Pescadero is a bit south of there. Want to watch a road go, Nope, I’m out of here, guys, ‘bye, in 59 seconds? I believe that’s highway 84 in the backdrop, looking just like it did the last time I drove it.

Foggy, cool, quiet, farmland… Like the much-missed Phipps Bean Ranch there, where they grew every unusual type of bean you ever or never heard of, including what looked like a lima bean to fit in your palm rather than between your fingers.

That family lost their farm to the long drought and they were renters; our rains that took Stage Road in the video link came years too late. The little farm-animal petting zoo my kids liked is gone. Last I saw, their land had simply returned to nature.

Up Highway 1, the next town is San Gregorio, then Half Moon Bay, and friends of ours decided to brave the commute and build their dream house there with views of the ocean. Beautiful spot. Not crowded. Buy your fish straight off the boat from the captain, come for the famous pumpkin weigh-off in October. The flower farms. The nurseries.

The little yarn store in the little downtown that had Holz and Stein rosewood knitting needles when nobody else did anymore. The manufacturer’s discontinuance was for good reason, I found out later: some varieties of rosewood were on the CITES list and sellers had to be able to show provenance of the wood. Now all varieties are simply banned.

The road home again. The commute goes through open space and redwoods as it goes over the hills, and those woods alternately run dark and deep mid-day to blinding you with sudden patches of sun above the road and it has a high rate of crossover accidents. Our friends bought a Volvo as life insurance along with that house.

My heart went straight to them at this afternoon’s news–and of course to everyone there no matter who they are. They’ll all know someone who knew someone who had a gun suddenly aimed at them today, it’s a small town.

The updates suggest it was all fellow farmworkers.

Which just means that those with the least means to deal with the fallout are the ones who will most have to.

Why we aren’t doing better by all of us, I can’t for the life of me understand.