Day 3 at the DMV

Day 3, Thursday, January 29, 2010

11:55pm. I pass the DMV on the street, enter the illegal lot and park. (I have got this down!). I waltz in, 3 minute wait for B 210 and Im outa there.

1:30pm. I return, this time, for the first time, remembering to ask my spiritual guides to provide me with help: a legal parking spot, a seat inside, and, dare I ask it? actual calling of my number while I'm there!

I pulll up and out pulls a pick-up providing me with a dream parking spot. So far, so good. Before I take remove my plates, I run inside to check the numbers, B170--OMG, I'm only 40th in line for this particular transaction! I pinch myself. Can this be happening???!!!

I get inside and there's an empty seat. I pull out my ipod and headphones and listen to a good lecture on Platao's Apology--how time flies.

1:50pm. We are already to B208. It's time to pack up and be ready to run to the right window. I compulsively check my form, my plates. It's all there.

2:10pm. I'm getting nervous. I've got to leave at 2:20pm to pick up my daughter from school. We've been on B209 for the longest time--what can be happening? I walk near window 16 and assess the situation. The customer has a Spanish translator who is patiently running a steady back and forth between the DMV intake person and the customer. The DMV intake person is frantically typing and occasionally grunting. The Spanish-speaking customer's children are attempting to peel mandatory notices off the walls. It looks like it may never end.

2:20pm There are no other Bs being served. Window 22, which had been solidly B for 20 minutes, has mysteriously gone A. Window 16 is still going strong. Can it be that I will have to leave the DMV yet again? I feel hysteria rise in my gullet. I am grateful that the only weapon I have access to is a philips driver--I mentally place the flathead's location in my car and wonder whether I can make it to the car and back in time to...

2:22pm "Now serving B210 at window number 16" Window 16! Window 16! I skip with joy and practically hug the employee (who looks like she could use a 6 month vacation from hell). I practice zen patience as slight obstacles in my paperwork arise and are overcome.

2:32pm I emerge from the DMV victorious and attach my old personalized plates (FORES10, if you must know) on our new car. Halleluyah Halleluyah!!!!

2:40pm Arrive at my daughter's school. She's not there.

Day 2 at the DMV

Day 2, Tuesday, January 27, 2010

1:50pm, I cruise through the parking lot and go straight to the illegal lot next door. I run in, and take a ticket, B230. The monotonotron intones, "now serving B150 at window number 16." I go to a meeting with a friend on Power Inn Road.

3:20pm. I'm finished with the meeting with a friend, I head over to pick my son up from school. We swing by the DMV. Miraculously, there's a parking spot opening up in front of the DMV. I can feel that this is it. We're about to achieve license plate switchage.

My son runs in and comes back out quickly with, "they're on B190. You've moved up 40 places in line over the course of 1 hour and 50 minutes. That's a rate of (he takes out his calculator) 1 number every 2 and 1/2 minutes. At this rate, you can expect your number to be called at around 7pm tonight. When does it close?"

"5pm," I grumble and we speed off f-- no point in giving the ticket to anyone. Who would want it?

On Wednesday I'm too busy even to stop by for a ticket, let alone a transaction.

Day 1 at the DMV

(posted first at the Sac Bee NorCal Voices blog which forced me to remove the words "snatch" and "screw" from the piece--see if you can figure out where they might have gone.)

I spent three days at the DMV on Broadway in Sacramento this week attempting to switch a personalized plate from the car we're selling to the car we bought. You may want to read this post before you visit the DMV.

Day 1, Monday, January 26, 1:20pm. I have been to the DMV on Broadway before, of course, and know that without an appointment it's a wait. And it crossed my mind that due to state workers being furloughed on Fridays, it would probably be more backed up than usual, so I packed a snack, homework, and a fully charged cell phone. Still, I was unprepared.

First I spent 20 minutes circling the parking lot looking for a spot. No luck. I cross the street only to be greeted by a large sign that says "no DMV parking." I come back. No parking on the street. Next door is a smaller building with a less menacing but nonetheless unmistakeable-in-intent sign (parking for building employees only), I park there and run to the DMV. After waiting in line at the information booth for only 5 minutes, I have a number, B280. I look at the monitor, and listen to the monotonous voice tone, "now serving B156 at window number 22." I look around, there's not a seat in the place, people are on the floor, crying babies, it's like a refugee camp and my chances of getting called any time soon are next to none.

1:45pm I leave and drive to La Bou on Stockton Blvd. (where I can legally park as a customer). I sip a latte and edit my paper for Classical Philosophy (it's due by email that day).

2:45pm I return to the DMV, spend 5 minutes looking for parking then return to the same illegal lot next door. I run into the DMV to check the monitor. "now serving B196 at window number 4" In an hour, I've moved forward 40 places in line. I develop a hope that many others ahead of me in the B lane have lost the will to live and given up there by moving me up in line at a faster clip than the last 40. I undo my old license plates and take them, prepared to surrender them.

3:10pm After 25 minutes of writing my paper, they are only calling B205, it is hopeless and I must leave to pick my children up from school. I announce to my section of the room that I am leaving and that if anyone wants ticket number B280 they can have it. Only one person grasps that that would be in her interest and eager seized the ticket, throwing money, jewelry and the keys to her car at me in exchange (actually, only a thank you was thrown, but it was sweet).

I leave, put the license plates back on my car and drive off to get kids.

Watching State of the Union with the fam...

Bill came home from work tonight with a story that studies now show that most of the younger voters who engaged in the Obama campaign/win are now completely uninvolved in the political process. To remedy this, the four of us listened on the radio to Obama's State of the Union Address while we ate dinner, then retired to the tv room to watch the rest.

The kids paid close attention, indeed, our 15 year old son shushed me and his sister as we repeatedly made comments about some of the congress people's clothing (I'm trying to teach my daughter to value flash over substance, o-kay?).

As I sought there, watching the speech and thinking back to the campaign, I flashed to that election night where practically our entire cohousing community of some 45 people was crowded into the small living room of one of a one-bedroom apartment to watch the coverage on our neighbor's widescreen tv. The excitement was over-the-top with everyone, including the communists and green party activists who may or may not have voted for Obama.

I resolved to create a wild State of the Union party for the next Obama speech and started planning the snacks, but then remembered that I was watching this speech now and focused. The speech was by and large excellent. The man can talk, and his people can write. He snuck in some good jokes, and some self-effacing, crow-eating moments. He blamed the previous administration copiously, but not in a mean way. He announced some doable and admirable initiatives, mostly to create jobs and boost the economy.

3 things stuck out at me from the speech:

1) Obama bashed the Senate more than I've ever seen one President bash a particular body of the Congress. Consciously praised the House, bashed the Republican minority for forcing a supermajority to get anything done, bashed the cowardice, bashed them for stopping health care, bashed them for stopping financial reform package, bashed bashed bashed. Clearly a decision was reached to make the Senate the scapegoat. Safer then bashing the whole Congress--after all only 1/3 of the Senate is up for relection this year, while the whole darn House is up--too risky to lay the blame on the whole institution. Plus the House has delivered and the Senate hasn't. So bash he does...

2) Obama announced a (probably modest) return of protectionism. I counted 4 instances when he talked about initiatives to save American jobs, export more, enforce more sanctions on international trade, etc. Maybe I'm wrong but this seemed like a different strategy than Clinton, and plays well with labor of course, and probably is popular generally. Maybe this is a way of playing to the public mood for isolation at the same time as he's gotta fight a war. Let's be isolationist on the economy, if not on security.

3) In the last 5-10 minutes of the 70 minute speech, almost in an instant, the whole room changed, both on the screen and at home. The assemblage went from watching a politician give a speech and playing their respective roles of clapping, booing, cheering, or being bored at certain parts, to listening. Speaker Nancy Pelosi over Obama's left shoulder lost her frozen deer-in-the-headlights grin and dropped her jaw. Tears came to her eyes as Obama spoke of the way the nation had pulled together to get through crises before and we could do it again.

For a few minutes, he was the Obama we voted for, the Obama who can change the world, the Obama we trust. And we were all Americans listening to our President.

Gay Marriage Trial Keeps Gay Marriage on Front Page

(published concurrently on the Sac Bee NorCal Voices blog)
I have been fretting a bit over the effort of gay marriage proponents to strike down Prop 8 in the current trial in federal court. Like many, I'm skeptical of the willingness of the predominantly right-wing stacked federal courts to render Proposition 8 unconstitutional.

Yet, it hit me today: since this trial has been going on, every single day there's a front page or front section storie on gay marriage in the Sacramento Bee. So the trial not only keeps the issue front and center, it also adds new dimensions, angles, thought and evidence because the plaintiffs in this case (the anti Prop 8/pro gay marriage side) have put on a lot of great witnesses. And, if the Bee's reporter is to be believed, the other side's witnesses are so far pretty weak like today's Institute for American Values guy who basically just states that gay marriage will drive up the rate of heterosexual divorce and doesn't even bother to present trumped up evidence for his assertion, let alone real evidence.

Yes to Helmets for Snowboarders

I give an emphatic yes to the proposal to require the use of helmets for skiers and snowboarders under 18 by California state Assemblymember Dave Jones and Senator Leland Yee. Many children are permanently disabled or killed from snowboarding injuries and often it may be preventable by wearing the right helmet.

Our experience shows that snowboarding without a helmet can be incredibly dangerous, even in seemingly safe situations. On February 13, 2004, our previously healthy 10-year-old son was knocked unconscious while taking a snowboarding class on a school field trip to Lake Tahoe. As a result of his concussion, for the past five years he suffered long periods of unremitting nausea and other central nervous system disruptions such as being unable to fall asleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. Due to the extremity of his symptoms, he missed weeks of school in 3rd grade, months of school in 4th and 5th grade, the second half of 7th grade, almost all of 8th grade and most of the first half of 9th grade.



It took us a long time to get to the bottom of our son's illness and to get it properly treated. Over the last 6 years we have consulted 3 pediatricians, 2 pediatric gastroenterlogists, 1 pediatric endocrinologist, 1 pediatric neurologist, 1 pediatric ear nose and throatologist, the Stanford Sleep Medicine center, the Mayo Clinic, 2 osteopaths, 1 network chiropractor, a somatic therapist, a cranio-sacral therapist, an Alexander Technique teacher, Maori healers, psychic healers, a shaman and a partridge in a pear tree. The conditions has been called and treated variously as a concussion, leaky gut syndrome and secondary adrenal insufficiency.

What happened on the day of the injury is that the snowboarding instructors apparently ran out of snowboarding helmets, disregarded our written instructions for him to wear a snowboarding helmet, and instead gave him a bike helmet to wear. In this case, wearing a bike helmet may have been more dangerous than no helmet at all. Because most bike injuries fall forward, bike helmets predominantly protect the front of the head. Many snow-related falls however are backward, so, like a motorcycle helmet, snowboarding helmets have to cover the whole back of the head.

What we believe now is that when our son fell he fell backward hard onto packed icy snow such that the edge of the bike helmet torqued into his head not only rendering him unconscious but causing a plate in his head to compress the vagus nerve, causing the nausea and the central nervous system dysfunction.

After these 5 long years, our son is finally well (the chiropractor and physical therapist doing the final trick of decompressing the vagus nerve), back in school and leading a normal life. Our bank account is slowly recovering from its own slow hemorrhaging. And our family unit is finding its equibilibrium without the constant crisis of health. But I'd give anything not to have put our boy and our family through this. One simple law would have done it. There's no way a school field trip would've flauted that law.

I applaud Assemblymember Dave Jones, a strong consistent champion of consumers, for leading the charge in California to protect our kids from the consequences of these inherently dangerous sports. I'd like to know if you also have stories out there that should be shared.

Ibuprofen, the middle-aged drug of choice

Over the winter holidays we spent a week with my college friends. We attended Reed College, Portland, Oregon from 1979 to 1983 and let's just say that there was some experimentation that went on in those years. For example, one of the people in our group once wrote a piece, circa 1981, called "Fear and Loathing in Disneyland" under the moniker Pigbitch S. Thompson. My children read my blog, so I'll just leave it at that.

I left most of that behind me the second I graduated. Between 1983 and 2005, I drank some serious beer in law school, smoked an occasional, er, cigarette, and focused most of my drug-related attention on caffeine.

At some point caffeine ceased to serve me and I phased out "real" coffee, switching entirely to decaf, and green tea. Many people, I hasten to point out, represent drinking decaf coffee as "caffeine free" but this is not quite true--here's a chart from the Center for Science in the Public Interest that shows the relative caffeine content of various popular beverages and decaf definitely has caffeine--caffeine content chart. Also, I go into shakes and headaches if I don't have any decaf or green tea.

After giving up serious caffeine, I pretty much cut out alcohol. It seems to lower my immune system, give me headaches and cause me to make poor choices in food and behavior. You know the old saying, "1 martini, and it's under control , 2 martinis, and it's under your belt , 3 martinis and you're under the table, 4 martinis and you're under the host." Well I'm a lightweight, I'm more like, "1/2 glass of wine and I've eaten a box of cookies, uploaded a video of me dancing on the table wearing only a napkin and fallen asleep."

So my current drug of choice is Ibuprofen (street names: advil, motrin). on the container it says "do not take more than 6 tablets in any 24 hour period" Ha, I'm lucky if I make it to lunch without taking 8.

And I'm not alone. At my 25th college reunion when I pulled out Vitamin I, I was rushed by my classmates.

"Dude, can you hook me up?" they asked me. "If you could just give me 2, or 3, 4 would be better, man" "I was just about to drive around Portland looking to score..."

"Yes," I said, pouring the beautiful little red tablets of the generic Ibu into their hands (I don't spring for the gel caps, it's quantity man, not quality).

"And I have Benadryl and Sudafed too."

Three snouts up for Avatar on Imax

(:)(:)(:) for Avatar on Imax. My expectations for this movie were mixed. On the one hand, I heard a review on public radio that said something like "this isn't a good movie, but it's enough like a good movie that you might think it is" and that gave me the sense that the hype was over-rated. On the other hand, I had heard from several people I trust that this was an amazing spiritual story, about the connections between all of us, so I got my hopes up for that.

On balance I was disappointed by the film, but for an entirely different reason than I expected. There was a lot to love about this picture. For example, everyone is right that the world they've created on Pandora is amazing and special and seeing it on Imax is frequently breath-taking. And what's not to like about the story of a native people living in sacred community with each other and all the creatures and living things in a spectacular rain forest in which it never seems to rain? And a disabled guy getting a second chance at life living inside a new alien native body? c'mon! Moreover, when the destruction of the environment is the crisis, and the bad guys are the army, you can pretty much have me for lunch.

So why, then, was I disappointed? I was disappointed because with a gorgeous environment and a creative premise, the film-makers missed the boat on the resolution. And they missed it in an over-the-top bad Hollywood, multi-million dollar when is this going to freakin' end way.

How could a peace-loving, environmentally harmonious people's salvation from destruction lie in investing a white marine masquerading as one of them with the power to amass an army of bows and arrows, flying creatures and wild dogs and pseudo-rhinos? Meeting with war with war is old news. Meeting massive war machines with primitive native equipment is ridiculous (not withstanding the fact that it's fun to watch the animals rise up against flying tanks).

If we're all one, then how can there be an enemy? If we're all one, then why isn't some way found to "see" the central casting stock redneck Marine colonel as "their brother" instead of tossing a grenade in his face? If we're all one, why can't there be a new solution, a new ending, a new way to stop destruction?

The filmmakers should read the ending of the The 5th Sacred Thing by Starhawk, a book with a similar premise resolved by a radically new, 22nd century solution. It's time to take it to the next level.

Navigating by the Starbucks

(reprinted from the NorCal Voices Blog at SacBee.com)
Yesterday, responding to my blog at Snicholsblog I received questions as to why Starbucks is my "second favorite corporation." I'm afraid the reasons are oftly banal: I love their coffee and their feel and I need them to navigate.

I first became aware of Starbucks back in 1984 when I worked in downtown Portland, Oregon. Starbucks, being a Seattle corporation opened a Portland store early on. It wasn't a giant chain, then, just a little one. It made really really really strong good coffee, unlike anything I had ever tasted. I was totally hooked. And it was okay to be out about my love.

Later, they were everywhere and it was "corporate coffee." They were putting little independent coffee shops (most of which, truth be told were Starbucks copycats, as the kind of strong coffee/espresso shop didn't really emerge until after SBs) out of business. And I was supposed to hate them, so I did. I boycotted them for a long time.

Then I discovered their lattes and started secretly patronizing them. I stayed true to my convictions by refusing to speak Starbucks. I'd say "medium" rather than "grande" and I wouldn't put my request in the right order so that they'd have to bring in a UN translator to turn "decaf medium latte with soy milk" into "Grande decaf soy latte for Sara."

And then I fell in love with the place again, this time I just really became enamored with the corporation. I like their logo. I like their decor. I like their snacks and foods and promotions and games and music. I like their causes. I just like it. And I started to make it my business to know where every Starbucks in town is and to navigate by them.

In Buffalo, New York where I used to live, they navigate by the bars. Say this is a nasal midwestern twang, "if you're coming from the Anchor bar, head straight up towards McNulty's, then hang a left at No Name's and you're there."

In New York City, in the 80's, it was sadly Gap jeans that helped me around. "It's up Broadway about 3 Gaps from here." Okay, no one ever said that, but they could have, there was a Gap every 5 blocks (providing little or no gap in the Gaps).

Me, in Sacramento, I navigate by the Starbucks. To get to stop one on the carpool, I head east towards the SB at 15th and Broadway, then north east towards the Alhambra and N, due north past the one in the Safeway at Alhambra and J. Then I head northeast up business 80 to the Marconi to pass the Starbucks at Fulton and Marconi, drop off my second load of kids nearby. Then its further east to Watt, south to pass by the near empty SB in the recession mall at Watt and El Camino--no lines in the morning rush hour but you have to make a left (why can't they place them all on the right side of the street? poor corporate planning!) If I head all the way to Fair Oaks, I pass a busy SB on the left (again!) at Watt and Fair Oaks. Way too hard to stop.

Now I have some difficulties navigating because its a large SB free zone (meaning at least 2 miles). Usually I turn right on Hurley, take it to Fulton, take a left, stay left as it becomes Munroe and head down to Sacramento Country Day to drop off my son.

Back to Starbucks civilization as I drive north on Munroe to Fair Oaks, head west towards the Pavillion starbucks, then southwest to the University and Howe Starbucks and down Howe to the freeway. On the freeway, I'm sure I pass countless SBs but somehow I stay focussed on getting home where I can get online and blog...about Starbucks.

All You Need is Love, Starbucks and the Beatles

Let's see, "All you need is love" is my favorite pop affirmation. Starbucks is my second favorite gigantic corporation (after Southwest Airlines). And the Beatles are my household's composite favorite rock band (currently being obsessively played by my children on their ipods and on Beatles Rock Band--see future posts). So it was not a stretch for me to adore this marvelous Youtube video Starbucks recently made with people singing "All you need is love" all over the world. I want you to watch it.

Dems need to get serious about governing and government

With the upset victory today of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat comes the clear sense that Thomas Frank's latest book The Wrecking Crew is dead on. Republicans hate government and when they're in power, ala Bush, they do everything they can to wreck government and have it work terribly so that when they're out of government, as in now, they can run and win on blaming the very government they wrecked.

Seen from this perspective, by the way, the Bush presidency was a huge success for the Republican party, with only a slight setback in 2008. Mind you I haven't read Frank's book, just saw him interviewed on Bill Moyer's Journal which I only watched because my husband was watching it and I was waiting for him to leave the room so I could do something else in there. Nonetheless, I love everything about Thomas Frank: his book, What's the Matter with Kansas? (which I did read cover-to-cover), the way he talks and the way he looks like the intellectual boy next door--adorable with his little glasses and sandy hair!

More importantly than how adorable Thomas Frank is, he's right. And he backs up with actual research what I've been ranting about for years, to wit: the Democrats need to get serious about explaining, protecting and defending the benefits of government unabashedly. No more Republican lite. No more running from taxes. No more trying to hide the ball. Time to start telling the truth and treating the American people like grown-ups.

If we need polling to find out how to sell government back to the people who own it, then do the polling. Change the frame, as Berkeley's own George Lakoff has been telling us for some time. Obama is the right president to do it, if he can only find the courage.

Three and a half Snouts up for A Single Man

(:)(:)(:)(: for A Single Man
(published first on the Sacramento Bee NorCal voices blog)

Colin Firth should win best actor for his performance in A Single Man. See it while it lasts at Sacramento's magnificent Crest Theater--though the film will probably be moved downstairs unless the crowd increases this weekend from last.

This first film for former fashion designer Tom Ford is not perfect. The movement from present time to flash back is sometimes awkward. The line between tragic drama and black comedy too blurry and some of the screen shots, while beautiful, scream "fashion designer director" just a little too loudly for my taste.

Yet, this focus on Colin Firth (looking oh-so-1960s Michael Caine with his skinny black tie and large frame glasses), an english professor in L.A. who has just lost his lover of 16 years is a must see. I don't know if I'll ever get out of my mind the scene where Firth hears of his lover's death from his lover's cousin. Firth's lived with the man 16 years and, it being 1960, is told (as no doubt so many were), that he isn't invited to the memorial it being "just family."

Yet, as reviewers and the director have noted, this isn't a "gay film" (although it is a gay story with lots of gorgeous boys trying to pick up Colin on the same day). Despite the serious subject matter, I didn't find it a depressing film. There are lots of parts that are damn funny, particularly the scene with the sleeping bag and the pillows. The marvelous dinner between Firth and his best friend Julianne Moore alternates between hilarity and unforgiveable utterances the way drunken evenings between friends can.

To me, it's a story about the depth of despair that we can feel and how alone we can persist in being even when there are angels all around who love us and want us to survive.

I have a dream that King wrote more than one Speech

(this post was published first in the Sacramento Bee )
The other day my 8th grader, a dedicated and engaged student at Sutter Middle School, came home saying that because of the upcoming Martin Luther King day, they were going to study "the speech" yet again. I asked her, "which speech?" She looked at me blankly, "you know, the speech" and rolled her eyes the way only 8th graders can.

My husband and I said in unison, "he wrote more than one speech." And then we groused, more to each other than to her, again, almost in unison, "couldn't her teacher have them read the Riverside Church speech at least, or, Letter from the Birmingham Jail?"

The truth is that King wrote and spoke thousands of times and much of it is captured somewhere. The King holiday is not a celebration of one march on Washington, but the whole life of this man, his whole body of work. Our public schools do King, our children and our nation a disservice if they try to boil it down to one speech.

Two and a half snouts for Sherlock Holmes

(:)(:)(: for Sherlock Holmes in theaters everywhere. The first hour of this movie made me physically ill. The context is important, I was with a mixed group of adults and kids, some of whom were younger than 13. We were out on a holiday walk in Palm Springs, arrived at a multiplex and made a split second decision that some adults and many kids would see Sherlock Holmes. Bill and I wanted to see Up in the Air which wasn't starting for an hour, so I convinced Bill that we should watch the first hour of Sherlock Holmes and then move over. Big mistake.

Probably if I had seen it just with Bill, or perhaps my almost 15 year old, I would have been fine. But seeing it with children 13, 12, 10 and 8 tormented me on their behalf. I am increasingly appalled by what the PG-13 rating deems appropriate. I swear it's way worse than anything my parents banned me from in an R rating in the 70's (Exorcist, Jaws, French Connection, you name it, I wasn't allowed to see it).

This film opens with a series of incredibly stylized close-up attacks by Watson and Holmes as they move to interrupt macabre occult killing (and implied rape) in a ghastly hall with a young woman chained and writhing on a table. How these images could be appropriate for a 13 year old, let alone an 8 year old is beyond me. Yes, I understand PG-13 is warning parents to use caution about showing it to under 13 year olds, but so many people let their under 13s see these kinds of movies these days that you're almost made to feel prudish if you don't.

Don't get me wrong, the production values are obviously high. I could watch Robert Downey Jr. fold napkins for 2 and half hours and be fascinated (Jude Law, maybe 1/2 hour). The dialogue was snappy and entertaining, and the costume, scenery, and overall dark Victorian world of the film deserve multiple oscar nominations.

It's just that the whole idea of taking a complex detective story and turning it into a highly violent action-adventure buddy film is noxious. And the violence is just gratuitous.

I've decided I've had enough of it and I'm not seeing any more action adventure PG-13 films made today without extreme pre-vetting.

P.S. Comparing notes afterwords, my children say I saw a completely different movie than they did. They weren't traumatized. They didn't find the initial scene disturbing (until I translated it for them, in retrospect with my help they do!), and they just had a blast watching H&W run around London killing people. This past weekend, District 9 was playing in our common house and my son banned me from watching it with him. He accurately observed, "my being there would ruin your experience and your being there would ruin my experience."

Oh God, my blog made the Bee

A few weeks ago, when I clicked the button to publish the post Want a cozy fire? Wait 'til next summer... on my Sacramento Bee "Norcal Voices" blog, a little voice whispered to me "this will end up in the Bee print edition" but I published it anyway.

Sure enough, this past Sunday, January 3rd, 2010, the Bee opinion page ran it. Every month or two, they seem to pick out one of the posts and run it.

Normally, I'm thrilled to have anything in print. I'm very close to the school of thought that the only bad publicity is no publicity (sorry, Tiger Woods). But this time I felt equivocal about what I had written the second I wrote it. The post was, after all, complaining about environmental regulation, something I generally frown upon.

It is significant to have it in print because it ups the readership of the piece from roughly 3 people to thousands. I am not kidding about the 3 people. If I didn't have the page to my blog bookmarked, I could not find it on the Bee website. The other day I literally spent 20 minutes trying to find it and couldn't. And even my friends with the link can't see my post if they don't create a username and login, which most of them are loathe to do.

Reaction to my piece has been mixed. Inside my insular leftwing cohousing community (and my personal dwelling), people are disgusted by anyone who would be selfish enough to put their own personal need for a cozy wood fire over other people's selfish need to breath clean air.

Outside cohousing, even with lefties, the reaction is pretty much, "oh I know! I was so mad that they wouldn't allow wood burning on Christmas Eve! It was a perfect night for a wood fire and they said 'burning prohibited!' Can't they at least have a holiday exception?!"

Meanwhile the sole commenter on the web version of the post seemed to think that I went too far by even being willing to follow the law. Her perspective is that wood burning is a drop in the bucket on air pollution and it's only rich people that have fireplaces or wood anyway, so why bother regulating it, just get everyone out of their cars.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty good idea. We only drive one car and use foot and bike transportation a lot. Can we have an exemption from the ban?

Oops, I did it again. Well, at least this time it's not on the Bee blog so no one will read it at all.