Spring Fling in Oakland!
Flowers! Color! Paint! Protest! Flowers!
Sorry, not the romance kind of spring fling. The family kind, the floral explosion kind, the paint project kind, and the Hands Off! kind of spring fling.
I usually spend my birthday weekend (~ 3/21) at my daughter’s in Oakland, but this year I had to put it off a couple of weeks—just enough later that Spring had sprung. The sun was out and so were the flowers. I wandered the colorful neighborhood in an enchanted daze.
My daughter and her husband are almost done with an extensive remodel of their 100+ year-old house, including a proper heating and cooling system, replacing ancient single pane windows and adding more electrical and lighting outlets. Bye-bye rat’s nests of extension cords!
Her office is almost ready for her to move back in, but needed fresh paint. The guy who mixes paint at Cole Hardware gave us a peek at the collected pool of colorants before he put the can on the shaker. Can you guess what color it will be?
She spackled and I taped: she rolled and I edged. I loved being able to help, and she appreciated the support.The room came out great, in half the time, and we had fun doing it together.
It got me thinking about small town neighborliness “back in the old days” when we helped each other out when it was time to can peaches, cut the hay, address envelopes for some cause, or prune the rosebushes. In my condo building (160 units) there are long time residents, now retired, who gather to knit or play bridge, but we also have many in their thirties and forties—most have underused talents. What if we could form some kind of mutual aid arrangement? Like kind of a friend-building, two-heads-better-than-one, many-hands-make-lightwork scheme—.someone to help paint or declutter (me!), or swap a fluorescent fixture for LEDs, or shorten a skirt, troubleshoot a software problem, pit cherries for jam, wrap holiday gifts, craft a good resume… this is not about trading, but about pitching in when time, talent and/or company would be welcome.
Do you have anything like that in your neighborhood? I’d love to hear about it.
The anti-President MuskTrump protests this weekend had a neighborly vibe too. My daughter and I made several two-sided signs before heading to the rally in downtown Oakland. I made two that gave me a kick: one with a drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. and in quotes, “I had a BAD dream: Project 2025.” The other said, The GOP is more spineless than WORMS, with a few worm squiggles. But here’s the one I wish I’d created:
All kinds of Americans, not just from the left, gathered to express how disturbed we are by the wanton destruction and disdain for the law—including many small towns in “red” states. And what about the turnout in Salt Lake City (chants of “Fuck Trump!” in Mormon country!)? Total turnout was over five million people, with more in several countries abroad. No violence, no desecrating capitol buildings.
Rick Steves, bless his menschy soul, gave a rousing talk at the rally in his home town of Edmonds WA. He compared what he’s seen around the world in decades of travel to what is happening here.
Did you go to a rally in an unexpected corner of the US? What was your experience?
OK, before we get to more Spring beauty, here are four in-depth pieces on the current chaos (all gift pieces):
An Experiment in Recklessness. The global trading system is only one example of the administration tearing something apart, only to reveal that it has no plan for how to replace it. From the NYTimes
VP Vance’s whoppers about Social Security fraud. Fact-checking from WaPo
How the Social Security Administration and DOGE are gaslighting Americans
To piss you off: Trump golfs while markets tank. AND taxpayers have to foot the bill, while his properties rake the big bucks into his own pockets.
PUT YOURSELF IN THE WAY OF BEAUTY
Went to rally here in D.C., but had kids and relatives going in other places, such as Anacortes, WA. I think there were more than the 1200 or so protests they've been mentioning. There were at least three in the MD suburbs right outside D.C.