Living in So Cal, I’ve been convinced to let my lawn (all 5 x 20 square feet of it) go brown for the water crisis. Which is not noble on my part. My patch of lawn was barely a lawn as much as it was an attempt at grass that just didn’t grow there. Now I’ve got an excuse to not give a crap and the HOA can’t be all underwear bunched about it.

But, I’ve realized that ceasing to water it has, anecdotally, given me the benefit of not fighting a swarm of ants this summer. As had been the custom for 10 years now.

I’m worried though. Not that water conservation is a bad idea in any way. But rather, that drought friendly landscapes and astro turfed surfaces are going to cause rainfall waters to speed over our previously porous surfaces and just overwhelm the infrastructure.

And that not being completely at my wits end over fighting ant invasions is going to cost me in other ways that nobody ever saw coming.

I’m a delight, no? It’s hard being my thoughts.

I want nothing more than to make deviled eggs and apply them to this vase.

As someone who could never understand hate, racism, unimaginable cruelty, and everything else we humans seem to do to each other with flawed logic as the armor - I’ve always wondered ‘how did we get here and how is it possible these things happen?’ Now I know. I’m 59 pages into this book and I finally understand how this happens. Everything written on the blurb page of this book is true. IT SHOULD be required reading for everyone. IT YANKS YOU OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE and places you in the figurative shoes of someone who knows first hand why these things happen.

Making someone (especially a young someone) feel safe, understood, and like they matter after they have been tossed aside by those who should have done that job is an open vault within which to deposit beliefs and give them viral life. And more often than not, those with dangerous and hateful beliefs are the ones smart enough to recognize this and act on it.

On the surface, it is pathetically simple and preventable. But underneath it is highly complex. It feels too much like not minding your own business and indoctrination - the kind that is undesirable and dangerous regardless of the message delivered. And nobody has the kind of time to invest in someone that those with the scary logic and beliefs have. We just hope that along the way, our schools and society in general will straighten someone out to swim in the right side of the belief ocean.

I don’t want to believe we just have to endure the few who act on this and hope it never becomes a majority view. Ever Again. Or that any one group or person should tell anyone what to believe, ever.

And so here I sit. Understanding that much better how it happens, but all the more disheartened as to how it can possibly be prevented. Wedged even further into my couch cushion. I dislike this feeling.

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead: The Frank Meeink Story, as told to Jody M. Roy, Ph.D.

You don’t realize how much music sank into a malleable, pre-internet, pre-teen late 70s, early 80s brain until as an adult you see hopscotch and start yelling HIP, HOP A HIBBIE TO THE HIBBIE, WAIT, WHAT ARE THE WORDS I KNOW THIS ONE … all Manchrian Candidate like.

Where am I going to find a stamp AND a penny?