I know why Trump hates California

Flags on Route 32 have stories to tell

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I lived in California’s Bay Area for five years in the early 1980s. My last couple of years there, I lucked into renting a garage apartment from a couple of retirees, and I’d wake up every morning and wander out into the sun in my shorts and stretch and say to myself, “Another beautiful day.”

Other states have more of one thing or another than California, but no state has so much of so many different wonders — dramatic coastline and redwood rainforests, soaring mountain ranges and scorching deserts, urban and suburban and rural communities, farms and orchards.

California is abundant.

California has more people than any other state, and out of 39.4 million or so residents, a bit over half were born in the state. Millions moved in from other states, and about 10 million are foreign-born. A couple of hundred languages are spoken in California.

California is a creative dynamo, with a GDP that tops $4 trillion, more than a trillion dollars larger than Texas’s and New York’s. Compare California with all the countries of the world, and its economy is the fifth largest, after the U.S., China, Germany and India.

In 1983 and ’84, I worked in a Palo Alto restaurant that billed itself as a Mediterranean cafe. A couple of brothers from Morocco ran the kitchen, a smattering of young locals and college kids were employed as servers and everyone else in the kitchen and on the floor were Mexican men.

I don’t know what the visa status was of the Moroccans or Mexicans, but the Mexicans were sending money back home, and a couple of them told me their dream was to save enough to buy their own farm in Mexico.

They weren’t taking jobs from Americans, because you could walk into any of a dozen restaurants in Palo Alto, say you were willing to bus tables or wash dishes and get thrown an apron on the spot.

Whether they had entered the United States with the proper paperwork or had snuck in, they were contributing to our country. As with the vast majority of immigrants, whatever their paperwork status, we were lucky to have them.

California is waiting on billions of dollars in promised federal relief for the destruction in January of huge sections of Los Angeles by wildfires. Meanwhile, the federal government is already pouring money into Texas because of the terrible flash flooding in Kerr County last weekend.

It isn’t surprising to see the Trump regime treat California with disdain, because its decisions are based not on what is best for the country but on who kowtows to Trump most unctuously.

California is our most advanced technology hub, our most productive agricultural state, our strongest economic engine.

California is the best proof that immigration is good for the country, refuting the central argument of Trump’s presidency.

Just as California has the largest immigrant population and the largest economy of U.S. states, New York City has the largest immigrant population and the largest economy of U.S. cities and the United States has the largest immigrant population and the biggest, most dynamic economy of all the countries of the world.

Immigrants = prosperity.

It takes resilience and resourcefulness, courage and creativity to start over in a strange land, and those qualities have defined our national character. Now our own government is attacking that legacy and endangering our future.

California, where Trump is sending in ICE brigades to do their worst, is ground zero of his campaign. He hates California because California loves immigrants. Why he hates immigrants I don’t know. But he is hurting our country.

Flag displays

Early last week, Bella, Ringo and I took a drive south on Route 32. It was a few days after the Fourth of July, and a lot of people had flags out. I took photos of a few.

This flag, caught by the sun as it waved from a porch shaded by two big trees, was the brightest one we saw.

This flag, hanging next to this red one, was the most forlorn one we saw. It looks ashamed.

This flag in front of Clear Echo Farm was the biggest one.

This flag, which appears to have weathered a few Independence Days, was the most tattered.

Poem

Here is a poem by Hudson Falls poet Richard Carella:

In Hurricane Season

Death is the one storm                                                                                                     forecasts don’t mention,

and, yet, which we                                                                                                                   know is approaching–

and that was foreseen by                                                                                                            us when we were young;

and death is the reason                                                                                                          we’re encamped in these

shelters, and don’t venture                                                                                                  outside of them...

(if there is an outside of them)                                                                                               ...and though we know that,

when death comes,                                                                                                                  they will fall: one by one.

New LARAC gallery show

Now on exhibit in the Lapham Gallery in City Park is a show of ceramic work and watercolor paintings by Betsy Brandt and oil and acrylic paintings by Laura Von Rosk. It’s colorful, organic, fun and a bit mysterious.

The gallery is alive with organic forms in this show.

Ringo probably enjoyed the gallery’s air conditioning most of all on Saturday when we stopped in.