seeing beyond the fog

   Our state flower springs from an unlikely spot, but it will be revered despite that. We are partial to the California Poppy.

the changing atmosphere

        Something about the Gina Haspel nomination to the CIA deserves pondering. There is something else out there.

       And there was something out there over the Pacific. The drive north on Highway 1 was accompanied by the bank of marine fog, waiting off shore. The light was crisp and the atmosphere was clear, but it is the time of year when heat on the other side of the Santa Lucia Mountains, in the Paso Robles region draws the ocean cooled hair through the Templeton Gap, bringing the blessing of fog and atmosphere to our coastal village.

    The bank creates a breeze. A careful look at the photo below reveals the small white caps pushed by the wind.

     The line of clouds below line up behind the marine fog and sock in the back bay of Los Osos and Baywood. Morro Bay also disappears in the gray.

   clearing the fog

    It's not unlike some of the fog surrounding the nomination of Gina Haspel to be director of CIA. There is a reality that should not be occluded. 

    I tend toward a view that contradicts the opinion of people I respect, including journalists, politicians and thoughtful analysts.

    Gina Haspel is an institutional person. She is a veteran of the CIA and that is important. Former directors, deputies, chiefs of stations, and many other professionals in the security and intelligence community endorse her. This is particularly important at this time, given who the President is and remembering his war on and disregard for the intelligence services.

   It is fresh before our eyes, the devastation this administration has wreaked on the US Department of State. An outsider, non professional, abetted by inexperienced political appointees disrupted or destroyed an agency that is vital not only to our security, but to keeping peace in the world. We dare not permit such wanton recklessness with the intelligence community.

greater concerns 

   I understand the aversion to torture and agree it should not be the policy of the US. The role of Haspel and the agency under George W. Bush was vetted by the White House, and it was a directive of that administration. It was rolled back by the Obama White House and the practices were roundly condemned. There are divergent views as to that sort of interrogation and it's effectiveness. 

   The CIA was doing what was considered necessary in the war against specific terrorist groups. Haspel should not be sacrificed on the altar of past wrongs, and especially not now.

   While this administration with its reactive, inexperienced  and non professional wobbling remains in a position to do harm and be ignorant, the director of the CIA should be a safeguard if not foil. It is good Haspel is there or we could see another politico or hatchet man nominated. Frankly we are lucky a CIA vet has been tapped to replace a short timer from the political side of Washington. 

    Haspel is an institutional survivor, widely experienced, tough, smart and has been in the labor of the citizens of the US for decades. She is smarter than the President, has more real world experience, more courage, a more studied background and has given more of her life to service.  

    Given the past 30 years of her life and work compared to that of the President, I'd give her the conch shell*. 

(*As in the symbols of order and civilization in William Golding's Lord of the Flies)

    It's a crazy world, getting crazier and having in charge a veteran who knows about the beasts and evils of the world is assuring.

california spring delights

      The succulents seem pleased with spring.  

      See you down the trail.

CORRECTIONS

 night work in Morro Bay

resembling the freeway

a light in the darkness

   The moment I saw this photo by Jim Wilson of the New York Times, I wanted to share it. Christmas season has come to even Santa Rosa California where normal is a word without relevance this season. 

twilight hopes

    There was a time when people were sure dreams could become real, that visions were visited upon souls and that spirits could roam. It was in the gloaming, in the twilight, that narrowing distance between day and night, thought to be a time of magic. Hope and fear nestling together, dependent on the other.

after the prelude

     Who could expect a tech dependent culture, a society risen on the muscle of science and fed on commerce would find itself stumbling into a wilderness, shredding itself by means of an inner, bipolar war, voluntarily blinding itself by a refusal to see, ignoring truths and exercising meanness while celebrating venality.

in the time before

    Those of old could never know what would come with the morning, nor how might they survive the mysteries in the dark. How weakened would they be by the fear that built in the night.

who shall we be?

      Women and men who deserve our respect tell us we are divided and in a cultural war-rural against urban, those with higher educations and those without, fractured by economic class, riven by ideologies, splintering into enclaves, separated by expectations.

      Indeed, we are like those ancient hopes and fears, nestled together on the fulcrum. 

      We watch as an executive branch and federal establishment implodes and disintegrates, departments being dissembled, with no skilled hand on the tiller and scores of important positions unfilled. The legislative branch is locked in an insular world though in a free fall decomposition. 
     Integrity and decorum are abandoned. It is dangerous and foolish to ignore the lessons of 240 years.
      Perhaps you read the remarks of General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA

      "If this is who we are or who we are becoming, I have wasted 40 years of my life. Until now it was not possible for me to conceive of an American President capable of such an outrageous assault on truth, a free press or the first amendment."

      It is the fair axiom of politics to ask, are we better than we were? Are we better off, are we a more united United States after a year of trump than we were at the end of Obama? Is anything better than it was?
       Here's a link to good and brief assessment of the trump year from Foreign Policy Magazine.

       Are we living into Shakespeare's Richard III lament-

"Now is the winter of our discontent..."

      Who shall we be when the sun returns to its fullness? Who shall emerge in the primaries of the spring and who will lead the challenge or defense in the campaigns of fall? Who will have the power to turn the votes-rural or urban, the educated or those who are not, those who carry tiki torches and spew or those who invite diversity? 

       Some hope for candidates of vision, compassion, integrity, pragmatism and strength to clean, correct, make right and restore. Others see no fault nor sins nor madness in the regime. We are divided. We enter this winter on the throes of fear, discord and anger. 
       The older I get the more I am convinced it was ever such. We can destroy or we can heal. I am of the camp that looks for light, a peace out of the chaos. Be alert. Watch with hope and live that way.

        See you down the trail.