SO LONG PAL & SUPREME FIGHTS

Phil

    The man behind me poked me in the back and said

"So you're from Indianapolis huh?"

     "Yes"

     "You know Indianapolis is very famous in this town."

     "Is that right?" I said, expecting a comment about the Indianapolis 500.

      "Yea. We've got an oncologist out here who sends his worst patients to Indianapolis, because it'll be the longest year in their life."

       And that is how I met Phil Allen 14 years ago. We were prospecting a post retirement move to Cambria and that chance meeting led a great friendship. In fact Phil and Nan became our California "mentors" helpful in countless ways as we awaited retirement, decided on making the move, purchased a home and then beginning the life changing odyssey. 

       Early on Phil invited Lana and me to join him and Ed Simonsen on Saturday mornings for coffee and crepes at Lilly's. Ed, 90 at the time, ran the Drop In Tennis play. He and Phil convinced this longtime basketball player to take up a new sport. Phil loaned me a racquet and kept after me to take up the game. He invited this rank novice into play in his regularly scheduled foursomes and thus my love affair with the game began.  

        As Phil rounded 80 his game began to slow and a chronic back problem began to take its toll. Before he finally hung it up he'd limp onto the court and if the shot was anywhere within reach he'd slap a backhand or snap a forehand at you, or at your feet, or toward the alley. He loved tennis and years later when hobbled by other health issues he'd remind those of us playing how lucky we were.

        "Even a bad game of tennis is a great day."

        He also loved jokes, cigars and friends. On that first chance meeting he invited us back to his house for coffee. I noticed a cigar in the ashtray on his deck overlooking the Pacific. That led to an invitation to join the "prayer group" a group of his buddies who'd gather on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons for a cup of coffee, tell jokes and enjoy a cigar. Not everyone smoked a cigar, but Phil did so with relish. The "prayer group" was religious about enjoying life, inquiring about the well being of friends and even pausing for a prayerful moment when someone was having trouble. Nan called it "Smoke and Joke," in fact a more appropriate name. There'd be days I couldn't make it and Phil would remind me I needed to get "my priorities straight." For more than 20 years that circle of friends added to the zest for life he enjoyed. And from time to time a few "younger guys" like me, were invited in. We called ourselves the youth movement, but Phil, Reg, John and Paul were young at heart.

         Phil used to say "It doesn't get any better than this" and he'd flash his thumbs up signature. It could be on a deck with the old boys, or having coffee with the tennis crowd or relishing a meal out.

          We used to joke about Phil's endless supply of jokes. He always took pride in saying he "could tell his jokes in any crowd," and for the most part that was true. One night a few years ago he went to an open mic night at the Lodge and between musical acts trotted out some of his best stuff in a short stand up routine.

        Phil was a lot more than a jester. He was a brilliant mind with a great curiosity forever recommending history books or documentaries. He had worked for an engineering company and had a grasp of technology and numbers that was off the chart. Some of his greatest understanding of math was the stock market. He'd begun investing when he was 12 or 13 and a newspaper boy. Phil retired before most people, giving him some 30 years in our village. When Phil spoke, people listened. I guess there was a time when he applied his knowledge to horse racing. In the last years he of spoke about wanting to get back for a day at the track.

        He was a great pie maker and analytical about the taste of the fruit and the need for a lack of need for sugar. He had a penchant for rhubarb saying the Midwest variety was superior to California's. There was a particular kind of apple or a specific type of lemon he needed before making his pies.

        The last few years have been tough but in many ways illuminating. Phil's back required extensive surgery and rehabilitation. A stroke robbed the strength of his right leg. He still harbored a hope he could get back to tennis, but that was not to be. He still got to coffee, the prayer group, though he had to forgo his beloved cigar. He enjoyed dinner with friends. He hated the idea of using a walker and undertook a regime of practice so he could walk with just a cane.  

       Many of us marveled at his determination and he was rightfully proud. It scared the heck out of us, but he'd park the walker or the cane and walk around to show us his improvement and seemed to be moving that right leg and foot by the force of will power. Then a few months ago when we were enjoying one of our early rains, Phil, with walker snuck out on to his sloped driveway to wash his car. A mid 80's man, with a walker on a steep angle, washing his car in a cold rain.

       "I saved 10 dollars" he said a couple of weeks later after recovering. Guys used to kid him about changing his own oil, something he gave up only a few years ago.   

        Phil was a philanthropist and many groups have benefited. He was a straight spoken guy. You knew in a moment where you stood with him and he pulled no punches.  He went to the leader of a group he thought was ruining the organization. He told him he was "racing a bus down hill with no breaks and he needed to go." He even offered to help the guy leave.

        He had a zest for life and an enthusiasm that was exemplary. Despite the recent medical adversities he enjoyed the gusto of being alive.

        Phil departed this world on Valentine's Day. Lana and I were fortunate to spend time with him the evening before and he reacted with delight when Lana mentioned she was baking him a loaf of bread.

        We were more fortunate to have been befriended by Phil all those years ago. The "Prayer Group," Lilly's and Cambria will seem emptier. We will miss him.

        As those of us of the boomer generation continue coming into our senior years, a rascal like Phil is a great example of living fully to the last breath and always appreciating the blessings of family, friends and a good laugh.

         Phil, we saw this coming. Guess we should have gotten you a ticket to Indianapolis.

     

     

THE SUPRME FIGHT

    True to the unpredictability of political outcomes, the battle over the Supreme Court nomination is likely to have surprising impact.

     The President should put forth a nomination and the Senate should consider it.  

      How all of that plays out will begin to wash into the Presidential campaign. If the GOP in the Senate under the obstructionist McConnell hold fast on their opposition it could begin to erode their majority and wouldn't that be interesting.

       Who the President puts forward will put all candidates into a position of reacting.  Not even Aaron Sorkin can write scripts like this.

     See you down the trail.

CAT AND UMBRELLA-IS PRIVACY FREEDOM?-GOODBYE CHARLIE

THE CAT AND THE UMBRELLA

  An umbrella drying on the spa provides a perfect place for a Hemingway nap, interrupted by camera sounds.

  "Hmmm. You woke me up bub!"

  "Ahhh!  Big stretch and look at these polydactyl paws."

  "Looks like little sister Joy is curious." 

  "Hey, I was here first!"

  "Good, she's gone.  Now if Mr Camera would leave me alone I could get back to napping."

TIME WITH THE CITIZEN

   The complex detail and playing time will rule this film off  people's list, but it is a film citizens should see.  CITIZEN FOUR is a nearly two hour examination of leaker Edward Snowden's act of leaking the documents that alerted the world to the pervasive surveillance under which we live.

    Most probably have an attitude about Snowden and what he did, but it's my take that until you've looked very closely into this, as documentary maker Laura Poitras has done, you've made your judgement without benefit of intimate, revealing, complex and important detail.  CITIZEN FOUR is about detail and implication. My bias is journalism; information gathering, fact checking, analysis with opinion or judgement coming last.  

    Even with all I have read and studied, I was still undecided about Snowden- a patriot, hero, trader, goat, grandstander? I've been given a closer examination of the leaker, his motivation, the absolute lying by US Government  officials, the specifics of the surveillance, the handling of the story around the world, an ultra-pervasive British spying program and the relationship between Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story and Snowden. 

    It's still a confusing situation on which to draw a judgement. It is clear to me Snowden was a young idealist and perhaps even a bit naive in his actions.  Seeing him now in Russia, you see a changed man. He looks worn, fatigued and even beaten emotionally. He says he did the right thing, but I sense he didn't fully estimate the toll it would take.

    Did he do the right thing?  Paths diverge at this point.

Those whom this nation tasks with its protection, security and law enforcement face a more difficult and lethal challenge than civilians can begin to understand. It is a hostile world and information and intelligence is a tool and weapon. Technology has provided keys to amassing that information. But should all citizens be subjected to a loss of privacy in an effort to provide security.  As an analyst in the documentary says, privacy is freedom and liberty. Loosing any privacy is a loss of freedom.

     It is not as though a monolithic dictator or fascist regime is using the gathering of the data to their specific advantage, but it is only a step from having the data to that kind of reality.  

     Presently information is being collected and gathered by a variety of agencies and in numerous ways. Now, this is a muddled kind of security, but the lack of federal coordination and the inability federal agencies to communicate well and to cooperate is a hedge against the information's singular mis-use. Still, in my mind, that is no defense. The point is, we are all suffering from a loss of privacy. Some of it we give up willingly. Social networks and commercial organizations gather and collect lots of data. It is something else when the federal government lies to us about what they are doing and what they are doing with what they gather. It is quite more serious when they use the cover of national security. Politicians have used that cover before, for all of the wrong reasons.
     Some have said if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. That is faulty thinking and is tantamount to  permitting a stripping away of any expectation of privacy, your most intimate freedom. That thinking is a slippery slope.

     The public has a right to know almost everything. The safety of agents, troops and critical operations must be maintained and that by nature puts some information out of public view, but in our process of governance there should be congressional oversight and judicial review.  We have a right to know that we were being spied upon and that our government lied about it. Had it not been for Edward Snowden, all of this would have been academic if not non- existent.  Did he violate a law? Yes. Did he tell Americans that his government was also violating the law? Yes again. He also revealed how.

      Attend Citizen 4 with friends and you may disagree with what it means to you individually, but it raises the kind of issues a democratic republic needs to address in the 21st Century. It is a bit slow, even tedious, but freedom is worth all of that.

IN THE SURF

    

GOODBYE CHARLIE

     Charlie Skinner, president of ACN died with his boots on but I hate it. As the extraordinary HBO series The Newsroom comes now to the finale, Sam Waterston's expertly portrayed old hand news executive goes out in a rant and rage. The networks new owner, a tech company billionaire is imposing  his silly but all too real reliance on social networks to guide news content and well, old Charlie's heart just couldn't take it.  I was particularly fond of the Waterston character who's life and death could have been drawn from real case studies. That is the beauty and brilliance of Aaron Sorkin's drama-there's a whole lot of truth in that fiction.

See you down the trail.

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWS

   Sunrise was too pretty to ignore. My admiration of it woke up that corner of the brain where vexing thoughts are caged, waiting to leap into a blank space. 

   One of the troubles with the news business is the derogatory but not inaccurate sobriquet for a style of news "If it bleeds it leads." To be clear that means if it is crime or disaster, tragedy, plane crash, wreck, fire, explosion, or etc. it's the first story of a newscast. Fortunately not all television news rooms operate by that ethos, but too many do. The more competitive the market, the more likely there's a station that follows that path.

   NIGHTCRAWLER starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a stringer (freelance) photographer is a well done examination of the pathology of that kind of news, as played out in Los Angeles.

    One of the brilliant elements of this film is the extraordinary visual treatment of Los Angeles at night. Oscar winning Cinematographer Robert Elswit offers a rich and stunning essay. Seeing his work, especially the open sequence, is worth the price of admission. 
    Director Dan Gilroy plumbs the exploitative, crass world of sensationalism that passes as a kind of tabloid television.  Rene Russo, who coincidentally is married to Gilroy, is marvelous as a desperate news director, once a beautiful young reporter now trying to hang on to a job at a low ranking station by spiking the ratings with overnight gore gathered by Gyllenhaal.  

     Gyllenhaal's character is a solitary whacko. I think of him as a slick cousin or even brother to Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Gyllenhaal's performance is incredible. As Jon Stewart joked he only blinked twice in 2 hours. Indeed Gyllenhaal's eyes and manic delivery are so riveting it'll give you the creeps.  It is a great character by which Gilroy can explore the senselessness of exploitative content and the tyranny of ratings.

     I know of situations where station reputations and staff integrity have been destroyed by this cheap and trashy management and style. Still, there are enough viewers who thrive on tabloid journalism that it exists.

PROFESSIONAL and/or Citizen Journalists

  How deeply should newsrooms go in utilizing or pandering to social media? The debate continues and the first episode of NEWSROOM, the excellent Aaron Sorkin HBO drama mines the issue set against the Boston Marathon bombing.  

   NEWSROOM is to journalism what WEST WING was to politics, only much better because it is more realistic, drawn from real critical judgements and experience. Plus the acting, writing and directing are all worthy of the multiple Emmys.  

BEEN THERE-DONE THAT

   As a television news director I guided an evolution of a traditional and historic news organization into digital news gathering, processing and dissemination.  We changed the technology on which we wrote, edited and the cameras we used to capture the pictures.  Our remote trucks changed from microwave to satellite. We changed our work flow from television only to television and Internet. We moved from thinking only about the big screen to feeding computers, pads, and phones. We changed our graphics, our presentation style and our pace. In changing how we worked, we also advanced the output and our approach to thinking about what is news and how we cover it.  

    I've been retired a few years now, but even back then we were starting to wrestle with blogging, the ethics and legality of using material from personal phones or on line chatter. Now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other micro blogging and social networking realities impinge on how a news shop operates. I'm not sure they've got it figured out, or properly.  But as my old friend and former broadcast journalist the Catalyst AKA Bruce Taylor cajoles me, don't worry about it. You can't do anything about anyway.  It's another generation's problem. Yea, probably so. But it makes great fodder for film, television or having a drink and bullshitting, or posting about.

     It may still wake me, but Bruce is right. It's someone else's job now.

DIVERSIONS

Late Afternoon

 Evening

Post Sunset

Neighbors
could have been the national bird

Heavy Weather on the way

Turning on the night lights

THROWBACK TO A GOOD DAY

    My late brother Jim, at the wheel and yours truly enjoying a day of golf in the late 70's or early 80's.  Dad was an extraordinary golfer, Jim and I not so much.  But we had fun.

      See you down the trail.

LIGHT FUN & THE NEWS BIZ

SORKIN'S GENIUS RUNS THE NEWSROOM

Courtesy HBO

     It's a subjective thing and thus, Aaron Sorkin's scripts in season two of HBO's THE NEWSROOM weave a brilliant faux reality that parodies, parses and probes what we know as "true reality," however vague and ephemeral that may be and gives us entertainment without peer.
     Last year he build a foundational understanding of the sliding iterations of broadcast journalism in modern America, against the back drop of journalistic iconography. This year he bores in, delivering core samples, albeit fiction, that examines how it is in the newsrooms of broadcast journalism. The fiction is virtually life like, and he delivers characters, drama and intrigue in story arcs that are painted in some of the most effective dialogue ever.
     The situational ethics are real and so are the characters. Yes, it's fiction, but after a life time in newsrooms I tell you unreservedly he nails it all. And brilliantly he holds a mirror to America where our political and journalistic mores are exposed, laid bare and in a way that will move you-to laughter, anger and even tears. And yes, the cast, everyone of them are up to walking and talking those brilliant words.
      If you haven't joined in this Newsroom fandom, make a point of starting with last year's season 1.  I'll best most of you will be like the rest of us-we can't wait until the next episode.  It's not Downton Abbey, but it is just as addictive. And it is about our age.

LIGHT FUN

     Jeff and Florence Pipes hosted a marvelous wine club dinner in the Pipestone Vineyards.  The candles and torches set against the gloaming created an enchanting mood. You can see more in a brief video below.

MUSICAL SHADOWS

 A pre sunset concert at Harmony Cellars provided a couple of interesting shadow moments.

Spend a gorgeous evening dinning in a vineyard

in about a minute and half-thanks to Pipestone Vineyards and my IPhone.

     See you down the trail.

LETTING THE CHIPS FALL...

IN THE ARENA OF THE MIND

     "It may be different elsewhere. But a democratic society-in it the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may."

      John Kennedy said that a little less than a month before he was killed.  He was speaking at Amherst College October 26, 1963.

       "In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation."

       I wonder how many writers today concern themselves with such lofty concerns. Maybe they do in little pieces and then over time, taken in mass, it adds up.
        It's  harder to get your voice heard through the mass of signals that fill the public square. Digital media, social networks, cable, broadcast, the whole universe of film and print are choked with content, much of it simply trying to out pace the others.  In some cases outrage and anger get attention. Those may be genuine, but are they the visions of truth JFK spoke of?

       The more I watch Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom the more convinced I am he is serving his vision of truth. Here's why I think so.  
       The modern media, in all of it's iterations, does more to shape our sense of reality, expectations and vision of government than most people make themselves aware of. As consumers of the din we rarely give ourselves the time to ponder the impact of what we consume.  We think more about what we eat, than consider what we put into our heads though we spend hours a day consuming information flow.

        Sorkin's work cuts to the quick.  Some criticize the "preachiness" of it.  I don't see it that way.  I think he is offering a valuable insight into the media machine that shapes our attitudes and affects our sense of destiny. Yes, it is entertainment, but it also holds a mirror to a powerful element of modern life and Sorkin, as President Kennedy opined, lets the chips fall where they may.

DAY FILE

A FUN "SCHOOL"

     Each year, since our move, we make a point to attend

Coastal Discovery Day up at San Simeon.  The Discovery Center, joined by a host of other nature, environmental, park and educational groups hold a kind of carnival overlooking the Pacific.  It's for kids with lots of hands on activities, but each year we learn something and pick up a few interesting shots.  This year I learned about the hearing chambers and ear drums (bulla) of whales, elephant seals and dolphins.  Amazing technology at work in those sonar sensitive relatives.

  The Falcon expert had a couple of beautiful friends.

    An injured wing has grounded this Pelican, now in the custody of a rehabilitation specialist.  He eats 3 pounds of sardines or smelt each day.  He'd eat more if he were burning calories by flying.

    Here are a couple specimens of Elephant Seal skulls.

     In the frame below is the skull of a Dolphin.  The bottom piece, in the shadow, is the kind of sensor bone that transmits sounds from long, medium or short distances, using a different portion of the bone to do so.  The differing signals are then processed in a sophisticated brain.

      Skulls of native wild life.

  While it was sunny and bright up at the cove, south toward
Cambria, another micro climate existed, in the fog.

See you down the trail.

WHEN LIFE IMITATES ART

IT HAPPENS

      Around America there are running conversations about Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama The Newsroom.  

     I posted earlier about the superb "ballistic monologue" by Jeff Daniels as a cable net news anchor in responding to a question about America's "greatness." The truth was withering. 

      Episode 2 provided its great moment when the same 

character opened a broadcast and apologized for the failure of American journalism.  Again Sorkin speaks truth.

      Lana asked if seeing the drama made me miss my days as a news executive or news anchor.  It did fire those synapses that John Chancellor, the late NBC anchor, used to call "the fire horse instinct,"  answering the bell.  Seeing the election night scenarios brought back memories of many such nights.  Election night was always the most "fun" and it required a decompressing that only those who have been there can fully understand.

      There were other memories, however.  The battle between the head of the news division and the network president over the network's need to curry favors with congressmen because their votes were vital to the network's business interests. It was a scene familiar to me. Been there and done that. Stood my ground on ethics and common sense.  Further comment would do no one any good, except a few lawyers. Some things I don't miss.

     Sorkin wrote of something conscientious broadcast journalists have said for years.  The news should be void of sponsors, it should be provided as a public service.  That would help remove it from the tyranny of playing to the ratings. Networks and television stations make plenty of money, even in recessions and they can afford to staff and air news without selling out.  Oh, the budget battles! There's another memory.  Something else I am happy to live without.

      It is merely a drama and an entertainment show, but there is truth in this fiction.

DAY FILE

THE ROCKER IN SHADOWS

      As the afternoon light was beginning its transition to 

that magic "golden hour" I noticed how the oak rocker in

my study was being lit and how it was caught in and cast shadows.  A perfect lightbreeze moment.

See you down the trail.

WAITING AND NEWS

OCCUPYING THOUGHTS

     Regardless whether Chief Justice Roberts writes it, and regardless of the outcome, the ruling on the health care reform will be remembered as one of the most anticipated, watched and debated. It is an automatic argument starter, however it comes out.

TRUTH IN THE NEWSROOM

       I entered my first newsroom as a green high school kid and have lived in them since.  The Aaron Sorkin script for the HBO series The Newsroom is brilliant and it speaks truth.  It demonstrates truth as well.  The pilot does a great job of showing how a breaking news story get's covered.  And I can't leave this without saying the tirade launched by actor Jeff Daniels, as a network anchor, is masterfully done. And it speaks truth.

DAY FILE

EARTH AND SEA

 In the frames below it looks as though the stone has been carved with a saw.  Amazing power in the relentless surf.

All of the shots were gathered at one of our favorite hikes, 

Montana D' Oro State Park.

See you down the trail.