YOU WONDER and WHO YOU GOING TO CALL?

WHO'D THUNK IT

Out on a Limb

    He said it was a true liberal's dilemma.

My friend was miffed that he found himself in league with Ted Cruz.

     "Hate to say it, but the idiot's right. Mitch McConnell is a liar."

    If you missed it, the right wing ideologue called his Senate leader a liar. That set off fireworks in the clubby old boy, old girl parlor. Republican Senators railed at Cruz for his lack of decorum and civility.

     "That's the other thing about this. As bought and paid for as most of the Senate is, I like the pretense of civility, you know, "as my honorable friend from the great state of…." and etc. Cruz is just a cur dog cretin, but McConnell is a lying son of a bitch, among other things."

     I told him he wasn't damned by association, being in alliance with both Cruz and Republican defenders. He should enjoy the show. Between Cruz and Trump the GOP is getting taken through the sawdust of the side show tents. Historic establishment Republicans are likely spinning in their graves while living traditional GOPers may be seeking identity change. 

REMEMBERING A DEFENDER

    I had my first Hell's Angels sighting the other day. It was a large public venue and in came a couple of fellows flying the colors.

    I was honestly terrified of the Hells Angels when I read of them as a high school kid. Their exploits of taking over little towns or running drug rings were no doubt amplified by movies but as a reporter a few years later I learned some of these motorcycle gangs are truly criminal gangs.

    I'm not saying these two gentlemen are anything but law-abiding and tax paying citizens who even volunteer at their church thrift shop, but seeing their famous logo stirred alive an old memory.

    The Monkey Brothers, Steverino and Dave, lived just around the corner. Monkey was not their surname but it was what all of the neighbors called them, even the vintage, proper, diminutive widow Mrs Picquaneou. Their heads were an interesting shape to say the least.  And maybe it was because they went through life being called Monkey Brothers they copped the tough guy, bully boy attitude. Dave was more passive, but older and bigger. Wiry Steverino spent his time spitting through his teeth, chewing gum or tobacco and making fists, if he wasn't pushing you, shoving you, knocking you in the back of the head or kicking over your bike.  Maybe because they lived so close, and their mother could speak to mine across the alley as they hung out wash, Steverino left my younger but bigger brother alone and gnawed at me only on rare occasions, however-

    When we went to the junior high school on the edge of the downtown, the Monkeys made friends with the Dork. They called him that, I certainly did not. He was huge for his age, and as we used to say in those days, a little slow. His upper lip hung over his jaw and it began to twitch when he was ready to "smash yer face," as I learned the hard way.

     Steverino and I were the same age and competitive ball players.  When I made the basketball team and he did not, he must have commissioned the Dork to kill me, one smashed face at a time.  

     I walked to school with a friend, Bill Paris. Bill was a good guy, a little too small for basketball but a great second baseman. A couple of times as we got to the alley where the Dork was standing by to "smash yer face" Bill tried to jump in and pull the big guy away, only to be tossed aside where Steverino started pumping away with his fists and spitting in his face. I was starting to get stomach aches thinking about having to get to school and past the face smashing. Basketball season was a blessing because we practiced after school and the Monkey Brothers and the Dork had gone their separate ways by the time I was walking home.

     I had a paper route in the same general area so some days after school I would detour to my route and collect. I was starting to feel better about things until the Dork and Steverino began laying in wait on the way to school. Two days in a row and my buddy Bill is also getting hammered and we show up at school, mussed, banged up and ashamed.

      I digress for a moment to tell you Bill had an older brother also named Dave. He was a high school guy, handsome, a letterman and popular.  He was a kind of neighborhood role model and Bill and I were embarrassed that he might learn we were getting our faces smashed and butts kicked.  

      OK, day three and I see the Dork coming out of the alley and Steverino coming at me to shove me into the Dork, when out of no where a high school letter jacket blurs into the scene and the Dork is up against a wall, his jaw being squeezed with a finger pointed in his eye. It's Dave who shoves the Dork to the ground and grabs Steverino by the back of the neck and lifts him off the ground. He tells the sprawling Dork and the shaking Monkey Brother that if they as much as say anything to his brother Bill and his friend Tom, he would be back to finish them off.

     I never saw much of the Dork after that. And Steverino seemed to go out of his way to avoid any contact. And our great Defender became a hero.  I thought about him the other evening when I saw those leather vests.

PLEASANT ENDINGS

Lana has raised a couple of giant sunflowers this year…. 

and this one reminds me a bit of the Dork.

  See you down the trail.

NOW WHAT-THE DANGEROUS RIGHT

SIGNALS OF SUMMER

    While summer visitors jam our coastal village, we can all find emotionally nourishing scenes, sounds and peace.

BITTER AND SWEET

   The affairs of life can sometimes smack you in the jaw in one moment and in the next excite your most joyful imagination.  So it was a couple of days ago.

    He was wedged between his octogenarian mom and his wife, waiting for the concert to begin. One of the most popular guys in the village, a long time resident and respected craftsmen, there were a couple of people in front of me chatting with him. 

    "Hi Tom how are you. I saw Lana earlier," he said smiling sitting, his hand resting on a walking stick.

     "Last time we chatted you were waiting on a diagnosis," I prompted.

      "It's bad. I have ALS. Do you know what that is?"

       "Yes," I winced, "Lou Gehrig's disease."

      "It's awful. It's just a horrible disease, but right now I'm happy and enjoy everything. Plus I'm too busy to be depressed."

      "Yea, he's working too hard not to be happy" his mother said smiling.

     This is a man who's family has experienced trauma, tragedy and death in larger portion than seems fair.  Through it all he and his irrepressible wife continue to beam a joy at living and devotion to work and cause.

     Hearing his diagnosis seemed horrible, even crushing. 

     As I turned after finishing our conversation with an obligatory though sincere but still impotent "you'll be in our thoughts and prayers" I spotted another friend.

     This fellow is probably the most energetic, fit specimen of manhood I know. Not a nano bit of body fat, buffed, muscular and as smart as he is in great shape, though he is fighting a deadly disease and has been for at least a couple of decades-but he's unlike anyone else.

     In all truth he is an experiment and cannot discuss nor publish specifics. It is an almost miraculous story and includes treatment protocols that are every bit as fascinating as science fiction.

     He has helped advance medical science by being a human test subject and the recent advances could have been written by Issac Asimov or Philip K. Dick. 

     He is without a doubt an incredible human being and I have found him to be one of the most inspirational people I've know.

     Within five minutes the roller coaster of life left me a bit drained.  Despair in learning of a terrible diagnosis and then another update from the future, dazzling with prospects of "Star Trek" style treatment and healing. But each "scenario" is a personal face and real story. Two good men, two bad diseases, two futures. And selfishly I thought of my younger brothers, both struck down in young manhood and the lives they did not get. I can make no sense of such narratives, but to seek shelter in the bromide that health is everything and that we should indeed be grateful for each moment. And we should celebrate life. 

RUMINATION

      Life is so precious as to not spoil and to protect. Life itself and the resources of our life on this blue planet need vigilant protection. As Californians the four years of drought are teaching us. We can still be smarter in how we use water, how we conserve, save and harvest. Even as diligent as the state has been, there are technologies, applications and enforcements that are needed to help us live more wisely.

       Freedom is also precious as to not spoil and to protect.

The Supreme Court's decision that all people are entitled to the dignity to marry the person they love is an affirmation of what some Christians have been approving in their denominations, though not without decades of opposition. 

   And now the evangelical Christian right, personified by people like Ted Cruz, must face a new reality. It seems  they are stuck on the idea that an LGBT person is someone or something less than they themselves. Some of these evangelicals say LGBT people are "sinners," because of who they are or who they love. I heard a right wing Dallas preacher talking about his "Almighty God!"  It was as shrill as a radical proponent of sharia law. 

       All through this gender and sexual identity debate  those who were denied full freedom and protection of law sought just to have the rights due all people. Those in opposition seem stuck on the act of making judgements. It is as though to impose a morality on everyone and doing so as the only true interpreters of religion. Reminds me of Isis, or Wahhabists, or when Catholics and Protestants were at war, or Sunni and Shia, or how the Christian church banned or persecuted Copernicus and Galileo, or how Massachusetts  Christians conducted witch hunts and executed 20 people and on and on. 

       Civil law, as imperfect as the process may be, is for the good of society. Spiritual law on the other hand is for the good of the individual heart, as imperfect as we may be. We do not want or need a theocracy in the US, but that is route the Ted Cruz mind set seeks to chart.

     As noted before, the eminent theologian Walter Brueggemann  says "When you think you know the mind of God, you are on a slippery slope."  Now the court has ruled how do we protect ourselves from those who would put us on the slope? 

     Religion has been too frequently weaponized. History is a litany of how religious people have done horrible things, imposing their view, stirring up movements and mob mentality and making judgements--- like those who executed a rabbi named Jesus.

    

     See you down the trail.

OF OBAMA, CRUZ, SPOOKS AND FALL NOSTALGIOU-FUN TIME-THE WEEKENDER

WANTING TO KICK THEM AROUND

     While in the Washington DC area this week I took special interest in the fallen leaves, pleased by our liberation from raking and bagging.

     I confess now I hated to rake leaves.  As a kid I'd complain to mom and dad about the pointlessness of it.  "Just let them rot and fertilize the grass" I'd plea, unsuccessfully.

     Leaf raking and bagging is not an activity in our California lifestyle-fortunately.  So while these shots may be old hat to some of you, it is a sweet reminder to others of the positive of an absence.

LINGERING MUMBLES

    Overheard laments and lash outs from the Halloween party circuit.

     "I'm so over Obama" a liberal friend complained. "I almost came in black face but I still know what's wrong!"

     "I'm the affordable care web site" said a tilted box, strung with blinking lights and wires.

      "I came as Ted Cruz" said a friend in street clothes. "So now I'm going to be an ass hole all night!"

      Singer Jill Knight won my award.  Dressed as Captain Morgan complete with long curly tresses, mustache and appropriate attire, I couldn't believe it was Jill, even when she spoke right in my face.  But then proprietor Lyn Nanni was unrecognizable as well in her Mistress of Darkness attire and face paint. I'm slow on the uptake I guess.

THE OBAMA APOLOGIES 

    If anything, the Snowden document leak has given the State Department and or White House protocol officers plenty to do.  With revelation after revelation about who the NSA has bugged or tapped or snooped on, it seems the President has been as busy with world leaders apologizing and parsing words as anything else, other than maybe kicking some tail to get the web site working.  

     As a satirist said, everyone had to know we were doing it, we just didn't want talk about it.  And that is crux the matter isn't it?

INDULGENCES

    For Weekender foodies-a few snaps grabbed during our own journeys into delicious adventure while back east.

      Our dear friends Frank and Sandy have long raved about LAuberge Chez Francoise up in Virginia Horse Country at Great Falls.  It's been repeatedly rated the best and most romantic French Restaurant in the Washington D.C. area.

    Our magnificent 3-hour lunch was dream like.  Frank says when he was there once with his late father, a newspaper editor, he was told back in the old days it was a place where CIA executives used their expense accounts. At least it was money well spent.

AND THE HITS KEEP ON COMING

    A delight of the nation's capitol is the diversity of great dinning options.  Neighbors pointed the 4 of us to a nearby Asian Fusion spot.  The special rolls were edible art and the Pad Thai was the best I've tasted.  Sorry all I can offer here on the net are pictures.  They can't give the credit the place deserves.

    And then there was this crazy Asian take on baked Alaska

     Kenji Fusion is the name.  If you are in the DC area, around Falls Church Va., it should be on your list.

AND FINALLY

A VIDEO TREAT

In the spirit of the international diversity of the Washington DC area, here is something my old friend Bruce, aka The Catalyst, found.  This is amusing and a bit amazing

for a number of reasons.  Enjoy

See you down the trail.