2009-03-21 Saturday - Roots vs. Root-less-ness

A man eventually wearies of traveling.

The desire of wanting to put down roots is a powerfully compelling feeling.

A place to call home.

Friendships that grow stronger and deeper with the passing of the years.

A feeling of belonging.

The waxing and waning of the seasons.

To know a place - deeply.

But even though a man may desire to put down roots, the fates don't always deal those cards to every man.

---

The Double Life

By Don Blanding

How very simple life would be

If only there were two of me

A Restless Me to drift and roam

A Quiet Me to stay at home.

A Searching One to find his fill

Of varied skies and newfound thrill

While sane and homely things are done

By the domestic Other One.



And that’s just where the trouble lies;

There is a Restless Me that cries

For chancy risks and changing scene,

For arctic blue and tropic green,

For deserts with their mystic spell,

For lusty fun and raising Hell

But shackled to the Restless Me

My Other Self rebelliously

Resists the frantic urge to move.



It seeks the old familiar groove

That habits make. It finds content

With hearth and home – dear prisonment,

With candlelight and well-loved books

And treasured loot in dusty nooks,



With puttering and garden things

And dreaming while a cricket sings

And all the while the Restless One

Insists on more exciting fun,

It wants to go with every tide,

No matter where . . .just for the ride.

Like yowling cats the two selves brawl

Until I have no peace at all.



One eye turns to the forward track,

The other eye looks sadly back.

I’m getting wall-eyed from the strain,

(It’s tough to have an idle brain)

But One says “Stay” and One says “Go”

And One says “Yes,” and One says “No,”

And One Self wants a home and woman

And One Self craves the drifter’s land.



The Restless Man always wins

I wish my folks had made me twins.

2009-03-15 Monday - A New Ending

T.S. Eliot once wrote:

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from."

2009-03-14 Saturday - Low Tide

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/TbaKBqQR8yk

Sitting in my favorite restaurant in Olympia Washington: Tugboat Annies.

Rain fails lightly outside.

From the 2nd floor window, I look out across the marina....across the boats tied in theirs slips...and even further... out across the cold, dark, waters of Puget Sound.

A mist hangs over the water in the distance.

A gray, drizzly, day.

The water is at low tide. Rocks and muck are revealed.

Your ship beached as the current rushes out of the bay. The mud and muck sucking the keel deeper into the black ooze as the weight of the ship works against itself. At low tide you can see the rocks and logs that were hidden just below the surface of the water. You wonder how you missed those on your way into this quiet bay. You plot them on your chart...small "x"'s to remind you of the hazards that await you.

Sometimes it may seem as if life too is at a low tide.

Low tide for the stock market.

Low tide for the job market.

Low tide in your relationships.

Low tide of hope.

Low tide indeed.

Time to stitch the sails and organize the cabin. Lighten the load. Get some rest.

Prepare.

The skipper shouldn't be worried though. The rythm of the tides ensures that if there is a low tide, there will be a high tide. He just has to wait. And take care that his ship is ready.

Coil the sheets, flake the sails, square away the cabin, make ready.

The tide may be out, but she'll be back boys.

2009-03-12 Thursday - Man's Arrogance

Artificial life 'could be created within five years'

"But there would be no safety issues for a long time as any initial organisms would be very primitive and need large-scale life support in the lab, reports New Scientist."
(...)
"...There's nothing you'd expect to go wrong - the way we expected things to go wrong with the assembly."

However, according to Dr Anthony Forster, of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, who is also creating a synthetic living cell in a test tube with Prof Church, "until you actually try this you won't know".

"But there would be no safety issues for a long time"

"There's nothing you'd expect to go wrong"

""until you actually try this you won't know"

Precisely!

It seems that some folks need to be reminded that Chaos theory rules.

weird al yankovic jurassic park

When the genie is let out of the bottle - it will be impossible to put him back in.

Just because you can do a thing - does not mean that you should.

Witness the proliferation of small nuclear weapons that can now fit inside a suite case...and are now the single largest security threat to millions of people living in large cities. This risk arose because scientists conceived of an idea - and implemented it - without regard to how that new technological capability might be controlled.

The natural order, for the majority of other life forms, is a struggle to survive.

Survival of the fittest is the law of the jungle.

Systems always seek equilibrium.

Every form of life exists in a continuum of a food chain.

I would be so much more at ease, and filled with hope that a disaster can be avoided - if only the scientists were more forthright about their safety measures, precautions, protocols, defensive measures - and if they talked openly about their contingency plans. Instead - comments like "no safety issues" read like the foreshadowing scenes in a bad B-grade Saturday night horror flick.

2009-03-06 Friday - Missing A Home Lost in the Past

I've been "on the road" most of my adult life. It is a lifestyle that is often required by my profession.

I find myself remembering tonight my grandfather's farm in Arkansas. The fields that went on as far as the eye could see...soybean and cotton in the fields. The old barns. The tractor shed. Learning how to ride my first horse. The idyllic summers spent on the banks of the White and Black river learning to fish for catfish with my cousins. The brilliant star-filled sky at night. The sound of the Whip-poor-will in the morning and at dusk. The smell of my grandmother's cooking in the morning. Laughter at the kitchen table late at night. Fourth of July celebrations. The sound of country music playing constantly in the background. Simple lives. Easy nights of sound sleep. Big down-filled beds. My grandfather's easy going manner..his particular way of looking off into the distance when he listened to the daily farm report on the radio. His boots that he bought on his trips to Texas. Learning how to trade antiques under his tutelage. The warmth of the fireplace on cold winter nights.

Early in the years of my travels, I always made a point of returning to my grandfather's farm for Christmas every year.

My grandfather is gone.

The old farmhouse has been torn down.

The family is scattered.

2009-03-02 Monday - Bush's Violation of The Constitution

Obama releases secret Bush anti-terror memos

The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.

Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo.

"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

On Sept. 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government's interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches.

That memo did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation.
(...)
The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges.

Do you feel as outraged as I do when I read: "a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts"

2009-03-02 Monday - Jimmy Buffett: Only Time Will Tell

2009-03-02 Monday - John Muir

I came across this book that is part of Project Gutenberg:
John Muir's STEEP TRAILS, California-Utah-Nevada-Washington-Oregon-The Grand Canyon

Definitely something I want to remember and read sometime over this Spring/Summer.

reminder to self: update my copy of the Project Gutenberg downloaded zip file so that I can take it with me on my next voyage.