Abalone

When I was a kid abalone were plentiful enough that there was a season when you could take them, abalone irons were regularly on sale in stores around town, and if you were under 16 which I was at the time you could take them without having a fishing license.  Everybody in town went for them.  Which is why they are basically extinct today.  The population could hold on, expand, even, when just the local indigenous people were taking them, and even when the white people had moved into the area with a population of 4 or 5 thousand or so.  But much beyond that, the taking exceeded the ability of the abalone to sustain.

I remember a time as a kid when my mom and I were walking along the cliffs in LJ, near Boomer Beach, and Glen Brown was cooking up some freshly taken abalone on a fire and invited us to join for breakfast, which we gladly did.  Brown was one of those ultimate water guys, surfed, dived, swam, he was riding a bike into his 90's.  In construction.  He built his own house overlooking Windansea and it stood there from when it and Dicky Van Doren's and his place were the only ones in the neighborhood, until it was surrounded by giant condos 40 years later.  The Browns had the neighborhood's first TV and all us kids would gather round the TV at 4 in the afternoon when channel 2 in LA signed on and we'd watch Captain Zoom.  Last time I was in the neighborhood I saw that the Brown house had finally come down to be replaced with yet another giant condo.  I guess the family wanted or needed the money.

When I was a kid in the neighborhood the entire block between Playa del Sur and Playa del Norte was vacant, just a giant field except for the ruins of a restaurant on Neptune Place that had burned down in the '30's or '40's.  And that is where we'd play.  My mom never let me go in the water at Windansea, said to be too dangerous.  So I never did.  I saw Dicky van Doren's dad surfing there.  How hard that must have been on big unmanuverable long boards.  So you aren't allowed to hunt abalone in La Jolla any more and you can't have fires on the cliffs any more, either.  The luaus went by the way long ago, they were huge drunken parties, I guess kind of like the Potlatch parties on the coast at U of Oregon, they went from being reasonable parties to giant out of control bashes, binges.  Ugh.

The World Series Month

I have found a lot of writings by Charlie from various times during his life.  I like this poem he wrote for school April 24, 1958, age 11:

In October I watch the World Series,
It is a lot of fun.
I like to yell for my favorite team,
When they hit a good home run.

I like to see the other pitcher
Throw four balls for a walk,
And if it's for my favorite team,
I like to see him balk.

I like to see the pitcher throw,
And hear the bat go "wham."
And when I see the catcher look,
I know it's a big grand slam.

If my father keeps his promise,
When October rolls around,
We'll board a big airliner,
And be World Series bound.

Chuck, Charlie's dad, did keep that promise, he took Charlie to the series that year.

Yesterday's funeral for Gloria was nice.  We all agreed she would have enjoyed it.  Judy brought delicious brownies.  Many fine speeches were given.

Gloria Johnson's service will be day after tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 7 at the Unitarian Church.  It occurs to me how many people we have said goodbye to there:  John Kohler, Nick Johnson, Brad Truax, Doug Scott, Albert Bell, David of the church, Charlie, and now Gloria.

It was very hard to sign back on to blogspot.  I have another account and it kept routing me to & through that account, which has no blogs.  It got exasperating.  It used to be easy.

A friend has died

She fell down a flight of stairs and suffered fatal brain damage.  Everyone who knew her is sad and misses her.  For missing her I too am sad.  Yet isn't what we are all looking for, hoping for, just such an exit?  We know we will have to go, we all know and accept that, but we do not want to suffer, to deteriorate in hideous agony.  So we all hope for a sudden and as painless as possible exit.  So for that, for her, I am thankful.  I would rather die suddenly this afternoon than go on another 20 years but finish the last 5 or 6 years in agony.  Not unreasonable at all.  Plus with health issues over the last 1 1/2 years I am not at all happy living in more or less constant fear, terror, worry.  So now of our original friendship group S, N, Charlie, P are gone.  So quickly!  Seems like only yesterday we'd all collect on a beach and party and laugh it up.  Time goes by so quickly.  Truth is I don't know what my future holds though reports, tests, doctors have all been encouraging but I began with such horrible numbers.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll stumble down a flight of stairs and my worries will be over.  And that would be a good thing, a blessing, something to be thankful for me for.

Losses

We lost Gloria Johnson on Sept. 22, she had been ill since breaking her pelvis in a fall in June, had been in and out of hospitals, nursing homes, convalescent hospitals since then.  She was such an ardent feminist, an early fighter for AIDS patients rights.  She and Charlie often ran for Democratic Party positions together.  We always had her up for Christmas or Thanksgiving.  She led an amazingly constructive, positive, productive life.  Maureen announced Gloria's passing at the end of the Democratic Club's awards banquet on the 22nd, the whole crowd gasped.  She and I rode in the Pride Parade of 2012 honoring Charlie posthumously.

And on Oct 8 we lost Patty Plaster, only in her 50's, vivacious, healthy, happy, the whole world going for her, but she tumbled down a flight of stairs and suffered fatal brain damage.  Incredible.  I will always remember her smile, she never had a cruel or bitter word for or about anyone.  She could express negativity about things without getting cruel or bitter.  But her most outstanding feature was her wonderful personality, just a loving person.  So our friendship group has now lost Patty and Charlie.  Gloria was of course a friend, but of a different circle, the political circle.  Wow.

Losses

Quite a few losses over the past few years.  Charlie, of course.  Nancy M, Nancy S, Paul S, Skip K, and now GJ seems very imperiled.  Seems like only yesterday we were all getting together for meetings or parties or leafleting or signing up voters at the county fair or the OB fair, or doing midnight door hangings, getting chased by dogs around unfamiliar neighborhoods.

It'll be 50 years this November since the assassination of Kennedy.  53 years since he was elected and Nancy & Nancy were young women then, eagerly walking precincts getting out the vote for him in 1960.  I guess the Pt. Loma club still has some energy but amazingly enough it looks like the SDDC is foundering.  The banquet has become an afternoon snack, I don't think the club has the clout it did when it was a king maker, when candidates thronged for endorsements.  Maybe now, too, but not as much.  No more mailer work parties, its on line now.  More efficient of course but getting the membership together to physically do something for the cause, the stories, the socializing, the bonding, made a lot of difference, it kind of made the club.  Now it isn't even named the SDDC any more, its SD Democrats for Equality.  Fine.  The idea was to bring in the younger voters.  Has it?  Seemingly not though I could be wrong.

  In reading Charlie's journals I am struck by how active he was, and he wasn't the only one.  I guess in a way the movement has achieved so many of its goals  gay people might not see the necessity of being political now.  As gay people we were continually under attack, held up as enemies of the state, of morality, of God, by Republican politicians, even some Democrats.  Our rights were continually under attack, being eroded, being extinguished.  As Charlie said it was a matter of survival to organize and fight back.  And now that so many goals have been achieved I guess it just doesn't seem important to people any more.  I wonder if they are right.  I wonder if our position is secure or if it can all be swept away in some kind of Christian Republican Revival.  For sure a Republican gov and or legislature could trip us up badly.  But for now I guess people are just relaxing, enjoying the complacency.

I am old enough I realize I won't be here when the shit hits the fan.  Not so much on gay rights as on say the country's economy, the building of barriers to class and economic mobility, the privatization & expensivization of higher education.  The middle class has been cast into unmitigatable debt, the infrastructure, the whole system is being allowed to collapse just to cut taxes for the already super rich, the formula for national collapse.  Too bad.  We tried.  Hard.  Its too far gone now.  Oh I suppose some radical congress & pres could just cancel all the student debt but thats not going to happen, congress is gerrymandered and the big money will forever control it.  Thus, the collapse is inevitable.  It is too bad. And I am not going to be around to see it, thankfully.  Ultimately the responsibility is on the middle class for ever having voted against its own interests, against its own existence, by putting into office Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush boys.  They should have known better.  But Republican appeals to racism or to glamorous empty suits (Reagan) worked, it conned them.  Oh well.  Nothing lasts forever.