Date:                           July 25, 2007

Location:                    Watsonville, CA                   

1000:

            Communication is a very strange phenomenon.  It can express joy, sadness, anger and love and all from the same person with small but significant voice inflections or body expressions.  Often the art is in the reception and not in the transmission.  A perceived inflection or body position can so very often speak volumes, and sometimes not the message that was meant to be delivered. 

            Communication is such a delicate art and science and yet last night my wife and I carried on a full conversation, of sorts, and all I did was sound some sort of grunt.  Sometimes my grunt was a yes response to her question and sometimes it was a negative response and yet they were both just grunts with minor sound inflections to define the difference.  Yet, somehow Connie managed to understand exactly what it was I was trying to convey to her and I managed to hold up my end of the small conversation with the least amount of effort.  I managed to grunt a yes at the proper time, or a no if that was required.  I managed to also indicate an “I don’t know” and still use the simple exhalation of air in a lazy “uh uh”, “uh ah” or “hua hu.” 

            Last night I carried on a conversation with grunts or moans of sound and this morning I have taken half a page to describe the event and have yet to discuss what the topic of the conversation was.  As I said, “Communication is a strange phenomenon.”  It really does not matter what the conversation was about.  It just goes to prove that while you are not using energy to actually form words and express thoughts your mind can wonder into some very strange recesses in your mind.

            As I contemplate these profound thoughts about guttural communication and the ability to express thoughts through groans or grunts I am also reading a book about the life and political experiences of Madeleine Albright.  She is a woman that has spent most of her life dealing with a world where each word of an agreement is parsed and negotiated.  I can not help but wonder if at one of her high level negotiating sessions if a conversation might have resembled the one Connie and I had last night before bed time.  If so, I can not help but wonder what earth shaking, historical event was decided between grunts of acceptance or disapproval.  One can only hope that each “uh uh” or “Uh ah” was interpreted properly.

            Like I said when I started this diatribe, “Communication is a very strange phenomenon” and now you have spent the better part of last few minutes trying to figure out just where it was I was going when I started this. 

Well, the answer is simple, “ah ont oh.”

            By the way, we did have a real day in the Monterey Bay area yesterday.  We, or should I say my wife, packed a picnic lunch and we ventured to Point Lobos State Reserve, which is just south of Monterey on the coast.  If you have ever watched a movie with a dramatic Pacific shore line and pounding waves breaking over huge boulders near the shore it was probably filmed at Point Lobos.  It has been a favorite spot for movies since the invention of film.

            The weather on our visit was not the pristine blue and sharp sunny day we might have desired.  It was actually a day lived within a cloud.  The beauty of crystal clear days along the coast was, for a day or so, replaced with an invasion of “Marine Layer.”  It may have dampened the scenery, but it did not dampen our spirits as we hiked along the rocky cliffs of Point Lobos and enjoyed our picnic watching the breaking waves explode as they crashed into the rocky protrusions of the inlets.

            Point Lobos is a place that we have visited previously and a place we will visit many more times before we leave this area.  It is a spot on this beautiful earth that holds that much charm and attracts that much attention.

Date:                           July 22, 2007             

Location:                    Watsonville, CA                    

0645:

            The winds of change are a never ending event in the life of all people.  It is from this perspective and reality that phrases like, “You can never go back home” grow.  The smell of chicken cooking in the kitchen and the expectation of a large family Sunday dinner are today replaced with Kentucky fried chicken take-out or a visit to Olive Garden.  The simple memory of a steam filled home as a large dinner is being prepared in the kitchen is saved for very special occasion and not just a normal Sunday afternoon.  We are a much more complicated and hurried society today and the simplicities of our youth are so far in the past that we can not ever seem to replicate them in today’s hustle and bustle.  People are just too busy being busy.

            From this slightly despondent perspective I must attempt to explain my feelings on returning to California. On my first visit here I fell in love. It has seemed, and remains to feel, like it is the place on earth that I am supposed to be.  It is not the perfect spot, I am sure, but it is beautiful beyond description and, in my heart, has an energy that feeds my soul and is beyond my simple understanding.  It just feels like the place where my heart and soul feel at home.  On my first visit I met the relaxed and happy Californian.  A person that was welcoming and warm.  The type of person that belonged in this heaven and treated you as you belonged also.  How could I not fall in love?

            I am not so sure that the energy and beauty of this area has changed in the least for me.  I still feel like I am in the spiritual home of my inner self and I am still in love with the area.  The beauty is not unrealistic but it is still beyond description by we mere mortals.  The glistening surf and rugged cliff shore line are truly dreamscapes of imagination and pleasure.  Even if the morning starts with a thick moist layer of fog the perfection of a crystal clear blue sky is soon visible and the pleasures of cool and calm breezes comforts the warmth of a bright full day of sun.  The tans in the pictured ads of a Californian travel brochure do not come out of a bottle; they come from days at the beach and normal life in this area.  This is a place of charm, true warmth and beauty; it is a glimpse of heaven on earth.

            As far as Mother Earth is concerned, I have returned to the place I have always wanted to call home and she has kept the warmth and charm as if just awaiting my return.  My sadness is in realizing that the people that I had once met seem to have all changed so very dramatically.  No longer am I finding myself amongst the throngs of easy living and relaxed souls of enjoyment and pleasure.  Instead I find a stiff, busy and hectic throng of bodies that exude a frustration and almost anger.  The people simply do not seem happy.  Sometime between my teen years and my senior years the lives of the collected society in California became the stereotypical cold, or maybe cool, northeasterner.  Always in a hurry to be where ever they are not and never able to stop and enjoy the beauty that is surrounding them.  Their faces are frozen in a stare of anxiety and excessive pressure and it would seem that there is no room for the experience of calm pleasure in their souls.  They are just not happy.

            I do not mean to imply that there is no happiness in their lives.  I do not know them well enough to even hint at that desperation.  I do not mean to say that the people I meet daily are all over anxious and under pleasured.  I do not live their lives, nor sadly do I feel that I might want to live in their souls.  I do mean to say that as I meet these zombies of the over stressed and under pacified throngs I see a society that is not pleased with itself, with anything around it.  I meet a people that are not able to understand or appreciate the pleasure and beauty that is all around them, nor can they be comforted by it.  They are, seemingly, in a self imposed state of misery and or self pity.  They are just not happy.

            I do not have any solutions for the problems that I describe.  I do have a feeling of sympathy for the people that carry such large frowns of despair.  We do not seem to be a happy country, or at least not outwardly when we are in public.  I think that as we speed up as a society we are often forgetful about the pleasures of slow and easy.  That is a very sad commentary on the youth of today, for they may never know the difference.  We in or near our 60’s remember the 1960’s and a time of love and peace not like today when we are living in a time of orchestrated hate, war and fear.  We geriatric hippies remember when we gathered to “make love not war.”  Now we gather to funnel hate toward one ethnic group or another; or one religion or another; or because of a persons private sexual directions.  We do not accept, we exclude, we do not unconditionally love, we instead fear monger and hate.  Is there any doubt why we seem angry most of the time and seldom, if ever, seem happy? 

            I did return home, in a sense.  It is as beautiful and enticing as I remember.  It just seems to be inhabited by a new, much less happy family.  It is a very large family that is filling up our lives in almost all corners of our country.  We need a change, and I think I know where we could begin the changing and the sooner the better.  Or maybe we should all just look deep within and see if there is not a happy person hiding somewhere that would love to come out and play. 

            The surf’s up and I’ll meet you at the beach. 

Date:                           July 20, 2007

Location:                    Watsonville, CA                   

            Questions have arisen about where in the world are Connie and Rob.  It seems that there has been little information on my Blog of late and there are actually people out there that do read this at times. This whole situation came as a bit of a shock to me personally.  First that people read this mind wondering of babble that I place out in cyber space, and second that they might miss it if I, for what ever reason, decided not to keep it up to date. 

            Connie and I are quite busy at the Santa Cruz KOA doing our “work camper” thing and enjoying most of it.  I will not go into the frustration we sometimes feel nor will I attempt to explain why it is that Connie and I always seem to take entirely too much ownership of any project that we tackle. It is a generational thing and a work ethic that we both have lived for many too many years.  If this is a negative thing it is a negative that the world will have to live with and learn to handle.  We do have a volunteer mentality and we apply that work ethic to all and any projects in which we choose to involve ourselves. 

            I will, however, attempt to answer the question of where are and how are we doing.  Connie and I are home and we are doing superbly.  I know that the “cutesy” answer of a full timer is that where ever I park my rig is home and now we are parked near the Monterey Bay shore line and we are at home.  But, inside our souls and from some ethereal feeling Connie and I do feel at home.  Yes, I said Connie and I feel at home.  The weather has been just this side of perfect with the heat of the day reaching a perfect upper 70 degrees and the evening cooling off to a mid 50 degree sleeping heaven.  I must admit that on most, but not all, mornings we are greeted with a very thick “marine layer” which disappears my noon or earlier. Back on the east coast this would be called patchy fog.  Once the marine layer retreats to the western horizon of the Pacific Ocean we are treated to the bluest of blue skies and gentle breezes of a cool ocean.  Connie and I have found that we can be lulled into not understanding the heat of a bright sun while enjoying the cool wafting winds off the surf.  Yes, that can translate to a slight sun burn and a peeling tummy for yours truly.  I found that a day sitting on the edge of breaking surf in a gentle breeze is a great time to read a book and perfect chance to turn ones white tummy into a red tomato which will then sting each and every time you turn over in bed or just move in any direction.  It will also produce a ton and half of peeling skin.  Yet I still love this area, only now I wear a t-shirt when I decide to be lazy in the sun.

            Connie has, many times, remarked how comfortable we are living in Santa Cruz.  The weather is as I described and the scenery is to be experienced to fully understand.  The blues of the sky seem bluer, the green of the trees against that blue seem sharper and the punctuation of beautifully colored flowers accentuates every scene. Fields of produce line both sides of the roads through this area and they run from the rich hillside right to the glistening blue of Monterey Bay.   Living in the Watsonville area  places us in one of America’s most productive agricultural areas.  It is an area of health and growth energy and it permeates ones soul as we drive through the valleys and over the rolling hill terrains of farm land.  The earth is as rich as I have ever seen and the fields are always in some state of producing fruits or vegetables.  Most of the farm land is now producing strawberries, and I mean a lot of strawberries.  In New York or even Florida we have seen patches of strawberry growing, maybe even a medium size field of berries.  In Watsonville we see enormous field after field of strawberry hills producing the largest and most juicy berries I have ever had.  These fields are not just large plots of land with strawberry plants they are large acreages of plants that line row after row after row of mounds that stretch seaming from horizon to horizon and from one hill top to the next.  It is literally “Strawberry Fields Forever.  How could one not love it here?

            In a simple summation, Connie and I are where we should be and enjoying it as much as we possibly can.  We do miss our family, but that is what moms and papas are supposed to do.  We are healthier and more comfortable than we have been in a long time.  We have been eating better and actually loosing weight.  Most days we smile and laugh a lot more than we frown or complain.  In a short, “Life is good.” 

By the way, Connie made me pancakes this morning with fresh strawberries on top; and the table was decorated with  Connie’s bouquet of fresh locally grown cut flowers which she gets every week, enough said.