This is our final week in Oakland. We are moving to the Washington D.C. area in an effort to be closer to things like humidity and hurricanes.*

Life is basically something involving a lot of cardboard boxes at this point — and the various efforts at coordinating their transport. The work is going well; we are 4 days away from the morning we head East, and we probably have > 60% of our ‘stuff’ stacked in boxes, ready for the Moving Truck. On Saturday afternoon (right as all the Auto shops in the Bay Area were closing and not re-opening until Monday) our catalytic converter was stolen (again). That was a particularly stressful episode as it has taken up to three weeks to have that repaired before, and our apartment lease ends this Saturday. C&G Auto Body up in Berkeley pulled off a same-day repair though, on Monday, and we are back in business today, running here and there.

Today is also my second day without a job in a fairly long time (my resignation was effective last Friday). I feel like I have had almost an impermeable level of job security for the last several years, and perhaps walking away from that is just something that will take a minute to get used to. It could just be the radical departure from the routine as well. Maybe some of both. It does feel odd.

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ADULTS MAKING DECISIONS (Season One, episode one):

Last week there was an Adult who made decisions to attack the regional FBI Office in Cincinnati. With an AR-style weapon and a nail gun. My first thoughts were that it must take a hell of a lot of talk-radio and online outrage harvesting to convince someone to be a Yahoo-with-a-gun attacking a building filled with Quantico graduates(?!) who excel at dealing with Yahoos with guns. But that’s not really what I’m following.

The ongoing radicalization of a small contingent of partisans is of particular concern to me; this fellow won’t be the last person to attack U.S. institutions in response to {all} the various matters of {ongoing?} criminality surrounding the former President. I also doubt all attacks from these discontents will be at such a small scale.

Further, the extent to which so many GOP candidates, elected officials and affiliated commentators continue efforts to capitalize on the anti-institutional sentiment, promoting and providing the incindiary rhetoric that drives these attacks is also worth a thought. Come November, will a Republican Legislator who simply speaks basic, easily verifiable truth–things like, “well, there is a process to obtaining warrants and this process appears to have been conducted in good legal order” be considered a RINO by the 56% of Republicans who want Trump to be nominated in 2024? How many Death Threats would a statement like that produce? Can they weather that, personally or politically? If not, who replaces them and what does that look like? It’s concerning.

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In lighter topics, I listened to the Wu-Tang Clan for the first time this weekend. There are so many bands and films and authors that I simply haven’t made time for despite their cultural cachet constantly reminding me that I should, but I had some time to just sit with Iron Flag from 2001 over the weekend. I honestly expected it to be over-rated (because 10 million Rush fans *can* be wrong) but no, I liked it very much. Production has obviously progressed in the two decades since this came out, but the album holds its own 21 years later. Top notch stuff.

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Also, I picked up a dog in the time between the last post and this one. My wife and I adopted Jack (formerly “Hummus”?) from Oakland Animal Services on April 14th. I was looking for a dog that would be great in the woods, primarily for fishing and backpacking and also 100% reliable in dog parks with zero dog aggression. He came to us almost completely shut down, an incredibly fearful 12 month old puppy that would ‘pancake’ or ‘turn to butter’ anytime people approached. We spent many hours at Lake Merritt and walking here in downtown Oakland getting him socialized to understand the world isn’t quite as dangerous for him as perhaps it used to be.

Within a weekend, I’d established that he had become reliably velcroed to me, so he and I went backpacking/fly fishing in the Trinity Alps Wilderness for 10 days in late April and (coached by Zoe?) and he learned those ropes — and how to approach incredibly high stream crossings (spring runoff was fairly intense!!!). His evolution in the woods was honestly unbelievable and too much to try to explain in full — I’d just say he simply came out of his shell and showed me who he was and there was a lot of talent I’d not guessed was there. He ended up displaying some incredible traits — like following me up the banks as I would wade upstream in depths and current too strong for a dog. This is more complicated than it sounds, as the mountains often create a maze of tributary ditches feeding the main creeks and all the banks are usually flush with dense willow thickets that confuse and complicate any idea of straight lines and direct access. Regardless, if I dropped into a creek at a small clearing, and started working the river too far upstream, around a bend or out of sight, Jack would turn around, run off, and then be sitting on the bank, waiting for me, 50 yards upstream at the next clearing that approached the water when I got there. Zoe, old hand that she is, would often just go back to the tent and nap in the sun.

We spent a few days on the back end of that trip at a cabin on the Trinity River, closer to Humboldt County, and worked the Trinity River (proper) for Steelhead. Jack would bark at others he encountered though, so we worked on eliminating that behavior, almost as much as we fished, during the next few outings. By June, he got it and rarely made a sound on the banks of the Stanislaus apart from the intense splash when he’d find a deep enough pool and a big rock to leap from.

He’s a good dog. And I can trust him not to get in trouble.