Any other day of the week, at least during daylight hours, BART trains run every few minutes, and you don’t have to give any thought to the schedules. On Sundays, though, there’s only one train every twenty minutes, and they’re never full-length 10-car trains; almost invariably, they’re mini-trains, 4 or 5 cars long.

What this means is, you can wait a long, long time for a train on Sundays, and when it comes it’ll be packed tighter than Lego toys clicked together. A puny half-length train toots into the station only three times an hour, and you gotta elbow somebody if you’re hoping for a seat.

It pisses me off. When you’re standing on the train during weekday rush hours, at least you know it’s unavoidable — 10-car trains jammed to capacity come by every few minutes, all with more commuters than seats, but BART’s making an effort.

On Sundays, BART’s only going through the motions, and they’re slow-motions.

Today I waited at 16th & Mission for half an hour because the trains were running late, and then stood all the way for a bumpy ride under the water and across Oakland. If they ran trains every 15 minutes on Sundays,  instead of every 20, or ran 8-car trains instead of 4-car trains, there’d be seats. You could read a book, look out the window, and it could be a pleasant ride.

BART doesn’t want it to be a pleasant ride. They’ve decided that on Sundays, people can stand around waiting, and then stand around riding. Why? I’m sure the answer is complicated, but it comes down to something simple and obvious: BART’s management gets six-figure salaries. When any of them go anywhere on a Sunday, they take the Cadillac, never the train.

♦ ♦ ♦  

27 years ago today, hippies seized an empty block of U-Cal property, and started transforming it into their own space, People’s Park.

It’s a great story, and it’s still a park very different from ordinary parks. There’s a welcoming do-it-yourself vibe, a stage where anyone can make music or speeches, and free clothes dropped off are yours for the wearing from a big wooden box. At People’s Park it’s still the 1960s, and you can get there without a TARDIS.

For the park’s silver+2 anniversary, there was a big party today, with free rock’n’roll, reasonably priced drugs, and snacks and dancing and nudity and probably Parcheesi.

I couldn’t attend the festivities, though. I was selling fish at the corner, close enough to hear but not see the strange goings-on.

With a few thousand extra people crowding into the park, its regular residents — the crazies so crazy they’re ‘park people’ instead of street people — were squeezed through their beer breath and heroin stupors back into the rest of so-called society, so it was a wild day on the Avenue.

One old guy was babbling about biscuits and gravy to suburbanites coming out of the book store. Another was shirtless and had ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ tattooed over his nipples, and he was singing “Garden Party” loud and off-key over and over. A third guy I’d never seen before was walking up and down Telegraph with one hand in his pants while staring at pretty women. Someone called the cops, but the perv only argued until the two policemen walked away.

There were a billion other wackos on the street, too many and too difficult to describe, and so many that the few familiar street people I saw were making their way to quieter neighborhoods. Perhaps yours.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

I’ve mostly stopped mentioning the Christians who are offended by the sacrilegious fish, but it’s not because they’re no longer offended and angry, no longer telling me I’ll burn eternally in Hell. They are, believe me.

It’s just that it’s almost always the same righteous condemnation, and I’m tired of typing it up.

There was another brief argument this afternoon. “You’re teasing God.” “You’re making fun of His holy fish.” If you want the details, flip through a back issue, but until then, in Jesus’ name, amen.

There is no God, and nothing proves that more plainly than the people complaining about the fish. If there was a God, if we were created in Her image instead of she in ours, and if, for reasons only a god could comprehend, she was hiding Herself, demanding our prayers and worship and judging our alleged souls on the basis of who believes in Her, isn’t it the skeptical ones She’d want to reward?

What use would a god have for people who’ve discarded the brains She designed, and instead believe fairy tales “on faith”?

Pathetic Life
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Mom is out of rehab now, which is stupid — she should still be there (fuck the insurance company).

That said, we’re not missing the place. It sucked.

It’s a “skilled nursing and rehabilitation center,” according to the sign above the front door. In Mom’s six weeks there, though, we saw only three nurses, and usually just once daily, for only a few minutes.

One is “the boss” and isn’t directly involved in patient care, and the other two are nurses, which is certainly a skill, but “skilled nursing” isn’t what the place offers. Seeing that sign every morning made me chuckle or pissed me off, depending on how the day before had gone.

Virtually all of Mom’s ‘care’ came from nursing assistants, other employees who seemed to be just employees, and a kinda spooky black nun who wandered the halls and sometimes helped with chores but, thankfully, never talked about Jesus.

Two doctors dropped in, once each, for about fifteen minutes, over the course of Mom’s six weeks there. For both doctors, we had to explain why Mom was there; they hadn’t looked at her chart.

♦ ♦ ♦

In American health care, it’s pretty rough being in a hospital or nursing home, if you’re not well enough to advocate for yourself and you don’t have someone pulling for you.

Mom received much better care than most of the rehab patients, simply because my sister Katrina was there from before breakfast to after supper every day, to watch and speak up when things weren’t right. Which was constantly.

The food was wrong every meal — simply not what we’d ordered.

The medicine was often wrong, too — pills sometimes wouldn’t come at all unless Katrina reminded the right people, and a medicine discontinued by Mom’s doctor kept arriving every evening, etc.

Diaper changes were often delayed or skipped.

Four times Mom fell out of bed during the night, but the rehab center had no beds with rails, so instead they lowered her bed to about a foot off the floor, so the falls wouldn’t hurt much.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mom has two major issues: general weakness which has her unable to walk, and mental confusion that has her often unsure of things.

For the physical issues, rehab offered pretty good physical therapy, but the PT workers are contracted — they work for a PT company, not the rehab center.

For the mental issues, rehab offered nothing, really. But five or ten years ago, someone in the family bought Mom a vanity-press printing of her very brief memoirs. It’s an all-profit scam where customers answer 20 questions on a website, and the company prints a dozen copies of the answers as a very thin hardcover book — about 40 pages, with no editing or even proofreading. All of Mom’s typos were included, along with (inexplicably) a few URLs scattered into the text. I read it, but disliked the book because the printing is so super-tawdry, and I promptly (but accidentally) lost my copy.

But with Mom’s memory malfunctioning, I borrowed my brother’s copy of the book, and brought it to the rehab center. Most days Mom and/or I re-read a few pages, and I’d ask questions about what she was reading, which often triggered more detailed remembrances than what was in the book. It was helpful, I think, at rewiring the neurons and reconnecting her to who she is.

It’s still a loose connection, but once in a while the clouds clear and she’s Mom again. She remembers every hymn she’s ever sang, and amazingly, so do I, so we often sing “The Old Rugged Cross” and “How Great Thou Art” and all God’s greatest hits. Kinda reminds me of 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Dave was pulling out HAL’s memory banks and it started singing “Daisy.”

♦ ♦ ♦

If you have a loved one who fades in and out of comprehension, you might not want her to have a stranger for a roommate, and certainly not the roommates Mom had.

For the first two weeks, it was a woman who had no visitors, and kept eavesdropping and butting into our conversations.

Me to Mom: “What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

Mom’s roommate, from behind the curtain: “Oatmeal. Everyone got oatmeal.”

Another day, me to Mom: “Do you remember what Clay said about Easter, when he was here yesterday?”

Mom’s roommate, from behind the curtain: “Clay is your brother, right? He was talking about taking his grandkids to the Easter egg hunt.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m trying to see what my mom can remember, not what you can remember.”

That lady relapsed with whatever brought her there, which got her sent back to the hospital, giving us one joyous day without a roommate.

Then the next roommate moved in, stayed for a month, and she’s still there. At least the second roommate never interrupted us, because she never woke up, never said a word.

But every day, that silent roommate was visited by her loud family of Republicans, talking at great volume to be heard over her too-loud television. With only the curtain between our half of the room and their half, the soundtrack for most evenings was endless stupid conversation between two or three of the roommate’s visitors, plus whatever stupid TV show they were watching at the same time they were talking.

Three times on three different days, I asked the roommate’s family to be quieter, but asking got me nothing but loud indignation.

“Could you turn down the TV please?”

“She’s hard of hearing!” was the reply, with “she” being the comatose patient. As if she was listening!

And Mom was sometimes confused by the jibber-jabber of their loud conversations. “Who is that?” “What are they talking about?” “Why are they so loud?”

Because they’re assholes, Mom.

♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of assholes, let’s check in with Mehar, the rehab center’s “activities director.” After the piano and Easter awfulness, she wasn’t much of a problem, because I avoided her, and steered Mom away from any activity Mehar was running.

Still, she popped into Mom’s room to invite her to each afternoon’s events. Mehar would cheerfully describe the plan — board games, beanbag tosses, whatever — and Mom would usually reply, “I don’t know what you’re saying,” because Mehar’s accent was darn near indecipherable.

Which is, I’d say, 25% of the reason I disliked Mehar so much. Mom was (and still is) having trouble making sense of plain English, so maybe speak plain English?

Is that racist of me? Probably. I’ve had immigrant doctors, dealt with overseas accents and English-as-a-third-language on helplines, and I shrug, but putting an immigrant with a triple-thick accent in charge of what’s supposed to be brain exercises for cognitive-challenged people — every last one of whom spoke English — just seems contrary to common sense.

The other 75% of me disliking Mehar was what Mehar did — the piano, and every time I remember it, I still seethe about her asking all the patients, “How do you feel about your loss of independence?”

♦ ♦ ♦

Maybe Mehar isn’t the worst employee at the rehab center, though. That might be the social worker, someone I never met and whose name I don’t know.

As we checked out, panicked with only 36 hours notice from the insurance company and Mom not really ready to come home, the social worker arranged to have a wheelchair and hospital bed delivered to Mom’s home. Katrina was initially pretty happy about that, and so was I, but the wheelchair is wrong for what Mom needs — it’s too wide for their narrow house, and Katrina would’ve preferred a transfer chair, not a wheelchair. They’re much lighter, and Katrina struggles to fold and lift the wheelchair.

The hospital bed hasn’t arrived yet, but based on its description in the paperwork, it sounds (same as the wheelchair) like something bigger and fancier than Mom needs.

The social worker never asked what Mom and Katrina needed, and never explained the financial facts of all this equipment. Katrina has her hands more than full just taking care of Mom, so she’s asked me to look through the paperwork for the wheelchair and bed. Both are rentals, and the rates seem sky-high — $59 p/month to rent a wheelchair we could buy brand-new for maybe $200? And $239 p/month for a bed?

The rehab place says they’ve billed the insurance company for the chair and bed, but the coverage is still listed as ‘pending’, so Katrina & Mom could be on the hook here.

I’m suspecting that the rehab place has a contract with the medical equipment house, and gets a kickback on every rental agreement. But it’s not quite an agreement, because the line where Mom or Katrina were supposed to sign is blank, so everything might be going back.

♦ ♦ ♦

And here’s my bottom line on the rehab center: I hated the place, but I’ve seen worse, and never seen better, so maybe it’s average. Grading on the curve, maybe it’s spectacular. Doesn’t matter — it’s still a dump, where you can wait half an hour after pushing the “call nurse” button before anyone comes.

Mom wasn’t ready to come home when she came home, and it’s still a struggle getting her to stand and take a few precarious steps. We have worries, all the time.

But at home the food and medicine are both correct, diaper changes aren’t delayed or skipped, we don’t ask Mom demeaning questions about her disability, and nobody’s being rushed into a financial commitment they don’t understand.

4/27/2026

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BARTed to Berkeley, as usual, to sell fish, but never made it to Telegraph Ave. I walked to Jay’s house, where the fish cart and materials are stored, but when I got there Jay said Judith had called, hoping I’d work for her today. Jay said she was OK with it, and I guess I’m OK with it too, so I got traded like a shortstop sent to Pittsburgh.

Judith had called me, but I don’t have a phone, only a voice mail service I hadn’t checked since Thursday. So she’d called Jay instead. And what do I care? I get five bucks an hour either way, so I shrugged and reported to Three Rivers Stadium — er, Judith’s house, where I’d lived until a month ago, and where I’d worked on Tuesday.

It’s vaguely cosmic, because Jay and Judith both live in Berkeley, less than a mile apart, but they’d never met. They both sent me three bucks for Pathetic Life and both liked it, and Jay offered me a job, and Judith offered me a place to stay, and somewhere along the line I introduced them to each other. 

♦ ♦ ♦   

At the messy old flat, I didn’t knock. Knocking makes the dog go crazy, and I still have a key. Soon as I stepped inside, Lugosi licked my legs, and I picked up a note someone had dropped through the mail slot. “Please, please,” it said, “do something to keep your dog from the front window. He has barked yesterday and today non-stop.”

I gave the note to Judith, and she glanced at it without much interest. And you know, I like Judith and I like Lugosi, but he’s a dog the size of a Shetland pony, and he’s never been trained. He shreds the mail and a couple of times he’s nearly knocked me down the stairs, and he barks and he bites — there’s an order from Animal Control that Lugosi must be leashed and muzzled whenever he’s outside.

Now he barks all day? That’s new, but everything’s changed since Cy and Joe and I moved out. When there were five of us, someone was almost always home, but now the dog is left alone for hours at a time, and I guess he’s not handling it well.

Judith isn’t handling it all that well, either. “They didn’t even sign the note,” she said, “and he’s a dog. Dogs bark.”

“True on both counts,” I said, “but if Lugosi’s barking all day, your neighbors are gonna hate you, and they’ll probably call Animal Control again.”

“Oh, well,” she said, and that was that and then Judith showed me the work she’d needed me for. And to my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t cleaning. It was interior redesign. 

We disassembled and dragged the bed from the guest room into Cy’s ex-room, moved a desk from Cy’s space into the guest room, carried chairs from all over the house into Cy’s room, and a big table from the living room into my old room, etc, etc. It was a whole lot of heavy lifting and schlepping things around, but Judith had a vision and it slowly started coming into focus.

While I was beating a dog’s worth of hair out of a rug I’d drug from the guest room down the stairs and outside, she took a knife to the bed we’d moved from Cy’s old room. She hacked and carved its foam rubber mattress into smaller pieces, lashed them on top of a dozen milk crates, tossed a pink sheet over it, and it became a new couch for the corner. A clever and comfy couch, I might add.

Then I brought the now-mostly-hairless rug into what had been Cy’s quarters, and with another hour’s rearranging and some sweeping and vacuuming, Cy’s room became a second living room, just as Judith had planned.

Then we (mostly me) assembled a new bookshelf she’d bought by mail order, and we (mostly me) moved a few hundred books from stacks in the corner of the old living room onto the new shelf in the new living room. Then we (mostly me) moved all the chairs we’d moved earlier, again, into different rooms. My old space seems to be becoming an auxiliary laundry room, and Joe’s old room is where the clutter goes to die.

As for me, I’m exhausted. I’d worked the same five or so hours I would’ve worked selling fish, only instead of sitting on my butt collecting colorful stories of street life, I moved furniture all day, collecting a backache, two sore arms, a face covered with sticky sweat, and a nose full of dust and dog hairs I’ll still be picking out tomorrow.

Tomorrow, while I’m selling fish, I hope. Trade me back from the Pirates, please.

♦ ♦ ♦  

At the phone booth in the hotel, I checked my messages, and yup, Judith had called twice yesterday trying to hire me, before she’d given up and called Jay.

Of more interest, there was a phone message from Corina. She didn’t say yes and didn’t say no to my Spike & Mike invitation, but she said she’d written a reply and I should have it within a couple of days.

Was she being coy, or was the phone call a prelude to an almost certainly lipless kiss-off? I couldn’t tell anything from her tone of voice, and I sure can’t afford to call her back long distance. (I’m still broke — in the confusion this morning, Jay forgot to pay me, and I forgot to remind her.)

It’s a weird situation. Ever since they were girls, I’ve hated asking women out, but they never ask me. Asking a woman for a date is like being the little wooden duck at a sideshow carnival, and the woman goes blam and shoots me down. Asking by mail is easier, but it’s odd, and a reply via voice mail that says the answer is coming by mail? That’s even odder.

Also got a message from a man named Elliot, who’d seen my “I’ll do anything” flyers in Oakland. He said he’s looking for a carpenter to work on his summer cabin in Philo, way up in California’s north country.

I called him back and explained like Bob Dylan but without singing, that it’s not me he’s looking for. I’m not a carpenter. If I had a hammer I’d hammer my thumb.

“Even if I only use you as a gopher,” he said, “five bucks an hour is a good price.”

“You’d have to cover my transportation to Philo and back every day, or pay for my housing there,” I said, and we agreed that the whole idea was crazy. He still thinks I’m a maybe, though, and I never argue with someone who insists on giving me money. It sounds like a rotten deal for him, but I’ll do it if he pays me, plus expenses.

The gig wouldn’t start until June, and he said he’d call again in a month or so, but I’m sure he can find a better man by then.

Pretty sure Corina can find a better man, too.

Pathetic Life
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