CUL-DE-SAC

Brown leghorns we got from the cramped cages of an egg farm.

My chicken coop out back had been home to six chickens before three of them died. On Friday, we replaced those three by transplanting three chickens from a nearby egg factory.

This is the kind of egg farm that’s been outlawed by California Proposition 2. Chickens there are confined in rows of cages that allow them to lay eggs, but not do much else. Unfortunately, Prop 2 was written by a committee of fools and it’s still being challenged in court for being unworkably vague.

My new hens are brown leghorns that are past their egg-laying prime. That’s why the farmer wanted to sell them. But they will still lay enough to satisfy my needs for a few years, so I adopted them. You might say I rescued them, in the way some people rescue retired racing dogs. If these hens hadn’t been sold to me, they would have probably gone to make chicken soup.

The girls show their history in many ways. Being crammed into small cages caused them to lose a lot of feathers by constantly rubbing against steel wire. Most noticeably, the fronts of their necks are bare from reaching into a deep metal food trough. Their beaks were trimmed to make them less “peckish.”

They are now in a backyard chicken coop where hens lay eggs and roost. My chickens descend into an enclosed run in the morning, and wander around my property in the afternoon when we decide to open up the door to the run. But the factory hens are unaccustomed to going anywhere.

So far, they are alarmed by the sheer spaciousness of their new quarters. They gingerly lift and replace their feet, as if they think the ground might swallow them up. They seem to have learned how to feed and drink, and they are beginning to peck at the ground. They follow the native birds into the coop at night, but they haven’t yet used the roosting bars.

One thing I will say for them: They are producing eggs. Over the past two days we’ve gotten two from the three new chickens. They’re not so traumatized that their bodily functions have been put on hold.

The farmer who sold them said moving them to a new environment might cause some “mortality.” So far so good. If one or two of them do die… well, they’re just chickens. But I hope they survive and I hope they have a couple more years of egg laying in them. I also hope their feathers come back and they start to look more like the handsome hens we have already.

Somehow Pearl Harbor Day always gets me. A few years ago, I was hosting a radio show and the producer or someone told me to mention it’s Pearl Harbor Day. So I said over the air, “Happy Pearl Harbor Day!”

The angry calls immediately came into the station. Pearl Harbor Day is a solemn occasion, they said, and why is this moron telling us to be happy! KPBS management went into damage control and eventually it all died down. Until yesterday.

Again, I was hosting a talk show and, again, the producer said I should mention the occasion. “Happy Pearl Harbor Day,” I said. The process repeated itself. Angry calls. Damage control. Stoney looks from station managers.

I thought the first event was just a couple of years ago, but it must have been longer past. Otherwise, the request to “mention Pearl Harbor Day” would have set off at least a faint alarm bell.

So what’s my problem with Pearl Harbor Day? I guess I’m just not sure what to say to people about it. I’m not in the habit of offering people a Pearl Harbor Day salutation. If it’s New Year’s Day or Christmas, that’s easy. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

But Pearl Harbor Day? Do I wish people a somber Pearl Harbor Day or a ponderous Pearl Harbor Day? I suppose the thing to do is just say, “It’s Pearl Harbor Day,” and leave it at that. But the pressure of preparing for a live show didn’t give me time to imagine a proper reference.

I wrote an apology to listeners, which I’ve copied below. These days I rarely do live broadcasts, and I don’t know why they always seem to land on Pearl Harbor Day. With some luck, that coincidence will not be repeated.

“On Friday I appeared on KPBS Radio’s Midday program. It was Pearl Harbor Day and I wished people a ‘Happy Pearl Harbor Day.’ My intentions were good but it was a poor choice of words. The attack on Pearl Harbor was shocking and tragic, and its anniversary is not a time to invite people to be joyful. As the son of a WW II Navy veteran, I’m sorry if any of you were offended.”

-Tom Fudge

The 2012 election had some high points, and the vote on Proposition 34 was not one of them. The initiative would have ended the death penalty in California. It was voted down. It would have been remarkable if it had passed. But it didn’t.

If you think that means the state can go ahead killing axe murderers, here are a couple of facts. Though it has more than 700 people on death row, California has not executed anyone for six years. California has condemned about 900 people to death since 1978, but it has only executed 13.

The death penalty in California is a joke, and it’s not very funny. It’s a expensive farce for one thing. Given the cost of death penalty appeals, the capital phase of murder trials and maintaining death row in San Quentin, the legislative auditor estimated the state would save $100 million a year if the death penalty was gotten rid of.

Furthermore, it’s a joke that’s told on the families of murder victims. We made a promise to them that the murderers of their sons, daughters and spouses would be put to death. But the condemned are a lot more likely to die of old age than die of execution.

I thought of that when I voted on Prop 34, which would have taken that broken promise and put it in writing. If the initiative had passed, all the existing death sentences would have been commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I lived the first 37 years of my life in Midwestern states with no death penalty. I didn’t feel any more unsafe, and I expect California will go that way eventually. Religious devotion and civilization run against capital punishment, and I think it’s just a matter of time before it’s gotten rid of here.

How that will happen is a good question. The last state to do away with the death penalty was Connecticut. And while they abolished the death penalty for all future criminal cases, they also left it intact for the people who were on death row. That sounds like the most promising path for California.

The people now in San Quentin were sentenced to death, and we should carry it out. That won’t please the ideological backers of the abolishing the death penalty. But we’d be finishing what we started, and we’d be keeping the promises we made to those families.

That would also make voters more likely to accept the abolition of capital punishment. I, for one, wouldn’t shed any tears for the people being put to death. They made a choice to abuse, rape and kill and they’ll suffer the consequences they should have fully expected.

But ultimately the death penalty is too high a price to pay for justice, and it depends too much on a judicial system that’s prone to error. I do wonder what should be the ultimate punishment for people who commit our most terrible crimes. Should it be life in prison without parole? And if it’s life in prison, should serial murderers get access to TVs and computers while they’re incarcerated? Should they get plenty of time to socialize and exercise?

Should the people who commit unspeakable crimes that shock us to the core be treated in prison no differently than someone who held up a liquor store?

This year Anders Behring Breivik was convicted in Norway of murdering 77 people, most of them kids. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Twenty-one years?? Is there any American who wouldn’t find that lenient to obscene proportions?

But Norway is a different country and they have to live with their decisions. In California, we have to decide what equals justice. We tried the death penalty,  and that just didn’t work.