Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez
Jose Macarena Hernandez
Abdon Felix
Our state is on fire. I don’t just mean that literally – although – literally it is. Not only are there a bobillion acres that have burned or are in the very business of burning right this second, but the heat is just oppressive. I whine and flop around, pulling my sweaty hair up off my neck whilst checking the thermostat and bumping up the AC another notch. A skunk has expired under our deck which just adds to the overall ambiance of the heat and smoke and unusual humidity. The lovely wafting breezes of a rotting animal right under the kitchen windows.
It looks like a foggy, winter morning until you open the door and feel the heat and smell the smoke. The sun is a strange orange ball in a darkened sky. The cat has taken to sleeping in the cool, porcelain bowl of the hall bathroom sink, for whatever slight relief it brings.
The names above are those of people that have died this Summer. In the heat. Not poor, shut-in elderly folks that we read about each and every year – with admonitions to check on our neighbors. Which we all should do. Not small children, left in a car while mommy runs in, for just a minute, to have a quick drink at a local bar. Good lord does anyone not know this is colossally stupid thing to do?
They are a 17 year old girl. A 64 year old man. A 42 year old father of three. Abdon spent his last day loading grapes onto a truck. Maria Isabel was pruning vines, without access to water or shade, when most girls her age should be picking out which bathing suit they are going to wear to the beach. The next butternut squash you eat may have been in the work calloused hands of Jose on his last day on this earth.
We are so very quick to point fingers at China, poisoning our dogs with tainted pet food or Kathy Lee Gifford for failing to notice that the clothes with her name on them are manufactured in foreign sweatshops by eight year olds. Yet we don’t give a second thought to who’s toil, who’s sweat has graced our evening meal.
This is not a political diatribe. I have no agenda. Or any answers. Not a single one. Just an overwhelming sense of grief that this can happen under our very noses. Who hasn’t left the television or radio on for a dog that is going to be left alone for the day. Or turned the air conditioning on when we run out to the store so the cat is comfy and the house nice and cool when we get home.
We are compassionate people. We want to do what’s right. We take our green approved grocery sacks with us when we do our shopping, we filter our tap water and refill our thermoses so as not to add more plastic water bottles to the landfill. For crying out loud if you walk down Main Street in Los Altos you will see every other store has a dish of water out for the canine pedestrians (quadrupedestrians?).
Yet our farm workers – IN THIS DAY AND AGE – don’t have ample water on a 110 degree day?
How can we know what grocery stores, what growers to buy from? What wine to drink. How can we send a message that this cannot and will not be tolerated?
I am totally enamored with local eating. Getting to know who grew my lunch. Yet I’m ashamed to say that I’m equally enamored with running into my local Uber-Mart to grab the makings for a dinner without a second thought of how or where it came from. I know for me personally I just need to slow down. Plan ahead. Be deliberate. Be considerate. But is that enough?
No one, no one, should die, trying to get my dinner on the table.
There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed. -Samuel Johnson (1709-1784
