MEDITATION ON BUDDY MILES, JIMI HENDRIX AND DAVID BOWIE

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

     The great Buddy Miles wrote it first "My mind is going through them changes..." Hendrix did his version.  David Bowie created his own anthem to change with the lingering chorus, 
         Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes-Turn and face the Stranger
           Ch-Ch Changes-Time may change me...
            Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes-Turn and face the Stranger"
       The lyrics of both have been the score as I've settled into a rumination. Still thinking and haven't achieved a great cosmic break through. This I know, some of us handle change better than others. 
       Chaotic change is rampant in the middle east. The climate is changing. The efficacy of American government has changed so drastically in the life time of boomers as to beget a desire for revolutionary change. The economic climate has changed so fundamentally the middle class is disappearing, the poor are growing and the richest become more exclusive and insulated. Change often seeds even greater upheaval. Bigger changes are coming.
       Not all change is bad. Nor is it cataclysmic. But doing it, changing, adapting, learning new ways, even accepting it seems a mission impossible for some. I was the architect of a massive change in a large media company.  It was needed and it paid off positively in all ways, but oh boy was it difficult to manage the change.  Time and time again I heard myself saying, "some people simply cannot abide change."
      Some changes we can temper, manage, even attempt to direct-cultural, ethical, political, even environmental. If we don't, then forces beyond our control will be in control.
      We need to be proactive, or we will be pounded. 
      You can't run from it, you can't hide from it, you can't ignore it.  As a significant chunk of the population, the boomers, reach the approach to our dotage, we must live open to change, in all ways. There is never a path back.
The force of life is forward. We are curious, experimental and searching. We should harness those drives for positive change. Humans are destined to seek and offer greater individual dignity and liberty even when forces conspire against it. Repression sparks liberation.
      We tend to think of things only on a human scale.  This blue sphere, and the star nations in which it rides have yet another scale of change. We need to embrace the reality of a planetary awareness.
        Ch-Ch-Changes-Turn and face the stranger. 
        We are constantly a work in progress. Stay tuned. Heaven only knows where this thought train is bound!?

Training the Trellis

     After about year, it is time to introduce our front gate, complete with vine.

   It has taken a while to get that Cambria look.  Here's the proof.

Now the mission will be an occasional trim.

 See you down the trail.  

THE DOWNTON ABBEYing of AMERICA

THE REAL CULTURE WARFARE

Courtesy PBS Masterpiece Classics

    You wonder how many million Super Bowl viewers had DVR's set to their PBS station while they attended parties or watched the game at home.

     Super Bowl fans caring about a Masterpiece Theatre production you say?  Absolutely, indeed!  It hit me one morning a few weeks ago at our post tennis match coffee at Lilly's coffee deck in Cambria;  six or seven guys sitting around talking about a soap opera, the soap opera of course, Downton Abbey. This marvelous production, created and written by Julian Fellowes has captured American hearts.  

     People who are not usual PBS viewers have discovered how extraordinarily well Brits do television drama. The intricate plot line is the subject of conversations from dinner parties to grocery store check out lines. Conservatives, liberals, young and old have found a fiction upon which they can gather.

      An intrigue here is how this period drama of a time of class distinction and way of life has brought, well, a little class to America. Can't you enjoy the image of a football jersey wearing, chicken wing and jalapeno popper stuffed fan clicking away from the post game wrap up to watch the latest from the Grantham clan or Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes presiding over the staff?

      Julian Fellowes is seeding something here. It dawns on me the aristocratic excess and the enforced civility of the staff both are under girded by a sense of rule and dignity. The characters know, even if they do not always do, what is expected, what is proper. There is much to say about all of that, but at the very least it is a good thing for an increasingly casual America to see, to be entertained and perhaps even to be influenced, ever so slightly, by people with manners. Mr. Fellowes, you are a PBS radical indeed!!!

AND ABOUT THAT WONDERFUL MUSIC

Here is something special, the lyrics. 

      See you down the trail.