Hattie's Web

In California

It's one of those ideal California days, and we're off to Pacifica to visit an old friend. Seattle was dreary outside, but family events made up for the chill outdoors. Hilo has had enormous rainfall, I hear (at least 20 inches since Friday at our house and maybe more).

The flights were bumpy but not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Should have pix and commentary on the Coastside south of San Francisco by tomorrow. We lived there for several years in the 50's, around the time when the first big developments were going in, Westlake most prominently. A builder named Doelger was reponsible for the Sunset District in the fog belt of San Francisco, and following this triumph went on to build Westlake in Daly City and the Coastside.

Herb Caen, the well known columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, referred to the development in Sunset as The White Cliffs of Doelger. And Don Sherwood, a local DJ, had a joke: Why do they call it the Sunset District? It's because the sun set 50 years ago and they haven't seen it since!

This is a reference to the summer fog that sets in out there and makes coastal summers in California cold and miserable.

But not today! It is crisp, cool and bright.

Stormy weather

It's about 7:30 a.m. local time. This is the strangest  weather condition I've ever seen. It looks like a couple of poorly organized mini-hurricanes trying to form and being torn apart. Last night we had heavy winds with occasional very strong gusts, and five inches of rain. I'm leaving for the Mainland today: Hilo to Honolulu to Seattle. Terry's staying here, so if any hatches need to be battened down he can attend to that. It might be kind of sporty flying over to Honolulu and away from the Islands, so I'm mentally preparing myself for some bumps and jolts.

A battle won

The war is not over, but I got this very good news today:

Nov. 12, 2009

Dear Marianna,

Last night, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs announced his departure from the network. As you know, we've been highly critical of Dobbs because he has used his platform to spread myths and propaganda — poisoning the debate over immigration reform and inciting fear and hate against Latinos.

The SPLC was one of the first groups to bring public attention to Dobbs' use of false information provided by racist hate groups.

With your support, we exposed his wildly inaccurate reporting about immigrants — such as his insistence that immigrants had brought thousands of new cases of leprosy to the United States during a recent three-year period.

And we condemned his reliance on the Federation for American Immigration Reform as an authority on immigration issues. This is an organization we have named a hate group with longtime ties to white supremacists.

This past July, we called on CNN executives to fire Dobbs after he relentlessly promoted the racist and utterly baseless idea that President Obama is not a native-born American citizen. Soon thereafter, a number of other organizations joined our call.

Immigration reform is an important and complex issue, one that should be debated honestly. We hope that Dobbs' resignation sends a message to other commentators that the airwaves shouldn't be used to vent extremist rhetoric and fan the flames of hate. Doing so has serious and sometimes violent consequences, as illustrated by the rise in hate crimes against Latinos and the unprecedented number of threats against Obama.

We are committed to exposing those who disseminate misinformation that foments hate. Together, we took a stand, and our actions made a difference. Thank you for everything you do to combat bigotry and intolerance.

Thank you for your support,

 

J. Richard Cohen

 

 

President, Southern Poverty Law Center

I want one!

This, from The Queen, goddess of wisdom. I laughed for about ten minutes straight when I saw this.  Old Auntie Hattie is reminded that deep down where beauty begins she is not a serious person!

Kant, Hume and the Enlightenment

I believe in the Enlightenment. It is the highest accomplishment of Western thought. Here is Hume's wonderful statement from  Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

This is an extreme statement of course: It leaves out many fine things: beauty, art, fine stories, spirituality, etc. But to me it is clear that what all these fine things cannot give us are systems of knowledge. That is the cultural advantage of the West, the ability to change the material world through science. Like it or not, this powerful tool for knowledge was what gave the West its dominance.

Earlier systems of wisdom and knowledge are pre-science.  These are often brilliant and even beautiful structures, but they have no explanatory value, and they can't make things. Castles in the air are fine, but you can't live in them. Such systems  offer people a good deal of consolation and even some excellent guides for self management but they are not the truth in the strict sense that enlightenment values demand.  Such is the neediness of us humans that a mythology has, unfortunately, grown up even around science telling us that we can go where no one has gone before. This is an illusion. The pathetic Heaven's Gate people believed they would be resurrected on the far side of the moon, but they just died, that's all. They really had pre-scientific minds, infantile.

Genuine science does what it does. It proceeds cautiously and empirically. It organizes empirical data into theory. It creates theory and searches for empirical proof.  Science lacks charisma, because it is not all inclusive and it seldom tells us what we want to hear. We don't want to hear that we are born, live, and die. We want to hear that we are transcendent beings who will live forever. We are infantile if we believe such things, and as Kant said,most people are infantile. People who are !00% dependent on science and technology ignore the material underpinnings of their lives, or take them for granted, imagining themselves to be natural beings uncontaminated by mere things.

Even after centuries of scientific inquiry, this is still so. We don't want the truth, if it is hard. We would rather be ignorant if knowledge means discomfort or change.

Real science is such a powerful thing. And enough for me as a guiding force in life, or at any rate what I regard as at least the best chance of reaching for the truth. What are minds for, if not to know? If I find myself liking ideas and feeling nice about them, I know I am in the realm of falsehood. If ideas disturb me, I pursue them, because that is the way to truth.

Native Hawaiians confront the County

Oh good heavens! Just lease the land over to them.  If people want to pursue property rights claims in court, let them, but open up the land now. Provide services, so that Hawaiians can build homes, do sustainable agriculture, etc. with decent access to electricity, water, and sewage systems.  Keep in mind: perpetrators forget, victims, never.

But of course I'm just a dreamer. There will never be a sensible solution in this matter.

Today's harvest

Sharwill avocado, starfruit, passion fruit (purple lilikoi), Kona oranges (navel oranges). I also found several orchids in bloom and potted some orchids. I have run out of room for orchid plants and no longer buy new ones.

Weeds! You don't want to know! It's year-round here. So if the end of the growing season's got you down, reflect on that!

Looks like health care reform is over the first hurdle. What a battle.  Any Brits or Canadians reading this: rejoice that you don't have so many divisive issues to deal with as we do. I know it's not perfect where you are, but you do put a social welfare floor under most people.

Breaking up

One thing hard times causes is marriage failure. Just in the last two days, two friends of ours have informed us that they are divorcing their spouses. They can tell you what they say the causes are, but I see no reason why these perfectly OK couples  could not have stayed together. In my opinion, money was at the root of the problem in both cases.

Can you believe this?

Before leaving due to the unbearable goings on around me, I listened to some of the testimony going on in the County Council chambers.  People have moved into Puna, a cheap area of the Big Island. in droves, and now they need basic services. The county has no money to provide said services, and everyone knows that.

What? You want running water? It's a luxury, says Brenda Ford. And so the standards continue to get defined down. 

One thing for sure: pressuring the local government will not help at all.  What will help, I can't say, since it seems that people can't think their way out of this dilemma but instead just fall back on this plantation mentality of how it's up to the Man to fix things for them. They don't seem to have any notions of coming up with solutions. I just don't understand this. They elected a woman dumb as a rock to represent them, who was honeymooning on Kauai instead of doing the job they hired her for. Not even there that day.

Property taxes are a joke  here, practically nothing, and they are the only source of tax revenue for the County (schools are State run). Where do they think the County can get the money to put in a water line? I would certainly be willing to pay more than the $400.00 or so we pay if it meant water for Puna!!! But all these people would scream no more taxes. I don't really think people have it coming to them, but sometimes...

At the same time, residents of this area are very worried that their kids will become autistic from vaccinations!

And reading the current Nation Magazine does not improve my mood. Unemployment among the young is running over 20% and is 40% in some minority demographics. That's awful. What are we supposed to do?

Gotta go pick up my husband at the airport. I feel like I live somewhere between affluence and the Third World here, and this makes me very uneasy. We live on an island and so can't ignore the increasing poverty, which is passing over from funky to just plain squalid for many.

Want to get published? Here's how, ladies!

Inspired By Colson Whitehead's tips on writing.

Be a very young and pretty woman registered at, or a graduate of, an Ivy League university. Write a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about your screwed up family and your tortured adolescence. Poverty and ethnic problems will enhance your chances of scoring big.

Be the daughter of a famous  male writer, preferably an alcoholic. Write a memoir about your horrible childhood and adolescence, all redeemed by the greatness of DAD.

Write a book about your terrible mother, the rich hotel heiress, movie star or some other such personage. Show how you triumphed over this hellion in the end to become the successful wife, mom, and author you are today.

Write a book about maternal neglect in your trailer trash or lower middle class family. This only works if you have established some reputation as a writer and so have transcended your early handicaps to become beautiful, successful, and a great mom.

Write a tell all or thinly disguised autobiographical novel about that rich family you were a nanny for or that successful magazine publisher or editor who enslaved you. This should win you a movie contract.

Topics to avoid: How you succeeded. No one cares about that! Only losers talk about how successful they are. You can, however, mention all the people who stood in the way of your "success."

Memoirs: You will never get published unless you are rich and famous. You aren't rich and famous, are you? Self publishing is the way to go for these. Your friends will be fascinated, or they at least will not hurt your feelings by telling you what they really think about your work.

New age or religious revelations. Self help. Yawn.

My cancer or other illness. Ditto. Only interesting to other sick people, unless you are a famous actress or something. This also goes for old age, maternal madness, divorce, terrible accidents and all other woes of humanity.

You get the idea. Now get to work!