Hot and Humid!

Afternoon Folks,

As per the title above, it has been pretty warm and humid here in Flagstaff, AZ. When I was young growing up in San Diego, I loved this kind of weather and have to say I never noticed the humidity. But, after about 35 years in the Arid Zone whenever we get to the "Monsoon" season here the relative moisture in the air gets to me. I am not fond of heat either. My ideal "warm" temp would be about 60 degrees. However, my favorite season is winter. I love it when we start to get those freezing nights in the fall.

Technically speaking, it is still summer (and feels like it), but kids in Flagstaff have started back to school. Northern AZ University begins their Fall semester next week. It is difficult to believe that for most of my life the calendar was marked by semesters, first in grade school, Jr. High, and High School, then after the Army (3 years), 8 years at university and 27 years teaching college. Even far more difficult to fathom is the fact that it has been 10 years since my retirement from academia. It took several of those years to adjust to not going back to school (work) in Fall. The lack of what Spring Break use to mean was another time adjustment.

Now it is difficult to see those divisions of the year as a reality in my life. Each chapter of life feels like a different lifetime. When I look back at when I was a young soldier in the early 1960s it hardly seems real to me. It is amusing to contemplate in your own life how time itself, and how it is broken down, is just a social construct.

On top of all that we are constantly redefining our past life in terms of what is important to us now. A sociologist by the name of Peter Berger called this "Alternation, or redefining our biography." In addition, we selectively remember the past as well. An author whose name escapes me said he kept journals throughout his life. He came-up with what he thought was a "novel" idea but in reviewing these journals from his younger days he found that it was not a new idea. If we all kept journals we would probably discover more of our "real" past, not our reinterpretation of it.

Well, these are some of my musings for a warm Arizona mountain afternoon . . . as for films . . .

Last week I went to Sedona to see Ann Hathaway's new film, One Day. I thought it had some promise but was not very good. Since returning to AZ the best one that I have seen lately is The Help. The acting and the story are very good. While in San Diego I viewed Cowboys and Aliens with my grandsons. They liked it but I found it somewhat boring and overly long. In that venue (s. cal) Sarah's Key was extraordinary with Kristin Scott-Thomas giving an excellent performance in a French film about the round-up of Jews by the french during WWII. The story went back and forth through time telling the story of Sarah and her escape and the journalist's attempt to uncover it. Crazy, Stupid Love was an entertaining film that I enjoyed. I walked out of Tree of Life because it was so "overdone" in trying to be "Artsy Fartsy" and into Captain America, which I had not planned on seeing but was pleasantly surprised. It too was entertaining, at least for its genre.

That's it for the moment here in Northern Arizona. Until next time, Adios Amigos y Amigas!

Almost . . .

Hey Folks,

I "almost" did a posting last month after I returned from Yellowstone late in the month. Upon beginning the blog I realized I did not have much to say. I resigned my job there and returned to Flagstaff. There were many factors involved and have decided not to go into them. However, I wish to say my boss, Candice, was great, so that was not a factor in the decision.

Yesterday I returned from a trip to San Diego County to visit family and that went well, at least the family part. I have to say that as much as "Zoners" like San Diego I dislike it intensely, too many people and the traffic is horrible. They say, "but it so beautiful over there." My usual reply is that it was "beautiful " when I was growing up there. I know that no place stays the same but the main problem everywhere seems to be people and development. There are so many places where I grew up that were filled with canyons and open spaces we played in that are now paved over and filled with "strip malls" and more housing.

I had a discussion at my gym about all this with some "older guys" this morning. I guess we sound like a bunch of old geezers bitching about the "modern" times and wishing that things had not changed. It may be part of getting older and harkening back to the past more and more. I told them I wondered if my grandsons would be saying the same thing in about 50 years.

Change today is moving at an ever increasing pace. New media makes us instantly aware of things it took days and weeks sometimes to discover. We know too much . . . our grandkids know too much but are not literate. No one wants to read books and use their imagination. On this recent trip I had this discussion with my 12 year old grandson Cole. He seems bored if things are not happening around him all the time, especially this summer. I said why don't you read a book. Further, I said reading was one of my main escapes when young (actually, it still is). His reply, which echoes my other, and older grandson Zac, " I don't like to read." The "Kindle" and other such devices have been invented to attempt to capture readers again but if my grandsons are any sample of the population, this will not be successful.

As Aldous Huxley wrote in the 1930s, it's "A Brave New World." It does not seem to be a world I like very much. I know everyone will survive and adapt to it and that there will be "pockets of resistance," but it is not my world. It becomes more and more difficult to relate to the world as it has become. Probably that is the evolution of becoming older and realizing that you are not much of a factor in "the world," if you ever were. In all probability it is the reason why elderly Inuits (Eskimos) went out on the ice to die, and Plains Indian elder males did the same, or staked themselves out to die in battle. This is not to say that I plan to do anything like this . . . None of us knows where we will end up or, how.

I realize this has not been an up-lifting blog, but just felt like "blasting out there" a bit. At this point, since I get no comments on these things, I do not know if this is being read by anyone "out there." It is kind of like Bob Dylan's old song title, "Blowing in the Wind."

Cheers all!