ON HANDS AND KNEES

ARTISTS AT WORK

The annual I Maddonari Italian street painting

festival in San Luis Obispo provided these

frames of artists at work.

They are beautiful if fleeting pieces. It provides a great weekend on the Mission Plaza. But what backbreaking work, to say nothing of the hands and knees.

See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER

WONDERMENT

     INTELLIGENT IDEAS

              John Muir appreciated wonders of nature. 

        His sensitivity points us to behold the power and even mystery of life beyond or beside human parameters. 

             Out there, up there, even in there are forces and natural occurrences that form the basis of science and dumbfounds rational tools.  We theorize.

              Watching star populated night skies over the Pacific and lightless mountains propounds the dazzling concept of interstellar space.  Seeing depth in a star field lends credibility to the vast distances of space and time. Out there are perhaps dark holes, worm holes and theories  we can't fully explain.  And now the little Voyagers are about to pass the limits we biped's have postulated to in up there. 

              Learning about in there is accelerating in a post DNA gene sequencing world. Medicine is getting more precise. The closer we look, the more we see forces beyond our making and which influence destiny.

           And there are spirit, heart, soul, religion and philosophy which bind an alternative in there. Wisdoms, truths, transcendence and riddles are pondered yet they too  stand in the face of mystery.

           

           Let something give you a sense of wonder.

           See you down the trail.

WHO ARE WE?

TO YOUR CORNERS

     The national political convention television shows have  done a good job of defining differences haven't they?

        Sense of the job to be done, fairness, inclusiveness, exclusivity, expectations of government, responsibility for self, for others, ability to tell the truth, diversity, vision, overcoming, gender rights, owning up to history, and more.

         America really has an opportunity to decide between vastly different attitudes about government and who we are, who we have been and what we might become.

         It is a contest and battle of will, sense of right and wrong and history.

         PS-the old reporter in me chuckled when Bill Clinton mentioned both Presidents Bush and his cooperation with them.  I think he gave George H. W. and George W. more airtime than either man got from their party in Tampa.

DAY FILE
PICTURES OF BLUE

    If you look carefully at the frame below you may spot a water spout from one of the passing humpback whales.

See you down the trail.   

EXPLORATION

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

     Here's some context.  Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Magic Johnson was at Michigan State, Stephen King released The Shining, Tom Watson won the Masters and Apple released their new color logo. 
     35 years ago today one of this planet's greatest accomplishments was launched. Voyager 1 began the journey that today has taken it 11 Billion miles and to the edge of our solar system.  Voyager 1 and companion Voyager 2, now some 9.3 Billion miles in another direction, continue to mine data of deep space, soon to be interstellar space. Voyager has gone the farthest human kind has reached.
     On board are those gold discs containing sounds, data and renderings of human life, in case an intelligence encounters our sub-compact car sized "human offspring" wandering beyond our knowledge base.
     Alicia Chang of the Associated Press reports each Voyager "has only 68 kilobytes of computer memory.  To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod-an 8 gigabyte Nano-is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder."
     Mind bending isn't it?

THE OTHER BOUNDARY

      Jack Kerouac's cult classic On The Road was published by Viking Press on this day in 1957.

From back cover of ON THE ROAD

       The original manuscript, a long continuous roll of type written script, now belongs to Jimmy Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts.  

        A few years ago the late George Plimpton told me he was in an office as the On The Road manuscript roll was being read and considered.  He said while it may be revered now on that particular day, people in the office were having  fun unrolling it across the floor and back, like a kid's toy.

Photo from mountholly-lamano.com

DAY FILE

GARDEN NOTES

      We've got a "volunteer" and "mystery" squash growing
down the back hill side.  

     Not sure what it is-something like a butternut or summer squash.  We've had a few and it bakes and sautés nicely and is great in a casserole.  I decided to pick a few when they were smaller.  One that had "hidden" beneath a slope side leaf grew to the size of a small pumpkin. That "prize" went home with a stone mason working on a neighbor's fire pit. He was delighted.

     A tomato update.  The "beautiful" greenhouse continues to endure evening breezes and winds and the crop inside flourishes. It ain't pretty, but the crop is.

      It continues to amaze us that we can grow tomatoes in this climate near the Pacific fed by the cooler than 
hot and humid mid-west conditions which favor tomatoes.

See you down the trail.

LABOR DAY

A WORKING DAY

     Labor day was just one more working day in a newsroom.  Yet there was a kind of cosmic foreshadowing that occurred in my kid hood.  

       As a grade school kid I became fascinated with radio news. There was something special about those voices coming in from great distances, telling about events of significance.  Perceptive man that my father was, he made sure I paid attention and thought about the process.  As it turns out, he knew the local radio and TV newsman.  

      Fred Moore Hinshaw had been an NBC announcer and legend had it that he and Lorne Greene (later of Bonanza) were the deep voices of NBC East and West back in the days when radio news reached more people than TV.  Fred came to Muncie Indiana, following his wife who was the local drama teacher.  Fred became a founder of the local television station and its news director.  Hinshaw Edits the News not only aired on radio, but in the early days of television, became the only source for local news on the tube.  Dad made sure I watched and listened to Hinshaw edit the news.

      Well one labor day, a rare day for my dad to be home and not at work, he loaded me into the car and we drove a ways into what I recognized was a "nicer" part of Muncie. The homes were larger, many of them were brick and they all had beautiful large yards with plenty of shrubs, hedges and shade trees. There on a slight slopping large green lawn was a man, sweating and wearing a cap as he shoved a lawn mower, the non powered type, over the lawn.  Dad pulled to the curb and honked.  The fellow turned, recognized dad and came over to the car.  It took a moment for me recognize the sweating man as Hinshaw, from Hinshaw Edits the News. I was stunned.  

     Dad and he chatted about politics and then said I was interested in the news.  I can't remember what passed in that conversation, but I was struck by the fact the man on the radio and television was mowing the lawn. At our house, my brother and I mowed the lawn.  

     Then that evening as the clatter of the teletype and the announcer intoned that Hinshaw Edits the News I was struck by the fact the man behind the desk with the deep voice and serious look had been the profusely sweating fellow on the nice lawn.  I'm not sure what I expected, that perhaps Hinshaw never left the station, was always on alert for news.  It then dawned on me that on this big deal holiday when working men and women had the day off, this guy was  there, working.  And just a few hours earlier he had really been working, breaking a sweat on a beautiful lawn.

     By the time I was working in a newsroom, I was not at all surprised by the fact that a holiday, even for working men and women, didn't mean a thing other than the stories we covered-parades, picnics and people working in their yards.  Like Christmas, New Year's eve and Thanksgiving, it was just another day of work.

     A quick post script.  Years later when I was in college and working as a radio news reporter in Muncie, my boss was Fred Moore Hinshaw. He was a brilliant writer, journalist, thinker and a bit of a rascal poet. Had he chosen the lights of a big city he would have succeeded, might even have been Chet Huntley.  He chose family, home and making a contribution where he lived, even if it meant sweating a couple of times on Labor Day.  My dad and Fred were of the same generation.  They were great teachers.

    See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER :)

SMILE

     It's a long weekend.  Barbecues, picnics, parties, parades, summer's climax.  Enjoy.

Time passes.  We all change.  Even royalty.

A tribute here to a beautiful woman.

Enjoy your weekend.

See you down the trail.

AN IGNORED WARNING

LIFE IN FAST FORWARD

PHOTO FROM JIMMY CARTER LIBRARY

    The "hot line" direct communication link between Moscow and Washington went into service on this day in 1963.  It took 12 hours to decode, translate and respond to Nikita Kruschev's message months earlier during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    By the time the hot line was on Jimmy Carter's desk, the technology had evolved. The dinosaur phone in the picture, once was the picture of modernity.

     49 years after the groundbreaking channel of instant communication we have come to this:

YouTube's Election hub, a child of the internet, which has revolutionized communication. Social media fueled the "Arab-Spring" and now Phillip DeFranco, the lad on the left who began his program in his basement, has more viewers than Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and even Jon Stewart's daily show.

     DeFranco is one of the multiple offerings on YouTube's election site which puts the director's call of what to air into your hands, truly at your finger tips and on the screen of your choice.

SO IN SUCH A WELL WIRED WORLD
A WORRIED WHY?

     The story of shrinking arctic sea ice, the largest melt since tracking data began, was reported two days ago and barely drew a notice. Arctic sea ice is disappearing more quickly than any time we know of and more rapidly than predicted.

Graph courtesy of Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and THE WASHINGTON POST

     The increasingly warm summer trends indicate earth's warming and the probability the sea ice will disappear in a future summer.  Warmer Arctic waters can cause Greenland's ice sheet to melt and that can lead to many problems. The shrinking of the Arctic Sea Ice and the diminishing of Greenland's Ice sheet will likely lead to more extreme summers and winters everywhere.

    Man made?  Nature's cycle?  A combination?  Don't you think it's worth exploring?  Still you had to search to see or hear anything.

    About the time the hotline was established a network of radio and television stations, produced a docudrama. Set in the future it was the story of how a news organization covered an environmental and ecological disaster that threatened all human life.  In one chilling passage the anchor does a voice-over of historic clips, listing a litany of warning signs of impending doom, sighting years, and failed international conferences.  Warning after warning went ignored while the people occupied themselves with buying and wanting more.  Until it was too late to hide from the impending end.

     How are we using or listening to our great communication tools? Is mother earth calling our hotline?

DAY FILE

A CORNER OF THE STUDIO

   I was looking around Lana's studio when I became intrigued by the corner near the window.  It's got "personality."

   I'm fascinated by the, texture, lines, divisions and proportionality of the frame below.

See you down the trail.