AND WE AVOIDED THE GUILLOTINE

 MADAME DEFARGE WOULD NOT BE PLEASED

   Oh how the queen of revenge would spin if she knew how so many of us choose to celebrate Bastille Day.

    The celebrants above, Larry, Mary Margret, Tom and Lana, cases in point, have reveled in the delights of France and by some force of nature have been drawn to the American Provence'. But there are limits and so in form from which Madame DeFarge and the Jacques' would recoil as decadent, we civilized the process.  After all who wants to toast the Great Terror which followed the storming of the Bastille?  If you are lost I refer you to either Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, or a precursory read of the French Revolution.  

     Being an artful and adventurous crowd we worked our way into the Paso Robles appellation to take up residence at an Olive Farm with true French management.  Loyal they are to their history, Bastille Day was celebrated with a light feast beneath the spreading Oleander blooms and gracious shade of Olive and Mulberry trees. Wine? Yes. And a never ending supply of Pommes Frites, done in olive oil of course.

      Sun kissed, blessed by breeze, beauty and American oenology, Bastille day was recorded as probably Thomas Jefferson would have appreciated.

     And just to show good form, the merry party meandered to a nearby vintner of Cal-Italia wines.  Salute! A votre sante! Cheers.

       After such international merriment a bit of the breeze along the Cambria coast was a sweet tonic. 

       Liberte', égalité, fraternité!  Noble still, though easier in notion than nation. 

       To history, then….

    

      See you down the trail.

INSPIRED

A DOSE OF GOOD MEDICINE

    Being personal now- our fall trip to Washington was a much needed medication.

    Time with our dear friends Frank and Sandy was part of a cure. The other "tonic" was to touch history, art and culture as an antidote to a bruising and almost unfathomable battle.

    I sense some of you are saying, "What the...?  Washington as a place to go for peace and inspiration?  Yes!  Yes indeed!

   Frequent readers remember I'm a First Amendment fanatic. I'm the kind of goof who reads the Declaration of Independence each Fourth of July, and who is adamant about protecting our liberties and who holds dear the extraordinary set of bones upon which this republic hangs-the Constitution.

   I believe that all of us are entitled the full extension of  rights, privileges and responsibilities laid out for us by the founders, protected by sacrifices through generations and increased by our perpetually growing enlightenment. 

   So Washington DC is the touchstone, in so many ways.

   Ingrained in the raison d'être of these monuments and memorials are intellects, sacrifices, leadership, vision and a devotion to an ideal-a nation where all live in equality. 
   Personalities who have risen to lead are honored, beyond their days, as a challenge to us in our time.  These stone reminders are a tonic. We are humbled and inspired by what we see and remember.

    Service personnel and journalists have given much, including their all so that we may know and live free. They inspire me.
   Politicians who rise above petty politics to move the arc of history as statesmen inspire me.

    Temples that celebrate the best of our creative dreams,  reaching and artistic output, inspire and offer a healing balm.

    And so our divided and dysfunctional Congress, beleaguered Presidency and questionable Supreme Court do not detract from the wide and long sweep of the true greatness that can and has emerged in and from this Capitol of human longings and achievement. It is not perfect.  None of the heroes who are memorialized were perfect. Like all of us, they had feet of clay and were made of the same star matter. 
   We have eras of which to be proud and periods of shame and embarrassment but it is always on a human scale, moving toward an ideal, an inch, a day, a moment at a time.

    So I take from all of it an inspiration and renewed zeal to stay stalwart in my belief that all of us, regardless of birthright, are children under the same heaven, brothers and sisters of planet earth. I may not like you, I may not agree with you, but neither that, nor how and who you were born should stand between you and full equality, even in a church.

    Your color, your gender, your ethnic heritage, your sexual orientation, your physical or mental challenges simply make you a human being, entitled to the full privileges of life.

    I thank the good Lord for a vision that it is so, and for a nation where we get better at making it so and for a place where we build monuments and temples to remind us to make sure it is always so and to recall those who have said so.

    See you down the trail.

MUSLIM PRINCESS BREAKING BARRIERS & DEFINING SPACE

SHAKING UP THE OLD BOYS IN THE ARAB WORLD

Courtesy gccwomen.org

     Could this be a face of the new Saudi Arabia and/or a face that is trying to create a new Saudi Arabia?

Courtesy saudiarab11

      Princess Al-Taweel, known as Princess Amira, is

as she says a "common girl" but married to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the nephew of the King of Saudi Arabia. Princess Amira, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Haven is an advocate for women's empowerment.  She is outspoken in her call for equal rights for women in education, the work force and voting rights.  

     Those are difficult and challenging issues for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the royal family.  Her "outspokenness" has been challenged by her uncle, another of the royal princes.

     Amira says women have the right to come out of the burkas, if they wish, it should their choice and not a man's or the government to make. 

     Her husband is fully supportive. He is a power in his own right, being the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Corporation, essentially the investment arm of all those Saudi billions. She is involved in the business and in promoting interfaith dialogue.  

     Both the Prince and Princess are at some risk from Saudi and other Arab parties who are less modern.  She considers herself a devout Muslim and her very openness for dialogue also has earned her enmity. She has defied some archaic edict by driving and then talking about it. 

     Soft spoken, articulate and emphatic this is one Princess

with fairy tale wealth who is challenging a great evil of the real world. She could just as easily live the good life but

she has chosen to battle ignorance, repression, prejudice and cultural chauvinism. We wish her well and hope for a 

happily ever after for Arab women. The 21st Century belongs to them as well!  Talk about a shift in the balance of power.

DAY BOOK

A FENCE

     An artist friend who is also an avid gardener told Lana that a fence can do wonderful things for a garden.  She told her "it defines space."

     So, Lana will have more defined space and the world will

have one more barrier to the marauding killer deer of Cambria.  I'm hopeful the wild turkeys will also be blockaded.

      Don't write me off as a wild life hating old grump, but merely a guy who has seen his wife's loving efforts at providing the world with blooms and beauty be devastated by the marauding killer deer. Year after year.  "They" say that some things are deer proof.  Ha!  

     As for the turkey's-while they are fun to watch, unless you are one of our terrified cats, they leave one of the world's most noxious calling cards.  It's not enough they uproot plants and scatter dirt over walkways.  Those little traces of themselves they leave behind are not little and probably could rate as a weapon class substance.  What do they eat-kryptonite?

      So, we've joined the fence builders of the world.

I see another place to watch the play of light and shadow.

     The fence has forced us to "recover" a back hill top

for more gardening and for a meditation spot with a 

wonderful long vista of Green Valley.

     Our good neighbors David and Lois reworked a portion 

of their privacy wall and tied it in nicely with our fence.

     See you down the trail.

PS-Oh yea, there is plenty of open acreage for the killer deer and dirty turkeys.