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!