GOODBYE MR. C AND THAT CALIFORNIA COOL

     

      There was a time in the 60's when California was the ultimate in cool. There was the music, beach party movies, Disneyland and something new and fast, drag racing.
      The Beach Boys and the likes of Jan and Dean gave the sport a personality and so did Mr. C--in the car above and on the left below.

   

    Mr. C was Gary Cochran, my cousin, my cool California cousin. Much of the Cochrun clan moved to California in the 20's. My father's dad became ill and returned to the mid-west though most of the family stayed out west, and even endured the spelling change because that is how everyone wanted to spell the name. My father had fallen in love with California and stayed in touch with the family.
   Gary was a few years older than me, but a family star. After high school and the air force he became one of the early pioneers of the new sport drag racing. In California they ran on old air bases and desert flats and experimented with design and engine power.
    Gary ran the exotic top of the class at the time the sport was being organized and specs were being formalized.
    There's been a lot written about Gary and this link provides a good overview of his contributions.

     It was family lore about how he had been flipped over, on fire and at 200 miles an hour, but he always stayed cool,

   Gary and his crew based out of my fathers house and garage when he came to run at the US Nationals in Indianapolis. As a school kid my bothers and I were knocked out by the exotic design of the racer and Gary's unflappable cool. He was ultimate California, always smiling, mellow in his style, wore great T-shirts, and seemed to enjoy life even when working hard and trying to win. Winning was not unimportant, but enjoying the pursuit was at least equal to it.

    Gary talked about the change that was coming to his sport, started by hobbyists and guys who built and raced their own designs. He saw the infusion of the factory teams, the big money, the big advertisers, and knew the days of fun had become a business. 

    Before he finally retired he had taken the arc from pioneer to professional but never lost his sense of humor or cool.

       We spent time with Gary and Marie as we made our move to California, completing the family odyssey. Neither one of us were the young men we had been all those years ago, but Gary had that quintessential cool that comes with a life in California, years at the beach, years on the fastest tracks on earth, years on the golf course and enjoying friends.
     His health had been failing when I talked to him a couple of months ago. Facing serious challenges he could still laugh at the circumstances in that mellow, laid back California cool style.

         We lost Mr. C and that California Cool last week. Gone at 79 and from where I stand, that is entirely too young. His records and his accomplishments and the adoration of his fans will continue, as it does for pioneers and heroes.
      We send our love to his Marie and to Dawn and Teri.

      See you down the trail.

TO BE HUMAN

Cambria Ca

     There's a great wheeze about three theologians sitting around and discussing when life begins.
     "We believe life begins when the egg and sperm cells unite. It is at that moment, even before the zygotic process that life begins," observes one of the scholars.
     "Well, I understand your view," the second nods, "but we think life doesn't fully bloom until the fetus emerges from the womb and breaths independently for the first time. It is as though the oxygen in the lungs, free from a maternal link, signals the beginning of life," the theologian opines.
      "Well, those are wonderful ideas, and beautiful too I might say," the third says scratching his goatee, "but as for me, I says life begins when the kids leave home!"

     But seriously folks.....
     The older I get the more I sense there is almost nothing of the most profound nature of human existence where we can find consensus. Our differences emerge early. So with that as prelude:
     I wonder if any of you have given thought to what it means to be a human being? How do we classify human existence? What is our hard line definition? What makes it so? Heart beat, brain function, blood flow, vital signs? What?
     
     Let me stretch this question with a few posits. Many of us are hopeful that new medical processes and technologies will improve and even extend life. Immuno therapy offers new horizons. Wonders to ponder in gene engineering, in vitro diagnoses, cloned, banked or engineered replacement parts and organs, interaction with neural circuitry, other brain health advances, and in fact a cascade of innovation and discovery that we have yet to threshold with understanding. People talk now of pushing life expectancy, and with a confident expectation.

      Years ago I covered rookie training camp for an NBA team as a participant. I checked into a room at the college, was issued all the material and was expected at work outs, practice sessions, meetings, and ate at the training table. Everybody was very understanding that I was just a reporter, but they seemed to appreciate I was busting my butt to report a story.
      One day I was in the training room, nursing an old knee injury on a cybex machine, flexing the knee. Next to me was a genuine star, Len Elmore. Even back in the 70's he was not only a great athlete, but an intelligent and deep thinking man.
      As we flexed away, Elmore said that perhaps someday the professional jocks would be more artificial-better working mechanical knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists and etc. 

     I can't tell you how many times over the years that idea has marched across my brain. But now we live with a kind of fulfillment. The idea of a cyborg is no longer an outrageous fantasy.
     Wouldn't a patient with brain loss jump at the opportunity of an implanted chip that could make up the deficits, or failing kidneys accept an synthetic transplant, or a failing heart supplanted by a technology, etc, etc, etc.
    In fact the dawn on this age has already come and we living into it, but I suspect without a longer arching view about what does it mean, where does it end, what are the implications?

    There are some in silicon valley with seemingly unlimited financial power and an interest in pushing the boundaries of old fashion physical death, even to the point of eliminating it. For some it is personal, for others, it is an art of science.
   There are creative and great minds pondering the coming impact of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and have sparked an important debate about weaponizing computers, robots, and giving machines sanction to take human life.
     See, we have backed into a future where the very existence of a human life can be extended, mechanized or artificialized while never defining the nature of a human life.
     When do we cross a Rubicon and evolve not so fully flesh and blood and human aspiration but also manufactured or engineered and algorithmized?  What makes us human?
     Does the fact that our lives are finite, even fragile make us more fully human than say a future iteration where bio mechanics or living cellular chips or some such can make us almost immortal? Is there a point where machine intelligence is so much more efficient as to render human instinct, spiritual inclination or devotion, creative musing, sensuality, and a range of human emotion as out of date, no longer valuable, irrelevant?

      Before this rambles into some shadow game of Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Arthur Clark and company, it seems some basic definition, delineation, or understanding might be helpful. It won't be easy. Like those theologians talking about the beginning of life, we'll be taxed by a diversity of thought but in the asking we might learn a bit. And it could make a big difference someday, perhaps not so much to us, but to our grand kids, who already live in a world vastly different than our own.
    

     growing

San Luis Obispo

   All it takes is a little blue sky and a patch of sun and an urban sideway becomes a mini vineyard.

From Griffin Park, Cambria

     We enjoyed the recent eclipse but failed to bring home a great shot. Still after stumbling from sleep a few times between 3:00 AM and 5:30 AM you need to show something for your efforts. We are only human.

    See you down the trail.

FRAUD RELIGION and LOOK AT DAVOS

    Balloons have lifted my spirit since I was a kid. They add cheer to anywhere, including an alley.

        Even the shadows are playful and teasing,

      and something to chase.

where a shadow haunts

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini Agency France-Presse

    The World Economic Summit has commenced again in Davos. 
    60 World leaders, countless corporate and business chieftains, academics and theoreticians gather each year to plumb the world's economy. This year there is more security than ever.

     Terror is a threat, in the form of armed zealots, but nature has done her part as well. A record 6 feet of snow has fallen. It is as though the planet's climate is demanding a place on the agenda.

Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller European Press Photo Agency

        There is also the growing terror of people dislocated by economics, war and disaster. There may have never been more refugees in history and more are likely. There may never have been a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. The number of wealthy remains small-most of the rest of the world's population faces more struggle. A storm of another kind is brewing.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini Agency France Presse

they wait for the rupture

    I attempt to avoid religion in these posts. A person's beliefs are their business, a most intimate and personal piece of being human. I think we should afford respect, but today I must speak.

     In the last couple of days two major news organizations have explored the support for donald trump by evangelical Christian groups, mostly right wing. There have been other pieces over the last year, but his recent profanity burst and the leak of his paying hush money to a porn star to be silent about their relationship prompted a new examination.

     They still back the vulgarian. That very support gives their brand of faith a black eye and a crushed credibility. 
     Trump is a liar, a swindler, a serial adulterer, an apparent racist, a sexual predator, a bully, worships money and is by most evidence stupid but conceited. All of that but the stupid makes him an ideal target for the evangelicals to capture- to change his heart, to convert him, to make him a better human being. But there is nothing in that to cause them to step away from the faith of Jesus to back  trump. They must have forgotten that Jesus was a radical rabbi who's rare display of anger was to turn over tables and toss out the swindlers. He spoke of eschewing all of the things that trump worships and does and how he lives and how he behaves.

    Can you imagine trump laying down his life for his followers, or living as a wandering vagrant, urging his followers to give what they have to less advantaged, or to decry violence, to be a peace maker, loving all, even those who are handicapped, or from Haiti, or Mexico, or Syria, etc, etc, etc.?

   So how do you justify going from a devotion to a Christ to a devotion to a trump? How? How in the hell do you do that? Ah, there is that!

      From my understanding of Jesus he would probably be the first to forgive trump and the first to try to bring him into the fold, but also the first to recognize the wrong or evil and perversion of the man's life and his devotion to himself. 
      Someone who purports to be a person with a genuine faith and who uses articles of that faith to support trump is, in my opinion, not to be trusted on matters of faith. Same for those who ignore trumps perversity of character.

      I knew Billy Graham and even worked with him and his senior staff over the course of a couple of years. I was leery of evangelists, but Graham was sincere and devoted to preaching. I came to a new understanding of Graham, his role and impact. Something that he wrote and spoke of is how he had been emotionally and spiritually swindled by Richard Nixon, with whom he had a close relationship. As someone pointed out recently he never got over how he was "snookered" by Nixon.  It would behoove his son Franklin and other evangelicals who somehow find a way to support the behavior and action of trump to learn the Billy Graham lesson. 

     To those who say they are evangelical Christians and who support trump-would you want to spend eternity with him? Not that you have anything to say about that.

     One year of him in the White House has been a kind of hell for the majority of US citizens and others around the globe. Try to save him if you wish, pray for him, but to take a pulpit or a public forum and endorse him or his actions makes you a phony and a fraud, just like trump. Your faith is more important than just another one of us mere mortals with feet of clay. To support trump or to ignore his perversity is to make a mockery of what you say you believe.
      And a reminder to me and everyone else, the founders were right with this idea of separation of church and state.

     And on that note, God bless you and God bless America, please! In fact, God bless this whole planet.

     See you down the trail.

     

      

SECOND VERSE

    For the second time, thousands of Californians on the central coast gathered in San Luis Obispo for the Womens March. Their sentiment echoed that of millions across the US.

    The first anniversary of trump's presidency and the majority  of Americans detest the man baby.

    The signs speak.

   Mission Plaza in San Luis Obispo was jammed and crowded.

   Sentiment ran deep.

  For a little gal making her first political rally, it was a bit fatiguing. 

 See you down the trail.

TOXIC-EXPLOITIVE and WELL DONE

shadow dance

    Just that time of day, the golden hour and the trees dance with their shadows.

     Wanted to start with something mellow, because a few graphs down we step into something deep.

America at its best

      The POST is one of those films that makes you wish everyone would take a couple of hours off to go see and then join into a national conversation.

       It is a beautiful and literate script by Josh Singer and Elizabeth Hannah and masterfully directed by the maestro, Steven Spielberg. They make it a great film, and so do Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks,  Matthew Rhys, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Tracy Letts, Carrie Coon, Bruce Greenwood as Robert McNamara, Sarah Paulson and in fact the entire cast. But what makes it important is the history, the constitutional, philosophical and political undercurrent and the decision of the Supreme Court. 

        We would be a worse nation if we did not know of the Pentagon Papers and learn how Presidents and a series of governments lied to us and then tried to hide behind national security. Worse too if the Supreme Court had not decided in favor of a free press and the right to publish.

       These issues, framed between the drama of Katherine Graham trying to manage in a man's world (another important storyline) and the battle between her as publisher and Editor Ben Bradlee, over the right and need to publish without interference, make for material that goes to the very heart and soul of this nation.

      Aside from being a great and entertaining film, it postures important questions for this very time in America. We swamp dive later. More immediately we tip toe along the fence line. 

about men and women

     Readers, please be gentle and think this through. If you don't, it may be  as Ed Murrow once said, "this just might do nobody any good."

       I subscribe to the notion of a "toxic masculinity" a variety of men behaving badly, very badly. It could be sexual aggression, manipulation, an exclusion of women, all of which have no place in civilized and decent social behavior.

       We have seen men fall because they possessed a toxic masculinity and made victims of women and other men. But we should remember not all masculinity is toxic and we must protect that fact. 

       Once a movement to redress grievances begins, pent up anger, injury and a desire to even the score can begin to affect our vision and shade more fine lines of distinction and even reason. There are indeed good men who possess and display a healthy masculinity. In fact they are allies in the #metoo, #timesup, human rights movements, as they should be. 

      It is my belief this needs to be understood- it important for men to begin to take ownership of how boys are taught and trained and how they learn what is proper and what is not. Good men need to teach and mentor boys. 
      It is a sick irony that some women who have been victimized work in an industry that helps explain why men behave badly. Television, Film, and music have profound impact on social mores and the adoption of masculine and feminine identities. 

      Violence that is so prevalent in forms of music, gaming, film and television also has a sexual component. 
       Once parents took it as a major responsibility but something has happened since those days. It's a challenge to find parents who even teach manners. Gone are the days when a majority of families taught their off spring to be ladies or gentlemen, to be courteous and respectful. Media is as dominant as parental guidance. 

       Yes we need to spend a lot of time as a culture figuring out the what and why for toxic masculinity and what can and should we do.

       But we should widen this discussion-and please hear me out. We should also address Explotive femininity as well. 

       Exploitive Femininity? Here's a notion-do you remember how you reacted when you saw Madonna's Like a Virgin video? I saw it in the newsroom on a pre-release. Some full disclosure here--I absolutely believe in artistic freedom, even to the point of making me, or anyone else uncomfortable. I am against any kind of censorship. I am an absolutist on the right to free speech. At the moment I saw the video I thought on the one hand, she was doing a good job of emoting sexuality and on the other, oh my gosh how is this going to shape the behavior of my daughters? That was a long time ago, tame by today's standards, and before dancing, body movement, style, lyrics became as explicit as they are.

        Any woman, for that matter anyone has the right to dress and express themselves as they wish without fear of being assaulted or violated. But- there are also consequences to every behavior.

      When little girls are taught to flaunt, tease, pose, act, pretend in behavior that is sensual or sexual, beyond their age or maturation, they are being trained in sexual exploitation. Four and five year olds being taught to move like  Beyonce, Lil Kim, Miley Cyrus, etc. etc. is twisted, and maybe even worse. How many kids are growing up wanting or pretending to be a singer who continues to visit their own genitalia? There are consequences to every behavior.
       Do you remember when strippers did their thing in bars and when cheer leaders acted more like gymnasts? I happen to think the human body is a beautiful thing, but it seems even professional dress is a lot more explicit and revealing. Who ever heard of side boob revelations? It's even a form of social media reporting. There is a time and place for everything. Again there are consequences.

      How many of you who have managed in an environment where there was a woman on staff who plied her wiles to woo, influence or try to manipulate you. I've attended  discussions where management techniques to stop and disarm the exploitation were on the table. I shut down those kind of advances, not so much because I was a paragon of virtue but because that kind of behavior was toxic, dangerous and could lead to serious repercussions for the manager and the company. Still there are people who use their sexuality as a tool. That too is Exploitive Femininity.
      I am not for a moment trying to dampen the reckoning that is underway and long over due, but I think our national conversation must be expansive, holistic and honest. All pieces of the sexual political puzzle need to be on the table.

     The point here is to suggest there is a lot about how boys and girls pick up cues as to how to be men and women, straight or gay, that needs examination and fixing. Now that we live in a world where trans, and in transition are identity groups, the conversation needs to be enlightened, intelligent and non judgmental.  It is complex and multi faceted.

        The work of artist Bryn Forbes symbolizes, for me the intricacies of the debate.

         His recent series A Light Behind Every Window explains the deeply byzantine and abstruse nature of sexual politics.

Frames from A Light Behind Every Window by Bryn Forbes

          It won't be an easy conversation, but it is necessary.

There is a lot to unpack. And, sadly, we have a sick and despicable role model marauding through our culture now and his supporters must come to accept guilt for his revolting and degrading behavior.

not worthy

     Have you seen the video of the idiot in chief blowing the lines of the National Anthem. The National Anthem for heavens sake!! He is supposed to be president and he doesn't know the national anthem?

     His comment-the shit hole statement-confirms his racism. I'm surprised by the reaction(?) of Mike Pence. Oh, you didn't see any either eh? Did he sell his soul to get on the ticket?

     It is bad enough the jerk is fouling the White House, worse that some 30% of American voters still support him. That too is toxic.

      See you down the trail.