Conrad Memories from the Future

 Lordy, where to begin?  I knew retirement October 3, 2019, less than a year ago, would bring a new normal.  I just thought it would be somewhat incremental.  After all, I was only working three days each week, three long ten hour days that challenged an old guy, but it was something I liked to do and I like the people.  Each weekend was being spent at Napa caring for the affairs of my mother-in-law, 94 and still healthy although moving toward some kind of assisted living to be sure. So, October 3 showed up and I celebrated my 70th birthday with my wife and financial adviser (don't ask) and looked forward to the trip to Yosemite for the big celebration the next week.  And, that evening, my mother-in-law had a heart attack! We spent the next month rehabilitating her and relocating her to a board and care home near us.  That month was spent at her mobile in the midst of severe wildfires that trashed our air and cut our power eight of those days. November...

 Gilda Radner wrote an introductory story of a harrowing dilemma for a young woman in her book "It's Always Something" about her battle with ovarian cancer.  I do not remember it precisely, but here is its essence: A young lady attracts the attention of a pack of wolves and they chase her.  The wolves gain ground on her as she runs frantically, looking back in terror as they gain on her.   Then she trips! But, the wolves don't pounce upon her, for she has fallen over a ledge.  In panic, she grabs a branch sticking out of the cliff face.  Looking above, she sees the wolves waiting.  Looking below, she sees a fatal fall.   But, looking straight ahead, she sees ... a patch of wild strawberries. Picking one with her free hand, she tastes it.  And she marvels.  How sweet! This story was Gilda's guide on how to deal with the inevitable wolves we all face, the seemingly impossible dilemmas of the impending death in our future and the ...

  Above is the culprit and it is doing a real job on human civilization.  People die and people are wounded and economies crater.  One would think we were at war.  Of course, in a very real sense we are. But, the war is not just with Covid-19, the illness contracted from SARS-COV-2.  No, the war is with ourselves and the Covid crisis has simply pushed it to the fore.  And all of us see this war from our own cultural perspectives, for our own civilization surrounding us is what must serve us to emerge intact on the other side of the problem.  Being American, I will reflect upon the problem(s) from an American perspective. When traveling for the first time in Europe and later in New Zealand, I was naively surprised to find so much of the news coverage in countries visited was news of America.  Our world footprint of the time was vastly greater than I expected.  Along with the news was a great deal of popular myths surrounding that media presenc...

So, Padmum suggested this, but it really is hard for an omnivore to narrow it down!  But, here goes ... Shadowbrook Restaurant, Capitola, CA Ate here for my 50th birthday celebration.  You go down through fern covered hillsides to a terraced restaurant by a river.  I had salmon and my best friend ordered a bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet, my favorite wine!  It's only one of the reasons I'd go back to being 50! Clam Chowder and Sourdough Bowl at Fisherman's Wharf, SF The San Francisco sourdough really is unique and you couple that with freshly harvested clams cooked right there, find a seat overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and you step into a lot of people's dream location.  Lobster in Boston Doesn't require a special place.  Just go from one place to another in the Boston area and order lobster.  They used to serve it to the prisoners there because it was the cheapest, most available food they had, if you can believe that! Great Escape Restaurant in Sa...

I address this to my blog mates when I say that I did not have any idea how to get cleanly out of a topic that Padmini says she can achieve a PhD with when I brought it up.  Then, last night, while walking, I hit on this analogy ... Cultural change through time is like responses in the flow of a fluid, like gravity drawing the water down the mountain over varied terrain, rushing, pooling, raging, all the time feeding life or drowning it in turn.  Cultural flow can be laminar, a term meaning smooth flowing without disruption or interference.  Or, it can just as easily be turbulent, tossed with with events colliding, people upset and fearful. Social evolution happens even as the river flows in a laminar manner, for even though the water is seeing little mix, it must follow the river's ever changing course.  This is a time of peace and gradual development, a period of restful rejuvenation, a time of little fear or concern.  It is the time to bask in the purifying s...

Honestly!  The way we behave, you'd think the earth was shaped like a cube, just a whole collection of flat earths.  Our country rules this face.  Stay away from the edge! We have technology that has made far away places not, in practice, all that far.  We communicate around the globe instantaneously (for all practical purposes) and travel before the pandemic broke out made it fairly easy to reach any place on the planet you needed to be.  But that pandemic has demonstrated so many weak points, putting pressure on all corners (pardon the theme pun) of the globe.  The countries that work cooperatively have a beautiful advantage of shared intellectual resource and supplies whereas those countries like Trumpian America go it alone, substituting propaganda for progress. The World Health Organization is made up of people.  That means it has faults here and there and has made mistakes.  However, it has served America and the rest of the world in a multi...

The above pictures are from the World Plowing Championships on the South Island of New Zealand in April, 2010.  A most gracious host who was the owner of South Pacific Seed housed us and took us to see this.  But, let me fill you in on what you see above and what significance it has to me. I grew up in the Heartland of America, the center of Kansas.  Our calendar and indeed much of our culture was centered on agriculture and the seasons.  Many of our families had farm land even if we didn't personally farm it, so we grew up learning acreage, the meaning of river bottom land, crop yields, wheat weight, etc.  I personally was not a farm kid, but even I have plowed fields with a tractor and have been a worker getting wheat from the fields into a grain elevator.  So, knowing this, our host thought I might be interested to see the actual World Championships of Plowing, something I didn't even know existed. There were different competitive classes, classes of tra...