{"id":229,"date":"2010-01-19T19:06:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T19:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/?p=229"},"modified":"2012-09-23T18:21:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T18:21:55","slug":"rainy-day-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/?p=229","title":{"rendered":"rainy day blues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>when a child is born in the Slabs, it&#8217;s not a cause for celebration.  two ambulances (one for the mother and one for the baby, who is being taken away) and three police cars.  sometimes it&#8217;s hard to keep my faith in humanity when so many of those surrounding me are setting each other&#8217;s camps on fire, losing their teeth and their organs to methamphetamine, alcohol and bad hygiene.  one day a guy in a van with AZ plates starts putting together a nice little camp nearby; next day there are two ambulances out there responding to reports of a stabbing, and the sheriff and an investigator come around asking me questions.  there&#8217;s a beautiful, noble young woman dying of cancer.  an old man who&#8217;s been dumped here by his family.   the hot spring is being converted by tourists into a creepy, free-for-all hangout.  my best friends are, at best, hopeless alcoholics or living with some sort of psychosociological dysfunction. many come out here to die.  but i&#8217;m here to live, and to thrive; i have drawn my line in the sand, i have pushed all my chips into the middle.  there is more entropy and <em>sabi<\/em> here than is generally considered wholesome.  sometimes it gets to me.  like today.  and they wonder why i keep to myself and keep the guns clean.  Slab City is a slippery slope, and at times i feel myself losing my balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>when a child is born in the Slabs, it&#8217;s not a cause for celebration. two ambulances (one for the mother and one for the baby, who is being taken away) and three police cars. sometimes it&#8217;s hard to keep my faith in humanity when so many of those surrounding me are setting each other&#8217;s camps [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":927,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chasterus.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}