WHAT IS COMING?

     It's a seasons of life thing. I've been toying with a letter to my 13 month grand daughter, to be read 25 years from now.
     Maybe I'm wrong but as I look around to develop a scope of the epistle, I keep bumping up against what seems to be a rock hard brand of short sightedness. It is dangerously so, it appears to me. There is a common denominator as well, money.
      As a nation, actually as nations of the world, we make choices. 

• Business profits or clean air and water. (Lower costs with fewer regulations vs a future of poison)
• Funding for education or prisons. (Only so many tax dollars available-where do they go? What has the greatest value?)
• Profit or public safety? (Think airbags or ignition problems and the calculus of cost of recall vs cost of litigation and pay out if a problem occurs.) Too many corporations choose protecting the "bottom line" over doing the right thing and undertaking recalls and product replacement. The culture seems to approve.
• Repairing infrastructure or kicking the problem down the road?
• The six WalmWart heirs control as much money as the bottom 42% of the American public, somewhere around $89 billion. Some 45-50 million Americans live poverty. Why is the divide so high? Why is the middle class disappearing? How has this new "Gilded Age" happened?

      And on and on it goes as I look for signals in how we live and decide now and how those choices will affect the world our grand children will inhabit. A lot more rumination is ahead. Complexities...

      shadow lace

flowers for Ruth

    Near tragedy struck our coastal mountain village last weekend.

      An allegedly intoxicated driver struck a parked car with such force it shoved it across a parking lot into a crowded coffee shop and village gathering place. Walls tumbled down, furniture was tossed and broken and 5 people were injured. One of them was our friend Ruth Armstrong.  

      Ruth was one of the first people to greet us when we moved to Cambria more than 10 years ago. She made sure we met new people and made friends. She is an artist and one of the village's most indelible people. Her leg and ankle were broken in several places. Ruth walks from one end of East Village to the other end of West Village, perpetually it seems. We are all hoping for a quick rehab because main street seems unadorned without seeing Ruth in her unique gait observing and monitoring Cambria village life.

    

self inflicted wounds

   The Trump gang just can't get it right. They hire a good speech writer who crafts a good address which the bossman reads as though he believes what he is saying, but then....

• We learn the Attorney general either lied or withheld information about his own Russian ties and a new storm begins...
• Kellyanne's bunkhouse posture seemingly ignoring the history and prestige of educators in the oval office sets off another storm...
• It is revealed the highest sources at the White House lied to a group of network news anchors doing a deliberate sleight of hand deception so as to trick positive press coverage. Reich minister Bannon may have won the day but further eroded an already tenuous assignment of truth or trust to this White House. 

       Amateur hour continues.

        See you down the trail.

Making Love and Making War & Goodbye Donald?

    The dramas of humankind, in high season these days, are always put into perspective when juxtaposed to the enduring beauty and power of the nature around us.

   Friend and former colleague John Stanley captured the scene of the coast and evidence of the Sierra snow cover on his recent visit.

   Seeing these help us shove aside the carnival in Washington and remind us life is a longer stride than temporary folly. We turn to that folly in a moment but first-

making love

the season has come

   Most the young elephant seals have arrived...mothers are ending the six weeks of feeding and that means mating season is underway

   above, one of the reigning bulls, snoozes while surrounded by some of his harem that he serially mounts and mates until nature's course is set

   here a young pup is about to become a weaner--mother is about to shut off the food supply so she is "eligible" for becoming pregnant again...the little one hopefully gained enough milk-like a mayonnaise in consistency-in six weeks of feeding to survive its next challenges.  first they must learn to swim and after a while follow nature's gps, in their DNA, to a hunting ground up north. males go up to Alaska, females go up to northern Canada. Once mother cuts off the food she has nothing to do with the weaner. they are on their own, guided only by forces of nature to learn and live.

is the trumpster bound for the dumpster?

   Are we seeing the beginning of the end of the improbable Trump Presidency?
    Crazy for asking you might think? Well, serious people with long runs in Washington have begun to look at the Russian connection business with a framing perspective of Watergate. They began to ask that famous question of Watergate "what did the President know and when did he know it?" 
    Members of the government began to use the words "treason." Congress has opened investigations, even the Senate's majority leader McConnell shows evidence his testicles have finally dropped. 
     There have been leaks from the White House, from the intelligence community, from the Republican party. There is division among White House staffers. Cabinet members are saying one thing and the trumpster is saying something else.
     Old hands around Washington say this administration has been a train wreck and it hasn't even been a month.
     What has happened? Precisely what intelligent people warned - A man with no sense of history, no government experience, who lies habitually, with the character of a mongrel thief and sexual predator, a malignant narcissist, who does not read, who watches television incessantly, who is obsessed about his own ratings is now discovered to be totally over his head, out of element, ineffective, without a clue. What did we expect?
     As this historic unraveling occurs and as the vulgarian himself senses the tides are against him he responds with the news conference today that further confirms-this guy is trouble, is in deep trouble and means more trouble.
     Caught in more lies today, ranting about the media, obsessing with his own image, fixated on the election-which someone should tell him is over-he was trying again to divert attention from a list of liabilities, fault lines and a crumbling administration. World media has almost universally regarded the strange show as that, a very strange showing by a very strange President, in trouble. Divert as he may have tried, this Russian connection will not go away.
      His rants at CNN or his reliance on accusing the media of fake news, while he continues to lie, mixed with his incompetence, his acting as though being President is really just another reality tv show is rising to the level of an absurdest Shakespearean tragic comedy without peer. The sad thing however is he is still the President.
      How quickly will true Republicans begin to flee the stench? How will our professional corp of diplomats and statesmen keep some semblance of stability? When will those who cast their votes for this "change" realize they squandered their franchise on a certified loony?
      Those of us out here in the country can see the signs of a manic collapse. But pity those who work in government. Professionals in Washington are beginning to think and act in ways that are without precedent-at least since a lying Republican President  Nixon was undone. 
     This Russian concern-his bromance with Putin, his refusal to condone sanctions-that are justified and legal-the Flynn overtures, his own business entanglements-the MI 6 dossier-the Russian hack and manipulation of the election and who knows what else may not be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but several levels of serious investigation are under way.  A ranting, raving, lying campaign rally style news conference is not enough to divert attention. No amount of Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer's lies and diversions will turn it back. There is more to come. Professionals are working on it. There may be no smoking gun. Still, when you are less than a month into a rigged election the mind shudders at what else may come to pass. 
      Analyst Frank Rich, New York Magazine and former New York Times author said
        "But Trump is no Nixon: He doesn’t possess the brains, the discipline, the decades of experience of political and governmental combat, or the laser-focused Machiavellian cunning to sustain a Watergate-style cover-up."
        And always, always there is the need to watch his business intertwining. Did you notice that since he became President, the membership fees at his Florida spa have doubled to $200 thousand a year? Don't you imagine though he will donate those increased funds to the coal miners whose homes were foreclosed on by his appointees Mnuchin and Ross-the predatory default kings, part of his "swamp drain." 
       In the meantime wouldn't it be nice to impose a kind of buyers remorse clause in our electoral process. After a certain trial period we could throw the idiot out. Like an annulment. He makes you pine for the days of stockades, locks and dunking. Maybe we could raise funds for those coal miners and auto workers by allowing citizens to serially water board the liar. As he might say, "it's effective, really, really effective. I know. I know better than anyone. It's a fine thing, really fine."

         Now look out a window or take a walk, breath deeply and know this too shall pass. And we can hope soon so we can invoke another Watergate phrase "The American nightmare is over."

         See you down the trail. 
       

INTO THE VALLEY and KATE MCKINNON AS Rx

   Time and energy is spent, being angry, worrying about being angry, getting active or worrying about getting active. We'll get to that, but first a deep breath and a quick road trip to clear the head.

 To Californians who have suffered 5 years of drought, green is a precious color and soothing. Please indulge these few frames from scenic Highway 46, the Green Valley Road. 

    In the early days it was a dirt mountain trail. Paved in the 1930s, it was a connecter from the Pacific Coast east to Paso Robles. The modern highway was built in 1970.

   The connection with Highway 1, aka Pacific Coast Highway, is 1 mile southeast of Cambria and about a mile from the Pacific Ocean, visible from the crest over the Santa Lucia Mountains coastal range. 

     We drive the highway all the time and never tire of its beauty, even more spectacular in the green season.

    As along Highway 1 and the 101 there are patches of the old roads and stage coach trails still visible.

   It is hard to be angry when absorbing the beauty, or when breathing deeply. 

    Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese monk, wrote Living Buddha Living Christ and tells of an easy deep breathing exercise that anyone can do. Sit quietly, still your mind and breathe in, thinking only about your breath and then exhale while smiling. Repeat the action a few times. You will find yourself relaxed, feeling better and less angry. If you wish to go deeper, begin with the deep breath and smiling exhale, then breath in again thinking only about the moment of your breath and then exhale thinking about how lovely the moment is. It is an ancient and healthy technique. It can't hurt you, but anger can!

    It is like an epidemic and in conversation everywhere. I've been surprised at how angry so many of us are, present company included. We understand why and in that is a modicum of strength. So many millions of American livid about the political reality and the man who is the toxic pathology of it. It is an historic revulsion and as in medical diagnosis it is a symptom of something ill in the body. In this case the body politic is reacting and warning us. 

    Unprecedented in our lives. The closest thing we may recall, those of us of certain age, were the mass movements of the civil rights era and the struggle to end the Vietnam war. For younger Americans there was the brief flicker of the Occupy movement. 

    It has been a while since so many have been so politically active-writing letters, e-mails, making calls, going to huddles, talking about direct actions and marching. It is a season of caring and politics and we should take care to remain focused.

COMIC RELIEF IS GOOD AND WE HAVE A QUEEN

     Bravo to Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live. As the American political horror show has progressed, McKinnon has made us laugh with cunning craft, skill and a rapier comedic genius.

      The 33 year old Columbia grad did a "spot-on" Hillary Clinton. But since the debacle she has done masterful take downs of Kellyanne Conway, destined to be hall of fame bits. 

      Just this last week she did another lethal job on Conway, turning her into a Fatal Attraction parody of Glen Close as a crazed stalker going after CNN's Jake Tapper. She also played the Attorney General Jefferson Sessions and just to show she can inflict bipartisan comedy, McKinnon did a number embodying Elizabeth Warren's zeal all in one show. She is an extraordinary talent and that talent is helping millions of Americans laugh and that is especially good.  

  See you down the trail.

Gaga and Melissa Rule

     Americans have experience with this idea. A quick look follows-but first tribute to two Americans who rocked the super weekend.

THE MOST VALUABLE

      Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer is destined for the SNL Hall of Fame. The unannounced star and her skit were a devastatingly hilarious take down of the White House press secretary. The video is already a classic.

       The Super Bowl champion is Lady Gaga. Her beautiful patriotic opening atop the stadium was ample politics before she dropped and tumbled into a stunning explosion of song and dance. As good as was the game it was secondary to a production and performance by the extraordinarily talented and perceptive young artist. "We Were Born This Way" is an anthem and at this time in our history carries even more power.  

America first?

       There's a good chance Trump had no idea the America First movement and slogan is an American artifact. 

       It was one of the oddest amalgamations of Americans and one of the shortest movements in our history.

       Founded at Yale in 1940 it was a movement to pressure the United States from entering the second World War. It lasted barley more than a year but was the largest anti war organization in history. It boasted diverse members, Republican and Democrat Senators, wealthy business leaders, writers, poets, political activists and had nearly 1 million paying members in 450 Chapters. 

       Associated with America First were future presidents Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, a future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, future Peace Corp director Sargent Shriver, Walt Disney, Gore Vidal, novelist Sinclair Lewis, poet EE Cummings, Frank Lloyd Wright, actress Lillian Gish, political activists as diverse as Charles Lindbergh and Socialist Norman Thomas, members of the House and Senate from both parties.

        The group disbanded three days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If the current occupant of the oval office read, or studied history he probably would have struck another slogan to hang his shortsightedness on.

THE TRUMPET

news for a post-truth world

      Rest easy Americans, the Donald's got this covered. He and the master counselor Bannon remain one step ahead by use of their blitzkrieg of disruption.

      As heads spin at the production line executive orders the strategy of diversion is working well. As the crooked media react and try to keep up with the Tweets everybody is forgetting about all the other fake news

• the still pending charges and accusation of sexual assaults. There will be no Clinton moment in this White House. 
• the non release of his tax returns and his claim "I will release them after the audit."
• the first failed military operation and US fatality
• the excoriation on Goldman Sachs instead of his appointment of five Golman Sachs to his team
• People have already forgotten he has no previous foreign policy experience, no government experience. Not a problem. Look how he's handled Mexico and Australia. Plus he's got good advisers, like Kellyann Conway who is fortunately recovering from her near death experience in the Bowling Green Massacre.  
• Ethics advisers to George W. Bush and Barack Obama claim trump has not gone "nearly far enough" to absolve himself from potential conflict of interests
• The Donald will still benefit financially from his business interests while president-but why shouldn't he. He's above the law.
• There are stricter ethics rules in place for his cabinet members than for him-but why shouldn't there be?
• The President is the sole beneficiary of his Trust and he can revoke the trust any time. Now that will help make America great again huh? 

         At $400,000 a day it will cost American tax payers $548,000,000 to keep Melania Trump in New York City for four years.

           Or one wonders why shouldn't the first lady be on hand at the White House? One wonders if the old man is as wealthy as he claims to be, why not pay for it himself? 

            Or why not sell or license images from her modeling career to pay for it?

             Wonder what Nancy Reagan, Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Bush, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Rosalyn Carter, and a few other former First Ladies would think? Until now would you ever have wondered how those former firsts would rock a bikini?

            Yep,  Make America Great Again!

         See you down the trail.

Legitimacy?

    The scope of the American divide was clarified in California when Governor Jerry Brown defied the "alternative fact" reality of the Trump regime. It also cast new light on the questionable legitimacy of the new presidency.

    Noting California is the sixth most powerful economy in the world he said this state "is not turning back now, not ever."   He called for courage and persistence as California continues to work on climate change, health care and assistance to emigres.

    "We have heard the blatant attacks on science. Familiar signposts of our democracy-truth, civility, working together-have been obscured or swept aside," the Governor said.
     He quoted the Woody Guthrie anthem, This Land is Your Land including an oft deleted verse,
       "Nobody living can ever stop me,
        As I go walking the freedom highway;
        Nobody living can ever make me turn back
        This land was made for you and me."

alternative legitimacy 

       A fact Kellyanne Conway or her boss can not deny is the minority status of the regime. Yes he was elected by the electoral college as is legal, but it is also true he was clobbered in the popular vote and it is true he was rejected by establishment Republicans. But the real factor as to his legitimacy or lack of it, is his disconnect between facts and the lies he spews. As he has done historically he denies reality. Many, if not all, of his followers believe him. They live in a fantasy land, constructed by deceit and ignorance.

        Most of his followers think unemployment rose under the Obama White House. It did not. There has been record job growth. He paints the bleak picture of America gripped by crime and carnage. Crime rates have dropped dramatically, despite the tragic mass shootings empowered by the NRA and its belligerent disregard of America. The economy is not in ruin, it has been on a record setting period of growth, following the near depression. There are more disconnects. In fact the lies are well reported but his supporters are disconnected from truth, they believe their liar in chief.

        Will those who supported him come back to reality? The man now refuses to release his tax returns though he promised to. He is moderating his hardline on deporting illegals. He railed at Goldman Sachs and used Hillary Clinton's connection to the firm as proof of her corruption. He has now designated 5 Goldman Sachs alumni as key members of his team.

        His team includes predatory lenders, crooks who made the life of his "ignored" supporters a hell.  There is the ever charming Conway who claims there are "alternative facts." Here's one, she was reportedly in a fist fight at one of the inaugural balls. How's that for class?  It appears his press spokesman Sean Spicer has saved his job, for the time being. After the weekend tantrum his first regular briefing was more civil and traditional though he too had trouble with facts. He refused too acknowledge that unemployment, as reported by his federal regime, is at a low of 4.7. Spicer said Trump doesn't look at statistics. 

      Perhaps the most festering problem is his bosses continued conflict of interest. What is at the core? There are credible sources who suggest that Trump is mentally ill, in the grips of a narcissism so powerful that he really doesn't know the truth or in his predatory mind doesn't think it applies to him. As he has said a few times he is next to God in ability. The ego maniac in chief may well be so far out of touch he is in fact a danger and at least illegitimate.  How many times can you lie at the rate he does and not be too sick to hold office?  

      The lies and disconnects are warning signs. Yet we live in the "post-truth" world where your opinion matters as much as the truth or facts. I used to think the dire pronouncements about what catastrophe he could bring were over started. Not now, now that so many devotees of the vulgarian refuse to believe the truth. He's perfect for the so called freedom caucus who want to destroy the government. He and they are a disease in the American body.

fresh and healthy

    

   

        Aside from the obvious success of California's economy and a Governor, respected by Republicans and beloved by Democrats the other good news is the ending of the 5 year drought.

     Growing up in Indiana I was used to hard rains, something I had not seen here on the California central coast until this year.

   In five days we had 6 inches of rain in our Phillippi gauge on the ridge. Our total for the year is almost 27 inches. In some places there is evidence of the saturation.

     As we move forward in these uncertain times I can't help but wish a man with the judgement, balance, vision, experience, governing skill, bi-partisan support and character of Jerry Brown was leading this nation. For those of you majority of Americans who worry about the miscreant freak who sits in the oval office, know this western Republic will have your back.

    See you down the trail.