...When Rights are Essential...When Wrong is evil...

shore sculpture at Morro Bay

     the pause

   A breather and a contemplation. Tucked into our complex lives is the need for moments to just look, appreciate and breath deeply. Some of you regular readers are facing health issues and please know our thoughts are with you.
    Our thoughts are also with others and we get into that below.

          But first, have you seen the hair cut sported by an artichoke that goes to seed?  We've enjoyed several "farmed" in Lana's raised growing bed. She decided to let the last one go to seed, to see what it looks like. Kinda of punk eh?

right is essential

     When I hear someone start off about media bias I can't help but think about people I know. There was Al Schultz the editor of my boyhood hometown paper. Al was a neighbor, his kids were my friends and he and his wife were friends with my parents. He worked at night putting out a morning paper so he wasn't always there when other dads were playing catch or grilling out. Even as a kid I knew he was smart, well read, knew history and was traveled. But we could all tell it was hard work and it took its toll. It was hard on the family when he broke a story about abuse in the jail.

      I think about the cast of characters that populated the smoky din of the Times City room when I was lucky to enter that special world as a stringer and copy boy while in high school. Men and women racing deadlines, clacking at typewriters, while line-o-type machines cast hot lead columns and huge presses rolled and rumbled on the floors below.

     Or my college buddies Toby and Dave who covered the police beat for the city paper in my college town while I did the same thing for a radio station. Or the friends who spent hours working to publish the college newspaper.

      I think about guys like Joe Gelarden, Bill Anderson, Tom Keating, Dick Cady, Harley Bierce, Mac Trusnick, Paul Bird, Bob Bell, Mike Tarpey, Ed Zeigner, Wendell Phillippi, Bob Mooney, Pat Traub, Lyle and David Manweiller, Robin Miller, Zach Duncan, Gerry Lafollette, RK Schull, Howard Smulevitz ink stained retches from the Star or News who were friends but competitors covering government, crime and the people of a major city.

     I think of broken plans, cancelled vacations, ruined days off, interrupted dinners, when called out to a plane crash, train derailment, hazardous material spill, homicide, fire, prison riot, the finding of a drowned child, a late night school board meeting, a run over legislative hearing, a citizens group meeting, meeting a source, pouring over documents, reading science reports.

     I think about Bruce Taylor, Will Murphy, Fred Heckman, Bob Hoover, Bob Campbell, Ben Strout, Steve Starnes, Anne Ryder, Teresa Wells, John Stanley, Kevin Finch, Stacy Conrad, Leslie Olsen, Mary McDermott, David Macanally, Rich Van Wyk, John Whalen, Bill Ditton, Steve Sweitzer, Marlee Gintner, Karen Grau, Pat Costello, Randal Stanley, Pam Vaught, Marilyn Schultz, Neal Moore and many others who saw the work as more than just a job. 

     I think of Bob Collins sitting at the bar at the press club a brilliant writer destroying his body. I remember Jep Cadou, Carolyn Pickering, Hortense Meyers, Ed Stattman. I think of the late night drinks of people who devoted their lives to information while missing family or ruining marriages. 

    In fact there are thousands of scenes I can conjure from lifting a body from a burning plane, to waiting for cops to identify a victim, or waiting in statuary hall for a senator or congressman to appear or sitting through long hearings and trials or riding with cops or embedding with military, or talking with people for hours on end to understand their point of view, or hearing parents weep about the abuse of a child, or rage in anger at how a bank foreclosed on a home and on and on. It takes something of yourself to listen,to wait, to care, to study, to ponder, to dig, to research so that you can tell other citizens.

     None of that is fake news. Never was. Never will be. It is looking for facts, truth, looking at life in its better and worse hues. None of the people who do that work are enemies of the people. 

     I think about the young staff of my local paper here on the Central California Coast. They remind me of myself and some of the names above. Many of you have never heard of those people. They are not New York or Washington luminaries-they were local journalists, like thousands of others across the nation. They are not enemies of the people. Nor are the people who labor to report the daily news and who endeavor to make sense of our crazy world.

    We have never been perfect. We make mistakes and we admit them. 24 Hour television in the deregulated age has added entirely too much bloviating, opinion, and entertainment with the bottom line being, getting viewers, but still the work-a-day reporters, the real journalists, the newsmen and women are not enemies of the people. We could do with less schmooze and more news, less celebrity and more substance, but our habits and ways of getting information continue to change.

     Trust me, please! This nation is much better off with a tough, adversarial, questioning, probing, and yes even a pain in the ass media and press corp than without. We are a much healthier nation with critics on all sides, and challenges of any president than without that tension. Probably every president has had their issues with the press and that is as it should be. That has been our history.

   A free press, a robust and even imperfect media serves this nation better than any President in our history. 

    Donald Trump has gone too far.

bullies

     Donald Trump is trying to silence critics. Remember he is the same man who used to call tabloids and talk shows pretending to be his press agent. He is more than a liar. He is a danger to our 200 some years of tradition. He is a cancer on what is left of our integrity and he is a toxin to what is left of our civility. And I suspect even if he were bright enough to understand, he wouldn't care because he is so self immersed. 

     Think about this. Who would you trust-a man who spent his life in service to his nation, doing hard and unthinkable tasks, devoted to the principles of a democratic republic, honoring civilian control and respecting security and military leaders or a real estate hustler, known liar, sexual predator and braggart, who will not even read position papers or intelligence briefings and who publicly condemns his own intelligence community? It is the tactic of a strongman or dictator.

     John Brennan battled against our enemies. Donald Trump meets with them in secret, gives them security secrets and functions as their stooge. In the Mano y Mano match up here, it is certainly not Brennan who should have his security clearance pulled.  Read the warning signs. 

      Trump is treasonous. He is the enemy of the people.  

evil

     I hope the Catholic church will pursue with all dispatch the prosecution of those priests who have engaged in such hellish behavior in Pennsylvania. Some of those accused are now in positions of influence and power and even in the College of Cardinals. 

       Their betrayal of their faith, and their evil behavior should again rock the denomination to its core. The offenses are awful, but that some of the men involved are still in leadership positions, and that an organized cover up still exists is horrendous enough for a full papal retribution.

after all that, a sweet parting

This is a creation of friend and painter Pat Wilmott

it was every bit as delicious as beautiful

    See you down the trail.

        

      

INSPIRED II

A DOSE OF GOOD MEDICINE

   This is a new top to a post that drew much interest. It has been revised. We gathered these images on a visit with dear friends. It was a tonic.
   Now this focus is brought to our current political rumble, which includes a fight with the media. We'll revisit that below. 

INSPIRED

   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.

  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.

Memorial to journalists killed in the line of duty.

Newseum, Washington DC

     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.
   
    Afterthoughts in this political season. Reporters and other journalists have been barred by the Trump campaign. That is stupid and it is wrong. It is also critical to note.
   If there is anything our generation should take from the history of 1933 forward is the rise of Hitler, his coopting of workers and his use of power. We witness warning signs and similar behavior. Trying to manipulate the press is troubling.
    Recourse? Some have suggested a fight back-refuse to cover his candidacy. If one outlet is barred, no coverage from everyone else. That may "vent," but it's not right nor effective.
My friend Frank, who hosted our Washington visit observes it keenly.
      "The media is always stuck between principles (protesting this kind of treatment) and responsibility (continuing to report on craziness.)
     This election offers American voters an opportunity to do a reality check and to think in view of US history and all that implies.
     

    See you down the trail.

WORDS MATTER & CREATING VIOLENCE

WORD SHOPS

 Courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Indianapolis

Vonnegut in his writing studio

Courtesy of Henry Miller Library Big Sur

Miller in his writing studio 

     Intriguing as they are these images cannot begin to capture the depth of thought, soul searching, intellectual ardor, soaring imagination and the just plan hard work of writing.

     Words matter. They build our world; hope, love, peace, war, inspiration, desperation, life, death.

VIOLENT WORDS

      I can't decide if many of the current crop of presidential candidates are lazy and refuse to think deeply and consider the words they use or if they are specimens of a declining intellect. Donald Trump is coarse, vulgar, impulsive, childish, mean spirited and a braggart. He is also the leading Republican in America.
     Journalist Ezra Klein tweeted recently "Violence is scary. But violence-as-ideology is terrifying. And that's where Trumps campaign has gone."
      It will be telling but not surprising if violence continues to hound the Trump campaign. His tone has been violent and provocative. He advocates violence even actions that would put the US outside the Geneva Accords. He appeals to racists, neo-nazis and some of his supporters have been photographed giving a Hitler style salute.
      We've seen a few Republicans begin to move toward Trump as others become apologists. It is beyond me to know how any one of intelligence can condone or support Trump, regardless of how fed up with conventional politics they may be.

      While analysts and pundits track the Trump ascendancy to the recent behavior of the Republican party arguing he is the logical result of their coddling of kooky fringe elements, lack of constructive proposals, naked political obstructionism, denigration of a federal government, poor choice of leadership in congress and other legislative sins, I want to put blame elsewhere, as well.

     Political media. The proliferation of saturation coverage has brought us to the age of a crowded set where political operatives of dubious experience and background shout and yammer while another crowded desk of political journalists weigh in with their own interpretations. Everyone talking, nobody listening. Each with their own "expertise" or take. Contrast that to time when political reporters spent more time asking questions and digging than pontificating. 

     A 24 hour news cycle fills time and space. But the tone of political discourse has continued to devolve. It is verbal combat and spew.

     I wonder how a Lawrence Spivak, Bill Monroe, Marvin Kalb, Herb Kaplow, Nancy Dickerson, Cassie Mackin, Bob Clark, Doug Kiker, Tom Petit, Howard K. Smith, Sam Donaldson, Sander Vanocur, Carol Simpson, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and etc, etc would handle a Trump, or a Cruz.  Previous generations of journalists would  not permit what has been said to go unchecked, unchallenged and not confronted for the sake of civility and decency. 

     We joke that Trump is good for ratings and so the hustler is allowed to insult, demean, embarrass, rant and in general lower the relative decorum of public discussion and no one calls him out, until now. It appears protesters are doing just that.

     The other dynamic is how anger and frustration with a broken system-entitled professional politicians enjoying the perks of office while doing little to benefit the public-has welled up to such a point where just being angry is more important than having ideas. The words we hear are anger. The words we don't hear are constructive ideas or solutions. It takes little thought to rant and rave. It requires intellect to craft workable plans and find a way forward. 

     Once there were gatekeepers. Today our future may well be in the hands of low information; low information candidates, low information voters, low brow culture and low performers.

      It is as though the D students have taken over political operations and even news sets. 

BEAUTIFUL FAVA

There is beauty in this season, the crop of fava beans Lana has cultivated.

      Good things are coming.

      See you down the trail.

BACK IN TIME and RESERVATIONS IN A LAKE OF FIRE

THE DARK LORD AND EGYPT

   Dick Cheney and Egypt have things in common. That follows below, but first-

INTERSECTIONS OF TIME

Reunion Ramblings

   Strange to be a visitor where once you lived. Things look differently, and indeed they are.

       Arriving in time to "enjoy" a severe weather outbreak, wondering if the locals realize how precious is the rain.
    It has been a while since my last thunderstorm and it is an appropriate commencement for a kind of "magical mystery tour."
     Even more appropriate the Beatles' movie of that name played on the local PBS station as I prepared for a 50th reunion. 50th?! Really?

   But first, there were tasks.  Miles to drive. Indiana countryside, flat and rich with corn well on the way to "knee high by the fourth of July."

   Obligations and remembrances down the road, while also

 invoking an old family custom-a visit to the Pizza King, after cemetery visits or funerals. 

    Memories too of college dates. Where else can you find a barbecue hamburger, thin crust delicious creation, still changeless after 50 years?  

 More highway views, ingrained memories,  

  more changed vistas, 

 and calming traditions and sights.

Amazement at bushes, trees and a lawn we planted, now a few years on.  Our design worked, as a park like setting ensues. Happy that we've made a place more green.

Amazement too at who we have become, while still only 18, in some place in our being.

    While old institutions gain a new face. The Indianapolis Museum of Art continues to re-invent itself and to spread its influence

   even to the new trendy Alexander Hotel, where art is celebrated and abounds.

         Reunion journeys where memories old and new gather.
     I grew up learning of Madame CJ Walker, probably America's first African American woman millionaire. Now she's a work of art, though I over heard young members of a wedding party identify her as a "famous singer." Time does its tricks! 
 What do I wish I could have again, or take back to my home in California? Certainly I'd take an abundant cure to our drought.

  And we leave a piece of history behind, while taking the memory. 40 years ago my radio employer staged what became known as the Great Raft Race. As old is often new, it is the subject of media attention and there is discussion of a reunion of another sort. That is one I'll sit out, though an old image of my colleague Bob, in the cap, and me booms out from the past. Those were the days.

    Confluences in the river of time. A 50th High School reunion. Stirrings of a 40th anniversary for a major cultural event and I'm still at a loss to believe my generation has made so many orbits around the sun.

     Years ago when Lana and I settled into our first house, a neighbor, a great old guy in his 80's, rode his bike over to our porch to visit. He said he didn't have the endurance he used to, even though he could only think of himself as an 18 year old.  At the time we thought what an odd notion. Now we are beginning to understand.
      As the great Indiana writer Kurt Vonnegut puts it,
"and so it goes."

RESERVE SPACE IN THE LAKE OF FIRE

   Dick Cheney and a recent ruling by the Egyptian courts are travesties. The judge and the discredited ex-vice president would be bound and gagged and put in public stocks were this my world to control.

   The Egyptian courts have sentenced 3 journalists to long prison terms for telling the truth.  

    The truth is something Dick Cheney does not tell. He is a liar and probably indictable on several charges of corruption to say nothing of his potential as a war criminal.  Cheney  became so toxic that even the not so bright George W. Bush and his other advisers shunned him in the last term as though he was a ham sandwich left in a car trunk over the summer. That same idiot is running his mouth again.

  America should not forget those weapons of mass destruction that Cheney "knew" were in Saddam's Iraq. Nor that Iraq would become a Democracy. Or that Iraqi oil money would repay the war effort, etc. Nor should we forget Cheney's famous "One Percent Doctrine," which contributed to the ill fated invasion of Iraq and war on terror all the while Cheney's old Haliburton pals and subsidiaries earned billions in war profiteering in no bid contracts.  

    Pulitzer winner Ron Suskind's book One Percent Doctrine, published a few years ago, reveals how Cheney's sick mind and devious politics spun us into the web of violence, war, death and bad diplomacy that plagues the planet now.

    No one should take a word this malevolent jack ass spews with anything but contempt.  It is after all a free country, despite Cheney's poisonous misadventures and crime. In his transplanted heart he probably applauds the decision of the Egyptian court.  You can't help but think this evil cretin has contaminated that new heart with his own hovering greed and darkness. Dick Cheney is the worst of America. 

     See you down the trail.

NOTES FROM THE BLUE PLANET

THE INFORMATION WARS

     Jonathan Landay of McClatchey Newspapers reports troubling news that amounts to a piling on after we've learned how invasive information mining already is.  

     Landay writes of a directive from James Clapper who works as the Director of National Intelligence.  Clapper's one man edict, with the power of law, forbids intelligence community employees from any contact with journalists.  Now, only the director, deputy director or public information officer of a member agency of the intelligence community is permitted contact. A very dangerous and sinister move.  

     No doubt Clapper and his advisers, rocked by the Snowden and earlier Wikileaks releases, and genuinely concerned about our security, believe this is the best thing. The danger though is when a single executive, or even a branch of government builds policy that restricts knowledge in a punitive way.  Under Clapper's edict, any offending intelligence community employee's career will be damaged or ended. There is also the philosophical issue of a government, meant to serve, deciding to hold information against, or away from those who empower it-we citizens.

      As I sat in an intelligence oversight conference room hidden away under the US Capitol dome, a ranking member of congress spoke earnestly of the hard choices and actions that must be taken in the field of intelligence, simply to give our government options for our security. There are few black and white constructs. Security and intelligence is a nether world where shades of gray and complexity are the multi layered norm. As my source told me "some of the decisions that are necessary, don't look so good in the light of day."

     In more than 4 decades of reporting I learned which sources I could trust and they in turn learned that I could be trusted. Now some of those people from federal law enforcement, intelligence and counter intelligence, defense, state and local police, Senate and House oversight committees, would not have been able to assist my work in reporting to the public.  

     No government is so good that it does not need to be watched, nor should it ever strive to be anything but transparent.  Men and women who hold positions of influence, elected, appointed or civil service are never above accountability. Journalism is an imperfect craft or profession but it provides a valuable surrogate role for citizens. Journalists must be able to gather and know all facts and as close an approximation to truth as possible, especially in the area of policy formulation and conduct. This is paramount in areas of national security, public safety and individual privacy. Clapper's one man edict, regardless of claims of nobility of intent, is wrong, chilling and dictatorial. 

     Good men and women who believe in the principles of this Democratic Republic and who do the hard work of intelligence and journalism will find ways to share information and knowledge and work around the dangerous Clapper policy. We are a government of, by and for the people and we can never accept anything less.

     A couple of weeks ago Central California readers of The Cambrian were surprised by the tone of an article I penned about the hiring of a public information officer for our Community Service District Board. "I agree with you but""you were awfully strong," or "too strong," or "too tough" were comments from a few friends. My point there derives from the same point as my reaction to the Clapper edict.  Government employees do not work for a political ideology, philosophy, policy leaning, or butt covering-they work for the public.

It is not easy. Issues are complicated. There are competing interests-but the constitutional frame work and the public's right to know should be guiding precepts. Clapper is a dedicated public servant, but he is wrong. I hope he reconsiders. This is tantamount to a gag order.

GARDENING IN A TIME OF DROUGHT

    Californians struggle through the drought finding ways to conserve water while governments look at water policy and permitting processes. 

       As an Earth Day celebration note we share a personal report.

     We've added rain barrels and redirected our downspouts.
These two are tied together.

   This barrel stands alone. These help to harvest rain, when we get it. Living in a coastal zone we are blessed with lots of spring and summer evening marine fog. It's amazing how much flows off the roof and the barrels are an improvement as a catchment. They can also be filled with non potable water.

    In a small way, we've become solar powered. 

 We opted for a small panel which feeds through a charge controller to a 12 volt battery that we store out of the elements in the plastic box.

    A ten amp pump with a 45 PSI rating connects the barrel's out flow to a hose that feeds into our irrigation system.

  Our native California friend Dick, a gardening veteran, helped modify the drip irrigation system by adding the white cap feed input.

    The single barrel will source the lower raised bed and tomato cage.

     The double barrels will source the hill top raised bed as well as the side beds. Most of the hill side itself is drought tolerant planting and not in need of much water.

  Fava beans are doing well in a new side bed.  They, as well,

  will be fed by barrels thanks to the power of the little pump.

                                           Ditto for the lemon tree

           and the newly planted grape.  The barrels, solar panel,
battery, charge controller, pump as well as the modification to the downspouts cost a few bucks, but allow us to conserve and continue to garden.  And the new 

     is a lot better than the old system of down spout capture by these old cat litter containers that also needed to be hauled up the hill.

     Happy Earth day.  Take good care of it.  It's the only one we have.

     See you down the trail.