PLAY TIME FOR BIG KIDS and THE HILLARY v. DONALD KNIFE FIGHT-

   We will rejoin the adventures of these lovely citizens of the Republic, but first a reflection on this business of Campaign 2016.

WHO DON'T YOU LIKE, LEAST?

    Remembering that in politics 24 hours is a long time and one should never say never, the pundits none-the-less are at work.

     IF the yacking heads are correct Donald Trump (Drumpf)

and Hillary Clinton will take saber and machetes in hand and make like human Popeil slicers and dicers. The one with the most body parts still attached November 9th will get stitched together so they can start driving the ship of state in January 2017.

    Lets assume the "experts" are correct. We then face a unique Presidential Election; two candidates with some of the highest negatives in history. What a start huh? Negatives always rise during the knife fights so there is a chance the new President will be one of the least liked people since Adolf Hitler. Charming!

     And there is a chance that one, or perhaps both could be indicted. Actions of both are being investigated; Hillary for the classified e-mails on a private server and Trump for alleged fraud at his now folded Trump University. Even more charming!

     I'll go against my own borrowed wisdom (borrowed from Eric Sevareid) and predict if Hillary Clinton and Donald Drumpf are the candidates, there will be a lot of cross over voting. The angry and more racist stripe of Democrats for the Donald and educated and moderate Republicans for Hillary. And a lot of folks may not vote which would probably help Drumpf.

    Much can and likely will happen so we stay tuned to an election that could have been an appendage to a 1976 Paddy Chayefsky script.  So, enough of that!

LETS PLAY

     The ever pleasing sounds of the Bellmores offer forth from

  a mountain top on the west side of Paso Robles.

      A red letter day-Le Cuvier pick up day. Club members are 

  treated to a gentle and sunny afternoon of wine and food pairings, great music and no politics.  

  Respected and well collected artist Ken Christensen set up shop for additional visuals on the mountain top with a view. 

AND....

SOMETHING NEW AT A CLASS ACT
back to the beginning

  Lana and Diane emerge from an inspection of the new public tasting room at the extraordinary Halter Ranch Winery.

   The following two photos are taken from approximately the same spot a couple of years apart.  The photo directly below is on the new public tasting room patio, near the entrance to the 22 thousand square feet of caves.The second photo shows the entrance previously.

  Views inside the new tasting room are also spectacular

    And in this new facility on the Halter Ranch complex, construction is stunning.

    The office, work space and members lounge is evidence of the state of the art nature of the operation.  Owned by a Swiss-German philanthropist and land conservationist he asked his staff to find best case design and standards. They did and the place is testament to excellence. It could be the most efficient and best designed winery in the world. 

  The works area was specifically designed; cement, iron, light, ventilation, work flow, access all customized.

    Friends are coming next month for a visit and we were concerned they were coming on a day when the members lounge is not open. After our inspection of the public tasting room our concerns drifted away.

    See you down the trail.

LIVING FREE-POST PARIS, CHEERS AT 700, MEN BEHAVING BADLY

LIVE FREE

     Hanging around a 700 year old Oak was a good place to absorb the shock of Paris and to think of life.

     Don't you think there have been millions of conversations framed by how do we live free but safe? I hope most of us desire freedom over a safety that comes in the form of eroded liberty. Giving up even a centimeter of civil liberty hands a victory to terrorists. 

     The British during the blitz are models to emulate. Stay calm, carry on, continue with life as free people. That is as much of an in your face rejection of the terrorists as we can demonstrate-to live freely, cautious, careful even, but by not ceding liberties. 

    The French, our longest ally appear ready to fight back by that course and by applying military strikes at the dark and evil core.

     After 9/11 we responded with the Patriot Act that we have since learned went to far, gave over too much and we've adjusted. Those who protect us in law enforcement and national security need room to work, but when citizens lose freedom and privacy we begin an erosion of a free and open society and we lose the high ground. We also lose our sense of purpose. 

     Thoughts on understanding the enemy follow below.

     

     Looking at things from the top of an old volcano lends a perspective. We close this post with a return to calming nature.

      Besides wrestling with the Paris attacks I've been thinking about how badly my sex can and too frequently behaves.

 MEN AS SLOW STARTERS?

     That is way too kind. Men have been too frequently cowards and weasels. 
     To our positive, history records some who have been reasonable, fair and committed to equality, but when you examine the right to vote for example and the evolution of suffragettes you see men failing to do the right thing, nefariously and repeatedly. 
      Fear of change, animosity at losing the club house lordship in relations with women, no longer able to plunder or abuse. Women with the right to vote, they worried, would change everything. Men feared it so they fought it.
      The battle was in England where women tried for decades to gain the vote. The struggle birthed suffragettes who made the fight larger, public and persuasive. The marvelous film The Suffragette tells a personal story in that time. Strength, forbearance and suffering under maddening inequality. It took courage to risk what they did. In this axiom men were thugs, cheats and liars. Women won, eventually.
     So now in the second decade of the 21st Century with worry that a regressive strain of politics targets hard fought rights, a little history is helpful. The battle for the right to vote commenced mid to late 1800's. The movement gained force in the early 1900's though stymied by British Parliamentary politics and a heavy press management. That is when women stepped up the fight and it is the setting for this film that is one of the years most important. 
     Carey Mulligan creates a laundry worker who's life leads her to the movement and through her we see the struggle, told personally. Helen Bonham Carter, Ann Marie Duff and Merryl Streep with a small role of an historic character paint a vivid portrait of the passion, determination, suffering and character of the women who earned the right to vote. Prison, beatings, hunger strikes, forced feedings and family separation were the cost horrible at the time, little known today.
     The American Suffragette movement paralleled the British.
In 1918 English women over 30 could vote and could be elected to Parliament. Voting rights were later extended. American women's rights came two years later. The obstacles were the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Too many men failed to see that in extending full citizenship to women you create a more valid and extended public square and private commerce. It broadens experience and perspective in both deliberation and industry. Aside from making sense, it's right. 
      This kind of historic remembrance is important. Rights are precious and fragile.

REJECTED BY THE HUMAN RACE

     There is no place in the 21st Century for ISIS. They are puppets who wish to make war on modernity. They are not religionists and they are not political strategists. They are a cult of death, manipulated by zealots and self appointed fanatics who pervert aspects of a faith founded by a man who had revelations in a cave and then who built a religion that required war fare.

     Even the most open minded of Christians or Jews have questions about some aspects of Islamic belief, but the true deep thinkers in each of the three largest religions in the world have found ways to coexist and learn from each other. So at the risk of angering some of you, we should separate Islam, Judaism and Christianity from conversation about ISIS.

     They may claim to be doing war for their god, but they are really all about imposing a world view that goes back perhaps as far as the third century. They are ignorant. Their leaders are dysfunctional sociopaths incapable of navigating the complexity of a modern life. They can't handle reality so they try to create their own vision of an imagined history. And they recruit the uneducated, unemployed young. Being on social media doesn't mean enlightenment.

    Fundamentalists of every stripe are arrogant in their assumption of rightness and are by nature close minded. But few are such retrograde jackals as to worship death and to make God an angry, vengeful force incapable of anything but destruction. When you consider their destruction of history, their hatred for art, culture, music, their inability to relate to women, their barbaric penchants you are reminded of the personality profile of the sick young men who perpetrate mass shootings in the US. Both behaviors are beyond the bounds of civilization. They are very much alike.

    Everything about them is illegitimate including the god they've created and who they use as an excuse to be brutal thugs, patriarchal bullies, sexual miscreants, simple minded rejects and failures at almost everything in life. It is life they can't handle and so they soak in death. Their leaders bastardize a belief system to justify their own demented dreams and to make up for their own personal weaknesses.  

    This world is troubled enough. There is no place for a cult of curs. There is nothing about ISIS that should survive. There is not one idea they speak that is worthy of negotiation or serious reflection. They deserve the death they celebrate. It should be the task of all nations to destroy them.

AND NOW A MOMENT OF PLEASURE

    A group of friends, boomers all, grouped in this Land Rover from South Africa for an excursion of Halter Ranch in the Paso Robles appellation. 

     Here atop an old volcano that created soil conditions perfect for grapes.

    Another stop at the Ancestor Oak.  700 to 750 years old and believed to be the oldest in the US.

    Autumn color apparent in the acres of vines.

     As you admire the long view of Halter Ranch consider the extraordinary back story. That long road in the left of the frame was the landing strip of a previous owner of the land.
     The man who built the winery purchased some 2000 acres, but planted on only a little more than 200. The rest of the land is a nature preserve and includes a three mile animal safety habitat. A man of means, he has a history of buying land around parks and preserves and giving it away to create larger areas. Ecology, sustainability and walking the talk.

 Cheers to life, love and the freedoms that sustain us.

   Peace!

   See you down the trail.

CAN THEY FIND THE WAY BACK?

REPUBLICAN CONTEMPT

   The setting is the great beyond. The card players are Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

    "Say fellows, did you read what David Brooks said about the Grand Old Party?" Reagan reaches for a jellybean.

     "Well, I've got to say even though he works for that liberal Jew New York Times, he's a good man!" Nixon wipes sweat from his upper lip.

      "I couldn't agree with him more," Ike says.

      "How's that Mr. President?"

      "I'll tell you how Ronnie. Ever since that gas bag Rush Limbaugh got the holy, holy treatment from Republicans our old party has, as Brooks said, become 'bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced.' They remind me of the old John Birch society."

      "Let me just say I stand four square for Republican values, but these people are radicals. They're as destructive as the yippies and SDS. All they want to do is tear down government," Nixon pokes himself in the eye as he gestures.

      "Well, you know boys, Old Tip and I didn't see eye to eye on things but we still took time to visit and you know we got things done." Reagan eats another jellybean.

      "These damned fools who call themselves the Freedom Caucus don't know the first thing about freedom or the price so many have paid. It's like Brooks said, 'Self-expression is more valued than self-restraint and coalition building.' Think we could have won the peace if we didn't build coalitions or I couldn't find a way to work with Mongomery for crying out loud?" General Eisenhower stands and straightens his tie.

     Nixon stands and almost salutes Ike. "I just want to put it out there, put it on the record so to speak, that I believe in the practice of politics, the whole enchilada. Politics is America and as American as the flag. These people are anti political. They don't know how to make a deal."

      "Dick I've never doubted your ability to be a wheeler-dealer, so I'll give you credit on that.  Brooks says this have it their own way "anti political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw dropping incompetence." He's right-jaw dropping incompetence. Hell, all you have to do is turn on C-SPAN and watch some of these damned fools. Brooks is right, the Freedom Caucus and the tea party are "insurgents, incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. If I could I'd bust them all to buck privates and make em spend the rest of their life cleaning latrines."

       "Mr. President I want it clear that I am not in favor of these people being called Republican." Nixon mops his brow.

       "Leave it to these people and everything we worked for will disappear. None of the three of us could pass their litmus test. They are not the Republicans we used to be. They should be thrown out on their asses."

        The door of the card parlor opens and Tip ONeill enters,

"Hey Gents. I've been listening and all I can say is thank God that orange haired carnival barker is now calling himself a Republican. Dick, hand those cards to the General so he can cut the deck."

        Meanwhile back here-Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan campaigned on and worked for ideas the Freedom Caucus and Tea Party right wing fringe now reject. Ideas like rebuilding slums, "eradicating racism," attacking poverty, income inequality, low cost housing, expansion of social security, equal pay regardless of sex, support for the UN, closer federal scrutiny of mergers, better anti trust enforcement, better SEC policies, protection of employment benefit programs, federal funds to train doctors and scientists, low rent programs, environmental protection, fair immigration and citizenship programs and occasionally even a tax increase. 

        Surprised? Either memory fails you or more than likely the restricted and partisan atmosphere of the last few years has made old fashioned Republican and conservative ideas look liberal. The same is true for Democrats as they, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, have become more centrist and business friendly. Conservatism has been drubbed and so has liberalism.  

         In old fashioned "politics" the nation has been moving right under corporate sponsorship. Sociologically the US has been fragmenting by income, education, gender and sexual identity, ethnicity and aspirations.  It is harder to find the "old center" of the commonweal and as an aging democratic republic with a dysfunctional government and towering maintenance issues, we should find our way back to consensus, negotiation, pragmatic solutions and survival.

The first who get tossed out of my ship of state are the ideologues, zealots, numb skull egoists and narcissists.

EATING IN THE BARN

   See you down the trail.

SECRETS-TRUE AND OTHERWISE AND OTHER HISTORY

SO IT WAS BIG SUR?

     The series finale of Mad Men revealed the origins of that famous old Coca Cola commercial "I'd like to teach the world to sing…" 

           It was a "new" Don Draper, fresh from Big Sur and an Esalen style institute who presumably returned to the New York ad world, retooled and re grooved by the hippie love and peace ethic and the magic of the California coast. We were left with a meditating Draper, breaking into a smile and then we see the Buy the World a Coke commercial.

       Many central coast Californians recognized our neighborhood in scenes of Draper reclaiming his soul midst the Big Sur coastline and in the ultra sensitivity sessions of a coastal retreat.

   The mythical Draper worked for the McCann Agency and in a kind of Oliver Stone version of history there is a little truth, but only a little.

Here's a link to a profile of the real ad man behind the Coke commercial.

   There's a lot of buzz about the way the highly acclaimed and historic series ended.  For the record, I loved it. And I wish Coke would bring back that creative  masterpiece.

     During the run of Mad Men, director, writer, creator Matthew Weiner was fastidious with playing it close to history, matching plot development with actual events even down to the weather. His payoff with the 1971 commercial

and the changing ethos of his characters and the mood of the nation was just one more gleam of brilliance in an historic and enjoyable television event.

THE WATER DIVINER

    Russell Crowe is also a brilliant director. His The Water Diviner is an epic film and a haunting, moving story that puts a face on war you'll not soon forget. That it too conjures history, easily over looked and conveniently forgotten is also powerful testament to his creative vision. The horrendous offense of war in the course of human existence is as poignantly stated here as in any film or novel, though it does not preach. It is the also uplifting story of the power of a father's love and guilt and the beautiful love of brothers. And the story of romantic love healing broken hearts.  

       Crowe uses film like an artist and fills the screen with emotion, pathos, beauty, action, hope and truth. 

WINE AS FESTIVAL

    Spring Wine Festival in the Paso Robles appellation has many faces.

   A covered bridge dinner in the Halter Vineyards.

    The "field kitchen."

   Food as art!

   An evening deep in merriment.

  The staff that delivered. Superb work by Thomas Hill Organics in Paso Robles!

  An afternoon grill, bocce and friendship at Hearthstone.

  The beat continues at Kenneth Volk and Four Lanterns.

   The extraordinary group of Danny Weis, Jill Knight and Eric Williams and the watchful eye of Willow.

    A central coastal afternoon,

  with approval from Tashi

    and a young Californian.  

    The west side hang out.

    See you down the trail.