Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun
Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2016

INSIDE TRUMP'S CLOSET and CONTENTED DIVERSIONS

CONTENTMENT
close up
Grazing slopes on Turri Road, San Luis Obispo County

    Silly to ask perhaps, but at what point and for what reason does a cow decide to stand or to rest?
FAVA UPDATE
   Frequent readers may recall recent photos of this year's fava bean crop, showing great promise. The days of promise have arrived.
     As Lana noted and as memorialized in this 2013 post Romancing the Fava, the Fine Art of the Shuck, it takes a lot of work to get the fava ready for inclusion in a menu. Picking, cracking the pod to shell it and then freeing the morsel from an inner skin. But the flavor is unlike anything else and thus coveted.
     I told Cambria artist and Italian cuisine maven Bruce Marchese, who seemed overly pleased that we had harvested our first batch, I was putting barbed wire and guard dogs around our fava bed.
     
WITH RESPECT TO THE CATALYST
    My friend Bruce Taylor, who blogs as the Catalyst at Odd Ball Observations, frequently treats and teases his readers with posts of food. Often they are items that he has made or that his beloved SWMBO has created. SWMBO, also known as Judy has delighted Lana and me with delicious dishes for more decades that would be polite to mention.
    Recently Bruce posted about a crispy fried egg. This is not that, but something he may wish to try. It begins skillet life as a fried egg, but at a propitious moment is suddenly scrambled, but only briefly. The white is set and the yolk is only a few moments from still being runny. By the time Mr. Camera arrived to snap the evidence, the yolk had set up a bit more than is desired. If you try it, get to that moment of scramble, then spatula it onto your plate and begin to eat. Leave the camera out of the equation and you'll have yolk that is that special exquisite place between solid and liquid. If you like that sort of thing.
SYMETRY
&
 HOME MADE POT STICKERS & HOT AND SOUR SOUP

RUMMAGING IN TRUMP'S CLOSET



      Though I do not see eye to eye with David Brooks on some policy questions I think he is a thoughtful essayist. I find agreement with much of what he writes about ethics and philosophy. I urge you to read this piece on the sexual politics of 2016.
     It is my belief that all are welcome in the American political rumble, even those with views I deplore. However people are responsible and accountable for their behavior. That means of course that voters should be thoughtful and even studied. That is not the case too often. We acknowledge it with the identification of LOW INFORMATION VOTER. Regardless, candidates are still liable for what they say, do, advocate and for the effect they have.
      I suspect some of you are offended by the images above but as I follow Trump and his artful manipulation of the media and his use of propaganda techniques, and read again his racist, sexist, ethnocentric remarks and see a void when it comes to specific policy objectives, other than building a wall, and see his bullying and bellicose manner I am reminded of history. So I've spent time reading about Germany from the end of WWI, the rise of Nazism, Adolph Hitler's oratory, the consolidation of the workers movement, the outrageous beer hall putsch, the writing of Mein Kampf, the growth of the Nazi party and all that followed.  Of course there many differences and circumstances.  But it is the similarities that worry me.
     Here we are when conservatives and liberal are both surprised and even outraged by Donald Trump's ascent. His own party is worried sick. Pundits, commentators and analysts are surprised his quest for the Presidency is real. Donald Trump is not Adolph Hitler nor is he a Nazi. But the similarities should worry us all.


     See you down the trail.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

AND THE CATS ARE UNARMED

KILLER BEASTS?
     Natalie Angier of the New York Times reports that cats, our domesticated pets and their feral cousins, kill 2.4 Billion birds a year.  They also kill 12.3 Billion mammals, like chipmunks voles and gophers.  At least I hope they are getting the gophers, but that's another issue.
     Well, our three are among that killing squad, though they look like a civil group here.  Luke, front and center, is the Alpha and is true to his tiger/leopard ancestry. Little sister joy with the pink heart is following her tiger DNA coding as well.  She is tenacious for such a cute little thing.
Hemingway, the orange polydactyl doesn't seem to be the hunter type. He's more interested in napping, playing and sitting on a lap.  We haven't seen him express much curiosity in hunting, so maybe he'll help lower the curve. Can't get a bird from a lap, or in a nap.

A DAY WITH A WEIRD VIBE
     The San Luis Obispo Tribune's "Flashback" listing of this day in history was almost enough to send me back under the covers.  
    January 30th has been besmirched by human endeavors.  Consider the history:
-1933 Adolph Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
-1649 King Charles I is beheaded
-1948 Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated
-1962 Two of the Flying Wallendas hire wire act die in an accident during a performance in Detroit
-1964 Ranger 6 is launched. It crashes on moon but fails to send back images
-1968 The Tet Offensive begins in the Viet Nam war
-1972 "Bloody Sunday"-13 Catholic civil rights marchers are shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland
-1973 KISS performs its first show
     This is also the birthday of Dick Cheney. But it too is the day that brought us Boris Spassky, Gene Hackman, Vanessa Redgrave, Phil Collins and Christian Bale. On reflection, that is a group of intense folk.
MOUNTAIN WAVES
 Looking toward the Pacific from Highway 46 between Paso Robles and Cambria 
      So we end this brutal post with something soothing. As the old sarge used to say on Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there!"
       See you down the trail.