JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE...

   It's funny how a fragment of memory launches itself and then sends you down a lane of thought, maybe even a rabbit hole.

   I can't tell you why, but one of my great aunts singing Blue Birds Over The White Cliffs of Dover sprang full bloom into the day. My great aunts, Martha, Anna, and Sarah were, like my grandmother Mary, born in England and arrived in the US as young girls and teens. 

    The song was made popular by an English singer, Vera Lynn and it was one of the most popular tunes of WWII.

    I'm a post war boomer, but I remember hearing them sing that tune as I was toddler in their care when my parents were out or on a trip. It was soothing to them, an assurance that regardless of the present problem or crisis, it would all work out. And apparently it did the same for this former little tyke.

I think they sometimes sang it to me when I was having tyke travails. 

   Maybe it's the winter clouds decorating our Santa Lucia mountain range, or the full moon rise during the light of evening.

        Maybe it's my hopes and prayers for a friends who are struggling against serious health challenges. Perhaps my optimism fueled by my trust in our democratic republic's sense of justice and the power of tenacious investigation and judicious outcomes. Perhaps it was reading of the winter storms and seeing snow blanket Arizona like something from North Dakota in photos from my friend Bruce. (His blog link appears in the column to the right.)

    But there it is, Blue Birds Over The White Cliffs of Dover, in my head, evoking memories of assurance, certainly as it must have done for millions as a world war against great evil ensued.

     Funny, how time's jewels come back, often just in time.

       By the way, I think the drag net is tightening around the great fraud and stooge. His poison will come to an end, "just you wait and see"

       "...I remember well as the shadows fell

           the light of hope in their eyes..."

        "...there'll be love and laughter

          And peace ever after

          Tomorrow when the world is free..."

    

    

    Be as young of heart as you can.

    See you down the trail.

GOLDEN MOMENTS

    Surrounded by Gold

Series of photos around Cambria

Golden Memory

     She could not have known the affect she had baked. The first bite was as though being belted into a time machine and delivered to an address in the early 1950's.

      Since Christmas a couple of years ago a jar of genuine English mincemeat sat in the back of the pantry. Lana put it to life in pie-cobbler. No top crust, just the savory sweet and unique taste, so authentic it time shifted me. My English grandmother and her sisters made mincemeat pie when they shared a large home, very much like a boarding house, on West Jackson Street in Muncie. Most of them were widows by then and frankly their English culinary skills were not to my liking as a lad with a couple of exceptions, ox tail soup and mincemeat pie.

      It had been decades since I tasted real mincemeat pie and each taste fired synapses deep in the memory file, vividly. I could smell the various perfumes of my great aunts, hear the sounds of that big house, feel the buzz as extended family gathered for Thanksgiving or Christmas. What a sweet and naive time it was. And what a wonderful taste!

Generation Shift

      My great aunt Martha who eventually survived all the others used to marvel at the progress she had seen and told my brothers and me we would see things she could not even dream of. My mother and father also welcomed the promise of the future and new thinking. Not everyone is wired that way.

     While most of the focus has been on the candidates in this cycle there is a glimpse of the future in the supporters and that is probably most true in Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

     Trump is a sentry of the old and changing structure; Whites, mostly older white men and women, some angry, some frustrated and most frightened by the disruptive nature of the future. More about that in a moment.

      Look at the faces and age of the massive crowds that Bernie Sanders has attracted coast to coast. Young, all sex and gender identity, culturally diverse and very much at home with disruption.

      Disruptive innovation, big data and the shared economy are forces that are shredding old ways and creating new businesses, opportunities, economic models, ways of living and in essence our future. Trump's supporters have more difficulty getting their heads around such concepts. Sander's supporters are already living lives that make Uber, Airbnb, 

metadata analysis, cooperative living, Instagram news and more, a reality. 

       20 years in the future? Most of Trumps supporters will be dead. Sander's demographic strength will be the most viable political voting block in the US.

      Based on the fervent support they have given Sanders, and the ease with which millennials adapt to disruptive influence and data processed lives, the formulating will of the American electorate will be much more inclined to a Sander's vision of government than any of the other candidates in this year. By 2036 a form of social Democracy may well be the model for being elected. I think we are seeing the first signs of that in Sander's appeal to those who will be the bulk of the future.

      Boomers are a fault line. Some take comfort in the knowledge of what they know, the richness of their lives and memories. They like things as they are. New operating systems on phones or computers, new designs in cars, new music, fashion and etc are annoyances. Others are still early adopters, fascinated by new art, cinema, technology, eager to use it, unintimidated by diverse mores, excited about the appointments of shared economy, comfortable with change including the relinquishing of power. 

      At the risk of annoying friends elsewhere-the most exciting region in the US now is the bay area-San Francisco-San Jose-Santa Rosa. Technology, information, data, money, ideas, innovation, space science, energy, automobiles, medical research and application are proportionately more robust and fully engaged in the Bay Area than anywhere else. Disruptive influence, big data, new business models and new politics thrive. That too is a glimpse of the future.

     Watch the politics there, a generation shift foretold. I hope as I continue my march to old boy irrelevance I will be excited by new technology, scientific advance and can still find mincemeat pie.

Surrounded by Gold

   See you down the trail

A MARVELOUS FRENZY and A FRIGHTFUL MEMORY

     Do you have triggers in your life? Something that turns a switch in your brain?

      This does it for me.  As far back as I recall, simply seeing a small boat switched on two circuits of emotion.  Adventure-the romanticized notion of going to sea as a fisherman struck me as a noble endeavor-man in the elements and nature, laboring earnestly for good purpose. Hard work, health, independence.

       And it awakens a deeply embedded dread-Davy Jones Locker.

     It started at "The House."  "The House" was a large two story turn of the century affair complete with root cellar, orchard, a barn like shed, massive garage, grape arbors and a front porch that spanned the big place. It was in all practicality a boarding house, in this case the residence of my widowed grandmother, her sisters, including husbands, and her eldest sister who was also widowed. Nana Cochrun, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Anna and Uncle Ed, Aunt Mat (Martha) and Uncle Pete and their daily tea and supper companion, their "kid" brother Uncle Bill. The sisters were English, emigres from Tinkers Green Farm by way of Warwick. Ed was a Scot, Pete was an Irishman. Bill, though born in the US, was the perfect English gentleman and always "dressed like the Duke," as the sisters said frequently. The accents were thick, the behavior prim and proper-the sisters never without their purses-and the culture was pure Brit.

      Being the eldest child of WW II vets I was often padded off to "The House" as my young parents enjoyed a post war social life and time with friends. It was in this context Davy Jones locker was embedded deep in my psyche.

      The books were from the UK and it seems an inordinate number of them contained harrowing stories of sailors lost to sea. A couple of the illustrations are so affixed in my memory they give me shivers still. 
      I don't know why I spent so much time on those stories, but I remember my stern English grandmother, very much a no nonsense woman, telling me if I didn't behave I'd end up in Davy Jones Locker.  Bad boys it seems were parceled off to the British Navy or merchant fleets and being the bad and inexperienced lads they were they ended up as fish food.

      Today I admire those boats and the sea but as a devoted landlubber. Sure going to try to avoid Davy Jones Locker.
       Is there anything from your childhood that frightens you today?

FOR THE BIRDS

 Driving south on Highway 1, I spotted a frenzy of birds feeding on a bait ball.  If you look to the left and lower third  in the above frame you will see a tell tale fin of another diner.

   Brown pelicans, western gulls, Heerman gulls, cormorants, sooty shearwaters, black vented shearwaters and terns all looking like an Escher print.

   Pelicans provided an aerial assault show.

   All the drama playing out under a morning quilt.

     Autumn on the central coast.

       See you down the trail.