TOUGH SPOTS---BAD MOVES---AND CATCHING UP

     Scottsdale sunset

     John choked back tears. His grandson had been a floor above the most recent school shooting. The students hiding in a closet heard gun shots below. John, a fraternity brother of 50 years had spent the day on the grounds of the school, including a desperate time waiting with families for the children to emerge. He was spent, drained by the tension and emotional.

      "What are we going to do to stop this? What can be done?" he asked.

    A 13 year old 7th grade girl was shot repeatedly. 29 year old science teacher Jason Seaman ran at and tackled the shooter, a student. Seaman was hit by several bullets.

    John's grandson was unhurt by gun fire but, are the kids of school shootings uninjured? John teared up as he spoke of seeing "all these beautiful children, people's babies" being brought out of the school, terrified. 

    Children should not fear for their lives when in school, but they train in sheltering drills. We, all of us, no matter politics or bent, regardless of our station in life, philosophy or belief, all of us have failed them. 
     There has been approximately one school shooting a week this year.

what is this?

    I was struck by the hues and shape. Tell us what you see.

bad moves

    Though they are within their rights and can muster the power, NFL owners resemble plantation owners with their edict about standing during the national anthem. 
     Don't you believe a free country means freedom to think and act, within the law? Kneeling to express concern over the imbalance of incarceration, or the all too frequent police shooting of unarmed black skinned people seems a respectful way to honor the flag that flies over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

bad moves aplenty

     My contempt for the Trump administration is a matter of record here. I agree with dozens of Republican, Democrat and non-partisan former CIA, NSA, State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council, directors, officers, executives, brass, agents, analysts, cabinet officers and former Presidents who have said Trump is unfit and unqualified to serve.

   While I think he is despicable and unlearning, most agree he has blundered. Leaving the Paris climate accord and the Iran deal are foolish and costly in their own right, but when measured in the dawn of a Korean peace deal and a standing down, they are incompetent. This administration has a signature-amateur and forever at war with itself. In runs on whims. This time is it Bolton or Pompeo? And isn't that either/ or the bottom of the barrel?   

    Here is what Tim Shorrock of the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting said to interviewer Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. 

TIM SHORROCK: Well, this is a terrible insult to the South Korean leadership and President Moon, in particular, the fact that they did not tell him in advance, though he’d been there just a few hours before. That’s an incredibly—I mean, it’s really historic incompetence, colossal incompetence, on the part of Trump, on the part of Bolton, on the part of Vice President Pence, to repeat these—you know, Libya solution, which is basically regime change on steroids for the North Koreans. And they keep talking about this sort of Libya option, as if it’s not going to faze North Korea. Well, of course it will. And they spoke out very strongly. 

    I take strength in the thought of how historians, political scientists, novelists and film makers are going to treat the Trump administration. What material! This nation may well spend the next 25 years, measuring and repairing the damage. We can find solace pondering how he and his supporters will be ridiculed, and how the ridicule and shame will be part of our healing and recovering. History is brutal to idiots and it is the last word.

in the family

   Some of you are readers of Bruce Taylor's Oddball Observations blog. You know Bruce and Judy have been our friends longer than any of us may want published. Bruce posted about our visit recently. Here are a few snap shots.

        The Catalyst, SWMBO, and Blackwell.

        Judy is not only a genius in the kitchen, she knows how to pick an incredible restaurant. The Iron Springs Cafe is worth a trip to Prescott and Prescott Valley, in itself.  I put the gumbo just a notch below Paul Prudhomme's when he was at the K-Paul Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans!

        Bruce and I are former colleagues. He was an excellent broadcaster and this idyllic setting is where he hung up the head phones. This is a classic old radio studio building.

one more credit for Lana

      My beautiful artist bride also grows a delicious artichoke.

Bon Appetit and Cheers!

      See you down the trail

Throwback-Tres Amigos-Deuce

buddy time

     These three buddies represent a time and attitude that we could use a massive insurgence of.

     Taken in 1952 or 53 we see Henry Shricker, Indiana's first two time Governor, President Harry Truman and newsman/editor Bob Hoover.

      Hoover taught me the ropes and introduced me to his "grapevine" when he broke me in on the police beat in Indianapolis.

       At the time of the photo above Bob was the editor of Outdoor Indiana, a post he held from 1952 to 1956. Previously he had been a reporter/photographer for the Indianapolis News, a job he took in 1919.

    Photo from Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame

     In 1956 he was hired by the 50 thousand Watt WIBC radio where he became America's first "mobile news chief."  A car was rigged with an early two way radio system and Bob reported from the scene of all manner of story and incident. 

   Think about this for a moment. Bob started in newspaper work in 1919 and worked through the heyday of the Front Page era. He broke me in starting in 1969. You can begin to imagine the stories he had. 

    In his early days when a reporter's salary was not enough to get by, Bob played drums in bands, including his own that toured a bit. He hung out with Hoagy Carmichael and played for Dick Powell. If you've seen the play or film Front Page, you'll have a sense of his time and place. Those guys knew how to have fun.

     He remained a dapper gentleman to the end. When he could no longer drive and his health began to fail, he'd get up every morning, put on his suit and tie, make calls to his vast network of contacts and sources and sit by the phone.

     Bob and I remained close and I visited with him frequently, and we spoke every day. When the end neared he was hospitalized. Each day he begged me to get his overcoat and help him slip out of "this place."

      I look at the photos above and realize what a sad decline we have witnessed in journalism and politics. There are simply too few men and women with the stature and class of of those amigos.

a transitional trio

    Though certainly of lesser luminescence, these three amigos came up at a time when we had mentors like the senior men above. This was "back in the day" when we were aiming for our prime.

      Tim Dietz on the right is one of the nations leading television news executives. He's been with a Colorado station for many years, but has served NBC, and his corporate group in a variety of capacities including running Olympic news feed operations and transitioning to the digital era. There was a time when Tim was a crack photo journalist and colleague of the "superman" in the middle.

      Frequent readers may recognize the middle man as Bruce Taylor, aka the Catalyst of Oddball Observations. Bruce and I worked together in Indianapolis where he too was a colleague of Bob Hoover.  Yours truly, in a skinnier incarnation, is on the left.  These three found themselves together at political conventions and a number of social mixes over the years.  Not sure of the age of this photo but I'm guessing a 1970's vintage.

        Bruce and I are retired and Tim is still a dynamo recently winning yet another prestigious award. I got a birthday note from him as he and his beloved took a post Rio Olympics R&R in the Turks and Caicos. 

        Tim is still fighting the good fight. Bruce and I are a couple of old boys lamenting what has happened to our political and journalistic culture.

        Time's change.  Thank heavens for old photos and our memories.

         See you down the trail.

INSIDE TRUMP'S CLOSET and CONTENTED DIVERSIONS

CONTENTMENT

close up

Grazing slopes on Turri Road, San Luis Obispo County

    Silly to ask perhaps, but at what point and for what reason does a cow decide to stand or to rest?

FAVA UPDATE

   Frequent readers may recall recent photos of this year's fava bean crop, showing great promise. The days of promise have arrived.

     As Lana noted and as memorialized in this 2013 post Romancing the Fava, the Fine Art of the Shuck, it takes a lot of work to get the fava ready for inclusion in a menu. Picking, cracking the pod to shell it and then freeing the morsel from an inner skin. But the flavor is unlike anything else and thus coveted.
     I told Cambria artist and Italian cuisine maven Bruce Marchese, who seemed overly pleased that we had harvested our first batch, I was putting barbed wire and guard dogs around our fava bed.
     

WITH RESPECT TO THE CATALYST

    My friend Bruce Taylor, who blogs as the Catalyst at Odd Ball Observations, frequently treats and teases his readers with posts of food. Often they are items that he has made or that his beloved SWMBO has created. SWMBO, also known as Judy has delighted Lana and me with delicious dishes for more decades that would be polite to mention.

    Recently Bruce posted about a crispy fried egg. This is not that, but something he may wish to try. It begins skillet life as a fried egg, but at a propitious moment is suddenly scrambled, but only briefly. The white is set and the yolk is only a few moments from still being runny. By the time Mr. Camera arrived to snap the evidence, the yolk had set up a bit more than is desired. If you try it, get to that moment of scramble, then spatula it onto your plate and begin to eat. Leave the camera out of the equation and you'll have yolk that is that special exquisite place between solid and liquid. If you like that sort of thing.

SYMETRY

&

 HOME MADE POT STICKERS & HOT AND SOUR SOUP

RUMMAGING IN TRUMP'S CLOSET

      Though I do not see eye to eye with David Brooks on some policy questions I think he is a thoughtful essayist. I find agreement with much of what he writes about ethics and philosophy. I urge you to read this piece on the sexual politics of 2016.

     It is my belief that all are welcome in the American political rumble, even those with views I deplore. However people are responsible and accountable for their behavior. That means of course that voters should be thoughtful and even studied. That is not the case too often. We acknowledge it with the identification of LOW INFORMATION VOTER. Regardless, candidates are still liable for what they say, do, advocate and for the effect they have.

      I suspect some of you are offended by the images above but as I follow Trump and his artful manipulation of the media and his use of propaganda techniques, and read again his racist, sexist, ethnocentric remarks and see a void when it comes to specific policy objectives, other than building a wall, and see his bullying and bellicose manner I am reminded of history. So I've spent time reading about Germany from the end of WWI, the rise of Nazism, Adolph Hitler's oratory, the consolidation of the workers movement, the outrageous beer hall putsch, the writing of Mein Kampf, the growth of the Nazi party and all that followed.  Of course there many differences and circumstances.  But it is the similarities that worry me.

     Here we are when conservatives and liberal are both surprised and even outraged by Donald Trump's ascent. His own party is worried sick. Pundits, commentators and analysts are surprised his quest for the Presidency is real. Donald Trump is not Adolph Hitler nor is he a Nazi. But the similarities should worry us all.

     See you down the trail.

HE KNOWS WHO I AM

BEING THERE

    Joy in this season, or any other, is seeing parents or family members watching their kids in chorales, plays, skits, ballets, concerts and the other performances that make this season so merry.

       Love is modeled best whenever it happens and we get to absorb a large gift of it during the holidays. Seeing proud parents and those little communications from kid back to them is a heart-warming information loop. It's good for all of us.

DECEMBER FLIGHT AT MORRO BAY

CHRISTMAS GHOSTS

  Dickens demonstrated for us how Christmas ghosts play a role.  Don't you think memories morph into a kind of apparition?  I think of old stories as becoming a kind of ghost of times passed. 

THE GRIZZLED VET

     You may need a context for this.  

      

Bruce Taylor, a.k.a. CatalystDecember 10, 2012 5:22 PM

I would just like it recorded here that, in spite of my post recently, I have never known this man nor do I know him now.

A Story AS Response

        That goofy shot from the beach where swim suit and the beach chair matched the color of peppers on the grill prompted the above comment.  You would know this if you read the comments below the post.

        Despite the denunciation re-printed above, his recent post about our long friendship, renegade forays at political conventions and other carrying on is mostly true, as either of us remember those years of "pedal to the metal" television news.

         It started in radio.  My first day on the metro news staff of the 50 thousand watt "Voice of News" found me assigned to shadow the veteran Bruce Taylor.  It was the pre computer era and the old line station had truly been the Voice of News for the state capitol. Unimaginable today, our radio news staff was larger than one or two of the television stations in the city.  It competed with the  three, then two, daily newspapers to break stories.

         I had been hired to work 3PM to Midnight, starting my day by picking up city government and/or state house leads before sources left their office or the bars some retreated to. Then I moved into our cubicle at the "cop shop" to cover police, sheriff, fire and emergency news.  At some point in the evening I went back to the studio where I wrote and produced the 15 minute 10:00 PM news.  I was to learn that newscast had thousands of listeners, many of whom had listened for years.  Back then people would get what they needed from our cast and didn't need to wait up until the late local TV news.

        Taylor had been working that beat for a while. I'd heard him on the air.  He wrote great copy, used a lot sound in stories, had a very professional big market style. Here I was, the new kid from a smaller market getting my orientation from the old vet.

        He wore a pin stripped shirt, mint green as a I recall, and an orange patterned tie, loose at the neck, as he sauntered into the news room.  His jacket was on his finger over his shoulder, he carried a cup of coffee, a cigarette clamped in his teeth.  His face and eyes said this was a guy who you could not bull shit.

      Our boss, a legendary radio news man and ex sailor, who swore better than the best, said something about "glad he could make it!" 
      "It was one of those kind of nights,"  Taylor shot back. 
       He looked to me like a guy who probably was a veteran of those "kind of nights."   
      I was a year out of college and had worked radio news in a medium sized factory town.  I'd been around a little bit, but I knew this guy Taylor was from the major leagues in being around.  

      We'd been dispatched to a north side shopping mall where a works project had changed the flow of water and several shops had been flooded.  It's hard not to be impressed by a guy who smokes, drinks coffee, talks on the two way radio and drives like a bat out of hell simultaneously.  
       Heading to our first assignment I thought a couple of things; man, this new job is going to be a blast!  And what a cool dude Taylor is.  He even liked jazz. That was a start to a friendship that for many years existed in those famous letters he wrote of.

      So, let him deny knowing me now, but let me tell you this.  Lana and I showed up in Phoenix one year for our periodic visit.  I was surprised when Bruce met us at the airport.

        "I thought you had to work," I said.

        "I quit.  They didn't give me the weekend off, so screw em!"

         We had a wonderful weekend up in Zane Grey country and created another story or two, as we always seem to do.

        Some time we should tell you about the Democratic mid term convention in the Kansas City landmark Muehlebach Hotel.  Here's the teaser-Bruce, a friend who is now a respected broadcast executive, a woman who ran for congress and I find our way into the deep innards of the old hotel.  It was a portion of a floor that had been walled off and had not been remodeled as the rest of the hotel had been.  It was a kind of 1940's pastiche of old hotel in decline. We were in a Felliniesque scene. It looked like an old conference room, now a storage area of dated furniture and other discarded stuff on the way to being junk.  

         Cutting to the chase-Taylor is jamming away on an old piano, clunking out a version of Sentimental Journey. The lady is singing, someone is pounding on a chair bottom like a drum and someone is trying to modulate the blast of a fire extinguisher to ape a trumpet when we are suddenly interrupted in our dusty jam session, by a Secret Service contingent. The lead guy asks "Can you tell me what's going on here?"

         All of that was early in the evening. It gets more interesting when Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace work into our evening.

        Don't believe for a moment what he wrote above!

See you down the trail.

       

A HUBBY'S PRIDE & A SURPRISE FROM THE ATTIC

BEING HER #1 FAN

     She takes it humbly with a kind of chuckle, but I'm a proud fan and bragging about it.  Lana took first place in  the Cambria Allied Arts Association juried show. It's a big deal because Cambria is an art colony and the competition is tough. The Plein Air oil was done near one of our favorite hiking trails.

FROM HERE

     I am hard pressed to understand how General Allen could 

produce 20 to 30 thousand e-mails and still be getting the job done. 

     Also miffed why guys as sharp as he and General Petraeus would engage in romantic conversations using DOD and CIA computers.  Duh!!!

FROM THE ATTIC

     Found this classic in an old photo file.  This is from the way back machine.  The lad in the T-shirt is Cris "Moto Groove" Conner, the Daliesque artist and social conveyer back in the day.  The bearded gent is Bruce Taylor aka The Catalyst of Oddball Observations Blogger fame. The kid in the back is this blogger.  This was taken in the old WIBC/WNAP Newsroom on what I think was Taylor's last day before decamping to Arizona.  BTW-notice the typewriters, old audio board and the shirt and tie combinations? What were we thinking?

DAY FILE

The California Skies

     See you down the trail.

A THRILL OF THE COAST

SUN TO FOG

     This evening shot captures the foggy edge of a day

that ranged from the extremes available at the coast. A very warm and bright sunrise, warm morning, brilliantly sunny mid day and the rolling in of a massive bank of marine clouds and haze, pre sunset, strings together a series of micro climates and clothing adjustments.  Shorts and short sleeves, give way to jeans and fleece.  The cool marine fog fills the valleys, obscures the mountains and shrouds the trees that just a couple of hours before were brilliantly green under a cobalt blue sky.  Living near the Pacific brings these changes and diversity.

PERPETUALLY SUNNY

      Though I'm a little dubious about these things, I'm happy

to note that a fellow blogger has awarded me the Sunshine Award.

       I appreciate the sentiment, and certainly appreciate the awarding blogger Bruce Tayor's Oddball Observations, but as an old journalist I'm suspect of these awards that form a kind of mutual admiration society.  Boy, do I sound like a cynic at the Banquet of the Sunshine Society, or what?!  

      This kind of mutual support in the blogosphere is actually a wonderful thing.  It is kind and generous, and of that I am appreciative. I think it is nice that people pass this along to 

others.  That it helps grow awareness of other bloggers and writers is fine as well.  But it reminds me a bit of kids sending secret "I like you, will you be my girl friend?" notes  on the playground.  Sweet. Cute. But my posts are often

not either.  So, Thank You Bruce.  Thank you Sunshine Award

originators and fellow recipients.  As someone who loves

the sunshine, and sunny dispositions, I accept on behalf

of those of us who take our sunshine with reality, on the rocks, shaken and not stirred.  

       So, something about me, an obligation of the award.  I love film and cinema.  I admire artists regardless of medium.  I think creativity is one of the highest achievements of the human mind. My heroes include John Muir, David Brinkley, Ernie Pyle, my father Karl and there are others.  One current hero is my friend Bob Foster some 56 days into a bone marrow transplant. My clan were Picts. The bloodline is Scots, Celt, Anglo Norman, (English), Welsh, Pennsylvania Dutch from the Palitinate.

      I have two published books, and would love to add to that number if I can get a deal for #3.  #4 is a work in progress.
       Another obligation of the award is to nominate another blogger.  I think Mollie, who I have known since her birth,
is a very deserving recipient.  She is an enormously talented
young writer who has shown a gift as she plumbs what it 
means to be a young Christian in the 21st Century.
Mollies lightbymorning blog.  
        See you down the trail.