The Annual Tour

 

        Now the atmospheric rivers have been turned off and the sun has been given the stage, California spring is magnificent.  It is time for our annual look around at the growing grounds here on the ridge. Lana says the weeds are also benefiting from all of the rain. I think it's all beautiful. 

        The gardener had an exam the other day and since they dilated her eyes I had the driving duty and so we stopped for lunch at one of our favorite San Luis Obispo spots. We call this, matching reds...

    

        Enjoy your spring. There will be time to discuss the historic indictment on another day.

        See you down the trail. 

Getting back to forward...

         Enduring the deluge of atmospheric rivers California has turned green, 

        and the view from the study has started to bloom.

        The cheer spring brings is a bracer for dealing with the slide backwards.

        I read that one quarter of all Americans are "food insecure," we used to call that hungry. For people of color the numbers are out of proportion to their population percentage . 

        I watched an investigative report that learned between 25-30% of all organs intended for transplant are wasted or rejected because the logistic of getting the harvested organs to recipients in time is so badly managed or fraught with transportation issues.

        Those who know say we used to do better than that. 

        The asthma medicine albuterol is in short supply and the problems that creates for millions will get worse. A pharma that made it is out of business.

        Polio and measles are showing up again, after years of control. 

        

      Do we seem to be losing intelligence, capability or even the ability to recognize the problem(s). Can we not function with foresight and efficiency? 

     I've already abused your attention and overstated my incredulity that "we"-the civilized world-have not stopped Putin's war crimes and his brutal assault on humanity. He is an international thug-killer and we watch, debate and even arm the invaded, but we have not found the courage to stop him. 

        History speaks to this matter. We act as if we are blind to those warnings.

        Donald Trump again bathes in media and continues to fertilize the hatred and division he seeded. 

        Some media are giving lip service to the conundrum, how do you cover such a malefactor and wretch and not give him the free ride that made him in 2016. The grievously flawed decision by then CNN chief Jeff Zucker was steroids for MAGA. 

        Here we go again with banks and money. Did we learn nothing from even as recently at 2008? The Fed is simply a council of banks. Banks are the bad actors, and always are. Inflation is and always has been a manipulation of price and supply. History teaches us  it is best to take care of and look out for the populace, the working folks. But banks and the bankers get the money,  get bailed out, and get the bonuses. Why can't, why shouldn't they get the haircut?  

        Guess who owns the legislators via lobbyists and campaign contributions?     

         We are still learning how much we changed in the pandemic. I think we are increasingly distracted.  

    

        Some distractions are good, even great. 

        

        

        We are fortunate our grand kids attend bilingual schools in communities that are tolerant, open minded and that put the intellectual and emotional well being of the children at the top of the priorities. 

        With this new mania for parents "getting to review" their children's education, an artifact of the right wing's pumping of the culture war, I ask what about PTA, or PTO or parent councils or volunteering at school, or parent teacher conferences. Has that not been an historic standard in this nation's evolution of learning,  education and parental involvement? 

       The Florida model is sick and chilling. If education is to achieve its intended purpose then open minds, fully prepared to think has to be the methodology. 

        The right wing is not the only bad actor here. The left has bent so far to be  "non triggering" they have become mind and thought controllers in their own right. 

       Minds need to be open, engaged in a full on immersion in facts. We need a full stop on half baked conspiracy, a disabusing of those with such faulty notions, an accountability, clarity as to what is real, severe scrutiny of politicians, more individual knowledge seeking, holding media to higher standards and more intelligent use of communication and information platforms. 

        We've gotten lazy, we get information in silos, we don't try to understand views that we do not hold. We lack a curiosity but we swallow platitudes. We've permitted ourselves to be divided, angry and mean. I'm a geezer, but if we want a future for grandkids, things have to change. 

        See you down the trail. 

Around here....the truth is....

         Another atmospheric river is pointed this way so we got out to look around before more drenching and snow on top what is a history making winter in California.

        It was too muddy for the hill climb and even the hard trail used by mountain bikers wore winter's damp.

        

        We noticed pockets of gold.

        The coastal trail also in full spring resurrection. 

       ** It has been written that "truth is a golden thread, seen here and there..."

The sweet truth of recent is that Fox News deliberately broadcast known lies and deceptions because, they reasoned, that is what Fox News viewers wanted. 

        I thought of Jack Nicholson in a famed scene "You want the truth, you can't handle the truth!" And so the golden truth seen here is that Fox News is never to be trusted. They violated the truth for the sake of money and in the rotten act made it worse by cheating their own audience, manipulating and patronizing them. 

        That comes as no surprise to informed citizens. Many years ago a nationally prominent American politician who has since gone on to other international prominence dropped a dime on me to say that Fox News might be interested in hiring me. This was before they had hit the air. When I pushed him about who's involved he told me "Roger Ailes" with whom he had worked. I knew then no good was to come from Fox News. It was to be a propaganda service. Propagandists lie and have no respect for truth. 

    Now the world knows that Hannity, Carlson, Ingram, Piro and the other clowns are also phonies and liars. They are also anti American. Quoting from another blow hard "enemies of the people. Fake news!"

        Looks as if these boys are practicing their high and dry stances.

        **The line was written by English poet Arthur Hugh Clough who was also an assistant to Florence Nightingale.

        Stay safe. See you down the trail.

hints of what is on the way....

         A friend to the east in Arizona posted snow pictures. Friends back east in the midwest and on the east coast are through with winter. Our Mediterranean climate gives you a look at what is coming your way in a month or so. Unless you are like our friends in upper lower Michigan. For you we are glad you enjoyed your daily vitamin D during your visit.

     Here's a look at what's happening on the California central coast.

As I make a weekly hill climb and hike I've been paying attention to the soil. Most of the trails on the incline are almost normal dry. There are a couple of crossings and a few low spots that are still boggy. If we get ample sun and warmth, all of that rain from those massive storms have probably prepped us for a great wildflower bloom.  Stay tuned.  The Fungi are happy already.

    See you down the trail. 

Considerations

•         Police Violence
•        Stopping Putin

        Before joining the ongoing national debate about "police reform" you deserve to know my "bona fides" or "where I'm coming from" when I say the issue is training and education. Learning is the reform that is needed.

        I was a college freshman and newly minted police beat reporter for a commercial radio station in my midwestern state university small industrial city. The first murder I covered was in Muncie. A poor soul was spotted by his wife in a country bar in the company of another woman. Mrs. went home, fetched his fishing knife and returned to nearly decapitate her cheating man. 

        The police beat seasons a young reporter.

  

        I asked to ride with the cops on Saturday night as they patrolled the south side dives and the downtown bar district. It seemed that for sport as much as for public safety a couple of officers liked to round up the drunks and haul them to city lock-up. Woe to the resistant inebriate! They became billy club target practice and were handled like tossed bags of garbage. Some of them were guilty of nothing but being out cold, dead drunk. They could not hear the order to get up. 

        Sometimes they got hosed down, and sometimes they were deserving, being covered in their own bodily output. 

        I'm embarrassed to say I didn't question the excessive force until a light went off during a sociology course. That led to questions, a couple of news stories, disconcerted cops, changed relationships and a new view of my work and that of the cops.

         Over forty years I worked with a lot of cops. Some were friends. Some scared me with their ideas about their work and their power. Some were genius investigators, some were politicians, some were real heroes and some were dirt bags. As the years passed and cities became gang ridden, and more guns hit the street, cops adopted a kind of siege or survival mentality. It's easy to forget that first they are just people with their own families and lives and hopes and fears.

        If I needed a particular kind of information I'd drop into a cop bar. Off duty, amongst their own was a great place to see the men and women for the humans they are, good and not so.

        I trusted my life to cops on several occasions. We had armed protection when we broadcast from violent a neighborhood where a drug gang had taken over. We hired off duty officers to be "crew" when we confronted armed and angry Ku Klux Klan members on their job site. We accompanied police on raids, and had to take cover from gun fire. I spent tense hours with SWAT members deployed in a dramatic hostage incident. 

        I understand the pressure they work under. But I've also watched as police departments that once touted Protect and Serve got militarized by hand me down Homeland Security or military weapons, outfits and vehicles. It has been the rise of the warrior cop.

        A crystalizing moment occurred when I began reporting on police training. With the help of an FBI agent and friend, I spent time at the National Law Enforcement Training Academy watching how they "upgraded" the quality of local police. 

        I've interviewed psychologists, educational designers, chiefs, administrators  elected office holders, judges and cops.

        US citizens are 60 times more likely to be killed by police than British citizens.  The American cop gets on average 600 hours of training while Finland trains cops for 5,500 hours. German cops get 4,500 hours, Australia 4000 hours, England 2,500 and Canadian cops are trained for twice as long as US cops.

     In the US cops are required to get less training than plumbers and cosmetologists. 

        When I followed a new class of FBI agents through 16 weeks of intensive training and psychological rigor I was convinced that states and cities needed to rethink how they recruit and train police officers. 

        Mental health and fitness, cultural and human relations, better crisis management and decision making are as important as weapons better suited for a battle field. 

        US police academies stress firearms training, as much as 3 times more than on training how to deescalate a situation. Some nations require academic degrees. 

        In addition to better psychological evaluation of job candidates we need to give cops better care. Police officers are five times more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in the line of duty.

        There is no excuse for the police violence we all have witnessed. It is police murder. But a government that does not pay more, or require more and better training and care and be willing to assign the resources needed is an accomplice to police violence. So too are the politicians who are willing to lament and complain in the media, but have not the courage to vote for additional funding, or better gun control. 

        In this way, police violence is systemic. 

        I am a realist, but I also pray for peace. In a few years people and governments will wonder why this generation of ours did not or could not stop Vladimir Putin. It is a nasty legacy for us, since we saw in our own century how a mad man bent on dominance was the evil factor who was responsible for the war that claimed 75 to 80 million people.

       Putin's war is purely his messianic complex at work. The world watches daily war crimes and atrocities. We have rallied opposition, we have assembled weapons, but the UN and all the alliances on the planet have not done what needs to be done, remove Putin.

       With Putin gone, it is an entirely new equation and it will then be a matter of standing down, disengaging and starting all of the repair and healing that needs to occur.

        Time and time again history tells us a timely removal of a delusional tyrant saves lives and prevents suffering and the work of destructive power. 

        Wishing you strength and endurance. 

        See you down the trail.