God only knows.....

 

When I heard Brian Wilson and friends 9 years ago, he was somewhat frail but the music he wrote and played, including the Beach Boys hits, never sounded better.

He was a senior maestro, sitting behind the piano and conducting a stage of talented players and singers, who made his music, even live, sound perfect. It was scary brilliant, and so was he.

Paul McCartney calls God Only Knows the best song ever written.

Without the legendary Pet Sounds album, there would have been no Sgt. Pepper. That musical brilliance was the Beatles answer to Wilson's innovation. 

Nobel Laureate and Bard of the 20th Century, Bob Dylan said he "admired his genius."

Listen to the hits, or to his avant-garde' creations and the sound infects you, with happiness and the never ending summer of youth, and it is marvelous.

It was bitter sweet hearing the tunes again, when the genius was being mourned. And when the idiot king sends the marines to Wilson's home area, and illegally federalizes the national guard. It doesn't matter anymore that no one in LA wanted them there, not the Governor, Mayor, Police Chief or the citizens.

The idiot king is mad and vengeful and a nation destroyer. Standing in front of uniformed troops and talking his insane trash politics demeaning not those he savaged only, but taking the US to new lows, dangerous and deranged lows. 

Yea, hearing Brian Wilson, his brothers and cousin Mike and buddy Al was a dose of sunshine, but poignant to the point of tears. It seemed only a temporary railing against this nose dive. Oh those happier, innocent times when we wanted to salute our land of liberty. As grade school kids, even in an imperfect and not yet fair US, we had a nation we were proud of.

 Just a fews hence from when that Cub Scout in uniform stood on the back row under the watchful eye of an untrusting teacher and next to his buddy John Smith, we Boomers would be under the thrall of a political system that seemed bounding with hope as a young President invited us to ask what we could do for our country and when even those of us in the great mid west wanted to go surfing...surfing USA.

A sweet time, rich with what will be, shinning with dreams.

We grew up tough though, doing duck and cover drills. Remember those? We'd have to duck under our desks and cover our heads to protect us from the Atomic bomb. I had nightmares about the bomb. I read a lot about the bomb and why we had to worry about it. I decided then the "duck and cover" was not going to stop any of us from being incinerated or vaporized, so I stopped ducking and covering. When my mates were being compliant, and Mrs. Rogers would be scorning me to obey I tried to explain how it was all useless. 

But there was hope too. Our government had developed a vaccine against dreaded polio that was killing and crippling our generation. We lined up to be Polio Pioneers, testing the Salk Vaccine.

Health Secretary RFK jr would just boil himself wouldn't he? It was a time of honor, a time when science and medicine was making for a better future. It was a time to be smart, to reach for the stars. We believed that our leaders also believed in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance "...under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

I listened to a lot of Brian Wilson's work over the years and like that pledge I believed what I heard, especially California Saga

Have you ever been south of Monterey?

Barrancas carve the coastline

and the chaparral flows to the sea

'Neath waves of golden sunshine

Have you been north of Morro Bay?

the south coast plows the sea

and the people there are of the breed

they don't need electricity.

That's precisely where I sit, remembering Brian Wilson and that era. My electricity comes from the panels on my roof.

 

Have you ever been down Salinas way

Where Steinbeck found the valley?

 

There the monarch's autumn journey ends

on a windswept cypress tree.

Again this Father's day weekend, my daughters and grands will join Lana and me on our annual trip to the Live Oak Music Festival. It's a tradition out here.

Have you ever been to a festival

The Big Sur congregation?

Where Country Joe will do his show

and he' ll sing about liberty. 

And the people there in the open air

are one big family

Yea, the people there love to sing and share

their newfound liberty.

I expect California music veterans and longtime emcee Joe Craven will have a few things to say this year. There will be mention of Sly Stone, and Brian Wilson. There will likely be more. Live Oak is a fundraiser for our public radio station. Yea, that kind of targeted, enemies list, media. So, maybe we'll get put on the idiot king's list. A badge of honor. 

As we take this nostalgic pause, we rightfully should recall those men called POTUS who actually quoted song writers and poets. And they all visited the Kennedy center to enjoy the arts. Not one of them showed up only to fire the staff!

Take us back to the trail, Brian.

"I may not always love you

but as long as there are stars above you

you never need to doubt it 

I'll make you so sure about it.

God only knows, what I'd be without you..."

To my kindred of age and temperament, keep on rockin' in the free world.

See you down the trail.

DUCK AND COVER

     A smackdown is coming. The overwhelming lack of public support versus the heavy handed nature of the Trump cabal sets a collision course. We'll get to that after visiting a ghost  conjured recently by yet another dust up--the clash of the man child leader of North Korea and his American equal. 

        It happened at the height of the cold war on an afternoon in an old classroom in Garfield Elementary School in Muncie Indiana.

        Third grade teacher Mrs. Rogers signaled yet another "duck and cover" drill. We'd seen film strips, movies, heard a Civil Defense presentation and certainly had our fill of posters. Atomic bomb mushroom clouds. Horrible, ominous dark rising swells of hell in the shape of a mushroom. Mushroom clouds were big in those days. If you had a TV set you'd see Civil Defense warning announcements. You'd see no end to mushroom cloud explosions at the movies and in those incessant films they played in the grade schools. 

      Seeing the test footage clips of houses, dummies, cars and buildings suddenly obliterated in fireballs and fiery wind storms we had a pretty good idea of what the "A" bomb could do. Some of us had mushroom cloud nightmares. That meant the campaign was working of course. The remedy? Duck and cover. 

      We would frequently interrupt the sacred process of a third grade education to learn to "save ourselves" by ducking under our desks-the old wooden variety complete with an inkwell, and covering our head. No random manner of covering allowed. No indeed, there was a proscribed technique of covering the back of your neck and head while essentially kissing your ass-good by. At least that's how I read it, as a third grader.

      It was the first time I was called incorrigible. Mrs. Rogers singled me out, told me I was a bad influence, that I was risking the lives of my Garfield third grade classmates. Why-because I refused to duck and cover.  It wasn't just rebellion. It came with reasoning that I tried to explain. 

      After seeing those army test houses vaporized and blown to smithereens complete with flying glass, furniture and telephone poles, I simply tried to make my case that ducking under our desks would do no good. Instead of miraculously saving our lives, permitting us to climb out of the ashes of a nuclear armageddon so we could go on with a reading lesson, we would just be vaporized or burned to a crisp while cowering under a desk in some unholy body twist.  

      You know, a third grade kid just doesn't get a fair shot in the world of adult logic. Mrs. Rogers was having none of it and I was as insistent about the futile stupidity of thinking we could save our lives in an atomic bomb blast by ducking and covering.  Incorrigible? Yea, maybe. Insistent certainly and an early adapter in reading the bull shit of adults. 

       How about a bouquet to the incorrigibles of Garfield elementary school! Charlotte, Connie, Benny and Tommy seemed to get on board with the logic. It's pretty much a haze now, but I can't remember doing those crazy duck and cover drills when we began to talk to our parents who, like most in those days, thought the PTA or PTO was an organization that had influence. I think they began to back off on some of the A-Bomb mushroom cloud propaganda as well. Too many kids were having bad dreams, or belly aches and the like. 

life below trump tower

      Those days of nuclear worry aren't so distant for those who live on the west coast since a strange little north Korean tin god has been trying to join the nuclear club and since our orange bully has threatened to take care of Kim Jung Un if he tries to threaten the US or makes into the nuke club.

      Intellectual weaklings, emotional children with war clubs-that's what we have. 

      Some, including a few from my decades in journalism have asked why after years of neutrality and trying to be objective have I been so nasty about the president. The answer is simple-I'm a civilian now and while that simply frees me to express an opinion it is in fact the sheer lack of competence and character of the president that compels me. Not in my life has such a jack ass achieved such influence. It is tragic because the majority of Americans rejected the buffoon, his tasteless noveau riche opulence and his despicable character. There should be a law that a minority president cannot reverse majority policy nor take to redefining how Americans conduct diplomacy. 

behaving like a dictator

    More than a handful of groups are going after the lout in chief for his boast he will not release records of who visits the White House. The man who said he was going to drain the swamp is now planning to end transparency. The previous President posted daily logs of visitors. Failure to do so undermines our laws and it shows he does not want to be accountable. Refusing to report to his employers, the American tax payer, who visits our White House is the trick of a dictator as is his broken promise to show his tax returns. What's he trying to hide?

     So to those who have wondered, I never thought I would be disrespectful to a President. Never did I think I would call the commander in chief a fool, idiot, lout, predator, liar, cheat, con man, hustler, sexual molester, narcissist or Russian stooge, but then I never thought America would stoop to such lows either. This president is a disgrace.

     Here's to the day we can climb out of the trump latrine.

important history

     The Zookeeper's Wife is an extraordinary film. It's historical sweep, passionately told and powerful story and superb acting make it a must see. Jessica Chastain is one of the best actresses working. Daniel Bruhl also deserves raves as do the animals and their trainers. And we must never forget this story or that larger event in history.  There was a time I thought such a thing could never happen again. I'm not so sure anymore.

     See you down the trail.