ANYONE FOR PETANQUE?

May 24, 2016

I have no idea how I'll eventually install all of the daily photos from my porch.  The idea would be to have them in a line... a single row where folks would move counterclockwise to encounter them like a slide show or a movie.  Perhaps mounting them on a long roll of butcher paper and making a maze that would hang from the ceiling in a gallery would work?  Here we go 'round? And, round?

Every day when I get to this part of my daily entries for One Hundred Days.. and have now gone well beyond a hundred..  I let the first thought that I have in mind become the Subject.  Petanque is on my mind a lot these days as I coax the City of Glendale to manicure a patch of dirt behind the Adult Rec Center to be a good place to play the game.  They mostly ignore me.  I started to say that I wished that I was a better politician, but that means coming up with ways to say things that are diplomatic and shaped to garner all the attention to a cause you can.  If I could just be totally honest and do that, that would be great. I now see the terrible "political" crap that is mounting in political races right now and it makes me feel dirty.  

As the race for the Democratic candidate comes to a head with literally thousands of young people rallying to support Mr. Sanders and rich people are invited to Beverly Hills to meet Mrs. Clinton, I wonder if things will all wash out in the long run? Just having read that Colorado Governor John Wright Hickenlooper may be on a list to run w/ Mrs. Clinton as a VP candidate, should she win the race to represent the Dems, that seems interesting.  Hickenlooper seems to me to be a straight shooter and I'll do more research via Colorado friends to see if they agree.  I would hope that should the tide turn for Sanders, that he might consult Hickenlooper, or another progressive and honest sounding leader would join with him to bring in all of the Democrats in these dark times.

Someone posted a quote from Joseph Heller's Catch 22 on FB today over the face of the Orange Man.  The cynical novel and wonderful movie that points up how crazy people can be is a favorite of mine. The quote bears repeating:  

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. 

It merely required no character.” 

Thank you, Joseph Heller.  We need all the help we can get to see through the veil of half truths and out right lies. 

 In California, it is now too late to register to vote in the primaries.  Hopefully, by the time November rolls around, everyone eligible to vote will have understood the importance of this election.  I used to say that Donald Duck could be the President and things would go along about the same. We got GWB and I now see that I was wrong! However, if we allow the United States to succumb to bigotry and hatred, it might be a good thing?  The world will erupt just like the last scenes of DR. STRANGELOVE and then..  in time.. humans may come back to life in the tatters of post nuclear war with sticks and stones for weapons and a lot of cleaning up to do? 

May 24, 2016

michaelsheehan