What a week this has been. There’s so much craziness going on in the world that I’m happy to have a garden to escape to, even if the drought has killed so many of my plants. Luckily, Penito and child seem to thrive in this climate.

Granted, this odd plant is not the ideal subject for a close up but boy, is it growing fast.

It seems unlikely, but I’m hoping for a glimpse of sanity next week. Just a glimmer, a speck, something.

Almost two years ago, this strange plant arose in the garden. We’d just had freakish lightning storms in the Bay Area which produced little rain but caused hundreds of wildfires. And, I just gotten word that my mother was dying.

At first I couldn’t imagine where it came from. Outer space? Then I remembered that years earlier, when Mother lived with us, my husband came home from the hardware store with a bulb that he’d proudly paid fifteen dollars for. He didn’t know what it was or how to grow it, of course, but had been intrigued by the size. Mother turned to me and said: ” Well, they saw him coming.” He planted it in the backyard and forgot about it. But Mother didn’t. It went on her list of reasons why he should never shop alone.

The stalk grew and grew until it blossomed magnificently and I had to quit calling it the “Penis Plant.”

Last year the foliage emerged but no blossoms.

The foliage stayed green for a couple of months and then died just before Christmas.

I didn’t know what to expect this year but, sure enough, after an unusual lightning storm hit this area, look who showed up again.

It was wonderful to wake up to the sound of rain. Wonderful to go into the backyard to see this unusual plant arise again. Now I just have to resist the urge to read the news.

Every Sunday I start the day by reading the obits of notable people who have passed. I started this peculiar habit one Sunday morning after I spotted the obit of a lovely man who was the partner of someone I once worked with. I’d heard through the grapevine he had AIDS but the last time I’d seen him, he seemed in such a jolly mood that I allowed myself to believe the disease wouldn’t take him. The obit, lovingly written his partner, actually made me smile. The best obits will make you smile or at least, make you wonder how such a splendid person could have existed in this dysfunctional world.

It’s always sad to read the obit of someone I knew decades ago and lost touch with. But, at the same time, it allows me to remember them fondly.

Here are examples from obits in today’s paper that are meant to make you smile. Two were written by professionals. See if you can match the sentence to the men being honored (below):

1. As people walked by, he would greet each one in his high pitched voice with “Hey, mama!’ Or “Hey, young man!”
2. From his Ted speech: “It isn’t the value or the size of a gift that truly matters. It’s how you hold it in your heart.”
3. [He] loved cracking jokes and carried around a card in his pocket with the word “JOKE” written on it to emphasize to friends he was just having a fun time.

And the men honored were:

A. Dr. D. Henry Cheu, a surgeon and member of the El Capitan Eating Club whose father was the first person of Chinese descent to graduate from Stanford University. Eating Clubs accepted students who were ineligible for membership in college fraternities for racial or religious reasons, e.g. Asians, Mexicans and Jews.

B. Willie Ellis, a homeless peddler described as “the Beloved Mayor of Lake Merritt.”

C. Werner Reich, a holocaust survivor who learned the power of magic in Auschwitz. “Having a deck of cards in Auschwitz was like finding a gorilla in your bathroom.”

The answers are!

1. Willie Ellis, the Mayor
2. Dr. Cheu, the Jokester
3. Werner Reich, the Magician

Okay, I’m just gonna say it. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, you might want to avoid Netflix’s new adaptation. Whoever wrote it decided to have the main character (played by Dakota Johnson) speak directly into the camera. Even with an English accent, she just doesn’t capture the tortured inner life of Anne Elliot. She’s entirely too upbeat and bubbly.

For those of you who don’t know the story, here’s a brief synopsis:

• Boy and girl meet and fall in love
• Girl is “persuaded” not to accept boy’s proposal (usual reasons: lack of money, social status)
• Boy goes to sea, makes a fortune and returns

Girl, meanwhile, has been treated as person of little consequence by her vain and silly relatives and, at age twenty-seven, is considered a spinster with few prospects.

In her earlier novels, Austen’s protagonists snidely mocked the societal norms that forced women to marry or live a life dependent on the kindness of relatives. But the mocking was never in anger; just frustration. In Persuasion, Austen took the gloves off. Vain and silly characters are no longer also lovable. They’re just vain and silly people who cause pain to others.

In the book, when Anne Elliot feels sorry for herself, she takes a long walk. In the movie, she drinks. I’ll have to reread the books because I can’t remember an Austen heroine ever dragging a bottle upstairs to bed and getting snookered. But it has been a while. Do y’all recall any drunken Austen heroines?

And let’s discuss Captain Wentworth, the jilted lover, the man deemed not worthy to marry into the Elliot family. Having returned a wealthy sea captain, why would he ever settle for the aging spinster who’d already rejected him? In the book, he shows little sign of his true feelings. He’s a proper English gentleman. So we agonize with poor Anne. Will he forgive her and see that she is the only woman for him?

In the Netflix adaptation. Sigh. Have you seen Dakota Johnson, friends? Poor Captain Wentworth can’t help drooling all over himself every time he sees her. Stiff upper lip, hurt pride be damned. It’s only a matter of time, misunderstandings, and miscommunications until he finally admits, his goose is cooked.

Supposedly there are fifteen animals hidden in this picture.

But if you’re looking for a lighthearted though predictable romance, set in the beautiful countryside of Southern England, ignore me and enjoy the show!

On my walk over to the library, under murky skies, I noticed that all signs of the July Fourth celebrations are gone. Poof, like they never even happened. Many people were at the community center dropping off their kids for one of the various summer programs. I could see the stress on their faces. Will they be happy? Will they be well cared for? I can remember long summers when I had no choice but to put my children into those programs. Whether they wanted to go or not. And that was before all the school shootings.

The mural on the library and the whimsical utility boxes are only the first steps in an effort to “artify” the town. I can’t wait to see what they do to the service station! Dinosaurs, perhaps?

Here in my small town we celebrate the Fourth much the same as other small towns. People of all ages either watch from the sidewalks or march in groups down the middle of the street. Above is the local high school Latin club being watched from the sidelines by two unimpressed young girls. Latin? What’s that?

I heard about the shooting in Highland Park moments before we walked down to see the parade. I’ve been to that town and it’s much the same as mine. Tree-lined, lights out by ten. Too far from the big city to worry about crime. But it seems no place is safe.

Unlike other years, the parade lasted barely an hour and the mood was definitely not as festive. We didn’t walk over to the park and listen to the bands. We didn’t buy a beer from our sister city’s brewery. We came home where my husband watched Wimbledon and grumbled about the brutality of the games.

I watched a sad movie I’d seen before and cried.

Recently I watched Martha Raddatz interview the governor of South Dakota, a state which has now effectively banned abortion. The governor claimed that her state planned to ramp up services for women with unwanted pregnancies (presumably so that they will all want to have and care for their children and all will be wonderful in the great state of South Dakota). When Raddatz pointed out that South Dakota ranks among the least supportive states when it comes to financing family services, the governor said they are calling on non profits and churches to pick up the slack.

Just what a woman with an unwanted pregnancy needs: To be stigmatized by a church! Folks, we are not living in the days of Little House on the Prairie when the townsfolk are all charitable and kind and all the children are raised equally in a loving community. (Not that those days ever existed, except in some writer’s imagination.) Here is the real story of my great aunt Mary Ness whose unwanted pregnancy at the age of fourteen made her an outcast from a small farming community in the Dakotas. Her story is the reality of the situation. Unmarried pregnant women and girls are often outcasts in their communities. Often seen at fault for their condition. Often made to feel shame for not wanting to be mothers. And what do you suppose happens to many of their stigmatized children? Adopted by the non-profits? Welcomed into the churches?

For anyone who has worked with children in foster care, hearing this kind of idiocy from an elected official is nauseating. It doesn’t matter how many perks they get, there’s only one thing a foster child wants: not to be a “ward of the state.” Thus their high rates of suicide, mental illness, drug dependency and incarceration. I’ve spent time in Dependency Court and the laws of most states favor family reunification. If a child has any relative willing to take care of them, the state would rather “reunite” the family than make it easy for a loving foster parent to adopt them. Often those relatives only show up if promised a salary for being “kinship caretakers.” And, let me tell you, they rarely spend any part of their salary on those children.

It’s a tragic mess that will only be made worse by this sort of unimaginably heartless and uninformed rhetoric.