Night Caps....plus

         I've been "experimenting," playing around, with shots of the night sky, lit by the moon and stars.

      I'm fascinated by the light play. These shots are best seen on larger screens, enabling a "painterly" feel.

      Shooting them is fun. The brace of the Pacific air and the canopy of stars are healthy. It's an antidote to my worry about a nuke plant being the middle of a war.

        

        The Nocturnal Ledger.........

        

        There is no good future without treaties or a strong international alliance to intervene. 

        Critical infrastructure anywhere with impact of a global scale needs protecting.

        This part of the California central coast has been blessed with fog, despite the drought. The heat on the other side of the Santa Lucia mountains draws marine air into the valleys leaving rivers of fog. There are nights with stars overhead while fog shrouds trees, and vegetation, even here on the ridge.

    

        The Nocturnal Ledger....

             The secret documents at Mar-a-Lago should mean strong justice and penalty. Knowing what we do, it's not hard to believe he was using our national secrets for his advantage. Treason is easy to believe. Is there anything at all that dissuades you of the notion? 

            Holding him accountable would be good medicine for America's tarnished image and diminished reputation.

         A phone screen may do this shot no justice, but it was taken by an iPhone. It is not a great astro-photograph, but it captures a layer of a little corner of our neighborhood.

        

        Of more earthly sightings, Lana's Amaryllis has put forth its best face(s).

        

            And a shout out to the bougainvillea I face each time I step out of the door of my study. It glows in the afternoon sun.

        Enjoy the last days of summer, it is on the run.

           See you down the trail.  

           Peace

When the fog shrouds...

          Our summer nights have been cozy, wrapped in fog.

      The spirited vapor rolls in from the coast as late evening sun and shadows play across the Santa Lucia slopes. As darkness descends, the fog rises from the valleys and thickens.

        I've taken it as a sedative. It's a shroud, buffering and insulating, changing the appearance of things. It helps take the edge off life's pain, if only temporally and if only in an illusory way.

        We live in a season of madness. We postulate extinction. My generation will not see the end of the whirlwinds we have given flight. Our friends are disappearing. We are no longer fleet. We are increasingly irrelevant. But we, some of us, rage against the insanity, the short sightedness, the decline, and demise.

        Those hard lines and sharp edges of life soften in the fog. 

        Fog may hide things, but we do not hide from life. 

        It seems a lifetime of reporting is calling in IOU's. I am now clobbered by war, disaster, broken hearts, frightening futures, wasted chances, toxic personality, and disappearing evidence of heart and soul. Like many of you, we worry about heirs and the yet unborn. And in every headline and news break is a connective nerve to the moments that soak the brains and hearts of old journalists in the pain, suffering, death, misdeeds and carnival of inhumanity that we saw and felt and can never seem to forget. It is our pass into club PTSD. Of course there are others here too, and some more grievously wounded. 

        The older I get the more resilient the ghosts are. The fog is a cocoon, but only a pretender.

        The Frontline Documentary Ukraine: Life Under Russia's Attack, left me depleted and ranting that a lethal drone should be addressed to Vladimir Putin. Another madman is loose in Europe, again. Why can't we learn from history? And already we are starting to forget. Old news, exactly what he counted on. 

        I had to step out for a walk, in the cool mist.

        It is life out of balance. Election deniers, a radical Supreme Court turning back the calendar on human rights, people tossed out of homes, working poor unable to get by, huge wealth getting larger, oil companies gouging for record profits, fires, floods, and human kind seems paralyzed. Where is the common sense? Where is decency?

        I sat in a briefing this week with a just retired Lt. General who had directed the Department of Defense's  Joint Center on Artificial Intelligence. You probably don't want to hear this, but the Chinese are way ahead of us in digital transformation, global interconnectivity and Artificial Intelligence. As he said the issues are Organization and Innovation. The question is How does an organized and innovative adversary fare on the battlefield?

        The US Military struggles mightily and lags in digital organization and innovation. Same old, same old. Turf battles, who's in control, yaddity, yaddity, yaddity.

        Once some of us were called "angry young men or women." Now we are angry again. As the saying goes, we know where the bodies are buried and we have secrets we will take with us. We've seen how we've missed getting it right, over and over.

       General's also talk about fog. They call it the fog of war, a confusion and lack of judgement caused by war. We are a people at war with our values, with each other, living on a planet that we are at war with.

        The great American writer Ben Hecht offers us wisdom; I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life's hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are."

            See you down the trail.

DANGEROUS CURRENTS

Gloaming at the shore

Cambria CA

twilight of reason

     Holding the current escalation in mind, remember these words from one year ago. 

        "We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history." 

        Last August some 50 Republican national security, foreign policy, intelligence and diplomatic experts who worked for Republican Presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush issued a position paper stating why they would not vote for the Republican nominee Trump.

         Here are some of their thoughts.

         "From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.

        "Most fundamentally, Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President."

            "Mr. Trump lacks the temperament to be President."

            "He lacks self-control and acts impetuously."

           "All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander- in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal."

       These men were "the real deal." They are experienced in the real world. They are deep and thoughtful. Republicans too. Astounding that members of the House, Senate did not or have not paid them a bit of attention.

        You can read the entire statement and see credential of the signatories here. I urge you to do so, especially if you were/are a trump supporter.

a gathering fog

    In this dry, tinder like season we love to see the marine fog bank beginning to line up.

     The heavy bank whispers in and shrouds the central coast over night, providing a welcomed dampening cool.

        

        Political foggery is less welcome.

the pence aperient

      I first met Mike Pence when he was a small town radio talk jock and failed congressional candidate. Someplace in his evolution from Irish Democrat to right wing evangelical he decided he wanted to be President. Mike is running now, despite what he says publicly. Just as he seems programed to be piously smug, he is programmed to run.

      He and his people have been making the rounds of heavy contributors and GOP apparatchiks. Before he was sacked Anthony Scaramucci let it slip that's what was up, especially with recent staff changes. 

      Pence is a curious fixture on the scene. After a tour as a member of congress he went back to Indiana to run for governor to bolster his presidential ambitions. He followed the skilled Mitch Daniels and should have just followed in the wake, instead he mucked it up so badly his own party was considering dumping him in the re-election campaign, but that's when the sig rune Schutstaffel lighting bolt named trump struck.

      A bit of advice Mike, stay as far away from Trump and Trumpista thought as you can. If you want to prove your testicles are still in place cut out the "fake news"  and "America first" garbage.  And by all means quit fawning over and paying homage to a serial adulterer, sexual predator, habitual liar, narcissistic, real estate hustler. 

      Even as far out of the mainstream that some of your ideas are, your temperament at least would be a change for the better. Watch yourself, you just may get your dream.

google goobering

    I read James Damore's Google's Ideological Echo Chamber-that's the memo that got him fired.You can read it for yourself, here. It's the latest wrinkle in a trouble of our time.

    Close to the core of the matter is the issue of freedom of speech and thought. We are having trouble with that now.

     In the Atlantic cover story and his new book How America Went Haywire, Kurt Anderson lays much of the blame on the free speech and free thought movement of the 1960's. To simplify Anderson's interesting thoughts, the trump movement and other far right elements, have appropriated the 1960's arguments, tactics and "approval" of things alternative-"you do your thing, I'll do mine," "everything's cool." 

     As Anderson and others including this blogger have noted,  Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it well

     "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."  He said that a long time ago and fearfully we live at a time when people claim their own facts.

       I'm not convinced the root of that was the unhinging of things in the 1960's, but it no doubt contributed and the echoes continue to resound. "Fake News" is only a symptom. Ditto Damore's Google memo.

      Damore professes to be open, believing in diversity, and agrees that sexism exists. He tries to ride through the eye of a needle and question what he sees as cultural and intellectual deficits at Google. He perceived a bias. For that he is accused of sexism, and he gets fired. 

      After reading Damore's memo several times I think he was trying to generate discussion in a knee jerk hyper sensitive culture that permits such alleged "indiscretions" where words are ruled to make people "uncomfortable" or "feel assaulted." It is the age of "micro aggressions!"

      Damore, or anyone who tries to raise these topics such as bias, discrimination, revisionism or any of the isms or to seek an examination of values is likely to get his or her head handed to them. I come away thinking he was indeed trying to provoke thought and discussion in a corporate culture.

      But at the same time he asserted ideas and "facts" about sexual and gender differences that in my opinion were too broad, overly arching and beyond his expertise. Had I been his editor, I would have challenged him. But we just don't have many editors anymore, anywhere. That is especially true in trying to divine the line between what we think or believe and what is reality. I understand how some of Damore's "certainty" about women was offensive or could be construed to be that way. 

      I grew up in a newsroom-profane and profound-loud and argumentative, collaborative and demanding,verification and confirmation were foundational. Nothing was sacred, nothing was off limits and even as "tough" as that culture was it allowed for true intellectual wrestling and it revered facts. "Truth" was an ideal and the only way to approximate it was to allow everyone to say their piece, take their shots, do their research, state the facts and if something was still left standing, then maybe someone would say, let's go with that. 

       It might be time to leave feelings (and guns) at the door and make sure we don't call opinion, theory, or belief a fact or a reality and then we could re engage this nation in conversation and debate. Of course having an open mind would be helpful.  Know where you can find any?

      See you down the trail   

THE SHIFTS

   While we seem be damned by current political attitudes,  profound changes are right behind us. We ponder views and the attitudes that drive them, after we first fog it up.

 Going over the Santa Lucia pass toward Paso Robles I was struck by how Morro Rock, Mt. Hollister and a couple of other volcanic peaks seem to be adrift in a sea of clouds.

 Fog moves quickly this time of year, one of the wonders of living along the Pacific.

big sur tribute

    As Big Sur remains isolated and inaccessible we are mining the archive to help those of us with a Big Sur jones.

     Fog and Big Sur are like Coffee and sugar-

We feel sorry for visitors who pick a day to drive Highway 1 when fog rules

      It moves quickly, literally before your eyes.

    

   Future posts will feature more of the Big Sur file as we lament its current status of being off limits.

  the political fog

   We should all be troubled by Secretary of State Tillerson's comment he is "not a big media access guy."
     The secretary needs to understand he is no longer a private CEO/Chairman of the Board dealing in a corporate world. He is a public employee, an official appointed by the President but responsible to the American tax payer for whom he works. This job is bigger than him and requires process and transparency.
     Tillerson's refusal to travel with at least a press pool instead of hand picking one journalist is unacceptable. It is wrong and dangerous, even more so given the pronouncements of the irrational liar and lunatic who appointed him.

here comes heart burn for non progressives

    The much maligned millennials are about to have their way. Those who are 19-35, the largest component of the Bernie Sander supporters now number some 75.5 million.

    They are a generation raised on disruption, new ways of working, living and a decidedly socialist cultural and political lean. The same goes for their younger siblings Generation Z who total some 77.9 million-they are 18 and younger but in the next two election cycles will become a force as well. Add them to the 65.9 million Gen X'ers, 36-51, and the tables have not only changed, but it is a new game. 

     Millennials and Gen Z bring such profound change to the political landscape that Boomers and the generation immediately preceding may not recognize the social landscape.

      They are decidedly more egalitarian, color blind, accepting of sexual and gender identity selections and differences, ethnic diversity, in favor of economic equality, globalism, defenders of the environment, suspicious of corporations and to such a degree as to render much of traditional political practice irrelevant. 

      One of them just sold his business to CNN for $20 Million. He has a daily vlog (video blog) with 6 million subscribers and more than 1.3 billion views. He's also been hired to be the front man for a multi billion dollar global corporation's advertising.  Here is a look at  the kind of style, cultural and political attitude that may decide the next presidential election.
      Hear what Casey Neistat has to say to "haters and doubters" and pay attention to the Titanic and Iceberg analogy. Listen to the attitude...and consider their massive numbers. Bye bye trump land..

         See you down the trail.

SUMMER COOL, LIVE AND LET LIVE, LIVE OAK SCENES

COOL SUMMER

      As temperatures "over the hill" on the other side of the Santa Lucia mountains rise, it draws moisture from the Pacific through the Templeton Gap, Highway 46, and leaves this side of the range shrouded in a cool marine fog.

    It ghosts in, filling valleys and creating a mood and ambiance. Evening is the preferred time of this cooling mist during summer. We can transition from bright cobalt sky and sun to a wispy fog in just moments.

LIVE AND LET LIVE

or leave

    Boomers grew up with the concept of "the melting pot," America as place where diverse cultures met and lived jointly. Somewhere along the timeline it became important to some that they not share a common good and still honor their unique history, instead they became tribal, standing off and finding fault with meeting in the middle. Subsequently sub groups grew, denigrating shared culture and fostering an attitude that a melting pot culture was wrong. Now there are some who would destroy what we have become to live according to their precepts, imposing them. Yes there are external threats, Isis and that sort, but homegrown separatists exist. I'm not sure how it happened, when the disrespect began, when narrow and selfish emerged. Thank heavens that view remains less than normative, but it's growing. As generations spend more time on screens and less in real life interaction I wonder if we only exacerbate it.

Diversity, where heritage and culture are celebrated is beautiful and makes the whole stronger and more interesting.

LIVE OAK NATION

business

African Guitar Summit at Live Oak Music Festival

    Frequent readers have seen previous posts from the Live Oak Music Festival, a premiere fund raiser for central California coast public radio, KCBX.

    Nestled in a magnificent live oak grove near Lake Cachuma and the San Marcos pass north of Santa Barbara, it is a weekend of magnificent music, camping, family gathering, fun and merchandise.
     This year's snap shots tend toward the vendors.

   As they say "peace, love and dirt." It's become a multi generational affair over the last 28 years. This year daughter Katherine joined us for the first time and she too approved!

OAK TREE UPDATE

     As the county continues its investigation of the Justin Winery ownership for large scale cutting of oak trees, improper land clearing and lying about their intent, a boycott of Justin wines has begun.

     Several San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles restaurants have dropped Justin wines. Individuals are stopping their purchase of Justin as well. Once owned and operated by Justin Baldwin, it is now the province of Stewart Resnick's big business empire that includes Fiji water, Pom Wonderful and other products.

     Neighbors have expressed concern about Justin's  intention to build a lake or reservoir that would have sucked huge amounts of water out of the already hard pressed aquifer. Longtime fans complain about the change the new owners have brought to a once prestige wine maker and for the attitude they evince in a friendly and family like wine region. Stay tuned.

    See you down the trail.