LIFE IMITATING ART

MY LAZY BUDDY

   Exploits of Hemingway our polydactyl have been documented here in previous posts. But here is something you may not know. He is a rescue cat from HART our local shelter-The Homeless Animal Rescue Team. He was an abandoned "freak," an off spring of feral cats in Paso Robles.
   The woman who brought him to HART had been watching a feral cat as it prepared to birth kittens. After they arrived the mother carefully moved the litter over a fence, except for Hemingway. Instead she dropped him elsewhere and left. Rescuers reason she wanted nothing to with a kitten who had six fingers on each paw. Being dumped by your mom could give you an attitude, right?
     When he arrived in Cambria he was put into a separate holding cage because he was wildly rambunctious and a "biter." They warned us he might be a handful but everyone loved the little scamp. They gave him an apt name.

   Hemingway was even a "poser boy" for a benefit.

  He is the first of his "line" to be domesticated. Nothing in his genes prepared him to be a "pet." Perpetually curious and affectionate he's been a delightful pal. A little slow, I call him a Palooka, he is playful. The trash trucks and mail unit scare him. He shows evidence of hypersensitive hearing. But he is playful, easy going and loves attention. He knows he's family. Good, for a "left for dead" creature.

  Well, as he has grown he's perfected the Garfield Syndrome. When not eating he loves to nap, often in the Jade planter on the front deck. Here he expresses his pique at being disturbed during a nap.

   But it's not about nothing. Of recent he's learned to resemble a corpulent old man dozing in an easy chair. That jade makes a perfect back support.  The good life!

   Life confronts us with complexity and the news suffers no shortage of inhumanity, but pets, from rescue shelters especially, are memes of caring. In return, we have fascinating entertainment while we abet a job description to pine for.

WE WERE BORN THAT WAY

    Bob Christy, a former colleague and longtime friend, who's blog can be found in the Rich Blogs Column to your right on LightBreezes, posted recently on the difficulties vexing transgender people. 

    We are in a learning curve. Societal understandings are morphing. Prejudice, ignorance-often because of limited or narrow life experience and exposure and a moralistic judgementalism will be overcome. Demographic cohorts of 12-40 year olds get it. You see the fault line? Life is more intricate than old black and white television. 

     The CBS 60 Minutes piece on a swimmer on the Harvard mens team is a case in point. He was born a girl, but didn't fit the gender. She had been a champion in girl's competitions and was offered a scholarship. But a gender change changed more. He now competes on the men's team. He is taking hormone treatments, had a breast removal and is a man with a vagina. 
     Generational perceptions influence how we think and react and that is especially so in this area. But more new challenges are due. Pharmacological advances, regenerative medicine, medical technology and artificial intelligence in particular will have humankind scratching our heads trying to determine what makes a human, human? That is an easier question today.

PINERIDGE ONIONS

   More evidence of why I appreciate that Lana likes to play in the dirt.

    One of our favorite Italian chefs is receiving a gift. 

    See you down the trail.

ANOTHER TAKE ON MIKE WALLACE & BIRDS ON A LINE

  MIKE WALLACE AND THE HOMOSEXUALS

     I heard from readers after my Monday post on Mike Wallace. Some of you took me to task for my praise of his
contribution to American broadcast journalism.  Here's a 
portion of an email-

"You forgot to mention how he set back gay rights with his 1967 special The Homosexuals.  By the time he was done with the special which featured a doctor who stated the homosexuality was a choice and that they could never be happy....a number of parents stopped supporting their gay children, threw many of their own kids out and many gay adults lost their jobs.  At the time Mike Wallace associated socially with gay people including long time partners.  This was a news man who used sensationalism at the time to gain viewers.

He never countered that original show.  Later he said that he had made a bad judgment call.  That was it."

   And another:

"The old toughie is probably laughing

that he's getting a pass on some of his

outrageous sensationalism.  Look at 

how he bashed gays.  Think you could

broadcast that kind of stuff today?"

     I either forgot about the broadcast, or never saw it.  The piece, which aired in 1967, has a legacy and even has

a significant Wikipedia link and other commentary.

     One source has edited portions of the broadcast and

posted a short YouTube video.

        A virtue of this means of communication is the quickness of response, the depth of research accessible with only key strokes and the value of conversation.  So I amend my thought's on Wallace by expanding it to include this post.

I hope this now broadens the view and achieves more balance.

       It will be interesting to see how CBS handles it on their

60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday.

DAY BOOK

RIDING OUT THE STORM
The birds have created an interesting profile.

See you down the trail.

MIKE WALLACE, GOLDEN & AN S CAR GO

WHAT MIKE WALLACE DID TO 60 MINUTES

     I was lucky to work in the same area as Mike Wallace, when he was still one of the CBS Convention team correspondents.  I was covering the campaign for a radio group, but it put me in the same press room and general neighborhood.  Back then I thought it odd to see Wallace in that kind of role, because I thought he was best as an interviewer or interrogator and that is the point of this.

     Mike Wallace had the ability and skill to talk to anybody about anything.  He rarely, if ever, pulled punches.  He could get into places and talk to people in a way that amazed us all.  If Wallace was scheduled to do an interview, the 60 Minutes audience was sure to be even larger.  

    The original 60 Minutes team was superb, but Wallace and his pointed, rapier technique was indeed the point of the spear that took that show into the heart of America. 

      Wallace was a performer on a news magazine, an experimental approach to journalism, that took broadcast journalism into the Top 10 most watched shows. It created a new heft for broadcast journalism, proved to network executives that news was not only good for people, it could be good for business. 

     Wallace's style and punch also put people on notice.  There was an old joke "You know you are going to have a bad day if, when you show up at the office, Mike Wallace is waiting for you."  He helped "out" a lot of villains, confronted power, made it entertaining and he worked hard.  He stayed much longer than most and television and broadcast journalism were bigger and better because of it.

THESE HELP MAKE THE GOLDEN STATE

GOLDEN

With help from Sweet Talk Radio

here's a few seconds of "breath it in" time.

   DAY BOOK

NOVEL RIDE 

See you down the trail.