Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

A FEW JABS AT THE COMING DARKNESS

 


                            "The voice of sanity is getting hoarse,"

        Irish poet Seamus Haney said as he observed a war of soul, "the troubles."

                "Cut it loose or let it drag you down,"

        Bruce Springsteen wrote in Darkness at the Edge of Town, seeing the advance of nihilism. 

        Admonitions, across cultures, with divergent nexus points, but warnings, relevant still.

        Culture, soul, belief, enshrouded in a deepening darkness.


        Americans live with competing realities. It is a madness. There is no good in such a state.

            "Lives on the line-where dreams are found or lost."
                                                        Bruce Springsteen

            Who gains? Who loses?
        Many of us find pronouncements of "existential threats" wearing, but we must listen. We live with a serial "What If " pointed at our temple, loaded and cocked.

        What if the Supreme Court reverses Roe V. Wade?
        The court will be dangerously out sync with the American population, and even with policies of Catholic nations.

        What is the calculus of damage when the nation's highest court loses touch and behaves as an extremist moving against the beliefs and wishes of the majority?

        What other rights might then be targeted?


          Venality and deception were weaponized and turned against the republic and so it is true Democracy is under threat.
            The republican party is an agent of destruction of all the American experience has been. 
            Recent findings of the January 6th Investigation and independent journalists put it out there in black and white. The Trump regime tried to execute a coup. We knew that in our gut. We know that now by fact.

            The Kaiser foundation reports Republicans make up a majority of unvaccinated people. Unvaccinated people are those who are dying and who are spreading the virus and who are crowding hospitals to the breaking point.
            Too frequently we've heard about those about  to be put on a ventilator asking for a vaccination, only to be told it is too late. 

            Truth, fact and political sanity are under attack. 

               "...where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks"
                    Seamus Heaney  Whatever You Say Say Nothing

            What if?


         The "Troubles" of Northern Ireland were/are deep by generation, belief, politic and sense of identity. 
        Heaney observed it and withstood pressures so as to clarify, to seek rationality and to uphold humanity. 
        Bold honesty in the face of madness.
        
        Rationality, clarity and the advocacy of humanity are difficult to find in the US. The nation, tired from pandemic and the upending of all that is prized as normal, is angry, self- absorbed, and failing to think clearly. Broadcast and social media are contributing factors. Few people read. Fewer research, analyze and think. 


        Frenzied attention spans overlook a stability. Biden's approval rating does not give credit to the historic accomplishments of a first year. Historians, already hail the achievement and note it has been done without a real majority and while cleaning up after the debacle. 

        The pushback on the mask mandate is good for the system. I'm not convinced a President has the authority to insist companies do what he asked. I applaud his intention, but as an institutionalist,  I question that use of power. It is good to let the body politic argue about it.          
        Like junk yard rats, republicans feast on the flack, while their constituency dies of the virus. Sad and tragic facts and it should not be so.


         Economic and market strength, low unemployment, the recovery acts, the infrastructure programs, the massive vaccination totals, the steady hand at the tiller of the ship of state, the decency, the humanity, the display of traditional American values, and a genuine humility are all there.

        If we are to prevent the darkness from descending and snuffing the American beacon, America as hope, work is to be done. 

        The voice of sanity, hoarse or not, must make itself heard,  in the darkness. Reason, rationality and humane action radiate as powerful light. 

                                "History says, Don't hope
                    On this side of the grave,
                    But then, once in a lifetime
                    The longed-for tidal wave
                    Of justice can rise up,
                    And hope and history rhyme."

                                Seamus Haney from The Cure at Troy


        Dear readers, please accept this as this a Christmastide ghost story.  

        See you down the trail.
        
        




            

Sunday, December 5, 2021

DIVERSION BY BEATLES


            The gears of our psyche have been adjusted.

        Some seven hours and 45 minutes of intimacy with the Beatles and entourage produced a retooling of attitude. 
        Over a couple nights we took a deep dive, to January 1969, and the 22 days that became the supernova of the singular creative force that changed music, lifestyle, lives and the world. 
         
        The previously unseen and impeccably shot film, edited and curated by director Peter Jackson, (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies) is riveting and immersive in the documentary Get Back. Lana dreamed about it, and I continue to marvel. 

        We laughed that just 4 months after the filming, we walked into Apple Records in London, thinking we might just "bump into" one of them. 
        Get Back, the documentary series, has the capacity to time scrub your brain and fill you with the zest and verve of that era in our life. It is a trip that rocks you with the passion and playfulness of our own youth.


        For a generation reaching the autumn of life, Get Back is a full on reminder of how good it felt, and how hopeful and limitless was our future.  

        We see our minstrels of revolution at their peak, in their 20's, writing and playing music, talking about their future, and it has the ability to vacuum the uncertainty and unpleasantness of that "future" we now occupy. 


        Watching John Lennon and Paul McCartney write songs, and seeing the duo work them through is astonishing. It is lightening in a bottle. There are moments when the two are  riffing, playing around, having fun while amping up their creative force. 
        There is something pure, innocent and even loving in watching McCartney's fascination as Lennon vamps, and then as Lennon, wryly acknowledges McCartney's new melody or set of lyrics. And on it goes. 
        Watching almost 8 hours of unscripted and pure Beatle creativity not only reminded us our own earlier dreams and life without limits, it is a balm.  


        Time and exposure can dull our senses. Remembering greatness, and seeing it so intimately is a thrill.



central coast autumn colors



        A lot of pundits have used the old bromide about the dog catching the car when talking about the right wing getting a court that now may overturn Roe v. Wade. Given overwhelming public support for abortion rights, it could become a big negative for many Republican candidates.  
        The larger question that occupies me is how will the Supremes handle the inner issue of being so out of step with where most of the nation is on choice. It is particularly delicate in this political culture because the court's very credibility is on the line. It will be interesting to see how they handle it and how the decision is written.

        Be careful, stay well.  See you down the trail.



 
    

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Atmospheres


         It is that time. 
     Tradition is we begin with gratitude. Celebrations ensue and we are to be festive. We then end the year with hope, light, and peace. 
      Nothing is as it was, still we remain children of star dust, all of us, siblings on a planet.
      I am one of those who find pleasure, maybe retreat, in just looking around. 
      The day, the light, the scene, the nuance and all paint for me a mood. We live in Atmospheres.
       Here, at the changing of the season, the beginning of Holiday, are some tones and moods of place of my California.





















       
    We are people of mood, affected by so much. So, the last two frames,  Lana's blooming "Thanksgiving Cactus" and a promise of the future bring us to a thought. 
     The scene directly above is the launch of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The reusable Falcon rocket is riding a plume of fire that ignited our southern sky. Vandenberg Space Base is 83 miles from my upper deck where I watched the rocket with its tongue of fire soar into space and take me into the future.
     It is the future we count on. In less than a year, October of 2022, DART will demonstrate it's "kinetic impactor" technique when it strikes a non threatening asteroid named Dimorphos, to see if it is effective in protecting earth from asteroid hits. Dimorphos, Greek for "having two forms," is the smaller planet moon of a synchronous binary system where the larger asteroid is Didymous. 
      DART is 1,200 pounds and the size of a refrigerator. It will pass around the sun and then stalk and hit a space rock at 15,000 miles per hour. 
       This thing about "having two forms," is interesting. Divided though we are over truth, and reality, while some respect science and others dwell in lunacy and lies it is, none-the-less, exhilarating to think what we star children can do in space, when we are our better form.
       It all gives us hope, that the season of light will someday bring us to an understanding of what we should and can do on earth to propagate peace.
       Let our better instincts, our higher aspirations, create for you an atmosphere to surround your times at the end of the year. May you see your world for the beauty it holds. 

        See you down the trail. 
            

Friday, November 5, 2021

Defusing the Bomb



        Talk of war, cultural or otherwise, is dangerous, emotionally precipitous and enables forces that strangle rationality.

      There is no shortage of bad actors in this destructive detour of the American experience. We'll take a closer look after first some good news and diversion.

        The numbers are up, some 3,500% at the Pismo Beach Monarch butterfly grove.


        The Monarchs fly some 1500 hundred miles to winter on the California Central coast. The numbers had been in decline.

        Scholars say the habitat they seek, in which to cluster, is being destroyed for development. Pesticides, and changing climate patterns have also taken a toll.

        The increase this year at the grove is encouraging as people on the central coast have been planting milkweed which attracts the butterflies.


shadowland


        As a kid I was fascinated by shadows and shadow play. The other day I noticed our new kitten "discover" his shadow. It surprised him. 
        Shadows make for fascinating photos. 


        Please permit these shots to offer you a visual rest, as we dive into the bad blood being stirred by shadow warriors.
        Those who know war and war zones are not those who are exciting the strife. 
        War is an act of desperation. It means that diplomacy, rationality and problem solving has failed. It means we have failed as human beings. 



        The more that media instigators, Twitter and Facebook combatants, and the under educated amp up the rhetoric, the more they foreclose on understanding, settlement  and their own enlightenment. The more they divide us!


        There is a large and unhealthy dose of delusional thinking in the nation. Those who buy into the big lie should sue the right wing cable networks and social media outlets for mental abuse. Propaganda has gotten us to this point. We are on edge.


          Both the the right and left claim guilty players. 

on the right

        The blitz on the credibility of the election, a fully delusional and dishonest effort is none-the-less believed by an misinformed mass. It's testament to the power of brainwashing. Tragically, it is compounded by the majority of the Republican party in Washington.
        Republicans try to ignore the January 6th Insurrection and attack. If they were to summon honesty and candor, it would go a long way to lesson the impact of the blood thirsty right wing lunatics fomenting for "war." Party complicity speeds destruction of our belief in democratic principles. 
        The American Republic is being undone by Republican collusion with lies and authoritarianism. 

on the left

        No less an unlikely alliance than Linguistic scholar and author John McWhorter and political strategist James Carville precisely describe the progressive left's destructive impact-"Wokeness."
      Carville says it's "faculty lounge foolishness" and it's killing Democrat's appeal. McWhorter's new book "Woke Racism:How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America" makes the case that Woke is in fact racist. He says it is a kind of intellectual suicide as well. 
       It is typical of far left ideology. No matter how well intended a new "social moralism" or idea may be, it can often be elitist, out of touch, and without "real world" grounding. Far left ideas can be as ill hatched and damaging as far right fear mongering and racism. 
        "Cancel Culture" is fascism. Those who engage in it are foolish, and enemies of free speech and thought. 



right wing fear

        There are historic principles at work behind this conflict of values and attitudes. 
        Conservative politics has always been fueled in part by fear. There is the fear of changing the norm, or the status quo as a bedrock. Conservatives have seen "socialism" or "marxism" like some see the boogeyman. It was there in trying to stop the union movement, in the civil rights movement, in welfare or child care or medical relief legislation. It's like Henny Penny and the "sky is falling." 
         Critical Theory, an intellectual discipline for study, a tool for understanding, is in the minds of conservative strategists and polemicists a communist or marxist plan to dismantle the Republic. Never mind free thought, the freedom that comes with challenging a premise or intellectuality. Now mobs are storming school boards fomenting about CRT when it is likely the majority of them never took a class in legal theory, philosophy, criticism, or civil rights. But it's red meat and rally's the base.
 

effetely left

        There is often an arrogance in liberal certitude. So sure that virtue is on their side when it comes to extending liberties, or using government as a tool to aid and assist, they too quickly dismiss those who disagree as being racist, ignorant or unbathed.
        Brian Williams refers to that wing of the Democrat party as the Whole Food's wing. Smug, self confident, and out of touch with the most of America.

there is no same as it ever was

       Progressives have been leavening in the loaf of American politics. Our founders were progressive thinkers, in fact they were radicals even revolutionaries. 
       Progressive thought is in the DNA of America. They seed ideas about progress, and reform. They are a good counter punch to the monied oligarchs who own a kind of wealthy selfishness/stinginess that has driven Republican business worship. It is "the rich take care of the rich" politics of the last century. Please recall that it took a turn coat elite Republican to bust his party when they got too much of their way in the gilded age. Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts, brought regulation, standards for food and drugs, giving the average citizen a break after they had been savaged by the wealthy, and robber barons. Republicans look out for business and wealth. 




        Democratic compassionates have tried to bend the levers of government to uplift the downtrodden, level it out, bring equality to the table and make government service for the public a reality. Democrats reason those services are needed and taxes are a way to pay for it. They think the wealthy should pay a fair rate. 
        The wealthy, corporations, and bankers of course bristle at the idea of a large government providing for child care, family leaves, public assistance and keeping up roads and bridges especially if it means they need to pay taxes or that government tries to penetrate their off shore veil and tax shelters. Republicans are their representatives. 
        More or less this has been the battle-line, and historically it worked its way to finding legislation and governance through compromise or a middle ground. It has rewarded both views periodically, pendulum like. 
    A point I've tried insert is that over the years liberals and conservatives, Democrat and Republicans and have swapped positions, changed views, morphed, helix like. Case in point, Democrats were once the racists, Republicans were the racial progressives.



        This mutability underscores the insanity of this angry time in America. We have been on a slide to this moment of division for some time. To understand that, one needs a sense of history, a knowledge of government, a long view and an understanding of driving forces. One must also believe in a commonweal, or common good. There is little of that now!
        We've become fractured, with short attention spans, easily diverted and manipulated, media has become shallow, politics has become a profession, elections are a business, too many of the players are egoists, zealots or racketeers. Newt Gingrich was the modern virus that killed off collegiality, compromise, negotiation, and truthful legislative government. 
The Republican party allowed itself to taken over by thugs more interested in themselves than national consensus or good.


            They've become anti democracy fascists in the grip of a mob boss mentality. The Democrats with no real majority are being held hostage by an internal fight between progressives and moderates while two selfish outliers see how much they can get for themselves. At its best the system is sick, and the America body politic needs emergency triage.
        We are shouting at each other, behaving horribly, and not interested in holding the center. Idiots want to provoke a fight, or secede, and sadly, tragically a huge percentage are being roiled up in a giant and malignant fantasy.
        Scholarship and the work of historians will look upon this time in America as the nadir. We have failed as human beings, we have failed as citizens. We have failed to think for ourselves and we have become angry and frequently stupid mobs.




        If people put national interests over their clique lust,
if a few Republicans would act with honor, a transformative and long overdue infusion of investment in our people, our very essence, and our national bones would energize commerce and spirit and would rapidly marginalize the lies, the liars, the fringe, and make all of the culture war/civil war talk so much hot air.
        81 Million voters, the largest vote ever, cast their ballots to depose and dispose of a malignant force. The will of the majority of us is being stymied by selfishness, ignorance and cowardice that allows the basest, most villainous, venal and contemptible behavior to become common place. 
        If we don't lower the volume, and begin to listen, truly listen, open our minds and reclaim our national soul of aspiration we will indeed become the wretched and dissolute states of America.
        It is time for reason and cool heads. Time to honor the idea of civil debate, not war. Time to understand the radiating power and good that comes in compromise. It is time for an age of reconciliation.


        There is probably something in this that angered you.
Will this make a difference or cause even one of you to widen your view? I suspect the answer is no.
      So to Addie and Henry, my grandchildren, I hope that when you read this, your world will be less strident and that we humans treat each other with more decency and respect.
       Regardless of your reality, please know no one is always right, that all ideas are the work of mere humans and subject to all the foibles that make us the complicated, confounding and wonderful beings that we are. We are all children of creation, imperfect but we share the planet, and we share a future, and each life, each one of us is sacred. Our destiny should not be to divide and to make war, but rather to work for peace and understanding. Truth matters. In the end truth rules.
        In the end there are no shadows. Everything comes into the light.

 


        See you down the trail.