BACK IN those days I was still working on my degree, and if I wasn’t at university picking up units, you’d likely find me working in the trade, if there was a job to be had, which often enough there was. Short jobs fit the plan, shutdowns during semester breaks or over long weekends when an emergency repair came up or machinery needed to be swapped out and brought back into production as quickly as possible. Study and work, idea and action, braided together and it was an agreeable way to live. At Berkeley you could drop out, drop back in, take classes across departments, across schools, take just six units a semester, if that’s what worked for you. Rent was affordable, tuition was practically free, and student debt, at least as organized and sold by banks, didn’t exist. It did take longer to finish, but for me the degree itself wasn’t what mattered, and as for time and the future, these were vague and hypothetical concepts to me back then. Then along came what looked like a nice little one-day job welding pipe and it was here that my six work partners and I came this (thumb and index finger showing a sliver of light) close to losing our lives in a massive explosion.

There was no sign of