Neighbors are a fact of life for most of us, I suspect. I think that one of the major defining separations between many city dwellers and many small town residents is the interactions that people have with their neighbors. Here, I know my neighbors. I know their names, I know their children, and I know their habits. If my neighbor’s house was on fire, I would call the fire department not out of self preservation, but out of concern. Likewise, if I saw strange behavior, I would probably speak up about it, and I know that my neighbors would do likewise. We may not be the best of buddies, but we look out for each other.

In the City, I felt like that was not the case. (And before you jump all over me, I am fully aware that there are neighborly regions of cities all over the world, where neighbors are friends and they do look out for each other, just like there are frosty, hostile neighborhoods in small town. I’m generalizing, people. Generalizing.) I didn’t really know my neighbors in the city, and they seemed suspicious and confused when I helped them out, or invited them to Thanksgiving because they were young art students who might not have anywhere to go.

I know that I complain about my neighbors a lot. Some of them are pretty noisy. But all of them are good people. I have a reasonably friendly relationship with the people who share this lot with me; there are actually two separate households in the front house, and we exchange baked goods and greetings and offers of assistance periodically. I also have two friends on the same block whom I interact with pretty regularly, and I exchange friendly nods and smiles with my other neighbors. I may not know everyone by name, but I know who lives where, and what they drive, and more or less what their working hours are.

I’ve noticed that some people who relocate here love this. My friend P, for example, is really pleased by the fact that people know her and her husband, and that they genuinely care about what’s going on in P’s life. She’s assimilated well to this aspect of small town life, which also has an ugly side; gossip, for example, spreads quickly here because everyone knows everyone, and it’s very hard to deal with something in private here. Other newcomers seem to really resent the fact that people here are generally (not always, I know) friendly to their neighbors.

At one point several years ago, my father and I were walking on the Coastal Access Trail I mentioned yesterday, and we ran into the property owners. The wife seemed like a nice lady, but the husband was very hostile. My father and I simply introduced ourselves, and my father mentioned that he was their neighbor, and that they should call if they needed assistance with anything. The wife thanked him, but the husband sneered and was rather rude. To my father’s credit, he responded with aplomb, merely saying that he was in the phone book if they ever needed anything, and that he would be happy to have them over to tea with some of the other neighbors so that they could get to know the neighborhood, if they wanted to.

They never called him, and I think this cut my father more deeply than he lets on. He made a genuinely kind offer, I think, and they treated him like an ignorant hick until he mentioned that he was an English professor (with more education than either of these yuppies (yes, Nicholas, they were in fact yuppies*) had). It’s sad to me that people seem almost afraid of neighborliness these days, because I think it’s excellent to know your neighbors. Especially when you’ve set up an adversarial relationship with them by trying to block a Coastal Access Trail; most people are willing to give you a second chance, if you decide to grow up and behave like an adult.

Not just because they might help you out some day when you need it. It’s just easier to be nice than rude, and it’s easier to get things solved by working together as a community. This town has a lot of problems, and they aren’t going to be solved by being rude to each other. I think that this divide between neighborly attitudes and frosty ones is a major issue in a lot of resort towns, and it generates a lot of resentment. Small actions make a big difference, especially in a town filled with people who have memories like elephants, primarily because we have nothing else to think about. People remember when you’re rude, or disparaging about the place they live in. They also remember when you tip them poorly, when you fail to be polite to their grandmothers, and when you make an ass of yourself in public.

After all, what’s wrong with being nice to your neighbor? Growing up in Caspar, we all knew each other, played soccer together in the street, had parties together, ate together…and banded together when someone needed help. That’s why I choose to live in a small town, because I like knowing that the people around me care about me. I like knowing that if I was in a major accident, a fund would be started at the local bank to help me with my medical bills. I like knowing that I can leave town for the weekend, assured that my neighbors will keep an eye on things. I like knowing that children and animals can play safely around the neighborhood, because people will watch out for them.

This is not to say that people don’t fall through the cracks; this is a town with some dark secrets and problems of its own which do need to be addressed. But being neighborly is a good way to start addressing these issues, by promoting friendship and goodwill among the people who live here. The only way to keep people from falling through the cracks is to know them.

*Furthermore, Nicholas, I would like to argue that yuppies are a serious problem here, as are WOOPs. The difference is that yuppies buy vacation homes that they only visit a few times a year, while WOOPs buy vacation homes which they slowly relocate to. WOOPs, at least, contribute to the local economy by buying things and paying taxes, while yuppies swan in and out of town bitching about how boring it is, which begs the question of why they bothered to buy property here at all.

Furthermore, I in no way shape or form mean to disparage the service industry. I greatly enjoy the efforts of the hardworking men and women in the service industry up here. I just think that an entirely service-based economy is not healthy, and that not all people are happy to work in it. To choose to devote your life to service is an excellent thing; to be forced into it is another. And although many employers here take great care of their crews and pay as well as they can, a service industry job does not generally pay a mortgage. Perhaps I should devote another entry to my issues with service-based economy, and my own suggestions for ways to break out of that here, assuming everyone isn’t tired of my ranting about this issue.

Britain is attempting a novel solution to problem neighbors: therapy.

Is the American short story endangered? A well crafted opinion piece by a well known author suggests that yes, it is.

Welcome to the police state; a woman has died in TSA custody.

Zero Tolerance is the name of the game in America, but is it effective?

An envoy to the UN travels to Burma in an attempt to begin unraveling the troubled nation’s issues.

Iran has labeled the CIA and US Army “terrorist” organizations. I’m not really sure that label is applicable, since I didn’t think that state agencies can be terrorists. But the point is clear enough.

One of the reasons I like being back home is that I get to hang out with my father. Today we made some lunch and wandered around his neck of the woods; there’s a deeded coastal access trail very close to his house where you can go out onto the headlands or down onto a little beach. Since it was so beautiful today, it was awesome to be able to get out of the house, breathe some fresh air, and ramble with my father.

His garden is certainly flourishing; he’s got plants exploding all around the house, with lots of flowers which were wide open to drink in the sun today. We harvested some produce from the garden for lunch, and I ate some of his peas; I do have a fondness for peas fresh out of the pod. It’s interesting to see how much he’s shaped his garden, which was pretty minimal when he moved in. He used mostly rejected free plants which no nursery wanted, coaxing them into health. Despite his constant battle with the deer, he seems to be doing ok in the garden department; although the gophers ate all of his potatoes, apparently.

My father and I are similar in a lot of ways. We’re both surprisingly inflexible, for such liberal people, and we both really like set, dependable schedules. Stubbornness is also a trait that we both have, along with a certain amount of reverse class snobbery. We can also be surprisingly blunt, sometimes, and we often make social gaffes despite being otherwise pretty on it and observant. I noticed today that we both also get on reading kicks, where we track down every possible book on a subject and read about it until we’re exhausted. I think that my father is a bit more compassionate that I am, which is presumably something that comes with age, and I’m much more hotheaded and impatient than he is, something that I hope will settle down with age.

Wandering along the coastal access trail, we were talking about all sorts of things, as we usually do, but the inanity of owning land came up. It is kind of strange, isn’t it, to think of “owning” the Earth. “Leasing” would be a more accurate word, I think. He made the point that the commodification of land has really changed our society, perhaps not for the better. Even if we do see and recognize that, I doubt it’s going to change; we’ve gone too far to go back now.

For those of you who don’t know what deeded coastal access is, it’s pretty neat. Essentially, California recognizes that beaches are something which everyone should enjoy, and so the state has a law which ensures that trails to the beach stay open to the public, even if they are on private property. These trails are built into property titles, so when people buy land, they do so with the understanding that the public can walk on their property.

As you can imagine, rich people who buy oceanfront property resent this, and a lot of coastal access trails are actually illegally closed off. The trail that we used today is on a piece of land which was bought by some rich lawyers from the city a few years ago. Initially, they tried to close off the land with no tresspassing signs and a high fence; to their surprise, the community fought back. Thanks to the efforts of a few people, the trail is now open to the public, although it’s lined with aggressive “no trespassing; private property; stay on trail; we’re rich self righteous fucks who never actually come our vacation home” signage.

Despite that, there’s something deeply satisfying about using this trail, not only because it opens out onto a beautiful headland and the ocean today was blue and sparkling and perfect, but because my father and I got to thumb our noses at the idea of “owning” property, of controlling rights to it, of refusing to get to know your neighbors. The people who own this house learned to their cost that communities still mean something in some parts of the world.

Congress has just approved more money for the war in Iraq. What was that about the Democrats only agreeing to vote for enough funds to pull troops out?

When domestic violence goes bad, it goes very, very bad. The Jackson Free Press profiles two women who were not well served by local law enforcement, illustrating the need for more aggressive tactics on domestic violence.

Farmed fish may be causing serious damage to wild stocks of salmon, trout, and others; some groups are asking that fish farms be located further out to sea.

Euthanasia of terminally ill infants is under discussion in the UK. A pity that the BBC calls it “mercy killing,” which makes it sound like doctors take babies out back and shoot them.

After being stuck in a car crash for eight days, a woman has been found; amazingly, she’s alive and it seems she has a good chance at survival despite severe injuries and dehydration issues.

Wealthy hypocrites appear to be invading all corners of the world. Pity the sanctimonious nitwits can’t choke on their own money or something.

I was talking to a young friend who is in the process of applying to colleges the other day, and since he’s applying to a number of schools, I recommended that he get fee waivers, since his family isn’t exactly rolling in money. It became readily apparent to me that he didn’t know what a fee waiver was, and that no one had told him how to apply for one, despite the fact that he’s obviously eligible.

“Well, you know,” he said. “I go to Mendo, it’s not like anyone there thinks about that.”

I thought he made an excellent point, and one which was more far reaching than I think he realized. The thing about living in a small town is that people seem to live in some kind of fantasy world, where a relatively minor meeting of the Planning Commission is packed with people while serious issues in the community are not addressed. People don’t “think about that” because “that” is ugly and unpleasant.

In this lovely fantasy land, we have no homeless people. No one is poor. Everyone who needs health care gets it, and women are never beaten by their husbands. Kids who want to go to college can do so without worrying about how to pay for it. No one is ever raped, and everyone lives in big, spacious homes with stylish modern design. Everyone is so very happy and comfortable.

Which would be awesome, if it was true.

In fact, our community has a lot of serious problems which I think are made more serious by ignorance. Anyone who works in social services can tell you about the major issues faced by people in our community every day. Do we really think that we can sweep these things under the carpet? That if we pretend nothing bad is happening, everything will magically get better? This is not, my friends, how the world works, much though we might wish it.

There’s a concerted effort right now which is focusing on promoting the tourist industry in Fort Bragg, which I’m sure we all know that I am very opposed to. Not just because tourists are, in my opinion, ruining this town and my quality of life, but because they are tearing this region apart. Tourists force everyone here into the service sector while they drive up the price of property and basic goods. Sure, the people on the “Mendocino County Promotion Board” are doing ok, but almost everyone else is getting fucked up the ass. I’m lucky because I managed to break out of the service industry through sheer force of will (and some natural talent, I like to think). But I can see the damage that it’s doing, and I still can’t buy a house in the town that I grew up in. I certainly don’t feel comfortable standing by while a handful profit on the backs of the masses. While tourism may not be directly responsible for homelessness, domestic violence, and poverty, I personally believe that there is a link here. People are getting poor and desperate because we ruined all our natural resources and now we’re pimping this town out like a trashy hooker.

People who are new to the area criticize it because it seems slow and quiet. Perhaps it doesn’t occur to them that some of us like it like this, that some of us grew up in a mellow logging town (which had its own problems), and we enjoy a more relaxed and, yes, sometimes dull mode of life. Don’t fucking move to a small town if you want businesses that are open late, and diversity, and ethnic food, and something entertaining to do at night. That is not what small towns are about. Small towns are about peace and quiet, church luncheons and parades and funds for injured firefighters. I am so tired of hearing interlopers bitch about how boring it is here; they chose to move here, they chose to drive property prices up, and now they have the gall to complain about it? Maybe the arts and culture would be more likely to thrive if artists could rent houses for less than $1,000 a month, or if the only decent theatre in town hadn’t been driven out. There are lots of artists, musicians, writers, and other creative types up here, and most of us are slogging our asses off in the tourism trade to pay for our expensive hovels.

This is not, my friends, the answer. The answer is honestly facing our problems and addressing them in constructive ways, like creating a minimum residency law to cut down on vacation homes, or telling the goddamn yuppies to fuck off and stick their wine bars up their uptight asses. We need to come up with long term, sustainable solutions and sources for income which do not involve pandering ourselves. Until we do, we’re going to keep living in a fantasy land, drowning in our own pastiche.

Violet Blue talks about biased anti-kink reporting in the SF Weekly.

The privatization of war is the topic of an op-ed by Paul Krugman. (Hey, New York Times, thanks for removing the pay gate so that I can read Paul Krugman! Good work.)

A new immigration test promotes “assimilation and patriotism.” Er…because those are two things that I look for in immigrants. Yeah. Personally, I’d like to see all natural born US citizens pass the current test.

If you’re vegetarian and you know it, go to Umbria on vacation. Mark Oliver raves expansively about it in the Guardian.

A federal plan for Iraq is nixed by the prime minister. Bite your thumb at that, Senate.

Australian students struggle with student loan debt too.

One of my myriad baby making acquaintances and I were talking the other day about what she is going to feed her child (after she’s done breastfeeding, of course). She was saying that she wanted to set up “rules” about what would be eaten around the house, and I was arguing against this idea. I grew up with essentially no rules under my father’s care, and I think that I eat a reasonably healthy, balanced diet, although I probably eat more than I need to, strictly speaking.

When I was a kid, I didn’t really have any fast food, pizza, soft drinks, chips, or storebought sweets. I did have a lot of whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and fish, with smaller portions of red meat. We also usually had something like cake or pie around, but we took awhile to work our way through it, eating small portions and encouraging others to assist. The pie protocol in our house also dictated high quality ingredients and culinary experimentation, two important qualities in all cooking, in my opinion. A lot of this food, incidentally, was locally raised; sometimes in my own backyard. My father didn’t need to tell me not to eat junk food, because I didn’t have interest in it. I mean, really. Like I would be invited over to friend’s houses and I would ask for water when their parents offered soda.

I think that Americans are experiencing a crisis of diet, and that many parents are really struggling with this issue because they see kids getting fat all over the nation. I don’t think that rules are the answer, though. I think that education is the answer, so that parents will demonstrate a healthy diet for their children, encouraging their kids to eat great food. I’m willing to bet that the Sardine, for example, is going to grow up a lot like I did, experiencing a range of foods and flavors and never touching trashy, fatty food which is bad for you physically and mentally, in my opinion. I doubt that he’s going to be tempted by the mysteries of trashy food, because he’ll already be initiated into the delight of good food.

We’re fat as a culture because we live in a country which places a lot of emphasis on quick, easy meals. People are encouraged to eat shitty burgers from McDonald’s. The grocery store entices them with transfat laden muffins and extra large tubs of ice cream. Many Americans eat a lot of garbage because they don’t know any better, and they eat it in huge volumes because we’re all about bigger is better. And we pass these traits onto our children because our children do as we do, not as we say. (I’m using the royal we here, not hiding anything from you, dear readers, I swear.)

In the case of my friend S, who was talking about the rule setting, I don’t think she has anything to worry about. I think her kid will grow up loving vegetables and fruit and eschewing soda because that’s how S is, so that’s what her kid will be exposed to. Rules only create temptations where there were none, and I don’t see why more people don’t recognize this. I’m sure that if my father had told me not to eat potato chips, I would have been all them every time every time I saw them. Since he didn’t, they weren’t a forbidden fruit for me, and I expressed a lack of interest in junk food which was considered appalling by many of my friends.

I can remember almost every time that my father brought something like soda home. I remember one summer, for example, I was sick, and he bought root beer and vanilla ice cream to make floats. I might have actually just had dental work; I seem to recall him making a lot of pudding and other soft foods around this time. At any rate, it was a rare and unusual treat for me, and I appreciated it all the more because I didn’t get root beer and vanilla ice cream every day. And I certainly didn’t clamor for it afterwards, because my father had taught me that one appreciates things more when they are rare, rather than frequent.

I remember once we were eating dinner and my father said “you know, the French believe that you should always finish a meal slightly hungry.” Whether or not it’s true, I think it’s a good philosophy to have, because things always taste sweeter when we know that they are precious, rather than abundant.

Raw milk in North Carolina will now be dyed grey, presumably in an attempt to terrify consumers into not buying it. I’m surprised they haven’t required a scary surgeon general’s warning yet.

Democrats are also plagiarists, apparently, as the Clinton campaign has copied the proposed health plan of the Edwards campaign. Classy, guys.

Verizon reverses its earlier decision on NARAL text ads. Good call, Verizon.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, er, lost an important piece of evidence in a child pornography case. Oops.

Clearer labeling laws for bottled war are under consideration in the California state legislature. Please tell me, dear readers, that none of you are stupid enough to buy bottled water.

Some silly science to play around with at home, courtesy of the Times of London.

I just attended a real humdinger of a Planning Commission meeting, and, let me tell you, I’m going to start going to these things all the time if they’re going to be this interesting. I had a personal and academic interest in the second item on the agenda, as it has generated a fair amount of controversy and I think it’s an interesting illustration of the complexities of small town politics, complete with backbiting, sniping, and utter lunacy.

The issue at hand was a local restaurant which wanted to expand its hours so that they could close at 11:00 during the week and midnight on the weekends. This ignited a firestorm of controversy over mixed-zoning areas, as the restaurant is in a mixed use district. The property owners, of course, came out in droves to support the measure, while a handful of local residents opposed it.

It did reveal some very interesting things to me, both as an observer and as a participant.

The first was that Fort Bragg clearly needs to think about its policy on mixed use zoning. It needs to set clear standards and apply them across the board, because this problem is going to come up again and again. Especially since mixed zoning is so trendy right now, I think that it would behoove the city to get its act together. In an area like this, there are also a lot of shitstarters who like to spoil the fun for everyone else, and now that they smell blood, they’re not going to stop. The city may have a real problem on its hands.

I also thought it interesting and rather tragic to see how many people were into the tourism industry, like it’s our knight in shining armor. Many of these same people, of course, work for organizations like the “Mendocino County Promotion Board,” so of course I wouldn’t expect them to have a balanced view on the matter. But I think it’s tragic that we are essentially killing ourselves with tourism, and no one is brave enough to suggest alternatives or to speak out against it. It’s not the only option!

There were also some very clear lines drawn. Alas, although I though the opposition had a good case, it did a poor job of presenting and arguing it. They threw around a lot of borderline slander and information of questionable veracity in their attempt to fight the permit, and I think that was a mistake. They really came off as poorly organized, unimpressive idiots with a personal agenda, rather than a valid source of concern. I actually rose to speak on behalf of the opposition, and I was a bit irritated that they tried to enfold me as one of their own, since I did not want to be associated with their tactics, which I thought were underhanded.

I personally opposed the granting of a permit for late hours because I felt that it would have a negative impact on my quality of life, and I spoke about that. I did not feel the need to malign the restaurant or its owners during my testimony, as I think that sort of behavior is rather childish and it weakens your main point. Alas, other people who spoke in opposition did not feel that way, and they presented evidence at the last minute and rambled incoherently on the stand while members of the audience snorted. I wonder if they were aware of how unimpressed the audience was.

At one point, one of these people actually suggested that “more people wanted to come and speak but they were afraid of retaliation,” which is simply poppycock. We’re a small town. That’s not really how we roll, guys. I even felt obligated to approach the restaurant owners afterwards to express my discomfort with that statement, because I wanted them to know that not all of the opposition is spouting absurd rhetoric.

I think that the people who spoke in support made a lot of really good points. It was actually kind of amusing to me that all of the old people talked about wanting to go out at night, and me, the young twenty something, was arguing for shorter hours. I wasn’t impressed with the appeal to tourism, but I thought there were some logical bits in there. I also thought it was interesting that many (though not all) of these people were new to the area, and obviously unaware of the complex intergenerational workings of small town politics. (Of course…most of the opponents were not originally from here either; I think I was the only one, actually.)

However, I did draw the line when supporters said that residents in a mixed use neighborhood should “get used to” noise or “deal with it.” I beg to disagree, and I said so when I spoke. Many of the people who live in the neighborhood in question are low income; they don’t have a choice to relocate because of noise. From my time living downtown, I can say that people who live there deal with public urination, garbage, drug dealing, and, yes, noise. I resented the implication that the people in those apartments don’t matter, because they do. They pay taxes, volunteer at the hospital, and go to school, and they deserve a say. They certainly do not need to “get used to it,” especially when a business moves in after they do and proposes to have extended hours. My personal rule is that if you move somewhere first, you get dibs on noise ordinances. You move afterwards: your problem.

And oh, how the fur flew. People kept leaping up to the podium to make rejoinders while the audience coughed, snickered, and jeered. It was amazing, I tell you! Way more entertaining than anything else in town, for sure. At the close of the public hearing, the Planning Commission adjourned briefly to review materials, and the argument was carried into the street, with representatives of the opposition trying to corner me while I engaged in spirited conversation with supporters of the measure.

I often get accused of playing both fields, which is not an entirely unfair accusation. I spoke in opposition for my own reasons, but I also support the right of people who want to support endeavors like this, and I enjoyed talking with them. I am also fully aware that I enjoy playing the position of devil’s advocate, and I like being able to see both sides of a situation, as I did in this case. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, personally. I also fully expected the supporters to carry the evening, since there were so many of them, and they were so articulate.

Imagine my surprise. After brief debate (with attempts by the public to add comments), the planning commission voted for hours which were, in my opinion, more reasonable: 10:00 closing on the weeknights and 11:00 on weekends. I was a bit slackjawed, actually, and my friends on the supporting side started giving me shit, claiming that my words alone swayed the Planning Commission. (Pish and tosh, I say. I merely rose to bring a more tempered voice to the opposition!) The opposition has “won” the evening, but I suspect that this battle is not over. Indeed, I sense that long simmering resentments are going to rise to the surface and explode in the coming months in the form of an epic battle; and I’m taking a ringside seat, myself. My local readers ought to join me, if they dare.

The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the lethal injection.

Speaking of criminal justice, the Innocence Project is campaigning to test some biological evidence which may absolve an executed man after the fact.

The candidates for President seem to be having difficulty when it comes to coming up with actual campaigns. Could this be because they’re afraid of ruffling feathers?

Hillary supports censorship, apparently, as her campaign essentially blackmailed GQ into dropping a story about her. Uh, guys, I know I’ve said this before, but…please don’t vote for her.

Transgender teens are coming out much earlier and being more assertive, which I think is a really great. It certainly is sparing some people years of agony as they struggle with their gender identities.

After being insulted in his introduction, Iran’s President goes on to lambaste the United States. I must say, if you’re going to invite someone to speak, you are obligated to be polite to them; it is inexcusable to be as rude as Lee Bollinger was. If you don’t have anything nice to say…don’t invite someone to speak at your university?