Holiday in Green and Blue

There are reasons why we regularly return to the Salish Sea: family, friends, and familiar haunts. But the one reason that is powerfully attractive is obvious. It is the magnificent, life-nurturing beauty of its green and blue.

The green is the grass, bushes, and trees. The blue is the pale blue of a clear summer sky and its reflection over the deep blue of the Sea.

Nowhere do Shari and I enjoy the stunning beauty of Lower Alaska's short summers than on Whidbey Island. The realization strikes us as we take in the view overlooking Holmes Harbor, the Cascade Mountains and its volcanos in the distance, or walk its quiet, forested residential streets, or drive through tunnels of giant hemlock, fir and cedar trees. We smell sweet, moist, cool air, admittedly with a hint of decomposition. We come here to absorb the nurturing mix of water, sunshine and earth. We come to Whidbey for a vacation.

South Whidbey on the Salish Sea isn't the congestion and noise of Seattle. No wonder the ferry lines are excruciatingly long in the summers. Most of the license plates are Washington and the cars wear Seahawks paraphernalia. I reckon they are local South Alaskans taking a vacation from the man-made environments that congest I-5 and I-405.

The grey, damp cold of when we lived here is forgotten. We are no longer concerned about mowing lawns, moss on the roof, power-washing walkways, or fighting back stinging nettles and blackberry canes with their flesh-tearing thorns. We can sit on the deck, enjoy the view, stroll through green, and graze on the abundant blackberries —just like the abundant deer. We are visitors. We are tourists.

The madrona trees remind me of the singular, striking beauty of the Sonoran Desert where every shape embodies a unique history. The huge fir, hemlock and cedar trees, even the alders, all adopt a standard shape: large, straight trunks with radiating branches. In dense stands, they are like a super-sized lawn. But the madrona trees twist and turn in their growth, adorned with carefully arranged clumps of leaves, like a banzai contrived to look natural. The madrona's peeling, vibrant red bark creates another one-of-a-kind pattern of shape and color. Each madrona is unique.

The forecast for Lower Alaska is more warm sunshine. Heck, we are tourists in our old stomping grounds. It could be cloudy and raining and we'd still enjoy the place — as long as the rain is warm.

Back in Lower Alaska

Puget Sound, on the Whidbey Island ferry.

I jokingly refer to Puget Sound as "Lower Alaska." It's typically wet, damp and cold, just like the Alaska panhandle coastline. The regular rain makes trees so giant you can't see the sky. Actually, you ordinarily can't see the sky anyway. It's hidden by overcast.

We drove for two and a half days and 1600 miles from Tucson to Whidbey Island. The road in Arizona, Nevada and Idaho is almost entirely through open desert. Big sky. Huge terrain. Even most of Oregon and Washington is open country. Only in the Blue Mountains, around Baker City and La Grande in Oregon, did we see a bit of evergreen forest, followed by the open land of the Inland Empire. Finally, we reached Ellensburg and things got really green. Heading up and over Snoqualamie Pass, we drove through dense forest. Familiar, dense forest.

Shari and I entered a time warp. Were't we in the Mojave Desert yesterday? And the Sonoran Desert the day before? Where did all this dense forest come from? Where's the dirt and the rocks?

Dense forest, vegetation everywhere, and the familiarity of an area where I have lived for four decades but now seems foreign, all that makes for a culture shock and a time warp.

They say it's been unusually hot and dry in Washington this summer so it's unfair to refer to Puget Sound as Lower Alaska. Hard to tell today.

Maybe the local weather spirits wanted to welcome us Baja Arizonans to Lower Alaska. What was cloudy at the Pass became overcast in North Bend. Then as we got off the ferry in Clinton, it started to rain. Welcome home, Whidbey Island ex-pats. Welcome home to Lower Alaska.

In Profit We Trust

The size, power and influence of multi-national corporations rival that of most countries. Wealth is increasingly concentrated among a few who wield disproportionately large influence among our politicians. Makes me think of ancient Rome where generals and the wealthy vied for control over their republican government. Poor plebs. Then there were the medieval kings who struggled with their barons and dukes for resources to raise bigger armies. Poor serfs.

Historical examples are many because the struggle for power hasn’t changed much. Today we have corporations that control the food supply, the financial system, oil, military hardware, health care, pharmaceuticals, and news media, not to mention gangster cartels. They all lobby and effectively control what is supposed to be our democratically elected politicians.

Our government is prohibited from competing. Health care, drug, and insurance companies are all for profit and their profits are protected by statute — or the lack of them. Patents on life forms are protected by statute. Public services (you know, electricity, water, communications, and other monopoly-utilities) are run for profit. We have private prisons run for profit. Education, the great democratic equalizer, is farmed out to subsidized for-profit businesses. College grads are in debt-servitude to banks.

I say we adopt a new national motto, one that better reflects our national values. Our original motto, E Pluribus Unum ("Out of Many, One"), was adopted in 1782. Clearly, it's a passé sentiment. Why, it's downright socialist! Congress replaced it with "In God We Trust" in 1956. But it's not God we trust in, it's the profit incentive.

I suggest a new national motto, one Ayn Rand and any respectable Ferengi from the Star Trek series would approve: "In Profit We Trust." We should emulate Donald Trump who used his wealthy pedigree, arrogant greed, government tax breaks, and even the bankruptcy code to accumulate billions, denigrate the needy, and run for president.

We should recognize that the purpose of life is to accumulate personal power, and anything that regulates that pursuit is bad for us. I'm not exactly sure why it's bad for us, but it's supposed to be bad, very evil, and very un-American.

The Huff of Mindbook

Some people think that after they die, they go to heaven, or maybe purgatory, or hell. Others think they are reborn in a better or worse life depending upon their current conduct and desires. I say, why wait? It's here. It's called the mind. Like the Eveready bunny, it just keeps on going.

In my hell, I get daily notifications.

"A lot has happened"? I don't think so.

Perhaps on a weekend morning, after I tire of playing solitaire, I tap the Facebook logo and scroll down my "newsfeed," which is a compilation of others' mind-chatter. "What's on your mind?" I suppose if my own mind-chatter isn't enough, it's fun to share it and read someone else's.

Posting what's on your mind can be very self-revealing. Sometimes I wonder whether people realize how revealing. As I scroll through my "newsfeed", I see myriads of heavens and hells, and a lot of depressing banality. I think to myself, if there is a hell, it's having to plug into others' mind-chatter. One mind-full of chatter is bad enough. Imagine a world-full.

I check into Huffington Post more often than Facebook. I admit, I lean heavily towards the liberal ("progressive") persuasion, so I enjoy the twist that Huff puts onto the news, and the hypocritical, mucky and salacious tidbits they drag up on politicians.

Like Facebook, Huff contains a lot of mind-chatter, most of it in the Media and Entertainment sections. Huff is a bit more creative than Facebook in that Huff pays people to make mountains out of molehills and think up hyperboles.

This is just a random sample from today's "Breaking News":

• Farrah Abraham Gave Her Daughter $600 For Losing Her Two Front Teeth.
• Jared Padalecki Stunned As Fans Honor His 'Always Keep Fighting' Campaign
• The One Thing Brandy Does Every Day To Find Balance
• Future: Ciara And I Prayed After Sex
• Justin Bieber Defends Kylie Jenner And Her Cornrows
• Mom Of Twins Uses Hilarious Signs To Shut Down Strangers Who Ask Intrusive Questions

Who are these people? Why in God's creation (or why in hell) should I care? It's too funny. I mean, I can't begin to make this stuff up. But "Breaking News"? I don't think so.

Like Facebook, Huff makes me chuckle, dread and joke about the creativity and banality of the modern mind. "What's on your mind?" "Breaking News"?

It's Bastille Day, so as I wonder about minds, heaven & hell, and banality & creativity, a quote comes to my mind, and I imagine that "pimpernel" isn't just a flower, but an expression of creativity.

“They seek him here, they seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in heaven or is he in hell?

That damned elusive Pimpernel”

Is it in heaven or is it in hell?

That damned ellusive -- mind.

Proof of God

That's what I thought when I realized what I was looking at: a miracle; proof of God; higher consciousness.

I was watering Shari's garden early yesterday morning, Wednesday, marveling at the varied vegetation in her small truck garden. Exhilarated, I got into a project I'd been postponing for weeks, planting small octopus agave shoots in dirt and lining up their pots between a grape vine and the loquat. I looked across the driveway towards the neighbor's and admired an ocotillo covered with fresh green leaves.

We had heavy rainfall on Sunday. The ground was still damp and the air humid. I just thought it normal that the ocotillo would be bearing leaves.

Then I realized it was the bare root ocotillo Shari and I had planted three years ago. All of a sudden, it had become magnificent.

It had never really "leafed". For years the plant had been mostly just a clump of sticks in the ground which I would water often enough with the hope it would bear leaves and flower. Last year it had a few leaves, only a few.

There's a large ocotillo in the middle of the circle that is the dead end, roundabout of San Simeon Drive. No one waters it. It bears leaves most of the year and flowers in early spring like clockwork. How tough can it be for my well nursed ocotillo to get established?

Now every possible location for a leaf is occupied. It is covered in leaves.

Sunday's monsoon downpour was the occasion. That downpour itself was a miracle; proof of a higher consciousness.

The rain got heavier and heavier as I carried an umbrella and surveyed out little acre of the Sonoran Desert. Water flowed everywhere. Desert frogs woke up from their torpor and were croaking. (We found two in the pool the next morning.) The driveway flooded and water poured into Coat Hanger Valley. For the first time I witnessed water flowing in our little gully.

I should have taken snapshots during the rain, but it was really wet. (Maybe I should get an underwater camera.) You will have to make do with these snaps of the ocotillo as evidence of Sunday's downpour and the miracle of water in the Sonoran Desert.

The Kaleidoscope of Technology

We used to call it planned obsolescence. Now it's called an upgrade. Version decimals, security patches, new (and "improved") user interfaces, Office ribbons, hidden files, incompatible apps, viruses, spam & worms, and a language that seems like English but is nothing of the sort —it's all a continuing kaleidoscope that refuses to stay still.

I have an iPod Touch 3rd generation. I've had it maybe six years. Its current operating system is IOS 5.1.1 that's been out only four years. I use it a lot to play internet radio, but then the app started to hang up so I thought I'd delete and reinstall. That's when I learned the hard way that Apple no longer supports its 3rd generation and my iTouch can't upgrade. Worse, Apple's app store doesn't have anything that's compatible with 5.1.1. Apple wants me to buy a new iPod.

I have a collection of iPod docks that don't charge newer iPods. How complicated can it be to ensure that the same wire is used to conduct electricity? But at $40 a dock, Apple has an incentive to play connection roulette.

I never could follow Apple's zoological nomenclature: tigers, snow leopards and lions. Had they used wombat, armadillo or giraffe, I might have been able to distinguish among them, but they stuck to cats. Now they are into weird geography. But Apple still dotes on its decimals. If you check "About this Mac", your Apple doesn't disclose the animal or geographic name of its operating system, only its decimal. The names serve only advertising and they add another layer of confusion.

We tried to upgrade Shari's OS and her MacBook locked up. We took it to the tech-doctor who announced that the upgrade was too traumatic for the hard drive. It had to be replaced. Hello? The hard drive was over-worked so it crashed?

I upgraded my OS and plugged in my external hard drive that I'd used for years on my existing OS. The new OS couldn't read the files. I could have lived with that. I have other computers that could have read it. But the new OS went in and affirmatively mangled my files so no one, not even the tech-doctor, could read it. Why would anyone design an operating system to mangle files it can't read?

Then there is the Microsoft Office ribbon. I got pretty fast using the old Office Word menus. Now that I have been made to upgrade, it's a whole new learning curve. Features I used to access with a hot key or a couple of key strokes are now attainable only through a couple of menus and three or four key strokes. It's way more complicated. I'm slowly peeling off the ribbon layers and replacing them with simple commands.

It's like the annual Detroit model design. What's the point except expense?

I still run Windows XP. It's only eight years old. It runs on a laptop that's over a decade old. I use it to run a high resolution scanner that isn't supported by anything newer. I really don't care to buy something new when the old one works very well. It also runs my Photoshop 6 which is fourteen years old, and PageMaker which worked perfectly well to lay out and publish a half a dozen books, and still works. But it won't run on anything that's made nowadays.

My Windows XP also runs my web design software, Expressions Web, which is five years old. I have a couple of websites; one with over three hundred pages.

Now I find that Microsoft server software on my website host no longer supports Expressions. I have to buy a new web design program that's compatible. I know the features I want, but the descriptions never mention anything relevant: like whether it imports existing pages without mauling them into something unrecognizable; or whether it includes an html editor. From what I can tell, web design programs are either ridiculously complicated or template-based simpletons. I tried a couple. They confronted me with multiple screens, dialogue boxes, and goofy gizmos. They may as well have been cuneiform impressions on clay tablets. Looks pretty, but I can't get it to do anything. Dumb as a rock.

The computer kaleidoscope now effects even the telephone. For work I have what I call my batphone. It operates through the internet and is tied in with the office servers. For some weeks, my batphone got phantom phone calls. Scores of them, day and night.  Pick up the phone; nothing. The office tech guys realized hackers were getting through because the firewall wasn't set up.

Now I am getting calls from "anonymous". That's an odd name for caller ID, particularly when the call is from some echoing, concrete room in India and the thick Indian accent announces that he works for Microsoft and is calling about …. He jabbered off some impressive sounding techie words. I had no idea what he was talking about, except that it had to be some scam. But has the kaleidoscope of computer gibberish turned so mainstream that scam artists assume tech-talk is understood by regular people?

I'm getting too old. I remember standing on the train platform at Wynyard looking at the billboards across the tracks. One was advertising a musical then playing in Sydney: Stop the World. I want to Get Off.