MEDITATIONS ON MEN, WOMEN & EROS

A PRAYER FOR PETRAEUS

" LORD GIVE ME CHASTITY-BUT NOT YET"
Saint Augustine  354-430

     It's too bad for the whole cast that any of this is now front page and 24/7 news.  

"Deceiving others, that is what the world 

calls a romance"

Oscar Wilde

     How does it begin?  A touch, a look, a playful flirtation that goes too far?

      Sad that a good man with stellar service to his nation is deposed by private actions and sad too that we are denied his capable skill.

"The surest protection against temptation is cowardice."

Mark Twain

      We are right to question though, why a chief of intelligence would leave the kind of trail that investigators have chased.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave...when first we

practice to deceive."

Walter Scott

Quoted by Senator Sam Ervin during Watergate

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy

with odd old ends stolen out of holy writ;

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

William Shakespeare, Richard III

  As editorial cartoons and pundits have noted, Petraeus is not alone in his submission to lust.

"I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed

adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will

do this and he forgives me."

President Jimmy Carter

"We are never like angels till our passion dies."

Thomas Dekker  1572-1632

   And so our national soap opera turns.  But I wonder, 

should we really care?

"The saints are sinners who kept on going."

Robert Louis Stevenson  1850-1894

DAY FILE

CALIFORNIA TEXTURE

   See you down the trail.

EXPLORATION

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

     Here's some context.  Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Magic Johnson was at Michigan State, Stephen King released The Shining, Tom Watson won the Masters and Apple released their new color logo. 
     35 years ago today one of this planet's greatest accomplishments was launched. Voyager 1 began the journey that today has taken it 11 Billion miles and to the edge of our solar system.  Voyager 1 and companion Voyager 2, now some 9.3 Billion miles in another direction, continue to mine data of deep space, soon to be interstellar space. Voyager has gone the farthest human kind has reached.
     On board are those gold discs containing sounds, data and renderings of human life, in case an intelligence encounters our sub-compact car sized "human offspring" wandering beyond our knowledge base.
     Alicia Chang of the Associated Press reports each Voyager "has only 68 kilobytes of computer memory.  To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod-an 8 gigabyte Nano-is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder."
     Mind bending isn't it?

THE OTHER BOUNDARY

      Jack Kerouac's cult classic On The Road was published by Viking Press on this day in 1957.

From back cover of ON THE ROAD

       The original manuscript, a long continuous roll of type written script, now belongs to Jimmy Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts.  

        A few years ago the late George Plimpton told me he was in an office as the On The Road manuscript roll was being read and considered.  He said while it may be revered now on that particular day, people in the office were having  fun unrolling it across the floor and back, like a kid's toy.

Photo from mountholly-lamano.com

DAY FILE

GARDEN NOTES

      We've got a "volunteer" and "mystery" squash growing
down the back hill side.  

     Not sure what it is-something like a butternut or summer squash.  We've had a few and it bakes and sautés nicely and is great in a casserole.  I decided to pick a few when they were smaller.  One that had "hidden" beneath a slope side leaf grew to the size of a small pumpkin. That "prize" went home with a stone mason working on a neighbor's fire pit. He was delighted.

     A tomato update.  The "beautiful" greenhouse continues to endure evening breezes and winds and the crop inside flourishes. It ain't pretty, but the crop is.

      It continues to amaze us that we can grow tomatoes in this climate near the Pacific fed by the cooler than 
hot and humid mid-west conditions which favor tomatoes.

See you down the trail.

BRING BACK THE SMOKE FILLED ROOMS

SHAMS

       With apologies if I start sounding like an old goat, but the political conventions today are nothing like they used to be.
        Coming of age as a journalist when I did gave me a chance to cover conventions with things like floor fights, battles over credentials, platform debates and open challenges.  A generation before me there was actual suspense about who'd get the nomination and on what ballot. I saw that at the state level, but the drama at the national conventions was about issues. At least when I started.  
       The last national convention I covered was the start of what they have now become, staged, public relations spectacles.  I remember grousing about it with Larry King and Peter Jennings as we took hallway breaks outside the "Skyboxes".   Our body clocks must have been on the same time zone because we headed to the men's room about the same time. "Here we go again," King would intone.
         At my first convention I had pretty much free access to the convention floor and all of the delegations for the whole week.  By the time of the last "coronation" as they were called, the media was kept in a building a block away, allowed only timed and limited access to the floor, and moved in sequestered zones. 
        In the early days we could see and hear protest demonstrators.  By the last convention they had been moved so far out of sight none of the candidates or delegates might even know they were around.  These events have become managed to the point it is a sham to call them a convention.
        At one of the mid 70 conventions, it might have been the issues convention in 75 or the New York gathering that nominated Jimmy Carter in 76, there was a lot of speculation about the intentions of the Black Caucus headed by Ron Dellums and a feminist contingent headed by Bella Abzug.  The question was about what they would vote on a particular plank.  Delegates and the media were speculating about what Dellums and Abzug would do.  I was walking through the lobby of the hotel where a meeting was scheduled. I spotted a delegate credential, on a chain,  laying on the floor.  I picked up the credential and started toward the desk where I intended to turn it in.  However on the way through the lobby I spotted Dellums, Abzug and others marching into a salon meeting room.  I squeezed into the pack, holding the delegate credential in the air, while trying to cover my own media credential. The caucus was "closed" to delegates only.  
      I stood there listening, and was obvious about making notes on my reporters notebook.  No one seemed to take offense. They decided they would be united on the issue and that both would have a chance to speak.  The caucus adjourned.
      I almost sprinted back to the working news center-in those days almost all of the media was housed in the same large working space, with little warrens of feed centers and edit spaces off to the side in cubicles. I was reporting for a group of radio stations and I filed my report into a special phone line.  I remember Jack Nelson, who went on to win a Pulitzer, asking me  "Where'd you get that?"
       I told him the circumstances.  By this time Walter Mears, also now a Pulitzer winner, seemed interested. In those days, for many of us, the story didn't really register with our headquarters until it appeared on the AP wire with a Walter Mears by-line. His putting it on the wire gave an event a kind of sanction with editors and producers miles away and out of touch.  Nelson asked me to repeat how I got it.  I did.  He and Mears smiled.  They were the big boys, I was just a kid, but I beat 'em that day.
       Chance of that sort of thing occurring again?  Nada.  The Republicans wont even let one of their own, Ron Paul, address the convention.  Despite winning about 8-10% of the Republican Primary votes, he's being shut out.  That wouldn't have happened, back in the good old days, when conventions were really conventions!
       

DAY FILE

THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER

     A few of you have asked about the bees.  They appear to be prospering with their new young queen.  When Michael did his last check of the frames he spotted the queen's chamber.  It looks a bit like a thrown earthen ware vase or jug.

    Now that our bee keepers have found the queen and are pleased with the latest inspection, your reporter is waiting for the honey to appear!

      See you down the trail.