PARTY AT THE CASTLE

BETTER THAN XANADU 

    Until a few days ago I could never say, "We partied at the castle."

   "Twilight on the Terrace" a fund raiser by the Friends of the Castle, permits you a chance to imagine the parties 

 hosted by William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon, his mountain top castle, six miles from our more modest ridge top abode. 

  We've been to great parties and feasts and have seen a bit of this planet, but San Simeon is certainly one of the very top party places in the world.

 The evening light on the mountain top is gorgeous.

   Now I understand why Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, David Niven, Clark Gale, Carole Lombard, Robert Taylor, Howard Hughes, Winston Churchill, the Barrymores, Jean Harlow, Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw among others, liked to party up at the Castle.

    Great local wine, food, music and views that literally do not end. And it should be noted, modern guests are offered a more varied menu and certainly more wine than W.R. permitted his celebrants. That's why David Niven learned to sneak in bottles and hide them in bedrooms! 

     See you down the trail

GENERATIONS OF THE TIE-DYE NATION

GROWING, CALIFORNIA STYLE

    26 Years has brought changes to a California music tradition.

   Live Oak, a project of San Luis Obispo public radio station KCBX has filled the oak forests and wilderness between the San Raphael and Santa Ynez  mountains with California and independent music in a Father's Day weekend festival that has not only become tradition, but a generational matter.

    Live Oak is the best of the Tie-Dye nation-Peace, Love and Dirt, as they say. There's been a lot of love. Each year new generations of Live Oakers appear.

   People have dated or met at Live Oak, fallen in love and so the Live Oak demographics keep growing.  Grand parents to grand kids, Live Oak is a festival of smiles, mellow moods and great music-acoustic, country, jazz, gospel, blue grass, new grass, Mexican, California home grown, and genre bending artistry from bigger names to up and comers.

   It's a picnic under the oaks, and for those who camp or 
RV, it's a jam session that never ends.

   Acts play the main stage, a hot licks stage and Stage Too

 here under more oaks, where the artists answer questions and discuss their writing, recording and try out new material.

  Amidst the name sake Live Oaks, napping brings a particular style-

    This is a particularly telling moment from Live Oak.  The kilted man, sans shirt, and his buddy protect a watermelon  especially prepared with an adult beverage. He glady shared spoonfuls or sipping straws with friends. When little Live Oakers expressed an interest, the fellow wondered to a concession stand and returned with slushies. Kids and parents were satisfied.

   Live Oak is a music festival that is family friendly and entertaining at every turn.

ALSO HOME GROWN

the garden report

   Despite our drought, a week of record setting heat and an invasion of cucumber beetles, Lana's crop of fava beans

has been impressive. Here's a portion of one's days harvest.

The inner husks on the right.

    I rhapsodized about favas in a previous post--the art of the second shuck- including an upclose look at a method of shelling and husking. Though Lana and daughter Katherine swear a quick blanching makes it easier, it seems somehow "less athletic." Still, what a product!

  See you down the trail.

THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN-A CHEF-ON THE WATERFRONT

PROTECTING WOMEN

    I come at this with the bias of being the father of two daughters, a man who loves his wife, mother and have always been comfortable in the company of women. 
   Equality is an either or thing for me-either we all are equal or it does not exist. One of my cherished trophies is the Good Guy award from the Women's Political Caucus.   NOW spoke to me at a time when they rebuffed other journalists, not because of my views, but because I was fair. 

   I'm angered by much of what I see with regards to women, their safety, their reputation and their individual freedom, threatened by actions in places like India and the US Congress. You all know the stories and the sound bites. It is criminal how some things are allowed. The insensitivity demonstrated by men, often in power is wrong and stupid.

A SUBTEXT TO AN IMPORTANT FILM

THE IMMIGRANT

     Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix brilliantly lead an excellent cast in portraying this story of Polish immigrant sisters trying to pursue their dream in 1921 American. What happens is awful, but all too real. The treatment and exploitation of women is powerfully told. Cotillard's character however shows a strength of character, faith and dignity despite what is thrown at her. Some of it is thrown by Phoenix who delivers a nuanced and complex character who creates a masterpiece of acting in a scene where he rages at himself as he attempts to explain how he could do what he did to someone he loved. But he did, and men still do, though at least laws have changed.

     My father's mother and her sisters came through Ellis Island with their mother in their journey from England to join their father and brothers in America. The memories of the crossing and their reception, several years before the time depicted in the film, never left these women, who were strong, educated and from a family of means. 

    Mary Elizabeth, in the center, was educated though in her life, widowed with my father as her dependent, she worked as a char woman, but remained every bit the prim and proper Englishwoman. She had more dignity and gravitas about her than most of the reactionary politicians or any of the misogynists who crawl across history.

    She was strong, as was my mother and her mother. The elders were survivors.  My mother was a depression survivor and bride of a WWII combat soldier. She was a career woman and heaven only knows how many ceilings she had to crash or abuses she had to suffer as she assumed management roles. When I reflect on what these women in my life accomplished, and see the graphic and gritty portrayal of The Immigrant, anger rises for those with attitudes that belong in the caveman past, or in modern ridicule, scorn, rejection or even jail. 

     The Immigrant also tells of the extraordinary challenge faced by any and all who came, or come, to America, looking for a better life. Strong film. Wrenching. A story with modern implication.

SERVING UP SOMETHING DELICIOUS

 CHEF

   Jon Favreau's film draws many ooohs and aahhs and tons of laughter as the director actor ties together a charming and delicious yarn that prompts audiences to applaud. It's a great romp across America as an estranged father connects with his darling young son and man do they eat well along the way!  Foodies will love it. Chef's and food industry pros will relate, music fans will boogie in their seats and you'll leave ready to whip up a feast of your own.

    Favreau, known as a big budget action film director puts Scarlett Johannson, Sofia Vergara, John Leguziamo, Robert Downey Jr, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt and Bobby Cannavale, through a great script and adventure.  Gary Clark Jr plays a great kitchen personality and little Emjay Anthony is wonderful as the son. Leguziamo is particularly good in his supporting and sous chef role. This is an entertaining  ride on a food truck that will leave you feeling good and hungry.

BAY WATCHING

 Closing up shop

 Bringing a bouquet?

 Not today

 Close to the bay and with a view

 Tried and true

Not today too

    See you down the trail.

IMMORTALITY and THE GREAT CRUSADE

FROM JUNE TO HISTORY

    Time records extraordinary courage and human insight on two June 6ths.  

     Most recently, 70 years ago General Dwight Eisenhower called it "the Great Crusade," the D-Day invasion immortalized by the bravery of warriors, so many of whom ended their own mortal journey on the beaches of Northern France. A personal D-Day beach reflection follows below.

    75 years before that a single man, venturing into the unknown pondered human existence and the infinite.

EVERY NERVE QUIVERS

    John Muir made his first visit to Yosemite in the summer of 1869. On June 6th he wrote-

                     "We are now in the mountains and they are

                       in us...making every nerve quiver."    

       It seems that it has always been such for Yosemite.
     In 1851 an ongoing battle between gold miners and the native inhabitants, American Indians, reached a point where the famous Mariposa Battalion was sent in. Probably from the moment the Battalion saw the place, word about its beauty began to spread.

          On June 30,1864 President Abraham Lincoln set aside a grove of sequoias in the valley.  That marked the creation of the first state park in the US. 
        Naturalist John Muir, who spent years exploring the wilderness, campaigned for federal park status. It took 26 years and in 1890 Yosemite became a national park.

   Later on June 6, 1869 Muir wrote-

         "Our flesh and bone tabernacle seems transparent

         as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an 

         inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees

         streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun-a part of 

         all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but

         immortal."

       Two rivers, the Merced and the Tuolumne flow through the park. There are 196 miles of road and 800 miles of trails. 

        The waterfalls are a signature, always spectacular, and even more so after a winter with lots of snow.

 Do you see the sprite or spirit dancing out of this falls in this frame?

      The land is described as "colossal."  Indeed it is.  It ranges from 2,000 feet to 13,000 and most of it is true wilderness.

    As Muir said on his first summer in Yosemite "How wonderful the power of its beauty."

    WHERE FICTION CARRIES TRUTH

    A scene from my novel The Sanibel Arcanum has the protagonist, Tim Calvin visit Utah Beach, a D-Day invasion sight with Stroutsel a Jewish survivor who had been part of the French underground resistance.

  The beach was windswept, large and angry.  The gray sky hung low over the rough choppy water, and the surf pounded the beach with an intensity that bordered on animosity. Old enforcements and battle walls, pill boxes and even strands of barbed wire were visible, while cattle grazed over the dunes in fields where one of the decisive engagements of mankind's warfare had been played out in blood.

    "You can sense the terrible loss just standing here," Tim said more to the wind than Stroutsel, whose face was turned toward the beach.  "Doesn't this bring back the anger, the hatred?"

     Stroutsel cut the misty wind of the beach with his gravel-like voice.  "Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools. That's from Solomon in Ecclesiastes, Calvin, it would do well for all of us to remember it."

     They stood, wrapped in silence and reflection as in a place of prayer as sand, wind and salt spray assaulted them.  Stroutsel faced squarely into the wind."Baruch, atah- Adonai-Blessed are though, O Lord, my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.  My loving kindness and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and He in whom I take refuge.

      Tim stood transfixed by the moment and the sweeping emotions which girded them against the ghosts of this killing beach.

      "We are a mere breath, our days are like passing shadows," Stroutsel's voice faded as he walked north his eyes cast on the sand and looking out to the sea.  Tim let him go.  He walked to the memorials and read the names of those young men who had fallen on this strip of sand and sea."

    On Utah Beach alone some 2,500 US troops and 1,900 allied troops were killed. Thousands of others were killed on the other landing beaches as well as glider pilots and Naval support troops.  The Germans lost between 4 and 9 thousand  on D-Day.

    There is an almost palpable presence that remains on those Norman beaches.

    See you down the trail.

WINDOW EYES, GOOD PLEASURES AND HARD QUESTIONS ABOUT THE POW RELEASE

A POINT OF VIEW

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW
the pow release

    There's a lot more to the story than the release of American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl. 

     First there are the questions about his wandering away from his unit and his capture. They need to be processed. 

     There's the obvious posturing-the Taliban calling the release of five of their own "a great victory."  Republicans criticizing the "deal." The Obama administration trumpeting it as a "sacred obligation" to bring him home. They are falling over themselves to get their narrative to stick in the political trend lines.

      Here's a question for the Taliban, can you be sure none of these senior officials have not been turned? How can you be sure?  

      For the GOP, was it really a deal and negotiation that will embolden our enemies? With thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thousands more injured do you think there is any more than our enemies can do to our troops? How does the current crop of GOP explain their criticism of this "negotiation" with the efforts of past republican presidents to get pow's released? Exchanges have been part of diplomacy for ever.  

      Does the Obama administration need to be so eager to hog the spotlight on matters of national defense, security and the like? There is something about this that smacks as though it is an administration perpetually on the campaign trail. Maybe it is simply Obama's personal style of oratory and spotlight grabbing. 

     Buried in the details are the facts that 5 bad guys had been held, but not charged, for years, in a prison the US seems incapable of closing. What's wrong here? If they were enemy and we are sure of that, why couldn't we produce the good to bring them to trial.  Or did we not want a trial, for reasons that can't, won't or shouldn't be discussed? And if that's the case, what the heck does that mean?  What was so good about holding them-at a huge cost?  If we have become so proficient at using drones to "decapitate" the terror cells leadership, how would putting five more on the street pose a grave risk to US security. Maybe a drone could do what we could not do to them in a prison, such as it is.

      For those who think they can find some high moral/philosophical/political ground on this matter, I suggest you read BLIND SPOT-The Secret History of American Counterterrorism.  Written by Timothy Naftali in 2005, it lays bare what has been the real American response since Truman and Eisenhower.  Our record, as exposed by historical fact, should shut up the President, the GOP and the Taliban. That's a problem today though--everybody reacts to the shouting match in the social media barrel and they ignore facts and history.  

CUSTOMS OF THE LOCALS

    About 12 years ago one of our favorite wine makers,

Marc Goldberg and Maggie D'Ambrosia of Windward Vineyards, started the Pinot and Paella fest. Over the year's this fundraiser for youth arts has become one of California's most gentle, enjoyable, delicious Sunday afternoons. Some 15 to 20 chefs compete for the best paella while 20 Paso Robles Pinot makers pour their product. Music is provided by  Incendio an extraordinary world music group, with a heavy Spanish accent.  (Check them out as you slip into your next bottle of wine or cocktail hour.  A YouTube link is embedded below.)

      There is an extraordinary variety of paella creations and these chefs are superb.  So too is the Pinot.

      Caution, these photos may make you hungry.

Selecting a shaded spot, with in view of the bandstand only 

enhances the joy of the afternoon.   

   The frame below needs explanation.  In the Paso Robles wine region there exists the Rhone Rangers-vintners who make wine of Rhone origin. Marc Goldberg, third from the right, wearing glasses, has created a counterpart. Beaune (pronounced bone) is the capital of the French Burgundy and Pinot Noir region-thus the Beaune Rangers.  This is the first official photo of Paso's newest wine group. These men and women are winemakers responsible for the creation and care of one of the world's most temperamental but wonderful wines. Cheers!

AND NOW FOR A MUSICAL INTERLUDE
INCENDIO