There are things to see -- if you only look

Like lichens.

Sometimes you have to look at the small things.

Such color, such texture!

Une tache de couleur

"A spot of color."

If I keep my mind open, my eyes sometimes find a spot of color, of beauty, of extravagant and unnecessary revelation of the wonders of Nature. 

And of Nature's God. 

This morning, checking the fax machine (yes, there are still both vendors and customers who use the '80s medium) in the front office, when -- Lo! -- across the street, a spot of dawn sun spotlights a meadowlark on the barbed wire at the margin of the farmland across the street.  The new wheat is inches tall, and new-grass green in the morning light, when -- Ah! -- this picture has audio!  The meadowlark repeats, repeats, repeats his song: "I am a Western Meadowlark."

"The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the meadowlark proclaims His handiwork."

(So to speak.  And with apologies to King David and Psalm 19.)

Gong Xi Fa Cai / Gung Hey Fat Choy !

To celebrate the lunar new year, I made yummy meatloaf. 

Spam, ground beef, brown rice, wild rice, egg, salt, pepper, and cumin. 

What makes it lunar new year meatloaf is the shape!

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse! 

In a land where dreams come true

You might just end up spending all night at school.

I have had that dream often enough.  Wandering through corridors and sitting at the hard desk that is all painful angles.  Feeling like I am not in the right room.  Or thinking I have not done my homework.  And always, always having to go to the bathroom.  Looking for the rest room, not finding one, then finding one and it is severely out of order and/or occupied by gangs smoking pencil shavings...

Be careful about dreams.  There really are places where dreams come true! 

You gottta walk it by yourself

28 January 2014:  American folk singer Pete Seeger dead at 94.

I remember the energy of Pete Seeger in an outdoor concert on a summer afternoon in San Francisco in the 1980s. 

Some folks say that John was a Baptist
Some folks say he was a Jew
But the Holy Bible tells us
That he was a preacher too 

You got to walk that lonesome valley
You got to walk it by yourself
Nobody else can do it for you
You got to walk it by yourself

Oh I don't think those words meant what Mr. Seeger thought they meant. 

He thought it was something about putting on a kind of liberal uniform and joining a movement to stick it to The Man, man. 

When he sang, there was a life force that made thousands join in song.  When he wanted to "be a preacher too"  -- God, what a commie asshole. 

Pete Seeger.  Rest in peace.  May God have mercy on his soul. 

Glimpses on the road

There are memories that form for me a kind of mind-Tumblr. 

In dreams I may see half a second of a real place -- a place I have seen but never visited.  The memory places I am thinking of are places seen while on a family trip long ago. 

A donkey in a back lot along California Highway 99...

A pool in the Silver Fork of the American River seen from U.S. Highway 50...

A clump of blue chicory blossoms along a fence line way out Jackson Road...

A grouping of granite and pines somewhere up route 41 toward Fish Camp...

Countless mental snapshots of places we never stopped.  These can be the beginning or the end of a meandering, morphing dream terrain, or they can be background images flashing by. 

Lying on my stomach on a warm boulder watching beautiful graceful Japanese fish dancing in the clear water below... Best. Dream. Evah. 

Remember the Pueblo. And the Benghazi consulate.

On this day, 23 January, 1968, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea, well outside the 12 mile limit off the North Korean coast. 

Alone and overpowered, the ship was forced west.  When Pueblo stopped outside the 12 mile limit, the ship was fired upon and Navy seaman Fireman Duane Hodges was killed.  Pueblo was boarded, its crew mistreated; ship and crew were taken to Wonsan harbor. 

President Lyndon Johnson was asleep at the time.

The White House response from Johnson and his crew of smart guys was to minimize confrontation with the communists at all costs.  Negotiations at Panmunjom at last produced the release of the crew (and Hodges' remains) across the DMZ into South Korea on 23 December 1968 -- following a formal written apology by the USA to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  Pueblo is still in North Korean possession. 

By the apology, Johnson set a precedent for bowing to foreign dictators. 

After 1968, one could see a few "Remember the Pueblo" bumper stickers.  But memories are short.  The official response had set a precedent of "what difference, at this point, does it make?"

By the way, today is exactly one year since Hillary blew off Senator Ron Johnson's question about why she lied about events leading up to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the murder of ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.