The Wind in Washingron Doesn't Blow

Tonight I will be brief. Not much to report. The weather is warm and a bit muggy with a twenty percent chance of rain that never came. It's a far cry from the deep freeze of winter, and I am still slowly adjusting to the fact that we have real seasons up here after half a lifetime in Salinas, where the TV weatherman gets orgasmic if we have real weather.

The isolation is insulating in some ways. It reminds me of my days at the University in Santa Cruz. We called it the City on a Hill, and sometimes the Magic Mountain, because we felt so far apart and away from the nasties of the world. That was the world of the 1960's, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War. We could see it all clearly and yet felt separated from it. The world kept assaulting us, but our fortress remained secure.

It feels a little like that up here: safe.

I need to feel safe these days. I think about that world out there and how life has changed just in the last few years. I think about how hard the economy is treating the people I know and love. I think about people I do not know who are struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, or trying to live without a paycheck at all. I think about the minimum wage not neing enough to raise a family of four above the poverty line even if both parents are working,

Then I think about the members of Congress sitting on their asses arguing about laws that have already been passed, and tax breaks for the rich. Then I think about how much it costs for just one of these elected officials to run for office, something it seems they spend more time doing than their jobs. I don't know the numbers, and it varies from race to race and constituancy to constituancy, but it seems that a member of the House will spend more money to secure his job for just one term -- two years -- than I will have earned my entire working career. And then he doesn't do his job.

That's why I think they all should resign. I think the election process should be radically altered to prevent all that money from being spent on people running; if it were up to me I would find a way for politicians to run at their own expense and see how fiscally responsible they could be then.

I apologize; I went on longer than I intended. I guess that means I would make a good politician!