I watch a parade

Douglas MacArthur, or close to it

I know too much about General MacArthur to be a fan of his, but it’s always a pleasure to see someone channel him for a parade. This man did a pretty good job of it, too.

We got great seats for the parade because Jaime and Bill set them up early on the day of the parade in an area that they marked with chalk the previous day. That is the local custom in Huntington Beach, and it worked just fine. The trick, they told us, is to return and darken the chalk marks from time to lest they fade away. Fading invites poachers, squatters, and other riffraff.

I think parades are a good idea. Entertainment comes from all sides, not just down the center of the street. We had religious zealots, hippies, wierdos, and scantily-clad young lovelies to amuse us. One of the trendy looks this year is the Daisy Mae, modeled after Daisy Mae Yokum from the Li’l Abner comic strip. The girls show cleavage, plenty of midriff, and they unsnap their jeans. I would have photographed one of them, but I was too stunned each time to lift my camera to my eye. Maybe next time. It is a definite gap in my photo gallery that requires correction.

Speaking of cleavage, I noted that I saw more of it in one weekend at the beach in California than I see in a year in Tucson. I think the beach folks have an advantage. I believe such displays reaffirm one’s faith in the natural order.  At least, they do mine. I noticed, when living in Portland, the effects of constant gray, overcast skies. In Tucson I notice the effect of not living at the beach where my faith in the natural order was constantly refreshed. Every locale has its trade offs, I guess.

I discovered while writing this post that Wonderbra sponsors National Cleavage Day in South Africa. They cleverly avoid political favoritism by declaring themselves “Firm supporters of both the left and the right.” See what you can learn from watching a parade?

I especially like local parades. The Pasadena Rose Parade, like the Portland Rose Parade, is too slick and ambitious for my tastes. I like a bit of goofiness and unpredictability. As an example, one of the horses relieved himself at the very beginning of the parade right in front of us. It was a conspicuous torrent that drove several spectators from their seats.

Excuse me?

This is the horse.  He seemed quite proud of himself.

The parade included plenty of bands, a few acrobats, some Shriners, some Democrats, and a few entries that were a pretty flimsy excuse to get folks with no talent and conspicuous potbellies in front of their neighbors. That, too, is a characteristic of local parades, and I think it is a good thing. As long as the parade is limited to two hours, let it accommodate a few Gong-Show wannabes.

There also was a strong military presence. I was pleased by the warm reception all of the military folks received as they marched by.

The Huntington Beach parade is preceded by a 5K run. If you go, consider entering the race. It follows a lovely course parallel to the ocean, and the course is mercifully flat. The July mornings are also cool. I have a few groovy photos of the racers, but I’m out of space for this post.

I had fun, but it’s good to be back. In Tucson I rely on yoga to reaffirm the natural order for me—not to say I wouldn’t appreciate multiple forms of affirmation. You can’t be too careful about such things.

Fire in the sky on the 4th of July

The 4th of July is a celebration of our ability to grasp and experiment with a new idea. The new idea, in this case, was democracy.

The Founding Fathers remain our best role models for courage, innovation, and getting a big job done in spite of savage personal rivalries and a lack of history to guide the effort.

I did not get any sense of that from my studies in school those many years ago, but now my library is blessed by the addition of books. They include A Leap in the Dark; George Washington’s War; Washington’s Crossing; and Jame’s Flexner’s abridge biography of George Washington, simply titled Washington.

These books are but a small sample of the literature now available that makes the Revolutionary period as fresh and interesting as your favorite television action show. Kids these days have an embarrassment of riches available to them if they care to take advantage of it.

Speaking of riches, there were these fireworks on the 4th of July. This year I got some usable photographs of the fireworks display at Huntington Beach. I discovered that it works pretty well to set the shutter at 1/10  of a second. It seems to catch a pleasing amount of blur. You can decide for yourself if you agree. You can a few images on my web site, or see 62 of them in my Picasa gallery.

Watching fireworks brings to my mind a number of lines of thought. The explosions look like stars. They make me think of what I might experience in deep meditation. Some of them look biological, jelly-fish-like shapes hanging in the black sky.

I will probably get the one you see here enlarged to hang on my wall. Oh, yes, it also reminds me of a dandelion ready to reproduce.

It’s always nice to hear from you. Let me know if any of the images speak to you.

We have a good month!

Peanut butter crank

June 2009 was the fourth-best month in the 23-month history of this blog! Shazam! People get here all kinds of ways.

Who woulda thought that someone on the planet would google “peanut butter stirrer” and end up on This Just In!? Just such a person was here, and helped me raise June figures to 4th place overall.

As far as I know, I don’t have a lot of regular readers. It’s mostly Google drop-ins who come by. Everyone is welcome, of course.

I now have 351 posts, so I am not going to attempt a “best of” list. However, if you have a favorite, I would like to hear about it.

Given the unknown status of regular readers I would be pleasantly surprised to have a visitor with favorites.

In any case, whatever the cause, I do like seeing the numbers rise, even if it is just a statistical oddity.

I will be celebrating the 4th of July, so I might miss a post or two, but you’ll be busy also.

When I get back I’m going to post about the three books I have about The Andy Griffith Show (TAGS, to its fans.) It’s about time that I sat down and read them!

Primary colors

TaylorJo and her bike

The gurus say that our minds are colored by the things we think about. They also say that what we think about feeds on our thought energy, and expands accordingly. 

There was a Star Trek episode about that many years ago. Captain Kirk, who had landed on a strange planet, conjured up an image of his old school rival who then proceeded to beat him up, as he had done at the academy. Once Kirk discovered that the fight was a figment of his imagination, he stepped out of it. Kirk had discovered the power of mental projection, at least, in the context of that planet.

The picture you see here, rich with bold colors, is of TaylorJo. She lives on the other side of the country now, and I recently spent some time with her when she visited Tucson. This photo is from last Christmas.

She colors my mind when she is around me. One evening, before dinner, she sat down with her friend Téa and played a duet on Lin’s piano. That is possible because Lin’s piano is in our front room.

I made a short video of the two girls playing a duet. Click the link to see it. I’m a simple person, and the notes in a piano score are as baffling to me as algebra. The two young ladies played together as easily as anything. Being sentimental, I got a bit weepy as I recorded the performance. It was a sweet moment. I especially enjoyed the “false start” at the beginning of the scene, and then their getting the rhythm.

We complicate our lives by coloring our minds with less worthy, less wonderful, less delightful things.  Why would we not spend all the time we could watching children make music, or watch the sun rising, or bread turning golden brown in the oven?

Our thoughts feed reality. Let us choose them carefully. It serves us to turn away from that which we do not want to encourage, and to color our minds with the primary colors of sweetness and joy.

Namaste.

 

I interview myself

Dan Wilson

Interviewing one’s self presents two challenges. The first is that the subject of the interview ought to be interesting. The second is, that the interviewer ought to have some talent at interviewing.

But, no matter.

There is also the choice of format. I could use the Donald Rumsfeld approach: pose your own question, then answer it. To wit: Am I The Best Secretary of Defense Ever? Some people might disagree, but I think so. And so on.

That approach turns me off.  I would love to have a good interviewer. Dick Cavett. David Frost. Bill Moyers. Charles Kuralt. But, I fly too close to the sun with those names.

I’m stuck with me. Here goes. ”TJI” denotes the question from the blog editor, “DRW” denotes the response from moi.

TJI: What motivated you to start a blog?

DRW: I’ve started four blogs, actually. Each revealed a different facet of my interests and ambitions. One consisted of book reports, one was about Tucson, the third was about business and management, and the fourth is This Just In! My motivation was to find and define my voice. That’s a poetic turn of phrase, and a bit self-flattering, but that’s the best answer I can offer.

TJI: How is This Just In! going?

Scene through my viewfinder

A saguaro at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix

The talk on the street is that the  saguaro cactus is an anarchist species.  Each plant grows willy-nilly, impervious to advice or genetic influence. It is not about to listen to anybody.

The crested variation goes all out to flout conformity and to reject prevailing social standards. The specimen shown here lives in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

Arizona is only slightly less anarchic than the saguaro, but it does have its charms.

Click HERE to take the short tour of a few of them.

Count the miracles

A leaf on a rainy day

How many miracles do you find in this scene from last winter in Chapin, South Carolina? The rain drop knows how to shape itself into that familiar teardrop shape that is common to all water. The water itself knows how to circulate around the entire Earth. Two weeks from now it might be part of an ice cube in my drink, or be lapped up from a mountain stream by a bear.

The leaf knows how to form those little saw-tooth edges, and the tree knows when to take its seasonal rest.

A whole bunch of people invented and built a digital camera for me to use to record the scene which, fortunately, I had the presence of mind to slow down and notice. Other people invented computers so that this leaf can be seen from nearly any place on the planet. I had friends and family to accompany me on this leisurely stroll.

It is an embarrassment of riches. If all this is possible, what else is?

My new look

I noticed the text was sliding off the page of my blog. The reason turned out to be that they retired the template I was using. Hence, this new look.

On having a Latin lover

My beloved sister-in-law, may she rest in peace

Joey, a good friend of mine, and a lady of great reserve and propriety, asked me how the governor of South Carolina could have a girl friend, given the circumstances of his life. For that matter, she asked, how could any married man do that.

I can’t speak for the governor, but I can speak from my own notions of manhood, and from a knowledge of male tradition and myth.

By the way, I illustrate this story with a picture of my beloved sister-in-law. She herself had a lover, a fact that some people could not reconcile with her sweet nature. I had no problem with it, but that’s a story for another post. Patty was half Mexican and, being nearly twenty years gone from this Earth, can fill my need for a picture of a Latin lover.

And now, on with my story.

Men are capable of two feats of imagination that affect their behavior. This may apply to women too, but I’ll leave the ladies to comment on that.

One of the feats of imagination is to create separate mental realms. I refer to this phenomenon as, “Meanwhile, in another part of the forest…” The gist of it is that men can easily imagine having two—or more—separate identities. It’s not unlike Odysseus and his sojourn with Circe, the enchantress. He lived with her in a separate universe from his wife and his circle of friends at home, and he might have spent the rest of his life with her if his crew had not grown restless and demanded that they sail away. This sojourn with Circe is literally a matter of mythical proportions. Buenos Aires was, apparently, the governor’s version of Aeaea, the island where Circe ruled.

The second feat of imagination is to see the door to Aeaea as a personal challenge. To not pass through it can be perceived as an act of cowardice. Thus, it is not so much the act of vanity it appears to others, it is rather perceived as an essential rite of passage that must be explored. When a man is intoxicated by infatuation, or enchanted, as Odysseus was, this is not a great leap for the male mind.

A man can fully accept, under the potent effects of testosterone, that the two parts of the forest are connected by a private rift in the time-space continuum. He can accept that he can move inconspicuously back and forth, and that the dangers of going to and fro are part of the challenge to his personal growth. The reporter at the airport was the fly in the ointment for the governor. He didn’t account for it when he created his personal mythology.

I don’t really know if Joey took my response seriously. Whether you do or do not, I welcome your thoughts.

I’m on Facebook again

 

I am on Facebook for maybe the third time. I’m still trying to figure out a use for it. Anyway, I’m there.

The ambience is strange. It calls for an avatar of some kind, or if not that, a photo that shows perhaps my right ear, or just my nose. Maybe my  full face, but with most of it lost in shadow, would fit the social network style.

If  I used an avatar, which I don’t, it would be the one you see here. Instead, I have my own photo in my profile.

I also sent away for an operator’s  manual for Facebook. I know I’m supposed to be able to figure it out for myself, but that is too much work, and I don’t like clicking buttons I don’t understand.  I might spam all my friends with some bizarre Facebook ritual or something. Any software that “pokes” people should be approached with a measure of caution.

I was on MySpace for a while, and I learned that social networking sites bring to the surface a couple of peculiar forms of vanity. One is the number of friends a person has. The other is the amount of traffic to one’s profile. MySpace had a hit counter. I don’t know if Facebook does that or not. Maybe I’ll be spared the low-hits depression cycle.

In any case, getting one’s ego in a knot over a social networking site is pretty lame. If you want to visit my site, and help me pump up my numbers, click HERE. Of course, you have to be a registered Facebookian to get past the gates.

If I learn anything useful from the manual that is coming in the mail I will let you know.