Click images for desktop size: "Goe Platz der Synagoge"
I have a friend. He used to be one of my kids. He became an archeologist.

I always pause and think, "How cool is that?"

He talked about the "dangers" of his profession. It was an intriguing conversation. Went something like this: We move rapidly down to the surface of the planet then along the raw, untarnished terrain, past mud huts and peasant farmers dressed in rough skins and little cloth. When we suddenly reach the edge of a great white glowing city.

There are hover cars here and clean refined elegantly gentle people stroll the wide boulevards. They wear togas and peplums. Even though we move past them too quickly we know that they are talking of nothing but the deepest most beautiful subjects.

We keep on zooming up to the centerpiece of this small Utopia; an enormous rose marble castle. We shoot up the spires until we come to a lavish room. The centerpiece of this room, mounted on a golden other worldly metal is a simple red clay urn.

It is apparent we are intended to view this urn with majestic awe. When suddenly the urn, for no known reason, begins to crumble. A piece of it falls to the floor.

The piece of urn stays where it is. The world around it dissolves as we zoom ahead, only this time we don't zoom through space but through time. Until we reach the present day and discover the shard of pottery in the hands of a gleaming archaeologist. We know that the past/future world is his dream of his discovery.

A dream that could be written up, published and after a while accepted as fact.


Click images for desktop size: "Christmas Trees" Paleontologists can have the same issue. He had a glib phrase for it. I don't remember the exact wording. It was something about reconstructing god from a toenail clipping.

Letting ego and hope and dreams cover up and distort objectivity. To let dreams become facts.

What seems to prevent this from becoming the universal truth are the cold hard facts of history.

I've long been concerned that we Americans don't put much value in history. We don't study it much, we don't learn from it, we don't see this as a story of people, ourselves, a story.

America, white America, really doesn't have a whole lot of history, anyway. Which could explain why so many kids assume Benjamin Franklin was our most important President; his pictures on the hundred dollar bill, right?

Most nations have their character forged by their history. Their inspiration and their aspirations are based on a firm bed rock of what went before.

America's character was forged by pulp fiction writers, story tellers, TV and movies.

I've always thought that was a good thing.

Very few people can live up to the demands and image of the hero's we create for ourselves. The wild west is our mythology that brands us and is the image we project to the world.

It forced people to live up to an impossible standard of "truth, justice and the American Way". Or as John Ford said, "When the truth becomes legend, print the legend."

I've always guessed that its our own scant history that has lead America into some of its gravest disasters. Sometimes its not enough to read the man in front of you, you have to read his past as well.

Viet Nam is an easy example. We ignored historical imperatives. We were doomed to fail. The Viet Namese have been conquered and occupied for centuries, but they never stopped being Viet Namese.

They even created a terrifying martial art based on their historical imperative. Its an organized fighting style that teaches its okay to take a fist to the face so long as you break your opponents finger. Then when the finger is broken take a punch to the chest to enable you to break his wrist, then on to break the arm, then the shoulder than a knee, then a leg etc.

This is a nation that codified its history into a fighting discipline. This is a nation of people willing to get the crap kicked out of them so long as at the end they stand triumphant.


Click images for desktop size: "Ocean Before the Storm" by GYS Moville Schoolyard politics dictate that you don't mess with the crazy kid who'll pick up a baseball bat and try and clock you in the head!

Its dumb football coach logic; understanding that when we make a move that we can study what our opponent has done in the past against others to predict what they will do in the future.

I just think we all need to pay a little bit more attention. We need to remember, especially now but always that the person in front of us has a past as well as a present and a future. We all do.

I think that's great.



Its cold here.

Went with my puppy for our walk and to take pictures of some of the Christmas lights in out neighborhood.

I don't really know any of the neighbors yet. That's odd for me, but not worrisome.

Wore the iPod and listened to Cathy Sharpe - North Pole Rock. It was a nice calm time.

I'm no photographer and I'm afraid to look at my "work" just yet.

As usual I was proud of the way my puppy acted as we met people. I was enthralled as she looked at the decorations.