SWEET & SOUR...ALLURING PLACES, BAD NEWS ON RACES

     Since the first reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, palm trees have had a special place in my heart, symbolic of something exotic.

      They represented escape from the Indiana landscape of my youth.  In time palm trees became synonymous with vacation retreat, away from snow, ice and gray.

  Years later there is still a special pleasure evoked by lounging under palms.

  Places with palm trees also provide natural color.

Race in America
A Failing Grade

     Segregation in America is getting worse according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO report find the number of racially and financially segregated schools has doubled in the last 13 years.

      The report finds that 61% of schools with high concentrations of poor students were racially segregated-schools that were at least three quarters black or Latino.

      The US Secretary of Education says fixing it must be a priority.

      This finding on top of the growing economic disparity in the US speaks legions about the ineffective response to what is a dangerous fault line in the American body politic.

Celebration of the Mediterranean spirit

Food and wine pairings are special. Stolo Family Vineyards in Cambria features a great barrel room tasting. 

   Le Vigne in the Paso Robles Appellation saluted Wine Festival Weekend with a charming dinner. 

  Vineyards abound in beauty.

  
   Between palm trees and vineyards, life provides good reason to say Cheers!

   See you down the trail.

SEEING INSPIRATION

REFLECTIONS

   Mark Twain, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Ernest Hemingway all found refuge and inspiration in the Hawaiian Islands. 
    The abounding beauty is but one of the captivating influences that engage the mind and put the muse to dance. The melding of Polynesian culture with indigenous history and native personality is rich. Add to that, color,   aroma, food, and a special relationship of people with nature all playing out in the unique light of a Pacific Island and you have a blend for reflection, appealing to writers and countless artists.
      William Faulkner said a writer needs experience, observation and imagination. Twain, London and Stevenson found it here.  
       On a previous visit, working on a documentary, a helicopter pilot with whom we worked told me the land and the Hawaiian people are connected in a special way and he said the land is alive. There is an energy and power to life that abides on land that has emerged from the sea by power of the ring of fire. Observing and experience life here stokes the imagination with volcanic power.

SEEING IT

     These frames are works of reflection in degrees of intricacy. If you have a moment, decipher how reality is bent by reflection.

  The following are a trio in tribute to the dancing palms.

   The following frames may take a moment to determine how up is on the bottom.

   Wishing you moments of reflection and inspiration.

REMEMBERING THE DREAMER

    

     See you down the trail.

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.