Wishing for a Renaissance!

         Perfectly on cue, poppies are popping and we hit the road, a colorful journey.

        Looking for a change of mind, we found California spring as we sliced the central state over the Santa Lucia mountains, through the lower end of the central valley, past the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains into the Mojave desert, through the Antelope valley to rest at the base of the San Jacinto mountains in Palm Springs. 

    California is terrific when it is green and the mountains are snow capped and

the people come to play.

    California may be a state of mind, but spring certainly is and we needed the charge. 

    Some of the reality has been simply nuts. Measles are making a comeback!

Ignorance and social media can do a lot of harm. There was a time when a parent who would not get their children the safest and best medical care would have been considered coo coo. Ditto for those who wear red hats and march locked step in support of a Dodo. There is an epidemic of dumb. 

    My WWII veteran parents could not understand why the republican party wants to throw away democracy as it embraces the very fascism Dad and his generation fought. Don't the fools read history? Can there be a bigger jerk than Mitch McConnell who endorsed the very man he condemned, and who sucked out what ever molecule of integrity that may have tried to invade the old Kentuckian. 

    To make it worse Google AI started creating Black Popes and Vikings and Asian American founding fathers. Oops said Sundar Pichai a very bright man surprised by his own genius computers. Hit pause and correct.

    That's what we did. 

    Some of us may be old and increasingly irrelevant but we can still manage a lucid thought and one of those surmises-- there is entirely too much intelligence, too many skills, and an unlimited amount of creativity, imagination and real knowledge, kindness, and genuinely good people to look and act the like the America we see today. The smart people, the thinkers, the doers, problem solvers, helpers, people of love and visionaries need to start getting more face time in our melodrama. The "professional politician," influencers, body celebrities, brainless blowhards, snark trolls, overly sensitive and self appointed aggrieved, need to hit the road and get out of our faces. 

    If you have not read the constitution, shut up. If you don't know what the Beer Hall Putsch was, take off your red hat and shut up, then go read a history book. If you want to ban a book, crawl under a rock. If you don't believe peace is the better way to live go for a personality transplant. 

    We need a Renaissance. You Dark Age droolers need to start learning the facts,  and paying attention to the life that appears just beyond your screen. Reality is what we make it, not a hateful attitude manipulated by an algorithm that takes you deeper into darkness, ignorance and insensitivity.

   Spring is going to start breaking out everywhere, soon. Breathe it in, take it into that part of you that that motivates and recharges your battery. There is a reason this is the time that tribes, and societies, and civilizations, and faiths celebrate new life, new energy. There's also more light. 

    The Renaissance started in a place where the light, and the color ignited thought and imagination, enough so to throw out the old, stalled thought and superstitions. It was a springtime of the mind and soul.

    About time for that here, wouldn't you say?

    See you down the trail. 

Moved by the Mountains

 

        It had been 8 years since we visited one of our favorite places on the planet, the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.

    Spectacular peaks crown the western rim of the vast Owen Valley on one of the great drives in the United States.

        We had booked access to Yosemite National Park, entering it from the east so we could drive the famed Tioga Pass. That thin line at mid mountain is the Pass, heading east.

        Rain fell overnight on the Lodge at June Lake. As we drove north in the morning we saw the surprise on the peaks to the north, the seasons first snow fall. 

    It was our first time to see fresh snow in Yosemite. In good years it becomes a winter wonderland, though we are not inclined to put chains on the tires and drive into the mountains.

    When the heavier snows fall, the Tioga Pass is closed until summer.

     We gave ourselves a couple of days to acclimate to the altitude before venturing out for a hike in the John Muir Wilderness.

        One of our favorite trails wanders along a creek as it winds upward to 4 alpine lakes. The trail head is at about 10,400 feet.

        With aging knees and hips we have begun using trekking poles and found them to be especially helpful.

        Lana and I are exhilarated by the beauty, peace and grandeur of the Sierras. My admiration for John Muir is always deepened as I think about how the Scotsman wandered and mapped the Mountains by himself.

            East of the Sierra is another story that tells us much about the state of the world. That's ahead in a future post.

        See you down the trail.

A Parting Shot and The Rising Storm

     Poster children for the unvaccinated enjoying the fog and drizzle between rain storms that have left us with 12 inches of rain in two weeks while our brethren and sisters up in Sierras are buried under record snow.

    We take the good where we can find it and we'll be tightly gripping our "cup of kindness" as we limp more deeply into the '20's. 

    We've wandered many a weary foot children, so drink up the cup and remember the good old times, stingily parsed these last couple of years. The trusty hand of a friend is a companion wise on the rough road ahead.

    Maybe it just me, but there's something regal here.

    Sunny and Hemingway making the best of it, on a rare moment to be in fresh air, as crises of nature and the human kind beat the old year to a pulp. 

    Another variant, bad behavior and now our precious care givers are beset again. Putin is up to little dictator games, and it's suddenly election year in America. Pass me another cup of kindness there and then I'm headed for safety.

        Whoops! Well, any box in a storm! 

    I've been paying attention the animals around here because people are either disgusting, or they are my friends, who I rarely see except on Zoom or masked, or at social distances and they too are worried about the rise of the disgusting. My tennis pals are an exception as we can put all human foibles out of mind as we rock and roll on the court-except two weeks of rain have stopped that. 

        So Auld Lang Syne 2021. You were supposed to be the year of healing and normalcy. Do you think humanitie's karma is catching up with us?

    

        So I've been looking up, as the storm clouds clear, and I can't stop from trying to make my phone work like a telescope.

        These are meager offerings especially when we have some genuine astrophotographers living in these parts, but they point you in a good direction. We can celebrate the launch of the Webb telescope this month. That will do more for human knowledge than all of the weasel heads in congress, all of the unmasked, and unvaccinated combined.

        Grasp this, Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977 are still moving through the heavens. In about 14 thousand Years V 1 will be leaving the Oort cloud. Give it another 280 thousand years and it will be approaching our next nearest star, still in our galaxy of course and we just don't know how many billion galaxies there may be. So there's a perspective to apply to 

the life and times of planet earth in these days of uncertainty. 

        A friend who worked on the Hubble telescope, one of the brightest scientific minds around said often as he aged, "you've got to have a sense of humor in this life." Frank was frequently bemused when it came to how the inhabitants of this planet conducted themselves. 

        So let's take a right good draught for auld lang syne and for the good old days to come.

        Slainte'

    See you down the trail. 

We've been here before.....

  

                  guard tower at manzanar internment camp, california                                 

   We've been here before. It is in our story.

     It was this week in 1942 an offense against Asian people  began and it betrayed American principle and idealism.

 

    Immigration is a recurrent political thorn and people suffer. There are seasons of hate and victimhood changes by ethnicity, heritage, and nationality. As violence and animosity toward AAPI peoples accelerate, we recall how the American federal government crossed a line of ignominy. 

     Manzanar is emblematic of the mistreatment of people of Asian ancestry, and their resilient grace in sustaining.  

 MANZANAR

        The National Historic Site is history as a window to our national soul. It's also evidence of a test of civility and a benchmark on doing what we say we believe.

        In this instance it was people of Japanese heritage. We know however, our villainy has been felt by Native citizens, Africans, Jews, Irish, Germans, Italians, Mexicans, and others despite we are a nation of immigrants. Immigration makes us better, and more culturally rich, but our history condemns us.

       The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, followed days later by submarine attacks on central California marine targets unleashed a public mania that empowered a low in American history, the internment of nearly 120 thousand Japanese Americans during WWII.

      The Manzanar Site, ironically near Independence California, tells the history and testifies as to how fragile our civil liberties are.

      Operated by the National Parks Service, the Manzanar Historic Site, 200 miles north of LA, provides an intelligent  account of the life that began there in March of 1942. It conveys emotion.

     10 thousand people lived in 504 barracks the internees built. Tar paper shacks, windy, cold and snowy in winter, blown by sand and sweltering in the 110 degree summers.

   Surrounded by barbed wire, armed guards, and watch towers, entire families tried to make the best of life in a kind of prison camp. 
   They had been uprooted and forced to live in a cramped adversity with communal latrines and showers without stalls. Personal space and privacy taken from them.

    They worked, digging irrigation canals, raising fruit, vegetables and livestock. They made clothing and furniture, camouflage netting and rubber products for the military. They were paid between $12 and $19 a month. With their limited funds they published a newspaper, operated a general store, bank and barbershop. 

   Without due process, the Federal government gave Japanese Americans only days to decide what to do with homes, farms, businesses, cars and all property. Most sold their possessions at a significant loss. They took only what they could carry.

      Not one Japanese American was ever charged with espionage. 
    Nearly 26 thousand Japanese Americans served in the US Military during WWII, many serving with distinction and  decoration.  
    In the frame below is Teru Arikawa the mother of PFC Frank Arikawa, the first soldier from Manzanar who was killed in the line of duty.

        Most of the Japanese American soldiers served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in North Africa, France and Italy. The unit had the highest casualty rate and was the most highly decorated Army unit of its size and length of service.
    The quote below is from President Harry Truman at a White House ceremony honoring the 442nd and 100th Infantry Battalion of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard.

         President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 on February 19,1942 authorized relocation and/or internment of "anyone who might threaten the US war effort."  
       With that simple order American civil liberties and justice were savaged.  
        Processing and reporting centers were opened and Japanese Americans were forced to depart.

     Ten relocation camps were built. Without the rights due them, American citizens were forced into internment, with no idea of how long they would be held. No charges were brought against them.

    21st century Americans can visit Manzanar and see the vestige of a time when emotion, paranoia, awful political judgment and prejudice combined to create a despicable shadow on the life of this nation. It was a time that revealed our promise of freedom, liberty, and justice to be hollow and hypocritical. 

    It is both moving and frightening to see the names of those American citizens, who, because of heritage, were, without any legal recourse, treated like criminals and put into internment camps. Their freedoms were denied by an executive order, as a nation stood by.

    A driving and walking tour also covers the memorial ground, where those who died are remembered and where ashes were spread. 

 

       

     Post Trump America holds new paranoias and hatreds with new generations who are the target of zealots, racists, ideologues and politicians seeking favor.  

     

     I asked once if Manzanar could happen again? Could we again suspend due process and trample civil liberties because of fear and a perceived threat? With the Trump-McConnell appointees on the federal bench, and all the believers of the big lie, it's a valid question still.

                    

      Manzanar can be explained, but not excused, by the fear stemming from war. Now it is another affliction that stalks us. Ignorance, brutality, political expediency and radicalized hate have aggregated to threaten our way of life, our beliefs and our future.

     

       We have soul searching and soul work to do.

       See you down the trail.