Roadette's Roadeo: Ups and Downs on the Highway of Life

2008-09-02T17:58:00.001-07:00

Video from protest march at Repub. Conv. on http://ping.fm/T57Ul

2008-07-10T12:27:00.001-07:00

Testing ping.fm from my phone.

2008-07-10T12:22:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting with Sara-Ellen and Sara figuring out how to navigate the SNS space. Pretty fun -- not so easy though!

2008-06-25T14:36:00.001-07:00

Testing sms 2 ping.fm

2008-06-25T14:18:00.001-07:00

Writing about HR management in creative industries today. Talent shortage is what I'm hearing...

Memo to President Bush: Cut off Chertoff

2006-03-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

It’s time for him to go. Far, far away from national security.

He’s failed to make our borders secure or to stem the flow of illegal immigration. He failed to respond to hurricane Katrina. He foolishly ordered the much-maligned Michael Brown to sit on his butt in Baton Rouge, revealing a staggering ignorance of how the activities of a leader (more than a mere manager!) acts in an emergency. Moreover, the recovery effort continues to be a joke – those damned trailers are *still* in Arkansas!

Chertoff wasn’t aware of the deliberations in which his agency participated to consider the Dubai Ports World contract to manage terminals in some U.S. ports. And he failed to recognize and tip off the administration that it would be a hot-button issue.

Chertoff should be fired and the agency he heads should be relieved of the burden of FEMA. There have been problems with the Department of Homeland Security, starting with its name: It should have been the Department of Defense – defend the country, defend the borders, defend the people. Except that the Department of Defense, which used to be more appropriately named the War Department, already has that name. So the new organization created to handle national defense had to be called something else. Now we’re probably stuck with the clumsily named Department of Homeland Security, resonating as it does with Nazi overtones of heimat, heim, und volk, meaning homeland, hearth, and folk.

But the problems with DHS go beyond its name. The conglomerate agency has not been successful in melding together the disparate organizational cultures of its combined units.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency under Clinton was one of the most professional and effective of all federal agencies. But the unit has fallen victim to the dysfunction of the DHS. As a result, many people are calling for removing FEMA out from under DHS, and the pitiful performance of the unit as part of the gigantic bureaucratic structure speaks for itself.

Chertoff has presided over the destruction of FEMA’s ability to respond to natural disasters. Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, referred to the possible breach of New Orleans’ levees as a potential disaster within a disaster.

As it turns out, DHS’s sabotage of FEMA is the real disaster within the disaster of the New Orleans levee breach, within the disaster of Katrina.

America's "can't-do" culture of incompetence

2006-02-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

America's Can't-Do Culture of Incompetence

This entry was posted on 02/28/2006 07:50 PM and is filed under Progressive politics.

In the old days, the United States was famed for its "can-do" attitude. No more. Eight years of the misleadership by the Bush Administration have reduced the country to a historically low level of competence by depleting the treasury, destroying the job base, and undermining the national security.

Here's a short list of what we can't do:

Prepare for a natural disaster, like Katrina

Take care of the people affected by Katrina

Reconstruct the Gulf Coast

Run a railroad, much less make it run on time

Operate our own ports

Field a fleet of ships

Provide health care for our citizens

Reform our public schools

Fund and manage our elections so they are fair and honest

Adopt rehabilitation programs for criminal lawbreakers or reform prisons

Manage immigration in a humane and reasonable manner

Protect our borders

Provision our troops with adequate gear

Repair the electrical grid in Baghdad

Conduct a dignified trial of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein

So why did we ever think we could bring good government to Iraq? Competence begins at home, and it relies on a clear view of reality -- not just faith and prayers. We better not expect God -- or anybody else -- to do for us what we can't (and won't) do for ourselves.

Make a move towards competence -- turn left.

Happy Highways (potholes and all), Roadette

Why Hillary Will Never Be President

2005-10-24T01:07:00.000-07:00

It’s not because she’s a woman. It’s not because she’s a Democrat. It’s not even because she’s Hillary.

It’s the war.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton is a chickenhawk who knows nothing about national security,” said Scott Ritter on C-SPAN2 Book TV, discussing his new book: Iraq Confidential. He went on: “ …Indeed, that is a problem of the entire Democratic Party. The next top figure in the Democratic Party that stands up in opposition to the war will have a real chance at the nomination."

If the Republicans are split over the budget deficit and the Miers nomination, Democrats are split over the war in Iraq. Fear stalks the political landscape. The elected Repubs are quaking in fear of indictments. The elected Dems are terrified to hammer out and articulate a positive platform that goes beyond mere opposition.

This past weekend, the chatterati TV programs provided stark evidence of the Great Democratic Divide, exposing the strike-slip fault lines of progressive topography with silent tectonics as hawks grate against doves.

The Dem hawks are the unrepentant politicians who voted for the war. For example, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that, even given what he knows now, he would still cast a vote to allow the President to attack and invade Iraq.

The Dem doves are the little people and their champions like Howard Dean. On a recent appearance on the political talker, Hardball, Dean reprised his long-held anti-war position: “I thought this [the war in Iraq] was a bad idea in the first place because I believed we would get in just the kind of mess we have…It’s not responsible to take our troops out tomorrow, but we need to get our troops out of there and we need to do it in a reasonable way and not lose any more lives.”

The hawks control the political agenda, maintaining hardened positions that are reinforced by party elders. According to Seymour Hersh, speaking on the C-SPAN2 program with Scott Ritter, there was a secret, as-yet-unreported meeting attended by Madeline Albright and other old party hands in Washington DC last week. They considered how the party should address the nation’s challenges and ultimately counseled a do-nothing strategy on the sidelines so as not to take the spotlight away from the Republicans implosion.

But the doves control the party apparatus and the grass roots. They won’t mean much until the 2006 mid-terms when they will be needed to walk the precincts, handle the phone banks, send the emails, drive the voters to the polls and carry out all the grunt work undertaken by ACORN, MoveOn.org, and dozens of other left-leaning groups.

Dem politicians are entirely out of sync with their dovish rank-and-file and they are hoping that the foot soldiers will have short memories.

In a CBS News poll taken October 3-5 of 808 adults nationwide, 91% of Democrats responded that the results of the war are not worth the lost American lives and other costs, 8% think they are, and 1% are unsure. (Republicans disagree. Sixty-two percent believe the results in Iraq are worth the costs, 26% think they aren’t, and 12% are unsure.)

Hillary and her elected colleagues may be having a great time tap-dancing on the grave of Republican hegemony. But she may have waited too long to leave the prom.

Hillary and Bill have miscalculated the intensity of bad feeling they have engendered against themselves while trying to protect Hillary against charges of being soft on terrorism. In 2004, in spite of having a hack politician burdened with war guilt foisted up on them, many of the people who worked for the Kerry campaign supported him because they believed that the candidate would move to end the war once he took office.

But time has passed and now it’s a minute to midnight. From the hinterlands, the streets, and campuses, patience and tolerance of cowardice are wearing thin. The grass roots want a candidate who has guts, not just guile. Principles, not just polish. The willingness to do what is right, not just what is expedient.

If she really wants to be president, Hillary should take a lesson from the nomination of Harriet Miers -- merely being a woman is no longer qualification enough (if it ever was) to take support for granted when seeking a high position…even from one’s own presumptive supporters.

Friendly fire can be just as deadly as attacks from opponents. Unless Hillary shows some backbone to her base, all it will take to turn Hillary’s inauguration ball gown into tattered rags is one high-profile Democrat who is willing to take a stand against the war.

The Spiral of Speech: Cindy, Katrina & Harriet

2005-10-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

Speak up or shut up – that is the question. Cindy Sheehan Hurricane Katrina,and Harriet Miers have a lot in common. They were all the focal point of situations that have given a voice to critics of the Bush administration.

Starting with Cindy Sheehan, she didn’t just voice opposition to the war. Her example gave others a voice to express their opposition to the war – without being unpatriotic or opposing the troops. Whether she ever occupies the public stage again, she accomplished the signal task opening a channel for progressives to speak out against the war.

Hurricane Katrina did for conservatives what Sheehan did for progressives. Plenty of conservatives had reservations about the war in Iraq from the beginning. But they elected their guy to office, so they shut up. They’ve watched the budget deficits grow with increasing dismay. But Bush is their guy, so they shut up.

In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina came the administration’s fumble and FEMA’s public stumble. Criticism came from everywhere, from all sides of the political spectrum. But nowhere was it harsher than from conservative media sources: Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, Sheppard Smith, Bill O’Reilly, and Geraldo Rivera on Fox News – to a man, they were angry at and disdainful of what they saw as shortcomings in the administration’s response. As the story unfolded, Michael Brown’s appointment as head of FEMA made him a poster boy for cronyism.

Okay, so the media never really shut up, but Hurricane Katrina presented the nation with the picture of intense criticism by conservative-leaning networks, anchors, and reporters, speaking straight from the gut. There were few of the usual limits of polite discourse or camera-induced media-speak.

Now the internecine controversy about Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court finds many prominent voices in the conservative movement in full cry.

It’s the Spiral of Speech at work.

Remember Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence? She was a social scientist who studied the formation and transformation of public opinion, focusing on the expression of political and social beliefs. She established the Allensbach Institute, an influential German polling organization that conducted political and social research for decades. In 1984, she published her brilliant Spiral of Silence theory. She argued that people fear social isolation, so they monitor the environment carefully to make sure that their speech is socially acceptable in that environment. If they perceive that an opinion they hold will be unpopular, they shut up. The opposite also holds: If they see that their opinion will be warmly received, they speak up.

Before Katrina, conservatives could criticize Bush only in whispers – after all, he’s their president. They’ve held their noses and kept their mouths closed over the bloated federal budget. And many religious conservatives managed to hold their fire when John Roberts was nominated – is that corporate-looking smoothie really their kind of conservative?

Now, released from verbal bondage first by the hurricane and finally by Harriet Miers, they’ve gone public. And loud.

So maybe the conservative caterwauling it isn’t about Harriet Miers at all. (The poor woman hasn’t even had a chance to speak a word on her own behalf.) Maybe this is the first chance conservatives have had a chance to voice a longer-standing displeasure over Bush’s actions, and she is merely the recipient of the high pressure, high decibel level granted by Katrina.

Noelle-Neumann believed that people are sensitive barometers of the political climate. It might be too early to foretell the midterm elections, and maybe the spiral of speech will spin yet another direction before then. But at the moment, Noelle-Neumann might well have predicted that Republicans will be in trouble in ’06. If the spiral of speech continues, the conservative, grass-roots base might not work very hard to put back in office the Bush politicos who are likely to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court.

Road to AntiWar March & Demonstration, 9/24

2005-09-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten how tired I get of ideological yack, whether it's
right-wing religiosity or left-wing cadreismo.
I got to remember soon enough when I dropped in to a meeting
of ANSWER/LA, the organization that is planning the 9/24
demonstration for Los Angeles. It will coincide with the demonstrations
in San Francisco and Washington DC.

Oh, yeah, these are all dedicated, caring people who believe in
what they are doing. But you know, it's all the same to me...
Marx died for my freedom, Christ died for my sins, Freud died
for my libido, and I just wish these people would quit dying on my
behalf. I'll do my own dying, thank you very much.

I had my vidcam, so I shot these earnest citizens doing their
best to turn the rest of us out of our comfort zones and into
the streets. You can see the vid at www.roadette.com/ansla.htm

Well, I don't know about you, but I'll see you there. As far as I'm
concerned, we need to build wetlands, schools, hospitals, roads,
and infrastructure in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama and leave
building stuff in Iraq to the Iraqis.

See ya on the road...

2005-06-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

Blue Roadette...Blue is as blue does.

Roadette Hits the Highway

2005-06-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

Oh, yeah, got the camera in my backpack, my computer bag slung over one shoulder,
with a USB 2.0 mobile HD, and a small personal bag over the other...I'm ready to hit
the road. The RV with the dope-smoking Italians, the anorexic producers, and the blissed out yoga
teacher/masseur/driver...then there's me, just another kind of outlier--keeping my eye in
the viewfinder, my ears on the audio, my hands on the zoom rocker and the iris control,
hoping for that stop-the-world visual, rock-the-world quote, and paint the world pink
saturated sunset.

I'm out following sirens, checking out the accidents, arrests, and routine stops, slapping
a lens on 'em, they stay honest or I get royalties...either way I win.

So I'm going to put up some video on my website, www.roadette.com, so take a
look and let me know what you think with an email to roadette@roadette.com.

More from Zihua

2005-03-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

More great video! I got up at 6:30 and went to the
central beach where the fishermen´s market is held
every day. The little boats with outboard motors
pull up on the beach and the catch is sold at various
stations towards the promenade.

I also went to Joe´s Restaurant in the Casa Marina
and captured shots of old photographs he had of
Zihua since 1948 and some lovely watercolors too.

Now I´m on the way to shoot a fellow named Ken
K from Canada who has an interesting prison story
from 50 years ago.

Later, Roadette

-30-

Zihuatanejo...a lotta good video

2005-03-28T10:46:00.000-08:00

Zihuatanejo, Mexico...good weather, great beaches, cool
video. Brought the 24p dvx100 with me...it survived
the trip and customs (so far). Taped the folk dancers
in Rick´s Bar. (They´re local high school students who
do this charming regional dances in beautifully made
costumes. I shot lots of swirling colors and delicate
lace as the skirts of the girls twirled in front of me.

Later that night, I went to a late-night Mexican dance
club and taped Jose Luis...a fully modern, adult singer
with such passion and energy. A privilege to have this
video, I´ll DVD it and send it to him.

PC (Fujitsu Lifebook) with DVD burner and attached USB
hd (149 GB) is working very well. I´m editing a 3-minute
video of my nephew´s 7th birthday party, where the theme
was superheroes. I´m doing some new stuff in animation,
matting subjects in life action against animated backgrounds.
Using the bezier handles to keep the figures is slow and
interesting...rather difficult but challenge is good, right?

Back off the road all too soon. Roadette

-30-

Roadette's Theorem: 24p 16:9 24/7

2005-02-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

No Black Mamba for me...I discovered that it doesn't shoot 24p and that's a deal breaker. I shoot with a Panasonic AGDVX-100 and it's the best mini-DV vid around. It's cine-gamma setting means the blacks are coal-black and the whites are snow-white, and everything else is rich and dense.

What I liked about the Black Mamba was its native 16:9 capability. I'm trying to get ready to be a shooter in the HD world, which as we all know, is coming fast.

I called Century Optics, a high end lens maker, and asked if they were ever going to come out with an anamorphic 16:9 lens for the Panny. Yes! they said. A mockup for NAB and in production in the late spring or summer.

So instead of getting a new camera, I'll stick with the tried and true 100 and pop the anamorphic lens on the end of it for the HD look. What this lens does is allow the camera to capture video in the 16:9 format...WITHOUT losing any resolution. In the camera, there's a switch that will record a 16:9 picture by blocking off the top and bottom and blowing up what remains to fill the frame. There's a big loss of rez...too much for a vid geek like me, people.

The lens won't give you HD resolution, but it gives you the right picture shape (as opposed to the 4:3 shape we're all used to). But sooner or later I'll have to give in and go for a true HD vidcam.

Sony has come out with two new HDV format vidcams. They compress the recording to mini-DV tape and then decompress it for editing. The two new cams are the HD-FX1 and its bigger brother, the Sony HVR-Z1U camcorder. Sadly, they don't have an adjustable frame rate, so no 24p. Me...I'm going to wait.

At December's DVExpo, the Panasonic rep in the booth said they would have a sub-$5k
HD camera so-o-o-o-o-o-n. So maybe I won't need that $1k anamorphic lens after all.

Maybe in March I can get on the road again!

I'm gettin' restless.

-30-

Black Mamba for the Dark Side

2005-02-18T08:51:00.000-08:00

I have to have a Black Mamba2. I don't need another camera but I've just got to have this one. It's the next thing to a hi def camera without the hi cost. It comes from Japan (not available here in this incarnation). It's black. It's very cool and industrial looking. It's quite small. it comes with a crystal clear hard-plastic all-weather housing and a 9-hour battery belt. Oh, yeah, mama mamba, mumble over me!

It's time to cruise on the dark side. I've been shooting some kids' birthday parties....lovely, really. The most photogenic time is about 4 years old. The face is entirely individuated and looks appear that are subtle, strong, and wise. It hasn't leaned out like it will at 6 or 7 and starts to acquire a more adult form.

But enough sugar and beauty. Time for something degrading and gritty. I like Hollywood for that, after 11:00 pm through the early am hours, there's always something ugly going down.

Or I could motor up the 101 to Oxnard to the Wagon Wheel Motel. It looks like Disneyland from the freeway...a big wagon wheel (surprise!) in front, little one-story cottages with dark green shutters. But inside, oh, that's something else.

The WWM is where you go when you get out of jail to re-connect with your connection who got busted with you. Or if your wicked sister-in-law screamed at you to get the f--- out and take all your crap or you'll find it in front of the mobile home in the morning.

So you head for the WWM to hide out with all the other drifters, grifters, meth monsters, and pro and amateur sluts, pretty well mixed in with unsuspecting motorists who snap up the tourist bait and say, "Oh, how cute, let's stop for the night and head on in to L. A. in the morning."

Yeah, it's a good place to shoot dope and sex deals from the car window, with the added bonus of the occasional bust. My kinda deep night place.

-30-

Exact Mouse -- exactly what I needed

2005-01-27T23:05:00.000-08:00

I've been having trouble with my editing software and neither my
Vegas discussion group or the s/w maker (Sony) could help me with
it, although someone from the droup gave me a workaround...fairly
kludge-y but a workaround nonetheless.

The problem: I would mouseover the top right or left corner of a
video (or audio) clip on the editing timeline and the little "fader"
icon would appear. I would click and drag...but the clip would trim
instead of fading...it absolutely would not adjust the opacity of the
clip to fade it in or out.

I use a lot of fades, so this was a huge hassle. Other stuff with the
mouse didn't work as well, same type of thing...trying to click and
drag something in close quarters, as though the mouse couldn't
"read" where it was, things like moving the opacity line, the audio
volume level, or the video velocity level.

This is a big headache for me. As usual, I'm in the middle of
editing a project.

So I did a bunch of stuff. I upgraded to the higher quality cirque
glidepoint ($79) touchscreen mouse -- no result...I still couldn't
click and drag. So I ordered a 2000 dpi precision mouse and
mousepad ($100) that is on its way now.

A couple of days ago, I downloaded a piece of $20 software - Exact
Mouse. Actually, it has a couple of very nice functions like a clickable
x/y grid that lets me check on whether things are aligned in a
document. Very useful for someone who cuts and pastes as much
as I do. Also 3 "load layout" memory buttons, which is quite handy
too.

Mirabile dictu! the mouse started functioning perfectly in Vegas.
Sure glad I spent that c-note on a precision mouse...but maybe I'll
end up using it for something.

In the meantime, I'm fading in and out like a real editor...Keeping
my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, and my brain in gear.

Happy highways, Roadette

--30--

Pharos GPS

2005-01-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

So a few years ago I bought this Ipaq PDA and it never really worked for anything. It was heavy, it didn't handle handwriting well, and the battery life was hopelessly short. And when it lost power, it deleted all the added software, so I never wanted to use it.

I saw people taking notes with an external keyboard at shows and expos, but I was always leery of losing everything. Nor would I trust phone numbers and addresses on it. It sat in a drawer for a couple of years.

Then I had it upgraded for a bunch more money....more memory, bigger battery, faster chip. I still didn't like it. I still didn't use it for anything. It sat on the charger for a few months.

Then last November I was in Fry's in Las Vegas...serendipitously located on the way to my rented condo. I saw the Pharos GPS Compact Flash unit and went, "Oh, yeah!"And it worked.
Beautifully. No more Thomas Guide or sloppy maps.

Just specify the origin and the destination, say "Go", stick the thing in the Prius' coffee cup holder and --voila! the route appears. Not only is there a map and text directions, a woman's voice speaks up to give you verbal directions if you enable it."In 200 yards, turn left," she will say.

Everything goes swimmingly -- until you make a mistake. Then the voice takes on the properties of a really mean stepmom who is planning to inject something nasty into your food because she hates you as much as you hate her. "You are off-route, you are off-route, you are off-route," she keeps repeating. "Root," she says. There is no training software to let me teach her to say "rout." No way to take that particular phrase out of her vocabulary, or to tell her to say it once and then shut up.

Oh well, it's small price to pay for finally finding a use for that previously worthless (and expensive) Ipaq.

I went to New York for New Year's Eve. (Yes, it was fun.) I left the Ipaq charging. When I got back, the GPS unit didn't work. The software was good, the unit's spectral blue light was on, but it wouldn't lock onto a satellite. I did the basics...re-installed the s/w, changed the comm ports...no joy.

So a couple of days ago I got around to calling up Pharos GPS tech support. The help desk guy took me through the troubleshooting paces -- to no avail. Nevertheless, I had the feeling he really thought I had made some kind of dopey newbie blunder, like not seating the unit in the CF slot properly or not making sure the unit was securely in the CF jacket.He gave me a choice of taking it back to Fry's and exchanging it or bringing it to the Pharos labs.The company is located about the same distance to me Fry's and I was curious about Pharos.

So today, I took it to the labs. It's a nearly anonymous building in a nearly anonymous business park that isn't even in my six-year old Thomas Guide. I found it anyway.The tech support guy, Josh, met me right on time. He sneaker-netted the CF unit over to the lab and zoomed right back within ten minutes."Yep, it's dead," he announced. "We've swapped it out for a new one."

'Told you so,' I thought.

As it turns out, Pharos did very well by me. The new unit locks onto the satellite much faster than the old one ever did. And the real-time destination update is working better too. For example, the unit thinks I should turn from Wilshire to San Vicente onto Barrington to get to my apartment. But I have a shortcut that lets me avoid the c-f (not compact flash) at the light at San Vicente and Barrington. Instead, I go straight on Federal and curve on Montana, then take a right onto Barrington. Stepmom starts nagging right away. As soon as I make the right, though, the satellite reports it to the unit and it shuts her down.

I have two large, comfortable armchairs in my living room. They have a certain character, a solid presence, so I have named them: The orange one is the "Chair of Self Congratulation," and the yellow one is the "Chair of Excellence."

Ahhhhh! It is a wonderful feeling when things work, especially when they are technologically complex, gadgetologically cool, and not entirely necessary. I've decided to sit for awhile in the "Chair of Excellence" in honor of Pharos' (and Josh's and the lab's) efficient and admirable customer service.

A good day.

Roadette

-30-

Roadkill: Requiem for a Ragdoll

2005-01-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I noticed that my ragdoll cat, Willow, hadn't been eating for a couple of days. And she wasn't sleeping by my pillow either. I took her to the vet where she had a physical exam and blood and urine tests -- a two hour visit. The vet ran the tests herself and said she couldn't find anything. Willow didn't have a fever, stomach pain, or heart murmur. Her urine was a bit concentrated, consistent with not eating. The doc gave me an appetite stimulant and some yummy food and sent us home.

All afternoon Willow became more and more listless. Finally I called Dr. Kitchen and said I wasn't sure--but I was very afraid that Willow was dying. The doctor told me to bring her right away.

I'm less than 5 miles from the vet but the afternoon drive time traffic was horrendous. Willow died as I drove her to the vet. I just sobbed, stuck in traffic for a half an hour with my probably dead poor girlcat. I couldn't tell if she was dead. She was limp; was she merely unconscious?
Was the pulse I felt in my fingertips hers...or mine? After 20 minutes or so, the pads on her paws seemed cooler.

Definitely dead, I thought. I got my camera and video taped her. Of course, I arranged her carefully on the seat so she had a composed dignity in death. I pushed down her eyelids...they wouldn't stay down. I screamed. I sobbed. I coughed. And I drove like a madwoman so I could get out of that damned car. Willow didn't care.

I hate it when stuff like this happens. Would I have liked it more if she died a lingering death of cancer? Not really. But I still hate the sting and shock of sudden death. Wilbur, my other cat, keeps looking around for Willow, even though I've explained it all to him a couple of times.

I've been looking for another cat to companion Wilbur. No luck so far.

So many of the rescued cats seem horribly damaged. The breeder cats seem horribly expensive. None of them seems like they can take the place of Willow.

There's a myth that no one is indispensible. As far as function goes, that may be true. But beyond function, in the realm of the heart, I think people (and cats) really are indispensible. Other friends, lovers, partners, mentors, and pets may move in occupy their own space in my interior pantheon, but they never really fill the niche of the one who is gone.

Bye Willow. You were a good traveller with a sunny disposition and a big heart.