The Teaser

    Graham Greene spoke truth when he said, "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and let's the future in."
     That moment occurred when I read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. My imagination was ignited and a desire for travel was launched. 
     Stevenson was an ambassador of travel and early I took to heart what he wrote; "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travels sake. The great affair is to move." 

     My life of journalism and documentary production allowed a decent bit of "moving," globe trotting and cultural immersion. 
   I was asked once to write a piece about the adjustment one must manage when returning from extensive travel. A meager truth I surfaced was this; the re-entry to normal also helps enshrine the intoxicating, psychoactive, or mind stretching affect of travel.

    As you have read we have been away for a while, celebrating a milestone in our marriage, connecting with ancestral roots. Ever the journalist and curious explorer we return with a couple thousand images and even more memories. 

    I want to share with you what we saw, did and felt.
   

   We were on country roads, navigating large cities, at historic sites, immersed in the local culture, in Scotland and Ireland. There was much to see and learn.

     There is history that makes ours seem youthful. Complexity, intellect, and human endeavor that is profound.

   Abundant beauty, nature and culture.

Always near is history that shaped humankind.

  We are fascinated by mysteries of ancient cultures, older than the great Pyramids, cosmic riddles.

Profound beauty, picturesque charm. 

Music and culture.

  Exploration and discovery. 

Food and other feasts of the senses. 

   Grandeur and majesty.  

   Politics, struggle, and the DNA of fighting for independence. 

  Whimsy, expression and stunning beauty.

  Intellect and impact. 

    And there are the people. Our exploration of Scottish history, genealogy, and nature was organized and moderated by research and experts.
    And so it was in Ireland, though our guides were friends, people we have hosted in California.
     We benefited wonderfully from the expertise of Irish friends who kindly shared the magic of their Republic. An endless gratitude to Kay and Willie,
  

 and to Kay and Jack. 

  So stay tuned. In the days to come there will be scenes, experiences, history, and the pastiche of travel and culture.

   I hope you will enjoy what you read and see, in a vicarious travel adventure.

   I'm tempted to say come along for a foreign adventure but I'm reminded of Stevenson's summation; "There are no foreign lands, it is the traveler only who is foreign."

   We have been the foreigner and now we seek to interpret and report.

   These are strange days on both sides of the Atlantic, a cultural metamorphosis is in the offing. 

    It is my humble suggestion we have reached these vexing times because we have become to tethered to small worlds, of small screens and small words and small ideas, and led by small people. 

    Greene said it well when he wrote in Burnt Out Case, "The more base a life is, the more we fear change."

     We have much to share. I hope you enjoy the ride that is to come. Let's move. 

     See you down the trail. 

   

DREAMERS and SEEING HISTORY, HONESTLY

    The "Dreamers" are Americans.

    I heard a young would be nursing student talking about the 15 years he had spent in the US, becoming as "Americanized" as anyone else and now he and 800 thousand others are targeted. It is not only wrong, it is stupid!

     Donald Trump has lied again and while that is no surprise the scope of the reaction of Americans and certainly American business is. Almost everyone knows the idea of ending "the dream" is a repulsive violation of what we think and believe.

     Perhaps the opposition of business and industry and the law suits by states and others will help keep the dream alive.

GETTING PERSPECTIVE

Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society and Indiana University

(This is a repeat of a post first published September 15, 2014. The complaint and issue has again been raised)

     To quote Ed Murrow "this just might do nobody any good." To paraphrase his 1958 speech to the Radio TV News Directors Association (RTNDA), at the end of this a few people may misunderstand what I'm saying, but here I go.

      We need to find a balance point where those who wish to address and treat sins of the past do not also destroy history or use deconstructionism without restraint and/or the balance of intellectual buffers.

      A case in point-The Thomas Hart Benton mural.

Controversial when it was created in the 1930's it is said to make people uncomfortable now. Why?  The depiction of the KKK. An honest appraisal of Indiana history cannot ignore the Klan. 
       If you are disturbed by the Klan portrayal consider proportion and perspective. The hooded terrorists are counter weighted by a white nurse attending to an African American child. More visual counter punch is the left anchor of the Benton panel composed of the press, an editor/writer and reporter that challenged and broke the Klan's extraordinary control of Indiana politics and the 1920's Republican party.  

      The media's battle with the Klan is iconic. Pulitzer awards have been given. I was awarded a National Emmy for my investigative documentary of the modern Klan in America. I've been an enemy of discrimination and prejudice, including racism, sexism, ageism and other manifestations of bias. My body of work is deep in reporting on these issues.

      We should find a way to be aware of sensitivities without trying to edit the past. The mural is not, as some have said, a glorification of the Klan, rather it is a depiction of fact. Reality, regardless of pain or absurdity cannot or should not be retrospectively edited or worse, deleted. Knowledge dictates that we recognize historic truths.

     History appreciates with understanding and by sifting nuance and seeing things in context through an honest assessment.  Later we may come to advanced understandings, gain insight, change our minds, learn, discover information and evolve, but the ground from which we and knowledge derive is historic fact. What we see and call history must be understood not only in the context of our time-but in the framework of what people knew and did in their own time. 

     As a high school kid I spent time in the city room of the Indianapolis Times. A giant replica of the front page announcing the Times winning a Pulitzer for their investigation of the Klan adorned a wall. It made a huge impression. When I took the stage in New York to accept the national Emmy for my own investigation I stepped into a slip stream of iconic history. The Benton art tells part of that story. 
    Though you may think the behavior is offensive, the painting itself of klansmen and the burning cross should not be regarded as offensive in intent  but rather as part of that stream of history. In the painting the Klan is seen as small, yet the nurse doing good service and the press loom more significant and impressive.  And if you look carefully you will see the klansmen are dominated and overridden by circus performers. There was a time when most circus acts wintered in Indiana. I think Benton was expressing a bit of poetic contempt and mockery by that juxtaposition.  

     No the Benton mural is not offensive, and those who think it is are simply wrong. It is history and should be taught and respected as such. And as I study it again I am reminded there must always have been those who like to ignore or even forget as well as those who may be rightfully upset with our past, who would like to expunge it. We can not help but analyze by virtue of what we know, but we must keep in mind that we are only as effective as we are fully and historically informed. 
       We cannot change the past.

Protection

    See you down the trail

SHIFTING SANDS and WHAT AMERICA DO YOU SEE?

    Just another day at the office for the Curlews, not mindful of the seasonal shift of sand.

    Where are the steps? "Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives...." Remember that old soap opera opening line?

    It will take seasonal tides to reveal the missing steps, but of no consequence to our Curlews.

   Here we see a gull considering grand larceny. Slowly it tracks toward a fisherman's rigs and kit.

united we stand
...don't think so...

    Campaigns have always been divisive, after all a choice is rendered, deciding for one and against another. But it's a new world and rifts under gird everything.

    Trump and Clinton present two vastly different visions of America and thus paths forward. Who do you believe?

    Media has become entirely too parochial or partisan to ideology or party. What happened to non-partisan or at least bi-partisan?

     We've crossed the Rubicon. This election, like so much else in daily living has devolved to "feeling" "emotion" "personal belief" and attitude. Where is critical analysis  intellectual work, truly weighing pros and cons, or thinking about it?

     Do facts matter? To whom? For what reason?

     Why are so many Americans fed up? Why is there so much anger?

      I fear this election will settle nothing. The rifts will continue to run beneath our feet. Old democracies and republics have problems, some are lethal.

      This is the Boomers last stand. In another 4 years most of our parents, the greatest generation, will be gone. Boomers are now dropping off the actuarial tables increasingly and in 4 years the once large "census bubble" will be faded and diminished. 

      Gen X and or Y or whatever will be aging and the largest group that matters will be the millennials. They will inherit a government and electoral system that is presently bought and sold where all too many who labor in it are in it for themselves.

      Some men and women who work as prostitutes are forced into it. All too many of our "electoral industry" and "government business" workers are in it because they want to be. They do it for the money and they like it.  How does that square with the historical intent of elections and governance?

      How will the millennials change things? Watch how they vote, or do not. Some things are a given. Race, gender, sexual identity will be passe to all but a few cretins, sons and daughters of skin heads. 

     Millennials have grown up where disruption is the norm and where the old norms of family, career, attitude are as out of date as the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and early 90's. We will be a relevant as the Civil War, WWI, the telegraph, or horse and buggies were to us.

      Grouse and belly ache, worry and shout all you want.

Our relevance, our attitudes, our way of doing is getting wrapped with the garbage in the newspapers and headed for the trash. I wonder how much of our ways are even worth recycling.

       A democratic republic is by nature a messy business but the point is to find a center, a meeting in the middle. That seems to have disappeared as a skill or goal. Maybe a new generation's take on our noble experiment of a United States will do what we have failed.

    See you down the trail.