egg; whole-wheat bagel with hummus and tomato. On and on. If we are each of us in this place the hero of our own comic book, facing villains with names like PsychoBoss or Captain Overwork or Doctor Poverty, then these bagels are the Breakfasts of Champions. And they will suffice for another morning.

And then they are eaten: some at the few tables, in silence. Others, God knows where: their owners will take them “to go” and run out the door with a wrapped bagel in one hand and a paper coffee cup in the other. Will they eat it one-handed, behind the wheel? Devour it at their desk, at the job site, or in the teacher’s lounge in the minute or two before the work day begins? The answer to these questions, you and I will never know. But we can surmise.

An hour or two later, this coffee house will be a different place: fewer customers, none of them in much of a hurry to be anywhere. “The market” looks more kindly upon them – or perhaps upon their parents. They’ll order more coffee drinks and sweet pastry. They’ll come with friends, and chat. Some will establish themselves at a table and spend two or three hours attempting the Great American novel, or at least the Great American Term Paper. Laptops will stream YouTube videos; young men in horn-rimmed glasses and funny hats will laugh over-loudly. This is what we expect of coffee houses.

But this is not all that they are. Nor everyone who uses them.

So ends another dispatch from the West Side of Santa Cruz, where some people live the good life all day long. And a whole lot of others are just getting by.