Wishing for a Renaissance!

         Perfectly on cue, poppies are popping and we hit the road, a colorful journey.

        Looking for a change of mind, we found California spring as we sliced the central state over the Santa Lucia mountains, through the lower end of the central valley, past the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains into the Mojave desert, through the Antelope valley to rest at the base of the San Jacinto mountains in Palm Springs. 

    California is terrific when it is green and the mountains are snow capped and

the people come to play.

    California may be a state of mind, but spring certainly is and we needed the charge. 

    Some of the reality has been simply nuts. Measles are making a comeback!

Ignorance and social media can do a lot of harm. There was a time when a parent who would not get their children the safest and best medical care would have been considered coo coo. Ditto for those who wear red hats and march locked step in support of a Dodo. There is an epidemic of dumb. 

    My WWII veteran parents could not understand why the republican party wants to throw away democracy as it embraces the very fascism Dad and his generation fought. Don't the fools read history? Can there be a bigger jerk than Mitch McConnell who endorsed the very man he condemned, and who sucked out what ever molecule of integrity that may have tried to invade the old Kentuckian. 

    To make it worse Google AI started creating Black Popes and Vikings and Asian American founding fathers. Oops said Sundar Pichai a very bright man surprised by his own genius computers. Hit pause and correct.

    That's what we did. 

    Some of us may be old and increasingly irrelevant but we can still manage a lucid thought and one of those surmises-- there is entirely too much intelligence, too many skills, and an unlimited amount of creativity, imagination and real knowledge, kindness, and genuinely good people to look and act the like the America we see today. The smart people, the thinkers, the doers, problem solvers, helpers, people of love and visionaries need to start getting more face time in our melodrama. The "professional politician," influencers, body celebrities, brainless blowhards, snark trolls, overly sensitive and self appointed aggrieved, need to hit the road and get out of our faces. 

    If you have not read the constitution, shut up. If you don't know what the Beer Hall Putsch was, take off your red hat and shut up, then go read a history book. If you want to ban a book, crawl under a rock. If you don't believe peace is the better way to live go for a personality transplant. 

    We need a Renaissance. You Dark Age droolers need to start learning the facts,  and paying attention to the life that appears just beyond your screen. Reality is what we make it, not a hateful attitude manipulated by an algorithm that takes you deeper into darkness, ignorance and insensitivity.

   Spring is going to start breaking out everywhere, soon. Breathe it in, take it into that part of you that that motivates and recharges your battery. There is a reason this is the time that tribes, and societies, and civilizations, and faiths celebrate new life, new energy. There's also more light. 

    The Renaissance started in a place where the light, and the color ignited thought and imagination, enough so to throw out the old, stalled thought and superstitions. It was a springtime of the mind and soul.

    About time for that here, wouldn't you say?

    See you down the trail. 

The Annual Tour

 

        Now the atmospheric rivers have been turned off and the sun has been given the stage, California spring is magnificent.  It is time for our annual look around at the growing grounds here on the ridge. Lana says the weeds are also benefiting from all of the rain. I think it's all beautiful. 

        The gardener had an exam the other day and since they dilated her eyes I had the driving duty and so we stopped for lunch at one of our favorite San Luis Obispo spots. We call this, matching reds...

    

        Enjoy your spring. There will be time to discuss the historic indictment on another day.

        See you down the trail. 

Getting back to forward...

         Enduring the deluge of atmospheric rivers California has turned green, 

        and the view from the study has started to bloom.

        The cheer spring brings is a bracer for dealing with the slide backwards.

        I read that one quarter of all Americans are "food insecure," we used to call that hungry. For people of color the numbers are out of proportion to their population percentage . 

        I watched an investigative report that learned between 25-30% of all organs intended for transplant are wasted or rejected because the logistic of getting the harvested organs to recipients in time is so badly managed or fraught with transportation issues.

        Those who know say we used to do better than that. 

        The asthma medicine albuterol is in short supply and the problems that creates for millions will get worse. A pharma that made it is out of business.

        Polio and measles are showing up again, after years of control. 

        

      Do we seem to be losing intelligence, capability or even the ability to recognize the problem(s). Can we not function with foresight and efficiency? 

     I've already abused your attention and overstated my incredulity that "we"-the civilized world-have not stopped Putin's war crimes and his brutal assault on humanity. He is an international thug-killer and we watch, debate and even arm the invaded, but we have not found the courage to stop him. 

        History speaks to this matter. We act as if we are blind to those warnings.

        Donald Trump again bathes in media and continues to fertilize the hatred and division he seeded. 

        Some media are giving lip service to the conundrum, how do you cover such a malefactor and wretch and not give him the free ride that made him in 2016. The grievously flawed decision by then CNN chief Jeff Zucker was steroids for MAGA. 

        Here we go again with banks and money. Did we learn nothing from even as recently at 2008? The Fed is simply a council of banks. Banks are the bad actors, and always are. Inflation is and always has been a manipulation of price and supply. History teaches us  it is best to take care of and look out for the populace, the working folks. But banks and the bankers get the money,  get bailed out, and get the bonuses. Why can't, why shouldn't they get the haircut?  

        Guess who owns the legislators via lobbyists and campaign contributions?     

         We are still learning how much we changed in the pandemic. I think we are increasingly distracted.  

    

        Some distractions are good, even great. 

        

        

        We are fortunate our grand kids attend bilingual schools in communities that are tolerant, open minded and that put the intellectual and emotional well being of the children at the top of the priorities. 

        With this new mania for parents "getting to review" their children's education, an artifact of the right wing's pumping of the culture war, I ask what about PTA, or PTO or parent councils or volunteering at school, or parent teacher conferences. Has that not been an historic standard in this nation's evolution of learning,  education and parental involvement? 

       The Florida model is sick and chilling. If education is to achieve its intended purpose then open minds, fully prepared to think has to be the methodology. 

        The right wing is not the only bad actor here. The left has bent so far to be  "non triggering" they have become mind and thought controllers in their own right. 

       Minds need to be open, engaged in a full on immersion in facts. We need a full stop on half baked conspiracy, a disabusing of those with such faulty notions, an accountability, clarity as to what is real, severe scrutiny of politicians, more individual knowledge seeking, holding media to higher standards and more intelligent use of communication and information platforms. 

        We've gotten lazy, we get information in silos, we don't try to understand views that we do not hold. We lack a curiosity but we swallow platitudes. We've permitted ourselves to be divided, angry and mean. I'm a geezer, but if we want a future for grandkids, things have to change. 

        See you down the trail. 

Resurrection Turtles

 

    Rainbows are one of those natural prompts that seem to always lift our spirits. We captured this one during a recent storm.

            

    Another natural phenomena that prompts human behavior is the calendar of our revolution and rotation in the solar system. 

        For as long as there is a human history, solstice and equinoxes has prompted response. Do you wonder when and how humankind first calculated a solstice or equinox. How did those ancestors harness observation and calculation? How was the knowledge, the "science," shared?

   It didn't take long for humans to turn the Spring change into ritual and events.

    Some regard spring as the new year, others call it a resurrection of the sun. Egyptians, Persians, and Chinese  advanced celebrations with eggs. Anglo Saxons celebrated fertility and the "moon goddess." Druids too celebrated a goddess of fertility, known as a Flower Woman.

    The Dionysian Mysteries were one of the Greek's mystery cults observing spring rites. They essentially drank or drugged themselves to the point of "loosing control," so the power of their gods or the universe could enter them. 

    There were elaborate observations of the solstice at ancient stones and archeological mystery sites. Some dug up decayed pigs. Cultures picked flowers and danced around around poles. 

    Islam celebrates Ramadan. Jews observe the feast of the Passover. Christian's observe the passion of the Christ. Holy week features Palm Sunday, a triumphant entry, marred by Maundy Thursday a betrayal and arrest, Good Friday when Jesus is executed on a cross, Easter Sunday when Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Son.

    It seems we cannot see the greening of the season, blooming of trees and flowers, the warming of the sun and not think of life, maybe new life from the dead of winter or more.

    Well, here's a little anthropological story. I call it 

THE RESURRECTION TURTLES

    My brother John and I somehow won a couple of little turtles at an elementary school Ice Cream Social. It might have been one of those fishing games, or musical chairs, I can't recall. We went home with two turtles, in little boxes along with turtle food. 

    We acquired an old fish tank, and built our turtle "biome" with clumps of dirt, grass, twigs and leaves. The turtles flourished and we lavished them with attention. They were our first pets and we loved them.

    As fall came on we noticed they were getting sluggish, not eating all of their food and we worried. One morning we discovered the turtles had crawled under some of the dirt clods and were not moving. Mom said they must have gotten old and died. She promised to bury them near the back stoop and put a rock on the ground so we could remember them. We got on and eventually the loss had less sting.

    Spring came and one day my younger brother John, a bit of a rascal, even at that age, suggested we dig up the turtles so we could have turtle skeletons. Sounded interesting to me so we proceeded. We moved the rock and began to dig. Instead of finding skeletons, we found a turtle, fully intact and it seemed to be alive. It turned its curious head our way. We dug on and found the second turtle, not as animated, but clearly not a dead skeleton.

    We called them our Resurrection Turtles and went about the neighborhood telling about it. Our turtles were Resurrection Turtles.

     Mom, somewhat amazed and somewhat embarrassed soon realized the turtles had been merely hibernating. She did a good thing in burying them by the back stoop. 

    Soon she and dad began to explain to us, the difference between death and hibernation and advised us the turtles were not really resurrected. But still, after all these years, I can remember the surprise, the elation, the wonder and the chuckles about our "resurrected" turtles.

    To this day the grass still seems greener, the flowers more beautiful, the world a little brighter and more joyful at Easter. However you observe or reflect at this time of year, I hope it brings a sense of renewal, energy, cheer and warmth.

       Our celebratory inclination is as old as the first human spring.

     See you down the trail.