The Way I See It

2012-02-20T18:29:00.000-08:00

I try to get in at least a short bike ride every day, but three or four times a week I head out from where I live on a hill without knowing exactly where I will go. I have to decide as I ride down Ulric Street if I will go east or west on Friar’s Road, or if I will cross the valley and ride up the Bachman Street hill behind UCSD Hospital to get to Hillcrest and then Downtown. This morning I decided to go that way so I could ride along San Diego Bay to see what has changed in the couple of months since I’ve ridden there. The day was perfect. This afternoon our grand-dog Cali came over for visit, so she's the featured image on today's BLOG.

2012-02-19T20:15:00.000-08:00

all lines
in the universe
all
if space bends
come together
finally

why can’t
we
i wonder

camelias
seem
to
want it

2012-02-18T17:23:00.001-08:00

IF HONEST CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL... then I need to say that this morning I tuned the TV to MSNBC looking for news and found instead the live news report of the Whitney Houston funeral in New Jersey. I wasn’t interested in attending a funeral, certainly not a broadcast funeral. I switched quickly to CNN, and damn, the funeral was going there, too; so I left the TV at CNN for a minute and went back to some writing that I had started yesterday. But I let the funeral go on and watched for what I thought would be one minute before I’d go on and find a news network channel. Here’s the confession part:

I don’t particularly like funerals. I dread them, but I go when a funeral is for a close relative or a close friend or when it’s a duty and I am expected to be there. I don’t go to TV funerals. I wasn’t looking for a way to spend the morning and if I had been looking for something to watch on TV, it wouldn’t have been a funeral; but I stayed with Whitney Houston’s funeral for one minute, then two, then three, and then I couldn’t turn away. I had thought it would be a staged event. I thought the Baptist Church would be one of those massive, showy mega-churches with seats for thousands. It wasn’t. It was a regular Baptist church. I thought it would be decked out with banks of bright flowers. It wasn’t. The flowers were much more elaborate last Sunday in the Methodist where I worship. I expected the coffin to be something fit for a Twentieth Century Cleopatra. It was a simple, ordinary coffin that might have come from the same factory where the caskets for my parents were made. I expected the volunteer regular choir to be in an audition mode hoping to be noticed and perhaps picked up later for TV or movie work. No doubt about it: those volunteer regular singers did exactly what that choir does every Sunday.

Like everybody else, I had liked Whitney Houston’s voice. It was obviously a gift... to the singer and to all of us who heard her sing... but there are lots of great voices out there. I thought the funeral would be a showcase for performers. It wasn’t. I thought the eulogies would be platitudes. They weren’t. The few maudlin remarks and readings during the more than three-hour service weren’t distracting. They are easy to forget. As Kevin Costner walked up to the pulpit, I thought to myself that now I would see the real glossy, Hollywood veneer paint over the service. I was very, very wrong. His words moved me. They weren’t from a script somebody prepared for him. His eulogy was more than a tribute to Whitney Houston, someone he obviously loved and respected. It was a sermon that I don’t want to forget. He ended his remarks with advice that I’ll try hard to remember: “Guard the precious gift of your own life.”

2012-02-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

Searching for the photograph for a day in the month of February in San Diego is a process of sorting, a sifting... The weather in February can bring snow to the mountain communities a few miles to the east and warm beach weather along the coast. A snug sweater comes in handy in the morning, and a swim suit can be a comfortable choice in the afternoon.

I came across some Monarch butterflies this afternoon. They’re the first ones I’ve seen this year. The monarchs are heading back up north to wherever it is they were born, the place where they will lay eggs on milkweed plants before dying. The eggs they lay will hatch into caterpillars after only a couple of weeks. Those caterpillars will munch on milkweed, growing fat for a couple of weeks until they harden and enter a 10-day stage which from the outside looks as if nothing is happening. In that ten days a metamorphosis occurs that seems like magic. In each chrysalis the caterpillar body parts change into a beautiful butterfly which breaks out of the chrysalis and flies around eating flowers. That generation of monarchs will lay eggs and die and another generation will emerge in May or June and that generation will lay eggs and die and a third generation will be born in July and August which will lay eggs and die and those eggs will emerge as a generation which has a much longer life span. The difference is that it doesn’t die after two to six weeks. That generation of butterflies, the great-great-great grandchildren of the butterflies we see heading north now, will make their way back to a place they’ve never seen in a warmer climate where they will live for six to eight months until it’s time to start the whole process over again. The butterfly in my picture for today is definitely a little less brilliant than it would have seemed to me had I seen it on its way to Mexico last fall. I appreciate its determination to do what it’s supposed to do.

The University of San Diego across the valley from Presidio Park.

I came across a guy with six month-old puppies... trying to find good homes for them.

The Presidio Museum designed by William Templeton Johnson on the hill above Old Town.

2012-02-16T20:57:00.001-08:00

I came out of the San Diego Photographic Museum this afternoon after my weekly volunteer stint, and the bird rescue people and parrots were in their usual place. One of the birds was barking like a dog, and another was whistling. The orange beauty that’s the subject of my picture for the day was much too dignified to bark or whistle or perform in any way at all. He (Yep, I asked about the sex of the parrot... I asked the rescue guy, not the parrot, making sure, of course, he [the rescue guy] knew I was asking about the parrot ) knew he was fantastic and didn’t need to do tricks to draw attention to himself. As a matter of fact, that parrot gave me a look... more than one look... and it was clear he was looking at me and not someone else in the crowd... seeming a bit annoyed that I kept snapping pictures... or perhaps he was just letting me know that he knows he is beautiful.

I considered telling him about the hundreds of blue and gold macaws I once saw swooping around some clay cliffs deep in the Amazon Basin, but I decided against it. I didn’t want him to think I was trying to say I think they were more terrific than he is. The rescue guy must have sensed that the orange parrot and I had something going. He came over and told me the orange parrot was a hybrid. The bird looked away. I wanted him to know it didn’t matter a bit to me that he was the result of a breeding experiment...

2012-02-15T21:07:00.001-08:00

First United Methodist Church was temporary home today and tonight and will be again tomorrow night for twelve adults and one adolescent boy who have had the misfortune to lose whatever place they called home. They will be permitted to come back for supper and a night’s sleep and breakfast again tomorrow night... and every night for two weeks. Then they will move to another facility in another church... I am trying to realize fully how fortunate I am.

2012-02-14T15:45:00.000-08:00

Today is Valentine’s Day and I should post pictures of red flowers on the BLOG; but, as the saying goes, “been there, done that.” I have been thinking about color, especially red; and if you’ve seen the pictures on the Blog for the past couple of days, you’ll know I’m a sucker for red. Red draws me in... or out into the world to find a way to photograph it.

Today it wasn’t something red that got my attention. Against a clearing sky after the rain we had last night and this morning, something that had no color at all caught my eye. I suppose I’m wrong about “no color at all.” Apparently, whether or not black is a color depends on whom you ask. A physicist would say, “In terms of color as light, black is the absence of color, while white is a mixture of all colors.” An artist would say, “In terms of pigment, white is the absence of color, while black is a mixture of all colors.” If you ask a child, he will say black is a color because his box of crayons has a black one in it.

So... I went off on a tangent and took my camera with me. There is something lyrical about the bare black branches curling against the blue sky with it’s wispy whitish clouds. That’s my picture for the day. Just for the heck of it, I’ve included in the BLOG a painting from the San Diego Museum of Art done by American Artist Janet Sobel sometime between 1946 and 1948. The piece is untitled, so I don’t know what she was trying to say. Red and black were definitely on her mind.

Whenever I think of black and white in the natural world, I usually think of zebras; so I went to the zoo to take a closer look. When you look at zebras closely, it’s clear that they aren’t just black with white stripes or white with black stripes. The wonderful design scheme for these animals includes some other colors subtly applied. So... I played around with the zebra images and included them on today’s posting on the BLOG.

And because It’s Valentine’s Day, I’ve included one bright red hyacinth. The dictionary says about hyacinths what everybody already knows: “the hyacinth is a bulbous plant of the lily family, with straplike leaves and a compact spike of bell-shaped fragrant flowers. Native to western Asia, hyacinths are cultivated outdoors and as houseplants.” The dictionary also reminded me that hyacinth is a color itself... and as a color it isn’t a shade of red.

2012-02-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

This morning I went out hunting for a special tree that was mentioned and pictured in Kathy Puplava’s and Paul Sirois’ book Trees and Gardens of Balboa Park. I found a couple of Brazilian coral trees near the Marsden House Museum. The trees are blossoming ahead of time again this year. They are very much like the African Coral Tree, which makes me wonder at what point in their evolutionary development the trees in Africa and the Trees in South America developed in slightly different ways. They look as if they started out as one kind of tree once upon a time. I wonder if differentiation began when the African continent and the South American continent parted ways 200 million years ago.

I particularly like the Coral Trees. The South American trees’ blossoms usually pop out March through May, and here they are completely bloomed out in February... Perhaps the trees are all trying to tell us something.

2012-02-12T20:18:00.001-08:00

The African Coral Tree is past its peak blooming period, but it remains one of the most spectacular sights in Balboa Park’s winter. The coral tree is native to East and South Africa where it’s known as a sacred tree which can be easily worked into religion and art. Its wheel-like, brilliant red blossoms seem obviously to have cosmic significance. In Africa the Coral Tree is said to be a dwelling place of gods.

2012-02-11T20:14:00.001-08:00

Every now and then something comes up in my conversations with trusted friends that demands exploration. Trusted friends are those with whom it’s O.K. to disagree and challenge and to whom it is sometimes fair to admit that they are right and I am biased and too narrowly focused and in need of readjusting my ideas and my arguments. They are the friends who will concede when it becomes clear that their ideas are the ones that are biased and too narrowly focused.

After a discussion with a friend about whether Bradley Manning, the American soldier who gave Wikileaks classified information, should be considered a patriot or a traitor, the conversation turned to definitions of terms like dictatorship and democracy. Although I am not a Greek scholar, I did actually slog through four semesters of Greek once-upon-a-time, so I used that bit of my academic history to try to gain a point in the argument. My friend implied that a democracy is no better than a dictatorship if a person like Manning doesn’t have the right to “expose” what he, as a citizen, considers critical tyrannical policies and actions of his government. I hemmed and hawed at that point in the argument mainly because I didn’t have the facts about Manning’s alleged crimes; and for hours after the discussion with my friend, I wasn’t able to get the problem out of my mind. This writing is premature because I’m doing it before I’ve finished thinking through the issues; but because this is my journal writing for today and I usually post the journal writing on my BLOG, I’m forging ahead as if I know what I’m talking about. If you’ve read this far today, you may want to stop. I may or may not take up the subject again tomorrow.

Just about everybody knows our word democracy (Greek, δημοκρατία) is a combination of two Greek words: demos (δῆμος, which means “people”) and kratos (κράτος, which means “power” or “force”). My friend is no academic slouch, so he pointed out that in Roman times the word dictator (dictat- from the Latin verb dictare) didn’t necessarily have the negative meaning that it has today. Originally a dictator was a person who had sole, usually absolute, power that was conferred, usually in an emergency, by whatever system was accepted as the appropriate system of government. In modern usage, a dictator is someone with total power over a country, usually someone who got the power by force.

So... At what point and in what kinds of activities and expressions is it appropriate for the ruling power structure to censure and imprison an individual person (δῆμοs) to restrict his/her freedom in the effort to safeguard democracy? Is it appropriate for “the government” to take away my tube of toothpaste when I forget and put it in my carry-on luggage at the airport? My answer to that question is “yes.” I am willing for the government to place some limits on my behavior if doing so makes the general population safer. My friend’s answer isn't an unqualified “no,” but it's nonetheless "No."

Of course, this will be a good launching point for another journal writing... a discussion of the confusion resulting from swearing allegiance to contradicting ideas which have inherent in them the possibility for gross hypocrisy. Examples abound of people who don’t seem to be bothered by the contradictions in their ethical, religious and political commitments. It seems not to be a problem for them to want government to forbid two male or two female citizens to marry each other but to insist that “the government” stay out of people’s lives when it comes to matters like regulation of health services, regulation of business, and regulating where and when corporations may drill for oil and what they may not do to polute the environment. The “keep government out of business” folks are also the ones who insisted that corporations are individuals and got the Supreme Court to agree with them.

2012-02-10T17:45:00.001-08:00

I go almost every day on my bicycle the half-mile down the hill from where I live to the banks of the San Diego River. California has some impressive rivers, but the San Diego River isn’t one of them. It is so small that in most other parts of the world it wouldn’t be called a river... probably a creek or branch or run; but here it’s a river... The tides lazily push the water back into Mission Valley and for a few hours each day, it even looks like a river for a few hundred yards before it spills into the Pacific Ocean. Periodically a big enough rain comes to the area to swell the river and even push it over its banks for four or five miles east of the sea.

Water birds and flowers along the banks of the river have begun to show signs of spring. Today the blue lupins are blooming and willow trees are showing off their catkins. Life is good.

2012-02-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

I came home from my Thursday afternoon volunteer job at the Museum of Photograph Arts; and as hard as it might be to believe, I hadn’t taken a single photograph all day. Sometimes you just do the best you can with what’s at hand. I took a picture of the cheesecake we’re having for dessert tonight. The cheesecake was yesterday’s project. Retirement is good. To those of you who still work in the real world at real jobs and don’t have time to make cheesecakes in the middle of the afternoon... Hang in there. Your day will come.

By the way, don’t believe that b.s. about the Social Security program being a Ponzi scheme* that the Governor of Texas was slinging before he tucked tail and retreated from his comical attempt to become the Republican presidential candidate. Forbes Magazine said Rick Perry’s story ranks right up there with the alligators-in-the-sewer fable. It’s a major problem that most people, both Democrats and Republicans, don’t know that there is bipartisan Social Security Trustees oversight of the Social Security Program. Ask any of them, even those who served during George W. Bush’s administration, and you’ll find that Perry’s fanciful tale doesn't fit the facts. It's true that the program is underfunded and must be modernized; but even if Washington does nothing, which is unlikely whichever party is in power, the young people who are now teenagers that Perry was talking about will get three-quarters of promised benefits when they reach age 65. The key information to know is that this good program must be funded adequately, and it must be appropriately modernized. The program has served Americans for many decades and it works even today remarkably well, especially considering that it has not been modernized for decades. You can probably imagine what kind of shape some of the “old people” you know in your own family would be in today if the Social Security Program had not existed for them.

You can check out the Social Security Trustees report on the WEB:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/TR07/index.html

*A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering higher returns than other investments, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent.

2012-02-08T20:02:00.000-08:00

While a friend and I were talking today, our conversation turned to politics and then to religion. He knows that I attend church, so he asked, “Why do you suppose it is that often the least forgiving and most bigoted people, including some politicians, claim that they are “born again?” What in the world are they talking about? What do they mean when they say they are born again?

I could have tried to dredge up from my memory the Bible verses that use the born again language, but I didn’t try because I’d probably have got it wrong. Instead I told him something that I’d read earlier today... not in the Christian Bible but in a book that my daughter Nancy gave me a few months ago. I’ve been taking my time reading through the verses compiled by Jack Kornfield in Buddha’s Little Instruction Book. My morning routine includes reading one verse before I settle down to three quarters of an hour of yoga and meditation. The meditation part of the morning ritual is just a matter of sitting quietly and breathing correctly after the yoga. I try to focus my attention for a moment on the verse from the Buddha teachings. Yesterday’s verse: “As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.” Today’s verse: “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”

Kornfield says these are saying from the sermons of The Buddha. The Supreme Buddha was Siddhartha Gautama, regarded as “the awakened one” or “the enlightened one,” who lived and taught five hundred years before the time of Jesus’ ministry. I think Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus were on the same track.

2012-02-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

PEOPLE ARE WINDOWS... AND COURTS ARE DOORS. It’s appropriate for the law to allow shades and curtains to be drawn against prying eyes; but there should not be public doors that are open to some citizens but closed to others.

Once again an American court has ruled that singling out and denying basic rights of citizenship, like marriage, to any group of people is a violation of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional was right. Because the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression of opinion and appeal of lower court decisions, perhaps we should be glad the 9th Circuit Court’s decision was stayed giving those who oppose equality yet another chance to appeal to a higher court, but it’s hard to be glad when denial of citizenship rights for anybody for any length of time is obviously an injustice clear to everybody but the bigots themselves. The bigots will lose their appeal... eventually. It always happens... eventually.

Of course, it’s possible that conservative justices serving now on the Supreme Court will rule against the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision; but eventually the matter will be resolved. Americans twenty years from now will look back in wonder that such ignorance and injustice could have been tolerated and approved by the highest court in their nation. I wish I knew the name of the author of an announcement issued by the San Diego LGBT Community Center so I could give credit for the following statement: “Odd to have your rights, dignity and worthiness endlessly debated. Odder still to have your fellow citizens vote on your basic rights with often nothing more to inform them than their fears, fantasies and biases about people they don’t know or understand. And the oddest thing of all may end up being that there never was any evidence that the committed love and marriage of gays and lesbians is anything more than joyous and human.”

2012-02-06T20:45:00.001-08:00

I went down to Old Town San Diego today to check in on a special friend of mine. He lives in that big white barn behind the theater. When I got there he had just got up from a roll in the dirt and straw and was standing just looking at nothing in particular. He looked around when I clicked-clicked and came right over and leaned in for a good head-scratch. He does it every time. There are some folks who would say he does that to everybody who stops by, but I prefer to think it’s just me. I asked him if he’d seen any elephants around lately, and he shook himself and shrugged. I told him about the bumper sticker I saw a couple of days ago: “Let’s just get along... I’ll hug your elephant, and you can kiss my ass.” He frowned and shuddered.

2012-02-05T18:34:00.000-08:00

February is the big Birthday Month in our family. David M. on the 5th and David H. on the 10th. We celebrated today with brunch at the restaurant Chocolat.

David Miles

David Higgins

2012-02-04T17:28:00.001-08:00

SEEING RED
I like red... perhaps not as much as I like green, but sometimes maybe even more than green or blue or indigo violet. I like the mystery in the red sort-of circle of spilled-maybe paint on the sidewalk... which reminded me of a wild impulse forty-something years ago when I painted a canvas with red squares and then put in each of the squares a white sort-of circle. I like connectedness, however and wherever and whenever it comes.

2012-02-03T18:25:00.001-08:00

My BLOG writing, which is what I once called journal writing, often springs from something in my world that bothers or excites and encourages me... something like religion or politics or social justice; and most of the things that excite my imagination fall into one or the other or both of those categories; but what prompts the impulse in me to think and then to write occasionally has absolutely nothing at all to do with religion or politics or social justice. I admit that I am easily smitten by the things I see as I wander around the world. That wonderful arched monument in Mumbai called The Gateway to India wows me every time... and the Eiffel Tower, Whoa... and the Grand Canyon, Amazing. But those three doors on the south side of University Avenue were enough to bring me to a screeching halt as I peddled my bicycle up the little hill to the east of Texas Street. I had noticed them on other occasions, but not the way I saw them today. I’m trying to figure out why the picture I took of them today pleases me so much. Maybe it’s the humility of those doors in the photograph... or the subtle, not-at-all green paint. I like the combination of gray and green and the glass reflecting faintly what’s happening outside... or perhaps it’s the smudged, broken sidewalk... As they say in California-speak, “Whatever.”

...And just up the sidewalk from the three doors there is a girl standing forever in the dingy entry-way to 2589 University Avenue next door to Tobacco Rhoda’s. She looks so real that I’ll bet half the people who drive by wonder why she always wears the same pair of jeans and a violet blouse and why she is wearing sunglasses always on the shady side of the street. The girl is life-size and embossed... real enough. Wow!

...And that stained glass church window not far away from the three plain doors and the embossed girl won’t ever make it into the book of beautiful ecclesiastical artifacts... but I like it. I’m impressed that the artist who made the window didn’t succumb to a suggestion that it would be a good idea to try to get John 3:16 onto the blank pages... or ten Roman numerals to represent the Ten Commandments. It’s a book open to blank pages. Isn’t that enough? The metaphor is clear enough to me... And the artist didn’t give in to wild, colorful glass panels that were surely available. The ordinary, humble panels are perfect... set in that circle of sort-of-turquoise, sort-of-green, sort-of-blue glass. Wow!

2012-02-02T23:29:00.000-08:00

It was Margaret's turn to wear the BIRTHDAY HAT today.

2012-02-01T18:18:00.001-08:00

Who needs oaks and sycamores
or even cedar trees
if you can have mysterious palms
shooting like rockets
right up out of just about any soil?

Don’t misunderstand my meaning
and assume I dislike
maples and sassafras and willows.
I especially like pines,
but a palm tree demands attention.

No matter how hard the wind blows
a palm stands humbly
allowing itself to be rudely whipped
and when it’s finished
the storm doesn’t get the last word.

2012-01-31T18:26:00.001-08:00

Have you noticed... it’s Speaker Gingrich, Governor Palin, Governor Romney; but it’s Barack Obama or Mr. Obama in Republican debates, speeches, and political ads. Why is that?

Back in the sixteenth century a mostly poet and dramatist, sometimes essayist, said “The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.” As far as I know, that’s the original statement that morphed into our commonly used phrase, “All’s fair in love and war.” I am dreading the time between June and November this year because it has become clear that in American politics “The rules of fair play don’t apply in love, war and politics.” Of course, there has always been a lot of stretching of the truth and a fair amount of bald faced lying by a few unscrupulous people who will do just about anything to win an election, whether it’s for a local school board or for mayor of Podunk City. A school district usually recovers eventually from the damage done to communities, families, and children from having chosen unethical, self-serving board members; a village and even a city can usually painfully dig itself out of a deep hole it sinks into under the inadequate and even criminal leadership of spurious city managers.

Just about everybody in the U.S. knows the story of Bell, California, a little city of 36,000 people near Los Angeles. In 2010 a couple of L.A. Times reporters investigated possible malfeasance in small suburban towns around Los Angeles, when they discovered that Bell’s city manager’s annual salary was $787,637 dollars (almost double the salary of the President of the United States) and with benefits received $1.5 million dollars in that year. The assistant to the business manager’s salary was $376,288. The police chief’s salary was $457,000, and all but one of the members of the city council received $100,000 for their part-time work. These people were conspiring together to deceive the citizens of their little city. Nobody believes these people should be excused for their misrepresentations.

Why then, should we be willing to excuse the obvious lying and misrepresenting of facts by people who are candidates for the office of President of the United States of America. I noted earlier that I am dreading the time between June and November this year. I dread it because I desperately do not want the people in the party to which I belong, the American Democratic Party, to resort to lying. The campaign strategies of “Speaker” Gingrich and “Governor” Romney, whichever wins the nomination, will continue right up to November 6. I desperately want President Obama and all of campaign strategists to stick strictly to the truth. Oh, I know... I know... there are those who say he didn’t tell the truth in his State of the Union message. Including something in a speech, or saying something in an interview that folks on the other side don’t agree with and is a matter of ideological opinion doesn’t qualify as “lying.” My friend who says the Social Security program won’t be available when we are long gone from the earth and our grandchildren are the age we are now is an opinion. It is appropriate for me to say I don’t agree with him, but for me to call him a liar is not. We both believe the program needs to be re-formed. Although neither of us is an economist or a politician with very much knowledge of the program beyond the amount that gets deposited each month from the Social Security program into our bank accounts, we have opinions based on what we hear and what we read. Of course, my opinion in the matter of Social Security reform has developed more subjectively than objectively. So is my friend’s opinion. I may be wrong when I say the program, or perhaps a better form of it, will be part of my country’s social net for all citizens for a very long time. But I’m not a liar for believing what I say I believe about Social Security. My friend is not a liar for believing what he believes, and it would be wrong of me to say he isn’t telling the truth. I can say that I desperately hope he isn’t right in the conclusions he has drawn from the same set of known facts that are available to both of us.

So, back to the reason for this writing. I hope the people on “my side” of the political contest that will play itself out over the next ten months will honor the truth. If they cannot honor truth, they will not honor themselves or our country.
----------------
Now, after the rant... I move on to some images that gave me a lot of joy today... the kind of joy that comes from being out in the world with friends and family... Jerome and Jeremy and a Juggler and children.

2012-01-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

We’ve finally got one
up close
a black hole of our own
dark impenetrable
what’s in there
nobody knows
a pool of ignorance
god
they say
wants a change
it’s a freedom issue
where you carry your gun
what we need
but ain’t likely to get
is a fact based
campaign
so drop your
ballot
in the box
and hope
for the best.

2012-01-29T19:13:00.000-08:00

The Earth Was Without Form and Void...

Mainly
because I choose form
over formlessness
and chaos

I was thinking
perhaps next week
or even today
but surely by sometime
next year
I’d like to address
the issue
you know
the lack of order
the random chaos
endemic
in practically
everything
but not quite

Life supplies surprises
enough
My eye delights
in the unexpected
song of a tiny bird
and
in the sudden break of clouds
above the sea at sunset
or
the startling burst into flight
of a clutch of doves
I hadn’t seen in my path

So I’ll get around to it
one day
but
until then
wow
this is quite a ride 

2012-01-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

San Diego from Udall Street

Just when you think you've seen something
in every way from every angle
and from every possible vantage point
you turn a corner and there before you
it presents itself
like an altogether new vision
a sight so new
you think it couldn't have been there
yesterday and perhaps won't be there tomorrow
so you stay to look at it carefully
and take a picture just in case
proof is needed.

2012-01-27T22:19:00.001-08:00

I wandered down by the sea today
waiting for nothing at all
and when it came I said
yes give it to me and it
did breaking like waves

2012-01-26T20:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_rohr

My friend David Burnight send to me a hard copy of an essay by Richard Rohr which was published in the May/June issue of Tikkun. You can find the essay on the internet at the address above. I urge you to read it. I don’t usually share a private letter which I’ve sent to a friend, but this time it is my journal writing for today; so I’m including it here. I've sent the letter to David by "snail mail." I'm in the awkward position of posting the letter here before it is actually delivered to him by the Postal Service. Because he will recognize how very much I appreciate his sending the essay to me, I know he will forgive me for this breach of etiquette.
--------
David,

Thanks very much for the essay from the May/June 2009 Tikkun. I read it tonight just after I had made myself blue and discouraged by sitting and watching the four Republicans beat up on each other in an effrort to become their party’s candidate for the presidency. Except for Ron Paul, their “reasoning,” if you can call it that, is informed by their determination to make America bigger and stronger with more of everything than any other country in the world... and, of course, throwing Barack Obama out of the White House... I like Richard Rohr’s point of view and his thesis. I especially like his insistence that we have developed a “Cadillac faith,” that diverges radically from the clear, straight-forward Gospel that Jesus delivered to the world... a gospel which clearly warns that greed hurts people, that healing the world is not done by making mountains of everything that can be changed into money.

I like the way Rohr shines a light on our arrogance and superficiality masquerading as success. Although he doesn’t say is specifically, I think Rohr is saying we confuse self-sufficiency with self-actualization... or if we know the difference, we choose self-sufficiency. I personally have too much rather than too little of almost everything... and like most of my friends, I don’t make much effort to share what I have.

I also like his emphasis on the loss of joy in our culture, especially what he calls “inherent joy” that comes to individuals who somehow manage to find and preserve in themselves a simple presence---presence to ourselves, to others, to the moment.

He is bold to say that our society, our culture, takes us back to a time of the divine right of kings; and we insist that it is somehow guaranteed by “democracy” and “free markets” and “capitalism.” When we say we don’t want our grandchildren to lack the benefits of the America “that made us great,” we are actually putting our grandchildren in grave risk of becoming hollow people.

I especially like and join Rohr’s hope for smallness? I especially like his last paragraph: “I trust, I believe, I hope, and I even know that the new Imaginers are out there! This crisis of prosperity is an opportunity to again love the small, the local, the human scale, the human over the corporate, the soulful over the successful, and the common good over private advantage. This alone will offer us a future worthy of spiritual and wise human Beings.”

Thank you, David, for sharing this essay with me. I’ll pass it on.

Jerral

2012-01-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

Today's journal writing and the photographs don't match. The first image below is my photo du jour, and the next three are also from today. I couldn't resist posting some more of the pictures I got in the Mission Gorge fog yesterday. Perhaps I justify including them because they provide a kind of contrast to the brilliant, clear birds of paradise. As a nation, and perhaps as a world, we are facing an eleven month season of political fog. As you could predict, I liked the President's State of the Union address last night. It was a brilliant, clear statement of things as they are in our country.

Christine Legarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is one of the persons on whom I place my hopes that the world can be spared a global economic meltdown. If I had the power to do it, I would make the report on Legarde in this week’s edition of Newsweek (January 30, 2012) required reading for all Americans. If I had to limit the homework assignment to a relatively small group of Americans, I would choose to have it studied by all members of the House of Representatives and Senators in Washington and all Cabinet Members in President Barack Obama’s administration. Knowing that he has already done so, I wouldn’t have to require the President to read it. I would ask for written reports from all members of Congress. I would grade them based on the attention in their writing to form and content.

In stating the assignment, I would ask members of Congress to pay particular attention to the following paragraphs from the Newsweek essay:

“...Legarde’s approach to running the IMF was quite different from Strauss-Kahn’s. And her first encounters with the 24 board members were a bit awkward. The sessions always tend to be a little ritualized, “like Kabuki,” says a woman who had attended many of them. And there was the question of how to address Legarde: Chairman? Chairwoman? Chair? She settled on Madame Chairman.

‘I don’t know if it’s male versus female, but I am told my management style is more inclusive,’ says Legarde. ‘It has to do with forming a team’s view, having a consensual approach, “wasting time” on occasion to build consensus so that “you will not need to waste it in convincing people to implement.”’

‘Even if it means not appearing as decisive--you know, ‘This is my way or the highway’--I don’t work that way,” says Lagarde. At the end of the day we have to reach a compromise and a common platform, but I think it has to include as many people as possible.” She pauses for a second. “I leave aside the bastards, because that’s one thing that I don’t compromise with: people who lie, people who cheat, people who are not with the group and behave like parasites. That, I can’t stand.’

..........

“The word Legarde keeps coming back to is “confidence.” Without it, nothing works. And confidence comes from leadership. In her no-nonsense way, that is precisely what she aims to deliver--not only for her institution, but for the world.”

2012-01-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

When I drove through Mission Gorge early this morning, a whimsical fog had settled along the river and among the trees...inviting everything to dance and sing. I heard something and it wasn't the hawk that came and looked at me, so it must have been the trees... or maybe the river.

2012-01-23T17:18:00.001-08:00

in a desert place
rain changes everything...
doesn’t just cover it up
the way snow does

2012-01-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

Duty calls sometimes, and a guy has to watch not one but two football games on a Sunday afternoon. That happened to me today, and I didn’t get a chance to go out into the world to find a picture for the day. I did get a couple of breaks... halftime and then the time between games, so I went out onto my back porch and into the back yard to fine images. In photography, as in life sometimes, the partial can be much more satisfying than the whole.

I’d never before today noticed how really interesting the individual feathers are on a dream-catcher hanging on the porch... and that white orchid which has been blooming for six months changes moment by moment in afternoon light. The whole geranium isn’t much to look at in the middle of January, but that one little blossom... Wow! Everybody knows the eucalyptus trees talk to me, so I can always go to them for a picture.

2012-01-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

Each of the candidates running for office in this election year, whether it’s for mayor or president, will try hard to convince a watchful public that his or her beliefs and practices are consistent with those of the majority. It is generally assumed by political strategists who advise candidates that citizens are keenly interested in their practice of religion and sex. Fifty years ago John F. Kennedy had to convince Protestants that a Catholic president wouldn’t install a hotline from the presidential bedroom to the Pope’s bedroom in the Vatican. Mitt Romney must convince voters who are not Latter Day Saints that a Mormon president won’t care what fashion or brand of undergarments American’s wear. Although Newt Gingrich’s reportable income last year was $3.5 million dollars, he is trying to convince voters that he, unlike the fabulously rich Romney, is just another ordinary man on the streets, a man just like the rest of us. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum also have their work cut out for them. To be viable candidates , all the Republicans hoping to be their party’s candidate in the presidential elections must state that they are absolutely against marriage for same-sex couples, and they must state unequivocally that they will take away a woman’s right to an abortion regardless of the conditions of her pregnancy. In San Diego two of the people running for mayor are gay. Both are registered Republicans. Gay candidates in any election face an even more daunting problem. Voters are told by many religious leaders that God doesn’t endorse homosexuals whatever kinds of undies they wear or whatever they do or don’t do when they take them off.

People running for office must promise to take us back to a time when things were the way they are supposed to be. I like a mural on the side of a building on Adams Avenue in San Diego. That mural is a reminder, without judgement, of the way some things were at a time which no longer exists. Whatever we think about the way things were, we can’t go back there.

Thanks to photography we can spend time with images from the past. One of my favorite photographs is one that was taken sometime during the Second World War. I know it was during that time because my Uncle Ed in the picture was still wearing his army uniform. My Grandparents, Amanda and Abraham had nine sons, no daughters. Sitting, from left to right: Uncle Calvin, Uncle Floyd, Uncle Walter, and Uncle Alvin. Standing, from left to right: Uncle Billy, Uncle Woodruff, Uncle Ed, Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Jim, and my Father, Luke. They are all dead now. So are the times of their lives. It's interesting for me to see the picture and know that my Grandfather standing there with his wife and his nine sons was the same age then that I am now.

2012-01-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

William Templeton Johnson was the architect for the San Diego Museum of Art. The headmaster's residence at Francis Parker School where we lived for a time is the house he built for his own retirement. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing the ornamental pear trees that are now in full bloom were planted by Kate Sessions, a contemporary of Johnson’s. The garden at his house had some of the pear trees in it.

There is nothing at all that I feel like saying about the South Carolina Primary election coming up tomorrow.

2012-01-19T21:50:00.001-08:00

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival began today at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. The Green Wave is the first film in the series. Green is the color of Islam, and in 2009, green was the color used by supporters of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi to identify each other. You should see this film if you are under the impression that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a benign presence in the world. You should see this film even if the only thing you know about what’s going on in Iran is the drive by the leaders of that country to develop nuclear weapons. You should see this film if you are under the impression that all Muslims are enemies of freedom and the West. You should see this film if you have any sense at all that you belong to the Family of Man. None of the photographs I took today represent what I was feeling as I left the theatre after I saw the film. On my way to museum I passed sculptor Donal Hord’s Aztec Woman of Tehuantepec. Considering what was done to the indigenous people who lived on this continent for many centuries before Europeans came to bring “civilization” to it, this statue can be an appropriate image for my photo du jour.

2012-01-18T21:01:00.000-08:00

CELEBRATION...Liz and Sue have birthdays this week

2012-01-17T19:10:00.000-08:00

A fierce twenty-foot cat threatens from a North Park wall. The giant mural is meant to be read. I'm trying to figure out what it says. I've learned today to point my smart phone at a blot of squiggles and let it tell me what it says... where I am directed to go. Finding the message on the street and in trees is easier.

2012-01-16T15:38:00.001-08:00

ALL PEOPLE’S BREAKFAST honoring Martin Luther King

This morning I recommitted myself to broadening discussions about politics and religion in American life and to participating in uncomfortable conversations about those topics whenever it is appropriate to do so.

José Antonio Vargas, the keynote speaker at a breakfast attended by more than a thousand people, spoke eloquently about the plight of millions of people living productively but in fear in the United States because they were brought to the country as children and not told until they were grown-up that they lacked the necessary “papers” that would allow them to stay and become the citizens they had always thought they were. Vargas was a sixteen-year-old high student in Mountain View, California, when he learned the truth of his “illegal” immigration status. Born in the Philippines, he was provide by relatives with fraudulent identity documents which helped him avoid deportation and remain in the U.S.

Mr. Vargas had become a distinguished, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist (2008) when he said he could no longer continue to live with a lie about who he is. He had to take charge of his own life by dealing with the distortion of truth about his immigration status. His first step was to be honest about it. The essay he wrote confessing his immigration status was published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in 2011. The week it was published his essay was the “most-mailed” piece of writing for The Times.

Mr. Vargas founded Define American, a project aimed at keeping conversation going about the DREAM Act , which would provide for people in his situation a path to citizenship through education or service in the military.

Vargas said his decision to come out as gay in high school in 1999 was “less daunting” than coming out as a person without appropriate identity documents. What resonated with me especially was his statement that “If we, as residents and citizens, are not engaged in uncomfortable conversations,” we are not doing what needs to be done to correct situations which hurt people who are hurting through no fault of their own.

2012-01-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

A REAL PHOTOGRAPHER
at a real birthday party
for
A REAL JOURNALIST
AND HIS REAL DAD

2012-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Pass the Word

Winter is a state of mind.
It's winter where I live,
but the pear trees don't know it.

2012-01-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't given up on the BARK project. Stay tuned...

The Gathering of Old Men

At any gathering of old men especially at the coffee shop
perhaps it’s the dark roast aroma that does it
the guard comes down after the second cup sipped slowly
and we begin to ponder and wonder out loud
ignoring all advice from Buddha and Jesus and Aristotle
about living in the present I pontificate again
citing Aristotle’s postulations about phronesis in learning
and Ken says we should read John A. Sanford
not the novelist but the Jungian shadow Side of Reality
priest suggesting we should check shadows
to see if ours are still there in old age which we all deny
but Jim insists or at least advises that music
is the answer George Gershwin had something to sing
about whatever it was Ben adds in Spanish
before Bill takes us this time to John Jack Stanford
and then David who isn’t as old as we are
says he’s not getting as much sleep as he used to get
because he has to get up at night to pee
and everybody says like the chorus in a Greek tragedy
you ain’t seen nothing yet just wait and see
pretty soon you’ll discover that the most important thing
about getting satisfactorily through the day
is always knowing where you are relative to bathrooms.

2012-01-12T21:25:00.000-08:00

Sitting alone in the tree outside my window
a new crow in the neighborhood checks me out
and talks earnestly expecting me to answer,
but I don’t know the language of crows... or doves

2012-01-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

Our family is getting a new puppy. Cali is a five-week-old chocolate lab. For another couple of weeks she will stay with her parents and her eleven siblings, then she will move in with the Davids... She'll come to our house when they have to be out of town. If their mother looks haggard, she can be excused... and commended. She had twelve healthy, hungry pups all in one litter.

2012-01-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

REGRET

My Grandma gave me a quarter a long time ago
when I was twelve... what a year that was...
and you know how you’re caught unaware
sometimes and you have no idea at all
that something important is happening.

It was the last time I would ever see her.
She was a big woman, not fat, just big.
I don’t remember her without an apron
She liked all of us and looked at us
even when we didn’t see her doing it.

Grandma led me aside from the others
and took my hand and looked at me
for a second and gave me the quarter.
She knew the gift wasn’t the money.
I had an inkling but didn’t see it clearly.

I don’t know what she gave to the others.
They didn’t say, and I didn’t ask or say
what she gave to me perhaps for fear
I’d learn that I wasn’t the most special,
the one she loved above all the others.

Grandma never worked at a paying job.
I know she got money by selling eggs
to the peddler who came once a week.
She bought thread from him and sugar.
I wish I knew what I did with that quarter.

2012-01-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Every now and then
something blooms
with such
piercing
beauty
that
words
cannot
be found
anywhere that
show how pure it is.

2012-01-08T22:58:00.000-08:00

Auld Lang Syne

2012-01-07T17:55:00.001-08:00

Children chasing birds
beside a wild sea
on a Saturday morning
maybe with dogs
and two people in love

2012-01-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

Statue of a Discus Thrower in the Balboa Park Hall of Champions

I have one of those screen savers for my computer that begins when it’s left alone for awhile showing a word that grows and swirls around on the semi-dark desktop... changing size slowly but constantly, until it is replaced by yet another word. When I came to my computer just now, the word on the screen, growing larger and light blue against a deeper blue background, was brevity... bre.vi.ty |ˈbrevitē|. Because brevity isn’t my strong suite, I decided today to give it some thought... That’s all I’m going to say... for now...

2012-01-05T21:01:00.001-08:00

Every poem has to start somewhere
and end somewhere
or not at all
which is what I prefer
it is just a matter of putting together
what you’ve got now
or had once
such as a reflection in a silent pond
and perhaps a parrot
and a moon
or a moon and parrot
and maybe a wee bit of pear blossom
and you say
what about that boy
in the red shirt and the scary dinosaur
it’s perfectly normal
for any poem
to end unsatisfactorily
if you expect to go on with it in a dream

2012-01-04T19:50:00.000-08:00

You know how it happens sometimes... You’re our looking at something and you don’t even know why or for that matter you don’t even know you’re looking at anything, and somebody comes along and asks what you see; and then you try to think of something even halfway intelligent to say, but you can’t. That’s exactly what happened when Rousseau came along today and caught me staring up into a tree. Actually, I was waiting for Margaret and Jim and Irene; and I had decided to pass the time by taking a picture. I’d got that done and was holding the camera down at my side, and for some reason I was standing stone-still staring up into the tree when my friend Rousseau came along and although he didn’t ask, “what’re you looking at?... I knew that’s what he was thinking because he was trying to see what was in the tree, too. Now Rousseau, like his namesake, is something of a philosopher. You can see it in his eyes and in the way he sets his mouth and wrinkles his brow.

Although he never actually says so, I have the feeling that Rousseau, also like his namesake, is trying to grasp an emotional and passionate side of man, which looked like what my friend was trying to figure out about me today. I have the feeling that he believes man, and perhaps other creatures as well, are essentially good when they are in what I think he thinks is “the natural state,” although he’s never spoken to me of it. Now I happen to think his insight is pretty profound. Not to call too much attention to it, but philosophical thinking is actually what I was doing looking up into that tree today, and I could tell Rousseau could tell that’s what I was doing, although, as I said, he didn’t say so. My neighbor Rousseau is a very quiet sort... and perhaps that’s what makes me think he, like his namesake, believes good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society, which the guy from Geneva with the same name certainly believed and wrote a whole book about it. I prefer to think I was pensive but not unhappy looking up into that tree today; but whatever it was, Rousseau caught onto it right away. He didn’t press me for anything except a pat on the head, which is the usual thing when we get together.

I don’t think I mentioned it, but Rousseau, who lives upstairs in my building, is a dog, and I mean that in the kindest possible way.

2012-01-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

THE MORNING PAPER RITUAL

When I’m reading the New York Times in the morning I often get worked up over some political/social situation and feel bad about what’s happening to people somewhere; but I almost never cry over the news. This morning I did. I actually dislike those television “newscasts" that focus on the grief of people who have experienced great loss. I turn off the TV when a newscaster asks a widow how she feels about her fireman husband having been killed in the burning building or a distraught mother how she feels about her soldier son or daughter having been killed in Afghanistan. So I wonder if I am doing what I recoil from seeing real journalists do on television. I've made myself believe there is a difference.

What provoked my sadness is the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo where Joseph Kabila is president. The country is usually called simply the “Congo” or “Congo-Kenshasa,” to distinguish it from neighboring Republic of Congo. Joseph Kabila became president of the country after his father Lauren Kabila was assassinated in 2001. Lauren Kabila’s presidency had followed the rein of the infamous Mobutu Sese Seko, who at the time of his death in exile in Switzerland was judged to be one of the richest men in the world... that after his having been born to a mother who was a hotel maid and a father who was a cook for a Belgian household. He became a dictator who eliminated anybody who opposed him. Pierre Mulele, his Minister of Education, ran afoul of Mobutu and was executed, but only after he was cruelly tortured. While Mulele was still alive, his eyes were gouged out, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were amputated one by one. Mobutu Sese Seko was not a nice guy.

In spite of the fact that Congo is potentially one of the richest nations in the world, the citizens of Congo today are not much better off under Joseph Kabila’s presidency than they were under his father or even under Mobutu. The country is estimated to have $24 trillion (equivalent to the combined gross domestic product of Europe and the United States) worth of untapped deposits of raw mineral ores. Congo has the world’s largest reserve of cobalt and significant quantities of the world’s diamonds, gold and copper.

So what did I learn this morning from Adam Nossiter’s piece in the New York Times? To survive, barely, families in Kinshasa cope with the critical food shortages by practicing what they call “power cut” (in French, delestage).” Ten million people in the city practice the following routine: On some days, some children eat, others do not. On other days all children eat, and the adults do not. In the Berbok family today, the big children will eat, Cynthia, 15, and Guellor, 13. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of the little ones, Benedicte, Josiane and Manasse, 3, 6, and 9. Their mother, Ghislaine Berbok, a police officer who earns $50 a month said the little ones will fuss. “Yes, sure, they ask for food, but we don’t have any. There will be a little bread for them at breakfast, but nothing more. At night they will be weak,” she said. “Sure, they complain. But there is nothing we can do.”

Delestage is universally used in French-speaking Africa to describe state-decreed electric power cutoffs. It has come to represent also the rationing of food. As a survival tactic, a head of household must painfully impose it on the rest of the family. Unlike the blackouts, it is not merely a temporary unpleasantness like having the lights go out. It means that two days a week children in most households don’t eat.

2012-01-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

composition |ˌkämpəˈziSHən|
noun
1) the nature of something's ingredients or constituents; the way in which a whole or mixture is made up: Two red umbrellas, one slightly larger than the other; one even larger yellow umbrella; sand; half a dozen people; pigeons; one ocean with slight swell; fog bank; and one American flag over all.
---------------
Not often, but occasionally I capture an image with all its “ingredients and constituents” arranged in a way that pleases me. If an American flag happens to be located in the preeminent place in the picture, it’s even better. I don’t know what was happening here. A old man fully clothed and with a heavy coat had set up his “spot” for the day on Mission Beach. Camping isn’t allowed on this beach; so even with a lot of camping gear, he can be there only for the day. The day was sunny and cool with a brisk breeze. One umbrella kept the sun off him and the two others stopped the wind. When I got to the Mission Beach on my bike this morning, the fog was so thick I couldn’t see the ocean from the boardwalk. By eleven o’clock the fog bank had receded making one more interesting horizontal element across the image.

2012-01-01T21:57:00.000-08:00

BEGINNINGS
January 1, 2012

S**T HAPPENS

The morning began very well
in church...
An important sermon...
full of truth and affirmation.

Then back at home a sewer problem
threatened to spoil the beginning
of a brand new year,
but obviously when shit happens
whatever follows
must surely be better...

And I was right...
an evening with friends...
Everything was better
immediately.

2011-12-31T17:01:00.001-08:00

Eschatology

The Mayans did it
and people paid attention...

In the Cave of the Apocalypse
St. John the Theologian
scared himself
and everybody else
when he did it...
The end of anything
is sobering but
insisting that God
is sick of the whole mess
and is going to zapppp
a bunch of recalcitrants
pronto
seems hasty...

A wait-and-see
approach
might have done more
good
in the long run.

So
at the end of this year
and in the beginning
of another one
in spite of
everything
expect
continuation.

2011-12-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

FRESH GRAFFITI

One of the recurring dilemmas for self-actualizing people is the task of sorting messages that stream to us constantly. Some of the information is just background noise which we can choose to ignore... like elevator music. Some information we may be wise to note and even commit to memory in case we may need to or want to make use of it later. Some information is critical immediately to our well being. As it comes to us, the trick is to know where the information streaming into our consciousness belongs on the continuum from useless, even silly nonsense, all the way over to critical, life preserving advice.

Someone whom I respect and love sent to me one of those ubiquitous u-tube clips that stream constantly into our digital mailboxes. This one, a video sermon by Bill Whittle, who “bills” himself as “a smart conservative thinker,” was designed to move people to the political/social side of those who don’t like the “Occupy Movement.” He begins his sermon by extolling the virtue of honest hard work and thrift and gratefulness for gifts received. Agreed... absolutely... nothing to argue against there. The smart, conservative Mr. Whittle tells us that those young Wall Street Protesters who got their degrees in basket weaving are mostly people who have never had to do anything more difficult or meaningful than changing the cat’s litter box. He says these young people have been damaged by “the self-esteem movement” in American culture. He seems not to have noticed that these are not just young people, and that many of the people participating are scholars with academic credentials much like his own. He goes on to make the point that all the good things in life, the things that make us comfortable and safe, come from Corporations, and that we should be thanking the people who manage the corporations rather than cursing them. According to Mr. Whittle, we should pay tribute in the form of money and respect to the mega heroes who manage corporations for all the good stuff we enjoy... for our X-boxes, smart phones, iPods and iPads, clean water, electricity to light our homes, gasoline for our cars, croissants, and wine coolers. What is very interesting, and scary, about Bill Whittle is that he makes a lot of sense. He makes the kind of sense that some good looking, articulate, clean-cut television evangelists make. We can relate almost everything they say in their sermons to our own experience of living in a complicated world... but only almost. He doesn’t tell the whole truth, and partial truth is sometimes more dangerous than blatant, easy-to-recognize fantasy... and building a case, an argument, around half truths presented as if they are whole truths is not only dishonest; it’s an egregious violation of trust.

Bill Whittle and I are in some ways a lot alike. As my grandma would have said, we are “cut from the same cloth.” By accident of birth, and now to some extent by choice, I live a comfortable life of affluent retirement. I am seventy-six-years-old in good physical and mental health. I can pat myself on the back for not having picked up smoking or some other drug habit and for being a moderate, one-usually-but-never-more-than-two glasses of wine or beer drinker; so I haven’t sabotaged my personal health and the good genes I inherited from the family into which I was born. I worked diligently and honestly in my career to advance to retirement without debt and with an accumulation of savings and enough income probably to see me though to the end of my life. I don’t know Bill Whittle personally, but I’ve checked his bio and learned that his virtue is of the easy-to-come-by variety just as mine has been. I’m guessing that he has had the good fortune to be often in the right places at the right times, just has I have been. He is obviously intelligent; but that means he is smart enough to know that a high I.Q. leads as often to tyranny as it does to virtue. A good read for Mr. Whittle would be the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (original French title Les Infortunes de la Vertu). He might pay particular attention to the following passage: “What is virtue if it cannot prevent the tyranny of the strong over the weak, or the rich over the poor, or those who are in power over those who are out of power! Filled with the will for power, the voices of virtue forge irons with which to chain men. And, men, stupified by their misery, willingly believe everything told them. Can virtue, sprung from such virtues, win our respect? Is there a single truth which does not bear the mark of falsehood and lies?” The novella Justine, written when Sade was a young man and imprisoned in the Bastille, contained little of the obscenity which characterized the later writings for which he is usually remembered.

Not to belabor the point, virtue is claimed by just about everybody in politics. Like Ayn Rand, Bill Whittle is a champion, a paragon of virtue, and an inspiration for Romney, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, et al. Between now and next Tuesday, Iowa and the nation are getting an earful of Whittle’s and Rand’s particular definitions of virtue. Both are ready resources for the writers of political speeches that will be delivered this weekend. Bill Whittle’s claim to virtue has the same ring to it that I hear in Pat Robertson’s sermons. In September of this year Robertson stepped into a pile of his own making when he stunned “700 Club” viewers by saying divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer’s Disease was justified (September 13, 2011). He said he wouldn’t “put a guilt trip” on someone for divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease, calling Alzheimer’s itself “a kind of death.” His notion is that sleeping around if your wife is still alive but with Alzheimer’s disease would be a sin; so the godly thing to do is to consider her dead (divorce under the circumstances he sees as honorable and virtuous) and marry somebody else in order to have connubial bliss that can be justified.

The issue then is to find ways to justify and to make seem reasonable and virtuous whatever it is we want to do. Bill Whittle does the job of making a pharmaceutical company CEO’s annual compensation of fifty million dollars seem perfectly reasonable. Take his message to heart, Mr Iowa. After all, you might one day win the lottery and become obscenely rich yourself, so why not dream a little and enjoy the fantasy of getting and keeping all that wealth. After all, you’re the one who bought the dream ticket... not the guy who squandered his money on a cold beer.

2011-12-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

No Pear Tree and No Partridges
but
Sleepy sea lions soaking sun
and
relishing surf splashed high
hundreds of cormorants
standing around in their own shit
ignoring each other
and
pelicans, a sea gull, and a pigeon
sharing a rock rising out of the sea
near where harbor seals swim
and sleep and quarrel
and a squirrel sits and watches

finally a fine foggy fog
teasing a white lighthouse wall
just up the hill from agave
all in a cluster unaware
and obviously unaffected
by the sea and me
and
Margaret and Nancy were there, too.

2011-12-28T21:44:00.000-08:00

One of my friends whose value is beyond my ability to put words to his worth is Alex Hajime Birnbaum. Alex has thrown his lot in with Blake Mycoskie and a bunch of other good people who have joined in a one for one movement committed to the idea that the lives of children can be improved by individuals making wise everyday choices. Go to TOMS web site and learn about what they are doing and how they are doing it... and how responsible people everywhere can become involved (http://www.toms.com/). Basically, the program is this: The company matches every pair of its shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. The program has expanded the scope of its mission by adding a line of prescription eyewear with the same commitment to help one sight-impaired person in need for every pair of glasses the company sells. The needy recipients of shoes and glasses are all over the world.

I believe the company is on the right track. It is a model that demonstrates the good that can be done by a for-profit company that operates with a commitment to match it’s “getting” with “giving back.” Alex guides the international operation of the company. As he told me again today about the work of the company, I remembered the words attributed to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 11:1: “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days” (King James Bible). Another translation of the Hebrew text (New Living Translation): “Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow to you.”

2011-12-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

Way to Go

Automobiles get us there.
People worry
maybe machines will evolve
all out of control
and reproduce
themselves
taking over functions
like meeting
and getting acquainted
and marrying
and reproducing
and producing
what they want
instead of what
we want.

Maybe
it’s not such a bad outcome.

We need all the help we can get.

2011-12-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

Critters... Today at The Zoo

2011-12-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

Around the Edges

Even Betsy Ross
Couldn't make a flag that
wouldn't fray eventually.

Everything dies--
A hard lesson to learn,

but she promised...
and in church, too...
so much for that!

Ah, the heaviness of regret--
so don't carry it for long...
just far enough to let most of it
or all of it drain away...

This is the only Christmas there is.

2011-12-24T22:16:00.000-08:00

‘Tis the Season

Once upon a time Americans went traveling and came back
with stories of beggars , some crawling at the edge of traffic,
some lame and sick slumped like sacks on sad sidewalks,
forlorn worn out women mournfully clutching sick babies
drugged to effect the most pitiful presentation of poverty.

A long way from Mumbai and Cuzco and Zanzibar
beggars stand at intersections holding homemade signs
claiming most need of help and better claim than others
for compassion please in the form of money not food.
I don’t know what to make of it or what to do about it.

As I hurry my bicycle past them trying not to look at their eyes
or in my car I come to a full stop and must look directly at them
or awkwardly look away as if trying to see someone I may know,
the full weight of childhood Sunday School settles on me
stirring my soul to remember Bible stories about feeding lambs.

These are not lambs, and I live comfortably in the land of plenty.
The presidential candidates aren’t suggesting solutions
about homelessness except to suggest not subtly
that anybody without whatever just isn’t trying hard enough.

Homeless on the waterfront in San Diego

Begging in Mumbai

Homeless in Barcelona

Homeless in Paris... camping on the Seine

A young girl sent begging... In St. Petersburg, Russia

2011-12-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

It Can Be Whatever You Want It to Be

I had an art teacher once
who knew a thing or two about art
and scary as it seems
looking back on it now
she knew a thing or two about me
but she wasn’t into betrayal
so when I asked what she thought
after I had made a drawing
about nothing
nothing at all
looked at it for only a moment
and nodded with great understanding
as if she knew exactly what it was
I had made
and said
yes

2011-12-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

Extraordinary Ordinary Stuff

Nancy has come home for the holidays
Jim brought Irene’s Christmas Bread
still warm from the oven so we ate it
without waiting for anything or anyone

warm wind is blowing out of the desert
ensuring a balmy holiday weekend
oranges and tangerines called Cuties
Ruth and Bill sent bread for breakfast

A red ship from Japan decorates the bay
the bottlebrush tree signals Christmas

2011-12-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a time to wonder

Christmas is a time to wonder
about all kinds of things
like why somewhere along the way
they stopped putting sashes
on girls’ dresses. Why is that?
I mean, why did they disappear?
Was it about the time of Barbie?
Did Barbie decide it wasn’t cool?

Those bands of sewn material
attached at the waist
to be pulled back and tied
and spread carefully in a bow
at the exact center of the back
were always on the dresses
my Mother made for my sisters
to wear to school and to church.

2011-12-20T18:20:00.001-08:00

When I Was a Boy

Some trees I know,
like so many people,
aren’t even from here
but they sing
and dance
and make everything
happier.

When I Was a Boy
more than half a century ago
The woods in Arkansas
sang
and sometimes danced.

People there sang, too...
and danced.
I thought all people did.
Some don’t!
Pity...

2011-12-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea still name Communism as their form of government. With most of its economy state-controlled, Belarus, although it doesn’t declare its government to be Communmist, is the only European country left with remnants of Communism predominant in its governmental structure. Belarus, China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea are all dictatorships, each with its own peculiar arrangement for choosing a leader. When the dictator in any of these countries dies or is otherwise deposed, the world waits with bated breath to discover what will happen next... Who will the new dictator be and how will he rule? The wait is especially uncomfortable when a temporarily leaderless country maintains an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Clearly the oddest of the Communist countries is North Korea. With the death of Leader Kim Jung Il this week, the world waits to see who will take charge of the nuclear arsenal. Kim Jong Un, the twenty-something son of Kim Jong Il is the heir apparent. The Rodong Sinmum, the official newspaper, described Kim Jong Un as “the spiritual pillar and the lighthouse of hope” for the military and the people. Ri Ho Il, a lecturer at the Korean Revolutionary History Museum spoke apparently for the leadership committee today. He said, “The Korean people have been coming to Mansu Hill in deep sorrow at the loss of the benevolent father of our nation with the infinite feeling of longing. Our General (Kim Jong Il) is our people’s benevolent father. He defended our people’s happiness, carrying on his forced march both night and day.” In reality, Kim Jong Il, was a hermit in his hermit nation. Little is know about how he spent his time. Even less is known about the son and successor. If the son turns out to be a nutty as his father, the poor North Korean people are in for a continuing rough ride. Will he be a puppet under the control of the a council of generals? The world waits.

2011-12-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

That Other World in Mirrors

That other world in mirrors
tells only half the story...
No... No... Not even half.

That other world in mirrors
is only ever seen partly
telling never ever the whole
truth... and at best distorted
by light and lines
half shown/half drawn
cut off by artificial boundaries.

Photographs taken early
lie all the more.

Life in the flesh
sags and wrinkles.

2011-12-17T20:15:00.000-08:00

Today I attended the funeral of Lloyd Griffee, considered by all the people who knew him to be a person of honor, integrity, and dignity. He distinguished himself in a career which included a lifetime of service as a teacher, a counselor, a school administrator, and a language arts coordinator. He served for a number of years as state secretary for the Iowa Department of Classroom Teachers. In retirement he volunteered in programs serving the homeless. In his church, First United Methodist Church of San Diego, he was part of a visitation program for homebound people. Rady Children’s Hospital presented him with a gold watch for serving 1258 hours as a volunteer ambassador.

Lloyd was gay. He is survived by his life-time companion and partner, Jer Thomas. The Reverend Jim Mowry officiated, acknowledging and expressing admiration and respect for the loving, committed 45-year relationship of Lloyd and his partner. Along with other Scriptures affirming the importance of love in relationship, Jim ended his homily with a reading of First Corinthians 13. It seems appropriate to include the reading here.

1) If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4) Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8) Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
_________________________

I’ve been wondering all day what the six candidates who say they are Christians and obviously want badly to become the next president of the United States would have thought about the funeral service and about Lloyd’s life of service to his community and his country if they had been there today.
-------
Calling himself a "traditional, classic conservative," presidential candidate hopeful Newt Gingrich said he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman and insisted he would not have repealed the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military. Gingrich said he supports a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.
-------
Ron Paul is a lifelong Christian who says he personally believes in traditional marriage. In 2004, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Paul said, “I oppose federal efforts to redefine marriage as something other than a union between one man and one woman.” In August Paul said, “I think that marriages should be between a single man and a single woman.”
-------
Jane Schmidt, a student at Waverly High School, in Waverly, Iowa, recently asked Michele Bachmann, “Why can’t same-sex couples get married?”
“They can get married,” Bachmann responded, “but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.”
-------
When Jon Huntsman was asked what he things about homosexuality and marriage said, “I believe in civil unions. I think we can do a better job in this country as it relates to equality and basic reciprocal beneficiary rights. I’m in favor of traditional marriage. I don’t think you can redefine it without getting in trouble.”

-------
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has signed a pledge sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage promising to support a federal constitutional amendment "defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
-------
Rick Santorum equated homosexuality with bigamy, polygamy, insest, and beastiality. He said, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum said in the AP interview.

On the way to my car from the service today, I stopped to take these pictures at the edge of the church parking lot.

2011-12-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

A Question of Duality...

Today was one of those days when I could find a clear theme running right through the morning, extending into the afternoon, and still discernible in the evening. In the morning at the San Diego Museum of Art I heard a stimulating, very enlightening lecture by Professor Alberto Blanco on Mexican Art, a subject which has interested me for a long time but about which I know very little. His focus was mainly on the work of Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juarez. Many of Tamayo’s paintings are such clear expressions of dualism that it is obvious even to people who have little experience with art. Two of his best works hang in the permanent collection of the San Diego Museum of Art. For the next couple of months Andres Blaisten’s Collection of 20th-century Mexican art will be exhibited at the museum. People who live anywhere near San Diego should not miss it.

Actually, this week, not just today, was full of reminders of the dualistic nature of reality. Early in the week many of us followed the breaking news that two research groups working separately at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research outside Geneva, say they have come close to finding the subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, which exists only in a theory that if proven would move scientists closer to understanding the relationship of space, time and matter, especially in creation. There was a lot of talk, most of which I didn’t really understand, about matter and anti-matter and black holes. Just yesterday I began reading Richard Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality. The sub-title of that book is “How We Know What’s Really True.”

I found my photographs for today on my way from my car to the museum, at the museum itself, and then as I walked back to the car from the lecture.

The first two paintings below are by Tamayo. The third is by Miro.

2011-12-15T19:17:00.001-08:00

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

In 1931 Florence Reece, the wife of Sam Reece, wrote the song that has been used to call attention to the plight of underrepresented poor and lower-middle income Americans in their struggles for dignity, economic rights, and civil rights. Mrs. Reece was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for United Mine Workers, who was targeted and intimated by a powerful sheriff J. H. Blair and a small of armed men hired by the mine owners. One night after the sheriff and his band had stormed into the Reece home and harassed Sam’s family, Mrs. Reece wrote the song. She took the melody from an old Baptist hymn. The song became well known all over the country when Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan sang it at rallies held in solidarity with people whose civil and/or economic rights were being threatened.

The song has been running through my head all day. The majority party in the House of Representatives is participating again this week in its now familiar circular firing squad. Even after news media reported this morning that CEOs in the United States enjoyed on average a rise in annual compensation last year of 27 percent while the median salary of Americans (remember median is not the same as average) hovered at $27,000. That means, of course, that fully half of working Americans are earning less than $27,000 a year; yet all but four of the Republican members of Congress have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes on anybody... which means they are unwilling to adjust the tax rate even on the CEO in a health services company who enjoyed last year a salary of $145 million dollars (the highest paid CEO in America, John Hammergren of healthcare provider McKesson). By the way, that $145 million paid to McKesson’s CEO is more than the corporation paid in taxes. J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon got a $19 million raise and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein got an extra $3.6 million in bonuses. My own song, “I Don’t Get It,” may become tiresome to folks who read my BLOG, but I remain incredulous. How can it be?

My grandfather wasn’t a man who cussed much, at least not in my hearing; but I remember his favorite joke. “A man paddled his son for some transgression that he had been warned not to commit, and after a couple of whacks, he stopped and demanded, “Now what you think?” The boy said nothing. The father said, “I know what you think. You think “Dammit...” Now I whup you for cussing.” Folks in the “Occupy” movement are getting the “Now I’ll whup you for protesting” response from people in power in many local governments. Even students at the University of California at Davis were pepper-sprayed when they peacefully sat-in to protest rises in college costs and to show solidarity with people in the “Occupy Movement.” It's true that the protesters sometimes don’t have a clearly articulated message. Some of them are just saying “Dammit.”

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on how to pay for something that both sides claim to want-- extension of a payroll tax holiday for almost every worker. Republicans in the Senate and the House say it can be paid for by cutting workers from government agencies... in other words, put more people out of work. Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Republicans use the slippery slope argument and say that if we raise taxes now on people who have more money than they could possibly need, the next step will be an increase in taxes on the people who aren’t rich. The dilemma for Republicans is that if they don’t act, the payroll tax will increase for almost every worker at the end of the year. In other words, in order to protect the incomes of the richest Americans they seem willing to see taxes go up by about $1000 a year on most Americans. They are having a hard time finding logical reasons to preserve the great tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthiest folks, so tomorrow we’ll learn if they are willing to shut down the government rather than to compromise.

...And when it comes to “circular firing squad” exercises, how about the Republican presidential candidates debates.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to say. I know which side I’m on... and so do most people know which side they are on. The majority of American are on the side of the people, the workers; sadly, too many of them just don’t vote.

2011-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

My friend Clyde Yoshida uses brushes to apply paint to canvas. He makes marvelous art. I go out from home into the world every day with a camera and try to see things I've never seen before. My aim is not to make art but simply to record what I see in a way that may make someone else see it, too. Today I was fascinated by a long slit in a palm tree in Old Town San Diego.

2011-12-13T22:18:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT... Yesterday I looked back on the San Diego from the high hill at the tip of the peninsula that is Point Loma. Clouds gathered around the shoulders of the city with the sun still high in the sky. The whole place looked powerfully serene. Today after the morning rain, I went for a bike ride around Fiesta Island at Mission Bay, and the whole area seemed a different place. I didn't begin the ride until mid-afternoon, so by the time I finished the ride the sun was low in the sky saturating everything with burnished copper. Even a great blue heron seemed so startled by the amazing light that it allowed me to come very close. It's easy to lose the real world in stunning images. I feel about San Diego and every other city I've known the way I feel about the Grand Canyon. I look hard; but when I turn away, I'm not at all sure that I've seen it.

2011-12-12T22:26:00.001-08:00

San Diego isn't known for clouds... or rain... or storms. What we had last night and this morning can't be called a storm, but we had a good soaking rain late last night and in the morning followed by a period of clearing with some of the most impressive clouds I've seen in the area in a long time... all of this before more clouds and more rain. I hurried out to Point Loma and Cabrillo Point hoping to get good pictures of the clouds. I wasn't disappointed.

2011-12-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

2011-12-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after my experience shooting the moon in eclipse and relating the experience to Li Po’s poem, I had a reason today to take a look at one of my favorite Japanese works of art, a wood block print by Utagawa Hiroshige begun in 1833 and finished in 1834. The print is one of the series of numbered prints the artist made of Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido. It shows a sudden shower causing the bamboo grove to sway wildly. Men are seen running up the hill with a palanquin. Others are hunkered down under the pelting rain. The print has a photographic "feel" about it. Click on the image here to see it larger. Margaret and I are fortunate to have this one and two of the other prints in the series. I took this picture of our print, so it counts as my photograph for the day.

I took some photographs of an agave that has an Asian grace about it.

2011-12-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

The verse that follows is probably the best known Chinese poem. Li Po lived in the Eighth Century. How could I not think of him when I was standing alone at 5:30 this morning on a platform behind the dining area of The University of San Diego. I had gone there specifically to look at the moon in eclipse. Li Bai (known in the West by the transliteration of his name, Li Po) would definitely have been somewhere looking at the moon this morning if he were still alive today. Last night when I set my alarm clock so I could get up early to see the eclipse, I imagined I'd be sharing the platform overlooking Mission Bay with dozens of other people looking at the moon. It's a university after all, and aren't university people supposed to be intensely curious about everything? I was alone there, which was O.K. If Li Po had been with me, he would undoubtedly have brought wine, even at five o'clock in the morning. Li Po drowned after falling from his boat when he tried to embrace the reflection of the moon in the Yangtze River. How poetic is that!
Jing Ye Si (Quiet Night Thoughts)
Li Bai (701-760)

Chuang qian ming yue guang
Yi shi di shang shuang.

Ju tou wang ming yue,
Di tou si gu xiang.

Before my bed
There is bright-lit moonlight
So that it seems
Like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head
I watch the bright moon
Lowering my head
I dream that I'm home.

2011-12-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

Watching Crows

Watching crows dodging traffic successfully
getting whatever in the road they want
I wonder why it is a man on the curb
sitting beside his grocery cart overflowing
not with the stuff it was designed to hold
cannot dodge slings and arrows of outrageous
you know what... Is it a matter of luck?
no place here for the concept of fortune...
to come to this despair... utter downness
barely if at all remembering youth and joy
and soft kindness with warm bread buttered
for him by a mother never guessing birds
would get what they want and need but he
would get edges and crumbs of loneliness

2011-12-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

Randomness

Randomness is unnerving
but like some
other pleasures
is mostly
not necessary to describe
in detail
because
everything
might dissolve
altogether
so
why
take
the chance.

2011-12-07T21:03:00.001-08:00

Michael says... Grandpa listens... Grandpa says... Michael listens...
...Can’t think of much of anything better than that...

Buddha said, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Michael is a second-year student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Today he came home for the holidays, and we talked. I like the way he sees... the way thinks... the way he talks... what he is obviously becoming. Up to now his two major areas of study have been mathematics and cultural anthropology. He is staying with the math and switching from cultural anthropology to photography in the Fine Arts Department. He told me why he is changing to photography. I like his reasons.

We walked and talked; we ate and talked; we visited the Museum of Photographic Arts and talked; We looked at shadows and talked... we looked at the way the shadows of trees change a landscape and reminded ourselves that every landscape changes every moment of every day. I introduced Michael to my favorite rainbow eucalyptus tree, and we talked. I captured an image of a section of curb that I’ll bet nobody has ever noticed exactly the way it looked at the moment when we saw it, and we talked.

The artist who paints with light has a daunting challenge. The proliferation of mage-making devices has flooded the world with images. Just about every place on earth has been captured on film or digitally. At one time or another just about every person on earth has been photographed... still and moving... and in black and white and in color. One might wonder what is left to be captured. Michael knows the problems, and he believes as I do that each of us has a unique way of seeing the world; so he is going to find images that no one else has seen and present them for all of us to see. He believes he will be an artist with photography as his medium. I believe it, too.

2011-12-06T19:00:00.001-08:00

Every morning before I begin yoga practice, which I have been doing at the beginning of every day for the past four or five years, I find one wise saying from mankind’s record of the world’s great philosophers and teachers; and I memorize the saying and hope it will stay with me through the day. A couple of days ago, I began the day with Buddha’s saying about time. He said, “The secret of health for mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, and not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” In other words, we don’t have time. It is not something we possess. The present moment is all there ever is in reality... and it can’t be grasped and held. Past and future don’t have a reality on their own. They are mental concepts in our heads. Past is a collection of memories and future is the projection of what may happen ahead. Anything can really happen only in the present moment. Nothing else regarding time exists in reality. So the task, the problem, for everyone is to get over the idea that anyone can “have” or possess time.

The teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha, that we read and hear today were passed down over five centuries as oral tradition before being first written down in Sri Lanka in the First Century BCE.

One of Buddha’s students asked him, “Are you the messiah?”
“No,” answered Buddha.
“Then are you a healer?”
“No,” Buddha replied.
“Then are you a teacher?” the student persisted.
“No, I am not a teacher,” Buddha said.
“Then what are you?”
“I am awake.”

2011-12-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

I’VE BEEN WONDERING THAT MYSELF...

Which way is the United States anyway?

How do we get there?

I mean... which of the many ways suggested by an interesting clutch of candidates who want to be president will get us back to “the way it’s ‘sposed’ to be”? One of the candidates insists that the way to get the U.S. back is to have somebody who isn’t an “insider” in Washington lead us there; and, of course, despite his long career as congressman, including a stint as Speaker of the House, and despite his career as lobbyist (while insisting that taking between 1.6 million and 1.8 million dollars in consulting fees from Freddie Mac, a quasi-government agency, doesn’t count as lobbying). Oh, yeah, he’s also the one who insists that fidelity (apparently in matters other than marriage) is essential. He’s known to be very smart. He says so himself. His third and current wife also says so.

Frankly, I’m waiting for Kim Kardashian to step up and announce her candidacy. We need someone like her to lead the charge in defense of marriage... and she may do it, too, as soon as she and her lawyers decide if divorce or annulment is the appropriate, American way to end her own short connubial adventure. After all, she has a birth certificate which shows clearly, despite her obviously “foreign” name, that she was born Kimberly Noel “Kim” Kardashian on October 21, 1980, in the United States of America, definitely not in Armenia despite what the fellow from Texas may suggest, and has worked, according to Wikipedia, as an American socialite, television personality, model, actress and businesswoman. If Donald Trump can’t be persuaded to get back in the race, I think Kimberly (Kim is obviously too casual... She’ll recognize why Donald chooses not to be called “Don”) could be coaxed into the fray for the sake of the country. Mine eyes have seen the glory. I don’t think anybody will notice that she doesn’t meet the constitutional age requirement. She’s hot. Somebody call Rush Limbaugh and tell him to get on board.

One of the candidates did the right thing and dropped out of the race after he made a mighty effort to build a campaign on the strength of personal authenticity and practical wisdom that one needs in the business world, and it became all too obvious that he expected more from some of his female employees and business associates than knowing how to make pizza and operate a cash register. With him gone, there is clearly room for someone from the business world, and Kimberly Kardashian, a business woman whose authenticity is vouched for by Wikipedia, will fit the bill.

Several of the candidates are proving that they are capable performance artists, which is probably a reasonable way to win approval and votes of citizens who believe reality T.V. shows actually show what the world is really like.

Following the silliness above, it may be foolish of me to try to persuade anybody that I am serious about photography and that I really like these three street, wall, and curb pictures.

2011-12-04T22:06:00.000-08:00

Back to Back BACH... Wachet aug, ruft ins die Stimme and Magnificat in D: Stan Wicks Conducting the Chancel Choir, Masterwork Chorale and pachem Singers with Members of the San Diego Symphony... and with Robert Plimpton, Organist.

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2011-12-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

Nina and her dad

2011-12-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Today’s Journal Photographs all have something to do with my morning bicycle ride. As usual, I climbed stairs from our ground-level apartment to the garage where I keep my bike; and as often happens, I passed close to a tabby cat that lives outside, belonging to nobody. Because the cat had a collar for awhile, all of us who live here suppose somebody moved away and left the cat behind deliberately. Nobody has been able to come closer to the cat than I was this morning. Coaxing, even with food, doesn’t work. When food is left in dish outside, it’s alway gone in a few hours, but nobody has seen the cat take it. Maybe it's taken by raccoons or opossums; so the mystery remains about where this beautiful, shy cat gets food. He appears healthy. I think perhaps he will one day come to me. He seemed to be considering it today when I got the picture; but when I knelt down and held out my hand, he scampered away.

I rode along the north side of the river today and then back along the south side to Old Town, San Diego’s earliest settlement, dating back to the beginning of the 19th Century. I got a few pictures... I guess transportation was on my mind. Just before I got to the entrance to the village, I spotted a baby’s shoe, just one, on the path. Shoes are for traveling. Of course, I wondered where the other shoe was, there were no shoelaces in the shoe, which I thought was strange. How could I not wonder about the baby... if it was a boy or a girl, if it’s parents are poor and would be a bit distressed by the loss of one shoe, if... if... if... I got the picture of the shoe beside a bit of my bicycle wheel... which set me to noticing wheels and wagons and carts. After riding around for awhile and checking R.D. Riccoboni’s art gallery, which was recommended to me by Clyde Yoshida... unusually good original works and prints, I took the trolley back to Mission Valley. What happened when I got off the trolley made me glad to be alive and awake on this fine day. I said, “Good Morning,” to a young woman when I passed her in the crosswalk as I was walking my bicycle across.

She surprised me by answering in a wonderful smiling voice, “It is a good morning. I’ve got a job. I’m going to work. It’s been two years,” and she lifted both hands in gladness.

I said, “Congratulations. I hope you have a very, very good first day,” and I hopped on my bike and rode toward home. I had never seen her before, and probably will never see her again, but today she made glad. I thought how wonderful it is that she had a job and that she is glad and grateful. All the way home I was thinking how I wish the people responsible for the stalemate in Washington could see her today... to see how important the work of ordinary people is to the well being of our country. One of the problems in Washington is that after only a few days in office, elected representatives and senators stop being ordinary people. Those who were once quite ordinary try to look and speak as if they remember what it was like being ordinary; but having salaries and health insurance and guaranteed pensions, many of them reveal that they have been almost totally self-absorbed all along and winning elections was all about them and not about the people who elected them, the people whom they are supposed to represent. My own political bias shows glaringly here, but I continue to believe President Obama, by some reckoning the most powerful person in the world, and his wife and his daughters are making a real effort to be as ordinary as possible, considering the spotlight that is on them all the time. I like his effort to give the same benefits to all citizens... like a job, healthcare, and social security for citizens in old age... that people in government enjoy. I can’t figure why such basic needs for all people is such a problem for one of our major parties. I admit that it is at least partly my political bias that leaves me surprised almost daily by the pronouncements and behaviors of most of the folks who want the President’s job, and by those in Congress who have made it clear that the thing they want more than anything else is to keep Barack Obama from getting a second term in the office. A good old-fashioned, very careful reading of the Gospel might give some of the people who can’t seem to get their feelings around and idea that all people in American should have access to basic health care, to enough food to stay healthy, and to assurance of security in their old age.

2011-12-01T21:23:00.001-08:00

HOMAGE TO CLYFFORD STILL

For a many years I’ve been wowed by the work of Clyfford Still who was born in North Dakota in 1903 and spent most of his life on the West Coast rather than in the East Coast artist communities. Art historians for the next few centuries will be trying to decide which of the abstract expressionists of the 20th century should be considered the father of the movement. With a strong nod to Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, I’d finally cast my vote for Still. By 1940 he had left representational painting inspired by country people and farm buildings and machinery and had gone almost exclusively to abstraction. I think of him often because a couple of varieties of eucalyptus trees look as if Clyfford had designed them. I found my photographs for today as I walked from the bus stop at Fifth and Laurel Streets to my volunteer work at the Museum of Photographic Arts.

Still died in 1980 thirty years before somebody finally got around to building a museum for his life’s work. A couple of weeks ago the Clyfford Still Museum opened in Denver. I’ll make a special trip there sometime soon.

2011-11-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

San Diego’s Mission Valley where I live was formed over millions of years by erosion. Geologists can read the record of the Valley’s development by studying the layers of rocks rearranged by water rushing down from mountains. I like to imagine how the place might have looked when saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths, and mammoths roamed the area. We don’t know much about the first people to reach the valley around 20,000 years ago.

A relatively short time ago in geologic time, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542. Settlement by Europeans didn’t begin until Sebastian Vizcaino arrived in 1602 with his flagship “San Diego.” He and the Catholic Fathers who came with him named the place San Diego de Alcala. Since prehistoric times the geography of the valley hasn’t changed much except for one small dam built at the east end of the valley around 1800 and a network of levies and dikes built to control the tidal flow from the Pacific and the river flowing down from the mountains. While the basic lay of the land hasn’t changed much in the past two hundred years, the look of it is dramatically different from the scene even fifty years ago. Many San Diego Old Timers remember when the valley was a sleepy stretch of dairy farms all the way back to El Cajon. Now the valley is crowded with shopping centers, freeways, and condominium complexes... with emphasis on complex.

I found my picture for today as I wandered around a hillside rising up from the valley floor. I wondered what the oracles of Delphi would have thought about some holes in the hillside, especially one that has a large crystal fixed between two layers of dirt. I’ve wandered all over the valley and the hillsides, and I don’t remember having seen crystals before this morning. The one I saw today is large... maybe a foot-and-a-half long, and I could only guess at the the size of the part buried in the dirt. It’s a mystery... and I like a mystery. I’ll go back to check on it every now-and-then. In the meantime I’m going to ask somebody who would know or perhaps I’ll go to the library to find out what causes crystals to form. If a crystal like the one I saw today had been found in a hole anywhere on Mount Parnassus that towers above Delphi, the ancient Greeks would have found an explanation for it in their mythology. They were understandably very cautious, even reverent, around holes in the ground. The Underworld, ruled over by the god Hades, was a place to be avoided as long as possible; and even a small dark pit in the earth might be a dangerous opening into the place where dwelled the spirits of those who had passed into the gloom of death.

2011-11-29T17:45:00.001-08:00

American Landscape with Rabbits...

An hour before sundown the Balboa Park landscape, while smack in the middle of urban sprawl, looks for all the world like safari country. The wild animals here aren’t fierce. I got close enough to get pictures of rabbits before they scampered into the underbrush. There are coyotes here, too; so the rabbits have more to worry about than a guy with a camera.

2011-11-28T21:24:00.001-08:00

ORDER AND DISORDER, PREDICTABILITY RANDOMNESS... Life Is Like That

I’ve been studying a year old report from astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory describing how they have discovered what is believed to be the birth of a black hole. First, I should acknowledge that I don’t know what I am talking about... that although I am fascinated by the subject, I am woefully ignorant of the science behind the report. A new book, which I will buy, is being published this week.

The object, if a black hole can be thought of as an object, is a remnant of a supernova in the galaxy M100 which is approximately 50 million light years from Earth. Even though the light from the supernova took 50 million light years to reach the observatory, astronomers are seeing the black hole when it was just thirty years old. I can only just begin to understand what this means by imagining that a picture of a baby sent through space for 100 years or 50 millions years would still be a picture of a baby. The image in the picture wouldn’t have grown old in the trip; so although the supernova which formed the black hole which the astronomers are seeing actually happened 50 millions years ago, the pictures they are receiving now shows what was happening when it was 30 years old.

What fascinates me about this story is that it says something terrifying and beautiful about the universe... perhaps about everything that exists or has existed, leaving us still to ponder what existed before the Big Bang... and how it began... and how it will end. On one hand astronomical evidence implies a beautiful order in the universe, and also that same evidence is proof of terrible catastrophes like supernova suddenly exploding and ejecting outward it’s mass.

The trick is to learn to appreciate the beauty in both order and chaos. Because I am learning to look closely, to see what is there to be seen, I have, perhaps perversely, found tree bark to be beautiful in its randomness, it’s seeming disorder. Bark is obviously necessary protection and conduit of nutrients for the living tree. On the other hand, the random change to its appearance fascinates me. The kaleidoscopic variations on the different varieties of eucalyptus trees in the cycles of seasons are examples of randomness and order together making beauty. The order and randomness are more enigmatic in oak trees, but both are there nonetheless.

2011-11-27T15:41:00.000-08:00

I wandered around "D" Street, the main drag in Marysville and found that the town has changed. When I found the building (with the blue awning in the first picture)where I had a job in a J. J. Newberry five and dime store, I caught a glimpse of myself in the store window and was reminded that Marysville isn't the only thing that has changed in the sixty years since I worked there. The Newberry Stores all over America went out of business twenty or thirty years ago... and, NO, that mural isn't what Marysville looked like when I was a boy. That was what Marysville looked like about the time my Grandfather Abraham Miles was born in Alabama in 1866.

2011-11-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

Don't believe it altogether when someone tells you that you can't go home again. I did... and it felt very good. The Feather River near where I lived when I was a teenager was a good place to begin to roam and dream of far away places. I taught for ten years in the high school a couple of miles from where I took these pictures... and then I did go out to see what things were really like in the big, outside world... and never really came back... except to visit.