UNFRIENDED

It's kinda strange though isn't it?
I Mean what's that even mean?

Are we no longer friends really not friends?
Or just not friends on Facebook?
Like if I were to see those who unfriended me
Or if they were to see me who unfriended them
Would we walk across the street to say "Hey"?
For my part
The answer I've arrived at
Is this

A note to the ufnrienders
A note to the unfriended

It's no thing to me

Some time back
A year or more
I simplified
Downsized
Purged 100 some odd "friends"

I've been wanting to communicate something
About doing that
Somewhere besides Facebook
Since then
That's what this is

This is to let it be known
Those considered friend before Facebook
Are considered the same today
If I would've walked across the street to say "Hey"
Before the friending
Second friending
Re-friending
Cyber-friending
Unfriending
or unfriended-ing
Then I'd still do the same today
Tomorrow
Next week
In ten years...

That said
My bullshit tolerance level has bottomed out
My tolerance for seeing Russian troll generated posts
Even lower
There'll be no more
If shared
If I see it
If I haven't clicked "unfriend"
I've definitely clicked "unfollow"
Done

I don't want to see it
I'm better off not knowing how I know
Is helping a hostile foreign power
Is helping Russia
Attack the country I love
Attack the USA

Ignorance is so ugly
Racism is the same
Lack of compassion
It puts me in a foul mood

Once more
The purpose of this short entry
Is to communicate to any who may see this
If I unfriended you
Or you me
It's no thing to me
If we fought online
It's no thing to me
Any resentment has been lain to rest
Or for those who never got into it
Over politics
With me
If I unfriended you
It's likely we never
or very rarely
communicated
clicked like
etc.
On there
So "unfriend" just happened
During my downsize FB phase
That too
Is no thing to me
I meant no harm

For others it's best we're not connected on there
If or when ever we meet F2F
This way we won't have arguing politics
Fresh in our mind

Some seem to handle it okay
Find balance, ignore this and like that
Some not
Me not

So that's that

Earthquake traps Martian Immigrant in Thai Cave. (Or something like that?)

I was watching the Martian with the boys the other night. I’ve got it in my iTunes library so was explaining and fast forwarding a bit to be sure we got to the end before bedtime. It’s a great story that leaves ya with such a good feeling inside—all the world pulling for this one fellow human—hoping against hope that he makes it home alive and safe.  

They were just getting into it when all of a sudden...

 Shjing ShjiNG! Shjing ShjiNG! Shjing ShiNG! 

The house was moving by the third "shjing". The “Yurekuru” (shaking comes) earthquake alarm app on my iPhone was going crazy. Thanks earthquake app but we know. Not much of a warning; it must be nearby so hit pause quick and cautiously check. A 6.0 up in Chiba, 50 km deep. The birdcage hanging on the plant shelf was swaying to and fro as the alarm went off a third time. This’ns going on a while okay time to take the kids to the hall near the stairwell, which my house building smarts tells me is the safest place to be when the big one strikes. That’s the thing about life in Japan. It’s definitely when it strikes.

Odds are we’ll survive it though. They build to withstand quakes and then some in this land, and I’m much calmer now after experiencing a gazillion or so quakes (give or take) in all my years here. Still hearing that alarm go off always gets my heart racing a bit. Luckily this’n was no thing. A 6.0 in Japan. Meh. That’ll barely make the evening news. 

Another quake come and gone now back to watching The Martian and imagining myself in Watney’s place. Sometimes real life news is like that as well, like recent news of some Thai soccer kids and their coach stranded in a cave. What if I were stuck in a cave? My imagination's just like that. It wanders off here or there, which got me to thinking back to a time I thought we might end up needing to be rescued ourselves, or to at least flee before we did, some years back. Not that it was anything like being stranded on another planet or even in a cave. Feeling the Tohoku quake from Izu wasn’t even close, but in the days after that 9.1 struck on March 11, 2011, I got to fearing for the welfare of my kids just the same.

The real fear didn’t come till a couple days after it hit actually. Late at night after two days of watching footage of the tsunami and reports of the nuclear meltdown just coming out a shallow 6.4 aftershock struck way too close for comfort. My wife and I immediately and instinctively each became a human shield over a sleeping little boy. I can only describe the shaking as violent. Pictures fell from the walls and things from the shelves. We were living out of two upstairs rooms of my wife’s family home at the time. I could look out the back window and see the beach 100 meters or so from the house. Prior to the tsunami killing thousands that upstairs window view was benign. Pretty even. In those first days afterwards that view was death. All I could see was the sea laying waste to our house just like it did to the ones up in Northern Japan. I wouldn’t worry so much if it was just me, but having kids changes everything. Parents are like that.

Still shaken a bit I contacted the US State Department early the next morning. They told of flying American citizens out of Japan; Japanese family members like my wife were allowed to evacuate too. By that time I’d received more’n a few emails and messages from friends and family back in California. “Casey come home!”. Like humans cheering for a fictional guy stuck on Mars or real young boys trapped in a cave, people far away were wishing rescue for my family and I. In the end we decided to escape to Kyoto instead. We had choices. Privilege is like that. 

A friend down there who owns some vacation rentals had all his guests cancel at the last minute due to the quake, which put him in a bad way so he offered us a place if we wanted to head down to a part of Japan that wasn’t shaking. We were on a train by early afternoon the day after that big aftershock. Hindsight 20/20 we weren’t really in danger here on Izu, but with store shelves empty of bottled water and batteries, gas stations going dry and fears of bigger aftershocks and the nuclear meltdown, I chose to get my kids to what I believed was a safer place.  Dads are like that. 

As a human who was dealt an extra portion imagination I couldn’t help but wonder while sitting there watching the end of The Martian, all the while with Japanese earthquakes and cave-stranded Thai boys all mingling around in my mind as well... What if it’d have been worse for us? Like instead of a natural disaster, what if it was hell raining down from the sky? Or waking up to civil war? Or civil unrest enough for gangs to be murdering en masse? 

In truth fathers not much different than I—fathers of young boys and younger girls—are experiencing as much as now in war torn places like Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and Yemen, or in Venezuela, El Salvador, or other South and Central American countries with the worst homicide rates on earth. What if, instead of fears of tsunami or a giant quake, I was faced with gangs threatening to kill my boys or rape my wife if I didn’t pay up or join them? How much more panicked would I be then? What lengths would I go to to get my kids to safety then?

I don’t know why my mind always wonders off into thought experiments like that. It just does. I can’t help it. It’s done so for as long as I can remember whether I give it permission to or not. And since having kids of my own, whenever it does, it gets me to thinking something—to knowing something. That something is this. There aren’t enough laws on this earth—there aren’t strict enough laws on this earth—to stop me from trying to get my kids to safety. I’m absolutely certain of that. I’ll break every goddamned law on earth, fight to my last breath and take a few with me to the grave to get my kids to safety if necessary. As seemingly trivial as experiencing the aftermath of the Tohoku quake from Izu was, recalling the fear I had that my boys were in danger has me convinced that I’d do whatever it takes to keep them safe. 

Millions are doing that right now, and America has taken in millions more. This is only fitting for an immigrant nation with a “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free” torch bearing greeter on its shore. Contrast that with the land I'm in--Japan. They suck when it comes to taking in refugees. There’s much I love about this place but even if I live out the rest of my years in Japan it’ll never become home in my heart like the good ol USofA is. Why not? 

My old CWHS State Championship Wrestling team is a textbook example. We kicked ass. Best team in the State, perhaps the whole nation, nd we were a motley crew and then some. Poor kids, rich kids, yellow and black kids, white kids and brown kids with undocumented family members even. An awesome multi-ethnic ass-kicking group of tough ass teens with awesome coaching we were, all wearing the same cardinal and gold uniform. Just like America is every ethnicity and culture and way of life all flying under the stars and stripes. That’s America. Our diversity is our strength. Our diversity comes from all corners of the globe. Unless you’re of Native American decent your ancestors either landed on American shores in a slave ship or immigrated there themselves. Most of us are children of immigrants, a fair percentage of whom fled their country for a better life for their kids if not to save their lives. People are like that. 

It’s so ironic since that’s something that is so very American. It’s one way, a big way, that America leads the world by example.  Or did, and will again one day soon I hope. Indeed, it's something my Japanese wife is not alone as a Japanese who admires that about us and wishes her country would do more of. It’s one of the things about being American that I take pride in while living in Japan as well. Our track record with meddling in other countries' affairs has a history of sucking ass and then some, but still we've done a lot of good too and as collective group of people we do lead in both attitude and example of how to help those in need. And trust me, people notice it. Years of living as an expat has revealed that much. 

But back to my overactive imagination. Back to my questions. Why don't people seem to care as much about refugees as they do Thai kids in a cave?  Both are kids in danger, so why attack the former and pray for the latter? Why write one off as “illegals” and spread fear about them? It seems to me their biggest crime was losing the birth lottery.

We watched The Martian to the end. Ya gotta love how all the people cheer when the commander announces to NASA that they’ve rescued Watney, just as ya gotta love seeing news that some of the Thai boys have been rescued recently. And I guess it's not everyone who does it, but I've gotta imagine a world where we all cheer as much when a refugee mother rescues her child by getting her to the safety of a free country’s borders. It’s a very human thing to do really.  Not to mention a very “…thy neighbor as thyself” thing for any who try to heed a certain Carpenter’s teaching. 

I’m glad the earthquake wasn’t so bad the other night. The big one will come. That’s for sure. When it does, if Hamaoka nuclear plant across the Suruga bay melts down like Fukushima did or worse, I could totally see myself opting to spirit my family away to the safety of California. I can do as much because I won the birth lottery. What's more is I can’t allow myself to not wish the same for my fellow earthly travelers, especially those who've drawn worse cards in this life game than I have. For more reasons I can't explain I've always had that kind of cheer for the underdog way about me. Thus my heart going out a bit more to immigrants fleeing danger than some I suppose. I mark it up to my "how you treat the least of these..." religious upbringing some too; that said I know atheist who feel the same so it's not just a religious thing. Whatever the reason though that’s just me. I wouldn't be comfortable in my own skin being any other way.