There’s a protest going on.

It’s getting bigger, getting worse.

It’s in Los Angeles.

I’ve been suburban to L. A. one way or another all my life, so L. A. is my city, and I’ve said so many times.

L. A. spreads in all directions, has everything, and includes everybody.

No surprise, it’s been the center and focus of events like the Olympics, and disruptions over and over, over all these many years.

I’ve lived through a lot of them, have participated in some, and here we are again.

This one is not the worst, not yet, but could become so.

Because the world is on the edge like never before. If the autocratic boot doesn’t get us, the climate change will.

And a target has been painted on California, L. A. in particular.

The current King god Emperor has sent in the troops to push the civilian populace because he knows that if you push hard enough, shoot them, gas them, someone will pick up a rock and throw it back and then he can declare it an insurrection and send in the marines. He’s trying to start a civil war and thinks nobody will notice. He’s chosen L. A. because he hates California.

It is judged by The Power that if you cut off the head of the Hydra, the entire creature will collapse.

To strike while the iron is hot, you have to heat the iron.

I was born during the last days of Hitler, but had to grow up enough to learn to read so I could read about my own history, and grow up enough more to see and recognize the parallels.

I see patterns and shifts, I see that history doesn’t learn enough from itself.

There was that time when people were revolting and dethroned the King and cut off heads, and now we have that ever popular musical Les Miz which even the current King likes, and it’s not even the same revolution.

We can’t rely on the kindness of strangers, the easyness of peace, the Good Samaritan who gives you half his cloak.

The Twentieth Century began with war. It began as a game of Gentlemen’s Disagreement, playing by the rules. Very quickly history leaped ahead, war was no longer a game, there were no rules, no gentlemen, nothing gentle, and the war that should end all wars because death is final and the last word to everything, did not, and here we are.

I don’t know what it is about us that we don’t learn, from our mistakes, from our successes, from any lasting thing.

There seems to be a poison in humanity. Inherent, it never sleeps, swells and recedes, strikes again and again and millions die.

I hope not gone are the days when Gandhi could non-violently say “no”, survive prison, endure the slings and arrows, show people themselves in a mirror so they could decide they didn’t like what they saw and relented, to save their better angels.

There was a time when the tank of tyranny rolled across the square and a child standing in the way would turn the tank aside.

Now the tank rolls right over the child and heads for the crowd.

I wish we could rely on people’s better nature, but they have to discover it in themselves. They have to sort it out from the tangles, free it from misconception.

People need to learn what they need to know. That’s why I taught, forty years in the classroom. Not to impose, but to draw out. To bring up to the level where we could sit together, discuss as friends, and they could go on to live a better life.

I’m an emotional person and I cry a lot, sometimes even in public. And I’m able to still learn things, which is why, though I may not have the strength to return to the classroom, I can still find ways.

I can talk to people. I’d like to talk to groups, share my life. Meanwhile, I walk down the street, see someone and say, “Hello.”

Sometimes they’re startled, but often “Hello” back.

That’s an opening, a wedge. I might follow up with “Nice day for a walk.”

They might say, “Yes, it is, the sun feels good.”

I might say, “At least it’s not raining.”

They might say, “You got that right.”

The next day I might see them again. “Hello again.”

They might answer back, “Hello back,” or “Hello again,” or “Hello yourself.” We don’t know our politics or religion or deep beliefs, we’re just two people in the community. We have a basic human bond.

That’s why I write a lot.

Yes, some of it anxiously political, but mostly not, about the larger life where we all live together. Distracting to what we have in common and can share.

So I write a lot about food, because we all eat, and we can sit down together and share a meal.

About my own life, because it’s interesting and takes the spotlight away from controversy.

About things we can agree on that are nice and put us in a good receptive mood and we can get down to the basics below the turmoil above.

We can raise a glass together, get comfortable with words like “like”, even find the courage to say “love” and, because we apply it, choose it as a human basic.

When you push people, they push back.

When you welcome people, they come in.

I can’t just wait for people to discover their own humanity, the guardsman who suddenly decides “I won’t shoot children.”

I distract people to the basics.

Like food.

Let me tell you about the time I ate too much and became famous for it.