MOUNTAIN LIGHTNING-THE UNEXPECTED-PEACEFUL BLUE

    This is no mere pedestrian shot of a rain barrel almost full, no indeed! What we see is evidence of great cosmic oddness and even history.

     A woman who has lived most of her 91 years on the Central California coast says she's never seen anything like it.

     "We've had rain in July but nothing like this. And I never in my life have seen lighting and thunder like that."

     A mid 70 man, a Californian, says he's never seen an electrical storm like it. He stayed up to watch it. In fact, that's been the talk up and down the coast. For many it was a first time ever event.

      We're referring to the storm that moved up from the south and dazzled the Central Coast and scared most of animals in the county. I grew up in Indiana and have witnessed many lighting storms, thunder that shakes a house and sometimes the tornados that are spawned by violent storms. What we saw and heard was in that league.

      Arcs filling the sky over the Santa Lucia range and then rumbling over the slopes and through the valleys. Our cats, Hemingway and Joy were traumatized and could not find a secure enough hiding spot. Poor Hemingway would have burrowed into the wall if he could have. Friends said their border collie actually "picked up" the approaching storm minutes before the first flashes or thunderclaps.

      Fortunately the thunderstorm was accompanied by rain-an odd commodity that is hugely deficit in this fourth year of a drought. We keep getting optimistic predictions for the rain the El Nino may bring this winter, but over an inch of rain in July, in Cambria California?!  Oddness. But we love it and the locals were on the verge of breaking into flip flop splash dash dances up and down the canyons and through the East and then West village and along the ocean bluff board walk. Rain! In July!

       

PACIFIC BLUE

   A dry July is more tolerable when the Pacific blue is nearby providing entertainment.  Our friend Diane Norton caught great moments in San Simeon cove as a couple of visitors came calling.

Photo by Diane Norton

San Simeon Cove

Photo by Diane Norton

Photo by Diane Norton

   Meanwhile just down the coast in Cambria a fellow is looking for a smaller specie.

  What a difference a sunny day can make. It was last September, gray and misty when some of the behemoths were in the same San Simeon Cove. It is a great joy to live on the "commuter route" of these sea going mammals.

    See you down the trail.

WHIZES AND DREAMERS, NOT MOUTH BREATHERS

ANOTHER SIGN OF HOPE

  Did you see the photo of all those confederate flags that greeted the President in Oklahoma City? Did you watch the Frontline detailing how Isis is treating women? Have you heard how millions are being spent to drain Lake Mead below the safety line? It's easy to get down on the human race. We make it so easy to disparage ourselves.There is a lot to suggest we're rapidly spiraling down to a specie of swamp dwelling, mouth breathing meatheads pulling back the throttle to our own demise or extinction.  And then…..    

  we do this.  We send a piano size and technology loaded craft on a 9 year 3 Billion mile journey to work for us. What makes this amazing feat more extraordinary is that with only hours to spare the team at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab discovered a vital piece was not operating. They managed a work around and got the New Horizons craft back on task and did so struggling against hours of information delay across billions of miles. Think of that the next time you have trouble programming your phone.  

     Designing, building and managing a project of this nature, spanning a decade, traveling to distant regions we are just learning of and doing it with success is evidence we are more than the stunted intellects we see waving flags, sitting in congress, running for office, running banks, working scams, destroying the planet for profit, forcing repressive beliefs, fighting wars, and on and on. Indeed,we are capable of marvelous, historic, boundary stretching heroic effort, creativity and thought. 

      In the next few months as we see wondrous images from the Kuiper belt and the loads of data and brand new knowledge, I'll be grateful for the keen minds, exploring spirits, extraordinary technology and information interpretation systems. And I'll take this as nod to our better angels who point us toward possibilities, solutions and hope. 

FEATHER RETREATS
from San Simeon to Cayucos

  See you down the trail.

PRIVATE SPACES and OUTING A RACIST?

THE MOCKINGBIRD RISES

     Watching the world react to a revised view of Atticus Finch is probably a once in a lifetime adventure. It is a bit like when Dorothy peeked behind the curtain to learn the truth about the wizard. In Harper Lee's newly published Go Set A Watchman, the character who has become a kind of inspirational figure in civil rights causes turns out to be a cranky old man with racist views. Remember though Finch did not evolve into this. 

     The Finch we all know was the product of a revised book. To Kill A Mockingbird was a type of rewrite or retelling of the story. Go Set A Watchman came first in the creative process, but only now after a half a century is it being published. Editors challenged Lee to tell the story differently and Mockingbird morphed out of Watchman. Finch and the racial vista we will see reflects the world in which author Lee created it and Mockingbird. I make this point because early response has bordered a bit on despondency that the good man Finch became something quite different.

     Still, it is a fascinating chapter in our ongoing struggle with race. It is a kind of symbolic set piece. Racial discrimination ceased being front page news sometime after Martin Luther King and the passage of laws, but the under girding racial discord did disappear. Weather it is  incarceration numbers, economic dislocation, educational performance, police violence, crime stats or other social fissures people have lived with realities that prove race relations are still a work in progress. If you are on the downside of the equation your entire life can be skewed.

     So now comes this new old version of Finch and oh boy will we see and hear a lot of new chatter and hopefully soul searching.

QUIET SPACE

   Along Estero Bluff between Cambria and Cayucos Ca.

FED AND THE DONALD

    A note of contrast needs a moment in the light.

The great, though aging, Roger Federer valiantly struggled for yet another Wimbledon Championship. He played great tennis and made only a few mistakes. Novak Djokovic played better and pounced on those mistakes and so for the second year the younger Novak dispatched Roger. I am with those who believe that Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time. He is graceful and elegant in his play and in his manner. 

    It had to hurt deeply to lose and to know that at 33 being in championship form is harder to achieve. He's won his share, but to be so close to an historic win and see it slip away must be crushing.  But afterwards the cool Mr. Federer was nothing but grace, class and dignity. And of course Tennis is that kind of game, where fans cheer even for an opponent who makes a good shot.  

    Later on the screen I watched clips of Donald Trump. Can there be any wider gap between levels of decency, class and integrity. I know that Federer and Trump are not in the same game, but they are both wealthy and competitive. Going with a sports analogy Trump is like a big time wrestling loud mouth phony. Federer personifies a kind of  sportsmanship that reveals honor and is turned by humility. Reminds me of the old spaghetti western-The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Hand it to the Donald-He wins 2 out of that 3.

    See you down the trail.

IMPRESSED-DISAPPOINTED-DIVERTED AND TRICKY GOING

POPPING UP

   Having been so taken by the extraordinary sky scenes in the recent Bruce Taylor post, linked here, I was pleased by a couple of clouds that popped up behind these slopes in the Santa Lucia Mountains as viewed from our deck.

   Skies here are normally clear so as former mid-westerners we get excited when clouds appear. I hope you'll take the link above to see Bruce's beautiful shots that remind me of JMW Turner paintings. 

THE TROUBLE ABOUT CELEBS

    A life in the news business and one is rarely surprised by how people behave, but there are still disappointments.

    If Cosby did what he's accused of and there seems plenty of indication he did, it's despicable. And sad.

     Now they say Tom Selleck "stole" or used public water for his estate. Why? Our neighbors in Cambria pay water suppliers and none of them have the wallet of Selleck.  

     Not sure where the investigation involving Subway pitch- man Jared Fogel is going. Hope he's cleared of any wrong doing. What they're investigating is a sick and heinous problem and crime. Actually feeling sorry for Subway, though their ad agencies and marketing people get some quick work.

    And that's the point. We've become a celebrity and fame obsessed culture haven't we?  Think of how much time, space and ink these pieces have gotten while we ignore real news. How about this the troubling news we are into a new Cold War? We've managed to ignore a lot of other "issues," "threats," "problems" and the like so the old national security beat in the back of my head agitated up an admonition. I call your Selleck and raise you a Putin!

      

TRICKY ANGLING

    Can you spot the fishermen in this frame?

    They guide their kayaks into the kelp beds of the coast near Morro Rock.

   See you down the trail.

LIFE SPAN OF A LYRIC

IS THERE A SHELF LIFE?

      An especially placid and expansive blue Pacific rolled by as Paul Simon's I Am A Rock jarred a stream of memories awake.
       Then I began to wonder what Paul Simon thinks of the lyrics today. What do they mean to him now?  There are some wonderful lines beginning with the "Deep and dark December" and "the freshly fallen silent shroud of snow."
"Don't talk of love…it is sleeping in my memory"…"I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died"…"I have my books and poetry to protect me." What does the current Mr. Simon think of that 1965 version songwriter?
      Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel tunes followed and I wondered again, how do songwriters think about earlier work, especially those that were hits and choreographed seminal moments in the life of a generation?
      We've changed and our perspective on those passages of life that played against the music of our era have morphed as well. Some lyrics no doubt mean the same today as they did then and as they will tomorrow, but some seem more fragile, or wed to an ethos that existed then. Is it a matter of sensitivity, emotion, a breakthrough or insight? Or perhaps it is all in the ear of the beholder.  Still, I wonder  how Simon, Dylan, Lennon, McCartney et al regard some of their early work and their labors at being profound.
      Then I hit a button and was enveloped in a Stones set and cruised up the coast in a slip stream of Wild Horses, Jumping Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man. Pretty sure there's been no slippage of meaning in those and the boys can still bang them out. Maybe somethings don't change, they only age. Cheers to the vintages.

TWIN BAMBIS

     Birthing season in Cambria brings a somewhat rare set of twins.

   Double the munch, a reason gardeners resort to fences.

SIMPLE AMUSEMENTS

    John is one of the village's most active citizens. At 90 he's learned a few amusements here between the Santa Lucia Mountains and the Pacific.

   His co-star is "Jay" as John has dubbed him.

    Our buddy Reg also gets into the act.

    Jay looks right…

 …looks left

   And he scores….

   Coming back for seconds.

   See you down the trail.

"SATURDAY IN THE PARK, I THINK IT WAS THE FOURTH OF JULY…"*

   * Thanks to Chicago for the tune and to the American Legion Post in Cambria for putting on the party.

   See you down the trail.