INFORMATION DELUGE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OLD-FASHIONED CENSORSHIP

There are two ways to control inciting ideas: deny people access to them or bury them in a sea of useless information. Today in America, we have access to just about everything, yet 99 percent of this information is distracting, irrelevant, or simply wrong. Meanwhile the Chinese have limited access to social media, blogs, and accurate historical information about their country. Most people view this as the most insidious form of censorship, but to me there is a huge upside to this old-fashioned style of censorship. The problem with keeping information from people is that eventually--as history has always shown--people will find it, and the act of censoring or hiding it actually acknowledges the informations' power and worth. In a world where many people struggle to establish value for themselves, this act of censorship actually does the heavy cognitive lifting for those who may not be able to do so on their own.

In America we have a new approach to censorship. We make everything available: every useless, distracting, divisive, unfounded, ridiculous, baseless piece of information is only a click away. Mixed together in this useless sea of ones and zeros are the rare fish, the knowledge that could wake people up to the unsettling truths that are beginning to stack up all around us: That elites are amassing huge stockpiles of our resources, that the penal system is enslaving significant sections of our population, that the media serves to polarize all who indulge in it in the most effective divide and conquer campaign since the colonization of Africa, that corporations are raping and pillaging our planet, that people are being shot on the streets of our cities because we don't understand the subtle yet complex racism that is hard-wired into each of us, and finally, that the American Dream--one of the most powerful myths ever created--is only possible at the expense of others. People throughout the world suffer every day for our dream. And now the American Dream is a global ambition; our wasteful selfish lifestyles have become models for others, and our planet can't sustain it.

None of the truths I've mentioned are censored from the American people. Like all the nonsense, they are a click away. It is a cruel irony that with wisdom comes calm. The ignorant scream at the top of their lungs and draw all the attention. We live in a world with an unprecedented amount of distraction that works like a magicians slight of hand taking our eyes away from the crucial realities. 

ART THAT MOVED ME

This piece of art resides in the San Juan Island Sculpture Park, a 20 acre free park where 150 artists display their work outdoors. I liked many of the pieces I saw there, but the one pictured above really stood out. It is called Winged Victory and it was made by Sante Fe artist Anne Russell. For more examples of her work click here. The piece really made me think about the consequences of victory. It could be yours for $3,000.00.     

ROSS LAKE

Ross Lake has got to be one of the best kept secrets in Washington, and judging from the number of visits my blog is getting, it will stay that way well after this post. Most of the campsites on the lake are assessable by boat only. To rent a boat we had to hike in a mile to the floating resort shown in the third picture. You actually can't reach the resort by land, you have to locate the hidden telephone across the lake from the resort and request a boat pick-up (this isn't a joke). Ross Lake Resort started in 1950 when a enterprising young man bought all the floating houses that workers lived in while they were building the neighboring dam. Today the small resort has a one year waiting list due to its popularity. Unfortunately for the timing of our visit, wildfires were raging in the area and actually got worse over the course of our two night stay. Smoke from the fires can be seen in the first photo. By the time we got our boat back to the resort we discovered that they had actually been evacuated the night before. It made for a nerve-wracking hike out, though we weren't in any immediate danger. The whole experience gave me a new appreciation for how dangerous and destructive fires can be. 

MY AFTERNOON WITH A DEER

Cat Island is a tiny speck of an island just off the mountainous coastline of Ross Lake in Northern Cascade National Park. To see it on google maps click here. Cat Island sits about 50 yards from the adjacent shoreline. Julie and I arrived on Cat by small rowboat in the morning and set up our tent, then left to explore the lake. When we got back we found this deer in a neighboring campsite. It seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see it. I wondered how this deer came to be on the island. Perhaps there was a whole family of deer here. I decided to get my camera and go on the easiest tracking mission ever (the island can be crossed in any direction in a few minutes). At this point the island was also becoming engulfed in a hazy smoke from the nearby Thursday Creek wildfire, giving the sunlight a beautiful diffused quality great for photography. I found the deer without much trouble. I knew it was the same deer because she had black scars on her side, perhaps from a run in with a bear or a barbed-wire fence. The deer didn't run off when I approached her, so I just sat and watched her for twenty minutes or so. It was during that time that I noticed her full teats, and figured she was pregnant. I suspect this deer, sensing she was pregnant, swam to this island to give birth and raise her young in an environment that lacked any predators. I was amazed by the sophistication of this animal. I left her after a while and returned to my campsite to read a book. About an hour later the deer came right down next to me as if to say, "I'm curious to see how you live too." I wonder what she would blog about me.   

MISUNDERSTANDING GOD?

I find it hard believe that God wants anyone to own a million dollar yacht, so I take some offense to this ship named Trinity pretending to be bathed in Christian ideals. I'm fairly certain Jesus didn't die so this person could have an opulent boat.  There is a reason why people like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and other godly folks lived modestly. There is something that comes with understanding the connectedness of all life that pushes people away from indulgence. Extravagance always comes at a cost to others, from the $10 an hour employee that gets cancer from breathing the marine epoxies that seal the boat's fiberglass, to the indigenous people who are kicked off their land so their teak trees can be harvested to make the yacht's cabinetry, to the innocent Arab families that have been killed as the collateral damage of war to secure the massive amounts of oil required to push the boat from port to port. Perhaps godly people are those with eyes that see these connections, but I'm not sure. Americans do a great job of isolating ourselves to avoid the uncomfortable truths about how our lifestyles effect people in other parts of the world we've never met. If you want to own a luxury boat because you feel like you've worked hard and deserve it, that's your business, but better to call it the Ayn Rand or the Bill Gates, and change the Jesus fish to a dollar sign. As we push deeper into the age of indulgence, I hope these connections become more apparent to the well-meaning well-to-do. Perhaps Trinity could discover some truth on a yachting adventure to Bangladesh to see where boat shoes are made.    

THE OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL: QUILCENE, WA

The Olympic Music Festival is an idea I wish I'd had or could afford to pull off. In 1984, a violinist named Alan Iglitzin bought an old farm property north of Quilcene, Washington and started hosting  informal music concerts in the barn for his friends and fellow musicians. He quickly realized that others were also interested in hearing classical music in his barn, and The Olympic Music Festival was born. The barn is now filled with old church pews and hay-bail seats. In 1990 Alan received a call from a man named Sam that claimed to have been born in the barn in 1914. The two ended up meeting and it turned out that Sam's parents were Japanese and were forced into an internment camp during WWII. Because of this, they lost their farm. Alan had no idea the place had such a troubled past. The two ended up becoming good friends and Alan has been very outspoken about the history of the property. Julie and I heard a duo named Anderson and Roe play in this fascinating venue. They actually played together on the same piano. Anderson and Roe are both piano virtuosos who studied at Juilliard. Part of their mission is to make classic music cool again. Click here to hear them play a great version of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.

PBS REFUSES TO AIR RICK STEVES' TRAVELOGUE ON ISRAEL & PALESTINE

When I think about Rick Steves, I think of a politically benign guy who loves to travel and has a penchant for picnics. He strikes me as a very fair-minded individual, and I don't just say that because he briefly attended the University of Puget Sound. With this in mind, I was surprise to find out during a talk he gave a few months ago that the PBS station that serves New York City (the most viewed PBS affiliate in the country) refused to air a travelogue he made about his travels to Israel and Palestine. According to him, the mostly Jewish board of that PBS station asked the network not to run it. During the talk, Steves showed this documentary, which was about as fair and even-handed as a documentary on such a sensitive subject can be. In it he travels to both countries, led by soft spoken hosts that take pains to be fair and sympathetic to the other side. What is most surprising is that nothing comes up in a google search using keywords like Rick Steves, PBS, censorship, refuse to air, New York City, Israel, Palestine, etc. It is a big story that simply hasn't been reported by any US media outlets. Steves has written that he became sympathetic to the Palestinian's story after watching the documentary Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land.  To watch Steves' travelogue, The Holy Land: Israelis and Palestinians Today, click here.

REFRIGERATOR DOOR CONCLUDES FORMAL EDUCATION

This refrigerator door was my final project for my Master's program at the University of Puget Sound. I wrote my thesis on neurodiversity in the classroom. Neurodiversity is a movement that attempts to reframe neurological differences in humans like attention deficit disorder and autism as normal variations in the human genome and not as pathologies to be cured. In order to honor the different ways people's brains are wired, I highlighted using assignments and projects that allow for creative thinking in the classroom. The refrigerator includes some examples of my students' creative work this year. On a related note, I was hired to teach high school English at School of the Arts here in Tacoma. School starts in two weeks!  

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER by WILLIAM STAFFORD

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

IN A DARK TIME by THEODORE ROETHKE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, 

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood— 

A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. 

What’s madness but nobility of soul 

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair, 

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have. 

A steady storm of correspondences! 

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is— 

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

LESS IS MORE, AND OTHER THINGS PEOPLE HAVE FORGOTTEN

Here are a few pictures from my favorite house in Paradise Cove on Vashon Island. What I loved about this place was its simplicity. It was originally built as a boat storage building, and the current owner's grandfather converted it into a vacation house by building in simple bunk beds, a basic kitchen, and a small toilet. That was over 60 years ago and not much has changed. Just the smell of the old wood inside made me feel relaxed. It smelled like history and tradition. The owners, to their testament, have left everything alone inside over the years while some of their neighbors have built bigger, more modern homes. They kindly let me snap a few photos of their lovely home. They noted that people get out of control when it comes to the size of their vacation homes and I tend to agree. Most houses on Vashon are seasonal and palatial, which works well for this sentence, but is really a huge waste of resources.

A FITTING NAME: PARADISE COVE, VASHON ISLAND

Some of the best discoveries are accidents. Julie and I took the ferry over to explore Vashon Island today. It's weird having an island the size of Manhattan a stones throw away from Tacoma that we've never visited. Due to its isolation (there are no bridges to the island) Vashon has maintained its rural character even as neighboring Seattle and Tacoma bust at the seams. For part of our adventure, Julie and I explored Camp Sealth, an amazing 400 acre property owned by Campfire USA. While we were there we spotted a small beachfront community to the north. It took some doing to discern which rural roads would take us down to the beach. What we eventually discovered was Paradise Cove, a community of about 30 mostly modest homes with only foot access to each from a communal parking lot. It feels like it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's only 10 miles from our house in Tacoma. I'm told that most of the houses here never go on the market. Instead they are handed down from generation to generation. 

A SAD SIGN OF THE TIMES

I had a few thoughts when I came across this advertisement in the local Tacoma paper the other day. Due to the bold printing on the opposite side of this ad, the first thing I noticed was that it appeared that the white corrections officer had a black eye. When I first saw his eye I thought, "Wow, that's honest advertising." The next thing I noticed was that the Asian guy in the foreground kind of reminded me of the villain Chong Li in the movie Bloodsport. Then I read the ad and was surprised to learn that a corrections deputy with a GED makes more annually than a teacher with a master's degree. I'm not demeaning this career; I'm sure it's tough, regimented and at times dangerous. But what does it say about our society when we pay people more to watch our prisoners than to educate our youth. At the same time, these prison jobs wouldn't exist if teachers and parents did their jobs. The thought I'm left with is, is it a good idea to put a person in a position where they have so much power over others when they couldn't even finish high school (and I say that as a person who hated high school)? Does earning a GED or even a high school diploma provide you with the advanced critical thinking skills that are essential in jobs like corrections or policing?