While the tomatoes cook

 I can smell the tomatoes cooking. I've gathered several hallecks full of the cherry ones and wonder if I might drop a container off to one of the many people on street corners with signs  that say "hungry" in big letters.

The raspberries got so blown in 75 mile an hour gusts (while the wild fires raged all around me) yesterday that the wind blew berries off, or dried them in place.

Blue sky is a thankful sight, even as I know loved people have only smoke to breath today, near me in Oregon and many parts of California and Washington. The Pacific Northwest is so beautiful and dear to me. It is hard to watch it burn.

The authorities made it a point to tell us that our pandemic masks are not effective to filter out fire smoke. I imagine us having then to wear space helmets in some not so distant future.

My yard is full of tinder dry spruce stems and needles, cedar and oak ends. I sweep and sweep, rake and pile to keep "fuel" from accumulating around my house. I harvest what has survived the rain and sun: cherry tomatoes, zuchinni, some raspberries and 2 more apples that fell from the winter tree. 

Meanwhile a presidential election looms, and the attack by the thugs is so disgusting I have to quarantine myself from all sorts of news. 

My city has been holding Black Lives Matter demonstrations every night now for 2 months straight. The crazies come out to torment them with guns and their giant flags and their insults and anger.

Families go walking in my neighborhood and everyone has the mask on. There is something heart breaking to me at the sight of a small child in a face mask, outside in summer.

And there are families sitting at the beloved Oregon State Fairgrounds, evacuated from their homes in Santiam Canyon, and elsewhere. They have to wear masks too, and maybe their home is burnt down.

In all of this I feel the president does not care. Disdain for the poor extends to disdain for the unlucky. How I wish for some really really, incredibly painful bad luck for him. That from the Buddhist acolyte who is taught to practice metta, the wishing well to all beings.

As I write the air turns orange to the south east. The morning winds are calming some. There are strong, brave firefighters and helpers out all over my beloved bio-region working in heat and smoke for long hours to keep the fires from taking everything. How fervent is my wish of metta for them.