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Urban life

On Being a Woman in America

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From Facebook friend Beth Riley, up pops the post below, with quote from a book by someone named Jackson Katz.

On reading it, I first thought…yup. Then reflected that it’s a damn good thing we don’t live in Saudi Arabia, where I grew up. That government just murdered…uhm, “executed”…a woman for the dastardly crime of asking to drive a car.

All extreme fundamentalist movements — be they fundamentalist Christian, fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Buddhist, fundamentalist Hindu, fundament-anything — aim to hold women down. This impulse seems to stem from a trend in human nature to try to control and even imprison females, for reasons that may have made sense when we roamed the ice sheets chasing mammoths but that don’t seem to do so in an advanced civilization.

In America, folks who subscribe to such thinking tend to identify as “conservatives.” But these extremists are not conservatives; they’re radicals. They take a radical attitude toward women, toward foreigners, toward God, toward our nation. People who think they can tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies are people who think woman’s place is as a slave: to a man, or to a culture, or to a misguided religion.

From Beth’s post:

I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.

Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they’ve been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter.

Occasionally, a young guy will raise his hand and say, “I stay out of prison.” This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, “Nothing. I don’t think about it.”

Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.

• Hold my keys as a potential weapon.
• Look in the back seat of the car before getting in.
• Carry a cell phone.
• Don’t go jogging at night.
• Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights.
• Be careful not to drink too much.
• Don’t put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured.
• Own a big dog.
• Carry Mace or pepper spray.
• Have an unlisted phone number.
• Have a man’s voice on my answering machine.
• Park in well-lit areas.
• Don’t use parking garages.
• Don’t get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men.
• Vary my route home from work.
• Watch what I wear.
• Don’t use highway rest areas.
• Use a home alarm system.
• Don’t wear headphones when jogging.
• Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime.
• Don’t take a first-floor apartment.
• Go out in groups.
• Own a firearm.
• Meet men on first dates in public places.
• Make sure to have a car or cab fare.
• Don’t make eye contact with men on the street.
• Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.

― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help

To that I say: Yup. All of the above.

I wonder how many men are aware of all the strategies and subterfuges the women in their daily lives take to protect themselves. To me they’re so much a part of ordinary life, I wouldn’t bother to mention them to a male partner or friend, any more than I would mention that I drink a glass of water or a cup of coffee in the morning. So…why would he be aware of all that, unless he’s an exceptionally close observer?

Here’s another one:

•  Never live in a place that doesn’t have a garage with a door that closes. When you get home, never unlock or get out of your car until you’ve closed the door and you’re sure it’s really shut. Look around you in the garage before unlocking your car door and stepping out.

Oh, what the heck, as long as we’re in that vein:

• Watch your rear-view mirror as you’re driving home. If someone follows you into your neighborhood, be aware; if the person follows you onto your street, keep driving past your house and drive out of the neighborhood. If he continues to follow you, drive to the nearest fire station, police station, or emergency room and lean on the horn.
• Never, ever leave your garage door hanging open. As you’re leaving the house, stop the car and wait until the door is completely shut, to ensure that nothing gets in its way and causes it to come open again as you’re driving away. And it should go without saying: never leave the garage open when you’re in the house.
• Never walk across a parking lot habituated by panhandlers and potential purse-snatchers.
• Do not carry a purse: wear clothes with pockets and drop a couple of credit cards in them.
• Install motion-sensitive lights along all four exterior walls of your house, up near the eaves where it’s hard to reach them to unscrew the bulb.
• Place battery-operated “screamer’ alarms on all sliding doors and windows, and on the sliding screens for Arcadia doors.
• Equip a room in your home with a solid-core door and a hardened dead bolt. Keep a weapon hidden in the room, and also hang a house dress on the back of the door, to use if you have to dart in there at night when you’re not fully clothed. No, you do not want to reward the cops with an impromptu strip show!
• Have a phone in every room, including the bathrooms, not only for your convenience but so you can grab a phone quickly to call 911.
• Equip every exterior hinged door with a heavy-duty security screen, and fit each one with a hardened deadbolt. Remember to close them and lock them whenever you’re not walking in and out.
• When driving at night or through a sketchy district, if you see a red light ahead, slow down to give it a chance to turn green so you don’t have to stop your vehicle.
• Avoid driving through high-crime neighborhoods and areas known to be infested with drug gangs.
• Drive a substantial distance to avoid having to shop in grocery stores whose parking lots are unsafe.
• If you have a carport or garage with an entry to the attic in its ceiling, padlock the thing.

Can most or all of this be replaced by an expensive security service and an alarm system? Well…some of it. But a) I hate alarms; b) I hate the monthly gouge an alarm service charges for something that might be needed once in my lifetime, at most; c) you’re at risk everywhere, not just in your house; and d) in my book self-reliance trumps relying on someone you don’t know and who cares about you only because you pay for the privilege.

Do I also hate living like I’m the one in prison, not the bad guy? You bet. But as things stand now, I don’t see many alternatives.

What d’you make of this story…

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So, I cannot bear the prospect of reading another word of academicese…there must be something better. Like, for example,

This interesting story just in from NPR, found on the LA station’s website.

Take a read of it, and then tell me: what do you make of this piece?

To my eye, it comes across as a sophisticated, well written version of what we used to call a “sob story”: a human-interest newspaper piece specifically designed to twang the readers’ heartstrings, thereby selling more papers.

It would be cynical, though, to say that’s exactly what this is. Because it’s not. Exactly. Homelessness — leaving out the “drug-addicted” aspect for discretion’s sake — has become a vast problem in this country, and it’s getting bigger fast. Putting a human face on the grimy, road-worn souls milling around outside your office, hitting you up for a handout when you sit down for breakfast at a restaurant, panhandling on the street corners, chasing you around the grocery store parking lot, and rummaging through the trash bin outside your home (to say nothing of stealing everything in the yard that’s not red-hot or nailed down) is a sure way to help Americans understand the dimensions of the problem and that the people caught up in it are people.

Still. Enough is left out of this report that you…well…you wonder.

For example: here we have a report that the tent camps our vagrants put up along sidewalks or (here in the ’hood, for example) next-door to a middle school are controlled by criminal gangs, who extort money and drugs from the occupants. One could even call these street-campers “renters,” since in effect they’re renting space from gangs. “(LAPD Officer Deon) Joseph says the landlords are the gangs. In order to stay on the block, he explains, one woman here was forced by the Grape Street Crips to give up her entire Social Security check every month.”

Okay. If she’s getting a Social Security check, the minute that thing comes into her PO box or arrives down at the social service agency where her mail comes in, right in that moment she has enough to get on a bus and ride out of town. Even if what she can afford is not very far. Every Greyhound bus in the country follows some route out into the boondocks. So…why doesn’t she wrap up her tent and her belongings, take herself to the Greyhound station, and ride out into the sticks, where the Crips are unlikely to follow?

True, the thugs may stop her from wrapping up her tent. Though it must be said: if Officer Joseph knows as much about these folks as he seems to in the article, why would she not go to Officer Joseph (after dropping her meth pipe and other paraphernalia in a trash can or hiding them someplace near the Greyhound station) and ask him to stand by while she packs up her stuff and watch while she boards a city bus and makes her getaway? Maybe Officer Joseph could even drive her to the Greyhound station.

If you’re sleeping in the rough, chances are sleeping in a national forest or on BLM land is going to be a lot safer and a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the streets. When SDXB and I hitch-hiked through the back country of Canada and Alaska, we slept under roof exactly two nights in three months — because it was raining so hard that even he would not put up with it. A couple of times, when we were in a small city, we camped overnight in a parking lot. And I’ll tellya: asphalt or concrete is damned uncomfortable to sleep on. The ground — dirt — is far preferable. And the boondocks are far preferable to an urban setting: quieter, and though there are a few crazies stumbling around out there plus the occasional bear, surprisingly few Crips and Bloods.

We have an observation from a social service worker, who sounds very experienced:

“They are you or me divided by circumstance,” says Georgia Berkovich, of the Midnight Mission. “A catastrophic illness in the family that depletes their savings. A victim of domestic violence who would rather live on the street than be with their abuser.”

Financial issues and the lack of affordable housing are increasingly impacting women. No one never imagines they’ll end up on these streets, Berkovich says. “First you would stay with friends and then you’d stay with family and maybe you’d wear out your welcome and you say ‘we’ll just stay in our car.’ “

Yeah. But…if you have a car that you imagine you can stay in, then you have four wheels that will get you out of town. You can camp in most national forests and on BLM land for nothing. For what you could get by selling that car, you could buy a small tent, a sleeping bag, a camp stove, a few camp pans, a plate, and a cup, with a wad of dough left over. That and a decent jacket and boots will equip you for living on the land — one helluva lot better than anyone is equipped to live on the street in some gang’s territory.

Something is left out of this NPR story. Maybe it’s simply an answer to the question why stay in a gang-ridden city when rural areas have services for the poor and the homeless?

Interestingly, homeless levels are significantly high in the rural counties here in lovely Arizona. My guess would be the conditions described in this NPR piece are largely the reason. Poverty rates are higher in our rural areas, so that would tend to push up the numbers of homeless. But dollars to donuts, the rates of urban homelessness — city people who lose their livelihoods and their homes — increase the numbers of homeless in the boondocks. Because anyone who knows how to camp knows that you can live better beside a stream than you can beside a freeway.

Live-Blogging from Storm Central

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July 30, 8:00 p.m.

Well, not exactly blogging: power’s out and likely to be that way for quite some time. We could say “pre-blogging”…in Word, the laptop being fully charged but, of course, offline.

Dinner at M’hijito’s house. Just as we were finishing the feast, we could see the storm blowing in, and then a pretty heavy dust-storm hit his part of town. I wanted to get home, as I’d taken a Benadryl a few hours earlier to stave off a (weird!) allergic reaction, and it had turned me into a zombie. Just wanted to go home and go straight to bed.

Not so much.

So I figured if I was lucky and the traffic was thin, I could fly low and get home before the rain started.

Wrong.

About halfway up the north leg of the trip, some serious rain started to sluice down. Limbs were already down all over the road, and now it was sheeting rain. An ambulance trundled by and – oh yeah, naturally – turned into the ’hood.

My beaten path to avoid Big Brother’s hateful speed bumps and aggravating round-abouts entails entering our area from the east side on a little neighborhood lane that everybody who lives here knows runs from Main Drag east to Primary Feeder Street North/South.

Via Neighborhood Lane, I’m trying to reach Secondary Feeder North/South, midway between Main Drag East and Primary Feeder Street North/South, by way of making my way up to the small neighborhood road that runs from Lower Richistan to Normalville, my part of the ’hood.

I get about three-quarters of the way up to Small Neighborhood Road and find a large branch down across Secondary Feeder N/S. So hang a U-ie and go back down to Neighborhood Lane, upon which I figure to reach Primary Feeder N/S. And THERE I find my neighbor Josie stopped in front of an entire downed tree.

In the dark, it appears a whole Aleppo pine – and these things are HUGE – uprooted and came crashing down across the road. I get out of my car to check the house across the street, to see if everyone’s OK. It looks like it didn’t quite reach that house, but it’s in their yard. If the residents are home, they’re huddled inside. I don’t think anyone’s hurt.

Josie knows the people who own the house where the tree stood, and she’s on the phone to them. They’re not home. We think their house is OK…except, ahem, for the absence of one exceptionally large shade tree.

Now I tell Josie that I couldn’t get through on Seccondary Feeder N/S. She says she couldn’t get through on the Main Drag to the south, either, because the power is out and the traffic is insane. She doesn’t think we can even reach Primary Feeder Street N/S along Main Drag South.

I say I think I can pull the downed limb off the road if we go back up Secondary. We both make U-turns and she follows me up Secondary. But by now others are trying to get through, and now a neighbor – a large male neighbor – is out in front of the house where the limb fell, trying to wave people away from the traffic jam.

I say I think we can pull it far enough off the road for cars to pass. He says he tried and couldn’t move it. He suggests we go up the wrong way on Secondary – Secondary is a divided road with a planter strip up the middle. No one is coming in our direction, so Josie and I cut across the road and make our way up the down street.

Luckily, we reach Main Feeder East/West before anybody comes our way. And before a cop comes along.

Because the power is out, once I get to the Funny Farm I can’t get into the garage. It is pouring rain. Leaving the dogs in the car, I enter the house, free the garage opener latch, and push the door open. Manage to haul the door closed behind the car – fortunately the door is well balanced, because it’s old, all steel, and damned heavy.

July 30, an hour later:

The power is still out. It’s damn hot in here. I’ve opened the doors that have security screens with drill-proof deadbolts, but of course can’t leave any of the sliders or the windows open. Well….I do have the bedroom sliding door open, because what we have here on the bed is a dual alarm system. If anyone comes anywhere near the place, they go off like banshees.

Which, I suppose, is what they are.

Not surprisingly, I can’t get online, so cannot check the Salt River Project website for word of how soon they might get the power back on. Not very, I expect. People are wandering around outside yakking, babies are screaming, and it’s wet and steamy. Still sprinkling a little, but not enough to keep the yakkers indoors. Or to keep the damn helicopters from buzzing overhead.

Some very odd things are working in the outage.

The phone, for example. I was told it would not run without electric. The Cox guy put a battery in the modem, but that thing died forthwith. So I’m bopping around in the dark when I hear an unfamiliar phone bell ringing. WTF? The clamshell throwaway phone??? My son, trying to get through????!?

Grab the camp lantern, make my way to the office, whence the noise emanates. It’s the main phone that plugs direct to the cable connection. Pick it up: La Maya on the phone. We yak for awhile. She says to be careful about leaving doors or windows open, because she caught a sh!thead prowling outside one of her windows a night or so ago.

Thank heavens for Schlage and Medco locks, think I.

Still. This is the time when you do want your German shepherd back.

And in the weirdly still-working department: I had a Washington Post online game up on the computer before I left the house. Even though the computer is offline, the little game is working! 😀

Strange.

The streetlight outside the Funny Farm flickered a few times, as though the power was trying to come on. Then went dark again.

And now it’s raining steadily again. It’s hot and stuffy in here. Believe I’ll throw a sheet on the tiles and go to sleep on the floor, where it’s cooler. A lot cooler…

July 31, 1:00 a.m.

The power finally came back on sometime in the wee hours., just as I was figuring that come dawn, I’d have to make a run on Walmart, Fry’s, and whatever other stores I could think of in search of dry ice to try to preserve the food in the fridge and freezer. If the whole area’s power was down all night, it could be quite a long grocery store run…

Salt River Project’s website says the power went off here around 7:15 last night. So it’s been off five and a half hours, give or take. This would be O.K. if it hadn’t been around 100 degrees when the power went out. Just now it’s about 80 outside, and around 83 inside the shack.

I see a new assignment came in from a client while all these shenanigans were going on. I hope they don’t want the thing back tomorrow, because today I’m gonna be in no shape to read technical copy. Ugh.

July 31, 7:17 a.m.

Power was out most of the night. Cox has been up and down. No phone, no pool, two heat-soaked pets…ain’t got no cigarettes.

I think the cable (i.e. phone) connection is up right now, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay up. Here at the Funny Farm, though, it looks like things are intact. Thank heaven Luis came earlier this summer and thinned out the forest! But for sure…I’m going to have to do something about that devil-pod tree. If that thing falls over, it will smush either my house or Terri’s.

July 31, 8:27 a.m.

Dogs fed and walked. Property reconnoitered. Phone and Internet crashed again and are still out…I do hate Cox. Really. Hate. Cox.

Neighbor took this foto of the scene on Neighborhood Lane, just west of Primary Feeder Street N/W.  That tree was uprooted and blown out of the front yard on the right-hand side of the image. Fortunately, the lots are huge and the houses are set back a good distance off the road. If it had been most other neighborhoods in this city, that tree would have fallen into the house situated on the left side of this picture.

That’s an Aleppo pine, a type of tree popular when the tract was built out…back in the 1950s. So the tree is probably 50 or 60 years old. At least. Another pine in the yard lost about a third of its branches — whether because this tree hit it on the way down or from the action of the wind.

Mercifully, no damage here at the Funny Farm. The potted ficus tree, which has waxed huge in its new place beneath the lath shade covering, fell over. Its pot didn’t break, thank goodness, and I managed (just) to haul it back upright and drag it, a quarter-inch at a time, back into the shelter. Fine mess in the pool, but Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner was up to it with no problem. Harvey was already out of the water, in anticipation of just such an event as occurred. Turned on the pump, which scooted the big stuff into a pile. Scooped that out easily with the hose-end water vacuum. Then dropped Harvey back in the drink, where he began tracing white trails through the brown dust. Otherwise everything seems OK except maybe the bougainvillea on the side, which got royally walloped.

Was very glad I’d hired Luis to trim all the trees in front. That devil-pod tree on the side, though, is beyond one man and a saw….Gerardo wants to take it down, but I’m afraid of having one of his cousins fall out of the damn thing. Since he’s laid first dibs on the job, though, I’m also afraid of pissing him off by hiring a tree company (at many times what he’ll charge) to cut it down. And don’t know what could take its place…as hated as it is, it DOES shade the west side of the shack.

I see the wind did blow a lot of shingles off the neighbor’s roof catty-corner behind me. That guy…there’s always one in every neighborhood, isn’t there?…is a shiftless soul. He inherited the house from parents who lived there till they died. And since he didn’t have to pay for it and is one of those clowns who doesn’t understand that real estate = dollars and paid-off real estate = investment, he’s just let it rot away. So that won’t be fixed, and what was already getting to be an eyesore will now be even dumpier.

Checked my own roof with binoculars. Doesn’t look like there’s much damage, though a couple of shingles might need repair. The roofing guys who installed that roof after Late Great Hailstorm didn’t leave me any extra shingles! Duh! I didn’t even think about it at the time. So…finding shingles to match may be a bit of a challenge. Dollars to donuts, they’re not available at the Depot, eh?

July 31, 10:34 a.m.

Having enjoyed all of about two hours’ sleep last night, I’m going back to bed. And so, away…

 

 

Poor Li’l Dog

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So I’m on my way over to meet my friends, to join them for a Costco junket. It’s almost 9:30 a.m. Hotter than the Hubs of Hades, cruising up Main Feeder Street EW.

And what should come trotting up the road but a beautiful young dog, all black, overheated looking. I stopped. He jumped in my car: a smallish lab mix. My guess would be part pit bull, part lab. I thought he was a pup.

He parked himself in the driver’s seat well, seated conveniently on the gas pedal and the brake pedal. And refused to budge.

Rousted one of the gay guys from the corner house. He’s kind of an old fella and pretty gimpy. Asked if he thought he could help me get the dog into a more practical place inside the car. By the time we got back to the car, the dog had climbed over to the front passenger seat well…which was good, because when the old guy saw the pooch, he said there was no way he could’ve helped to personhandle it.

Brought the hound back here so I could call the folks and put them off.

Get him into the backyard with a bowl of water, which he inhales. But once he gets back into the garage that dog is NOT goin’ back out.

I try to slip into the house around him, but Ruby dodges out.

Forthwith they get into it. Ruby, the little twit, will try to dominate any dog…even if it weighs 30 pounds more than she does. Even if it’s likely part pit bull. Which evidently it is….

Had a time rescuing her. Finally the stray shot into the house, allowing me to fish the now cowering corgi out from behind the car’s exhaust pipe.

That distraction delayed the phone call long enough that the folks were outside waiting for me to show up and didn’t get the call, so I had to drive to their place to tell them what was going on.

Catch them as they’re about to leave for my house. Explain what’s going on. They agree that leaving the dog in the house is impossible and outside in the heat is unwise.

Return to the Funny Farm, by which time I’ve decided to take the dog to the Humane Society.

Unfortunately it’s a kill shelter.

Dog is somebody’s pet. It’s very well cared for, well fed, shiny coat, clean teeth, more or less heels on a leash, sits on command, shakes paws.

I would like to steal him. Probably would, if I thought I could get away with it. Which I don’t.

Often you can find the owner on NextDoor, but I didn’t feel I could risk keeping him even for a few days, since there’s no sane way to keep them separated. Obviously, I can’t keep a dog that’s going to fight with Ruby, even for a short time

Got the dog up to the Humane Society. Yes, he had a chip, but the idiot owner hadn’t registered him! They had no way of finding out who he belonged to. And their shelter was full. They wanted me to drive him down to the county pound, WAY down in South Phoenix — half a tank of gasoline’s worth of driving. And that place is a zoo.

They ended up taking him in and saying the pound would come pick him up from their facility, within 24 hours.

Felt extremely guilty.

Got home to find Ruby in a frenzy. She was SO upset. She ran around and around the backyard and the house baying (did you know a corgi can actually bay?) and barking at the top of her little doggy lungs.

Still felt guilty, but was forced to acknowledge that my first instinct was right: NO WAY could I keep that dog while searching for its owner…or permanently.

I thought, briefly, about seeing if M’jito like to have this dog foisted on him. But in the first place, he’s not a golden retriever (the preferred beast). In the second, he’s very active. And in the third, somebody is no doubt searching for him…or will be, whenever they get home from work.

Mercifully, Ruby doesn’t seem to have gotten hurt. Thank god. Just what I needed: another vet bill!

She’s still batsh!t, though.

Boss dog and recumbent underling

A Fed Coyote…

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…is a dead coyote.

Born hungry…

How the hell many times to people have to be told this before it registers?

This morning the corgis and I were making the dawn stroll across Orchid between 15th and 11th. A coyote lives in the alley over there — I’ve seen her several times before. But this morning I didn’t spot her until she came trotting up the sidewalk on the other side of the street and was just a few hundred feet away.

She saw us.

We saw her.

My dogs, not being the brightest rhinestones on the cowboy vest, figured she was just another dog — how interesting! She, on the other hand, clearly thought, “Ah! Breakfast!” 😀

She kept trotting along, not changing her pace and very clearly not afraid of me. I carry a few stones in my pocket for the purpose of beaning coyotes and aggressive dogs, should it be necessary, but at this point I was too busy wrangling corgis to dig them out.

Breakfast roll…

She now crossed the street, coming straight at us. “Yum! Can I get ketchup with that, please?”

I hollered GIT!

She was unfazed.

Another attempt at GIT! showed that she was unafraid of me and not impressed by a sharp, somewhat aggressive utterance.

At this point I manage to get the dogs behind me and then yell, in full counter-surfing voice, “NO! BAAAD DOG!!!!”

Incredibly, this stopped her! Now she crosses back over to her side of the street and continues trotting westbound. Dogs and human continue east. As distance increases between both parties, she crosses back over to our side and disappears into a yard that has a lot of shrubbery.

She appeared to know exactly where she was going. Probably someone leaves food out for their pets in that area. Or for stray animals — the yard she entered is overgrown with shrubbery (lots of cover), and the owners are, shall we say, eccentric.

Please don’t leave food out for stray cats (including your own cats that you allow to run loose). Or for stray coyotes. Leaving out cat food or dog food helps to acclimate coyotes to humans, and it calls them in to our neighborhoods. Once a coyote is no longer afraid of humans, it becomes a potential hazard to your small pets — cats and smaller dogs. 

In our parts, there’s plenty of natural food for coyotes. It’s called “roof rats.” In your parts, the chow line may include gophers, sewer rats, mice, raccoons, badgers, and the like.

Coyotes predate on vermin, and that is why they are not a bad critter to have in the neighborhood. Unless you enjoy the sound of a line of rats doing the can-can across your rafters, leave the coyotes alone.

That means a) not feeding them and b) keeping your (scrumptious!) cats and your dogs indoors or on a leash at all times. If we feed the wildlife on purpose, they lose their fear of us and then become a nuisance. And speaking of nuisances, letting your cat roam loose is feeding the coyotes.

Do not feed the coyotes. Dammit!

Thievin’ Tweakers, Tweakers’ Thievin’…

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So the other day here in the ‘hood — don’t recall whether I mentioned this — while I was walking the pooches along about 5 in the a.m., the hounds and I decide to make a side trip up a less-traveled lane in Richistan. (There are only so many times you can defile a mansion’s lawn without the millionaire charging out with his shotgun in hand…) Up this pleasant little side street a development of new Styrofoam-and-plaster McMansions is a-building, on a piece of land late a beloved horse property. Starting price: $800,000.

I’m thinking I’d like to explore the shells of these nascent shacks, but… As we approach the target of our proposed snooping, along come two skeletal-looking dudes, one on a bike, one on foot. They’re reasonably clean, freshly shaven, but obviously the sort we diplomatically call “homeless,” both bearing backpacks. In their near-identical scrawniness, they resemble each other so strikingly that you’d think they were brothers. But after they start to talk, you realize they’re not — they’re just acquaintances. Probably met in jail or camping on the street.

The pathological skinniness is a sign of meth use, and indeed, around here meth is the drug of choice. Some people, particularly a special type of stupid female, actually do get hooked on it when they take the stuff as a diet pill. It does cause you to lose weight, just as other kinds of speed will do.

Interestingly, both men were (at least on the surface) fairly mellow, friendly and downright neighborly. One, whom I took to be, possibly, the younger, had an odd kind of sweetness about him. When they first approached, I thought ahhh shit! I shoulda gotten another German shepherd! But nay: no overt evil intent surfaced. To the contrary, Ruby pounced the younger one, not to rip off his foot (as Anna would have done) but to try to love him to death.

They were so charmed by the adorable corgis that we all promptly became lifelong friends. If I knew which hobo camp they’re living in, I could probably get a bowl of beans at their shopping cart…assuming I brought the dogs.

While the kid on foot stood around and chatted, his more enterprising pal bicycled into the development, which was unfenced with all the framed-in houses standing open, and explored each structure. Hope the workmen didn’t leave any tools around, thought I. Then they went their way and I went my way and I reflected…

Yeah…

So today we walk up there and what should I see but a guy in a contractor’s pickup driving into the worksite. So I go up to him and say you should know these two guys were here about 5 a.m. and they were real innarested in  your project…so maybe don’t leave any tools out…

He said yeah, he knew: the site had already been ripped off several times. Not once but twice they stole newly installed water meters…one of them with the water turned on!

I suggested it was probably a better way to get a shower than down at the shelter. He only dimly saw the humor in that. 😀 He said he was going to put cameras around the site.

Okay…. I refrained from asking what good he thought that would do, since you’d have to catch the perp to identify him, and by the time you get to the site he’s soooo long gone. Why, one wonders, does he not just rent some fencing?

Oh well.

So, that’s Life in These Newnited States.

Makes the south of France look damn good, doesn’t it? Portugal. Parts of Spain. Germany, for sure, if you don’t mind a little regimentation in your life. Yeah.