Is Winter Weather a Grind?

 A Winter Diversion

        After a while snow, ice, gray skies, freezing temperatures and being confined inside is a drag. I know. 

        So, what if your job is a beach?

        And what if waring 5000 pound elephant seals were a job hazard?

    

        That's the deal for a couple of Cal Poly researchers recording behavior and communication sounds of elephant seals at our local rookery. The battling brutes kept wrestling closer to equipment.

        Try being nonchalant as the bull edges ever closer while your colleague is trying to extract a sound boom that another beach resident has rolled on down at the ocean.

        It's not always picnic at the Pacific shore. Researching the colony also includes counting the pups that don't survive.

       Still, the beach beats any office I've known.

        And who's going to complain about you catching a nap?

        When compared to those winter's past, it's hard to think of even a foggy and cool day as being a bad day at the beach. That idea is shared out here.

 

         February can be brutal out there. On the central cost, it brings green and the hint of the spring's renewal that comes to all. 

    

        Back when my patience with winter chill and hazard was at its end, I'd start playing Paul Simon's April Come She Will.

     It will and for those of you in freezing temperatures, rain and snow, hope the adage "life's a beach!" warms you a bit. 

    See you down the trail.

The Demise

         There's a chop out there. Tough days in the newsroom, especially at CNN. Testing time on the diplomatic front. And I'm going to violate one of my mother's rules of conduct.

        Mom would often say, "if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all." But I can't ignore Jeff Zucker or Vladimir Putin. 

        From my view, they've been exposed, seen through and both have been up to no good. 

        They're dark agents and we deal with their legacy.

        I don't know Zucker though our paths crossed many times as we treaded the news and journalism events over the years.

        Zucker got respect for his early work at NBC bringing the Today Show to a new era. I worked 15 years at an NBC affiliate, was in and out of New York at NBC events or with the NBC crews in the field and we shared moments of history. 

        I followed his career track but when he got to CNN my opinion of his professional decisions tanked. Zucker turned CNN from a 24/7 News Network into a news and personality heavy yack format.

        Viewer interest in broadcast news rises and falls based on any number of variables, but substituting personality for reporting or investigative work and documentaries changed the nature of the network. Zucker was more about ratings and the bottom line than the public's need to know.

        

        The darker cloud over his now tarnished reputation was his fawning and irresponsible devotion to Trump. 

        Under Zucker's command CNN  gave then long shot and unlikely candidate Trump millions of dollars of free airtime during the Republican Primary. CNN's deplorable judgement  put on a countdown clock ticking away until the next Trump appearance. Never had a candidate been singled out for the spot light and free air time. No candidate ever was so propped up. No candidate was ever as undeserving.

        Zucker tossed out balance in news policy and philosophy to pander and let an infantile and crude hustler trash the sober Republican party, and infect the American political system with a rotting disease from which we still suffer. Zucker alone among all credible news group executives aided and abetted.

        I care less about Zucker's personal life. There are questions about his professional judgment and CNN is in a crisis. His damaging influence on news broadcasting is a greater offense. It is, however, another example of how self indulgent some in the information business are and how out of touch they are from the working and struggling audience and citizens.

       

        One has to wonder if Putin's campaign of interference, undermining and collusion would have happened without the  media shine on the narcissist stooge.

        In a December 9, 2013 post I referred to Putin as being a taker. The world watches as his motive and intent have been revealed and counter played by the US and allies. Thus far President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, Security Advisor Sullivan, NATO, and European leaders Macron and Scholz have been more than a match for the little Russian. But Putin is old school KGB, steely and immune to public opinion. 

        The table of options of response to an invasion are wide.

Putin is counting on a moronic partisan strife in Washington. We once enjoyed the adage that politics stops at the water's edge. That was before Jeff Zucker and Donald Trump.

        Stay safe and stay tuned. 

        See you down the trail.

        

          

Free flow....

 

        Night dresses these coastal mountains in ethereal velvet and pearls. Down on the other side of the canyon and through a forest the Pacific throats a lullaby surf. The mind wanders.

        Someplace between the Lunar New Year, listening to Thich Nhat Hahn, and watching a rocket launch I was able to aggregate those streams of consciousness. It is a trail of amusement. 

        

        I can watch a Space X Falcon rocket take a National  Reconnaissance Office payload into the heavens,

in an age when people are again banning books.

        Those hard to see little puffy spots in the frame above are the payload and second stage heading up while the puff to the left is the first stage returning to Vandenberg and its landing pad. You can find much better video and photos from Space X and NASA, but I'm boggled that I can see it from my deck.

      Rockets going into and coming home from space while a quarter of the US population refuses to trust science.

        Seeing dancing trees makes more sense than all the voter suppression laws, enacted in the name of a fraud that did not exist, solutions in search of a phantom problem. Double down on the P's.

    

        Poor Whoopi! Just goes to show how unstudied in history we have become. She didn't mean to be a monster, but even when you care you need facts, and truth. A lack of knowledge and intellectuality infects most public discourse today.

        If we didn't laugh, we'd cry.

        Thinking about the wise advise of Thich Nhat Hahn as I showered today, looking out the window to see the above frame.

        "Happiness is not something you find at the end of the road. You have to understand that it is here now."

        Friend Jim sent the above frame from native Indiana where he is visiting, longing to be back in California. That's easy to understand. 

    

        The blooming season has begun here. Lana is still picking tomatoes and snap peas, from last year. The lemon tree is bearing well and the lime is coming on. Happier thoughts even than hearing Mike Pence has discovered his cojones. 

        So as we toddle between absurdity and amusement, I'm shopping for glasses so I can see it all.

Especially those cosmic pearls.

    Meanwhile down here, "Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet."  

    It, and all of us on it, need a lot of love.

    See you down the trail.

RUTH

         Our village was shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Ruth Armstrong, unforgettable Ruth. 

  

        A hike a few years ago, found Ruth, in the pink sweater up front, where she usually always was, in the midst of friends. 

        She introduced people. She was a wonder at matching folk with new friends. It was her mission to make sure everyone knew each other.

        You could set your clock by Ruth; mornings at her favorite coffee shop with a group, mid day doing her daily stroll through the village, afternoon stop at the ice cream and coffee spot, regularly at the Lodge on music evenings, at almost all live music venues and each evening watching the sun set at her favorite spot.

        That's where we gathered.

       It's on Moonstone Beach, where the creek flows into the Pacific.

        I used to kid with Ruth that she knew more about the village than anyone else, because she knew more people than anyone else. I told her she should write a newspaper column.

         She had grown up at the family home in rural southern California, not far from the Roy Rogers ranch, and spent summers in Europe.             

        She'd lived in the Bay Area and fancied herself  knowledgable about all things Berkeley, including the early days of Cafe Chez Panisse. Others will agree, she made the absolute best hazelnut cookies in the world. They were a work of the baker's art. 

        Ruth was an artist and part of the of Cambria art culture. She lived in an historic early Cambria log house that her renown mother had shared with an early Disney film director. She remembered Disney people. A unique life, shared with friends. 

         We almost lost her a few years in a freak accident when a truck rammed through the wall where she was sitting in the village. She said she was saved by the large old pew in which she sat. She was broken, but not daunted and eventually got back to her daily village strolls, though with a limp. 

    

        Thanks to friends for the "Ruth appropriate" memorial gathering as the sun set at her favorite vantage point.

        Johnny, Christy, and Joan called us together. 

        Ruth, like most of this part of California, was a fan of troubadour Jill Knight who helped us remember our friend. 

        

    In a sweet, sad and cosmic irony, the gathering brought people together who had not seen each other or spent much time together during  the last two years, because of Covid.                               

    Because of Ruth we were together again.

     

        Someone remarked they'd never heard her say an ill word of anyone. 

        Her passing leaves a vacancy in many lives and certainly for Cambria.

        In a village known for free spirits and individual thinkers, artists, and intellectual vagabonds, Ruth cut a unique persona.

        She was and remains a true Cambria character.

        In the last duty for her friends, she got a perfect sunset that we could share. 

        Stay safe.  See you down the trail. 

 

       

Blues-Views-News

 "We all live under the same sky, 

but we don't all have the same horizon"

Konrad Adenauer  

        Coming across that quote this week, I thought we don't all have the same reality either, or language skills. 

       My reality was tweaked when I was in on a brief by Dr. Catherine Marsh former chief scientist for CIA's directorate of Science and Technology and now Director of  IARPA-Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity. IARPA is the Intelligence Community version of DARPA. They are about finding and funding future technologies, systems and frontier new realities. 

       How about filing data using DNA? Maybe advanced polymorphous sequencing to increase security and save space. Server farms are energy hogs, take enormous physical space and have awful carbon footprints. DNA is tiny and tidy.

        

       Tech companies evangelize the Metaverse, maybe just a  buzzword. Still, we've entered a dimension where media called social is a battle ground and war zone that has polarized and  destroyed truth and fact.

        We live with it. Some can't live without it. Some kill themselves because of it. Privacy has vanished because of it.

        Who is doing something about it? 

        Meta data volume builds, and builds, and builds and flows to manipulators.

    

        IARPA is looking to protect algorithms, defend artificial intelligence, counter "deep fakes" and more they can't talk about.

        Imagine walking through any city or village in the world, seeing and hearing all that is going on, but doing it remotely. Our tax dollars are looking for a way.

        Mixed reality.

        

        Some recognize global challenges. 

        Some believe lies while others see the challenge to the American way and they respond.

        

        Words matter more than we may realize.

     A study published by the National Academy of Sciences finds the societal balance between emotion and reason has shifted back to what it was 150 years ago.

    Scholars from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and Indiana University studied word and language use since 1850. They discovered the shift from reason to emotion began in the 1980's and has accelerated since. 

    Truth, facts, and science have a hard time being heard in a climate where emotion trumps reason. The voices of our better angels have competition.

    Words have power and evoke a vision. 

        Journalist Ari Berman, a voting rights specialist, reported the 48 Senators who voted to reform the filibuster represent 182 million Americans, that is 55% of the population. The 52 Senators who upheld the filibuster represent 148 million Americans, only 45% of the US population.

        Realities?

        After that vote Republicans shook Senator Sinema's hand, glad to have a nominal Democrat join the new Jim Crow movement. Any doubt about that?  Here's a quote from Republican leader Mitch McConnell "African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans."  

        Mitch, you said that out loud.

          Sinema is a play for pay grifter/grafter girl.  She took big money from big pharma and voted against legislation to control medicine costs. She took hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and voted against increasing their taxes. You have to wonder who got to her on voting rights. 

        Reality: By their actions the Republican party is anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic.  

    As David Remnick wrote, "it has become a party less focused on traditional policy values and more on tribal affiliation and resentment."

     They may have short term gains, but a truth spoken by the greatest Republican consigns them to the ignominy of history, in a pile of those without value, the dishonored. Sinema and Manchin have their own asterisk on that list. 

"We cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."

Abraham Lincoln

        

       My bet is Americans will be pushed back, watch rights be stripped away, and oppressed only so long before the great majority rises up against the tyranny of a minority and hand out prostitutes like Sinema and Manchin. 

            There's a lot of dread, justifiable too. Climate, nature and resources are in trouble. It maybe unrecognizable to this generation, but human civilization will find ways to live, adapt, innovate and find destiny.

        As IARPA, DARPA, Bio tech labs, medical discoveries, exploration, discovery and all kindred renaissance thinking invent the future, the human will and spirit will protect itself. 

        It's safe to conclude there will be awful tolls, and maybe so, but I think it would be great to live 50 to 100 years from now, just to see the reality, the fixes, adjustments, innovations and all the new realities we humans create. And, to meet the people as exotically different as we are from those who survived earlier plagues and wars and human catastasis.

        I'm also curious about where artificial reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, genetic design, cyborging, algorithmic cascade, DNA data files, and more take us. 

        But before we go too deeply into the future, I wonder what becomes of the house cleaning mother of five who is exhausting herself with work and worry, trying to keep her family fed and housed. Or the emigres stuck between working to make their dreams reality in the US and an inconsistent and ill defined policy and attitude about immigrants. Or the millions of other working poor facing inflation, already out of control housing costs, and lack of insurance and health security. Or those around the world, victims of war, starvation, authoritarian  regimes. Or those growing numbers of humans displaced by lack of water, resources and a changing climate.

        Wonderous things are indeed coming. I wonder if they will help us with compassion, caring, equity and fairness. It is hard to hear our better angels in the din of word wars and social media combat. Will we listen to each other? To wisdom?

        Do you think we'll learn to take care of the garden?  

        Do you think we'll be closer to having the same horizon?

        Stay safe.

        See you down the trail.