Wishing for a Renaissance!

         Perfectly on cue, poppies are popping and we hit the road, a colorful journey.

        Looking for a change of mind, we found California spring as we sliced the central state over the Santa Lucia mountains, through the lower end of the central valley, past the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains into the Mojave desert, through the Antelope valley to rest at the base of the San Jacinto mountains in Palm Springs. 

    California is terrific when it is green and the mountains are snow capped and

the people come to play.

    California may be a state of mind, but spring certainly is and we needed the charge. 

    Some of the reality has been simply nuts. Measles are making a comeback!

Ignorance and social media can do a lot of harm. There was a time when a parent who would not get their children the safest and best medical care would have been considered coo coo. Ditto for those who wear red hats and march locked step in support of a Dodo. There is an epidemic of dumb. 

    My WWII veteran parents could not understand why the republican party wants to throw away democracy as it embraces the very fascism Dad and his generation fought. Don't the fools read history? Can there be a bigger jerk than Mitch McConnell who endorsed the very man he condemned, and who sucked out what ever molecule of integrity that may have tried to invade the old Kentuckian. 

    To make it worse Google AI started creating Black Popes and Vikings and Asian American founding fathers. Oops said Sundar Pichai a very bright man surprised by his own genius computers. Hit pause and correct.

    That's what we did. 

    Some of us may be old and increasingly irrelevant but we can still manage a lucid thought and one of those surmises-- there is entirely too much intelligence, too many skills, and an unlimited amount of creativity, imagination and real knowledge, kindness, and genuinely good people to look and act the like the America we see today. The smart people, the thinkers, the doers, problem solvers, helpers, people of love and visionaries need to start getting more face time in our melodrama. The "professional politician," influencers, body celebrities, brainless blowhards, snark trolls, overly sensitive and self appointed aggrieved, need to hit the road and get out of our faces. 

    If you have not read the constitution, shut up. If you don't know what the Beer Hall Putsch was, take off your red hat and shut up, then go read a history book. If you want to ban a book, crawl under a rock. If you don't believe peace is the better way to live go for a personality transplant. 

    We need a Renaissance. You Dark Age droolers need to start learning the facts,  and paying attention to the life that appears just beyond your screen. Reality is what we make it, not a hateful attitude manipulated by an algorithm that takes you deeper into darkness, ignorance and insensitivity.

   Spring is going to start breaking out everywhere, soon. Breathe it in, take it into that part of you that that motivates and recharges your battery. There is a reason this is the time that tribes, and societies, and civilizations, and faiths celebrate new life, new energy. There's also more light. 

    The Renaissance started in a place where the light, and the color ignited thought and imagination, enough so to throw out the old, stalled thought and superstitions. It was a springtime of the mind and soul.

    About time for that here, wouldn't you say?

    See you down the trail. 

Resurrection Turtles

 

    Rainbows are one of those natural prompts that seem to always lift our spirits. We captured this one during a recent storm.

            

    Another natural phenomena that prompts human behavior is the calendar of our revolution and rotation in the solar system. 

        For as long as there is a human history, solstice and equinoxes has prompted response. Do you wonder when and how humankind first calculated a solstice or equinox. How did those ancestors harness observation and calculation? How was the knowledge, the "science," shared?

   It didn't take long for humans to turn the Spring change into ritual and events.

    Some regard spring as the new year, others call it a resurrection of the sun. Egyptians, Persians, and Chinese  advanced celebrations with eggs. Anglo Saxons celebrated fertility and the "moon goddess." Druids too celebrated a goddess of fertility, known as a Flower Woman.

    The Dionysian Mysteries were one of the Greek's mystery cults observing spring rites. They essentially drank or drugged themselves to the point of "loosing control," so the power of their gods or the universe could enter them. 

    There were elaborate observations of the solstice at ancient stones and archeological mystery sites. Some dug up decayed pigs. Cultures picked flowers and danced around around poles. 

    Islam celebrates Ramadan. Jews observe the feast of the Passover. Christian's observe the passion of the Christ. Holy week features Palm Sunday, a triumphant entry, marred by Maundy Thursday a betrayal and arrest, Good Friday when Jesus is executed on a cross, Easter Sunday when Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Son.

    It seems we cannot see the greening of the season, blooming of trees and flowers, the warming of the sun and not think of life, maybe new life from the dead of winter or more.

    Well, here's a little anthropological story. I call it 

THE RESURRECTION TURTLES

    My brother John and I somehow won a couple of little turtles at an elementary school Ice Cream Social. It might have been one of those fishing games, or musical chairs, I can't recall. We went home with two turtles, in little boxes along with turtle food. 

    We acquired an old fish tank, and built our turtle "biome" with clumps of dirt, grass, twigs and leaves. The turtles flourished and we lavished them with attention. They were our first pets and we loved them.

    As fall came on we noticed they were getting sluggish, not eating all of their food and we worried. One morning we discovered the turtles had crawled under some of the dirt clods and were not moving. Mom said they must have gotten old and died. She promised to bury them near the back stoop and put a rock on the ground so we could remember them. We got on and eventually the loss had less sting.

    Spring came and one day my younger brother John, a bit of a rascal, even at that age, suggested we dig up the turtles so we could have turtle skeletons. Sounded interesting to me so we proceeded. We moved the rock and began to dig. Instead of finding skeletons, we found a turtle, fully intact and it seemed to be alive. It turned its curious head our way. We dug on and found the second turtle, not as animated, but clearly not a dead skeleton.

    We called them our Resurrection Turtles and went about the neighborhood telling about it. Our turtles were Resurrection Turtles.

     Mom, somewhat amazed and somewhat embarrassed soon realized the turtles had been merely hibernating. She did a good thing in burying them by the back stoop. 

    Soon she and dad began to explain to us, the difference between death and hibernation and advised us the turtles were not really resurrected. But still, after all these years, I can remember the surprise, the elation, the wonder and the chuckles about our "resurrected" turtles.

    To this day the grass still seems greener, the flowers more beautiful, the world a little brighter and more joyful at Easter. However you observe or reflect at this time of year, I hope it brings a sense of renewal, energy, cheer and warmth.

       Our celebratory inclination is as old as the first human spring.

     See you down the trail.

Take It In....

    It's been a vibrant and colorful spring on the California central coast and our Iris has been resplendent.
    Spring has a way to bump us, to revive our outlook and to pay attention to life, often so beautiful and always moving on.
    The loss of Judy, a life long friend, and a golden anniversary bumped us too, and sent us looking through shots of the old days.

    We picnicked in a clearing in the southern Indiana woods where we would soon build a home. We were practically kids, I think,  as I look back...

    Tucked away too was a photo of our first garden. It was planted when we lived on the Indianapolis east side. Lana came from gardening stock, I did not, which explains why I did the sod busting and she did the skilled work. 
   It turned out to be quite a good garden and gave us the itch for "land," and getting closer to nature.

   We're old boys now. Terry in the red cap is in North Carolina, Dave is on Sanibel and we're on the west coast.
   Back in our more hearty days, even Indiana winter didn't stop us watching grill master Dave and his red weber.

    No doubt you are struck by how impossible it all seems, this advance of the calendar. So, as my dad used to say, "make the most of each day," indeed, take it all in, and with a sense of joy.

speaking of taking it all in

   I wish all US citizens, regardless of tilt, would sit and read the Mueller report. Forget the shill you've heard from you know who and his apologist. Read the report, read the details, read the facts.

   It's clear federal prosecutors and members of the house have. The investigation has legs, and no amount of bs or lies will change that.

parting beauty

     With the color, the return of longer days, a brighter sun and the sense of rebirth, it's clear why spring has been, since ancient days, a time of celebration and renewal.  So, take it all in. Take it deep within. These are days to celebrate life.

       See you down the trail.

The Resilience

    It's a trick we never tire of. And it is a heady tonic; new life, rebirth, an élan vital for those deepest chambers of who we are. Spring reminds me.

      It makes us look, 

     creates intrigues,

  and broods. 

   Ben, my late friend, producer and television business partner joked that after college he wanted to open an office in Manhattan and sell words and lines. 

   Please allow me to offer you a new line....

  sight lines

   Here are some visual lines that deserve a well done!

  

     (some tricky window washing required here)

   Oh yea! Ice cream done this way.

   Nature or nurtured, spring brings hope. BTW, does anybody know what is the tree with these pods?

they deserve the best

    Among those to whom we can take such a question is a teacher. I'm one of those who think teachers are among the very most important people in our culture. I also think we should be ashamed at the economic dislocation between the crucial role players they are in shaping a future, and what we pay them. 

    Pay inequity is a disease in the body politic, a symbol of a social code or set of values that is wrong and dangerous. 

    I read a note to her mother by a teacher who has participated in the protests and demonstrations in Oklahoma. She spends her own money to help feed her students and to provide the support material they need to learn. She is grossly underpaid to begin with. They sacrificed further to take the message to the street and to the state government.

    I spent enough time reading city and county budgets, school board budgets, state budgets, federal budgets and all manner of analysis and accountability studies to know there is always a way to pay public servants more than what they are paid.

    In a philosophical finish I question whether any corporate ceo, cfo, coo, or board member is worth their salary, really! I'm more confident saying what they do is not more important than shaping the intellect of a child. The discrepancies between what we expect of teachers and what we pay them has to end, even if it means a radical restructuring of our current way of doing public business, which is obviously broken.

    As a post script-my resume includes being a president/ceo, an occupant of the corner office. CEO salaries are like pay of professional athletes. You might be able to make a "justification" given an organizations income but it's still absurdly inflated. That is never more true than compared to what we pay teachers, fire fighters, cops, health department workers, etc, etc. 

    See you down the trail. 

THE WEEKENDER :) REBIRTH & RENEWAL

IS IT THE AIR AND THE LIGHT?

      You know how you get one of those "ah hah" brain bumps
when you see or hear something that brings you to a recognition of a new thought or insight?  I think I did it to an artist who had studied neurochemistry and photography.  His paintings were extraordinary displays of light. I asked him        "Do you think the renaissance could have occurred further north where there was less light and Mediterranean climate?"
       His eyes and crinkling smile indicated he was genuinely delighted by the question. "That is a good question.  That is a  very good question?"  
       Being a professor, I sensed, he was going to give it some thought.
       Well, this non professor has given it much thought since something theatre professor Gilbert Bloom said, in passing, years ago.  He noted the Greek Festival of Dionysus probably
wouldn't have happened in something other than a warm spring or summer climate. That was probably the ah hah bump that put me on a bridge to the idea that great creative efforts can often be charted to places where the light is good, the sun abounds and where in the spring there is a festive spirit of rebirth.
       Paganism of several variety, certainly partied hearty in the spring. It is also the time of Passover and Easter, both of which derive from sunny climes. 
       Who doesn't feel a bit of a charge when a warm sun sweeps across spring blooms? Renewal is spoken.

WHERE THERE IS A COAST 

THERE ARE WAVES

     Local experts say this past week brought the biggest waves to the Central Coast in a few years-up to 16 feet with
an 18 second period. There were some big walls of water, hanging up there for long moments.  It is thrilling to watch
the planet forces at work in the Pacific.

SPECIAL VIEWING
THE WEEKENDER's :) featured video this 
weekend has been around a bit, but I thought
it would be a good fit for this weekend
when Jewish people observe Passover and 
Christian's celebrate the resurrection.
For that matter it's perfect if you are neither
and just simply a living biped.
This is a 3 minute film that no less than Ridley Scott celebrated. It is very good.

And then, a less celebrated film,
but a little Central Coast tribute to the 
weekend.  Music by Ma Muse from Chico.

Enjoy.  Peace.
See you down the trail.