Lilith was quite literally dogging it up Kahekili (although I gather I'm using "literally" figuratively) when Don came jogging behind us. Lilith stopped to greet him. We (sans Lilith, of course) had watched the 2008 election returns together, his family and mine. Having exchanged disbelieving happy new years to each other, he said he'd been sent to spend four months this past year on Maui, post-Lahaina fire. Lee Zeldin, head of the EPA, had come to visit, and so Don had practiced his spiels so as not to anger him. No mention of cost, for example. Zeldin never once asked about health or environmental issues, which didn't surprise Don, but what did was how interested he was in the people working there. He seemed genuinely to want to know about them and their lives.
This was a week after he'd summarily fired 300 scientists, and he did worse later. I suggested it might have been because he didn't fire them face to face. "That makes it even worse!" I brought up the film about German families who lived just the other side of the walls at Auschwitz, leading their normal lives, their children playing in the gardens. "Terrible," Don said, "that such an analogy makes sense now, isn't it?"
I asked if he'd seen news of the Buddhist monks walking across the South. He had not, so I showed him a photograph of them on my phone. They're on the same route as the Freedom Riders, I told him. Don was impressed, but not overly. "It's a step," he said.
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