And now this! What is your choice, America?

pacific sonata and soliloquy 

   A stiff onshore wind cleared the thought that was stuck on replay since a friend's text, deploring the latest offense of 2020, stuck it in my mind. RBG gone less than 24 hours and already the jackals were salivating, revealing a soulless betrayal of their own perversity, again!

     A bluff trail along a rugged stretch was the antidote of choice. Our national tragedy just got worse. Fresh air and surf gave me some distance to riddle it out.

     I know we're in new territory, a place that is dangerous to the continued existence of the republic as we have known it, but we've gone even deeper into the dark woods. We'll explore our national mood, a bit further down the trail.

ash on the gold

    What is top of the mind, the crisis of the day? Out here on the West coast we've been forced into thinking about long term implications. Giant fires, loss of life and billions in property, limited resources, fouled air with a deleterious global impact. 

    Climate change is changing the course of history. California, the magical land of golden sun, beaches, mountains and redwoods, where the future and fantasy are built, Disney, Hollywood, Apple,Tesla, Google, and the place that loomed alluringly in the lives of boomers with every note of the Beach Boys, Eagles or Grateful Dead, must now navigate a veil of uncertainty. There is smoke and ash on the gold.

been bad before

    The calculus for our daughters and grandchildren is a different data set than we used to engineer our aspirations. But there is always the X factor, human ingenuity, and now augmented by artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

     Sitting around the dinner table recently, hearing them voice concerns about the future of their work, their children's lives, education, the government, state of the civilization and all, the best fatherly sagacity I could muster was, it's been bad before, but somehow the spirit leads to evolution, improvement and survival.

   the new "moon shot"

    Our parents would not recognize some of our everyday routines. And so it will be for our kids, and for us. Change is accelerating and it must. Life is coming at us more quickly.

    Here are a couple ideas I've tried to seed. President Biden, and we hope that is so, should do a "moonshot" approach on wildfires. All of humanity would benefit. 

    With scientists, technologists, environmentalists, foresters, architects, builders and firefighters in concert, we can find a better way to mange forests and wild land, prevent fire perhaps, battle back at blazes and survive them.

    It's more than a sci-fi notion, why can't our brightest design robotic, mechanical, scalable, "Transformer" like massive firefighting equipment and technology that can do what and go where humans cannot? Designed to adapt to all terrain, loaded or rapidly refilled with water or firefighting chemicals, able to attack blazes and withstand what brave humans can't. A fanciful notion? Perhaps, but this planet's future will involve fire on a scale unknown to our history. It's time for new thought. When JFK committed the US to get to the moon in a decade, it all had to be invented and made possible. 

   new ways to build

   Homes need to be built and coded differently where fires burn. I'm not a designer, but I told the girls if we were building today, we'd design a home that includes a large section that is subterranean, built with concrete, cement, metal and other fire resistant materials. Interior and exterior sprinkler or retardant systems and more would be part of the plan.

    After hurricanes devastated coastal homes, insurance companies, state, and federal agencies mandated new building codes. The same should go for those of us who live in states where wild fires are a reality. It would mean a massive change in construction, materials, design, and planning. It would no doubt limit development in some areas, but not to change is foolish. 

    Simply put, we need to get busy inventing our future, with an intentionality, and in response to what science and experience  inform us. 

the rise of the beast

       An incompetent, criminal, minority President who is mentally ill and a liar without precedent, the deadly pandemic, and a terribly managed response, the bull goose looney Attorney General aroused by a growing authoritarianism, a cult like party largely brainwashed or belligerently ignorant and proud of it, the nation's diminished international standing, being seen as a stooge of Putin, and a trend to reverse civil rights apparently is not bad enough juju so now we have a Supreme Court vacancy to get exercised about. 

      Well, we have McConnell, and Graham and others in the Senate saying there should be no court nominee put forward so close to a Presidential election. But that was when a Black President, and a Democrat had an appointment to make. Now they have a White Racist Republican whose feet they lick. In the real world, there goes the notion of principle. 

      Do you remember when intelligent minds told us never to accept Trump and his gang as normal and never normalize the aberrant behavior? Did we ever have a chance, with one disaster or outrage leading to another?

     Are there any Republicans, old fashioned true Republicans left in the Senate? I guess we'll see. 

     I suspect I'll be back on trails, grabbing as much pacific breeze antidote as I can in these next few weeks. In the near term we should celebrate the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an extraordinary human being who lifted the greatness of the US by her devotion to principle, liberty, intellect, law and a sense of human dignity. 

      Citizens deserve a process and timeline that allows us to think and reason. There has been precious little of that in the last 4 years. If this deplorable administration and its quisling minions in the Senate try to fill the court at this juncture, there may well be a seismic rumble. Two visions of the US are available to citizens this year. One leads to repair and problem solving. The other one is the super spreader of despair and problem making. 

      Stay safe. Take care of each other. Vote. Encourage others to vote.

      See you down the trail.

And Now More Disconnect and What They See

disconnect

     Someplace near the Cupertino and Mountain View exit signs an idea began to emerge. As I routed through what the world knows as Silicon Valley it took shape. The United States is not. Not only are we not united, but this behemoth nation straddles a couple of centuries. The divide is obvious  as we look to federal Washington.

     Research and development, business, investment and the attendant cultural vibrations in this part of California are about the future. The current US electoral mania is a symbolic foil. The morass in which most government grinds to near irrelevancy is a further proof of the disconnect. 

     On the modern campuses arrayed between southern San Francisco and San Jose new horizons are being mounted. Apple, Facebook, Google, Stanford University, NASA's Ames Research Centers along with a web of smaller tech and communication companies are striding with systems, applications, models and advances that disrupt old ways of business, living, doing and being. 

     Data, sensors, nano architecture, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, space exploration, transportation revolutions and more cascade in a fountain of discovery and advance in this area oblivious to whatever moribund and retrograde shards of society that seem to fill our media. (IBM, New York based, is apart of this historic arc with its AI program Watson.)

     Whether it is in perhaps the most unpopular and unwanted presidential candidates in history, or the obsession with celebrity, racism, more guns and violence than any nation on the planet, crumbling cities, poisoned seas, waters, land and air, lowered expectations, failing schools and climate changes, it is as if a deadly inertia spread shroud like over the nation. There are pockets of bio technology and advanced research elsewhere, but it's not in the air, rippling like an energy force as it is here.

     It is easy to despair how this nation seems committed to getting more stupid and uninspired, until we ponder the extraordinary things that are happening out here.Government  is not sought for solution, inspiration or leadership. California watches tech genius, innovators, visionaries work through modern and future matters. Culture, ways of business, expectations and attitude are being changed.

     I may be working too hard to make a point, but so much of what has shaped our way of living in the last 25 years-data-communication-technology is new. They are amazing things sprung from creativity, imagination and invention. Washington on the other hand and by extension politics everywhere, is about money, power and the desire for it. Yes, there is money, big money in the Silicon Valley axis, but it comes from making something new. Politics is a business and so is government. It is increasingly bought and sold, has lost direction and is venal. Principals of public service have been subverted. It is harder for good people to do good because politics is now inhabited by so many losers without a hint of an original idea or the desire to make something better, let alone new. There is a breed of politician and their beltway bandit allies who think they are pulling something over on us.

     It is a time for vision and visionaries. Time for those who are in it for themselves to join the scrap heap. Until then, the disconnect continues. Government and politics could become irrelevant. 

     

natural agin

   Driftwood on Moonstone beach offers a never ending visual treat.
   People say the image below reminds them of a local sea otter, on its back. Does your imagination get you there?

a debate post

     Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper expended energy to maintain control, focus and observance of time restraints. They did an excellent job and did not allow themselves to be bullied nor did they let the candidates get away with avoiding the question.

      Bob Schieffer of CBS had what I thought was the best summary and he asked "How have we come to this?"

        See you down the trail.

FIGHTING WINTER-PRIVACY AND FREEDOM-RAPE AND FOOTBALL

FOR THE WINTER WEARY

     This post offers a few scenes for those of you who are winter weary. We hope the color, green and sunny scenes bolster you through what remains of that cold gray or worse.

     Our morale booster follows below.

 PRIVACY IS A FREEDOM

      It is a hard call, privacy vs investigative reach, but Apple is correct is denying access or a back door into personal information on phones or other devices.

      Privacy is under attack just in the way we live with technology and marketing. The Snowden and Wiki leaks disclosures detail how government is and can snoop. People often forget how willingly they open their lives to surveillance and manipulation via social media, on-line commerce and other transactions.

      We appreciate how difficult is the task of those who work to provide security. Intelligence and law enforcement are challenged by increasingly sophisticated adversaries and the capacity of modern communications. Still we cannot concede an inch of our right to privacy even if it makes investigation, prosecution or intelligence gathering easier. 

      We discovered the excessive reach in the Patriot Act, an emotional response to 9/11. If we give up expectations of privacy and personal rights the bad guys begin to win. It is an objective of terrorists to force democratic governments to behave like fascists or repressive regimes. When that happens we loose.

       Despite the difficulty a democratic republic must value individual rights and liberties. There are many other reasons beyond the philosophical rightness, not the least of which is human incompetence which can and has infected government agencies. There is also the fact that even with good intentions, governments can be used and manipulated by administrations and regimes with less than honorable intentions. Two names to help make that case-Richard Nixon and Watergate cover up. There is also Dick Cheney and his corrupt manipulation in energy and war business. If other less than honorable or zealot driven governments had what the government is pushing Apple for, then what happens to the freedoms we say make us different than dictators, strongmen or others like Stalin, Hitler, Putin, Assad, Isis, and etc.?

       Freedom means just that. Nothing less. 

 NATURE SAYS CHEERS!

      Hang in there, spring is on the way.

 RAPE AND FOOTBALL

     It's unclear how the Tennessee matter will resolve in the courts but football thuggism and sexual assault continue to plague us. In this most recent case a Tennessee player came to the aid of a rape victim. She had been attacked by two of the man's team mates. Later the good Samaritan was attacked and injured by team mates and when he complained to his coach Butch Jones, Jones berated the man and said "he betrayed his team."

     There is ample documentation of how players are coddled, how aberrant behavior is overlooked, how educational standards are ignored so a football player can compete. It starts in public schools, continues in some colleges and we have all seen how many NFL players are involved in criminal activity, assaults and domestic battery.

     When coaches like Butch Jones are around it's no wonder.

THE COAST IS CLEAR

     Coming soon, up the coast.

     See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER :) AWESOME

AWESOME!
in so many ways

     The Weekender :) begins with a tribute to patience.

8 hours of Wednesday and Thursday were spent on the phone and on line sorting through nooks and crannies of my computer and programs looking for the reason I could not effectively use some of the tool bar on this blogger site.

     Dan from Apple support was the guy who was on the phone as we finally jiggled a jot that got it done.  Richard was helpful for two hours of searching.  Before that Brian was helpful, if perplexed before handing me over to a guy in iphoto support. He was a bit testy and slightly arrogant though he was dealing with me and my frustration and I could well have been the source of his seeming irritation.  Except for that the Apple guys were truly helpful, attentive and superb.

      Blogger support is merely canned text or direction to "support groups" that in reality are a list of people with questions and complaints that go largely unattended by anyone with Blogger.

       The source of the sudden chaos in my peaceful cyber world was updating the mac to Safari 6.  Things are different in Safari 6 and some of those things are little goblins that have disruptive capacity.  So, I'm singing the praises of the Awesome Apple Support team and my own Mac's Only Guru, Rick who was able to plow into some helpful and suggestive space very quickly.  Though this Blogger world is big, rich and full of great stuff, they could take a few lessons from the Apple team.

       And I can't help but think about trying to explain to my late mom and dad some of the stuff their eldest was doing with, in and around a computer, while on the phone, and on line. That would have been both amusing and Awesome!  My daughters would probably land more on Amusing!

                                   NOW THIS IS 

                                TRULY AWESOME

     Thanks to my friend and retired Navy man Lew for this find. Please take 5 minutes sometime this weekend to see this extraordinary bit of life on this blue planet.

                                              

DAY FILE

OF SEEDS AND BEES
for the land bound

      It's the time of year when we like to collect lupine seed as the pods turn brown.  But, as you notice, one must collect carefully.

Take a look around this weekend
and find something awesome in your world.
See you down the trail.