2008
After suffering with sleep apnea for more than a couple of years, where I was in such a state as to fall asleep at red light or stop sign, I was confronted with yet another medical drama. This one is a long and storied affair, which I can't tell yet except for the outline. Originally when I moved here, just in time for Christmas I got non-A /B Hepatitis, and unfortunately remember it all too well. I will try and return to continue this more than thrilling life time story of misery, disappointment and love lost, how how can one person be so able to attune themselves to find a story line that sucks as bad as this one? I can't imagine a more talented person than one who could do that.
Well, 2008 brought some of more of the the same, my brother's husband of almost 40 years died, having a massive stroke and then having those who have been legally responsible, required to make a decision most of us do not want to make. So, does this protray the year or is the last gasps of yet another horrible Bush Presidency year. I say it that way in that it seems he was the sources of all that was wrong, along with 2007 and 2006; 2005; 2004, etc. And so I go to my Thrive meeting, in which I find out via the person who does walks through the Castro, yes there is more than one, that he will lead one on the 21st, and it should be special since, the Castro is to be reborn back into 1977, a time in which I visited, but did not live here and if there's anything everyone remembers it's Toad Hall, now part of Walgreens, which bought the existing pharmacy at the corner before expanding, in preparation for the filming of Harvey Milk.
Of course it will seem lonely with so many gone now, but that was then and this is now and it should be way too much fun to see the Castro transformed into the one I knew, starting with my first visit to my dear friend Wendy and her new husband Alan, who had moved backed here to finish college (Wendy), she didn't like SoCal, and they lived out on Taraval. And in those days the underground did not yet exist to Castro. BART and thus Muni in the downtown had been completed or at least BART , but the Chruch and Castro Street were still under construction, and so to go west, the trains came and went through the tunnel.
Wendy says, oh you'll know it, you'll come out from the tunnel and there's this big sign for the Castro Threater, get off there and you find what you are looking for. I did and I really never forgot I suspect. But, how fun Castro the way it was in my youth. Having never given much consideration to a day to day reality of life at this age, there was the time when 1996 was probably it, so whether past my prime or time, it is not something I've thought much about.
What will 2008 bring for most of us? Is it too early to ask? Could we expect that someone would come out of the woodwork and say hey! You, yeah you! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE UP to save the planet as well as uplift the level of poverty that most of the world lives?
In contemplating this concept, ask yourself, what would give up first, how might you reorganize your life, or reduce etc. to meet some similar aspiration as expressed by President John Kennedy when he challenged the nation to go to the moon? Between what you consider most important to you and (for those who think other people exist) what might fit best in this cog in order to achieve the above ideas, then is there an intersection? For those of you who might not think allot about any of this for one reason or another, for those of you who do and realize the demons of chemicals in our lives, and for the animal activitist who realize that we are consuming all of the usable and now almost all species are on the brink due to ever rising population of humans, DO ANY OF YOU EVER GET IT?
IT IS NOT A TESLA CAR, it is a tesla home, and we need to shrink or microorganize our lives along the lives that has occurred with electronics. Are there any of you, assuming there are any of you reading, can read, or care to read sort of finally thinking of what the real answer might be? Forget that we can't do this or that or what have you, just from the plain perspective of an answer, there is, has been and until or unless there are techological advances, which do not end other concerns, IS AN ANSWER!
Since 1972 I have been against and fought for the elimination of the automobile. I actually hate automobles, but that does not necessary have anything to do with it. It is what it does and has done and continues to do to our lives and the rest of the planet. And, now that day of reckoning beyond a chance of salvation has arrived, and has nothing to do with any doomsday except our own for our own stupidity. And that is for stupidity in not remembering history and to think, if lead can bring down the upper or all levels of Roman life, does it not occur to you that placing our lives, even if we believe that just because we do nothing more than drive our vehicle, that we are immune from the chemicals spewed forth by gasoline, oil and rubber?
And that hatred it is not because I am not anti progress or some odd ball thing, just, why so much so land, the planet, our home, should we really give over to this belching beast, to satisfy our desire to be able to put space between what and ourselves? Are we so afraid of each other that we can't imagine that we can live close together with lot's of space?
Oh, but you say, we are so industrial, how will we accomodate the vastness of already huge population? We do what we did with electronics, we microize our lives. That means we begin to reorient our City's to a non auto development.