On the fringe of Apocalypse

A panoramic iPhone photo of the devastation on Hemlock Street in the Coffey Park area of Santa Rosa on Tuesday, October 10, 2017 

In the wake of the cataclysmic inferno that ravaged the region throughout the second week of October, 2017, those who were wiped out face the monumental task of rebuilding their lives as those who survived materially unscathed seek to make sense of the chaos and wonder at the randomness of the universe that spared them total ruin while destroying friends, family and neighbors.

Countless friends and acquaintances were taken out as the aftermath rippled out into the community. Everyone knows someone who was burned out of their homes or businesses in this wide-ranging disaster that continued for more than a week as firefighters from all over and the National Guard worked to put out fires and keep some kind of order.

When the fires started Sunday night (Oct. 8), I was driving back from northern Oregon after a brief visit with family. I stopped for fuel in Cloverdale and arrived home around 9:30. My wife Colleen and I could smell smoke and went to bed wondering if there was a house on fire in the neighborhood.

At around 1:45 a.m. Monday, I awoke to my computer rebooting, which it did twice more before I finally shut it off. I drifted back into an uneasy sleep, subconsciously hearing the winds battering the house, thinking it was Google installing upgrades I didn't know I needed. But it turned the electricity was blinking on and off as the fire consumed transformers and wiped out a big chunk of the system in northwestern Santa Rosa.

The carport from a neighboring mobile home at Rancho San Miguel Mobile Home Park blew off in the winds that drove the firestorm in Sonoma County on Sunday, October 9, 2017

At about 4 a.m., a neighbor came and pounded on our door, ringing the doorbell and calling for us to get out. I opened the door and the howling wind was swirling through the trailer park, blowing debris and adding to the soundtrack of the dramatic moment. The horizon behind our neighbor—who looked like an apparition from Hell due to the light cast by the fires—was glowing bright red and there was a thick pillar of black smoke billowing up above. We could hear explosions and helicopters and tried to comprehend as he told us “the fire had reached Kohl’s,” about a mile north of us.

We had no idea what fire he was talking about, but the smoke and explosions convinced us to gather a few possessions and get out.

Refugees

We packed up our cats and a couple of the strays that live in the neighborhood and left the house with no idea where to go. My first instinct was to head for the Veteran’s Hall and Fairgrounds that were already being used to house evacuees/refugees.

Since we had the cats and the hall was filling up so fast, we decided to get a motel room somewhere out of harm's way. We lucked out and found one in Petaluma. The freeway was already a parking lot, so we took Petaluma Hill Road instead. It was relatively clear, so we were able to easily get out of town. When we hit the stretch south of Santa Rosa near Sonoma State University, we saw a line of fires along the ridges to the east and fire departments staging in the predawn hours.

Our old neighborhood on Tuesday, October 10, 2017

We were told it would be 2:30 p.m. before we could have access to our room, so around 7 a.m., we joined several other refugees in the parking lot near Starbucks on McDowell Avenue and tried to use their internet connection to no avail.

I went into Orchard Supply Hardware to see if they had pet supplies we needed. Their pet section was woefully inadequate for our needs, but there was a very somber and sympathetic man at the door handing out bottles of water to anyone who entered the building. Apparently, refugees had been pouring into Petaluma since 4 a.m.

We found the PetSmart and were fortunate to get in right before a rush of people started clearing the shelves of necessities for pets that were part of the flight. We then proceeded to the Motel 6 to wait for our room in the parking lot. After three hours waiting with other people wearing whatever clothes they ran out of the house wearing, we squeezed into the room and waited. As we unloaded our car, one of the strays we wanted to save managed to get away. We were never able to find her.

Waiting out the storm

We lasted the night in Petaluma and then decided to head home early Tuesday morning to wait it out or prepare to flee for an extended period of time.

The remains of our old house at 3670 Hemlock Street

Our mobile home park, one of a triumvirate of retirement parks in the immediate area, was in an evacuation zone, but it was as safe as anywhere else in town at that point. The park across the freeway, Journey’s End Mobile Home Park, was almost completely leveled by the firestorm, as was the Coddingtown Mobile Estates. I received texts from friends and family members expressing shock and sympathy about our loss, but was able to tell them that it was not our park that was destroyed.

We settled in expecting to have to live days or possibly weeks without electricity, gas or internet and with bad cell service.

Sifting through the wreckage

That Tuesday, a friend who was not evacuated came by and we rode our bikes around our old Coffey Park neighborhood, which no longer exists. Literally. It is a burned out husk that looks like it was razed by repeated bombings. It was a melancholy ride as we rode through the toxic air and heard stories from friends and acquaintances wandering dazed among the ruins.

We went home to hunker down in the dark, but somehow the electricity came back on Tuesday night.

Inside Journey's End Mobile Home Park on Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Wednesday morning, after the sheriff's press conference, I headed out to survey the damage within a mile of my house. The air was heavy with the smell of burned plastic and likely toxic building material, the destruction unbelievable: Round Barn; Equus; the Hilton; K-Mart; Arby’s; Puerto Vallarta Mexican restaurant, and Mountain Mike’s Pizza were just a few of the landmarks in the neighborhood that vanished in a puff of smoke and a pile of rubble.

Journey's End

I walked around for a couple of hours and all of a sudden there were helicopters overhead and a big cloud of smoke rolled in, turning the late morning into twilight. I practically ran the mile home and told my wife we had pack and prepare to evacuate at any moment. If we had not had electricity by then, we would likely have headed to LA to wait out the fires and we considered the possibility of Sacramento. Apparently though, the smoke was from a backfire lit to create a fire break for the battle going on in the Larkfield/Wikiup area that was also decimated in those few hours on Monday.

Fortunately, we didn't have to leave that day and on Friday they lifted the evacuation order for our area.

Aftermath

Now, much of what we know as Santa Rosa simply no longer exists. The places we run and hike on a regular basis are nothing but charred remnants. Historical buildings gone. Poof: Just like that.

For me, Colleen and our cats, the extent of our disaster was a night as evacuees who survived with nothing more than a few hours of inconvenience, without gas for our water heater or internet to keep us informed or amused.

The view of the remains of the Hilton Santa Rosa from 

Journey's End MHP on Wednesday, October 11, 2017

But there was a deeper sense of loss for us, as the house where we lived around the corner from Coffey Park for 15 years—owned by friends who became more like family—went up in a ball of flames along with the rest of the neighborhood we called home and grew to love.

My morning walks, designed to get the best view of the Fountaingrove hills, are now forever changed. The solid outline silhouetted by the morning sun is now the jagged, evil grin of a Jack-o’-lantern. The streetlights and various light twinkling from the houses on the hill that I always associated with the comfort of civilization are simply gone. In their place is a line of burned out trees and the ruins of multi-million dollar homes that don’t look quite right and take a moment to process.

At this point in time—a week from the start of the fire—it is not advisable to walk out the door without a mask because the air is toxic from smoke and when the wind dies or changes direction, we get more ash raining down on us covering the cars and house with a chalky patina of filth.

We're okay physically, but there is a pall and malaise overhanging everything, but alongside that is a sense of community and camaraderie that we're going to have to hang onto in order to rebuild and recover from this.

Northwest Santa Rosa in the wake of the fires

You're hired. Here, take this mop and go clean up that mess

Surveying the damage from the Hilton wreckage

Fire extinguishers outside of Journey's end MHP 

Remains inside of K Mart on Friday, October 20, 2017

SPC Masaru Kikuta (left) and PV2 Mikah Leyvas from the San Diego National Guard

Remains of the gun shop on Piner Road and Range Avenue on Friday, October 20, 2017. We could hear explosions from the shop burning down on Monday morning when the fires ravaged northwest Santa Rosa

Checkpoint to get into the Coffey Park neighborhood on Friday, October 20, 2017

The view from Hopper Avenue looking northeast
on Friday, October 20, 2017

Neighbors helping neighbors on Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The more things change (Wherefore art thou Great Society?)

Occupy Santa Rosa

Occupy Santa Rosa was a great success. People are still out on the site of Santa Rosa City Hall three days later. Stop by, see what they need and offer support.
Hopefully, this is the start of something bigger than all of us individually.

The Great Handcar Regatta

Steampunk'd: The return of the Great Handcar Regatta

California Governor’s campaign heats up as Darling set to enter race

by David Abbott
Sonoma West Editor


Lowell Darling in Occidental
Lowell Darling recently kicked off his campaign for governor by borrowing his ex-wife’s truck and hauling all of his possessions from Southpoint Self Storage in Sebastopol to Gallery 16 in San Francisco.

‘I took everything and set it in the middle of the gallery,’ Darling said. ‘Forty boxes containing the history of how I became an artist.’

The exhibit is entitled ‘Full Disclosure,’ and the Camp Meeker resident is inviting potential voters to dig through the detritus of his life in order to show he has nothing to hide.

All of Darling’s personal possessions in the U.S. will be on display until March 31, including his first drawing as a child, documents from his 1978 run for governor, and IRS documents proving he is not an artist.

The IRS documents go back to his fight over an $850 deduction the IRS disallowed in the early 1970s because he wasn’t making enough money to be considered an artist. That battle went on for several years as the IRS followed Darling from place to place — he collected a stack of documents several inches high — and was finally resolved when the National Endowment for the Arts gave Darling a $3,000 grant.

‘The IRS was my biggest influence,’ Darling said. ‘I was a conventional artist up to that point, and then I became a conceptual artist.’

His career as a conceptual artist included his ill-fated run against Jerry Brown — who is expected to run again this year, although he has yet to enter the race — performances of ‘urban acupuncture’ to relieve problems in American cities, and stitching together the San Andreas fault to contain earthquakes.

In the ensuing 32 years, Darling has been married four times, fathered two daughters, and spent several years in Europe. His political experience includes a stint on the Salmon Creek school board in the 1990s in Occidental.

Darling believes that running the state isn’t nearly as tough as running a school board.

‘Until you’ve been on a school board, you don’t know politics,’ he said. ‘Lobbyists show up on the playground with their special interests in tow.’

Darling has until March 11 to raise about $3,600 — 2 percent of the governor’s salary — and gather 60 signatures, which worries him more than raising the money due to the scrutiny the signatures receive.

He’ll be his own treasurer and campaign manager, which will help him contain costs, and his campaign will focus on reducing the two-thirds majority rule on state budget issues to a more simple — and in his mind, a more democratic — simple majority.

Until the two-thirds rule is done away with, Darling believes it makes no difference who is governor of the state anyway. Keeping his campaign simple has other advantages for the 67-year-old artist-cum-politician.

‘I decided that whittling it down to one thing would make it easier for me to remember my campaign promises,’ he said. ‘Although I love to make promises. I don’t know how many wings of the governor’s mansion I’ve promised.’

He’s been back from Germany for about a year, and says he’s legally and officially homeless, although he likes not having a base to maintain.

The only reason he has health insurance is because of a stint in the Coast Guard, but he doesn’t see his financial situation as an impediment.

‘It’s just disgusting that government has turned into a business,’ Darling said. ‘The corporations and the government play off of each other. Politicians should be forced to wear logos’ ala NASCAR.

Republican candidate Meg Whitman spent $30 million of her own money on her campaign, according to Lowell, and he figures that if he spends $30, it will have about the same proportional impact on his finances. Therefore, his campaign will be very minimalist. He’ll drive everywhere, won’t go over 40 MPH and will avoid freeways.

‘I like the idea of being the antithesis,’ Darling said. ‘I hate the cost of campaigning.’

Darling admits that his campaign may be absurd, but he thinks that might be the role he’ll play in the election.

‘When I sound no more absurd than them, what does that say?’ he said.

Absurdity aside, Darling did do his stint on a school board, which in his mind makes him infinitely qualified.

Occidental resident Mary Szecsey was on the Salmon Creek school board after Darling but remembers his time there.

She agrees that school boards are very complex and finds the parallels to running the state to be interesting, although she said that school boards are ‘more personal.’

‘Lowell was a great board member and represented the interests of the parents,’ Szecsey said. ‘He’s an interesting guy.’

Full Disclosure will be on display at Gallery 16, 501 Third St., San Francisco, and Darling will be on hand to discuss his work, his campaign, and anything else anyone wants to talk about.

For information, call the gallery at 415-626-7495 or go to the Web site at www.gallery16.com. Darling can be reached at lowell5@sonic.net. For more information, go to lowelldarling.com.

Published in Sonoma West Times & News Wednesday, February 10, 2010 6:39 PM PST

The REAL King

Martin Luther King, Jr. outside Santa Rita prison in California, on January 14, 1968, where he had visited Joan Baez and other jailed anti-war activists and draft resisters:

"They have supported us in a very real way in our struggle for civil rights ... I see these two struggles as one struggle. There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice. People ask me from time to time, 'Aren't you getting out of your field? Aren't you supposed to be working in civil rights?' They go on to say the two issues are not to be mixed. And my only answer is that I have been working too long and too hard now against segregated public accommodations to end up at this stage of my life segregating my moral concerns. For I believe absolutely that justice is indivisible and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And I want to make it clear that I am going to continue with all of my might and all of my energy and with all of my action to oppose that abominable, evil, unjust war in Vietnam.

"Now let me say this: I see some very dangerous trends developing in our country, trends of oppression and repression and suppression, and I see a definite move on the part of the government to go out now and silence dissenters and to crush the draft resistance movement. Now we cannot allow this to happen ... And let us continue to work passionately and unrelentingly to end this cruel and senseless war in Vietnam. I don't have to go through all of the things that this war is doing to corrode the values of our nation.

"Suffice it to say that the war in Vietnam has all but torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military industrial complex of our nation. It has exacerbated the tensions between continents and races. The war in Vietnam has ... played havoc with our domestic destinies. And I can never forget the fact that we spend about $500,000 to kill every enemy soldier in Vietnam and we spend only about $53 a year for every individual who is categorized as poverty-stricken in our so-called 'war against poverty,' which isn't even a skirmish against poverty. And I say that there is a great need for a revolution of values.

"And I say to you in conclusion that we must continue to stand up and we must continue to follow the dictates of our conscience, even if that means breaking unjust laws. Henry David Thoreau said in his essay on civil disobedience that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And I do not plan to cooperate with evil at any point.

"Somebody said to me not too long ago, 'Dr. King, don't you think you're hurting your leadership by taking a stand against the war in Vietnam? Aren't people who once respected you gonna lose respect for you? And aren't you hurting the budget of your organization?'

"And I had to look at that person and say, 'I'm sorry, sir, but you don't know me. I am not a consensus leader. And I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Leadership Conference or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion.'

"Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but he's a molder of consensus. And on some positions, cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expedience asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'

"But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. And that is where I stand today and that is where I hope you will continue to stand so that we can speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters all over the world and righteousness like a mighty stream. And we will speed up the day when men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations will not rise up against nations neither they will not start a war anymore and I close by saying as we sing in the old Negro spiritual, 'I Ain't Gonna Study War No More.'"

The Winter of Our Discontent

In the wake of Obama's announcement of the escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and the subsequent hulabaloo over his Nobel Peace Prize, I'm reposting a piece that I wrote shortly before Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the U.S. My question now is, "is this the 'hope' part or the 'change' we voted for last year"?

For another great King speech, go here.

I read somewhere a few years ago that Martin Luther King Junior’s legacy had been homogenized in the name of political expediency. The nadir of that process came about in 2001 when Alcatel used images from King’s 1963 “I have a Dream” speech to peddle communication systems.

But the piece to which I refer pointed to a speech Dr. King gave in front of a gathering of labor leaders in 1967. I revisited that speech when I heard that Pastor Rick Warren was ordained to speak at Barack Obama’s inauguration and it struck me that one of the most important voices of the civil rights movement may not have been chosen to speak at the inauguration of the first black president in our nation’s history.

I also found that King’s rhetoric was much closer to that of Reverend Jeremiah Wright than to the plump, somewhat moderate white Pastor from Saddleback Church. I will refrain from pointing out the similarities of that church’s name to a popular film about gay cowboy love.

Reading the text of King’s speech, it amazes me to see the similarities of the Vietnam era to our current Iraq era. King decried a Vietnam War that he believed “produced a shameful order of priorities in which the decay, squalor and pollution of the cities are neglected.

“It has made the Great Society a myth and replaced it with a troubled and confused society. The war has strengthened domestic reaction. It has given the extreme right, the anti-labor, anti-Negro, and anti-humanistic forces a weapon of spurious patriotism to galvanize its supporters into reaching for power, right up to the White House. It hopes to use national frustration to take control and restore the America of social insecurity and power for the privileged,” he said.

In that speech, King criticized politicians who condemned the violent turmoil enveloping urban black populations, saying that, “the users of naval guns, millions of tons of bombs, and revolting napalm cannot speak to Negroes about violence. Only those who are fighting for peace have the moral authority to lecture on non-violence.”

He said that urban blacks “are infinitely less dangerous and immoral than the deliberate acts of escalation of the war in Vietnam,” and that “even in the grip of rage the vast majority have vented their anger on inanimate things, not people. If destruction of property is deplorable, what is the word for the use of napalm on people? What would happen to Negroes if they not only set fires but killed people in the vicinity and explained blandly that some known combatants had to die as a matter of course? Negroes would be called savages if we were so callous. But for generals it is military tactics.”

When King made his speech in November 1967, unemployment had increased by approximately 15 percent in the previous few months, and tens of thousands of people were abruptly thrown out of jobs and training programs in a lousy job market. The corollaries to the first decade of the 21st century are chilling, particularly when King calls national political leaders to task for their warped spending priorities.

“It is disgraceful that a Congress that can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam cannot vote a weak $2 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wound of our nations 35 million poor,” he said. “This is nothing short of a Congress engaging in political guerilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation.”

King was accusing the government of terrorist acts against its own people in much the same way that Wright criticized the government in his now-famous sermons.

During his final days, King took a lot of heat for his criticism of war in Vietnam. He was subjected to “the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders,” and told to stay in his place.

“I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns,” he said.

He was assassinated five months after he made that speech.

I find it ironic that on the day after MLK day, when the first-ever black president of the United States of America is set to take the oath of office, the convocation will be given by a man who supports a fiscally and morally debilitating series of wars and “separate but equal” status for a group of Americans.

It’s kinda funny in a sadly disturbing way. Obama keeps reaching out to the right political wing, but people on the left — the dreaded Lib’ruls — seem to continue to wait for representation in this budding administration.

I should probably wait until he gets into office to be thoroughly disappointed.

Published in Sonoma West Times & News, January 14, 2009