• Life’s Little Lessons

If I run a stop sign, you might say I ran a stop sign. I drove illegally that day. Guilty as charged. But does that make me an “illegal driver”?  No. The thing I did is not generally assigned to me as a status of my person.

But boy, if you cross a border illegally one time, you bear the mark of freaking Cain! You didn’t do an illegal thing. You ARE illegal.  People allow themselves to view you as essentially a non-person, because it is a mark of your essential being now. YOU are illegal.

That is a huge rhetorical problem, because it allows people to get on a high horse about the technicality of legality. Legality and moral character are magically interchangeable. An illegal person is an immoral person, a non-person. Non-persons can be denied all rights, not just the rights of citizenship, but increasingly, it seems, basic human rights.

An “illegal immigrant” is seen as a person getting away with something, somehow taking something away from the rest of us “legals”. The illegal immigrant is a criminal, and that just gets the goat of law-abiding citizens. A person who needs money can choose to work, or choose to steal, and that is a choice. But a person who wishes to enter a country does not have an equally viable path to legal entry if the entry process is made difficult by quotas or other laws discouraging immigration. If the legal status of persons is the real issue, why keep making new laws which will produce more illegal immigrants? How about making laws which produce fewer illegal immigrants, like making it easier to enter the country legally?

I propose that we drop “illegal immigrant” in favor of  “migrant workers”, since contrary to the scare tactics of the immigration freakouters, most do in fact come here to work, not get white babies hooked on drugs while raping them. That migrant workers may or may not have entered the country illegally tells you about as much about that person’s moral character as the fact that I once bought beer in a wet country and then drank it in a dry county tells you about my moral character. Furthermore, one could easily turn the moral character angle completely around. If you are a farmer, or a farm laborer, and are unable to work due to economic conditions in your country, and you knew of work across the border, and obtaining this work could help you provide for your family, but in order to enter that country, you had to do so illegally, what would be the moral, Christian thing to do? Let your family starve, on the principle of not entering a country illegally? Or take some personal risk to provide for them? Isn’t it clear that the moral thing to do would be to disregard the immigration law in favor of your family’s economic security? Of course it is — therefore what defines people in this predicament is that they are migrant workers, not illegal immigrants.

Migrant workers with no legal rights are the least enfranchised people in our country. Far from being the cause of any problem, they are the victims of economic and labor policies and discrimination perpetrated against them by very well enfranchised, well connected political elites in both countries. Bringing the full measure of the state down upon the very least enfranchised members of our society — besides being cruel — is guaranteed to accomplish nothing and please no one. It’s like trying to cure leukemia by arresting cancer victims.

So really, I think it’s fair to say, this is a capability we’ve actually degraded as the result of new technology. I’m not talking about sentimental loss. I’m saying a bit of functionality that used to be a little better has actually gotten a little worse.

Why martinis? Could it be Mad Men fever? Actually, it was because of Julie and Julia. They were drinking Martinis in just about every scene. So after the movie, Julie and I (the real Julie) went to CostPlus to obtain the paraphrenelia. Then we went to Safeway to obtain the hooch. Then we came home. I looked up the recipe for Martinis. It’s not too hard, as it turns out. Couple cubes of ice, a bunch of dry gin, a splish of dry vermouth, and shake. I was unable to achieve the full on sexy shake, but nevertheless. Soon we were drinking home-shaken, dry Martinis.

They were OK. I prefer beer.

The only other time I ever drank a Martini? Saudi Arabia, 1989. Things were just peachy in the Gulf before the Gulf War, let me tell you. I was teaching English to Saudi naval cadets. Saudi is as dry a country as they come, hoochwise, as everybody knows. But at the Dharan airbase the U.S. military maintains a tiny bit of sovereignty, sort of a diplomatic briefcase but bigger. And inside that briefcase, you can drink. If you can get in. We got in. To the Officer’s club. So we’re in this semi-swanky space, drinking real drinks (not the homemade beer we drank back in our teacher’s quarters). Everyone was having Martinis, so what the heck, sure, I’d have a Martini. So guess who else was there having Martinis? Norm Schwartzkopf. The US had recently invaded Panama, so my buddy James, who was bold about this sort of thing, talking to generals about classified military operations and such, engaged Mr. Schwartzkopf about it. Norm, I’ll call him Norm from now on since it’s easier to spell, Norm’s a pretty intense character. Especially armed with a Martini. Norm and James went at it a bit, not arguing, but Norm obviously proud and conscious of his power to impress, inhibited by the classified aspects of the story, James trying to get him to spill. Since none of you know James, unless you do, go ahead and picture James Woods, circa Salvador. All politics aside, if you’re going to have a Gulf War, I guess Norm was the guy you’d want to be your general. And if you want someone to needle him about it, James was your man.

Anyhoo, that’s my Martini story. I hope not to have very many more like it.

Not Homer, Not Marge

The Simpsons first appeared on the Tracy Ullman Show in 1987, which I definitely did see. But I drew and conceived of these characters in college prior to that, more like 84/85/86. Can’t prove it, but it’s true.

This was a pretty easy hike — mostly flat (although we gained 1000′ feet from Tuolumne Meadows to the pass area). It was unseasonably cool — we were warned about a snow storm. It definitely was freezing overnight and did snow lightly, but no accumulation in our area. This was a pretty spontaneously planned hike. Terry just happened to be in town and I snagged some days off. Most of his gear is at my house, but he was a little under-equipped for cold weather.

Anyway, we lit out early Wednesday morning, arrived to get our permits at the ranger station around 9, and after gathering some last minute supplies (warm clothes for Terry and some lunch) we were finally on the trail around 1:30.  We hiked in about 6 miles to a point beyond Ireland Creek where we had never been before. It’s always fun to explore virgin terrirory. We found a really excellent site — flat, soft earth, plety of trees for our hammocks (Terry’s tent is a hammock dealy. I have a simple hammock for resting during the day but my tent is a single person tent on the ground.) Close to the Lyell Fork for water, a pretty little falls. Previous campers left some little presents for us — a copy of the novel All Tomorrow’s Parties to use as kindling, some sunblock and a handkerchief.

There seemed to be tons of pack trains on this trail — this is a segment of the John Muir Trail and most hikers are going much farther than we did. Lots of groups were hikers plus horses plus mules. We also saw one Llama train! That was cool. Two hikers leading around four or five llamas. They did not carry as much load as the mules did but they were really beautiful and exotic.

On day two, Thursday morning, it was snowing. We had some hot coffee and Ramen noodles for breakfast, then head down the trail for a day hike. We passed more pack trains and chatted with hikers. One British dude we met was 6 days into a 4 week hike of the full JMT — which culminates with a hike up to the summit of Mt. Whitney. He’s out there now, presumably, so do raise a pint for him. He bid us “Cheerio!” which struck us as archaic, although I greeted him with a “Howdy” so…

We hiked up the switchbacks at the end of the meadow — it really isn’t Yosemite unless you do switchbacks, according to Terry anyway. Got more views of the pass and the meadows we had just come from. But it was a little too cold to linger too long. We hiked back down to camp, lit a nice fire and mixed ourselves some High Sierra Margaritas: water + instant lemonade + tequila + snow.

Friday morning we lingered at the site. The sun threatened to emerge but basically it was still cloudy and windy and cool for the hike out. We drove to Oakdale for our traditional Mountain Mike’s post hike pizza and it was a wrap.

In terms of wildlife, we saw: mama deers with their fawns, a garter snake (first non-poisonous snake we’ve seen in Yose), horses, mules, llamas. No bears, so our success rate for this area dropped from %100 to %66.666. But that’s OK, especially since we saw something rarer. It was either an American Marten or a Fisher. We had stopped on our hike out at Rafferty Creek by a bridge. Right as I was ditching my pack, I saw across the stream an animal that scurried across the rock and stoop and looked at me. I said to Terry, “That’s a huge marmot!” Then the creature slinked away and as it did so I noticed it had a more elongated shape than a marmot. It had similar coloring — a brownish coat with a light colored chest. But the behavior was not at all marmot like — a marmot would have come right up to us to steal our food. Also I have never seen a marmot at this elevation (around 8800′) — they usually appear higher than that and in more rocky terrain. This was woodland. The elongated shape and size were the main giveaways. I came home and wikipediaed the thing and basically narrowed it down to Marten ro Fisher. It looked more like a marten but the size was more like the fisher. So cool, I saw my first new mammal, and a hunter as opposed to a scavenger.

That was a real highlight. Also the lack of mosquitoes or bugs due to the cold weather. Virgin territory, new animals, no skeeters, and snow added up to a really pleasant, highly successful hike. Also cool is that this canyon is a fork of the Tuolumne River, so I essentially hiked all the way to the very headwaters of the source of the water that is eventually captured in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Next month when I do my “Restore Hetch Hetchy” hike, I’ll connect up by hiking from Tuolumne Meadows down to the reservoir. So that means I’ll have walked the length of the watershed.

The best sushi in Florence?

The best Mexican food in Shanghai?

The best bacon burger in Calcutta?

Best canolli in Rio?

Best falafel in Bangkok?

Take that concept, add one obnoxious anti-social snob and you’ve got yourself a show!

Old lady: “Oh, look, it’s Jane Fonda’s hotel.”

Old man: “Hanoi Jane? I’m not going in there.”