I Am Sickened, But I Am Not Surprised

Scientific data is supposed to be non-partisan, although God knows it has been used over and over for distinctly political ends. Nevertheless, I am impressed by the Bush Administration’s blatant violation of even the pretense of scientific objectivity.

“U.S. Deletes, Alters Gender Issue Web Data -Report”

Why not just say “Bush Castrates the Truth”?

The Lions of Shadow Mountain

The three of them were thin, hungry, and just six months old — too young to be foraging the mountains on their own. Maybe there would be easier pickings in town. It was their bad luck that they strayed into a yard next to the school run by Shadow Mountain Baptist Church.

I was listening to KCBS, the local all-news radio, during the siege. The children had all been herded inside, out of harm’s way. The police and game wardens came. One cub was tranquilized and later released in the hills. Another was shot dead. The third, maddened by fright, bolted over a fence and was hit by a car.

I?m sure the police used their best judgment in dealing with the animals. Mountain lions can kill human beings; a bicyclist died down in Orange County just a few months ago, and this week another Orange County park was closed when a cougar was apparently stalking mule riders. Just yesterday, a horse was attacked near Stanford University.

Although the schoolchildren were safe inside, imagine the consequences if some errant fifth grader, rushing to class, had cut through the yard where the lion cubs were hiding.

As long as the white settlers have been here, the mountain lions have been feared. (The hunting stopped about thirty years ago.) The local newspaper reminded readers,

One of the more colorful stories from Morgan Hill’s history tells of Isola Kennedy, who saved three boys from a mountain lion attack by fighting off the animal with an eight-inch hair pin. Miss Kennedy died from her wounds two months after her heroics in the foothills east of Morgan Hill.

No date was given for the story, though that hair pin (hat pin?) sounds Victorian.

And yet. And yet. I think of those poor creatures, hungry and terrified. I look at their pictures, one caged, one dead, in the Morgan Hill newspaper. What a sordid, sorry ending to the wildcats’ brief lives. When it comes to a showdown between young cougars and young humans, I know the humans have to take precedence. But I have to wonder if there isn’t a better way to handle the intersection of human and wildlife.

Boulder, Colorado, offers some interesting statistics on mountain lion attacks, as well as advice for safer confrontations with bears and cougars. California’s state animal is, of course, the grizzly bear, long extinct even in the wildest mountains. But the state fossil is the sabre-tooth cat (Smilodon californicus). It’s easier to be proud of a fierce and beautiful creature when there is no chance of meeting one on your way to work.

That seems to be the case in Los Gatos, a particularly rich and beautiful mountain town. Though there are varying stories of how the town was named, all involve the mountain lions. In one tale, they snatched and devoured a baby, whose distraught mother drowned herself in Los Gatos Creek. In another, their caterwauling kept a mission priest awake all night. I prefer the third story, in which the noise of fighting wildcats — and a little knowledge of the ways of mountain lions — led the mission priests to find the water they desperately needed.

Naturally, the Los Gatos high school sports teams are named the Wildcats.

Finding the Words

I haven’t written in a week. And I’ve spent the night trying to find the thread of writing again. Imagine me making my way through a blank-walled maze (twisty little canyons all alike), keeping an eye out for Ariadne’s clue.

The maze in my mind is nothing like the cross-stitched labyrinths I make for those I love. The shifting colors of overdyed silk gleam; this labyrinth is of grayish tile and reminds me of the underground corridors linking the train stations and subways of Philadelphia.

(Am I ever going to stop seeing the world in terms of that city?)

And, like those corridors, this is a transitional space.

I am actually happy, writing these words, facing this struggle. Yes, I would have loved to spend the night pouring forth words, but I am somehow pleased to find that I can stick with it even in a dry spell. That I know how to wait. Not like a bus passenger; more like a hunter.

No. Like a gardener. Doing the work even when the seeds seem dead in the ground. Weeding, hoeing, watering, holding the blissful image of the seed catalog in mind through the weeks of winter.

I did a few exercises — the kind of descriptive writing that usually urges me toward composition. I listened to music. (The headphones, laptop, and iTunes make it possible for me to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want.) Wandered the Web, looking for inspiration, email, something. Played a lot of solitaire.

Around 2:30 I paused for some supper and reread half of Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Her California is weirdly familiar, but not because it resembles the place I live now. No, it is familiar because I grew up in the 1960s, and in Didion’s prose I smell the acrid cigarette smoke and the secret despair of that giddy decade.

One of the things I’m trying to be aware of is why I stopped writing, when I’d been doing a steady 25 pages a week (minimum) for three weeks. I hit a bad patch of insomnia, coupled with life stress, and I stopped being able to think. Or feel, or face things.

(And, on a practical level, I was doing a lot of non-writing work — going to Redwood City three times in three days, for example; dealing with the EDD; doing a convention program at the last minute. And dealing, all the way through, with the stress and frustration of looking for work.)

Now, I’ve worked out what was causing the insomnia (the usual Allegra buildup), I’ve taken steps to resolve some of the stress, and I’m feeling — more alive? More courageous.

So. This isn’t fiction. But it’s writing. It is testimony that I stuck it out and did the work.

I am feeling much steadier now. This doesn’t mean it’s all going to be jolly. I don’t expect it to be. But I am feeling a certain pride in enduring, and I want to hold onto that.

Silence, Censorship, Art

Today is the Day of Silence. Students protest the mistreatment and silencing of LGBT youth in schools by not speaking for eight hours. “Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?”

In San Francisco, a vandal vented his hatred of the LGBT community by mutilating more than 600 library books. “Without explanation, he carved up covers and pages and left small typewritten slips of paper advertising a Bible radio station tucked inside the damaged works.”

Yes, he was caught. Now the ruined books have been turned into objects of art.