AS IF LIFE WEREN’T DIFFICULT ENOUGH, now we have to contend with white-collar criminals sending emails to our home computers with our bank’s logo, telling us in corporate-sounding language that “several fraudulent attempts have been made to enter your bank accounts” and therefore unless we click on the link below and “verify all our bank information, your account will be terminated by February 27, 2014. Thank you for being a valued Wells Fargo customer.” Give me ONE BIG BREAK!

I received an email like this years ago and immediately called Wells Fargo, and they gave me the e-address of their “phish” security group (phish as in “fish” for someone else’s identity and resources). I thought I was done with this brand of low-brow horse manure, but last week I received yet another official-sounding email, complete with Wells Fargo logo. I trashed it. Likewise I’ve received garbage supposedly from AOL and with an official-appearing logo, too, asking for similar privately held password, etc. NO DICE, Muchachos! I clicked NO link, divulged nothing, and DELETED it from my side of the email planet. The SOBs can go eat dead fish off a stinking, sinking barge in their own, living-under-scum neighborhood.

This morning, noted as 2:09 in the a.m., I received yet another solicitaion, this one addressed to me in a Bcc. How strange. Did that mean 10,000 other naive souls were also on the “phish list”? How many naive fools would they round up in their digital net this time? I printed out the letter and took it to my Wells Fargo teller’s window down at Raley’s. “I thought you people would like to see who’s impersonating you” was my answer as the friendly clerk asked me how she could help me today. She gave me their phish security e-address and I’m passing it along: reportphish@wellsfargo.com. Send all such nonsense to them.

DO NOT hit the link, do NOT reply to them, that just tells them they have connected with the real person. Let white-collar criminals be dealt with by others who know more about ferreting out criminals.

White-collar criminals genuinely $%$# me off. If my middle name were Noah I’d be busy building a new ark, not for the animals but for all the white-collar criminals I could load on board and then scuttle at sea, with explosive charges at the waterline.

Something to Write About
There will always be
something to write about
so long as our reason
and our passion
are kept alive within us.
It’s only when we
settle for the superficial
that writing will cease
to serve
a purpose …

Dear Writer
And suppose there wasn’t
a single soul in your audience.
Would you write any more or any less?
Would you write any better or any worse?
Or would you write despite the fact
that no one heard a single word?
Yes, I believe that write you will
and write you must,
whether you fly
or turn to dust too soon.
Such is the nature
of the gift to write.

His Words
I shall long remember
his words for he said:
If you should learn
anything from this class,
learn how to see,
to observe,
to find symmetry in a leaf,
beauty in a stone,
architecture in a seed,
structure in a bone.
And so it was
that I came to see,
to observe,
to find in my own way
that which had always been.
And though my pen
was often laid aside,
what I found were not only
the artifacts of yesterday
and the technologies of today,
but the spirit, the emotions,
the intellect, the essence of life,
the sensations of being.
And with these observations,
I began to write.

February Poem
Not in 44 years have I
ever written a poem about February.
What happens in February?
Beats me, a few Presidents
get their birthday acknowledged,
this year the rains are here
late on the West Coast or non-existent,
the East Coast is under
a perennial blanket of snow,
and even the South gets some.
Global weather change is very real to me,
but the deniers still deny it,
and the Do-Nothings in Congress
still have their well-paid jobs
and great benefits packages too,
paid for by the taxpayers
who they’re supposed to serve,
and sharks are savaged for their fins
and thrown back alive into the ocean.
Maybe things will improve by March.
Couple of weeks remaining.
Good luck, America.
Oh, yeah, the Olympics in Sochi.
Congratulations to all participants.

Peter Bray lives, works and writes in Benicia.

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