Cơm Cháy: Why Trump Is Wrong

Ihave a patch of land I leave alone. A little more than half of the backyard is weedy and wild, although I do mow it. Right now, a mole is living in a deserted ant mound. There is another active ant mound close by, though. I leave all the wildlife out there alone, and for a while, there was even a raccoon the size of a large dog eating the nuts and birdseed on the flagstone by the basement door.

Hosts give their Cơm cháy to guests of honor. Crispy Rice is a coveted treat (but I thought she’d served me leftovers).

I did stop putting nuts and birdseed by the back door, but in other locations in my tiny backyard, marmots feed, and the squirrels, of course, rabbits and a mother deer and her fawn have been out back, of late. Last year, a mother and her twins stopped by a lot, and the raccoon still stops by, I am sure. All the leftover food is gone every morning, even when the deer are not wandering around in the ravine.

The ants have never bothered anyone, either, and unless the neighbors have a fit (one has called me names), I let all creatures alone.

A neighbor did have a cage to trap rabbits out back this year (or some kind of trap), but thankfully the rabbits were too smart for it, or so I imagined. Of course, the mother rabbit and her baby, a second-generation team, are never hungry. She does stare up at my window, almost like a pet sometimes, and I was worried. 

It is so easy to live in harmony with the creatures we share this world with. Of course, I have birds out back, too. I saw a blue Finch this year during the COVID-19 quiet. Even the crows, who especially like the birdbath, are welcomed. I do try to stagger the feeding, so the back yard doesn't become a roost, but I still remember the baby crows rolling and playing on a shed roof like children.

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Several years ago, in a tiny basin of bushes between a city overpass, a highway, and an off-ramp in Western Iowa, a frog colony took up residence. No one bothered them, and hardly anyone knew they were there.

We destroy anything in Iowa that isn’t fenced, tasseled, or stored in grain bins for futures.

I am not sure when I noticed they were gone, but it was around the same time the state decided to spray chemicals to kill weeds around the basin where the frogs lived.

There hasn’t been a frog down there for years now.

I felt rage then, and I still feel it today. The frogs had found a place to live, in an area no one cared about on U.S. Highway 75, and humans killed them anyway. The only reason the state sprayed was a clueless belief that it doesn’t matter. But it does. We destroy anything in Iowa that isn’t fenced, tasseled, or stored in grain bins for futures.

I thought I’d send a letter to the editor, but no one seemed to care much around here. My neighbor has even called me a tree hugger, like it was a bad thing to support the life of the planet.

When I researched who to call at Iowa’s department of transportation (DOT), I realized it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Iowa’s DOT had destroyed an oasis of life, and my anger about it wouldn’t change a thing.

Many believe we need more studies about the damage humans are doing to the planet. Scientists think this will help. But more studies? Really? We don’t need studies. We need action. If we don’t do something, the only creatures with any hope will be the people who rape the planet. We will all watch on our cellphones as they escape our dying world in their rocket ships.

Anyone with a brain can see flowers wait for pollinators that no longer exist, that frogs are in trouble. Even the crawling insects are disappearing. Our home doesn’t need another study. It needs our help. We need to help our planet and all of creation living on it, including ourselves.



Auanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, 2020, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her. He was yelling an expletive about China. Then a bus passed, she recalled, and he screamed after it, “Run them over!” Unbelievable, huh? Especially in the year 2020. As reported in the New York Times, it most certainly should not have happened.

This happens all the time, and when it does, we usually wake up. Unfortunately, we live in a hazy world these days, a world of reality seen through the prism of fiction and fantasy. We love zombies, and yet we love the fear of them, too, the bogeymen created to make money that clouds what we’ve become: fools who live in a fog of reality. Should we blame the politicians? Donald Trump and the Republicans, for example? Maybe, but like the fiction writers and moneymakers who cloud our minds, it’s more symptomatic than anything else, it’s greed. Perhaps reality will wake us all up like it did Chil Kong:

“‘It’s a look of disdain,’ said Chil Kong (also quoted in the article), a Korean-American theater director in Maryland: ‘It’s just: How dare you exist in my world? ... It’s especially hard when you grow up here and expect this world to be yours equally. But we do not live in that world anymore. That world does not exist.’”

This is not fake. It is accurate, and we all owe Mr. Kong, Ms. Zhu, and all who face this ugly reality, an apology. It happens to white people, too, like the crazy man who sieg heiled me in San Francisco (I was walking home). Even in Rohnert Park, California, the suburbs, students jeered me for walking to class. Someone sent girl’s underwear, too, all in colorful pastels. I’d walked to my PO box in Cotati, where they were waiting for me. The hate, the stupidity: It never goes away. We will all learn this soon enough if fantasy becomes a reality in America, especially if our current leaders’ lies and deceptions wilt into fascist rule.

Renewal with God, the arts, symbols, language, creation, others’ lives (and even travel) reaffirms the meaning of our inner world...

With the nightmarish experience of race-baiting and COVID-19, thinking turns inward to God. I believe we mourn, unconsciously, the loss of traditional experience that heightens other people different from ourselves. An example of this comes from another story in the New York Times. In Iowa, Christian communities fear they will lose their way of life if they do not support Donald Trump, despite misgivings about his character.

Renewal with God, the arts, symbols, language, creation, others’ lives, (and even travel) renews the meaning of our inner world and our understanding of others. Take this balance away, and there is a crash. The aloneness becomes an all-consuming frustration of self-isolation that scapegoats others, mostly through fear of the unknown.

How is a love of Jesus, the reality of the unconscious, the economics of force, adoration of the Buddha, or any belief, find self-acceptance in a world without others to shape our very being in the world?

If race-baiting and COVID-19 is a test, the question is: will we keep pushing one another away, or will we “share the garden,” perhaps pull the weeds together, plant new seedlings, teach one another, and give thanks for all of creation? We can build our garden anew only with each other, a garden of the intended creation, the survival of life, hopes, and dreams.

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My brother taught me how to cook rice. I remembered this when I read a New York Times story entitled “A Mother, a Pandemic and Scorched Rice.” I do not know where my brother learned how to cook rice, but he taught me well. It was one of the few times we shared something without rancor.

Our father was from upstate New York, and when he moved to Iowa to marry Mom, there were no Asian restaurants in Sioux City. So whenever Dad had the urge for Asian food, we would drive us all down to the King Fong Cafe in Omaha, Nebraska. This wasn’t a leisurely drive back in the 1950s. There were no interstates, and the trip took more than two hours.

“I think you have it backwards maybe. The 2-pound bag is the ‘American amount of rice.’ The 15 pounder is what an Asian would buy.”

We loved going down there, or at least that’s how I remember it. But the drive was long and tedious. Perhaps Dad taught my brother how to cook rice, although I doubt it. Dad was a master at making his New England boiled dinners, and other yummy treats everyone seemed to enjoy, except me (Welsh Rarebit comes to mind). Unfortunately, Asian cooking at our house consisted of canned chow mein and brown, crispy noodles. I still have limited Asian cooking skills, but the canned stuff? No way.

I buy two-pound bags of rice now, nothing at all like what many Asians call an “American amount of rice.” But I think I got this wrong. That’s what I learned from Sylvia of Los Angeles:

“I think you have it backwards maybe. The 2-pound bag is the ‘American amount of rice.’ The 15 pounder is what an Asian would buy, or actually, the 20-30 pound bags that are a staple in any Asian market.”

We are all different, which is genuinely inspiring.

We are all different, which is genuinely inspiring. My father’s love of exploring and learning has always been with me, including the joy of eating Asian food. I have been to many Asian restaurants, with friends and by myself. But the one I remember most is when my server brought me Crispy Rice. I became upset and asked her to return it for fresh, steamed rice. She accepted this, but it was a faux pas. A guest of honor gets this rice, but I thought she’d served me leftovers. Crispy Rice is a coveted part of Asian food and even has a name. It is called cơm cháy.

I read newspapers, letters to the editor, books, magazines, and articles all the time. This is what I have learned (in life and travel, too): In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you. We are all in this together, and we need to learn and accept one another for who we are. This requires listening and learning, like: Why is this rice crispy on the bottom? Or, “Is it okay to eat?” The fantastical world of conspiracy theories, outright lies, and hate must stop. It is stupid, deadly, and unworthy of America. Maybe new leadership is in order (that’s what I think, anyway).