DOING SOMETHING ABOUT BANNED BOOKS-PLAY-THE NEW TRIP-WHERE DID THE WATER GO?

FIGHTING BACK

    The battle over book banning will play out in this window 24 hours a day for the next week.

     Tim Youd will essentially live in the front window of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial library as he types, on a typewriter no less, the entire Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury.

     The effort is spurred by the American Library Association's continuing fight against the banning of books.  The Vonnegut is a natural as his Slaughterhouse Five has faced occasional banning and even burning since the 1970's.

      Indy Star writer Will Higgins provides a profile here.

      Full disclosure here; I'm a member of the Vonnegut Memorial Library and a great fan of the Indianapolis native. A previous post takes you to the Vonnegut Memorial Library which you can read here. Being a first amendment absolutist I abhor book banning, even those that I might consider trash, subversive, offensive or any other such subjective objection.  Free is free.

PLAY

    As work spaces go, the office, winery and tasting room at Halter Ranch sets an example of great modern California architecture and a nice place to work.

   The drive in is pretty sweet as well.

   Harvest time is underway in the Paso Robles west side.

THE TRIP TO ITALY

    If you enjoyed Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP, you will probably enjoy the THE TRIP TO ITALY.  

    Plenty of laughs, gorgeous Italian country side and a foodies delight of kitchen, restaurant and meal scenes.

    We left and headed to Giuseppe's for Italian grape and repast. We couldn't help our self. 

Here's the trailer

THE DROUGHT CLOSE UP

   California's need for rain is critical.  This scene, from between Paso Robles and the Pacific Coast Highway is all too common.

    

   See you down the trail.

ON THE VONNEGUT TRAIL-

SO IT GOES

     "The walkway is ending, watch your step, the walkway is ending, watch your step, the walkway is ending, watch your step...." The recorded voice was a metronome rising above the din of an airport that wobbled someplace between dread and manic as a dust storm pounded outside.

      I'm parked on one of those courtesy columns, recharging a phone and trying to reach my friend the Catalyst to see what is his read on the duration of the storm that has stopped flights into and out of Phoenix.  The metronome voice is like a machine gun over my shoulder, while a fellow just around the column is listening to a boomingly loud and dramatically affected Spanish language broadcaster call a Soccer match. He reacts effusively in what can best be described as the odd spawn of a chortle and a nasal guffaw. The parade of humanity marches down the terminal as in tribute to the Zombie apocalypse. Mouths agape, trudging on, watching the dust give way to wind and rain as planes sit in motionless lines at the gates.
    The din is a stew of cell phone callers, parents yelling at kids, people bitching about missed connections, PA announcements on delays and gate changes and it all crescendos into a kind of giant moan-though it cannot drown out either the Soccer snorts and profundo or the metronome. And I keep getting, "all circuits are busy please try your call later." At large in America-on a kind of Vonnegutesque mission.  In fact I've been to the temple itself.

     There in the heart of the city where I pounded the street as a reporter, across the street from a bar that often offered cool retreat is the Vonnegut Library.  It is only 25 blocks from where I had my first encounter with the very Kurt himself and just 3 blocks from where the tape of that interviews resides in the environs of the Indiana Historical Society time safe. 

    Indianapolis has been enriched by the addition of the Vonnegut Museum and Library. Though the scion of a prominent Indianapolis family may have made some of his family crazy, he was to be embraced by a generation of Indiana readers, and even more world wide.

   They've created a replica of the room where so many of those thoughts were birthed.

   I got a kind of cosmic shock as I noticed all of the representations of an asterisk.  It is a Vonnegut trademark now.  Shock I say, because as a high school and later college student my notebooks were rich with asterisks. The pages full of them, as markers and as doodles. Even then I thought it a bit odd, but they continued to propagate. They riddled my class notes, long before I was reading Vonnegut.  

   My friend Frank, author of the Vinyl Stats blog, and I have often joked about "Vonnegut moments" ripping into the Hoosier ether.  Must be another one of those, like cosmic lightening. 

   Aside from great interactive data files and videos, Vonnegut books and books about him, there is also terrific Vonnegut art.

   My pilgrimage to the Vonnegut Library was my last stop before heading off for the Indianapolis International Airport after after a weekend pilgrimage of another sort... 

   There was also a visit with my famous trophy-I do not have custodial rights...

   Back in the day I was the first Indianapolis broadcaster to win a national Emmy.  It remains on display at my former employer.  I can stop to touch it however...

  There was also a reunion of fraternity brothers-25 years we have gathered at the end of summer.  Some are gone and now some struggle with health or that of their spouse. But it is a special friendship that deepens with the seasons

   To add another Vonnegut wrinkle to the weekend commemorating the Washington March and Dr. King's address, I met and heard Dr. Allan Boesak.  Boesak was a Mandela and Bishop Tutu ally, one of the leaders of the South African Anti Apartheid movement, often called the South Africa MLK. He more recently left the Reformed Church in protest over their discrimination of gay and lesbian people. I would be flying home to a local iteration of such.

   I never did get a clear circuit, the walkway never stopped ending, nor did the metronome voice, but the dust and rain ceased and we were able to ride below the stars and return to this ridge a mile from the Pacific.

    And as the man said...."so it goes...."

    See you down the trail.

KNIGHTHOOD FOR A LION-EVEN ON THIS DAY OF THE MARATHON BOMBING

A GOOD MAN IN A TOUGH WORLD

   It was great to read here that Senator Richard Lugar is to be knighted by the Queen, the high honor that Britain can bestow on an American.
     As a member of the Senate, Lugar distinguished himself as one of best in the chamber's history.  A post, written last year, on Lugar's departure from the Senate, remains one of this blogger's most read and forwarded entries. 
      It appears fate may have captured Lugar in a sad irony.  The day we read of the honor is the day that will be remembered for the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Lugar's announcement as a Presidential Candidate on April 19, 1995 was the day of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed.  The launch of his campaign for the 1996 nomination was in essence stunted by the overshadowing event.  
      Lugar could have been a great President. A brilliant and scholarly man and a former Naval Intelligence officer, Lugar represents the kind of tough intellect that could have exercised the power of the Oval Office in an historic way. Wise in the ways of the Senate, respected in the world as a strategic and even visionary thinker, he had the verve of a pragmatic mind that could have paid huge dividends to the Republic as its Chief Executive.
     Though only British subjects are referred to as "Sir," the knighthood of Richard Lugar will, I hope, permit an occasional, if even lighthearted reference, to Sir Richard. 
Last year I called him a Lion of the Senate. Now we know him as a Knight.  
      Still there is that irony, which were it not for the obvious tragedy of the coincidence would make it a perfect kind of Kurt Vonnegut fiction device-Vonnegut being a graduate of the same high school and Indianapolis neighborhood. Both men reached summits of achievement.  

THE CALM OF THE SHORE

Even more precious on a day like this

    See you down the trail.

IN DEFENSE OF CRYSTAL-A DRONE STORY-THANKS FOR THE AWARD

GET OVER IT

     Apparently some are upset, or so some would lead us to believe, over Billy Crystal's impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr.  

     First, it is a reprise of a famous sketch he's performed many times, secondly it was in no way disrespectful, and this

particular bit was hilarious. If you were offended, of course you are entitled to your sentiment, but come on, comedy

is all a joke. Lighten up!  There are serious things over 

which to be offended, but these recriminations sound shallow, void of a knowledge of this artist's history, self-serving, contrived and as though someone was just looking
for something to tweet.  

WHEN I WANTED MY OWN DRONE

     Reading Associated Press writer Joan Lowy's piece on drone's going mainstream reminded me of my attempt to put one to work for my news organization.

     In covering national security and intelligence issues I made friends with people with unique skills and job descriptions.  Later when I was a television news executive I got a call from an old contact telling me about some amazing  new technology.  We set up a show and tell.  He, and a retinue, brought a couple of drone aircraft to our conference room.  They played a recording of the craft in flight, showed telemetry data, discussed it's operation system and the budget for flying it.  

      They did not want news coverage, but wanted to let me know, as a favor to an old friend, the system was available.

Well, I was awestruck.  This is years ago, long before there was public knowledge of the technology and certainly long before military applications.  They had rigged a craft with a

camera to show how we could use it in covering critical situation incidents; emergencies, disasters, accidents, hostage situations, surveillance in investigative reporting, and many more possibilities that my mind ran to.  

      Now here the story takes a couple of jogs.  In the contingent in the room were a couple of guys who were very circumspect about who they were and what was their interest. There was the developer, an engineer, a business partner and financial backer and two guys who later I learned

were what I suspected at the time-federal employees watching over this prized technology.  
      My contact was probably not the first to develop such a system, but may have been the first willing to "test it" in a commercial field exercise, in this case assisting journalism.
      The other jog was the broadcast division executive who shot it down even before we could fly it.  He'd "never heard of such a thing," and didn't want to give it a try.  He said we "didn't have a budget" for such a line, though I showed him where and how we could afford it. He was a numbers cruncher, not at all a visionary or creative thinker.  

      So, now as drones are used by police, farmers, power companies and at lot less cost than the helicopter and pilots I kept on staff, I can't help but imagine what if.

THANK YOU CHUBBY CHATTERBOX

      There is only one way into this and it is to resort to 

fully acknowledged copy cat writing.  I was "humbled and honored" to read this weekend that The Chubby Chatterbox,
who's blog link is listed along the side, had nominated me
for an award he had won, that of the Versatile Blogger.
      The Chatterbox is a marvelous writer and an equally superb artist. He has taken blogging to a fine level of creativity, imagination, style and warmth. So I am all the more humbled and honored-- with all sincerity.
       In getting this nomination I am to tell you seven things about myself and to pass along my nomination to other bloggers.
       #1 I am a blessed, lucky, fortunate man, with a wonderful and creative wife, two loving daughters who make me proud and more friends than I deserve.
      #2 I have authored two published historical mystery
and historical thriller novels: The Sanibel Arcanum and The Sanibel Cayman Disc.
      #3  I co-authored a professional guide, Crisis Coverage and News Room Credibility, with US Army Lt. Col. Charles Ricks,retired FBI Executive William Ervin, and the late Benjamin Strout.
      #4  I have recently finished a new manuscript and I am searching for a new agent and publisher.  My previous publisher was purchased by a media conglomerate that did away with the literary imprint.  I was invited to do graphic novels or coffee table books.  I have declined and I am work on a more literary project now, an homage to Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
      #5 I spent four decades in journalism and documentary work that took me to far reaches of the globe and/or put 
me at the ringside for important moments in history.
     #6  My idea of the ideal job was to have been a National Geographic photographer.  Never achieving that I now blog
and thus entertain my fantasy of that and my second ideal job-a newspaper columnist.
     # 7 Aside from hiking, I play a lot of tennis, a game I did not pick up until about 3 1/2 years ago which I think bespeaks my faith and pragmatic idealism.  It is probably good to work our butts off in good pursuit, no matter our age. Regardless of the score, what really matters is how we play the game.


      BLOGS I NOMINATE
      ODDBALL OBSERVATIONS by The Catalyst
      Vinylstats by Frank Phillippi
      Artist C.W. Mundy

DAY BOOK

SCENES OF THE SEASON

See you down the trail.

FRIENDS & CREATIVITY

MUSINGS ON TREASURES

MY FRIENDS ARE MY ESTATE

Emily Dickinson


A group of fraternity brothers have gathered
again for our twice a year encampment.
These are our oldest friendships and over
the years they have grown to be more
important and enjoyable. Wives have become
friends, we have shared troubles and tribulations
and watched changes and the constant remains
our love for each other. These people
and these times together are treasures indeed.


I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
John Lennon


A WORTHY HUMAN ENDEAVOR-
CREATIVITY
No doubt, it is because of the way I am hard wired that 
I think creative endeavors are the highest and holiest
of human activities.  In a sense it is an emulation
life itself-giving birth to something new. It is
an "aping" of the Creator.
Thanks to friends at the WCI for finding
a great thought from our beloved Indiana writer
Kurt Vonnegut

"Nobody will stop you from creating. 

Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. 

That is the way to make your soul grow - 

whether there is a market for it or not! 

The kick of creation is the act of creating, 

not anything that happens afterward. 

I would tell all of you watching this screen: 

Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. 

 Make it as good as you can. 

Don't show it to anybody. 

Put it where nobody will find it. 

And you will discover that you have your reward." 

                          ~Kurt Vonnegut

Think about a friend today and then
think something new.
See you down the trail.