LETTERS FROM HOME: POLS, MASTERS AND MEN IN SLIPS

August 4, 1994

Dear Leslie,

Awoke from a frightening dream this morning. I was announcing my candidacy for the governorship of California. Journalists were asking me the Big Little Questions and I kept answering, "I don't know."

"I don't know" is an admission politicians aren't supposed to make, but I'd sure vote for one nuts enough to do it. I'm weary of Pete Wilson and Kathleen Brown each pretending to be every criminal's worst nightmare. As if it's longer sentences and bigger prisons that will allow you to turn in the gun you bought after the L.A. riots. I don't know what will, but it doesn't have anything to do with inflicting more and more punishment.

The Bible or the Upanishads and other holy books say love is the answer to most questions. I do know it's the hardest thing to do, to respond to hurtfulness and injustice with love. I guess the fact it's the goal and not the reality is proof we're far from becoming ascended masters.

Ten thousand Rastamen and Deadheads are coming to town this weekend for the 11th annual Reggae on the River. The world's second-largest reggae festival (number one is held in Jamaica). Two days, 20 reggae bands, dreadlocks and messages of unity, people dancing in the broiling sun at French's Camp and diving into the Eel River so they can do it some more.

DC and I volunteered to join the security patrol (we get free tickets in return). Our job is to walk up and down Redwood Drive calming the waters and delivering messages of peace and good will between the merchants and the sidewalk.

The sidewalk already is starting to look like a Caribbean bazaar, even though many of the people on it grew up in California. Some might be selling homemade earrings hanging from a stick. Some might have ingested nonprescription drugs. "Something in the way you move along," we'll say.

We have undergone what the organizers call "nonviolence preparation," taught by people who're veterans of the anti-nuclear protest movement. We don't have to worry about getting arrested. Maligned is another matter.

We practiced dealing with angry store-owners and with visitors who've decided to camp out on the sidewalk. Our job is to avoid taking sides. The most important thing, we learned, is to keep noticing how we ourselves are reacting in the situation, what buttons are being pushed. Sometimes peacemakers can be real troublemakers.

Thought you might enjoy this crime headline from one of the local weeklies: "Sniper in a slip shoots up Sylvandale building." Nobody was hurt although people were inside. The suspect is a 38-year-old homeless man who had been camping along the creek beside the building for years. He was wearing only a black slip when a deputy caught him. The newspaper had a spicey picture of him getting cuffed in (deshabille in Italic) deshabille. Unfortunately, his little handgun was nowhere around.

For a lot of reasons, not a good decision to run that picture. Last I heard, the guy was already out of jail and trying to buy more bullets. At the Rotary Club barbecue last night, the editor of the paper blithely admitted in front of the sheriff and everybody that he'll be carrying a concealed weapon for awhile.

So this is how we have become an armed camp. Avuncular editors arming themselves against cross-dressing homeless people. That's what I mean about not knowing.

Meanwhile, DC says she's going to count her slips tomorrow. She figures a guy who can't afford a place to live probably steals whatever women's undergarments he needs from clotheslines. For some reason, it's important to her to know whether one of her slips was involved in a crime.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian currently on leave of absence in Garberville, Calif.