Archive for the ‘travel’ Category
November 20, 2019
This morning I heard Meghna Chakrabarti interviewing Sylvia Poggioli about the flood in Venice, Italy.
Hearing the WBUR On Point hostess ask NPR’s Italian correspondent about that watery excess, my imagination flowed back to my visit to Venice in 2003.
On that day, sixteen years ago, I stood in a long tourist line to visit the Basilica of San Marco.
On that day, flood waters from the Adriatic Sea were lapping up the stepped entryway into the nave of the cathedral.
My daughter Kim, studying in Italy at that time, snapped some photographs. I assembled three of them here:

It is plain to see that, yes, there is an ongoing, and worsening problem of flooding in the ancient city of Venice.
Moreover, the evidence is mounting that, yes Virginia, there is in fact a worldwide problem of more frequent coastal flooding, and it is reasonably related to climate change.
My position about climate change is that we should collectively educate ourselves about the impact of human activity on our planetary ecosystem. But human rights—rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness— should not be violated for the sake of imposing restrictive laws to reduce and control carbon emissions.
However all of our overflowing angst about climate change gets spread around, I would like to hone in on a certain detail in the frontal edifice of San Marco church building.
Look closely at this picture of the front of San Marco. You will notice, above the middle arch, four horse statues.
When I noticed them up there in 2003, I was fascinated with those horses.

Five years later, as I was writing a novel later entitled Glass Chimera, I included those horses—actually, miniature glass reproductions of them— in part of the story I was cloning together at that time
In chapter 13 of Glass Chimera, we find this scene:
Sunday afternoon, Mick Basker slept until 1:30, then got out of bed, made some coffee, and sat down at his computer to take a look at the chip that he had retrieved from the glass horse’s gonads four nights ago. He reached down to open the bottom drawer of his desk. Then he noticed a scrap of printed paper, about the size of a small index card, on the floor nearby. Recognizing it as a slip that he had found within the figurines’ crate, Mick picked it up to get a closer look. This is what was printed on the little paper:
Congratulazioni! Lei ha comprato uno degli articoli di vetro più belli nel mondo. Quest’edizione a bassa tiratura della “Quadriga Marciana” ha soffiato degli artigiani specializzati della Società del Vetro Leoni di Venezia, Italia. Gli articoli di vetro sono i riproduzioni squisite delle sculture di bronzo che fa la guardia di sopra del vestibolo occidentale della Basilica di San Marco in Venezia. I cavalli originali sono giungi a Venezia con il ricco bottino di guerra dai Veneziani dopo la conquista di Constantinopoli al termine della IV Crociata nel 1204 A.D. Dopo cinque secoli, nel 1797, Napoleone li fa trasferire a Parigi, ma i cavalli erano ritornati alla Basilica di San Marco nel 1815.
But Mick knew no Italiano, so he set the little paper aside, and reached down again to the bottom drawer, from which he produced a yellow pharmaceutical container, a pill box. Inside it was a was a patch of plastic foam which concealed a little green circuit board about the size of thumb. Carefully, he inserted his chip, looking like a little black crab with metallic legs, into the device, then pushed the assemblage into a USB port on the computer. He typed and moused his way to the chip’s data, and when he found it this is what he saw:
OAT, GHN-1:17q22-q24, DTNBP-1:6p22.3, IGF-2:3q28.
But he didn’t know what it was.
If you ramble around this world, you will notice that life on our planet is full of mysteries. You just never know when another strange happening might come flooding into your mind, your mailbox, or your city square, or even your own sacred space.
But no matter what strange occurrence crosses your path or your mind, try to make the best of it.
Glass Chimera
Tags:Basilica di San Marco, chimera, climate change, flood, flooding, four horses, glass chimera, glass statues, global warming, Meghna Chakrabarti, novel, Sylvia Poggioli, travel, Venice
Posted in architecture, art, attitude, books, change, Christianity, church, civilization, climate change, collective memory, design, education, exploration, global warming, memories, optimism, symbolism, travel, water | Leave a Comment »
October 5, 2019
The Traveler had been carrying his burden for a long time: a restless soul. Traveler’s roots were deep, but not necessarily set into a specific place on this earth. After traversing many a mile of land and sea, the sojourner had been driven westward, in search of some destination that could not yet be clearly identified. So it might be said his deep roots stretched deep into life itself, rather than a place
At least for now.
From an Old World starting point,

he had sailed o’er sea channel, into stillness and storm, outside of the norm, through the outskirts of somewhere, and beyond the other side of nowhere, arriving for a season upon some ancient isle. But finding very little solace there, traveler had redirected weary legs to ascend yet another ship’s gangplank, so that he might be transported to that great land he had heard tales of, beyond the blue.
The seaport where he disembarked was, as it happened, a frontier for foreigners not unlike himself. They had uncovered motivations to—for whatever reason—not remain where they had begun. And so, having hung their hopes upon such vague restlessness, they undertook yet another phase of the great journey to somewhere yet to be determined.
Ever moving and moving from this place to that, Traveler eventually found himself ascending a long piedmont hill, and so it seemed when he had reached the top of it, the extended journey was now delivering him to a wide westward-looking vista.
Pausing to catch breath, Traveler trained his eyes on a string of faraway ridges. Obviously high, yet . . . it seemed . . . gently-sloping. . . forested they were, and having no cragginess that he could see from here. That string of mountains stretched like great slumbering beached whales across the entirety of his new horizon. From north to south . . . blue, and blue to blue on blue, and more . . . blue.

He had never seen such a thing.
Search for Blue
Tags:blue, blue ridge, creation, frontier, history, immigrating, moving, narrative, new novel, restlessness, story, travel, traveler, wandering
Posted in America, books, change, civilization, creation, exploration, freedom, history, immigration, inspiration, narrative, travel | Leave a Comment »
September 22, 2019
Guy Noir, the Prairie Home detective, spent many years trying to puzzle out answers to “life’s persistent questions.”
Some of those life questions are very important, such as how will I make a living?; what career should I choose; is there life after death?
Others are not so important as that, but nevertheless persistent, which is to say. . . they keep coming back again.
This morning I find myself researching, in order to answer a question that has perplexed me for a long time, ever since Pat and I started visiting the Hawaiian Islands about a dozen years ago.
The question is: What’s up with these red rocks and black rocks that seem to constitute the entirety of this Hawaiian island archipelago?
Spoiler alert: I haven’t completely figured it out yet. I will be describing herein my path of wonder, not necessarily giving you an informed report on the subject of red rocks/black rocks in Hawaii.
While I have not yet fully discovered why some Hawaiian rocks are red and others are black, I have managed to gather some learning along the way.
In many ways, I am person who is driven by an appreciation for lifelong learning.
The ancient dynamics and pyrotechnics through which these islands were formed is described in noteworthy detail here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes.
You can learn far more about this subject by following the above link.
But getting back to my little take on it . . . In our ten visits to Hawaii, the photo that I snapped which best shows what lava looks like is:

This dark gray/black solidified lava flow is called pāhoehoe. You see it throughout all the islands, but mostly on the big island, Hawaii, because it is the newest island, and the one that still displays an observable continuance of recent and still-active volcano activity. It’s fascinating stuff, especially for a curious person like me who took a geology course a long time ago.
We enjoy traveling these islands, year after year. In noticing the vast array of different volcanic rock formations, this question about the red rocks keeps popping up, as “one of life’s persistent questions.’ This never fails to fascinate me.
Here’s a pic, taken a few years ago on Maui, that shows two layers of black rock with a layer of red rock between them.

So we can see that there is some kind of “story” told in these rocks, some sort of history.
Geologic history, Earth history. Hawaiian Islands are perhaps the best location on the planet to identify features by which Earth reveals itself, by telling, in the rock, its own story.
SO, what about that strip of red rock in the middle? you may ask? I’m glad you asked.
I don’t know, but I did ask a Hawaiian about it.
As she began driving our tour bus up into Waimea canyon, I asked Jana about the red rocks, and she said the difference was:
“Rust.” The red rocks have rusted. And, she said, they are older.
I greatly appreciated her immediate answer. It has helped me a lot. It does seem, however, a little too simple for my over-active mind to accept completely. Nevertheless, her concise explanation was confirmed a few days later when I found online a Galapagos report from Cornell U:
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/LavaTypes.html
Herein I found an authoritative source confirming that the difference in color, in some cases, is “a reflection of age. The older ʻaʻā . . . has weathered and the iron in it has oxided somewhat, giving it a reddish appearance.”
And that’s good enough for me to understand a little bit about what is going on in these vast, ancient islands, which represents processes that have built up our vast, ancient earth.
Meanwhile, back at the beach, I found, two evenings ago, a different working out of the red/black interface.

In this scenario, I surmise that, somewhere along the ancient timeline, red rocks were weathered down to red sand and grit, then deposited at low places. During that time, the volcano or the weather must have torn black boulders loose. The black rocks tumbled down into red sands as what you see here. It appears to be black lava rocks trapped in red sandstone, nowadays being gradually dissembled by the thrashing Pacific Ocean.
Or something like that. That’s my answer for the riddle of red and black, one of life’s persistent questions.
Glass Chimera
Tags:archipelago, Earth history, geologic time, Hawaii, lava, rocks, volcano formation, volcanoes
Posted in beaches, change, creation, exploration, Hawaii, history, islands, lessons, travel, Volcano, wonder | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2019

Kauai
Hawaii
where long
ago hot lava
spewed up skyward
into prehistoric atmosphere
and falling back down to earth
deposited Wai’ale’ale the mother of
all Hawaiian volcanoes dormant volcanoes
now
stands
as cloud
catcher
mist
collector
waterfall
dropper
streams
trickle

down
ancient
crater
plummet

and then
flow
Wailua
River
to Pacific

from
magma
mountain
Wai’ale’ale
Mahalo
Selah
Glass half-Full
Tags:crater, Hawaii, Kauai, poem, rainmaking, trickling streams, volcanoes, Wailua River
Posted in beauty, creation, Hawaii, history, islands, poem, rivers, selah, travel, Volcano | Leave a Comment »
July 9, 2019
Setting old stones with new methods lays a solid foundation for future pathways of our life together.
Here’s a Blue Ridge Parkway bridge, near my home, built when I was a kid long ago, in the 1960’s.

It’s a well-built public-works project.
Incredible strength was laid into the bridge’s inner structure when concrete was poured around a steel rebar framework. Unseen in the finished structure, the silent steel still contributes to ongoing structural integrity and function. Internal strength assured the bridge’s longevity, allowing the structure to bear up under the heavy demands of continuous motored traffic for many and many a year.
This solid piece of work has been sustaining motored traffic for most of my 68 years.
Use of reinforcing steel roads, tied together with wire like cages, then buried forever with gravel aggregate in solid ‘crete mud, is a relatively new architectural practice in construction history. The internal rebar method was devised by constructors over time, to assure deep integrity and resilience in vast concrete structures.
Such built-in reinforcement has enabled folks to progressively build bigger buildings, longer roads and bridges, as civilization marches on.

This strong, continuous, time-tested concrete underbelly enables motorists to drive without stopping, on a road that crosses o’er a road that passes beneath it. In this photo, you can see the structure’s rock-hard underbelly, which bears the surface imprints of wooden planks that were used in forming the main arch when the concrete was cast, back in the mid-1960’s.
Certainly our attention is drawn to the large veneer stones on the outside face of the construction. These chiseled rocks, having been skillfully cut with calculated angles, lend a classic appearance to the roadway, which would have otherwise been a dull utilitarian construct.
Thus did the bridge become something far more than an elevated roadway; it stands as an artistic statement of architectural continuity, in agreement with its older, 1930’s-era bridge “ancestors.”
The stone masons who erected similar Blue Ridge bridges back in the earlier days were ancestors–whether by profession or by blood– of the rock masons who set these stones three decades later.
Such chisel-sculpted work becomes a masonary tip-of-the-trowel to time-honored traditions of stone masons who lived and worked on this same 469-mile parkway back in the day, and then eventually crossed that great celestial bridge to eternity.
Having stood the tests of time and traffic, this good work stands as a long-lasting homage to both structural integrity and graceful design.
About six miles up the road from the bridge pictured above, there’s an S-curved structure that I tied steel on, back in the early 1980’s– the Linn Cove Viaduct on Grandfather Mountain. It’s a very special construct, being the final missing-link in the middle of a 469-mile, 50-year Blue Ridge Parkway project. But this one was special–not for the classic stonework–but for the cutting-edge technology of building the thing from the top down, instead of the bottom up!

Here’s solid evidence that in this life it’s a good idea to do things right. Build it to last, whatever it is you’re working on in your time here. Our children’s children will notice the quality and be inspired to do great works in their own time.
Search for Blue
Tags:1930s, 1960's, architecture, Blue Ridge Parkway, bridges, concrete construction, construction, good work, history, legacy work, Linn Cove Viaduct, quality construction, stonework, work
Posted in 1930s, 1960's, aging, America, architecture, art, attitude, beauty, civilization, curves, design, exploration, good work, history, memories, productivity, progress, quality, sustainability, symbolism, time, travel, USA, work | Leave a Comment »
June 22, 2019
In 1937, the following scene probably happened somewhere near where we live in the Blue Ridge, North Carolina:
“What does it say?”
Jake handed the letter to his father. “There’s a lot of gobble-dy-gook there, Pa, but it says the land stopped bein’ ours when they posted it down at the courthouse.”
“Posted what?”
“The map of all the land they need to take.”
Jeremiah turned around slightly. Casting an eye on his nearby rocker, he carefully took aim and seated himself. Looking up again at his boy, “Well they ain’t paid us for it yit.”
“That needs to be decided yet, Pa.” Jake shook his head slowly. “It’s lookin’ like this is gonna drag on fer awhile.”
“We told that inspector fella we’d take forty.”
“It ain’t that simple, Pa. Them lawyers down in Raleigh gonna pay us whatever they say it’s worth.”
“Damn, son! What is this? Damn communists!”
Jake set the letter down on the side-cabinet. He had managed to glance through it and get the gist. “Shit, pa, it ain’t that bad. They’re just tryin’ to build that road real nice and scenic so’s people’ll come drivin’ up here and spend their money.”
“Well I guess that’s all well ‘n good, son. But I ain’t been down to the courthouse to see what they posted. Don’t seem right that we ain’t got payment, and we don’t even know how much we’re gonna git!”
“It’ll all work out, Pa. At least they’re only takin’ one side of our land. Watsons and Purlears got their places split up. And from what I’ve heard from Miller up in Ashe, them that got their land split up won’t be able to even drive from one side t’other. So be thankful for what you got. Ain’t that what the Book says?” Jake looked his father in the eye. “Be thankful we’ll still be able to drive the tractor from one side all the way across the field to the other side.”
“Yeah, what’s left of it,” Jeremiah mumbled as he commenced to rocking. He looked out the window, through the porch at the front yard. “Hell, I don’t know what this world’s coming to.
Jake was reading another letter, silently. His attention riveted there, he said nothing, just nodded his head, looking down at the script on a letter from his aunt Polly in Foscoe.
“New Deal, I guess,” his father continued while Jake folded Polly’s letter and picked up another piece of mail.
“Yeah, Pa, I reckon it’s the New Deal. Did Sally say what time they’d be back?
“’bout four, I think she said.”
Pa had been pondering. “Son, did you know they posted that map at the courthouse?
Jake sighed. “Yeah, Pa, I knew about it. I went and looked at it on Friday when I was in town. Roby Watson told me about it while I was in Goodnight’s pickin’ up feed.”
“I guess you didn’t wanna tell me, huh?”
“Nah, pa, I just forgot about it.” Jake sat down in his easy chair. Now he was reading something else.
“You forgot about it.”
“Yeah, Pa.” Jake nodded his head slowly, preoccupied with his bank statement.
Jeremiah was rocking steadily now, as if he were relaxed and maybe resigning himself to whatever it was that was about to happen that would change the shape of the 67 acres he had inherited from his father back in 1910. “Seems a little strange to me, boy, you could forget about something as important as losing a quarter of our land.” No judgement in his voice. Just sayin’. Pa had calmed down from his earlier rant.
“I mean,” Jake looked up at his father again, smiling slightly. “I mean, I didn’t forget about it; I just forgot to tell you about it.”
“Uh huh.”
Jake’s expression morphed slowly from concentration in his letter-reading, to a mild amusement. “Shootfire, Pa, there’s somethin’ else I forgot to tell you.
“Oh yeah?” His father allowed a mild chuckle. Mr. Roosevelt gonna bring us a hog or two as a consolation prize?
“Actually, it is kinda like that . . . maybe a peace offering. Uncle Skip told Roby he’d give me a job running one of them road graders.”
“On the new road?” Jeremiah’s voice acquired an even more amused tone.
“Yep.”
Jake’s father laughed. “Well, ain’t that a cat’s whisker! I seen it all now. The Parkway giveth and the Parkway taketh away,” he declared, playing upon some ancient proverb. Now he set the rocker into a steady pace. “And when’s that gonna start?”
“Coupla weeks, or something like that,” Jake replied. “They gotta finish that little bit of blasting over there near the highway. Then, Skip says, they’ll pretty much be ready to grade from Deep Gap all the way to Aho.”
“Well, I guess that’s good news for Uncle Sam, but it’ll blast the hell out of our peace and quiet around here with all that machinery and whatnot takin’ over this country.”
“Not takin’ over, Pa, just makin’ it easy for folks to come up here and spend money, after they lay the asphalt to it.”
“I reckon it will be easier for them rich folks down the mountain to come up here and ride around in their Cadillacs, like over in Blowin’ Rock.”

Yep. Coulda happened. . . maybe, maybe not. Long time ago . . . but we haven’t yet totally obliterated our consciousness of the past with our contemporary obsession in social media and and political side-show antics. Not yet.
Blue
Tags:1930s, Blue Ridge mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway, eminent domain, history, infrastructure, national memory, New Deal, novel being written, public works, road construction, Roosevelt, scenic highway, WPA
Posted in 1930s, America, books, change, civilization, collective memory, employment, exploration, family, history, infrastructure, memories, narrative, time, travel, USA, work | Leave a Comment »
June 5, 2019
The Traveler’s main burden is a restless soul. He has carried it dutifully for a long time.
Traveler’s roots were deep, but not necessarily set into a specific place on this earth. Having traversed many a mile of land and sea, this sojourner had been driven westward, in search of some destination that could not yet be clearly identified. So it might be said his roots stretched deep into life itself, rather than a place.
At least for now.
From a continental origin he had sailed o’er channel, into stillness and storm, outside of the norm, through unknown , and out the other side of somewhere . . . arriving for a season upon an ancient isle. But finding very little solace there, traveler had redirected weary legs to ascend yet another gangplank, so that he might be transported to that great land he had heard tales of, beyond the blue.
The seaport where he disembarked was, as it happened, a frontier for foreigners not unlike himself. They had uncovered motivations to—for whatever reason—not remain where they had begun. And so, having hung their hopes upon such vague restlessness, they undertook yet another phase of the great journey to somewhere yet to be determined.
By ‘n by, the traveler eventually found himself ascending a long piedmont hill, and so it seemed when he had reached the top of it, the extended journey was now delivering him to a wide westward-looking vista.
Pausing to catch breath, Travis trained his eyes on a string of faraway ridges. Obviously high, yet . . . it seemed . . . gently-sloping. . . forested they were, and having no cragginess that he could see from here. That string of mountains stretched like great slumbering beached whales across the entirety of his new horizon. From north to south . . . blue, and blue to blue on blue, and more . . . blue.
He had never seen such a thing.

So this must be the beginning of Search for Blue . . .
Tags:blue, emigration, exploration, history, immigration, journey, memory, mountains, restlessness, search, sojourner, travel
Posted in America, attitude, collective memory, curves, east meets west, exploration, freedom, history, life, memories, narrative, selah, symbolism, travel, wonder, world | Leave a Comment »
May 26, 2019
I wrote a story about an American traveling through Europe in the spring/summer of 1937. In the novel, Smoke, which I published in 2015, young businessman Philip Morrow accepts an unusual errand, which takes him through London, halfway around the far side of France, then to Paris, and ultimately to arrive at a place called Flanders Field in Belgium.
At his specific Memorial battleground destination, Philip sees for the first time the final resting place of his father, a soldier of the American Expeditionary Force, who had died there in 1918 during the last week of World War I. Philip had been eight years old in 1917 when he hugged his pa for the last time, then beheld his mother while she tearfully embraced her husband, a mountaineer marksman named Clint.
In chapter 27 of Smoke, Philip arrives at the Memorial cemetery accompanied by a newfound friend, Mel, an old Frenchman who expresses his appreciation for Clint’s courageous sacrifice–given in his last full measure of devotion– for freedom, to defeat tyranny.
Clint’s total offering in 1918 was not the first, nor the last, to be put forth by millions of other soldiers since that time. In Washington DC, I snapped this photo of a newer Memorial–that one constructed for us to remember the dead of Vietnam.

We Americans do appreciate the families left behind. Their sorrow and sacrifice is painfully precious; it runs deep–deep as the blood that pumped through soldiering bodies alive with determination–blood that still streams through the beating hearts and minds of us Americans and Allies.
Here’s my offering, from chapter 27 of Smoke:
“How could this place have been a battlefield for a world war?”
‘The old Frenchman cast his eyes on the passing landscape, and seemed to join Philip in this musing. He answered slowly, “War is a terrible thing, an ugly thing. I did not fight in the war; I had already served my military duty, long before the Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo and the whole damn world flew apart, like shrapnel. But I had many friends who fought here, and back there, where we just came from in my France, back there at the Somme, the Marne, Amiens. Our soldiers drove the Germans back across their fortified lines, the Hindenberg line they called it. By summer of 1918 the Germans were in full retreat, although it took them a hell of a long time, and rivers of spilt blood, to admit it. And so it all ended here. Those trenches, over there in France, that had been held and occupied for two hellish years by both armies, those muddy hellholes were finally left behind, vacated, and afterward . . . filled up again with the soil of France and Flanders and Belgium, and green grass was planted where warfare had formerly blasted its way out of the dark human soul and the dark humus of lowland dirt and now we see that grass, trimmed, manicured and growing so tidily around those rows of white crosses out there, most of them with some soldier’s name carved on them, many just unknown, anonymous, and how could this have happened? You might as well ask how could. . . a grain of sand get stuck in an oyster? And how could that oyster, in retaliation against that rough, alien irritant, then generate a pearl—such a beautiful thing, lustrous and white—coming forth in response to a small, alien presence that had taken up unwelcomed residence inside the creature’s own domain? The answer, my friend, is floating in the sea, blowing in the wind, growing green and strong from soil that once ran red with men’s blood.” ‘
“Now they were arriving at the battlefield. Jacques parked the car, leaned against the front fender, lit a cigarette. Mel and Philip walked through a stone arch, along a narrow, paved road lined with flowering linden trees, spring green with their large spadish leaves, sprinkled with small white blossoms. The sun was getting low behind them. Shadows of these trees had overtaken the narrow lane, turning it cooler than the surrounding fields, acres and acres neatly arranged with white crosses and gravestones, and continuous green, perfect grass between all. Having reached the end of the linden lane, the stepped slowly, reverently, along straight pathways, passing hundreds of silent graves on either side. The setting sun was still warm here, after their cool approach from beneath the trees.
“At length, they came to the row that Philip had been looking for, the one he had read about in the army guidebook, where his father’s grave was nested precisely and perpetually in its own place in eternity “. . .
King of Soul
Tags:Belgium, courage, death, determination, Flanders Field, last full measure of devotion, marksman, Memorial, Memorial Day, mountaineer, Oordenaarde, sacrifice, soldiers, Vietnam War Memorial, war, war dead, World War I
Posted in 1930s, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, America, civilization, collective memory, education, freedom, good work, history, In Memorium, lessons, liberty, life, life and death, Memorial Day, memories, soldiers, symbolism, time, travel, United States, USA, veterans, Vietnam, Vietnam war, Vietnam War Memorial, violence, war, World War I, World War II | Leave a Comment »
April 18, 2019
there’s gold in them thar hills,
somewhere up near sutter’s mill:
them’s words that sparked the great gold rush,
and set us up us for the great golden push

California be the place you gotta go
so we loaded up our siri for sausalito
cruisin’ somewhere o’er the rainbow
where gentle dwellers come and go
speaking what makes their property ’ssesments grow
them gatlins said all the gold that’s there
be locked in some bank in beverly here where
somebody else will that precious stuff share
but hey
this is what i say
whatever stuff upon your dreams do thrive
whatever you do to keep that dream alive
whether you track with ferlinghetti
or train your sights on images of getty
keep that california dreamin alive
lest u get waylaid in some hotel california dive
where some say there’s alchemic gold
in that stuff that owsley sold
cuz when you wish upon a star
makes no difference where you are
whether u b goin’ to surf city surf city
or lookin for dem hollywood pretty
maybe try to hawk you little ditty
in tinsel town jez be twitty
cuz it be a factory town you know
they crankin up th’dream factory fo’ show
and when you wish to sight a star
makes no diff’n where you are
Cal the place you oughta go
so we loaded up the boat for sausalito
where weather underground stars did go
then caught light of day in law’n’order show
while light falls apart in a little room
like Alice with some kind of ‘shroom
on stanyan street
if you catch by beat,
where gentle dwellers come n go
speaking softly of how property ’ssesments grow
yeah demmie residents come and go
speak’n of what makes dem property ‘ssessments grow
but this i know
it may be all for show
okie from muskogee said
California or bust or ’til i’m dead
but whether u b muskogee okie
yes i know i b get’n lit’bit hokey
or if’n you b some smart silicon geek
u got to admit dat state is pretty sleek
been California dreamin’ all this week!
though you know i aint no freak
oh what fools’gold these mortals seek
u gotta believe it I know
and i be tellin you fo’ sho’
as so i been told
dem streets be wired wit gold

though i now be gettn’ somewhat old:
all that glitters is not gold
what stuff our dreams are made of, or so i’m told
may the bird of paradise eclipse your deepest woes
in the land of gold’n dreams and shows
here in California.
Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
King of Soul
Tags:California, gold, golden state, humor, jest, poem
Posted in 1960's, aging, California, fantasy, history, jest, memories, poem, poetry, pursuit of happiness, satire, travel | Leave a Comment »
March 20, 2019
It has been about 200 years since our great American expansion picked up enough steam to really get going full throttle.
From Maine to Miami, from Seattle to San Diego and everywhere in between, in our humongous exploitive thrust westward, southward, and every whichaway you can think of— we went bustin’ through the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, across the wide prairies, over Big Muddy, up the Missoura and all the way down to the Rio Grande, through Sierras out to Pacific shores, even leaping oceanward and skyward to Hawaii.

Back in the day, when we got into the thick of that vast continental expedition, we moved over and through rolling virgin landscapes of living green.
Green were the great evergreens of the North. Green were the hardwood forests on coastal plains, on Appalachian slopes, on heartland grasslands. Green were the piney woods of the South. Green were the grains of the far-stretching prairies.
And the certificates by which we assigned value to our works—these too were green.
Dollars—we designed them in green.

So, green were the dollars that transacted our nation through thousands of ventures, millions of contracts, compelling trillions of working hands that were capitalized by investing hands, then driven upward in value by speculating hands and traded cleverly by arbitraging wallstreet whizzes.
Some newly-immigrating Americans moved independently, others collectively, across the continent. All along the way they cultivated green crops and earned green dollars wherever they settled, digging, mining, organizing co-ops, forming companies, building roads and bridges, collaborating, accumulating capital, incorporating, expanding, growing, thriving, burgeoning and burdening.
Burdening the earth. Extracting to the max all along the way. Tow that line; tote that bale. Milk it for all its worth.
By the time mid-20th century rolled around, ole mother earth was bursting at the seams, displaying scarred hillsides, scraped-out open-pit mines, hollowed-out insides, chemicalized sores, oozing green slime. . . but enabling us thereby to whiz along on continent-wide interstate rides. Hey, let’s pull over for a song break:
http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Deep Green.mp3
We grew up with stock-green scenery whizzing by outside the windows at 65 miles per hour— seemingly insignificant landscape sliding through the view on our way to wherever our best-laid plans of mice and men might propel us.
At ramping exits we egress to fill-up on the American dream, then cruise control at 78 mph in our lean dream transportation machines. Green, green is just a tucked-away scene behind the gas station.
Still yet are the the dollars green, but only in our minds, because now we’ve digitized them so we don’t actually lay eyes on them $$ any more.
And then, lo and behold, a new thing happened. Motivations morphed. The politics that drives our nation states began to turn green.
Whereas, before, red, white, and blue were the colors that motivated us.
Now we find that the ole faithful red, white and blue of Liberty has run its course through world history. Those other nation-states that had followed our galavanting, capitalizing lead. . . now they have fueled their engines with our money-green currency, and they did park billions of our little federal reserve notes into every marketplace and bank vault across the globe. . .
But what goes around, comes around, and when it recycles, it morphs as something different.
Alas, so now what new Green through yonder Continent breaks?
Turns out that some Keynesizing technocrats have devised a means to turn the whole financialized world around so that the new motive—the re-greening of earth—becomes society’s great purpose and goal. On the old economic scenario of Supply and Demand, Sustainability arises as the new Remand.
Instead of the profit motive! Instead of Go West Young Man, now we find a new clarion call: Go Green Young Band!
https://www.socialeurope.eu/green-money-without-inflation
Will it work?
Glass half-Full
Tags:appropriate technology, conservation, economics, expansion, green, history, production, profit motive, progress, sustainability
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