There is another timeline where things aren't like this. A timeline where the dream that is America became a reality. A place where any person — regardless of race or creed — could come to this country and find a welcoming home. If they were industrious enough, they could build a good life out of nothing but hard work, honesty, and determination. Their children would look forward to a better world with plentiful food, cleaner waters, and longer lifespans thanks to advancements in medical science. Their public infrastructure would be even more robust — advances in technology constantly paving the way to faster transportation, less pollution, and seemingly infinite abundance. Those children would look at America as a warm embrace — a place of refuge for the downtrodden, a place whose systems benefited any who came to its shores, a place that valued honesty and hard work, and most importantly — a place to thrive.
This is not our timeline. Ours is one where America realized into a nation that focuses the majority of its wealth and industry on war and violence. Our is a nation where its children can expect to live shorter, more difficult lives than their parents. Ours is one of riots and protest. Protests around a simple phrase: my life matters. The response to this from our government is violence — tear gas, flash-bangs, beatings, choke-holds, rubber bullets, and massive numbers of civilian casualties. Our timeline is one of secret police kidnapping citizens and throwing them into unmarked vans. Mafia-like sheriffs refusing to service 911 calls to libraries because they wrote a letter supporting Black Lives Matter. It is a timeline where many citizens see Black people saying my life matters and their first response is BUT!. The only moral response is Yes! nothing more, nothing less. Anything but a Yes! is a No! when someone is asking to matter enough to continue breathing. It is heartbreaking to see so many of my fellow countrymen perform mental gymnastics to prove that, actually, state sponsored violence should result in so many citizen lives being ended. That it is somehow right for police to drive MRAPs through cities in peacetime. That it is somehow just for police to murder civilians should they happen to feel threatened by a cell phone.
We say Black Lives Matter because for four hundred and fifty years America's systems have said that they do not — proving it with slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and public murder. The same cannot be said for Blue Lives, and to insinuate that police — one of the highest paid, most powerful groups in America — have endured similar hardships as Black Americans is heartless. We say Defund The Police because the Police have drained our city budgets, defunded our social support systems, and used their unions to wield uncontested mafia-like power over our communities. We say Abolish The Police because they have become a symbol of violence, fear, and death for many citizens. Because they abandoned Serve and Protect abandoned long ago. Because they have the audacity to exempt themselves from our legal process, becoming all but untouchable should they do wrong.
Maybe you don't believe in these ideas, but it's hard to make an honest moral argument that they are without merit. History has many examples of institutions that become corrupt with power and require revolution to improve.
These protests have highlighted that many Americans are fully accepting of fascism — just so long as it is American fascism. Russian secret police are bad, American secret police are good. The Chinese government sending in federal troops to pacify cities is bad, the American government sending in federal troops to "dominate" its civilians is good. Many of these same people even go so far as to say that anti-fascists are the enemy. But there is no moral ground in which opposing anti-fascists is not full-throttled support for fascism. There is no moral ground in which property is more valuable than life.
We are still in the midst of a pandemic. I know that many got bored with this particular plot line, but it hasn't gone away. In our alternate timeline, our government's action was swift and decisive. Our citizens compassionate, brave, and proud to sacrifice a few weeks of socializing for the public good. We had a rough couple of months, but thanks to our robust medical system, we were able to return to mostly normal before the heat of summer had fully kicked in. Gatherings were fewer, but thanks to our quick and accessible testing, weddings and birthday parties were still commonplace — just grab a test on your way over. These are the benefits of living in a first world country.
Many businesses suffered in this alternate timeline, but our government was quick to realize that pandemics are bad for business. Public health was mandate number one. You cannot have a healthy economy if you don't have a healthy population. Of course we paid people to stay at home — it was the cheapest way to keep our economy afloat. And you know, keep people alive. For those that did lose jobs permanently, we were quick to provide meaningful work that was pandemic friendly. We built ten million new campsites. A thousand miles of new trailhead per week. Untold millions of acres of our forests were improved, more fire resistant than they'd been in decades. Highways were repaved. Litter picked up. We closed many city streets to vehicles and our restaurants took over, creating a thousand new plazas. Hundreds of new food trucks started roaming in every city. Farmers markets became an every day affair. Our public spaces flourished with a vibrance not seen in generations.
And everyone wore masks for a few years. Sacrifice? That's not a sacrifice. Could you imagine losing hundreds of thousands of countrymen because we were too stubborn to wear a mask every now and then?
Unfortunately, it didn't go like that in this timeline. Over 150,000 of our citizens have died here, and we are just starting to lean into the worst phase of this pandemic. Our economy is deeply broken. It's broken because there is a pandemic happening and we let it ravage our population. Pandemics are bad for business. Many businesses will never return. If they do, their customers and employees may not. Some businesses that have opened up again are sure to close down again soon. Millions have lost jobs that have disappeared for good. Many can't afford healthcare, rent, utilities, or even groceries. Those that can go to work are forced to choose between exposure to a deadly virus or not being able to afford groceries. Almost half of renters in America are facing eviction. It isn't like this in other countries. This is a uniquely American punishment.
I don't really know where things are going. We're only four months into this pandemic thing. I know that Americans are not fans of drastic change, long term thinking, nor do they particularly excel at patience. This is a problem that requires patience, long term thinking, and has to result in drastic change.
If you happen to be thinking something to the tune of what else could possibly happen this year? I can't help but think you're suffering from a failure of imagination. This feels like the start. We haven't fixed any of our other festering problems. Remember Climate Change? That part where we are actively turning our planet into one that can't support human life? That hasn't gone away either. Adaptation has to be our mindset. Times are strange, but they are sure to get stranger.
Welcome to the Spring installment of Seasons of Kyle!
Here's one overriding theme of today's world: change. I sympathize with those that see change as scary or uncomfortable, but for me it tends to have the opposite effect. Change creates the opportunity for something new, it creates space for us to break away from the broken systems of yesterday. I'm hoping that something new is more resilient, more just, and maybe not so keenly targeted at poisoning the planet we live on.
I read an article recently that posed a thought experiment: What if we didn't "restart" the economy? What if we continued to spend less time in offices, got rid of a bunch of nonsense jobs, consumed less, traveled less, and moved toward a more sustainable way to live? What if we did this not because of a virus, but instead to save our planet? Every bone in my body knows we won't go down that path, but it sure is an interesting route we've proven is within our grasp.
There are many great futures available to us, ones where we prosper and build great things together. But they all require an acceptance of change. If we remain stubborn — set on recreating a false memory of our past — vindictive of future generations for having something we don't — stuck in a scarcity mindset — our future is quite dim. If we can embrace change — embrace a mindset of abundance — tremendous prosperity awaits. Maybe. The future is kind of unpredictable.
I've had a few big what if everything could be different? moments in my life over the past decade and I'm getting more confident in taking advantage of them. So that what do you do? question keeps getting harder and harder and easier and easier to explain. As for right now, well, I guess I'm just trying to do some stuff I enjoy doing and doesn't actively contribute to the end of human civilization. For right now — that mostly means avoiding people. Hey, I'm good at that!
One of the goals I wrote down for myself last year was "invest in a local business". Investing in technology companies is easy — there's plenty of private marketplaces and VCs willing to take your money for Tik Tok Too. But how do you invest in your local ice cream shop? That's something I've been trying to figure out.
Refuge Coffee
When I moved to South Lake full time, it was about the same time that Blue Bottle got acquired by Nestle and I was feeling less and less great about giving them money for coffee. My friend Corey had also recently moved to South Lake and happened to find a guy a local roaster on Facebook.
That guy turned out to be Jared Marquez, the owner/roaster of Refuge Coffee, and now my business partner as well. Jared roasts some of the most delicious coffee I've ever had, and I'm super excited to help Refuge live up to its full potential. I'm not totally sure what that looks like yet, but it'll be fun to figure it out.
So hey — maybe order some coffee! Maybe set up a subscription and get a rotating selection of coffee in your mailbox every month. I promise his coffees are ridiculously delicious.
Resilience Fund
As you might have guessed, it's been a little difficult to find new businesses to invest in lately given the plague. Plagues are bad for business.
Which is why I was happy to stumble upon the Resilience Fund. It's run by the Sierra Business Council, and this particular fund is aimed at helping businesses adapt to the post-plague world. The gist of it is pretty simple: they screen businesses, give out loans, and provide business coaching on how to adapt their business to our coronavirus reality. The really cool thing about this particular fund is the loans are pass-through: the businesses pay 2% interest and the investors receive 2% interest.
Originally this program was confined to north shore businesses (Truckee / Tahoe City area), but I got in touch with them when they were trying to bring it to South Lake. As it turned out my initial investment spurred the city to match my funds, and now it's up and running here on the south shore! The first loan was recently awarded to Freshies so they could repair their deck and offer outdoor seating again.
Warpspire
Somewhere along the lines, I finally got around to redesigning my website, by which I mean I removed almost everything and replaced it with almost nothing. Classic Kyle.
I do miss writing there, and I look forward to figuring out what my personal site ends up looking like with this new chapter in my life.
The Ranch
The plan for this year was to have a beta-run for a yearly event out at the ranch. We'd invite a bunch of people to come out for two weeks during the height of wildflower season to camp out and have a good time. We'd play with some power tools, build some stuff with trees, go on some hikes, dip in the swimming hole and enjoy some time in the forest.
But, of course, the pandemic. So instead it's just been me and Jess putting in some sweat equity to make the place a bit more comfy. I threw out all my goals for the year and just started working on stuff that makes us happy.
This is the little cabin we sleep in — just about big enough for a full sized bed. We cleaned it out, built some shelves, and put a fresh coat of paint on everything. Now it's a perfectly instagram-worthy cabin, just as nature intended.
I've been dying to get some milling infrastructure set up at the ranch, so this year I took a little step forward and got an Alaskan Chainsaw Mill. I can't say it's easy, but it is oddly satisfying to turn a tree into some straight boards. Or a bench. Every swimmin' hole needs a bench.
We also got around to giving the old cabin some TLC. We ripped out the old mouse-eaten chinking, gave it a fresh coat of oil, and put some permanent chinking back in on about half the building. The goal of all this is the ultimate luxury: a mouse-proof building!
This is the fifth summer I've owned the ranch, and the first one I've really felt like I've made real progress. When we bought this property, the previous owners hadn't been there for over fifteen years. The water systems were broken, the road was in need of serious repair, and the buildings had been boarded up and left to the creatures of the forest. Now we've got running water, hot showers, solar power, satellite internet, and are getting caught up on forest and building maintenance. We got out there the earliest yet (thank you, 4Runner), got all the winterized systems up and running the first week, and have had most of the summer to work on projects.
It's a good feeling. And I have Jessica to thank for a lot of that. This is also the first year I've had any kind of consistent help out there, and it's made a huge difference. So maybe next year, if we get this pandemic under control, I can have y'all out there to try this thing again.
Until next time, Kyle