The Pandemic

My grandmother died in 1918 and though it was in childbirth, a few months before the first signs of the flu, in my mind it’s always been connected to the ‘18 flu. After 1918 nothing like the World Flu Pandemic has afflicted us for over 100 years and then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. We learned we are just as vulnerable today as the world was in 1918.

In December, 2019, there were reports of lock downs and quarantines in Wuhan China, a city most of us never heard of. In 2020 the news was full of the novel coronavirus but but like Ebola and other outbreaks it was a virus far away and didn’t seem relevant to the United States.

In 2019 my sister in Iowa began having seizures and we made a couple of trips to see her. Our second trip was in February 2020. In January the virus had broken out from China and isolated cases were showing up all over the world including the United States. At first outbreaks were traceable back to China. A cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama. But by January there were cases of “community spread” on the West Coast. The first case in the Bay Area was January 31^st related to China and then the first “community spread” in the Bay Area was February 28^th.

On February 23^rd, when Adam and I went through O’Hare Airport in Chicago a few people were wearing surgical masks, mostly Asian. In Asia masks are common during cold and flu seasons and Asian ethnic communities here, but it always seemed a little neurotic to me. I wasn’t worried about the novel coronavirus yet, but in the Chicago airport some people were.

As March began it became obvious that the novel coronavirus was loose in the United States. By mid-March cases were multiplying each day, 4 became 8, became 16. Trump was incompetent as a national leader. In the first week in March a cruise ship in the Eastern Pacific with hundreds of infections was looking for a safe port. Trump said, “he didn’t want to bring the Grand Princess’s passengers back to land because doing so would increase the critical count of US coronavirus cases. I don’t need to have the numbers double of one ship that wasn’t our fault. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” The ship parked outside in International Waters outside of the San Francisco Bay March 4^th and finally March 10^th docked in Oakland.

By March 15 Alameda had community transmission unrelated to travelers. It was in the Bay Area and infections were multiplying exponentially. A few cases in February had become hundreds of cases by mid-March. Adam’s school canceled classes for March 15 and said they would consider what to do after the weekend.

Saturday I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things The atmosphere at the Nob Hill in Alameda was tense and there were people with full carts, some with two carts. The shelves where there had been toilet paper and sanitizer were empty. Sunday we went to Shop Rite in our neighborhood. It was crowded but less tense. Monday, a free day, it was announced the school would close indefinitely and school would be by distant learning online. On Tuesday March 17, the six county Bay Area declared a regional Shelter in Place order, closing schools and all but essential businesses. On Thursday March 19 Governor Newsom issued a statewide Stay at Home order.

It seemed like we were under siege. When I bicycled in the East Bay Shoreline Regional Park on Wednesday, the maintenance worker wasn’t sure I could be there, it was still being argued. Not until the next week was the order altered to allow outdoor exercise. Similar orders in Europe and Asia were being enforced by cops writing citations and making arrests of anyone outside their apartment for anything but essential trips.

On May 28^th twelve cases of COVID-19 were reported at Cardenas Supermercado in our neighborhood. My brother-in-law Alan Bruemmer, Kate’s brother, had Multiple Sclerosis. His MS required frequent hospital visits. He was infected and died in December, 2020. Alan’s death was the only one of two of someone I knew. An elderly neighbor Mrs. Smith lived two doors down from us. Her house was a gathering place for her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At first the family stayed away but after a couple of weeks the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren returned. Some wore masks but younger people in our town were less careful. Mrs. Smith died of covid during the summer.

A high school classmate, a gentleman with whom I had reconnected 15 years before, had gone full Q-Anon on rumors and paranoia. In our last phone conversation in November 2020 according to Bill the pandemic was a plot and a hoax and the vaccine was dangerous. I was shocked that he believed it all. I knew he was a Republican, but he had always seemed rational to me. He died of covid in August 2021 unvaccinated. Until today, March 31, 2023, Suzette, Adam and I have been uninfected. We took precautions and when vaccines were available we got vaccinated.

In the first days we wondered when things would return to normal. They never have. Early in the pandemic I heard a radio host respond to the question, “How are you?” with the answer, “Under the new normal I’m doing pretty good.” 

I’d been baking our bread for over ten years. I buy active dry yeast by the pound and it lasts a year or more. In the beginning of the pandemic my supply of dry yeast was running out. Baking at home had become a national past time and yeast and flour were hard to find. I found a 25 pound bag of flour at Shop Rite. I made a sour dough starter at home and three years later I’m still using it.

The year before the pandemic I had gotten interested in specialty coffee. In November before the pandemic I bought an espresso machine. And so in the pandemic I indulged my interest in coffee, exploring the Peerless offerings at their roastery buying from a table in the doorway and then online at Amazon. My coffee obsession reached a new level. We began doing weekly shopping trips online at Amazon. In April we went to Starbucks in San Leandro and waited 45 minutes in a long line of cars to buy our drinks at a drive-up window. It was a real treat.

In the beginning of the pandemic I thought if we could take the proper precautions we might eradicate the virus. We watched the various indexes, the Worldometer, the CDC maps, the New York Times maps, the State Data sites, the County Data Site. Reading charts like baseball statistics, trying to parse out infection rates R(t)s, deaths, infections, testing and ICU capacity. We watched the transmission rate closely, wishing it below 1.00 where maybe the virus would die out. Or a vaccine, only vaccines take years and that wasn’t going to happen soon.

At first we didn’t go anywhere unnecessarily. We stopped seeing friends. Gary, our neighbor four doors down and I began meeting for morning coffee on his porch on Tuesdays. We sat and discussed the pandemic and politics for an hour and a more. We met like that for 2 ½ years.

By May, 2020, I realized masks could make a major difference. Experts were not recommending masks. I think it was more they were in short supply and they didn’t want to start a run on masks that would worsen the shortage for health care workers. I wore a bandana over my face and slowly China was able to ramp up their masks production and we could all get masks. In June California mandated masks in indoor settings and the pandemic prevailed. I ordered 50 surgical masks from Amazon. There was no longer any hope of stopping it before it became widespread.

In June I talked to a friend in Redondo Beach who had gone inside a restaurant to eat. Restrictions were easier there and I was jealous. We hadn’t been to a restaurant for months. At first delivery had been fun and then it was boring Then we went for a drive to Inverness and went to a deli where after we ordered our food we could eat outside at a picnic table. It seemed such a special treat that day in June. I remember the first time we went to a restaurant with outdoor dining at Jack London Square. We had to have our temperature taken and wear masks except at our table. After that we returned to the restaurant scene outdoors as often as we could.

The pandemic deaths in the United States were in the thousands each day. The vaccine was rolled out with a limited supply in December, 2020, an incredible accomplishment by the scientific and medical community. The pandemic peaked in January, 2021 with over 4,000 deaths per week in California alone.

There was a scramble by people to get the vaccine. At first you had to be 75. I was 74. Then there were loopholes and cracks and people I knew spent hours on the phone were able to get in for a vaccine. By the end of February I got my vaccination and in March Suzette got hers. The worst spread had been among the elderly decreasing with age and children mostly were unscathed.

There was this sense of new freedom. By June, 2021, fewer than 100 people a week were dying and it seemed the dying were the unvaccinated. There was another surge in February of 2021 at a third of the death rate of 2020 and since then the virus has been with us, many people infected but fewer deaths. A few vaccinated people died but overall it was at a rate 50 times less than the unvaccinated. Death was no longer a strong possibility but more like the flu a remote possibility. After my vaccination I never worried much about dying of covid. And then the variants started infecting vaccinated people, but like flu, a couple of weeks of being sick for most people staying at home, not hospitalizations. Today there are antivirals that are very effective if used early.

In the first flush of enthusiasm and relief I made plane reservations for a vacation in Puerto Rico. I was feeling protected. Later we changed to Chiapas Mexico when Adam’s close friend made plans with her father to return to where they had spent a year before. And we went to Chiapas. Chiapas had experienced low infection rates at the worst of it in Mexico and the vaccine was generally available by the time we arrived in July. We were careful on the plane. Mexico was much easier than the United States. There was no political divide. Mexican society has much more social cohesion and most Mexicans were careful about protecting themselves and their neighbors. Stores and nearly everywhere else required you to put a hand up for a temperature check and wear a mask. An attendant at the door enforced the rules.

There was no worry about scofflaws or skeptics. And the rates of infection showed it. For a month in Chiapas we were aware of covid but didn’t see any infections. The locals were concerned and acted so and the covid they had they blamed on International tourists like us but there wasn’t active animosity. Leaving for the United States we had to have an antigen test within a few days of our departure. It was hard to find, the demand was very high and the availability limited, but finally at a pharmacy we were able to make an appointment and it was an easy process.

Back in the States the politics were poisoned. Areas like the coast of California and liberal regions were safer but even here compliance wasn’t universal, the possibility of non-compliance, the lack of will was obvious, unlike Mexico. In Mexico everyone paid attention. In coastal California most people did wear masks indoors and in Eastern California it seemed to be a statement of patriotic independence to ignore it. We went to Yucca Valley where many people were defiantly unmasked and many gave us the fisheye when they saw our masks.

The Omicron variant came while we were in Mexico and at home there was renewed caution with people more careful about mask wearing. The Zocalo, a favorite cafe in San Leandro, allowed people inside but only after showing proof of vaccination, washing your hands, and wearing a mask. The whole staff was masked of course.

Vaccines were approved for 12 and up in 2021 and Adam got theirs when they turned 12 in October.

I went to Iowa in November, 2021, my sister was in hospice. In Iowa people wearing masks were in the minority. The politics were that lock downs and closings limited our freedom and was bad for business. The Republicans apparently were practicing Social Darwinism. After all the worst effected by the pandemic were the elderly, the poor and people of color. It was so amazing that it was clearly a political issue for Republicans, Trump at first had been on the side of prevention and caution, but when the Populists angrily denied acts of empathy and thoughtfulness as infringing on their freedom Trump followed.

Slowly the pandemic waned, less transmission. The politics continued toxic. The Democrats won back the Presidency.

This is the new normal. Life doesn’t seem constricted. We do what we want, go to restaurants, shop, travel, and visit with friends. Some people are more cautious than others. Here in the Bay Area most people seem respectful, putting on masks when asked to. Our Unitarian Church started in person services again in March 2022. We were more conservative than most churches. There had been some intense discussions about requiring vaccinations or not. We are still required to wear masks indoors except when eating.

Hugs and closeness, not everyone is comfortable riding in the same car with other people, sharing an elevator, inviting people into their homes. One friend still won’t eat indoors with other people.

There is this feeling of unease that’s always there, mostly unconscious. It’s a constant we’ve all learned to live with. We’re never going back to what we called normal but things today are normalish. Nature has shown us our own fragility. Life is a gift.

A House of Our Own

When we left Angel Island we moved to what we Islanders called the Main Land. We rented an apartment on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the world. The first heavy rains the roof leaked in our bedroom and they fixed it and it leaked again and they fixed it again and again. Then in July a year after we had moved to Lakeshore, Suzette’s 17 year old son Arom moved back to California and to live with us. Suzette found us a house on Humboldt Ave in El Cerrito. It was a good house in a nice neighborhood, close to things on a bicycle and even a few places to walk to. We were planning to go to Spain in a year and the landlord was planning to sell the house in a year. That worked. Then Suzette reconsidered Spain and the landlord was selling the house. We found another house in Hilltop Green, a wonderful neighborhood with a park except it was in a dell below a freeway.

When the landlord raised the rent 10% after the first year we looked around and realized we could afford to buy a house and began looking. By 2015 the financial and real estate crash of 2008 had evolved into an overheated market and the East Bay was crazy. A small apartment called a condo in Berkeley was selling for twice what we could afford. Another house in Berkeley we could barely afford was across the street from where the local leisure class hung out in front of liquor store.

We bid on one house in Richmond on a nice street in a poor neighborhood and were outbid. We had started in May and after three months we were still looking. One more bid in the Dimond we nearly got and then we looked at a house in the flats of East Oakland near Mills College. It was almost in our price range and we overbid for it and got it.

5615 Fleming Avenue was on a good street below the 580 freeway and above Foothill Avenue. East Oakland is the hard part of town but our neighborhood was a 1920s development a little more genteel than the area is known for. It had gone through covenants and restrictions to block busting to gentrification nearby. The neighborhood had changed color a couple of times but after a hundred years it was still genteel. When we moved there the diversity of the neighborhood was solid and still is and the neighbors turned out to be the best part of our new house. Shortly after we moved in Bettina and Gary Larsen moved in. Bettina quickly became the neighborhood social director and godmother to all the children. We met all of our neighbors and Pastor Clarence of the Mills Grove Christian Church. It wasn’t long before we felt at home.

A month after we moved in Adam started kindergarten at Escuela Bilingüe Internacional in Rockridge, 15 minutes away. The second through eighth grade is in Emeryville, again 15 minutes away. From our neighborhood everything in Oakland is about 15 minutes away.

The house is 1200 square feet, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a backyard and a small front yard. It’s more than adequate for us. The backyard is well fenced and in 2017 we got a dog, Bella, the Rescue Dog. I don’t do yard work and the landscaping is au naturel. We’ve lived here for 8 years and it’s home. We’ll probably stay until Adam graduates from high school when I’ll begin to look for digs in a cheaper geography.

I used money I inherited from my parents for the down payment and so far it has been a good investment. For a few years we watched the value of the house increase rapidly and since the Pandemic it’s at a plateau well above what we paid for it. At first the payments were hard on our budget but we refinanced and reduced them by 15% and our income has increased with the Cost of Living Allowances of Social Security and CalPers. Buying a house has done what we needed, fixed our housing costs. Eight years later we can afford it. It’s a good house for us in a good neighborhood with a good dog. 

Congregational President

In 2016 I reluctantly said yes to joining the Board of Trustees of UUCB, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. I ran unopposed and won. At first I couldn’t figure out what the board meetings were all about and what the real issues were. Who was running the Church? We spent most of our meetings discussing the process of governance and real issues must have been addressed elsewhere. It was pretty obvious it wasn’t the board. Before I had figured that out they told me the Vice President was too busy with job and family to run the nominating committee, would I to the nominating committee and be the acting Vice President? The next year the Vice President, now me, reluctantly became the President.

Like most mainline churches in these times we had the usual problems: a large old building sitting on very valuable real estate, growing deferred maintenance, a large staff and an elderly and shrinking congregation. When I joined the board our longtime co-ministers had just retired and we were in the two year interim where a search committee looked for a new minister. We had an interim minister I couldn’t seem to get in step with. The real leadership of the Church was diffuse and fragmented; the choir, religious education, the grounds committee, chalice circles, the personal theology program, the men’s group and a humanist group.

70 miles away we had a cabin in the woods in bad disrepair, our retreat center. At home we had a financial management mess, law suits and bad tenant relations. We had a congregation deeply divided and everyone passionately protecting their idea the church’s identity. I was the person most visibly in charge and still trying to get a handle on it when the new co-ministers arrived and I became President. Together we dealt with lawsuits, finding new tenants, and trying to find out where the money was. Before we found out where it had gone we ran out of cash for payroll. The real problem had been the financial manager without good supervision borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and covering up the mess it created. We were short and now Peter had to be paid.

The property in Sonoma, Freestone, had been a getaway for members since the 1970s. I wasn’t as sensitive as I should have been to how cherished the property was to an important minority of the congregants. I saw it as a piece of property in desperate need of repair and restoration with funds we didn’t have and a resource we were barely able to use with only a few congregants committed to it. At a big congregational meeting a majority just short of 2/3s voted to sell the property. We didn’t reach it.

Ironically the board is trying to sell Freestone again some five years later. This year they’ve changed the majority to 50%, but the vote hasn’t happened yet.

After my term was up, I served another year on the board supporting the new President and then gratefully went off the board. My Unitarian Universalist enthusiasm, my UU faith, was barely intact. I had a new respect for people who can make democracy work, particularly direct democracy like the UUs. I don’t know how they do it, leaders who can speak the truth without pissing people off. Then the pandemic came and now years later I’m still a member of UUCB albeit with a much lower profile. Our cash flow problem was saved by Federal Pandemic relief for employers which the church tapped very successfully, other problems were postponed and recently hired co-ministers left.

The church continues on, maybe unsubstainable, maybe not, but always struggling and so it goes with or without my help. I do know in 50 years there will still be a UU Community in El Cerrito with or without a Church. It will not be easy. I think the people there now are better able to deal with the strife. There have been three more board Presidents since, all of them reluctant to have taken the job.

82 is Too Old to be President

I thought Biden’s State of the Union speech last night was OK. Biden looked energetic, he gave the speech well, he even looked relaxed and to be enjoying himself. Vice President Harris did her Mike Pence imitation more convincing than Mike Pence. Kevin McCarthy couldn’t stop smiling; seeing himself as the Speaker of the House and was even cordial and correct not showing any of the Trump shit he talked to get there.

It was the usual Biden speech talking about his accomplishments and then it went on and on and he was still only talking about what he had done. He made the usual bows to bi-partisanship and getting things done, but it was apparent to everyone including Biden that this Republican Congress is not going to do a single thing with Biden. There were some good jabs at the coming Debt Ceiling crisis and some exchange between him and the Republican crazies, now leaders in the McCarthy’s House. This morning in the papers I got it, he challenged the Republicans as the Party that wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. “Liar!” the Rudes screamed. He countered, a readied retort, that it was nice to see they’ve converted. Nice move Joe.  Biden 1, Marjorie Taylor Green 0.

There was nothing about future policy, things he can do and will do, for the coming year. He did lay out the intent to continue backing Ukraine against hesitant Republican opposition originating in the Putin admiring Republican right, formerly the extreme right wing.

Biden did a good job of demonstrating that even at 80 years old he can give a good speech and is with a script and some rehearsed retorts and quips still sharp. He is running for President in 2024 and this was as close to a campaign speech as he’s given yet. It’s the same old speech but up until now it sounded like an activist President pushing his agenda.  Last night was a campaign speech.  

Biden is a lifelong stutterer and mangling Schummer’s position, Majority Leader, not Minority Leader, was acceptable stumbling, embarrassing, but not fatal. He looks and moves frailly but heck he’s 80 years old. If he were a friend, he’d be described as 80 but still sharp. It was painful to watch him glad hand his way out of the House. I held my breath hoping he wouldn’t get knocked over in the press of members wanting to shake his hand.

I’m 76 years old and I hope my family describes me “but still sharp.” I tell myself most people are surprised to learn how old I actually am. So far I don’t move frail, particularly if anyone is watching.  

I will not vote for Biden under any circumstances. That is until November and it’s a choice between him and a Republican. Then I have no choice, but I will work hard before that to see the Democrats have a younger, more vigorous and less dated candidate than Uncle Joe. 82 is too old. I think it’s almost inevitable that a President starting his term at 82 is going to end up like Wilson, Reagan or Feinestein, just a shell of themselves before their term ends. I reluctantly admit no one could have been better for Speaker than Nancy Polosi, but she is the exception not the rule and even Nancy is stepping down at 82.

So Trump is almost as old. Trump is a demagogue. Demagogues go until they die. If the Republicans want a demagogue it doesn’t make any difference to me who it is. The Party is suffering from dementia, so why shouldn’t their candidate?

I felt this way three years ago and yes, Uncle Joe has done a good job and may have been the right man at the right time. Thanks.  Now step down. Make room for new leadership. I am not voting for a candidate who will start his term at 82 years old.

Japan 2012

In 2012 I finally accepted the invitation from my boss at Dai-Ichi Kangyo when I was there in the 80s. I had become Hayashi’s right hand man, my desk next to his. I was his American advisor, a gopher sometimes, a trusted lieutenant and a friend.

When he returned to Japan we continued to correspond and he insisted that one day I should come to visit him in Japan. The expense seemed intimidating and I didn’t have the time, but in my first year of retirement I was cash rich and had nothing but time. My excuses were gone and I finally agreed to come.

I arrived in Japan and Hayashi met me at the airport and was my host and tour guide almost every step of the way. Hayashi is a bit of a control freak but in two short weeks I got to see Japan in a way that most America-jin would never see it. I was the VIP guest in a downtown hotel, visited the Hayashi’s at home in central Tokyo, was a guest along with an old co-worker and his wife at Hayashi’s country home where the Hayashi family was from. I got to become friends with Nagasuchi-san. We had worked in the same place but never really known each other. I went by myself on a carefully planned package tour to Kyoto.

Currency, language, geography were never a problem with my guide.

The first event was a reunion of the DKB staff from Los Angeles in the 1980s. The dinner was at Hayashi-san’s very exclusive club in downtown Tokyo. After the 1980s DKB became a Zombie Bank and vanished in a takeover. My colleagues were the survivors and had been scattered to the winds. It was the first meeting of all of us since those days. It was fun to recognize each other after 25 years and the dinner was an incredibly warm and fun event. It seemed our affection for each other had only grown in the interim.

Ono-san, the class clown, was still the class clown. He was assigned to take me back to my hotel. We walked out into the crush of downtown Tokyo, he raised his hand and a large black limosine immediately pulled up at the curb. Ono-san was the president of a Japanese insurance company.

During the course of the trip, various colleagues were assigned to take me out or put me up. Yamada-san met us a few times and we went to restaurants and shrines. Nagasuki-san and his wife, friends of the Hayashis, picked me up and took me to the country home in Nakano. We spent a few days together and went touring in the countryside, seeing temples and shrines and eating at wonderful restaurants, touring the City of Nagano and Matsumoto Castle. I hadn’t really known Nakasugi-san. He was in charge of IT and we didn’t work together. We became friends on this trip. He and his wife were delightful. I asked him if Hayashi-san had changed at all. No, he said, if anything he was more himself, still the boss, but his loyalty and affection for his team was still strong and it seemed we all still did what he told us.

Hasegawa-san hosted me at a National Park near Mount Fuji. Yamaki-san took me to dinner at a famous restaurant in the Ginza. Arahata-san took me to dinner. At the end of the trip Hayashi had assigned Nakasugi-san to take me to some museum and we both discovered we were more interested in the railroad museum and we cheated and went there. On a trip arranged by Hayashi I visited Kyoto. Tsukamoto-san a junior office in Los Angeles was now a senior executive at a major International Bank and we met him for a very special lunch at his bank.

In a short two weeks I had an amazing trip to Japan, hosted and guided by Hayashi-san. I saw Tokyo, Yokahama, Nagano and Kyoto, shrines, temples, parks, restaurants, gardens and public baths and castles. An extended stay with the Hayashis at their country home. I met his auntie, his brother and saw his daughter a Nippon Telephone executive. It was an amazing trip and the warmth and friendship of my former colleagues was incredible. A short trip but a life experience for me.

A Trip to Ireland

In 2012 I finally went to Ireland. Most of my family and friends and even people I didn’t know all talked about what a wonderful place it was after they had been there. I am proud of my Irish heritage, but after being taught by Irish priests in high school and my experience of not being Irish enough for them, when I was in Europe Ireland wasn’t on my list of things I had to see. Finally in 2012 I went there for myself.  

As soon as I landed I was Irish enough.  I felt welcomed. It is an incredible country with incredible people. I have never been in a place where it was so easy to talk to people. Every town has a Falté shop, a government tourist center where the people are incredibly helpful. In Galway I got acclimated just walking around. I learned pizza shops in Ireland are always Pizza and Kebabs. I went to a poetry reading in a local library where arriving on time got me the last seat available.  It’s not cosmopolitan, it’s not provincial, it’s just comfortable.

In Dublin I toured the city particularly aware of the Easter Rebellion, the Post Office and the bullet holes in the Daniel O’Connell statue in the line of sight for British snipers at Trinity College to the to the Republicans General Post Office barricades. I attended a lecture at Dublin Castle and was invited by the moderator, an Italian Irish American from San Francisco professor at University College in Cork invited me to join him, the lecturers and their historian friends to go the pub.

I took a bus tour to the New Grange, a Neolithic site, even older than the Pyramids. I went to the National Museum of Ireland. I saw artifacts thousands of years old. It wasn’t the history I had shown at State Parks in California, someone else’s ancient history, it was mine going back to time immemorial, Irish stone tools and dugout canoes.

I went to the National Gallery and saw a special exhibit of Leonore Carrington, one of my favorite Mexican artists, an ex-pat of Irish ancestry who made Mexico her home. There was a wonderful docent who showed me around and we saw a small model maybe 8 inches long of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” a crocodile boat with a crocodile crew. I told the docent I had seen the full sculpture all 16 feet by 30 feet on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. It was an old friend from Mexico honored in Dublin, like me part of the Irish Diaspora.

I went on to Cashel in Tipperary to see where my family was from. In the graveyard of the Cathedral on Cashel Rock there was a Duggan gravestone. In Tipperary at Brian Boru’s castle I wasn’t a person with an Irish surname, I was one of the Duggans.

Ballingarry is a long and expensive cab ride from Cashel. I got there and walked the main street. There is the Church of the Assumption, two pubs, the Miners’ Rest and the Amby, and a sundries/post office shop. The pubs don’t serve meals. I asked the publican where do people eat in Ballingarry. He said at the Day Break across the street, a 7/11 type convenience store that served chicken wings and snacks.

People told me my cousin Mark Duggan, a veterinarian, was down the street, but he wasn’t home that day.

The only thing of note in Ballingarry was Famine Warhouse, actually 5 kilometers away in the country. Warhouse is where the Royal Irish Constabulary had fled from the Young Irelanders.  Young Ireland had taken over the Commons in the Rebellion in 1848 and the Constabulary sent to break it up had to flee for their lives and took five hostages in the widow McCormack’s farmhouse.   

An hours long gun battle ensued; two rebels were killed.  Reinforcements came for the Constabulary and the rebels retreated and faded into the countryside. Most of the Young Irelanders escaped capture after the event and some showed up in America afterwards. I knew about the Rebellion at Famine Warhouse, where the Irish Republican flag was first flown. I didn’t know it was in Ballingarry where my great great grandfather was from. It was closed for the Day.

I learned a little more about it and began to connect the dots. The Young Ireland movement was an independence minded group made of up of middle class Irish Protestants and Catholics. William Smith O’Brien, the leader was Protestant country gentleman from a landowning family and a member of Parliament.

Michael Duggan my great great grandfather arrived in Missouri in 1849 at the age of 21. He was not fleeing the famine, like Irishmen of the day in steerage to Ellis Island. He entered the United States through New Orleans and went up the Mississippi and bought 500 acres of prime farmland in Brinkstown Missouri.

A young man, 21 years old, from Ballingarry who left there in 1848/49 and arrived in America with enough money to buy a large farm. The Duggans have always been Republican in their sympathies and rebels at heart.

Was my great great grandfather a Young Irelander in Ballingarry in 1848? I don’t know. He certainly could have been.

91 Dead to date this year

On New Year’s Eve of the Lunar Year, a 72 year old madman from Hemet opened fire in a Monterey Park Dance Studio and Club and killed 10 New Year celebrants and wounded 10. He left and went to a similar Club in Alhambra where two patrons disarmed him. He fled and was spotted the next morning in Torrance. When the police approached his vehicle he shot himself and died.

The victims were apparently an older crowd that were celebrating the New Year at a party at the club where they took ballroom, latin and Chinese dance classes. What a sadness. The shooter was an old man who had reported to the Hemet Police where he lived that people were trying to poison him. The victims were also older people who belonged to a dance club. It’s remarkable that the shooter and the victims were all Asian, either Vietnamese or Chinese Americans.

And life goes on in America. Another mass shooting. A couple of weeks ago a whole family from a ten month old baby in their mother’s arms to grandparents were murdered in the Central Valley by gangsters. Eleven years ago a madman killed 7 people at Oikos University here in Oakland. A rare event in 1999 when the Columbine shootings occurred has now become commonplace, disturbed teenagers, madmen, paranoids, and politically deranged people are arming themselves and killing people en masse for all sorts of reasons, political, personal, jobs, race, gangs or sometimes for no discernible reason at all.

In a country of 330 million people these type of people are inevitable but only in America are we insane enough to make sure everyone who wants a weapon of nearly any kind can obtain it and to claim this as a constitutional right. With various loopholes, this includes violent felons and the insane. There are even court cases where the right to buy a gun for the disturbed or the mad is defended. A majority of Americans believe there should be limits but the gun manufacturers and their association the NRA fight common sense controls every step of the way.

Of course, almost all other countries control their citizens owning weapons very tightly. For myself single shot long rifles or shotguns for hunting or even protection are fine. But assault rifles, automatics, pistols, weapons meant only for killing people should be banned and gradually removed from circulation. It’s not going to happen in the United States for now and periodic mass murders like Monterey Park and worse should be expected frequently. There’s nothing rare about them now.

Reaching out to the isolated and deranged with decent mental health services wouldn’t hurt either.

Two days later another overwrought Chinese American man shot 7 coworkers to death in Half Moon Bay. The victims were farm workers at a mushroom farm. He was captured alive a short time later in a parking lot familiar to me from my Half Moon Bay days.

Monday a video was filming at the corner of MacArthur and Seminary at the gas station there, a few blocks from our house. Gunfire erupted and 1 person was shot dead and four people were wounded. It was multiple shooters and was apparently gang related.

91 people have died in mass shootings in the United States this month. This is according to a crowd sourced data base, Mass Shooting Tracker where four or more people shot defines a mass shooting.