Rose Sky, Rose Sea, Rose Petals

Today would have been my father's 89th birthday. Unfortunately his years stopped counting forward when he died at the age of 73 in 1992. For years after my family had gathered to scatter his ashes into the sea from this very wharf, Roger and I walked down these old planks to toss roses into the bay for him. We did that on his birthday and the anniversary of his death. It was a spontaneous ritual, one that sprang out of having no grave to lay down our flowers or our tears.
Being back in California on my father's birthday gives us this special heart-tugging opportunity to walk down the wharf for him again. This time we are not going to toss fresh roses in the bay. Instead, I saved these rose petals from our yard in Washington. We'll go down to the wharf after sunset Wednesday, and send our love and rose petals down into those stormy waters, saying out loud to a man who's been gone a long time that he is still dearly loved, missed, and remembered.

Do Sea Otters Have Bellybuttons?

I wish we had more than this question, but we're tired and it's been a long day. We drove 75 miles up the coast to San Francisco on Sunday, had lunch with Elena (Roger's youngest) and her partner Jimmy. We walked through Golden Gate Park and the panhandle. Saw people that were like flashbacks to an earlier era, pierced and tattooed, painted and preened. We drove home with the sun setting on the edge of a magnificent continent. We remembered why love this part of the world.

But the question remains, do sea otters have bellybuttons? I photographed this sea otter on Saturday and had an opportunity to be fairly close to it. When I looked at this photograph, I thought I saw something that looked very bellybutton-like (click on the pic and take a look). What do you think? What we've been really intrigued by, though, is the presence of a gull hanging out very close to the otters. They seem to be waiting around for some inadvertently dropped food, or maybe they clean up whatever morsels have been left behind. We just don't know, and it's only been the past few days that we've noticed this interaction. I guess today we have more questions than answers.

The Times They Aren't A Changin'

We got sidetracked by audio. Wow, does that ever eat up hours and hours of time. While I baked bread on Thursday and Roger put up shelves to make our little space a little more organized and spacious, we also worked on an audio file. (An interesting project for two non-musicians who have un-used audio programs on their computers.)

Here's how life happens. I was listening to Thom Hartmann's show on Air America Thursday morning when the 10:00 am news break came on. The reporter from Free Speech Radio Network was talking about the arctic becoming ice-free in the summers. I was listening while I baked bread. There was something about the cadence of her voice that reminded me of Simon and Garfunkel's 7 O'Clock News - Silent Night. Roger came downstairs and listened to the news piece and said it reminded him of it as well. That was it. We were off on a tangent to make this updated version. (Her voice is the first piece of the news we used.)

But even before that, we had both read an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer about a Washington Congressman, Jim McDermott, who the paper identified as one of nine US representatives who had voted against Christmas. What? We have no global climate policy, no single payer health care, no updated CAFE standards, no Constitutional accountability, no compliance with the Geneva Convention against torture, no open government, no caps on spending for the war, but we do have a new resolution recognizing Christmas and the Christian faith.

I guess this must be our contribution to that little piece of hypocrisy.

All sounds were borrowed without permission from the internets. I googled free mp3 download of Silent Night, and this version came up. The rest of the audio was found on Free Speech Radio, National Public Radio, and CNN. We thank them for seeing this as a fair-use creative endeavor meant only to educate, entertain, and enlighten.

Breathing in Time With the Sea

We're still here. We're watching the world outside our windows. We're reading the news everyday. We're walking along the shore, but it's the wind that brings tears to our eyes. We watched Judgment at Nuremberg last week. We're expecting Inherit the Wind on Tuesday. We're living life in the here and now. We're lamenting the past and fearful about the future. We're seeing dolphins through the open door while we do the dishes. We are learning how to breathe in time with the sea.

The first link above takes you to You Tube and you can watch the scene where the Nuremberg verdict is read. Tell us it's not relevant to the times in which we live.

Panorama

I have been out shooting panoramic photographs of the sky and bay from the deck. It's hard not to keep trying to capture the entire breathtaking scope of it, so I keep at it. The light and shadow, color and hues change all day long.
It's just insufficient to say it was a cloudy day. The grays and blues have a palette that is impossible to describe and even harder to match without seriously abrupt transitions. These are five photos taken a mere one or two seconds apart. This view is looking at the light in the sky from east to west.
It was much easier to photograph a calm sunset. The sky was completely accommodating with even and easy shading, and the calm bay reflected it with perfect symmetry. These are five photos again taken a few seconds apart. (It's our new header.)
On Tuesday a stormy sky stirred up the bay with waves that thundered and crashed for hours. There was no way to even get a good single shot let alone three or five to convey the sound and fury of that much water moving.
An older, experienced surfer took his board out for a last ride in those waves on Tuesday. There were 20 foot swells. He lost the tether to his board and couldn't successfully swim this pounding surf back to shore. On Wednesday the sun rose through a half-shadowy sky, and the waves still roared.

in sickness and in health

thank you all who left such encouraging comments on the previous post about our blogname uncertainty. we are not worthy. (that's a "wayne's world" reference, google it)
our garden here in sunny (so far) capitola. that's a mix of various lettuces planted about 4 weeks ago.

i've been trying to compose a grand epic narrative of my recent health challenge. feh, as they say on the internet. or is it meh? other people we know have much worse health problems than i had, and still others have no insurance for even minor problems. i am well now. i got excellent care at santa cruz medical clinic and sutter hospital. robin and i marveled at the poise and equanimity of the the receptionists, nurses, physician's assistants, and doctors who deal with people in my condition or worse all day, or shift, long. waiting rooms full of pain and infection.

i did pass out from pain (a story for another post) and i did have an abscess that would have been much more serious if untreated, but i got proper diagnosis, including a ct scan, and treatment, on short notice. i took heavy duty antibiotics, cipro and flagyl, for 10 days. my malady was, in the scale of maladies, a simple infection, even if in a secluded place--the wall of my lower colon. this care was paid for (mostly, we haven't gotten bills yet) by medicare and some sort of supplemental from robin's retirement insurance package. we did not have to hesitate to consider money. too many others are not so fortunate. robin reminds me that i remarked, somewhere in the middle of a painful day, that i felt guilty that i was so well taken care of while i knew that so many were not.

somewhere in the past i read of the notion that the strength of a nation, especially a democracy, depended on a healthy and well-educated populace. there was probably mention of fiscal responsibility too. am i un-american to notice and point out that our country isn't doing very well in all three of those areas?

We Are Not The Dharma Bums

We are not really the Dharma Bums. That was Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith from the imaginative ramblings and rants of Jack Kerouac. So we think it may be time to rename this blog, but we don't know what to call it. I think the problem lies in the fact that the blog has no direction or purpose. We are not naturalists, nor are we poets. We are not political writers, nor are we biologists. We have no claim to anything other than our insatiable appetite for knowledge. Roger is a damned good carpenter and cook. I can take a pretty good picture every now and then. We are masters of none.

Do we need a new name? What do you think? Suggestions?