“The Economy” is supposed to provide a matrix of relative rationality and predictability for the relations among human individuals and the billions of their fellows that make up civilization. It’s also supposed to govern the hundreds of specific choices each of us makes daily—shop at Costco or Whole Foods, get the conventional bananas or the organic ones, work hard in school to qualify for a good job. It provided the success narrative for my parents’ achievement of the American Dream through hard work and thrift, starting with no money as refugees from the Nazis in 1937 and ending with their substantial bequest to us upon my mother’s death in 2003.

Having grown up sheltered by their steady progress, financial security never seemed urgent for me, and having my adult values largely formed as a high-achieving student at an Ivy League university where concern for money was considered plebian, I got more gratification from giving stuff away than from acquisition. That attitude was part of what led me to attempt to live off the land in a Thoreauvian “economy” in patrician poverty.  A couple of years of mortgage anxiety and mill work brought me around to a craving for any job that could generate a steady income.  When that finally arrived in my forty fourth year with a tenured position as professor and civil servant at a state university, I again lost interest in money. When the inheritance from my parents came through, my inclination was to donate  it all to charity. But I was dissuaded by my wife.

Her attitudes about money always diverged from mine.  The daughter of a banker, she was interested in me as a good prospect when we first met—PhD candidate at Stanford with secure academic career ahead. After several decades of disappointment of that expectation, she went to law school, passed the bar, and started her own law firm dealing with business law, employment law, trusts and estates, whereby success and failure was all about economy.

Despite being able to purchase whatever we wanted—new cars, real estate, a therapeutic private school stint for our daughter,  international travel, and tithing for charity—our assets grew.  We still maintained habits of relative thrift—drinking cheap wine, sleeping in Motel 6 on the road. Jan spent a good deal of time managing the portfolio.

The expansion of our wealth made me uncomfortable, especially in light of the attrition of the middle class and the growing gulf between rich and poor, making us part of the hated one percent.  Habits of thrift seemed absurd unless the money saved was being put to meaningful use.  I looked at our investments only once a year while preparing reports for our tax accountant and calculating our tithe.

In November 2019, I discovered that in the course of one year their value had ballooned by 25%, largely due to the influence of the despised Trump administration. I hunched it would soon drop. The moral thing would be to liquidate the ill-gotten gains now and turn them over to charity and righteous political causes.  The practical thing to do would be to turn them into cash and spend as much  as possible on things with tangible value.

The latter is what we chose. We purchased a new mobile home for our daughter, bought two electric vehicles and a Powerwall, donated to the Community Foundation for City Farm SLO and left enough to cover what we expected would be a large tax liability from the profit taking.

By the end of January after our accountant filled out the returns,  it turned out that we were getting $18,000 in refunds.  Most of the securities Jan had selected to sell were losers over time and the rebates on the car and Powerwall as well as the charitable contributions made for yet more credits.

Three months later, as the Pandemic has eclipsed all other concerns, personal and public, the significance of our economic windfalls keeps shifting.  The stock market continues reeling from the assault of the plague.  The hyper economy that tied together the whole world in a feverish gold rush sickening ecosystems and climate and draining wealth from the poor and funneling it to the rich, seems to be falling apart.  The majorities living paycheck to paycheck in tight quarters can’t possibly maintain social distance or shelter at home, while we are encouraged to exercise generosity by ordering takeout meals from favorite restaurants. The government’s decision to print and hand out trillions of dollars to everyone may either start limiting the damage we’ve been causing for the last fifty years or may simply accelerate collapse.

From Katie: “The fox just ran through my plot, coming from the direction of your plot. It came through the fence just behind the hoop house, headed southwest to the creek.”

Reply: “Before we talked  yesterday, I gathered up the dead but unmutilated chickens and laid them in a tote inside the run for burial today.   When I arrived this morning they were strewn all over, all partially eaten.  My deduction, based on the fact that their feet were still warm yesterday:  I must  have scared  the fox off when I first came out, and he must have returned to finish the job after I left and before you sent the above text.”

My  daily news comes  from the world center of suffering:

• New York Times
• New York Review
• New Yorker

My abandoned home

30 March 7:23 A.M.

The big space in journaling accounted for by relative lack of change. Jan and I are still comfortable with social distancing, mitigated by her ongoing interactions on Facebook and my daily visits to the farm which include live interactions with co-workers Shane and Tree, fellow farmers Abimael, Javier and Katie, volunteers Claire, Gregg and Anneke. Continuing harvest for the Food Bank, reorganizing the field map, planting the thousands of starts donated by Green Heart, feeling the ground softened by mini-miracle March drought busting rains makes time there more precious than ever, though often exhausting.  Daily routine includes nap, dinner prep with harvest or dutiful restaurant takeout, and entertaining screen time. With students gone and populace on lockdown, the streets and freeway are quiet, the downtown empty.  The absences are filled with birdsong and screaming headlines, the most recent being that the national lockdown will continue at least until April 30.

The vocabulary word reminder:

• Social distance
• Self quarantine
• Isolation and self-isolation
• Lockdown
• Shelter at home

29 March [to Kathleen Balgley]

After the lockdown started I began a journal to record thoughts of what seemed like unusual urgency in the face of unprecedented transformations. But within a couple of days I lost motivation, thinking that even if some new insight emerged, who cares, since both audience and author are likely to be eradicated in the approaching tsunami. Better to just keep working in the garden, prepare good dinners and drink hard while watching movies.

That sentiment was captured in this quote by an Oxford Shakespeare scholar in today’s NY Times:

René Girard, the French critic, wrote in a famous essay that “the distinctiveness of the plague is that it ultimately destroys all forms of distinctiveness.” Mass burial pits for plague victims were one visible symbol of the way the disease erased social, gender and personal difference.

But then she goes on:

Elaborate plots, motives, interactions and obscurities focus our attention on human beings. No one in Shakespeare’s plays dies quickly and obscurely, thrown into a communal grave. Rather, last words are given full hearing, epitaphs are soberly delivered, bodies taken offstage respectfully.

Lots to learn from writers and artists these days after all.

Sunday March 22, 2020 10:08

Five days since the last entry. Not because there’s nothing worthwhile to record, but because it’s been busy enough at the normal rate to keep me away from dark thoughts and the need to write. But the sense of having purposeful activity to engage in is again being outweighed by confusion and fear.

At the farm this morning I discovered that the lock on Teresa’s shed had been broken and her power tools stolen. This complements the theft of Abimael’s generator and wrenches reported yesterday. An immediate sign of actual loss, as opposed to the theoretical horrors reported in the news, though one that could just as well have happened without coronavirus.

The positive developments there have kept me busy and high spirited for most of the week. With the suspension of all student activities at the farm and the reduction of staff, Tree, Shane and I have been able to work effectively to harvest 200 lbs. of produce on Tuesday and Thursday that was enthusiastically and photographically welcomed at the food bank, to map out a new plan for upcoming planting, and to get several rows of beans and peas into the still moist ground. The rain continues making up for the dry winter, but there’s not enough to prevent work in the well mulched and nontilled beds. Abimael has been out replanting starts after his early planting of bean seeds failed because of cold and wet, Corey’s cover crop suddenly came up in front, Katie is moving forward on planting her two acres. All of us agree that continuing to grow food is the most meaningful contribution we can make under the circumstances.

Jan and I have been shopping regularly for food and alcohol, the grocery stores apparently able to keep up all stock despite the runs on toilet paper. On Friday, projecting the need for more “home entertainment,” I finally moved on the resolve to replace our aging “new” tv and went first to Best Buy and then to Costco, bought a small cheap one, brought it home and tested it and found it wanting, returned it and bought a bigger and more advanced one that needed to be set up in the living room, spent many hours hassling with the instructions and software and finally got it working, so now we sit comfortably on the couch and use it like a monitor for the computer in front of the fireplace to enjoy a range of great content I hadnt before dreamed was available: 30 Rock, Suits, Miss Fisher for a start, and more flowing in all the time. A Thursday night phone call with Joe and Amy, lightened by booze and the first toke I’d had in months had us all laughing for close to an hour. Claire volunteered to take Sophie to the groomer, loaded with spare time now that she’s laid off and on unemployment insurance, while Lucas is out of school and assisted by Gregg in doing his online homework.

Reading the paper and listening to the news takes up quite a bit of time now, both because being “locked down” produces more leisure, but also because every hour brings refreshed reports of disaster regarding health, economic, and political threats that I still experience more as diversion than direct impact. SLO County is experiencing a rapid increase of reported cases and an absence of adequate medical supplies and facilities. The roads are close to empty. The neighborhood is quiet. But all real needs are still being met—including internet, more valuable than ever, electricity, water, garbage pickup, sewer.

That very affluence is becoming dreamlike. The waking reality of growing disaster gets closer.

Tuesday March 17, 2020 6:00 A.M.

What was unthinkable on Sunday, happens on Monday. The orders from the Governor, not contradicted by the President, being that “elderly” people should “shelter in place except to get food and medication, Jan and I—from now on “we”, decide to go to Trader Joe’s and possibly its low-class neighbor, Food for Less, when it opens at 8, rather than Costco, which we heard had long lines and empty shelves on Sunday. Its raining steadily. When we arrive, there are hand-lettered signs saying “Opening delayed until 9, and harried employees holding up hands while moving merchandise outside and others being let in.” Food for Less is open, Jan wipes the cart handle and inside there are piles of merchandise with new price mark-downs. We fill the cart with bargains for stuff on our list and find long lines at the cashier, but moving quickly. While Jan goes for extra strength Tylenol, the woman next to me says she really misses Jan as mayor. I say please don’t say that to her, she gets it whenever she shops and it causes pain each time. The clerk at the cash register is tired but friendly. They are working 12 and 14-hour shifts and getting overtime. Heading to the car with our stash, we see people with umbrellas standing in a line that reaches Starbucks waiting to get into Trader Joes. They aren’t six feet apart.

We unpack at home, storing surplus wine in the garage, taking three heavy bags of groceries up in the lift, constructed years ago to accommodate Jan’s knee surgery and allowing us to avoid stairs in anticipation of future accessibility problems. The news is a cascade of panic. Stock market “cratering” worse than last week, all schools closed, health authorities now predicting that US is two weeks behind Italy, where deaths are skyrocketing and health care system is overwhelmed. After a trip to feed chickens in the rain, leaving them inside the coop for the whole day and night, I return and contact Solarponics to see when the now installed Powerwall can be activated. End of the week or beginning of next. They are swamped. I’m eager to get it working after all this investment in backup for grid shutdown.

Jan calls to inquire about production schedule of the new mobile home we have ordered for Claire and Lucas with the one year stock market profits we cashed out back in December, when the virus was starting to work in Wuhan. He says they are still on schedule.

Claire calls Jan expressing concern for us and reporting that she has been laid off. The opening of the new restaurant in Paso, which she’s been frantically and ecstatically preparing for, is cancelled. She will apply for unemployment insurance. She and Lucas are now again staying at Gregg’s, combining care for their boys and coping. The 13th birthday celebration for him last Friday was a happy two hours among four adults inconceivable even six months ago, at least partially attributable to the crisis. They seem now to be bonding as a new family. It’s likely we wont be getting together in person for the foreseeable future.

As the trees in the yard leaf out and the hills turn green in the rain, I try to clean up back email and check the news continually. I confirm that Tree and Shane and I will work at the farm starting 10:00 this morning. We’d agreed that tending the garden still makes sense, though that too may change.

I sleep well afternoon and night, happy that the alarm clock interrupt dreams, that are now becoming easier to remember: all our chickens somehow tied up inside a basket and underwater, but probably ok, and being out in a hillside clearing surrounded by pristine redwood forest, as a surging sound gets louder, not feeling it but realizing its wind, looking up at the nearby slope and seeing a great red trunk emerge from the green mass and delighting in being able to watch it start falling and then waking up to the alarm.

In the dark bathtub, basking in the daily sensation of hot water easing the tension of muscles and joints, I’m overtaken with big picture imaginings. My anticipation of being grid independent when the Powerwall flips on is framed by the realization that if the grid really goes down, Diablo will blow up; my project of growing food at City Farm in case of shortages framed by the realization that it would feed only a couple of people and only while the pump was working; my desire to preserve a coherent archive of projects and pictures on a computer not dependent on the internet framed by the news yesterday that Microsoft will now require purchase of software subscription in order to provide future access to all previously saved Office Documents.

March 16, 2020 7:25 AM

The greatest instability in my 78 years—maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 or the Columbia strike of 1968 can compare—and it’s already become a routine. No mindblowing headlines this morning, no new directives for today—the schools all shut down, seniors supposed to stay indoors, stock market crashing again—Jan and I resolved to stay home without company, finding most stimulation in watching old TV shows.

I still go back and forth between fantasizing about how to pull the plug if I get really sick in compliance with my advance directive and thinking that the probability of being affected is less than dying of the seasonal flu.

Our next door fraternity boy neighbors, who are careful not to have parties at night and are friendly and courteous, threw what in SLO is a traditional “St. Fratty’s Day” 8:00 AM bash the Saturday morning before St. Patricks Day.  They had told us of the plan the day before and neither of us were concerned, since we had planned a Saturday morning rendezvous for 6:30.  Once the festivities started I went up the hill in back and looked over the fence and gave a thumbs up, which produced this response:

They urged me to join them, which I did, thinking I was being  discreet by elbow bumping instead of hand shaking.  Sky high on endorphins from the earlier activity, reinforced by avid attentions of the sorority girls, I did not resist many much closer contacts and couldnt help thinking if the end of the world was near, this was the way to go.

When I got back home Jan was not amused.  She’d been reading the morning’s news about the urgent necessity for “social distancing,” and told me immediately to take off all my clothes and put them in the washing machine and to shower thoroughly, soaping everywhere.  I did as she said, but still felt the glow of being a “celebrity””their word”among the neighbors, and so sent you the photos.  Fortunately I left it at that, though Jan put her picture from our yard up on Facebook.  But as the day went on and the news got steadily grimmer, she  got more and more pissed at me, and I felt stupider and guiltier, realizing that the party itself, and my succumbing to it was precisely what the Surgeon General and even the President now was cautioning against. We’ll only know in a couple of weeks whether that lapse will have led to serious   consequences.  But Jan did acknowledge this morning, that though she chose not to join me at the party, she didnt try to stop me going.

As of Friday all schools in the County are closed until April 15, and our burgeoning educational Farm programs are shut down.

An address to the White Heron Sangha, September 15, 2019

A variety of encounters with non-human animals over the past year have opened new areas of experience for me and left me mulling some troubling questions. They’ve led to conversations with family members, friends and co-workers, to reflections on past experiences, to scientific research and to guidance from Buddhist authorities.

One area of experience is my relationship with our two year old family dog, Sophie. Another is a series of cardiovascular incidents which have motivated  me to refrain from eating animals for medical reasons. And another is my work at City Farm SLO, where the production of organic vegetables by small farmers and students is subject to the ravages of gophers and ground squirrels.

Sophie came into my life a year after the traumatic death of our previous family dog, a Yorkshire Terrier who had bonded closely with my wife Jan and our two live-in grandchildren but with whom my relationship was distant.  By the time that Jan acquired Sophie, we were empty nesters, and I was a goner.

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