Dear Beloved Sanibel...

         Dear Sanibel,

        It is heartbreak and anguish to see you shattered and broken. More heartbreak to ponder the human toll in the physical devastation. Dreams gone, homes, jobs life as normal wiped out.

        My pain is in memories only. Family vacations, anniversaries, book launches, special celebrations, times with friends and the dreams you launched. 

        Our girls grew up counting down until spring vacation and our escape from gray, cold and dark mid-west winters; there was excitement even in the wait until we could jet away. 

        We sensed life was kind when we first drove onto the causeway and felt the gulf breeze. So many years, so many of life's great moments, there on your shell tossed sandy beaches and under your thick canopy.

        Year after year Lana and I would walk your shore, being healed by the sun and Gulf, and be recharged to plunge back into life and careers.

        We watched as dear friends created a business, and converted a corner into an art and hospitality peace, and a piece of paradise. We watched our goddaughter grow as an island girl. We slept on the shop floor in our early vists and took pride in what Barb and Dave created.

        All of those grill nights, dinners at Jean Paul's, the Bubble Room, Mc T's and more. All of the laughter.

       Then precious Sanibel, you were where we planned to retire, and so we bought a house, and our dreams took hold. 

        In time our daughter moved there, we spent more vacation visits adding to the years of cherished time.

        My Sanibel Arcanum and The Sanibel Cayman Disc books were published and you helped me celebrate the success. The clippings and interviews and video tape reports now live in the archives of the Indiana Historical Society. All of those wonderful parties and book signings saved for the future.

        It was not about you, nothing about your tropical charm, but we changed focus. Our retired life was to be in California, another coast, another life, but so fondly and sweetly we remembered you, and our dear friends there and the thousands of memories. 

        Now we grieve. We are lucky, the memories remain. You dear precious Sanibel face another daunting time of rebuilding, repair, re-greening and rebirth so you can again be a haven of hope, laughter, peace, and memories. 

        We are sorrowed by the task that faces not only your communities, but the thousands of individual lives that have been altered.

        The Sanibel of my memory and the Sanibel of my novels was changing, as life does. But no one who has enjoyed your magic, your wildlife and wild nature, your devotion to the environment and love of birds can forget how special you were, and that was never to change. Nature will comeback. Ding Darling will again be a refuge and so too will you, precious Sanibel. You rare, east-west, barrier reef island, walking in the Gulf, you have endured for centuries, have taken hits, and have changed, but you always come back. 

        But for now, we hurt, we hurt for you. 

       See you down the trail.

Wishing you....

 

Wishing you a life that is green...

...a comfy spot...

...a good story...

...a place to quench a thirst...

...friends...

...music...

...a timeless mystery...

...something to love...

...spirit and commitment...

...something to believe ....

...memories...

...friends with which to share...

...wit and wisdom and the soul of a poet....

...and a life that breathes an ageless story.

Slainte'

See you down the trail.

WHERE THE PAST LIVES

   My gratitude for your visits to this little spot of the blogosphere. You have kindly indulged these quirky essays, ramblings and flights of thought. 
   In this season of light and hope I wish you the abiding peace and joy that is the nexus of Christmas.
    And too it may be a time for pleasant visits from Christmas ghosts. Speaking of such, here is a visitor from the past.

WHERE THE PAST LIVES
Published December 17, 2013

     Snow had turned to freezing rain and the old wiper blades spread a smear of icy trails across the windshield. It was dark but the snow covered road shone in the headlights courtesy of the glaze of ice. It was late Christmas Eve and I seemed to be the only car on the highway and now on this county road.

      I saw the old beater off the road to the right with the hood up when a dark figure stepped around from the front of the car and stood there. It did not beckon or wave but  simply watched me approach as though resigned to see me drive by. The headlights caught the visage of an older black man in a threadbare overcoat. Ice crystals matted into his hair. He appeared surprised I was pulling the old Studebaker over to park behind his even older car, I think it was an Oldsmobile.  As I started to alight he walked toward me wearing a smile that shone.

     I had worked late at the commercial radio station in a city some 60 miles away. While my college was on holiday recess, I needed to be back at the station the next morning to sign it on at 6:00 AM. The winter storm had slowed my progress to get home to my parents house to spend a bit of Christmas. I knew my parents and brothers were probably concerned about my travel in the snow and ice. This was long before cell phones or adequate snow clearing equipment on county roads or state highways.

     Something "froze up" he said.  He was on his way to his daughter's house with part of their Christmas Eve meal.  He'd been there "a while" he said and the few cars that had passed slowed down, but sped by "when they got a look at me."  A black man on a county road.  

     He was headed for a neighborhood near the downtown of Indianapolis, a neighborhood I would not normally frequent nor drive through.  We chatted about how our Christmas fates had put us together as we navigated the ice covered road that led to suburban streets which in turn fed us into the car lined streets of old houses, commercial buildings and vacant lots.  Lights gleamed from windows, rimmed with Christmas decorations.  We chuckled at how a few of the homes had painted snow scenes on windows or doors.  No need for that now as the ice had turned back to snow and the drive crunched on.

     His daughter and son in law looked curiously out the door and then came down the steps when they saw the old man get out of the car. They were visibly surprised to see a young white man get out of the other door.  

     Two or three little faces peered out of the large window on the porch, their eyes were wide.  "Those little angels are my grand children," the man said, his smile even wider now.

     Both the old man and his son in law went to their billfolds as though to offer me money.  No way I said. It's Christmas Eve.  I'm just being a Santa's helper I added, looking at how other doors were opening and seeing people appear in windows.  The daughter wanted me to come in and warm up, have something to eat. I explained my family was waiting and I needed to get on.  We shook hands and his big grin had a special quality of that caused a tingle in my chest.

       As I picked my way back to the suburbs the aroma of the dish that had rested on the back seat continued to fill the car. It had a sweet scent that activated my hunger sensors and I began to think about my parents and brothers and how I hoped they had dined.

      When I made it to the driveway Dad was first out of the door, as Mom stood behind him, in her apron.

       "We were very worried about you," Dad opened the Christmas Eve conversations.

       Later when I had relayed the story and we had begun to eat the feast Mom prepared, I noticed she was sitting there, looking a bit distant, but smiling.

       "You did the right thing," Dad said, "but you took a chance in doing it."

        I never confessed my nervousness, in making the stop or driving into that neighborhood. It was the mid '60s and times were different.

        A ghost that visits me this time of year is that picture of Mom, sitting there and smiling. Later, and she would often remind me of the story, "you were a Christmas angel for that man."

        At least I was a young white lad who saw another traveler and realized color makes no difference. 

       The other ghost I recall is that heart warming smile. It spoke more than words.

a Christmas pastiche

  

                            Merry Christmas. Peace!

    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.

ELECTION NIGHT INSIGHT & A PROPER RESPECT

EXERCISING THE FRANCHISE

THE LONGEST NIGHT

    Election night broadcasts were my favorite.  It was all "in the moment," unscripted, spontaneous and adrenalin ripped. 

      Starting out I covered campaign or party headquarters, grabbing interviews and reporting on the numbers as received by the partisans.  Later I would be at the anchor desk, cutting back and forth between field reporters, network feeds, interviewing candidates, moderating our analysts and reporting the numbers.  Hundreds of people worked behind the scenes in a kind of full court press involving satellites, trucks, remotes, control rooms, computers, results and always the story was changing.   

      Some good journalists faltered in that kind of rapid fire circus, but I loved it.  Ad libbing was no problem, and as long as the technology did what it was supposed to be, it was thrilling.  

       As a senior news executive I directed those hundreds of 

people in that army of journalists and technology.  I'd pace on the top tier of our multi leveled central control room, roam into the studios and work with our anchors and analysts or stand in my office watching 4 television sets and a computer screen.  It was an ultimate adrenaline pump.

      There was a time when I was brought back as the "senior analyst" meaning the old guy on the set who "had been there and done that."  Think Tom Brokaw, today.

       This evening I'll probably drive Lana crazy with my channel hopping, computer searching, texting, and phone calls with people around the country.  It will be fun, with

no pressure, but I think perhaps the greatest thrill was my very first election night, covering a mayors race.  At the end of a long night, our radio anchor had us all looped together in a "talk back" debrief where we shared our impressions.  I remember driving home that night thinking, "Man, I've arrived in the big time!"

    

A GREAT CITY 
AND HOTEL

Yesteday's post was a bit of slap dash, iphone based view 

of the Fairmont. Both it and San Francisco deserve a more deliberate treatment.

 GREAT VISUALS

creative window designs

See you down the trail.