Thursday, August 18, 2011

Signs of the Times

I've been going to the Touchless Car Wash in downtown Berkeley for years now. For $20 they take the car through the wash for you (I have a tendency to claustrophobia and really hate doing that) and then four or five people in red Touchless T-Shirts descend on the car to vacuum out the inside and wipe down all the surfaces (I have arthritis and just plain don't do that). While they are busy, you go inside and amuse yourself shopping for junk food and a whimsical selection of greeting cards and gift items.

Today, taking my grimy car in for some attention after leaving it parked out front of my house for much of the summer, I was struck by a shift in the ethnic composition in the staff. For as long as I can remember, the cashier has been a young man from somewhere in the Middle East (not always the same young man from the Middle East) and the grunt workers in the red T-shirts have all been from somewhere south of the border or beyond, and I suppose I always assumed, not thinking about it any more than middle-class white people in California have to think about it, that most of them were probably undocumented. Now, the crew is getting to reflect the ethnic composition of northern California--black, white and Asian as well as Latino.

And then there are the changes on Lincoln Avenue, the street where I grew up back in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lincoln Avenue is about a mile long, and connects the Amherst College and University of Massachusetts campuses. The housing runs a social gamut; four or five huge, gracious mansions in the first block at the Amherst college end, and increasingly modest middle-class homes as you move toward UMass, with a block of apartments bordering the campus at the end.

The top block has not changed one iota in appearance for the past fifty years. From there on down, there are creeping signs of shabbiness and disrepair, first in some of the houses, then in all of them. The apartments down at the end, which used to be tidy and utilitarian, have deteriorated into a little slum.

It's kind of a parable for the times.







Friday, August 12, 2011

This Is Your Old Age on Drugs


My mom, now 91, has one of those foot-square plastic trays with pills sorted out in lidded compartments by day and time, 28 for a week. (I have a smaller one, still just one little lidded box per day. And the system works better for me because most of the time I can still remember what day it is).

In the case of my mom, whose physical health is remarkably good, most of the drugs are psychoactive. I have not followed what they all are, or which discouraging aspect of her emotions and behavior they are meant to treat, since we have two nurses and a doctor in the family who are much better qualified for this responsibility than I. Just now, my sister was on the phone with the psychiatrist, having a very complicated conversation about dosages and trying more of this and less of that.

The result of all this medication is that my mom is not crazy, exactly, but still quite depressed. And more confused than she should be, given the appearance of a recent brain scan. (She doesn't have Alzheimer's--you could have fooled me.)

Coming from the 1960's by way of California, I of course see the obvious option of trying some really good drugs, if she is going to be on drugs. Primo bud her food, might be a good place to start.

Apparently my teenage nephew recently made a similar suggestion at the dinner table but was quickly stifled (his father the doctor is, like most doctors, quite conservative).

For myself, if I make it past 90, I definitely intend to do it stoned.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Wort Moon

The full moon that falls in Leo is sometimes called the Wort Moon because its waxing is the auspicious time to gather certain worts, or herbs useful for the leafy part that grows above the ground. (Dried herbs of this type are medicinally and magically effective for only about a year after they are picked, a fact that is ignored by most businesses that market them.) Two herbs traditionally associated with this time were mugwort and vervain.

Mugwort is plentiful in California, and known since Native American times for its power to induce dreams. Drink it as a tea, and fall asleep intending to dream what you need to know. Some herbals give warnings about its possible toxicity, but you would probably have to drink gallons of the stuff to do any harm, and there's no reason why anyone would do that. You'd be up all night peeing, and never get any dreams at all.

Vervain is traditionally used for kidney stones and bladder problems, also to drive away vampires. The Iroquois used it to drive away anybody they didn't want to deal with, but this strategy doesn't seem to have stood the test of time. It apparently works better on vampires than on white people. Vervain has general protective qualities, though, and is also used in divination; you can see the future by gazing into a fire through vervain. Or add some to your mugwort tea for prophetic dreams.