Foray into US Culture: Manicured Faux

[Introducing a new writing series: "Forays into US Culture".]

Through the window of my temporary home office, a flash of bright orange on a slim branch of a well-trimmed oleander. I peer into the shrub manicured to present the de rigueur Potemkin profile for gated communities in suburban Houston, Texas; its skinny, bare branches prop up a palapa-like toupee of green leaves trimmed and tweaked so that no errant petal- or dry leaf-like shape mars the streetscape. (I suspect the residents who drive by in de rigueur V8, double-cab trucks notice the environment only when something is out of place…then anonymous complaints made to the anonymous HOA result in anonymous emails of disapproval to the resident associated with the eyesore). 

  

Suddenly, another flash of bright orange, this time close enough that I make out a vertical ‘ruff’ that, Japanese fan-like, flicks out from throat to breast then folds back into the neck of a delicate lizard, six inches from tip to tail; spectacular! 

Further revelations of beauty when this lizard traverses the window sill inches from my face. If it is fear that makes this creature’s chest thump as we, two disparate but living creatures, size one another up through the glass, the lizard does not scitter back into its camouflage. I marvel: its gossamer toes and knuckles jut at impossible angles yet cling effortlessly to the metal window frame; its skin, rather than the uniform brown I’d seen from afar, shows flecks in shades of yellow, orange, and gold sprinkled on a background of browns. 

Intrigued, I wonder: how has this delicate critter survived ecocide and urban development?

For, out here, south of Houston and a long way from “home”, San Francisco Bay Area, I am a cranky visitor, out of sorts, disoriented. That lizard, tough little critter, helps me understand I am heartbroken. 

Certainly not unique, this gated community - the norm for upper-income suburban development across the south western US - displays that the subduing of the “natural” environment (this one was bayou wetlands) into manageable monoculture and manicured faux is an art form, albeit banal, executed to the exact price point to ensure, for developers, enviable return on investment and, for residents, the exact signals of willingness to conform yet some leeway to brag, appropriately, that is without the effort of actually bragging, of far-above-average net worth. 

Squares of Bermuda sod grass, manufactured elsewhere, is carpeted into luminescent lawn sprinkled at 3:00am each day throughout the neighborhood. I witnessed the laying of a sod lawn: at 11:00am, in 95-plus degree heat, three Mexican men with shovels and pick axes excavated resident grass and weeds while one white man leaned against a stack of palleted sod and watched. At 4:30pm that same day, in 90 degree heat, the same three Mexican men, now drenched in sweat and dirt, wiggled the last squares of sod into the new lawn (now resembling a once-bald man’s head with newly implanted hair plugs). The same white man leaned against a stack of empty pallets and watched.

Purchased adult palm trees (homeowners have the option of purchasing decades-old oak trees from other parts of Texas – at $100k per oak though, palms proliferate) inserted into accommodating holes are carefully arranged around stucco houses with the architectural flourishes of princess-in-fairytale castles, painted in shades of beige (“ecru”?) and brown (“desert”?) and off-white. Inside, the square footage is so vast that resident’s leg muscles ache from hiking the stairs to upper bedroom number one to media room then down the stairs to kitchen to one of three dining areas then back up the stairs to a Jack ‘n Jill bathroom dividing two junior bedrooms to master bedroom to number two and three bedrooms then downstairs to half bathroom to walk-in closet that stores shoes and accessories and walk-in closet that stores clothing to four-car garage that stores consumables post consumption, and oversize, bulging garbage bins awaiting the garbage truck due in the early hours two days a week. (Then, out of sight, out of mind, garbage goes wherever garbage goes. Why care where it goes as long as it goes?) 

How did this glorious lizard survive the ecocide? I imagine it the lone survivor of the lizard equivalent of the Hunger Games, a once proud member of a lizard community since euthanized to make way for 2.2 members of nuclear families fully dependent upon houses with air conditioning systems that utter airplane-taking-off-like moans throughout the day and night. Despite 4-car garages, Lexus SUVs (white or silver) and monster trucks (uniformly new and shiny, white or black, Ram, Ranger, Super Duty, Silverado, or Escalade) and golf carts (to putter rather than walk around the neighborhood) park, four-deep, in expansive drive ways. 

How will this lizard survive this over-engineered future? How will any of us? 

Those of us with imagination, or from the experience of having known this land before it was 'mani- and pedi'ed' into submission, conjure up images of when this bayou wetland and all its denizens, including lizards and oak trees thrived. At least we still have our imagination - for now.

(Photos: Susan Galleymore, 2014)

Upper income stucco but cookie-cutter-nevertheless houses with
fairytale princess-in-the-castle architectural flourishes.

Palm trees...and sidewalks that end right at individual property lines;
once the 60-foot lot is purchased, the HOA ensures the new home builder is furnished with a completed sidewalk - not that residents actually walk on it.

2.2 members of nuclear families fully dependent
upon air conditioning systems that utter
airplane-taking-off-like moans throughout the day and night.

The effrontery of it!
This expression of wild plant life resisting
manicured faux lasted 3 days. Then the offense
was spotted and eradicated by landscape crews.

Views for sale! Three multimillion dollar homes, with all the accoutrement, will be fitted into this spot. Here, work begins on the first home.

The first bulldozer. The two oaks, center right, will be demolished and
replaced with a leg-achingly large house, air conditioning system, Bermuda grass lawn, asymmetrical flower beds with black bark mulch, and the inevitable palm tree or two.
The environment is dead! Long live the environment.

Garbage day in the 'hood.
"Garbage is picked up by men in a truck
and where garbage goes, I don't give a f...!"

Common area for a gated community?
Besides the public swimming pool, this patch represents
the only area for residents to meet, shoot the breeze,
be, y'know, neighborly. Just as well there are no tendencies
in that direction...the only activity I've seen here are trucks
parked on the faux tile.

[All photos: Susan Galleymore]

Check out other entries in the new series, Forays into US Culture
Foray into UC Culture: Rush on Robin
Foray into US Culture: Hillary Clinton, "It Takes a Pillage to Raze a Child..."
Forays into US Culture: Relax in a Hurry
Forays into US Culture: Downloadable Books...and Other Dystopias
Foray into US Culture: Manicured Faux

Lest We Forget “Never Again”

April 18, 1996, Israel Defense Force shelled a UN compound in Qana, south Lebanon, killing 106 and injuring 116 of the 800 civilians seeking refuge there. Back then, the UN expressed outrage and demanded accountability, stating that its officials had repeatedly given details of the UN facility and its refugee population to Israel. Israel denied this.

July 30, 2006, Israel Air Force attacked a three-story home in Qana where 63 villagers had sheltered in a basement for 18 days. Survivors suggest the house may have been targeted when pilots spotted flickering candlelight. Rubble from one of three bomb strikes blocked the basement door.

What happened after that?

According to accounts related to me in Qana in 2006, family members sought one another by shrieking names while parents felt around in the pitch dark for their children, all the while slipping in blood and scrambling to remove dust from lungs and debris from limbs while the able-bodied scrabbled with bare hands at the blocked exit.

One mother found a toddler she refused to release even after she escaped the ruins. Bleeding, in shock, and sheltering under a tree, she rocked the already dead child until dawn revealed the child to be her neighbor's. Her own child, smothered to death under dust and rubble, was still in the debris - one of 16 children of the 28 confirmed dead; 13 more dead were never found.

The UN expressed outrage and demanded accountability. The US did too, sort of….

My  trip to Qana in 2006 allowed me to understand, first hand, these sites and how these attacks are remembered.

Memorials at the site of the UN attack in Qana include a shiny black pyramid-shape to remember the UN’s UNFIL victims. For the Lebanese dead, an elaborate photo mural, a series of coffin-shapes spread over the plaza and, on the ruined floor of what once an office in the UN compound, a rusty shell casing and a man’s sandal still lay in the bombed structure.
 See more pictures: New holocaust.

A memorial to the dead of the Qana basement is built over the home’s concrete foundation; the youngest victim was 10 months old.   

Memorial to Israel's bombing on a home and killed people who'd
sheltered for 18 days in the basement. Photo: Susan Galleymore

Ibrahim Ahmed’s family’s photo collage honors its dead;
Ibrahim Ahmed is shown right of Zena’s husband, center.

I talked to Zena, whose husband and father were killed, and to Zena’s mother, Maryam, wife to patriarch Ibrahim Ahmed - dead, along with 10 members of the family. Today, these women, like many others who lost heads of household in the attack, eke out a meager living (sometimes supplemented by Hezbollah).

Never again? Or, more of the same?

This year, in July, Israeli forces struck UNRWA schools in Gaza. As of the end of July, the toll of dead and injured had not been fully tallied for this latest event (RT reports, “Officials in Gaza say the shelling killed at least 15 and wounded 90 others”). The overall tally of dead Palestinians in Gaza, so far, is more than 1,300 since July 8 (with Israel targeting 4,100 sites in Gaza’s 139-square-mile area).

According to The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood, reporting from Jerusalem, "United Nations officials described the killing of sleeping children as a disgrace to the world and accused Israel of a serious violation of international law….Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said the attack was "outrageous and unjustifiable" and demanded "accountability and justice". The UN said its officials had repeatedly given details of the school and its refugee population to Israel."

In the US, Israel’s most staunch ally and weapons’ supplier, the White House called this week’s shelling of the UN facility by the Israeli Defense Forces 'totally unacceptable and totally indefensible'.

Nevertheless, RT reports that US Congress “overwhelmingly approved an emergency measure on Friday [August 1st] to grant $225 million in additional revenue to Israel for the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system.” (The inimitable Sen. John McCain explained, “We are with the Israelis, because if they don’t have the Iron Dome, they can’t defend themselves.”)
And, the Pentagon reportedly approved Israel’s request for additional rounds of ammunition from the US.


It is difficult not to feel deep cynicism and not to express biting sarcasm at these predictable goings on. How dare those inconvenient and pesky Palestinians resist their slaughter? Why do they insist upon clinging to land subjected to Israel’s relentless 19th century-style colonizing project?

And, after several such attacks on UN facilities since the 1996 attack on the UN in Qana, how can UN representatives bear to manufacture yet more outrage and indignation for public consumption at yet another instance of the slow-moving genocide of the Palestinians?

How can "the public" watch …then turn away to busy itself with the banal?

Do the Israelis attack so shamelessly because they are certain that the UN's expressions of bitter outrage (and the US’s carefully phrased-to-be-meaningless condemnations) to the public will be as impotent and as futile as ever? No matter what Israelis do, US support, weapons, and ammunition will keep flowing – after all, how else will Israel defend itself?

If the world remembers Qana - or Cana - as the site where Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding two thousand years ago, why can it not remember Qana’s - and Gaza’s - more recent yet just as dramatic events?

Perhaps it is simply pesky and inconvenient to remember distressing events unless they are drummed into heads via assiduously courted and supported pro-Israel historians, academics, history books, movies, news reports, and propaganda, or unless they are as well funded as the marketing campaigns and museums around the world dedicated to the mantra “Never Again”.

Occupy… and Defuse Capitalism's Handmaidens

I wrote this article for Csaba Polony's publication, Left Curve, No. 36, 2012 issue.
Occupy… and Defuse Capitalism's Handmaidens 

In 2011, I wrote, "The same ground you walk on, we do too" for Left Curve, No. 35. Download and read it. 

In 2014, after 30 years of publications, Left Curve will print its last issue, No. 38. Order it from Left Curve website, also the archive.


This journal was unique in that it published articles, poems, art and ideas that our culture tends to marginalize as not mainstream enough.  For example, this was one of the few print publications where writers critical of Israel's policies and brutality against the Palestinians (and others who highlighted them) were published.
Csaba Polony's passing is a blow to his family and friends...and also signifies the end of an era. Where else might such ideas and the product of such ideas arise?

A Friend Passes

Csaba Polony, friend, editor and publisher of "Left Curve" journal, and core to San Francisco's North Beach literary crowd and Spec's bar, died mid-March, 2014.
He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in mid-January; 8 weeks later he was gone.
As I write this, it is early April and I'm still "processing" the speed with which my friend left us.
In early December, he reported he was able to sleep even less than usual. I shared a sleeping pill; it didn't help - he said it made him fuzzy the next day.
At his usual winter solstice party, before Christmas, he was his normal party self: a quiet host ensuring his many guests had food - lots of it, including his signature Hungarian goulash - wine, and music. The "usual suspects" sat outside the apartment smoking, talking, sharing poetry, singing, and playing music; inside - the no smoking zone - we ate, drank, talked, and danced. Those of us who frequently contributed articles to Csaba's annual journal, Left Curve, looked forward to another issue. It was, as usual, due out in late April with a publishing party at City Lights in North Beach; after that, those of us who could, crossed Columbus Ave and gathered in Spec's for a drink and more talk.
This year, cancer intervened.
At the first medical visit, Csaba's doc said the preliminary examination indicated an ulcer...or cancer. Then next examine revealed cancer - advanced.
I volunteered to help produce this year's issue of Left Curve. Csaba, meanwhile, worked as hard and as fast on the issue as he could while he could. When he and I talked about it, he'd download as much info as he could to me ...then fatigue would overtake him.
He began chemo. I introduced him to someone who had beaten stage 4 cancer and, 3 years later, was still in remission. We all took heart from this miracle man.
Chemo knocked Csaba sideways.
And chemo is, well, dreadful. I learned, for example, that the person administering the chemo dose must wear gloves; the chemo pill may not touch the skin of a healthy person. (Yet we dose a person already weakened by cancer with this chemical?)
After a week of chemo, Csaba - and his family - elected to forgo that treatment.
Ten days later our friend was dead.
I said goodbye to Csaba about a week before he succumbed. I thanked him for being my friend, for being the one person I knew who understood, and could talk about with honesty and intelligence, the actual experience of being an immigrant to the US.
Csaba was a child of war. His family fled Budapest for the US when he was four. When he was five, his family set up a home in Ohio.
His memorial at the Emerald Tablet in North Beach showed photos of the young Csaba, a lovely lad with white blonde hair.
It would be hard to find someone less likely than Csaba to remain in Ohio and, after college, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and attended SFSU and earned a Masters in Fine Arts.
I knew Csaba for 14 years and, each of those years, he traveled back to Budapest during the summer for at least one month.
While I knew my friend never forgot his homeland, it was only when I worked on the production of the last issue of Left Curve, that I discovered how deep was his attachment. More than that, he considered himself far more of an European/Eastern European than an American. Indeed, cultural dislocation was one of the elements that bound us as friends. Our views of our adopted culture were similar and, instinctively, we talked to one another from the point of view of travelers in an alien land, populated with ideas alien to our own - even as our own ideas were ...enabled...by our adopted culture. Interestingly, Csaba was a city boy from an historical European city; I am a country girl from an authoritarian British colony yet our views of American culture and society were congruent.
How true that one can take the boy (girl) out of Hungary (South Africa) but one cannot take Hungary (South Africa) out of the boy (girl).
One goodbye story stands out.
Accomplished poet Jack Hirschman and Csaba were friends for at least 40 years. In the last couple of years there had been a period of ...estrangement?... between the two; not uncommon for good friends who are also strong characters. When Csaba was diagnosed, Jack came down with a cold then pneumonia...and, around about the time Csaba was using, then forgoing, chemo treatments, Jack ended up in the ICU for a week. About a week before Csaba died, Jack's wife, a wonderful woman and great poet, Aggie Falk brought Jack and his oxygen tank to Csaba's house, then helped Jack up the steep stairwell and to his friend's bedside. Then Jack, as only Jack could do, paid tribute to his friend and their friendship: he sang. I was not there - alas - but among the songs I heard Jack sang to Csaba, who was semi-conscious and holding Jack's hand, was "Sonny boy."
I cannot think of a more apt, moving, and perfect way to say goodbye to one's friend.
Here's a picture of the friends, Csaba Polony, foreground, and Jack Hirschman, taken on my cell phone, in Spec's in 2013.

Left Curve, No. 38, will publish in June. After 30 years, this will be the last issue.

The Myriad Faces of... Facebook

There is a lot to say about Facebook. Yes, it is a sign of our times; it can be a time sink; yes, it has Zuckman - what more can be said about Zuckerman? yes, too, Facebook has got more than its share of not-too-smart people trolling around; then again, it has some very cute pictures of cats...and other critters.
And, yes, it has a good number of PC people trying to keep the rest of us in line.

Here's an example:

Here's a sample of what followed:

Now, these days - after going through several iterations of pro- and con-Facebook - my Facebook persona tends towards, first, see if any more pix of my grand kids have been added; if there have, I hover over them, laugh, enjoy, write a comment or two.  This is the Number 1 Best Use of Facebook.

After that, since I'm also attracted by pictures, and if I have the time, I scan recent  pictorial additions. Now and again, and if necessary, I chime in with something.
In the above case of "he's not your dad", etc, I chimed in with:

"C'mon all y'all ... the joke here is that it is SO EASY to divert the issue. Take one serious issue - surveillance - and shove it aside with what is known as "shock doctrine"! The kid - or whoever is the recipient of the shock - is so blown away by the new revelation that the old revelation is minor in comparison. Now that is smart ideology at work!"

Now it is also true that any one person is in the particular "life phase" that s/he is in...and, try as one might, it is difficult to break out, really break out, of that phase (sure, one can pose as in "be a poseur" but, why bother?)
So, if you are a PCing PC'er, be the best PCing PC-er you can be. By all means, correct the folks who find stuff funny that you think is serious and that you think everyone else should find serious too. But, try to do it with the understanding that, one day, you, too, might pass out of the PC phase and find others still in the PC phase to be tedious, humorless, and annoying. Yes, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be happy you passed out of the PC phase but try look back with compassion, understanding, patience, and, yes, lots of humor and a good dose of chagrin too.

Another thing that might happen after you pass out of the PC phase is that your thinking becomes more nuanced and less rigid; you may find wider understanding of the complexities around you and also deeper enjoyment of life and its oh-so-many-wonderful-possibilities.
Just like the Men's Warehouse, I guarantee it!

One year later...

Yikes! It has been more than a year since my last entry here. So much has changed/so much has stayed the same.
I wonder...should I draw a heavy line to separate this post from the last one, February 19, 2013?

Yes. Let me do that and then begin, again, for April 1, 2014.

__________________________________________

Skirting the real changes necessary to address climate change

About 3,000, “The biggest crowd ever to address climate change in San Francisco”  according to emcee for event organizers Sierra Club and 350.org,  gathered in Justin Herman Plaza on Sunday, February 17th.

Unlike the 40,000 hardy souls gathered in wintery Washington, DC on the same day for the same demands (no Keystone XL/tar sands; no fracking; cut carbon emissions, divest public money from fossil fuels) sunlight streaming between skyscrapers warmed us in San Francisco.

Marchers gathering on the corner of Steuart and Market Streets
to march around the block that houses the
state department’s regional offices in San Francisco.
(Photo: Susan Galleymore)

Circle dancing to the beat of Native drums warmed us too. Indeed, the presence of descendants of Native people indigenous to the bay area signals a change from the usual political gatherings. So novel is this addition of Native people to predominantly Anglo liberal and progressive local politics that the aroma accompanying the ritual burning of sage is still acceptable. (If the Native presence continues at these events – and I sincerely hope it does – I predict that delicately worded requests will soon circulate requesting organizers ban sage to accommodate the chemically sensitive. How that clash of cultures plays out will speak volumes about inclusion, power, and empowerment.)

On this early spring day, speakers included fresh voices and faces including youth, residents of the city of Richmond, and San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos who described his resolution to divest the San Francisco Employees Retirement System (SFERS) from leading fossil fuel giants Exxon, BP, Shell, and Chevron.

Divestment is a “great idea” but not addressed is how retirement funds make up the losses when an approximately $1 billion investment is pulled from these highly profitable companies.

Justin Herman Plaza on the Embarcadero.
(Photo: Susan Galleymore)

For fewer dollars building up in already strapped retirement funds mean fewer dollars for retirees, while barely affecting fossil fuel giants’ bottom line: $137 billion in profit goes a long way to reduce short-term corporate loss.

Among the questions not addressed by the push for “sustainable living” in the 21st century is what it actually means...and how it effectively addresses climate change.

The romantic view of sustainability predominates: the young and middle-aged, the healthy and able-bodied, the well-off, those living close to work, grocery stores, and shopping malls -- can buy and ride bicycles, grow vegetables, raise backyard chickens, turn down  thermostats, perhaps take buses (if one has the time to wait).

But, even if 25 percent – about 2 million people – of the Bay Area’s population did all of these things (a welcome even vitally necessary but highly unlikely scenario) it would not much diminish climate change.

The American People are woefully unprepared for the changes genuine “sustainable living” will impose on America and the American “lifestyle.” Indeed, “sustainable living” is profoundly un-American for, realistically, it means Americans “divest” from capitalism and that means major changes not only in material wealth but in the American worldview, culture, and identity.

In theory, I’m all for sustainable living and already live as sustainably as I can: I gave up my hurry-hurry, commute-centric, money-making career in favor of a simpler, shopping-free, more humane bike-centric life - despite a much diminished income.

But I’m aware that I can do so because the system of capitalism is still firmly in place and I can eke out a “sustainable” existence in the shadow of the American Way of Life. I cannot nor can any one of us sustain ourselves – never mind our families – on what is grown on condo patios, back yards, community gardens, on tiny amounts of wind- and solar-generated energy, and on bicycling, recycling and reusing.

While I heartily endorse Avalos’ resolution, it behooves him to explain that ritual and symbolism – divestment, political protests and gatherings, even blockading routes to and from tar sands areas – do not address the fundamental conundrum: sustainability versus capitalism...with capitalism requiring endless growth

As much as some well-intentioned people desire to have both, the two are incompatible.

In America, so far, there exists no vernacular to communicate the fundamental and interlocking changes that are required – demanded! – to reduce the perils climate change brings to people all over the planet.

Those who present themselves as leaders during this new moment must not only understand, integrate, and communicate a holistic picture about what sustaining life really means they must also acknowledge that what is necessary is not only divesting from but also doing away with the war, defense and homeland security industries that are the backbone of our economy, and nuclear energy and weaponry, and Wall Street, and the corporate model, and lobbying and lobbyists, and Congressional and corporate corruption....

For, “everything” is connected – and fundamental change includes re-ordering the American psyche.

The lovely spring weather allowed like-minded people and their colorful banners to reconnect after a cool winter and, as we celebrated in the plaza, hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists looked on and cars, trucks, and buses sped along the Embarcadero.

What would it really take to get those drivers and passengers out of their cars and engaged in step one: divesting from fossil fuels...and car culture?