gearing up to wind down

big time!

deadwood...foul language and all

warning: adult language.
enjoy!

farewell, deadwood

tonight is the final episode of "deadwood." it figures, because it is one of the few things i truly take the time to watch. in the vapid world of television viewing, this one is a gem. ian mcshane is a marvel. the whole cast shines.

the era of the old west has always appealed to me, and this series makes me want to learn even more about the time. the west appears to have been won by greed, murder, and deception. the legacy continues.

in my heritage, there were also robber barons. they were integral in the oil boom in bakersfield, california. my ancestors went from extreme wealth to flat-broke in the course of about 20 years.

A Belated Happy Birthday, Dear Elvis

this is from a great special on vh1 last month. see it if you have not! this song features my favorite dude and my youngest child's favorite dude.

one week from today

the last time i was in hilo was 1984. my son and i spent a month near there, with friends. one day, we went to a shop with various hawaiian antiquities. i bought a little cardboard packet of assorted vintage hawaiian tourist shots. this is one of them.

next sunday, we fly to the big island. it will be incredible, being there again.

Families

another shiny-new video from neil's living with war.
incredible footage.
watch it and pass it on...
peace

ride in my little red wagon

sebastopol, california. 1961. well before viniculture's* greedy sprawl. my three girl cousins lived there, and it was always an adventure for the little san francisco girl. that's me in the goat cart. the girls are behind me, tolerating the spectacle. their daddy was leading the reluctant goat along.

i loved going there, and maybe that's when i knew that i would not always live in the city.*


*
Viniculture vin·i·cul·ture
Vinicultural vin'i·cul'tur·al
Viniculturist vin'i·cul'tur·ist

[VIHN-ih-kuhl-cher] Synonymous with enology viniculture is the study or science of winemaking. One who does so is called a viniculturist, enologist, or simply a winemaker. The term viniculture is not as popular as its counterpart enology. See also acetaldehyde; acetification; acetobacter; acidity; acids; acidulation; aging; alcohol; amelioration; anthocyanins; antioxidant; assemblage; autoclave; autolysis; baking; barrel; barrel fermentation; brix; bentonite; blending; bordeaux blend; bottle fermentation; bottle sickness; bung; campden tablets; cap; capsule; carbon dioxide; carbonic maceration; carboy; chaptalization; charmat process; cooperage; corks; crust; cryoextraction; custom crushing; deacidification; destemming; disgorgement; dosage; enology; esters; estufagem; fermentation; fermentation containers; fermentation lock; field blend; filtering; fining; flavonoids; flor; fortification; fructose; glucose; glycerol; grape concentrate; grapes; hydrogen sulfide; hydrometer; inoculate; isinglass; leaf removal; lees; maceration; malolactic fermentation; méthode champenoise; must; must weight; mutage; muté; mycoderma; oaking; oxidation; passito; pasteurization; ph; phenolic compounds; plastering; pomace; potassium metabisulfite; potential alcohol; press; pulp; pumping over; punching down; racking; residual sugar; riddling; ripasso process; secondary fermentation; sediment; skin contact; solera system; specific gravity; stabilization; stainless steel tanks; starter; sulfur dioxide; sur lie; tannins; topping; tartrates; ullage; variety; vintage; viticulture; volatile acidity; whole berry fermentation; winegrower; yeast.

who knows where the time goes?

another birthday, way-back-when. that's my little brother.

today i celebrate #49, in a series.

i have much to be thankful for.

not the least of which is YOU!

cheers.

gonzo

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Hunter S. Thompson

after the garden is gone

it's a just-released neil video, with some powerful pictures.

i just can't help myself

paul krassner made me laugh today.

it's a bit vulgar.

sorry.

Take A Vacation, Fall Out For Awhile

another flashback. the high country of yosemite. twenty-six years back. lying on a giant slab of granite by the river. (i was multi-tasking, old-school style!)

last week, i spent a little time with the man that took this picture. both of us were at his mother's house, saying farewell to our now-grown daughter.(pictured below) we haven't been married since 1988.

for a dancer

older daughter in 1992, when she was a ballerina in santa cruz.

"Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But youll never know"

jackson browne

she is mighty

camp winnarainbow 2006

stop this world

better days this girl has known...san francisco, 1958.


"Stop This World"
(Written by Mose Allison/Covered splendidly by Diana Krall)

Stop this world, let me off
There's just too many pigs in the same trough
There's too many buzzards sitting on the fence
Stop this world, it's not making sense

Stop this show, hold the phone
Better days this girl has known
Better days so long ago
Hold the phone, won't you stop the show

Well, it seems my little playhouse has fallen down
I think my little ship has run aground
I feel like I'm in the wrong place
My state of mind is a disgrace

Won't you stop this game, deal me out I know too well what it's all about
I know too well that it had to be
Stop this game well it's ruining me

Well I got too smart for my own good
I just don't do the things I know I should
There's bound to be some better way
I just got one thing more to say

And that is
Stop this game, deal me out I know too well what it's all about
I know too well that it had to be
Stop this game well it's wrecking me
-----------
that about covers it. i took my older daughter to the bay area yesterday, and she flew away to boulder. she'll be there until next spring. the quiet grief is indescribable. i am learning to let go-i have done it before. i can't say i like it much. the pain of love is like nothing else.

the kid had to throw things away at the airport early this morning.(water bottle and a jar of mendocino mustard!)what a day to fly. she made it to denver, safe and sound.

cynical me can't help but notice that this heightened terror alert coincides with the continued failure of this administration in every way possible. so much war and mayhem. "quick! let's remind them that they are always vulnerable; they NEED us!"

just remember... "be vigilant!"

stop this world, indeed

You Are A Cedar Tree

You are elegant yet unpretentious, modest yet vivacious. Attractive and friendly, you are full of imagination but might lack passion. You abhor vulgar people, and you don't like anything in excess. You have little more ambition than to live a calm life and enjoy nature. You create a content, peaceful atmosphere for others.

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

(thanks, taza!)

everett, washington

august 1995. she was 8. he was 13. it was turning out to be a bit of a rough month for their(closet deadhead) mother. the kids and i had a trip planned to see my pal. she lives north of seattle. a 5th grade teacher. the sort of a teacher that parents dream of, for their children. a perfect friend since she was 20 and i was 19... marshall tucker band. beaches on the west shore of the lake. operating a chair lift, all winter-long. cream cheese and green onion enchilada feasts. that kind of friend.

the kids and i were to fly to seattle on august 9th. the big day came. awake early, i answered the phone when it rang at a surprisingly early hour. my friend tim was on the line. "have you heard?" i had not heard much so far that day. the television was not on. the next thing tim said was: "jerry died in his sleep."
long silence. that moment felt a lot like when you were a kid, and you'd fall from a swing, landing hard on your belly. a big thump. no air. no obvious way in which to find any air. just that quiet, desperate gasp.

i don't think we said much, after that. i hung up the phone. off to the airport, and to the nearest news stand. that part was surreal, approaching the wall of newspapers. there was jerry garcia's picture on all the front pages. weird. who would have thought, in the beginning, that he'd be front page news? we all settled in for the quick flight to seattle. i began reading the various accounts, assumptions, and tributes to this man. just a man, after all. it began to sink in then, maybe.

the visit was many fine things. my son got his blonde hair died blue. his big wish finally happened, after months of asking. funny. he got bored with it fast, and couldn't wait for it to wash out.

we had waited months for this trip. i can't describe how strange i felt all that week. shock, i suppose. we did cool stuff. toughed it out. (my specialty.)
we were still in the northwest when jerry's giant memorial took place in golden gate park. at the time, it seemed perfectly okay to miss it. something i'd regret.


life has moved on. the kids in the above photo are adults now. the friend who called to tell me that garcia died was dead less than a year later. i miss him.
and i still miss jerry.

the countdown begins

a month from right now... we will be on the big island. this was kalapana, which i enjoyed a great deal with my (little) son the last time i was there. that was in 1984, and both kilauea and mauna loa were erupting simultaneously! eventually, the lava took kalapana over.

more morford

Lick My Silent Sports Car
How much has Big Auto lied? Take a drive in this four-wheel electric orgasm, and find out
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, August 2, 2006



Oh my God do they ever lie.

All of them: Big Auto, Big Oil, BushCo, Pennzoil and Havoline and Saudi Arabia and crusty Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and the oil lobbyists and lackey scientists working for the Department of Energy and all the rest, on down the line and right up to your garage door.

Lie lie lie lie lie like evil little ratdogs because they are, after all, corporate greedmonkeys and war profiteers and duplicitous oil-sucking cretins (is that too polite?) who would eat their own mother's heart for a notable uptick in share/barrel price. Nevertheless, it's always a bit of a jolt when you see it all up close and personal and they basically rub it in your face.

Just look. Look over here. It's a new sports car. It's a new sports car that looks deliciously like a Lotus Elise and reportedly drives like Michael Schumacher's wet dream and goes from zero to 60 in about four seconds with so much torque and freakishly instantaneous power it makes the gods swoon.

This car, it has a top speed of 130 mph. It has a range of 250 miles. It also has GPS navigation and air-conditioning and air bags and it surely will come with a very badass sound system. It has heated seats and (I presume) iPod integration and Bluetooth. You know, just like a real car.

Oh, and by the way, this car? It's completely silent. It is 100-percent emissions-free. Doesn't even have a tailpipe. Because it has no internal combustion engine of any kind.

It's not a hybrid. It's pure electric, powered by a "3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor," which I'm sure is rather impressive if you know what the hell it means. But it means one thing for certain: The only oil in this car is in the buffing fluid for the leather seats.

It's called the Tesla Roadster, unveiled just recently to a gaggle of giddy auto peeps in Santa Monica and coming to an elite showroom in about a year for around the price of a Porsche 911.

That's right, it's not a prototype. Not some eccentric inventor's crazy basement fantasy. It's a real car. Street legal, drivable, gorgeous, available soon. The Tesla guys have already earned their share of press, given how they managed to wrangle millions in backing from the Google boys (among others). Rumor has it that the Guvernator himself, after going for a test drive during last week's press day, has already placed his order for one of the little luxo speedsters, presumably to feed to his fleet of rabid Hummers.

Did I mention the Roadster costs about 80K? Who cares? The price is irrelevant. The fact that this car even exists in such a pure and obvious and performance-oriented form, does. Simply put, it is the most flagrant proof yet that we have been brutally, savagely misled.

See, they lie. And they've been lying for years, decades. They lie about how difficult it is to replace the internal combustion engine. They lie about how unfeasible it is to eliminate auto emissions without sacrificing real performance (the 130-mph Roadster's lithium-ion battery system is estimated to be twice as efficient as a Prius and three times as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell. Not to mention Tesla's fabulous solar option).

But they lie, most of all, about how much we still require foreign oil, because these billion-dollar corporations claim they can't possibly afford to develop sufficiently advanced technology in your lifetime to create a 100-percent emissions-free, oil-free, ultragreen vehicle that still has all the comforts and performance of a regular car.

Nice pipe dream, they say. Here, have a bloated SUV, they say. Sorry about all your dead kids in Iraq, they add, smirking like a chimp and blowing their noses into a big pile of Halliburton profits.

Did you already know? Did part of you suspect that we could be, if we were directing our country's massive resources at all correctly, already mass-producing the technology that could quickly wean us from our dependence on foreign petroleum?

Did you already calculate that if even a fraction of the $300 billion -- a truly staggering amount -- we've wasted on BushCo's failed and disgusting war could have gone to revolutionizing our nation's energy infrastructure (like, say, funding large-scale development of the Roadster's technology), instead of annihilating a pip-squeak nonthreatening nation over its oil reserves while simultaneously serving as the most successful terrorist-recruitment poster in world history, the United States could be considered the epicenter of integrity and invention once again? Of course you did.

But oh wait. Such an obvious, lucid redirection of resources and ideology would require someone with true vision in the White House. Someone with integrity. And intelligence. And fearlessness. And an articulate understanding of complex ideas. And a Congress to match. Never mind.

I know, it's not exactly a new story. Just go see "Who Killed the Electric Car?" for proof of how corporate greed eats innovation like so many CornNuts. Then go see "An Inconvenient Truth" for a story of brutal denial and sheer idiocy among the political and corporate elite. Then rent "The Corporation" to see how social responsibility ranks right up there with modest golden parachutes on the list of U.S. corporate values (though that may finally be changing, given the undeniable business woes caused by global warming). Voilá America in a nutshell.

But Tesla is different. They're an independent company. They don't have to answer to the Bush or ExxonMobil or GM. Indeed, its execs say that any sales of the pricey sports car will help propel its core technology even further and maybe create an economy of scale to make mass production of regular cars much more feasible.

In other words, screw the monoliths; enthrall the wealthy individual enthusiasts first, sex up the media with cool pictures and dazzling performance, prove you can make serious profits with green technology and the big corporations will have to follow.

Sure, why not? Why couldn't the Roadster's ideal combo of sexiness and performance and entrepreneurial grit trickle down to the consumer mind-set and generate some fanatical buzz, force some change, help take us back to a culture where true innovation and radical thinking aren't considered a threat (sorry, GOP) but rather the mark of a vital and thriving country?

Hell, mass-produce that Roadster motor and toss it in a nice little Audi TT or even a Ford Focus, slow it down a little and add a trunk and slice the price by 60 percent and advertise it as zero pollution and zero trips to the gas pump and a big throbbing middle finger to Saudi Arabia and BushCo and distended world-humpers like this guy, and watch the eager throngs line up.

Of course, these cars do need one thing to juice their love: electricity. Which we are, at over 100 global-warmed degrees all over the nation last week, straining like mad to produce in sufficient amounts to keep our air conditioners cranked to stave off the dire heat problems created, ironically, by all those years of lying. But hey, one massive ecological crisis at a time, you know?


----------------

life may be sweeter for this

jerry's birthday

this is a spunky version of the jerry garcia band,
doing "run for the roses"
happy birthday, jer.

you are missed.