Storming the New Year

         We've started the new year with an ample baptism on the California central coast. 

        In Cambria and environs 8.5 inches in the last 10 days has washed 2022 away and changed the color scheme from drought brown.

        Rain is forecast for 8 of the next ten days. We've been soaked for 8 of the last 10. We are being warned to expect 5 inches in the next two days.

        Santa Rosa Creek is a water freeway gliding into the Pacific near Moonstone Beach. It's also a zoom-floom. 

        The storm surf is audible from miles away. Its roar and growl thunder the planet's voice. Its power is immense.

        Some are not content to listen and watch.

        Leaks, slides, road closures, lost power and communication, washouts, and localized flooding; California is good at getting things back in operation and  Californians take it in stride, especially on the central coast. We've had a breather between the "atmospheric rivers," and we wait now for the next act. 

        This is a place of "human/nature interface;" mountains, forests, wildlife, the Pacific Ocean. We live here with the knowledge that nature rules. We are cool with that. Still, this rain season is unlike most. 

        See you down the trail. 

        

LIGHT and A VERY SPECIAL COUPLE

BREAKFAST LIGHT

BEACH LIGHT

DAY MOON

 NIGHT LIGHT

A VERY SPECIAL COUPLE

    Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader may have created a new format or genre of film relationships-the Sibs. Couple films, bromances, action adventures, chick flicks, women pals have found ways of creating ideal combinations.  Wiig and Hader as sister and brother are brilliant and have created a relationship that is as nuanced, textural and entertaining as any screen coupling.

   In a recent interview they said their time together doing Saturday Night Live gave them a bonding, based on experimentation and hanging it out there in character sketches. It was marvelous training and they bring an extra element to their portrayal of twins.

    Hader and Wiig are another testament to how superbly comedic artists can bring to life dramatic characters. In large and little ways these two infuse credibility and power into Milo and Maggie who reunite after years after both cheat death on the same day. There are moments when the SNL talent shines and you are amused and there are tender and vulnerable moments as both contend with the affects of their beloved father's suicide when they were kids. Wiig and Hader connect in a very special way and the power of that relationship is strong enough to make you want to see this duo again in those roles.

    It took writer director Craig Johnson a couple of years to get this independent film done.  He's created a unique piece that serves as a platform for this new kind of relationship film.  Luke Wilson, Ty Burrell and Boyd Holbrook are perfect in their roles. Wilson especially so.

    There is more to this story than comedy and mirth, but the full emotional range opens great performance from the SNL alums. Wiig and Hader are very special.

See you down the trail.

   

McCONAUGHEY AGNOISTES and WHAT EMERGES FROM THE SEA

MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY
IN CONFLICT

     Two current works have put Matthew McConaughey on the screen as an actor who has mastered the role of an agonist.  

      Most of the current buzz and accolades are for his remarkable role in Dallas Buyers Club. That role personifies this idea of a man in conflict-a hard partying rodeo cowboy/electrician homophobe who becomes an advocate- combatant in the early HIV/Aids crisis.

      True Detective writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto has given McConaughey the role of Rust Chole, a vehicle where the actor has taken complexity and a cosmic level of brooding to a new level of brilliance in a haunting performance that achieves mastery. 

      Pizzolatto's story line has McConaughey and partner Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart, move backwards and forwards in time as they encounter a bizarre and grizzly crime. The evolution and spin in the character Rust Chole, the nuance, ticks, tautness and unique personality is absolutely stunning to see. The ownership and  demonstration of the character is powerful enough that his behavior in the internal affairs interview process will establish a level of interpretation like that of Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle.

       Truce Detective is an acquired taste and its field of play is more gritty than some will appreciate.  As a young reporter I spent a few years on the street, during which time I covered the police beat and became friends particularly with a couple of homicide investigators. These guys lived that twilight reality 24/7 while I was merely a tourist. I am still haunted by things I encountered in that world where work begins after someones violent death. Pizzolatto, McConaughey and Harrelson weave a pattern of that life in an exotic drama. Once you see McConaughey's work, it will sear an impression upon you.  Powerful stuff on the screen.

SAN SIMEON COVE

    Evidence of a diverse yield from the Pacific was splayed around San Simeon Cove on a recent afternoon stroll.

      Wave action reveals pilings from an old pier, perhaps the original that William Randolph Hearst constructed to unload artifacts and remains of European villas, churches and objects of art for his own castle up the mountain.

   Pieces of whale vertebra are being unearthed by the sea.

     And only barely more lively are elephant seals, who have wandered far from the colony to find peaceful venues for a snooze.

      While this more junior member chose a spot on the parking lot.

See you down the trail.

BIRTHING TIME

THE CLOCK HAS STARTED

     A couple of young elephant seal pups nurse in the afternoon sun on the beach near Piedras Blancas.  The colony is in the midst of birthing season.

     The wrinkled little black pups have about 6 weeks to feed when mom cuts them off as she becomes fertile and ready for mating.  

     Nearby adult males have begun to size up their harem and their corner of the beach.  They know instinctively when a female reaches a six week post birth state of readiness.  The scene then becomes one of harems.

     A bull is surrounded by a ring of females.  He will stir periodically to mate, then drop back into a pose such as this.  If another male attempts to enter his circle, a battle ensues.  In the meantime it is nap time.  

     After six weeks the pups are called Weaners and they begin to cluster together.  Eventually they need to learn to swim, but do so on their own.  Mom is long gone. And if it goes well for them they'll know when it is time to go into the sea for a hunting/feeding migration. Elephant seals travel alone as males head to waters off Alaska and females track toward Canada.  

     Poetically, mating season in this colony reaches it's peak around Valentines day.

    Down the beach, another couple has already begun their courting.

    See you down the trail.

REPUBLICANS SHOULD HEAR THIS & THE KING IS HERE

AN EXTRAORDINARY FAREWELL

    Words, important for all Americans to hear, have been inscribed now into the historic record of the US Senate, but first they should be heeded. What Senator Richard Lugar said in his farewell to the Senate is counsel and wisdom to this generation and to the future.
     Lugar is the most senior Republican in the senate and has served there 30 years.  He is widely considered to be one of the most intelligent Senators in history. 

Link here to see Lugar's farewell on the Senate floor.

     Lugar's 15 minute farewell could well save this nation years of acrimony and heartbreak. 

     He cautioned his own party.

     "...Republicans must be willing to suspend reflexive opposition that serves no purpose but to limit their own role in strategic questions and render cooperation impossible." 

      Lugar is one of the nation's leading thinkers on foreign policy. He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has advised Presidents.

    "All parties should recognize the need for unity in the coming year when events in Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and other locations may test American national security in extreme ways."

     Americans are fortunate Lugar will continue to work on nuclear non proliferation and the cooperative threat reduction program that he and former Senator Sam Nunn started after the fall of the Soviet Union. They deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.  Their work to stabilize and control nuclear and chemical/biological weapons is one of the great chapters in world history.
     I wrote earlier about Lugar's impact and my history of covering him. You can link to that post here.
     If you have any interest in the state of American politics, I urge you to see the C-SPAN file on his farewell.

THE KING TIDE

 It's called the King Tide and indeed it is.  

   It is the rare cosmological and natural phenomena where the tide is so high, the beach disappears.

   Here are a few frames of the same beach, before the King Tide.

   See the difference in boulder before and after- 

       See you down the trail.                                      

THE OTHER WEST COAST & THOUGHTS OF A DEBT CEILING

SUMMER FUN

California friends said "Florida in July?!"

We told them we'll survive just fine.

A visit with our eldest and a family wedding 

brings us to the other west coast, along

the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

This is where summer fun means the beach.

The gulf also provides a canvass of relaxing scenes.

And as you can note, changing cloudscapes.

A tropical summer offers a vast change from

the central coast.  Stay tuned.


AS THE DEBT CEILING DEBATE CONTINUES

Here's an interesting perspective from
James Surowiecki in the New Yorker
The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. There’s no debt limit in the Constitution. And, if Congress really wants to hold down government debt, it already has a way to do so that doesn’t risk economic chaos—namely, the annual budgeting process. The only reason we need to lift the debt ceiling, after all, is to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, we’ll face an absurd scenario in which Congress will have ordered the President to execute two laws that are flatly at odds with each other. If he obeys the debt ceiling, he cannot spend the money that Congress has told him to spend, which is why most government functions will be shut down. Yet if he spends the money as Congress has authorized him to he’ll end up violating the debt ceiling.
Interesting eh?
You can read more of an illuminating article
in the August 2 New Yorker.
 See you down the trail.