Critical Situation

Pic of the Romanov Czar of Russia from wiki.

Spent the day trying to clean and arrange things. I put the drawing table out in the alcove, so maybe that will become my place to paint and draw. Without a neighbor I don't have to worry about halveseys...my half their half.


I thought to make more room, but as it is everything has seemed to expanded!! The stuff I have isn't much, but the room isn't much either...about the space of VW camper van!! Oh, a little more, but not much.

Show in the evening on National Geographic called Critical Situation, about a pilot shot down in the Bosnian war. Then one about the real King Arthur, and then one about the Romanovs in Russia. Pilot down story is kinda like Man Against Wild, with the added peril of being hunted by gun happy Serbs.

I haven't seen Man Against Wild for awhile, I think it's still on.

The White Army nearly rescued the Czar and his family. The downed pilot had a happier story to tell.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 31, 2007

Unprecedented Terror

Soldiers are always collecting souvenirs from the battlefield.
History Detectives about Civil War Balloon PBS

And then a documentary on the artist Mark Rothko. While I watched I read his biography on wikipedia…

Sometimes my study for my Tree in the Door posts overlaps with the old weblogs, JFK and Panay. Rothko overlaps with JFK. My collection of JFK assassination lore is such that my ears perked up when wikipedia said he sat beside Joseph Kennedy at JFK's inaugural ball.

Apparently, modern artists received funding from the CIA, the story layed out in a book sited below.

Following are some cut and pastes...these, what to call them...exhibits, can be complicated, and require background, study, of the jfk lore. I've made a lot of them...too many!!

quote

Despite Rothko’s insistence that he was a life-long anarchist, it came out after his death that he was in the employ of the CIA.
He was scarcely alone.
According to Frances Stonor Saunders's The Cultural Cold War: The
CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (The New Press, 2000), TS Eliot, Andre Malraux, Stephen Spender, Cszelaw Milosz Bertrand Russell, Robert Lowell, Dizzy Gillespie, Peter Mathiessen, George Plimpton, Mary McCarthy, George Orwell, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko . . . all professed progressives, with the exception of the royalist Eliot, were in the employ of the CIA.
They received funding in exchange for “battling Communism” (however implicitly) on the cultural front.
The well-known art critic and unrelenting champion of Jackson Pollack,
Clement Greenberg, a nominal leftist, also on the take, was not the least bit chagrined after being outed.
He argued that artists have no choice but to rely on patrons to support their art; whether the patrons are royal dukes, wealthy industrialists, global oil corporations, or the CIA matters little in the end, so long as strong art is produced.

end quote

Suicides
Harold Jaffe
http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/creative_writing/temenos%20s%202006/jaffe%20s%2006.htm

Here's another:
quote

In 1943 Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman wrote a manifesto, essentially, for the Abstract Expressionist Movement. One of their points was, "It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial…. Consequently if our work embodies those beliefs it must insult anyone who is spiritually attuned to interior decoration; pictures of the home; pictures over the mantle; pictures of the American scene…"
When the US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an unprecedented terror fell upon the world like so much nuclear fallout. The Abstract Expressionist artists felt keenly that they had to present a pessimism, a somber refusal to paint either reality or viscera, as that would be frivolous, superfluous, and hollow. The brutality of their art was a screaming out of rage at what their world had become. Nothing should be finished, or refined, or inauthentic. Crudeness, power, and destruction were the only reactions left.
MoMA, The Bomb and the Abstract Expressionists
by Annabell Shark

http://www.slowart.com/articles/cia.htm

unquote

And one more...a triptych!!

http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/B000OVLNK6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-4396907-3042346?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185862351&sr=8-1
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters [BARGAIN PRICE] (Paperback) by Frances Stonor Saunders (Author)

As Saunders points out, "Cultural Freedom did not come cheap." In fact, "Over the next seventeen years, the CIA was to pump tens of millions of dollars into the Congress for Cultural Freedom and related projects. With this kind of commitment, the CIA was in effect acting as America's Ministry of Culture." It was Allen Dulles' idea to organize most of this funding at arms length, through a "consortium" of "philanthropic foundations, business corporations, and other institutions and individuals, who worked hand in hand with the CIA to provide the cover." Dulles had moved to the CIA in 1950 as the case officer of the National Committee for a Free Europe, whose fund-raising wing was helped by a young actor, Ronald Reagan. The CIA role increased in 1954 when Cord Meyer replaced Tom Braden bringing fresh ideas and agents and stepping up the cultural war. The truth about the CIA's role in the CCF broke with the Patman revelations in 1964, the New York Times investigation of 1966 and the famous Ramparts expose of 1967.
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue31/johnso31.htm
The Cultural Cold War: Faust Not the Pied Piper
Alan Johnson

unquote

There was more, and I might work up a jfk post.

Next was a bio on the life of Queen Elizabeth, who had T.S.Eliot's fealty.

I rarely go to concerts, or performances, but I did go to a reading by Cszelaw Milosz and afterwards after waiting in line had him autograph his book, since water damaged, and I specified a page for the signature...a poem about Eucalyptus I liked. Eucalyptus is an interesting word, and tree!

quote

Cszelaw Milosz

Walking along the steet, I raise my eyes and see the nuclear laboratories glowing among the eucalyptus trees in the folds of a hill, and there is San Francisco Bay, metallic and darkening now, taking only some the sky’s green, yellow, and carmine.

San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City By John Miller

unquote

Then Charlie Rose has the Simpson creators on to talk about the movie...and of course Homer works at the Nuclear Plant.


DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 30, 2007

The Audience in the Dark

Well, a PBS show from Carnegie Hall was on when I got home, so I'll go with this thought from today, though I'm not sure where!!

Now, I don't mean an audience "kept in the dark".

I'm pondering the relation of performer and audience.

If mountain peaks are an audience, than the mountain climber is the performer.

And the peaks are "in the dark" until the climber paddles up the mountain.

The climber hears their "applause" and reaction as he climbs.

That must be tough to comprehend!!

Now, anyone can sit in the dark, and be a part of an audience. But audiences tend to be selective about who they watch perform.

Mountain peaks have a certain expectation of the climber.

It seems cruel that not everyone can climb mountains, but it's true...

And that's what I thought on today, the cruelty of audiences, how they select just who they'll watch, listen too, follow....

But it's a straight up cruelty, that is respected. Performers like athletes know what they're in for.

But what is really cruel is a performer that dupes an audience....does a performance that is false.

Well, now there's been a show on telling the story of military aviation from the first jets to, now, attack helicopters...

Audience and performer....simultaneous interchanging roles for the combatants. And cruel.

Pic is Mt. Conness, and I got asked today the route I took to get there...which was cool, especially considering the trepidation with which I went there last summer!! I've only climbed a few, and they're just class 1 and 2, peaks one can walk and scramble up without ropes and all. Now, the question was to find the rope route, where to start climb with ropes and all. But I was glad to provide a help for that.

Now they have the story of U2 and Blackbird...secret stuff...black audience!!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

July 29, 2007

Einstien Telling The World

Well, what I recall is that Einstien expressed regret after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Maybe the bomb is our "Pharaoh", and all the expressions of our civilization resemble the ancient Egyptians hieroglyphs, their iconographic glorification of Pharaoh.

The take on the pyramids is that they are tombs to prevent tomb robbers. It don't take much imagination to see the "pyramid", and the "priesthood" surrounding the bomb...bombs...is the same. Security is the new "maat". For the Egyptians "maat", represented by a feather balanced against one's heart on the scales of Anubis, represented harmony and order.

I don't know how many nations now manage a nuclear capability. I suspect some of them can switch into that category very quickly.

I saw a white bear on the hike, white with brown feet. Blond some would call it. It's been hanging about Glen Aulin for four years and has it's "hiker's nickname", Magatron.

On TV tonight: Are You Being Served, always amusing, Dr. Who, all the way to end of the Earth, and the last human, a vain patch of skin!(note the term ipod she uses in reference to the jukebox!), and ALIAS, a hop away from CSI.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 3o, 2007

Mundane Evil

I haven't really followed the news for the last two weeks. The McGlothlin Group was on when I got home. When I was a kid I took these political talk shows serious. Now, now I just wonder if they all just came from a bar.

I didn't latch on to a thought today, sorta like not getting "out"!!

Oh, but there was this...

Evil begins by making you turn away, and pretend it's not your concern.

Sometimes I see a petty theft, and insomuch as there is really nothing I can do, I just go about my business. Oh, I did bark at them, like I often do, to pay for the item, but I was ignored. Sometimes, I get an excuse, like, "a squirrel put it's nose in my chili, that's why I'm getting another!"

In the backyard there's a tag graffiti on an electric box...what can I do, or make of that??!!

Look closely at the big rocks on the Mist Trail, and you'll see where they have been painted to cover up things, most likely signatures with dates.

Now there's a doc. on Niagara Falls. "Artists started coming in the winter to get a new view..."

Trouble with the thieves, and vandals, is that seeing they have done what they do in plane sight, and escaped, it thrills them, and it ropes the innocents into that dilemma of not knowing what to do. It's insidious.

Now they have the story of Tesla and Edison...cool.

Of Edison..."To prove his point he publicly electrocuted dogs and cats."

Tesla came to sit on park benches and feed pigeons in the snow.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 28, 2007

Pharoah

Well, the Old Egyptians obsessed on "souvenirs".

"Just to say the world was here..."

Build a pyramid.

National Geographic is what I'm watching, show about Ramses.

Now, last night, after I logged off, National Geo. had another show about a tribe in the South American jungle. And they wore these cylinders hanging from under their chins. I have no idea how they were attached. But they looked like the false beards on the Egyptian sculptures.

Everything an ancient Egyptian did, everything they wore, their homes, entertainments, everything, were mention of Pharaoh. It was like the hieroglyphic language wasn't just a script, just carvings, and ink on papyrus, but was everything, and everyone. And it all spoke of the glory of Pharaoh.


Sometime I'll have to try and explain this better....

Next on is show about Tattoos. Well, that's souvenirs all over....

The tribe was living without any technology beyond stone age, and they are part of the fabric, the hieroglyphic world, of the jungle.

That's how I kindof see things, hieroglyphically, or, iconographically. The "language of the trees".

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 26, 2007

Hang Nest

... Fortunately, the only people that I dislike are afraid to enter it. The hole in the roof is to command a view of the glorious South Dome, five thousand feet high. There is a corresponding skylight on the other side of the roof which commands a full view of the upper Yosemite Falls, and the window in the end has a view sweeping down the Valley among the pines and cedars and silver firs. The window in the mill roof to the right is above my head, and I have to look at the stars on calm nights."

John Muir describing his "hang nest", the little cabin in the sawmill along the creek by the Lower Falls.

When I was given housing in my cabin I considered it quite a gift (and still do!!), insomuch because of the views, the Falls to the right, and Sentinal to the left, albeit somewhat marred by the road, and a telephone wire. These will be fixed when the road becomes a walkway promenade, I think.

Anyway, what Muir said, and how I feel about the cabin, are kindalike. Somehow we both ended up in a unique place, though the places themselves are humble. Mine is often referred to as gloomy inside...well, it's the way I feel at times so it's a fit!!

But here's another one...

The Glacier Point Hotel manager talking to Huel Howeser in Fire Fall episode of California Gold on PBS.

Manager: From my room I could see Half Dome in the evening before I went to bed, and in the morning I could see Half Dome after I awoke.

Huel: Oh, you were spoiled rotten!!

end quote

If by some circumstance one finds oneself living in a unique setting with a view there's a kinda pride, a pinch me I'm dreaming sense, and of course it impresses when people ask where you live. Or work. One tourist from Japan asked where we employees lived, and I described my cabin's location, and he said, Oh, you have the best job in the world!!

Well, all the employees here have experiences like that, and in other parks and tourists spots too. One brief summer working in Sequoia I was often asked how to get a job there.

I've learned to avoid the conversation. It's tough to handle, as it's a dream land place. It's not a bed of roses, but compared to "town life" it has it's merits!!

Howser's show is the closest I've seen to capturing the charm of the Valley. And the people who visit.

In truth, the vacationer in the one, or just few visits, whether it's a day or a week or two, actually experiences the Valley most truly, and takes away a precious experience.

It's hard to explain, there a tourist's Yosemite, and then there's a residents Yosemite. For the latter, one has to read their stories, or just find a way to be here.

What I think is that the brevity of a visit doesn't diminish it.

Another ALIAS is on...Sydney in fine gloomy circumstances!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 24, 2007

Small Potatoes, Big Potatoes

Sometimes I'll be maybe sitting at the bus stop and it's early morning and some hikers are sitting there too on their way to Happy Isles, and the big hike up Half Dome. Having been there now a few times, if I learn this is their first time, I try to be helpful and share some of my experience.

When I do this I always feel a bit of a "big potato".

And then sometimes in the conversation I learn that the hikers have traveled the world and climbed mountains all over and I feel a small potato...

This happened on Lambert Dome, now that I think of it. One evening I made it to the top for the first time (easy way from Dog Lake trail) and had the view to myself I thought until I framed a photograph and saw a climber scrambling up from the road, which is a steep face, but many do it. We talked a bit, trying to identify different peaks. He was from back east, and I learned ran a mountaineering school.

Next day I came across him and his wife sitting at the store picnic tables having breakfast, and talked a bit more. I had a photo of him climbing up the dome and offered to send to him when I had it developed. He graciously gave me his mountaineering school card.

Well, what I'm saying is for a moment I felt a big potato atop the dome, but a bigger potato came along!!

This just happens all the time, not just with hiking, but with painting and writing and just everything!!

Sometimes I am in fact the big potato, and I try not to...what?...be condescending??

It's a serious thing in a larger sense...Americans are famous for thinking themselves big potatoes!!

Anyway, I come back from four days out and flip through the channels. It's always a kinda shock to come back from being out and turn the tv on. The Dirty Job guy sings a good national anthem. PBS had a doc on about buildings built like things...hot dogs, donuts, ketchup bottles, ducks. And then a show about some little Arab state planning to build a whole city from scratch out on the desert. I think Brasilia was made that way, and is now surrounded by shantys.

Clearly the Arab sheik is keen on being a big potato!!

I never did send the mountaineer the photo. I dont know how much mountaineering one must do to be a mountaineer, but I'd like that, to have that epithet.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 24, 2007

Trash

On my photo walks along the creek, I keep meaning to take a plastic trash bag along. Today, after seeing this, I went back and got one. There wasn't much but over the weeks, I was becoming familiar where each little bit was resting. I gathered up maybe a quarter of a bag. Most people in the park pick up their trash, but there are always a few who don't care.

Spielberg's movie AI was on, and I wasn't paying attention, busy with hiking trip packing and planning, but it repeated, and the second time I've watched it through.

The Terminator films were about the "rise of the machines" and AI is another take, more Asimov and I Robot.

It's a bit solemn. And about illusion and reality.

I'm finding I shy away from people who cant plan and stick to it, which is a lot of people!! Thinking about my hike tomorrow I am here. Three days in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. My ankle has healed, but it's still a little sore, and I'm favoring it. A concern that walking on it will make my knee get sore with the miles I'll travel.

A deer mouse shares my cabin.

Then Starship Troopers comes on...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 18, 2007

Hummers

Pic from google images at many sites, here's one:

http://www.greencar.com/index.cfm?content=news&ArticleID=55&show=all
Arnold inspired the first civilian one, or at least gave it his enthusiasm. He's proven himself out as governor, I'd say, and here from a site is a pic of Arnold in a hydrogen powered Hummer. It would appear that enthusiasm extends to an environmental sensitivity!

He put John Muir on the California quarter.

Nonetheless, I don't think I'd last long in his smoking tent!

New show on, American Inventor. I thought up ideas for hydrogen power, and a zinc power idea I found, and posted them a long while back now. To make up an idea/invention is pretty engaging, and of course, while you will convince yourself it is a wonder, the reality of it being understood and accepted by others, would, I'm sure, make anyone jump up and down with joy!!

Tonight, a tea brewing contraption won.

There's Terminator 3D at Universal Studios.

New show ad: Masters of Science Fiction

So much in Science Fiction literature has never made the big screen.

So much more in History.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 17, 2007

Ice Whales

Pic from google search: beluga
Site I snagged it from credits Seaworld 2002
http://www.chemgapedia.de/vsengine/vlu/vsc/en/ch/16/uc/vlus/stlawrence.vlu/Page/vsc/en/ch/16/uc/pollution/casestudies/stlawrence/stlawbeluga.vscml.html

I strained my back a little, and my right ankle too, and it's really really warm. Just hung out in my cabin, and for the next couple days too.

An older couple asked where the Falls were, this by the Visitor Center, and they were looking right at them...they're gone, I had to point out, until next May. I tried to cheer them up, and they were grateful for the conversation.

Tale of the Ice Whales on National Geographic. Very "cool" story. It took altruistic concern to save the whales, and still does, and it's the selfsame thing we all need!!

I've been called sentimental...to love whales and such.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 16, 2007

Doomesday

Watching National Geographic....stories of mummies, green glass made from a meteor in the Egyptian desert (the scarab body of King Tut's pectoral is made from it), and the Book of Revelations.

There's an awful lot of these stories!!

Oh, I thought I lost this post last night, but it was over in Fauna and Flora...here I repost it:

National Geographic is on, repeat of the green glass a meteor made in the Egyptian desert. And in the commercial break: Domesday, The Book of Revelations, NEXT. So, that's on next.

"The sand was transformed into a thin layer of glass... " That after the Trinity Test in New Mexico of the first A-Bomb. There's green glass too.

A lament is often made that television, books, films, the web, everywhere we look!, is saturated with "this and that". But the thing I'm noticing doing this blog is how saturated it is with doomsday stories. I, we all, have seen so many people die in make believe, or real documentary stories.

Just before was story of Egyptian mummies, which has of course always the wonders about the next world.

You know, yoga is a simple thing, and a complicated thing eventually. I've never pursued it seriously, but believe in the benefits of stretching, and just relaxing.

Starting out in yoga the routines are simple, but the unbending emphasis is that they have to be done everyday. Once the tendons and muscles get stretched out, you want to keep them that way, and if you lay off, you have to start over.

Hiking is like that. If I go out every week, I keep my wind and leg strength. And hiking is a very simple thing, it's just walking, and it can be anywhere, I go on city hikes, or walks, along with the mountain ones. But hiking can be very involved, the epic hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail hikers an example.

Anything, I'm coming to realize, if it is started out simple, and then repeated, reiterated, can become something much more. It's the just getting started that can be tough, and then keeping to the routine. Small persistent efforts can lead to really elaborate accomplishments.

And then there's the flip side, where negative things beginning with small incremental repeating routines, become monsters.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
June 15, 2007

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
June 16, 2007

Mono Lake and Mars

A hike to Parker Pass concluded with a trip to Mono Lake when I caught a ride down from Tuolumne from a photographer friend chasing lenticular clouds which took us on a side trip to Mono Lake. Later we shared photos downloaded to my friend's computer, and while doing this a show about the robot explorers to Mars was on...does everyone do this!!??...watch TV while on line or computing??

Anyway, if Mars is terraformed by introducing species from earth slowly, it will be a lot like Mono Lake. Mono Lake has shrimp, flies, fly larva, seagulls, and a handful of other things...all in exceptional numbers. At one time, and somewhat still, the entire shore to a width of about three feet out was black with flies, that, to add to the mysteries of the place, live a few inches under water. I think I have that right!! One early observer noted there was over a hundred miles of flies!!

Some harsh environments on Earth have little species variety, but do have an abundance of species that are there. That's what will happen on Mars.

I think that's the point I wanted to make with this post!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 14, 2007

Trespass

Well, I was away to Bakersfield, but thought of this word "trespass". It rings in my head from the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, but the sense I've been thinking of is when you trespass on some one's property.

Walking in the city is very tough. Most roads don't have sidewalks, and the only public place to walk is along roads, except for parks, bike ways, and such set aside for walking. At home I'd go to the ocean, walk along the beach, on the pier, around Balboa Island, the later I could go with my dog. Walking with a dog is another level of difficulty!

City space is carved up by private property lots, and one cant walk on them, it's trespassing.

To set foot on private property engenders a kindof childhood fear of retrieving a baseball from unfriendly neighbor's back yard. One of those "I dare you to do it!"

So the Pope comes on and says only Christian Catholics can be saved, which is , only another version of Christians saying only Christians can be saved, and that notion is common to religions, each seeing themselves as the only path to salvation. I suppose it's a trespass to say this is all whooey. Brought up Lutheran I wasn't at home in a Catholic church (San Juan Capistrano), but was respectful. I didn't dare put my fingers in the mysterious bowl of water! I don't know, it's like the Pope is trashing the whole notion of being saved.

One should hit the save button as often as possible!!

And then a Senator comes on and says Bush should stick to his word and seek out terrorists in whatever country their hiding in, as in Pakistan, and, well that's a double dare you to do it!!

Some yards you just cant go into.

Fans running onto the baseball field... Don't know! But maybe that's the nature of blogging!

Postcard pic of Capistrano's bells. On a visit with my folks I thought I heard these bells ringing, and remembering where I saw them, I ran off. When I got to them I found they weren't making the sound, but were a recording. Disappointed, I thought to return to my folks, but found I was thoroughly lost. I wandered a bit in tears, by the talo vats I recall!, and then a Black family rescued me and returned me to my folks, and that dried my tears.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

July 11, 2007

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Before work I watched TV a few minutes, and Burns PBS Civil War documentary was on, and the tale of Southern Cavalry Officer Bedford Forrest. At first I thought the tale was about a Northern officer, but no, he was an exceptional Southerner. And of course historian Shelby Foote had some things to say, and he said Forrest was a born genius for cavalry somewhat like Keats was a born genius for poetry. Well, that made my ears perk up and I thought all day what in the world kindof correspondences there are between soldiering and poetry!!

After work, I google up Beford, and it's quite a tale. Foote is often referring to Keats, one of his favorite authors, and all the google tonight was worth this quote, and a bit about Forrest Gump.

Nathan Bedford Forrest
"A fact is not a truth until you love it."
John Keats

In the 1994 motion picture Forrest Gump, the eponymous Tom Hanks character states that he was named after his ancestor General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and there is an edited sequence from the 1915 pro-Klan film, Birth of a Nation, showing Hanks as the General in Klan robes.

I'm not sure how eponymous is being used there!!??

Homer would have had it that Forrest had a god with him. Somewhat like Poets with their Muse.

And this is pertinent:

Civil war, such as you have just passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings; and as far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings towards those with whom we have so long contended, and heretofore so widely, but honestly, differed. Neighborhood feuds, personal animosities, and private differences should be blotted out; and, when you return home, a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect of your enemies. Whatever your responsibilities may be to Government, to society, or to individuals meet them like men.
The attempt made to establish a separate and independent Confederation has failed; but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully, and to the end, will, in some measure, repay for the hardships you have undergone. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the merits of the Cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, has elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms.
I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous.
N.B. Forrest, Lieut.-General Headquarters,

Forrest's Cavalry Corps

Gainesville, Alabama

Then again, maybe not, Al Quida's list of grievances always seems to end with "unveiled women". But many of the Arab states have landed on civil rights watch lists for, of all things, slavery.

Forrest made some of his fortune selling slaves.

Steven Segal back to back...with Hollywood's invincibility...and a speech about the oil cartels!!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

July 8, 2007

Past as Layers

After the Dirty Dozen, an awful movie!, I flipped to Discovery Channel and it's a survival story...I'm guessing after a meteor. Lots of survivalists tips.

A friend showed me some of their art, one a portrait with words, cant remember exactly, but about the past being like layers. More memories and souvenirs.

What's Holy? Oh, that's what I thought about during the busy warm day. Another friend posed what makes a man holy??

They're blowing holes in a mosque in Pakistan so hostages will have an escape route.

Photosynthesis is interrupted. Fernando gets to ground zero, it's a meteor, and doesn't survive.

And they save the seismic record.

That's what makes someone, or something holy, being saved. A favorite souvenir.

ALIAS is on...We did it, we saved the world! and Sydney answers...Something like that.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 7, 2007

Global Snoring

On TV when I came home…

It Could Happen Tomorrow

Then….

Full Force Nature

Then...

Well, it’s the weather channel, and the normal forecasts with music.

There is certainly a kindof giddy sardonic euphoria to being in disasters, and a sardonic kindof of black humor. O my Gods, and Holy Craps.

Okay, it’s “give out attention” to Global Warming, what?, tomorrow, on the 0707007, James Bond!! Day…I don’t know, they’re all getting married in Vegas…

Gore has it we should all watch the Weather Channel, I have it on! Okay???

But wont it divert everyone from other channels’ preoccupation…Global Warmongering…(a site has T-Shirts displaying both) which the advertisers pay big bucks to scare everyone??

Here’s a scare. It’s hot as the dickens, and the Bunkhouse Gang across the alcove propped open their room door, and the alcove door, for ventilation, which meant there was nothing between my mini refrigerator in the alcove and Black Bear..,and having an over active imagination, I could see it…Black Bear saunters in passed the snoring Gang and snuffles the refrigeration…all on the quiet…but the prop fails and the door slams shut behind Black Bear…oh, the horror….I just shook my head on a flipflop trip to the can…the night is quiet and the snoring peaceful…why wake anyone??

Of course, Global Warming can be countered with Global Warmonger which the SaganSages have it can kick in with even a small local NukeWar and the resultant Nuclear Winter!! Whatever happened to that concern??

The night is quiet and the snoring peaceful.

Pic is from a short lived comic with a remarkable title!!

What happens to Charleston exrapolated from old big quake of 1886. A second showing.

It takes almost two hours to do these posts...Letterman and then funny Ferguson!!...OctupusSquids!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 6, 2007

Apophis

Dr. Who is kinda grim. Some robot creatures are on their way from the fringe of the solar system…Derelicts?? It’s hard to follow…

New season of NOVA is on now, hosted by an astrophysicists….and Apophis is on it’s way from the edge of the Solar System. Well, that’s cute, in an animation it hits Southern California, and my home.

I’ve never gotten over the Martians landing in Silverado Canyon (Sunday Picnics) and Huntington Beach (night fishing on the pier…phosphorescence in the waves.)

That's Set, allied with Horus, spearing Apep. I have an old poem about this...in storage...if and when I recover it I'll add it..."Hail and well met, Square Ears..."(Spock, with his pointed ears from Vulcan) it begins.

The battles between Horus and Set were like an early comic book. In fact, all the old gods seem to have taken up residence in the adventure comics, along with Xena and Stargate!

Well, next on NOVA is bit on weight, as in explaining overweight, and on another channel...Big Medicine!!

a poem

Oh, I've seen desire, and envy the object,

The girls' long pause of deciding

In front of the desert refrigerator

While I wait patiently to load another tray of pies and puddings and parfaits.

DavidDavid

Everyone is drinking too many sugared drinks. Just cut back on that.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

July 5, 2007

Hyperion

I came home and National Geographic was showing a bit on Ancient Astronauts, Van Danniken and all. They do a lot of these kinds of shows!! Last night it was crop circles. The question with that one should be what is compelling the crop circle makers. Is it just the fun of making a hoax? Do they know themselves?? Sheesh...what compels me to Blogg!!??

Anyway, a long time ago, on old GEnie, I posted a notion about a giant snowball in space. I thought of it as a habitat for a space station. The surface would be frozen, but inside it would be liquid, and the techniques of undersea habitats would come into play. I think it would work, the surface would be translucent enough for things to grow and live in the liquid water...oh, I had dolphins swimming about in this planetoid made of ice and water.

But on old GEnie I got poo pooed because it was said water in space would just evaporate away. I still, to this day, do not know what exactly happens to water, say. in orbit around the earth. I thought back then that distance from the sun would play a big part, and there would be some kind of horizon orbit from the sun where water would freeze solid and stay so. Clearly comets have water...

And here today on MSN news is the story of Saturn's moon Hyperion. I add it to my Snowball lore.

Hyperion's place in the Greek pantheon is worth a read...see Wiki. And let me go find Keats...


Hyperion Book 1st
Deep in the shady sadness of a Vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of Morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and Eve's one star,
Sat grey hair'd Saturn quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his Lair.
Forest on forest hung above his head,
Like Cloud on Cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece:
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Hyperion
John Keats


Is that all there is, of this Epic?? Bit like the John Muir trail hikers that only get as far a Vernal Bridge!!

I'm contemplating doing the trail...it would take two weeks and all my vacation time. But the Hoffman hike was exhausting because of the heat...I'm still dehydrated. And I can visit with family and friends, go places with them...if I stay in the Valley. And explore the Tuolumne trails I haven't been on. The latter is an opportunity I have now, and may not later. so it's on deck.

Almost forgot to watch PBS 1812 Overture.

Oh, here's a bit...

quote

Keats's first book, Poems, was published in 1817. Sales were poor. He spent the spring with his brother Tom and friends at Shankin. It was about this time Keats started to use his letters as the vehicle of his thoughts of poetry.

unquote

Keats, of course, had TB.

The Dolphin widget came back...have a look.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 4, 2007

Precession of the Equinox

National Geographic is on with tale of how the moon was formed. It's responsible for maintaining our tilted axis, which give us the seasons. There is a whole list of things the moon does.

Well, I thought to look some of this up, and found this site, which concludes the sun is in a binary star system...it has a dark companion.

http://www.newfrontiersinscience.com/Papers/v02n01a/v02n01a.pdf

quotes


2 Gravitational forces of the sun and the moon acting on the earth’s bulge to cause a torqueing force on the
earth, which causes (or partially causes) the axis about which the earth rotates, to slowly shift its direction
(“wobble”), which then results in precession of the equinoxes.


In examining the mechanics of the motion of precession, one notices:
• The North Celestial Pole on its 23.45 degree incline slowly traces a large circle in the
sky, pointing to different pole stars over thousands of years
• An observer on Earth, at the point of equinox changes his orientation to inertial space
at the current rate of about 50.29 arc seconds annually. At this rate the entire
precession cycle time required to traverse all twelve constellations of the ancient
Zodiac, is 25,770 years, although evidence indicates it is declining.

unquotes

"Some creatures have breeding cycles linked to the moon."

I find I'm of two minds! One tries to understand science, and the other, more heart than mind, doesn't think about things so much.

And this from Wiki...

The iconography of Mithraism is now recognized as having pronounced astrological elements, but the details are debated. One scholar of Mithraism, David Ulansey, has proposed that the cult was inspired by Hipparchus' discovery of precession. The centerpiece of his analysis is the tauroctony an image of Mithras sacrificing a bull. According to Ulansey, the tauroctony is a star chart. Mithras is the constellation Perseus, and the bull is Taurus, a constellation of the zodiac. In an earlier astrological age, the vernal equinox had taken place when the Sun was in Taurus. The tauroctony, by this reasoning, commemorated Mithras-Perseus ending the "Age of Taurus" about 2000 BCE.

unquote

To go with this I'll go get the Zodiac of Dendera...

I thought to do a poem...from this... I was putting trays in the big box that holds them, my behatted head low towards the carpet, and unbeknownst to me, a tourist with one hand on the top of the box, was leaning over me to look at the grill menu high above, and,.. I dont raise up quick, age slowing me down....and as I did raise up my gaze traveled from toes to her lovely face, traversing all the loveliness inbetween!! A procession indeed, I thought, remembering my Valley musing of the post Villages. Sometimes I missthink precession for procession, and I got to thinking of the precession of the equinox, and the zodiac, and thought to make a poem...how to explain...visiting each village traveling along that marvelous picture of Isis from Dendera and overlaying it on the zodiac. She wore white short shorts and a small blue T...:)

Sheesh, now there's a show on about female bodybuilders...a bit too sceintific I'd say!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
July 1, 2007

Proteus

ALIAS is on. I watched the ending episodes, the first I had seen, in re-runs, like four a nite on TNT, and now I come across the beginning ones. Her father makes a speech about impending oil crisis at birthday dinner party in this one.

I can remember things, but forget names...like trying to remember an actors name...and was thinking of one of the old Greek myths, and it came to me...Proteus.

Sydney is Protean!!

Here's a quote from wiki:

He became the son of Poseidon in the Olympian theogony (Odyssey iv. 432), or of Nereus and Doris, or of Oceanus and a Naiad, and was made the herdsman of Poseidon's seals, the great bull seal at the center of the harem. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar from several cultures, will change his shape to avoid having to; he will answer only to someone who is capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of "versatile", "mutable", "capable of assuming many forms": "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

unquote

That's a good fit with ALIAS!!

I looked about for a pic...of a bull seal...and found a "bull" seal...that's how language is, and it's protean malleability.

This may be the subject that preoccupies me most, day and night.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

June 31, 2007