THE DAY LIGHTS

PASSING DAY LIGHT

Cambria April on Windsor

KNOCKOUT

     The Boys Club boxing space enveloped a smell of canvas, leather and balm while the accoutrement's and apparatus triggered an urge.

      You could hit the big bag with all you had, repeatedly until the bag won. The speed bag could be danced by skilled hands in a rhythm that was poetic. I could bang short bursts, but never got so talented as to pound out a dance beat. I liked the footwork and was able spring around the ring quickly. The rapid air punching rotations and jabs were great arm and shoulder work. But before I could box competitively my dad knocked me out of the game.

      "No son of mine is going to get his brain rattled like that." He knew boxers who he said were "punch drunk", their speech or thinking were victims of the fight game. I was not fond of the idea of "cauliflower ears." I watched a Friday night boxing match as Dad and a couple of neighbors pointed out the work being done by the "cut man," on a boxer's eyebrow. As much as I fancied myself a winner, he did me a big favor. And he told me I could take the pugnacious urge and turn it into defensive basketball. He was right.

walk by solar

SORRY 

     Manny Pacquiao is the better man but Floyd Mayweather Jr.is a stronger and better fighter. An almost $200 Million payout is staggering. Big money sports is another fight, though. 

       I befriended a foreign student at while Ball State. He struggled with his early attempts at reading and speaking English. He was a graduate student, had been a young employee in a government agency and was in the US to get a PhD. His English rapidly excelled and over a couple of years we'd chat and shared classes. I lost contact with him many years ago but learned he had returned to Nepal and worked in education. I've thought of him these past days and the suffering of his nation.

      I've also thought of how desperate are the lives of refugees and victims of disaster and war. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on sports entertainment seems embarrassing in the same paragraph and on the same planet.

      See you down the trail.

Safe Google-Magnificent Undulations-Would you say Vivid?

PAINTING THE SKY

 Sweet light on the California central coast.

more scenes follow below

WHAT IS REASONABLE?

     Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt opened the window on the tenuous world we inhabit at a Surveillance, Privacy and Civil Liberties conference Friday, but the light he let in captures a multi dimensional web where the map is being improvised as we go along and the perils are grievous.

     Schmidt explained how shocked he was to learn from the Washington Post that his own Google empire was being surveilled by the FBI.  Google now encrypts data between their data centers to protect privacy. Schmidt believes Google to be the safest information purveyor if you wish to avoid surveillance.

     The CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, sponsored the first Surveillance conference hosting experts across the disciplines and issues involved in surveillance, privacy and civil liberties. I spent hours at the conference, thanks to  C-SPAN, that special blessing of our information age.

      It appears all of us will move into a time of greater use of encryption. An affect of the Snowden NSA leaks is  everyone now knows a lot more about who is spying and how they are doing it thus the free market response is a series of applications, technology, services and methods of operation to protect privacy.  

     Schmidt observed the rules of this new world are hammered out in a cat and mouse game where governments seek and push Google and the other tech companies who then respond. Legal discussions or suits ensue and become  the process to negotiate a path to established policy. It's all new and the dynamic is ongoing.

     The Google leader said we could almost "end all criminal activity" with greater surveillance but said we should not allow that. Schmidt said even the kind of surveillance used in Britain, facial recognition and other means employed by GC Hq (General Communications Headquarters) is counter to the American way of life. He said we must be careful to protect information privacy.

     Law enforcement has never discovered a surveillance technique it does not like. It gives you pause to learn how many local and state police departments use the FBI developed Stingray technology. That's the system that mimics a wireless cell tower. It's a cell sight simulator that forces all phones in an area to connect with it where it then gathers all of the stored data on a phone.  It can also deny cell service.  Think about it for a moment. The police can turn on a Stingray, which penetrates into your home, car or pocket and makes your phone connect with it where all of your private information is gathered up. How do you think Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, George Washington and our other founders would respond to that?

      Don't American's equate privacy with freedom and liberty? We do not tolerate a loss of freedom nor should we which is why we continue to fight over civil rights, gender equality, economic fairness. We remember the Nazis, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, et al.  We even intervene in foreign wars to "spread democracy" or "guarantee liberty." How seriously then are we considering implications of our communication practices? Your phone, pad or computer are extensions of your life and often are repositories of your most private or valuable artifacts or information. Don't you have a reasonable expectation to privacy/freedom from surveillance?

      Already batches of metadata have been collected. Algorithmic data analyzers are at work. How long should that information be kept? Washington Post National Technology Reporter Eric Timberg asked Schmidt about what happens in 20 years, or sooner, when he is gone from Google. Schmidt deferred to  Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saying they share values and a belief in privacy. Schmidt noted they are young men.

      So it seems that a "belief" by young entrepreneur tech capitalists is our firewall. The personal belief of the men and women who have created these marvelous systems and technologies is the wall protecting our privacy and information security? Sorry, being a rich inventor or genius seems a thin credential. Henry Ford, for example, was a notorious anti-Semite. Then of course this is a world with other players, China, North Korea, Russia, Isis, NSA, CIA, GCHQ, FBI, all of whom come with their own idea of privacy, freedom and liberty. 

      Still loving that cell phone or pad?

SANTA LUCIA UNDULATIONS

shadows

post rain greening

THE EVENING SHOW

From a bluff near Harmony Headlands

    See you down the trail.

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWS

   Sunrise was too pretty to ignore. My admiration of it woke up that corner of the brain where vexing thoughts are caged, waiting to leap into a blank space. 

   One of the troubles with the news business is the derogatory but not inaccurate sobriquet for a style of news "If it bleeds it leads." To be clear that means if it is crime or disaster, tragedy, plane crash, wreck, fire, explosion, or etc. it's the first story of a newscast. Fortunately not all television news rooms operate by that ethos, but too many do. The more competitive the market, the more likely there's a station that follows that path.

   NIGHTCRAWLER starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a stringer (freelance) photographer is a well done examination of the pathology of that kind of news, as played out in Los Angeles.

    One of the brilliant elements of this film is the extraordinary visual treatment of Los Angeles at night. Oscar winning Cinematographer Robert Elswit offers a rich and stunning essay. Seeing his work, especially the open sequence, is worth the price of admission. 
    Director Dan Gilroy plumbs the exploitative, crass world of sensationalism that passes as a kind of tabloid television.  Rene Russo, who coincidentally is married to Gilroy, is marvelous as a desperate news director, once a beautiful young reporter now trying to hang on to a job at a low ranking station by spiking the ratings with overnight gore gathered by Gyllenhaal.  

     Gyllenhaal's character is a solitary whacko. I think of him as a slick cousin or even brother to Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Gyllenhaal's performance is incredible. As Jon Stewart joked he only blinked twice in 2 hours. Indeed Gyllenhaal's eyes and manic delivery are so riveting it'll give you the creeps.  It is a great character by which Gilroy can explore the senselessness of exploitative content and the tyranny of ratings.

     I know of situations where station reputations and staff integrity have been destroyed by this cheap and trashy management and style. Still, there are enough viewers who thrive on tabloid journalism that it exists.

PROFESSIONAL and/or Citizen Journalists

  How deeply should newsrooms go in utilizing or pandering to social media? The debate continues and the first episode of NEWSROOM, the excellent Aaron Sorkin HBO drama mines the issue set against the Boston Marathon bombing.  

   NEWSROOM is to journalism what WEST WING was to politics, only much better because it is more realistic, drawn from real critical judgements and experience. Plus the acting, writing and directing are all worthy of the multiple Emmys.  

BEEN THERE-DONE THAT

   As a television news director I guided an evolution of a traditional and historic news organization into digital news gathering, processing and dissemination.  We changed the technology on which we wrote, edited and the cameras we used to capture the pictures.  Our remote trucks changed from microwave to satellite. We changed our work flow from television only to television and Internet. We moved from thinking only about the big screen to feeding computers, pads, and phones. We changed our graphics, our presentation style and our pace. In changing how we worked, we also advanced the output and our approach to thinking about what is news and how we cover it.  

    I've been retired a few years now, but even back then we were starting to wrestle with blogging, the ethics and legality of using material from personal phones or on line chatter. Now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other micro blogging and social networking realities impinge on how a news shop operates. I'm not sure they've got it figured out, or properly.  But as my old friend and former broadcast journalist the Catalyst AKA Bruce Taylor cajoles me, don't worry about it. You can't do anything about anyway.  It's another generation's problem. Yea, probably so. But it makes great fodder for film, television or having a drink and bullshitting, or posting about.

     It may still wake me, but Bruce is right. It's someone else's job now.

DIVERSIONS

Late Afternoon

 Evening

Post Sunset

Neighbors
could have been the national bird

Heavy Weather on the way

Turning on the night lights

THROWBACK TO A GOOD DAY

    My late brother Jim, at the wheel and yours truly enjoying a day of golf in the late 70's or early 80's.  Dad was an extraordinary golfer, Jim and I not so much.  But we had fun.

      See you down the trail.

NEED A SUNSET? HOFFMAN'S NEXT ROLE

DIFFICULT TO RESIST

    I'm resigned to accept my inability to watch a sunset without reaching for a camera. It is a daily magic show.

THE HOFFMAN CHORUS

    My beloved younger brother spent too much of his short life as a junkie, so the Phillip Seymour Hoffman overdose hit me extra hard. My brother was the smartest, most creative of the three of us. He died young, though he lived a big life before his body, damaged by street drugs, blew an artery, a brain aneurysm.

    It's been moving to see the sense of loss felt by those who knew Hoffman and those of us who were simply impressed by his extraordinary talent. Poignant and bitter. Such a waste!

     And there has been this phenomena where his death, syringe in arm, has become the poster child of the heroin scourge. Law enforcement and the more alert of the media have attempted to warn of a new flood of heroin. That it's in our high schools, colleges and a choice of young professionals has been largely overlooked by most. Hoffman's demise has been the launch of a new round of reporting and hopefully this time we'll learn.

     When I was a street reporter, smack, skank, crank, jolt was mostly "an urban" problem. In those days that translated as African American, or ghetto. Later it crossed over into other strata's, and there was a time when more affluent white kids tried "chasing the dragon," smoking it, thinking it was impossible to become addicted that way. Not true.
      Hoffman talked of his battles with addiction, though we seemed to put that out mind when we were dazzled by his talent and the creation of those characters he played with such mastery.  Heartbreaking to think of him going the way he did. In all of the talk the last few days there's been an examination of the way some European countries have lowered their use heroin. And there has been focus on good intervention and education programs, though they are too few and often struggle for survival.
     My kid brother was smart.  He knew what he was doing, but like so many who get started and hooked, there was that youthful feeling of being immune or bulletproof. He told me it was the "perfect drug."  He amassed a small fortune, real estate, boats, exotic locales, but the drug took it all, beat him, broke him and put my parents through hell. He never intended for any of that. He was a sweet person. Hoffman almost certainly didn't want to die the way he did, leaving behind a love and 3 children. Those who sell heroin never tell you that part of the story.  
   In death, Hoffman may be playing his most important role.
   See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER-HOW DO YOU SEE IT?

POINT OF VIEW

     Some of us are bewildered by the almost instant division that appears on practically every thing anymore.  Politics, religion, social structure, meaning and significance are all points of departure.  It seems more so now than ever.

     Henri Bergson, a writer and philosopher in the early 20th century and a Nobel winner for literature wrote of the power of intuition over mechanized intellect.  He also wrote of the continual force of creative and evolutionary energy, calling it "elan vital." I like the concept; never ending expression of new, original, life, birthing, a driving force to creation and understanding.  Mix that with my opening premise above and I'm left to conclude "some people get it and some just don't."

     Some adapt, learn, evolve, grow, expand. Some don't. Some see differences as a space in which opportunity exists, others see boundaries. While we all probably "get set in our ways," as rapidly as science is expanding and cognitive understanding is occurring and computer assistance advances, getting hung up in "old thought" seems to be counter to progress.  But then there are those who find "Progressive" a frightful term. So we come full circle.

      What's it mean?  Maybe we are indeed from different hemispheres of the brain, or different planets!

VIEW POINT ON SUNSET

 From a vineyard hill top, watching the painted sky.

Even the shadows enjoy the moment. 

 There may be better acoustical stages, but none with a better point of view.

THE ULTIMATE EXERCISE IN POINT OF VIEW

THIS IS LOTS OF FUN

     Thanks to my long time friend, artist and musician Jim for forwarding this video.  We are probably from close to the same planet.

      Have a great weekend.

      See you down the trail.

FRAMED BY LIGHT

ON SIMPLY BEING

    Some times a scene presents itself and leaves me awed by the wonder of it.

     This morning two fawns, spotted still, only days old, were bounding through the open space north of our house on the ridge.  They seemed to hop and leap on all four hoofs  as though flubber had been attached. I was so amused by  their fascination with near flight I didn't want to leave to grab a camera. They were like kids on a trampoline. I don't know a whit about cognition in deer, but it sure looked like joy.

SUN SET AT MORRO BAY

REEL THOUGHTS

THE LONE RANGER

     Note to critics-What do you expect?  The first and last thing you need to know is, it is after all, THE LONE RANGER!

     Director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp have worked together so often, and so effectively when Depp is animating a costume with a character of his creation, it had to be good even if it was bad.  But it is not bad. 

     It is grand telling of American Iconography.  The big west, is BIG and gorgeous.  The action is big, huge and on a scale that could set the standard of western action scenes. The villains are classic renderings-sinister, nasty, vicious and BIG. In a way, they are the mold for such characters, despite that such tales have been around since the Lone Ranger rode on the radio.  There is an honesty too.  Big business hustlers riding rough shod, controlling land, abusing Chinese workers, lying and cheating to Indians, and using the Army for their own venal purpose. Ooops, how did some real history get so cleverly laid into this big, almost comic book entertainment?

     Arnie Hammer's Lone Ranger has that same "good guy" nobility of Clayton Moore's portrayal, though more human, quirky and real.  

    Depp's Tonto is indeed a masterpiece. Strong, not a subordinate or side kick, clever, witty and with his own tortured tale that makes his "back story" such a powerful motivation.  Without giving up too much, the scenes of the old Tonto are powerful. Depp took the icon to a complex, rich and proud new strength and standard.

     It's the Lone Ranger-true to form, as you may remember it from kid hood. But better, because it is more funny, more action packed, more beautiful cinema graphically, more nuanced, more honest, more political and BIGGER!

ROUNDING OUT THE EVENING

  See you down the trail.

GRATITUDE IS UNDER VALUED

LOOKING FOR IT

      I'm grateful for a walk my mother took with me one autumn day as the oaks, sycamores, elms and maples were resplendent.  She said it was one of the most beautiful falls she had seen.  It was an unusual thing, a hike in the park with my busy and laboring mom. As we strolled beneath old and ancient trees ablaze in red, orange, yellow and crunched over the leaves on the path I noticed the world, maybe really for the first time.

     Natural beauty stirs a deep awe in those who are sensitive to it. 

 PIER LIGHT

Seeing it again

subtle changes in seconds

     Thank you to the cosmic set designers!!
     See you down the trail.

AFTER THE SUN & PLANET TEARS

TWILIGHT COLORS

Once the grandiloquence of 

the sun's evening departure is fixed

in our mind, in the hour of 

myth and dreams, the land becomes a 

subtle scape of texture and hues.

The summit of the pass over the Santa Lucia range is a portal.

 A place of exquisite subtlety.

HISTORY WILL CARRY THE VERDICT

Imagine December 2111.  Is it possible that humankind

will look back to us and say we had a choice between

money and life and we chose money?  Children born

between now and the next 10 years will be the elders of that humankind.  What will they endure, because of our

devotion to economic structure as we know it instead

of care for the planet?

I don't believe our science, as good as it is, fully understands the continual changes, shifts and evolutionary forces at work on our blue planet. But some of the maladies are man made.  Poisons in rivers, lakes and oceans. 

Trash and debris that takes generations to degrade and 

often leaves an altered earth and water supply behind.  Global climate changes may not all be man made, but there are apocalyptic warnings about changing temperatures, animal and insect migration changes, extreme weather changes.  It is also undeniable that carbon emissions are rising. Maybe they don't matter. But what if they do?

10 Thousand government ministers and experts from 194 nations are meeting in Durbin for a conference on our 

planet's future. From the most rational and reluctant to the most strident, there is a consensus things are changing

and those changes will force biological and botanical  reactive change.  How we live will change, in ways 

we can only speculate.

But, because the planet is gripped by economic fear,

there will be no agenda, no plan of action, no

muscle to try to change the course we are on.

Socialist, Capitalist, Communist, Feudal, Tribal-

no matter how the nations of the world practice

economics, this age is too wed to evaluating

life and human endeavor by those standards to 

instead put a value on the life of the planet we

inhabit or the lives of our descendants.

December 2111.  Will they regret the choices 

we have made?

See you down the trail.

GOLD ON THE WATER

A SIMPLE PLEASURE

WATCHING THE DROP

       Can you remember how you felt the first time you saw the sun turn a body of water into a path of gold? I don't remember specifics but I can recall that sense of wonder and awe and wanting to touch it. All these years later, it still fascinates. That painting of light is one of the enchantments of sunset.

       For centuries we bipeds have marveled at the daily act of cosmology. It is a turn in our life, a rhythm. Each sunset is unique, but those near water offer a canvass of light play.  In the incremental descent is a peace, if you will a natural meditation. And everything in the light is a player in the drama. We know the eventual outcome, but we are drawn to the slow recess of that path of gold and its provider.

        Everything reflects or captures that special sweet or golden light.

       We watch our watery path of gold get further from our touch, fading into the mystery.

       If our busy lives have allowed us to pay attention, the ritual leaves us more complete
and perhaps with a hint of enchantment active in our being.

And then, it is that time of day when dreams begin to walk.

See you down the trail.