AN ODYSSEY OF PEACE, LOVE AND DIRT

Once again the Live Oak Nation is called together for peace, love and dirt. 

Do yourself a favor, have a little fun and spend a few minutes departing the norm.

Colorful people, being colorful and raising money for KCBX public radio and the love of tie dye. 

Year 30 for the music festival. A post pandemic resumption returns Live Oak to it's relatively new home at  El Chorro Park, San Luis Obispo.

See you down the trail

"...we thought we'd bring peace to the world..."

off-shore Cambria, CA

        It was buried in an Associated Press report from Colleville-Sur-Mer, France, an account of several dozen veterans in their 90's observing D-Day. About 4 paragraphs down it jumped off the page, one of those universal truths we recognize with a flash.

    The speaker is a 98 year old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island Maine who was participating in a sage-burning ceremony near the beach. Charles Shay was a 19 year old US Army Medic at Omaha Beach.

    "In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we'd bring peace to the world. But it's not possible."

    It is not possible! Peace?

    Sage burning is a native ritual of cleansing and release and on this day in honor of fallen comrades. 

    "I have never forgotten them and know their spirits are here."

    The AP reports "He said he is especially sad to see war in Europe again. 

    'Ukraine is sad. I feel sorry for the people there and I don't know why this war had to come, but I think human beings like to, I think they like to fight, I don't know...'"

    98, a survivor of an historically bloody invasion tending to the fallen as a healer, a spiritual man who has seen the ways of the world for almost a century, and he cannot understand human beings. 

    It is no wonder then that I cannot. 

    Peace, the diadem of human faith, the elusive goal of religions and diplomacy, the thing that humankind values above all, even trying to find it in places, things, and states of mind. Peace, a state of no conflict, of no hostility, of no more war. It is not possible.

    Not possible. You can't get peace out violence. 

    Quickly I attempted to deconstruct the truth that Charles Shay spoke 78 years after he was part of massive effort to "bring peace." My mind ran to my father and his generation who fought in that war, to "win the peace." And then to my friends who "did their patriotic duty" in Viet Nam and then to all of the other conflicts, all over the globe. Why is it that we ask so much for a peace that is impossible. 

    It was ever such.

    The only good thing to be said of a war is when it ends. Though, does it ever? It only changes shape and decades. Peace, an idealistic aspiration is shredded by a read of history. 

    We stumble through life grazing for something that will resonate deeply as significant, a clarifying knowledge, an insight. We search, even as we're never sure what it is we're after. Until it smacks us. 

    Peace is impossible, because?

    As Mr. Shay said, "human beings like to, I think they like to fight."

    Despite the wisdom of this special man, and even in these later years of my life, I'm not giving up on peace, either as a diplomatic and geo political quest, and certainly not as a spiritual reality. 

    As a global status it may not be possible, no indeed, but the absence of trying for it is even more disturbing. 

    Some humans choose to live in peace, engaging our better likes. 

    Lana creates beauty. Here is evidence, a corner of our deck, benefiting from her affirmation of life by means of a green thumb.

    Even through the millennia of human history, from clubs and stones to assault weapons, killer drones and nuclear missiles, the force of life resurrects itself, nature shows us the path. For as long as we have told our histories particular humans have lifted our vision to what can be. Like Mr. Shay humans have knelt over the injured and dying and have comforted parents, friends and the grieving. Humans have told us there is a better way. It need not be our destiny "... to like to fight. 

    I think it is that which enables our survival.

    Peace.

    See you down the trail.

    

    

 

Clearing the mind in the trees. Saying Goodbye.

 

There are times when we need to be with the trees, and away from some of the human madness.

Time after time I wonder why we can't learn. Why are we be as barbaric as the human ancestors who threw rocks and carried clubs.
 The little plaques in the frame above denote historic moments in the course of the 2000 years of this tree's life. We've been killing our best for at least that long. There have been marvelous discoveries and advances. But the beast in us is still on the prowl.

Why can't we learn? Notice below how four trees grew together, a family, increasing their common strength and well being. 

 

For at least a couple thousand years these citizens of planet earth have endured.

By comparison humankind is short sighted, destructive and transitory.

 Just being in the presence of these old giants is good for the soul.

A couple of side notes now-

Look at this forest color scheme starring a banana slug.

And is this how you spend your time at the beach?

Thinking of fitness, please allow me a couple of farewells to tennis pals...one is a see you later, the other is good bye.

I estimate that at least 90% of the hours I've spent on the tennis court since I began playing the game about 14 years ago have been in the company of Roy Evans.

Roy is a quiet and thoughtful Welshman. We competed in doubles at least two days a week for most of those years and there were years when we were on the court together 3 times a week.

We called him the Welsh gazelle because his speed and quickness got him to some impossible gets.

There was never a cross word between us. We loved the game and the complete focus it requires. Whether we were on the same side of the net or trying to beat each other, we loved the joy of simply being able to play.

Roy has moved north to be closer to family. The courts seem strange without him and his brightly colored shoes.

Thanks for all the great fun.

We say good by to Jess Bathke.

Jess was an active player when I first started learning the game. He'd been the Club president and seemed to be a friend to everyone. Over the years I improved enough to play at his level and we became friends. He was a community giver and led organizations that  provided community services.

A couple of years ago when I faced surgery, Jess, who had been through it, was an assuring friend letting me know that soon enough I'd get back to normal and be able to return to the courts. We were coffee group conversationalists and usually on the same side of issues. We had lunch with other tennis pals and always Jess was the class act of the group. He was a man with a deep faith, the kind of person who uplifts and is a joy to be around. 

On the court he was a tough competitor. We discovered that before tennis, we had been basketball players, our favorite game. But age made tennis our new game and we threw ourselves into it.

Jess had to give up the game during the early days of Covid and it was tough, but age had taken it's toll.

A week ago Jess had a full and busy day with his beloved Pat. That evening he had a steak dinner, a couple of glasses of wine. He watched some TV, played solitaire on his computer and went to sleep. And he was gone from this world.

If anyone deserves the peace and mercy of such a passing, it is Jess.

Jess was 88 and had been active, competitive and skilled player until 86. His age and his movement on the court was incongruous to most.

I learned when I began playing in his doubles groups, that he always sat on the bench between end changes and breaks. 

Just a brief rest and recharge. 

When I got back to the courts after my surgery I started doing the same thing. I continue to do that and now it will be a way of remembering a good player, a good friend and a really good man!  

Milky Way "cloud" and star field in Cambria 6/1/22.

See you down the trail. 

The faces-the loss....in America

 

        We cry. We rage. Again our hearts are broken. It is an aberration. It is an American act.

      As we look at photos of each of the victims we are crushed by the loss of innocence, the sweet childhood, the promise, the hope of young lives, the murdered love of family. We are killing America. 

    We destroy our truth, we bury our aspirational promise of the Constitution to be a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility. We do not secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and posterity. We kill them. We put money and political power over the sweet faces and the future of our children in America.

    Here a teen boy can not buy a beer, but he can buy assault weapons. Why shouldn't 21 years be the mandatory minimum for a gun purchase? Why? Because Republicans are owned by and work for the gun makers. Because Republicans are now afraid to cross the gun crazy nation they and the NRA created during decades of clever deception about the 2nd Amendment.  Because Republicans, not even 10 of them, will vote to make that a law. They are American cowards.

    President Biden is limited in what he can. Politics is why. Were it his to act unilaterally, gun safety laws would change. Democrats, who have been pushing gun laws since the murder of innocents in Newtown, are now doubling down on efforts to find ways to bring 10 Republicans into support of the change that 76% of the American people want. 

    Now parents, grand parents, and caregivers worry about their loved ones. They and teachers and counselors have the  task of explaining to their children or wards that American children, just like them, may be killed in their school, or at the super market, or movie theatre, or church by an assault weapon because there are so many guns and they are so easy to buy, in America. 

    Gun manufactures bought the NRA and turned it into the money pipeline for Senators and Representatives who have worked for decades to loosen gun laws. Fewer regulations mean more sales. Now that right wing looney authoritarians control the Republican party there is a population of gun owning folks, confused about the 2nd Amendment, who are willing to fight to keep their assault weapons. They are also Americans.

    Background checks, age requirements, tighter security on sales and transactions does not mean the Federal government is "coming after your weapon(s)." But a lot of people have been misled and manipulated by the NRA and Republicans into thinking that, in America.

    No one can deny there is an epidemic of mass killings in one nation on this planet. There have been many moments like the pain, grief, shock, loss and hurt we now endure. It is an American ritual.

    Can enough Republicans find a sense of virtue, decency, and goodness, to honor at least 10 of the dead children? Can the two Democrat problem weasels stay with their party for once and can the Senate finally give the American people what they want in gun laws? Now, that would be an American victory.

    Love the children. Keep them safe.

    See you down the trail.