On Monday, March 8, the California State Parks Foundation held its eighth annual Park Advocacy Day at the state capitol. Over 150 volunteers and park activists gathered to call attention to the plight of our state park system and to lobby for solutions.
This gathering, organized by Foundation president Elizabeth Goldstein and Traci Verardo-Torres, Vice President of Government Affairs, started with a general meeting to discuss the days events. After that the group, armed with posters stating, "I'm Saving Our State Parks For," plus a photo taken by an attendee, held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol. Several legislators spoke in favor of the parks, including local assembly member Bill Monning. One of the speakers, a nine-year-old named Adam, was the hit of the morning.
Then some of the group delivered bags of state park petitions to the Governor's office (another photo op), while the rest started the round of meetings with members of the senate and assembly.
After the meetings, where small groups had appointments with various law makers or their staffs, everyone gathered again for a wrap up and two rousing, pro state parks speeches by assembly members Hector De La Torre and Mary Salas. A reception followed, after which attendees departed for the long trips back home.
The groups found most law makers supportive of our state parks, which have been threatened with closure recently, and which now have one billion dollars in deferred maintenance. Unfortunately budgetary problems and the inability to get the two thirds necessary to raise revenues, have tied the hands of even the parks' most vocal supporters.
Among the issues the lobbyists brought to law makers were the Governor's proposal to tied state parks funding to very uncertain revenues from a yet unapproved off shore oil deal, several bills currently being considered that would help our parks, including one to make part of east Andrew Molera Park a state wilderness and also the state parks ballot initiative. Currently state parks supporters all over the state are gathering signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would fully fund state parks, along with ocean and water conservation programs, return the current 130 million parks funding to the general fund and allow every California license plated auto into any state park or beach at any time, for no charge. All this would be accomplished by a once a year $18 additional charge on license renewals for autos, RVs and motorcycles. Most law makers indicated that they supported this measure.
It was a very upbeat day, with the small army of activists encouraged by the responses they received. Even though the day of lobbying is over, the volunteers intend to follow up with their assembly and senate members and continue to gather signatures for the State Parks Initiative.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Voluntary educational protests
I'm glad to see people finally standing up for education. Walking out, by teachers and students, sends a message and costs money, which also sends a message. I only wish more K-12 teachers and students had stayed out last Thursday. A voluntary walk out by all or most would get our elected officials to change course.
However, the word "voluntary" is a word of caution to university student activists, who tend to see things in black and white and forget there are shades of gray. Blocking people from entering campus is coercion, something the students would not tolerate from others.
This casts doubts on both the protesters credibility and the actual number of people who stayed away on purpose.
This kind of fighting coercion with coercion takes you down that dark road to Orwell's Animal Farm, a book that should be a must read for student activists.
However, the word "voluntary" is a word of caution to university student activists, who tend to see things in black and white and forget there are shades of gray. Blocking people from entering campus is coercion, something the students would not tolerate from others.
This casts doubts on both the protesters credibility and the actual number of people who stayed away on purpose.
This kind of fighting coercion with coercion takes you down that dark road to Orwell's Animal Farm, a book that should be a must read for student activists.
Monday, February 22, 2010
The Hiker
Perhaps whoever this hiker is or was should not be the issue, for this could either be recent or some past event, occurring before the onset of respectability and community standing.
However, it was a spring day with a light, warm rain, but otherwise a lovely day. Restless, the hiker imagined a lovely walk in the woods. Once out among the trees, the hiker was alone, most people unable to make a connection between rain and hiking.
Pulling on a cap and a nylon shell over shorts and shirt, the hiker started down the trail, enjoying the musty smell of rich soil and emerging mushrooms, watching the steady drip from the overhanging leaves and from the bill of the cap. In the calm silence, the time simply slipped away, until there was a bright spot ahead.
The hiker quickened the pace, soon arriving in a small clearing, finding that the sky was just slightly clearing also. Through the breaks in the clouds, shafts of sunlight lit patches of the damp leaves strewn on the ground. The rain drops, like pearls, sparkled in the shifting sunbeams.
After a look around, the hiker, sure of the perfect solitude, sat on a fallen log, quickly disrobed, and then started dancing naked between the beams of light, feeling the gentle rain, just another animal in the woods, thinking only in images, feeling only joy.
However, it was a spring day with a light, warm rain, but otherwise a lovely day. Restless, the hiker imagined a lovely walk in the woods. Once out among the trees, the hiker was alone, most people unable to make a connection between rain and hiking.
Pulling on a cap and a nylon shell over shorts and shirt, the hiker started down the trail, enjoying the musty smell of rich soil and emerging mushrooms, watching the steady drip from the overhanging leaves and from the bill of the cap. In the calm silence, the time simply slipped away, until there was a bright spot ahead.
The hiker quickened the pace, soon arriving in a small clearing, finding that the sky was just slightly clearing also. Through the breaks in the clouds, shafts of sunlight lit patches of the damp leaves strewn on the ground. The rain drops, like pearls, sparkled in the shifting sunbeams.
After a look around, the hiker, sure of the perfect solitude, sat on a fallen log, quickly disrobed, and then started dancing naked between the beams of light, feeling the gentle rain, just another animal in the woods, thinking only in images, feeling only joy.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
What's with the Tiger Woods media hype
The other day I turned on the evening news, actually hoping for some news. Instead, I was subjected to something close to ten minutes of Tiger Woods. He plays golf; he had affairs, so what. Then the next day there's an almost full page editorial in the Sentinel about this guy. Needless to say, I didn't read it.
Don't most of us have too much going on in our personal lives, too many local, regional, national and international issues to think about, too many interesting things to arouse our curiosity to bother about some golfer and his promiscuity.
I'm sure there are people who are addicted to the tabloids who will read every word, listen to every commentary about any celebrity who does anything, at any time, for any reason. However, I don't think there are a majority of those people in the Monterey Bay area. The people I know are interesting and have interests in their own right.
Watching golf, which until recently was dominated by portly, middle aged men, is one step above watching paint dry, so what's the big deal about a guy who can tap a ball into a little hole on a patch of lawn. I guess other golfers can admire his skill, but how does that translate to his personal life, and how does that personal life affect the lives of countless Americans? Are we collectively so far adrift?
A neighborhood middle school girl is the best hop scotch player in town, and I hear she was kissing some boy behind the gym last week. I think the national media should get down here and cover it.
Don't most of us have too much going on in our personal lives, too many local, regional, national and international issues to think about, too many interesting things to arouse our curiosity to bother about some golfer and his promiscuity.
I'm sure there are people who are addicted to the tabloids who will read every word, listen to every commentary about any celebrity who does anything, at any time, for any reason. However, I don't think there are a majority of those people in the Monterey Bay area. The people I know are interesting and have interests in their own right.
Watching golf, which until recently was dominated by portly, middle aged men, is one step above watching paint dry, so what's the big deal about a guy who can tap a ball into a little hole on a patch of lawn. I guess other golfers can admire his skill, but how does that translate to his personal life, and how does that personal life affect the lives of countless Americans? Are we collectively so far adrift?
A neighborhood middle school girl is the best hop scotch player in town, and I hear she was kissing some boy behind the gym last week. I think the national media should get down here and cover it.
The other day I turned on the evening news, actually hoping for some news. Instead, I was subjected to something close to ten minutes of Tiger Woods. He plays golf; he had affairs, so what. Then the next day there's an almost full page editorial in the Sentinel about this guy. Needless to say, I didn't read it.
Don't most of us have too much going on in our personal lives, too many local, regional, national and international issues to think about, too many interesting things to arouse our curiosity to bother about some golfer and his promiscuity.
I'm sure there are people who are addicted to the tabloids who will read every word, listen to every commentary about any celebrity who does anything, at any time, for any reason. However, I don't think there are a majority of those people in the Monterey Bay area. The people I know are interesting and have interests in their own right.
Watching golf, which until recently was dominated by portly, middle aged men, is one step above watching paint dry, so what's the big deal about a guy who can tap a ball into a little hole on a patch of lawn. I guess other golfers can admire his skill, but how does that translate to his personal life, and how does that personal life affect the lives of countless Americans? Are we collectively so far adrift?
A neighborhood middle school girl is the best hop scotch player in town, and I hear she was kissing some boy behind the gym last week. I think the national media should get down here and cover it.
Don't most of us have too much going on in our personal lives, too many local, regional, national and international issues to think about, too many interesting things to arouse our curiosity to bother about some golfer and his promiscuity.
I'm sure there are people who are addicted to the tabloids who will read every word, listen to every commentary about any celebrity who does anything, at any time, for any reason. However, I don't think there are a majority of those people in the Monterey Bay area. The people I know are interesting and have interests in their own right.
Watching golf, which until recently was dominated by portly, middle aged men, is one step above watching paint dry, so what's the big deal about a guy who can tap a ball into a little hole on a patch of lawn. I guess other golfers can admire his skill, but how does that translate to his personal life, and how does that personal life affect the lives of countless Americans? Are we collectively so far adrift?
A neighborhood middle school girl is the best hop scotch player in town, and I hear she was kissing some boy behind the gym last week. I think the national media should get down here and cover it.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Decision
Perhaps you've been faced with this decision, and although you had no way of knowing the outcome of your choice, you had a gut feeling of how it might play out, and you knew it would be life changing.
It's never expected, but suddenly you find yourself staring deeply into another's eyes; your world shudders, and you know you have only moments to make the decision of your life.
You so much want to abandon all caution, throw your fate to the unpredictable winds, turn your back on all your plans, your comforts, your security and follow blindly. And deep inside you sense how it will unwind, the period, far too short and tumultuous, of ecstasy and unimaginable highs, followed by the shattering of your life, leaving you to sort the emotional, mental, spiritual and likely physical and financial wreckage, sensing that it will take a least a decade to gather up the scattered pieces, and that the scars will last a life time.
The other choice is to break the spell, turn and walk away. But then, each day as you wake to a familiar alarm and go through the routine of starting a familiar day, as you emotionally sleepwalk through comfortable and secure days that become years, you always pause in that surreal moment of first awakening to think of how it might have been, of all you could have had.
Or you might be the lucky one in a million who both said yes and then had it all, a life-long intoxicating roller coaster ride.
You may even have faced this decision more than once and survived to tell about it.
Or you may have been spared the decision, and, if so, it's hard to say whether you should be envied or pitied.
It's never expected, but suddenly you find yourself staring deeply into another's eyes; your world shudders, and you know you have only moments to make the decision of your life.
You so much want to abandon all caution, throw your fate to the unpredictable winds, turn your back on all your plans, your comforts, your security and follow blindly. And deep inside you sense how it will unwind, the period, far too short and tumultuous, of ecstasy and unimaginable highs, followed by the shattering of your life, leaving you to sort the emotional, mental, spiritual and likely physical and financial wreckage, sensing that it will take a least a decade to gather up the scattered pieces, and that the scars will last a life time.
The other choice is to break the spell, turn and walk away. But then, each day as you wake to a familiar alarm and go through the routine of starting a familiar day, as you emotionally sleepwalk through comfortable and secure days that become years, you always pause in that surreal moment of first awakening to think of how it might have been, of all you could have had.
Or you might be the lucky one in a million who both said yes and then had it all, a life-long intoxicating roller coaster ride.
You may even have faced this decision more than once and survived to tell about it.
Or you may have been spared the decision, and, if so, it's hard to say whether you should be envied or pitied.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
On a day like today
It's one of those days, during a series of storms, between rains, undulating cloud formations, shafts of clear sunlight like searchlights, probing the ground, droplets of water on every leaf, refracting light, making tiny prisms, and you, being out there, no plans, no hurry, just enjoying, just doing life. I hope you've been there.
And you look around, not thinking of anything other than the hills, gray, dissolving in the low clouds, with those clouds, every shade of gray, orange, pink, metallic blue. A gentle breeze stirring the leaves, the world seemingly in repose.
And it comes up from deep within, this memory, not tangible, but of a feeling, a sudden experience. It was another day like today, perhaps sitting on a river bank in a deep forest, walking in the rain on some deserted beach, stopping to watch a vivid sunset, thinking of a moment with someone you care deeply about. And then, not looking for it, not trying for anything other than following the currents of the moment, it happens, that elusive something always hovering on the periphery of your awareness, that indefinable flicker that always slips away as soon as you turn to look, that something that never quite comes into focus, never stands still long enough to be defined, to get a name. Suddenly, it's right there, in the center of your awareness, like a flash, like the culmination of a fire work show ignited in your mind. And then total stillness, a moment in which time seems to stand still, a moment in which you feel you can wrap your mind, your heart around everything that is, every atom, every photon, every pulse. It is that moment of pure ecstasy, when everything is just so painfully pure and real, so absolute and so absolutely there.
That moment slips away like the traces of light on your cornea after lightning. It all happens so quickly, almost no time elapses. These are moments that connect with dreams, with the sigh of a long forgotten lover, with the sudden joy of discovering some ephemeral truth. They slip up on you while listening to a song, watching birds in flight, smelling a field of wild flowers, remembering a smile, touching something beyond the limits of your skin, or of your senses.
And it is both intently ecstatic and intently sad, sad because you can't call it back, sad because it happens so quickly, sad because you know it might be months or years before it happens again, sad because it could be your last time.
And as you stand, looking up at the clouds, looking out over the violent sea, looking into your most cherished memories, remembering the feeling, while not quite reliving it, you know without doubt that the rest of life is bookkeeping, maintenance, and these moments are your reason to be.
I so hope you've been there.
And you look around, not thinking of anything other than the hills, gray, dissolving in the low clouds, with those clouds, every shade of gray, orange, pink, metallic blue. A gentle breeze stirring the leaves, the world seemingly in repose.
And it comes up from deep within, this memory, not tangible, but of a feeling, a sudden experience. It was another day like today, perhaps sitting on a river bank in a deep forest, walking in the rain on some deserted beach, stopping to watch a vivid sunset, thinking of a moment with someone you care deeply about. And then, not looking for it, not trying for anything other than following the currents of the moment, it happens, that elusive something always hovering on the periphery of your awareness, that indefinable flicker that always slips away as soon as you turn to look, that something that never quite comes into focus, never stands still long enough to be defined, to get a name. Suddenly, it's right there, in the center of your awareness, like a flash, like the culmination of a fire work show ignited in your mind. And then total stillness, a moment in which time seems to stand still, a moment in which you feel you can wrap your mind, your heart around everything that is, every atom, every photon, every pulse. It is that moment of pure ecstasy, when everything is just so painfully pure and real, so absolute and so absolutely there.
That moment slips away like the traces of light on your cornea after lightning. It all happens so quickly, almost no time elapses. These are moments that connect with dreams, with the sigh of a long forgotten lover, with the sudden joy of discovering some ephemeral truth. They slip up on you while listening to a song, watching birds in flight, smelling a field of wild flowers, remembering a smile, touching something beyond the limits of your skin, or of your senses.
And it is both intently ecstatic and intently sad, sad because you can't call it back, sad because it happens so quickly, sad because you know it might be months or years before it happens again, sad because it could be your last time.
And as you stand, looking up at the clouds, looking out over the violent sea, looking into your most cherished memories, remembering the feeling, while not quite reliving it, you know without doubt that the rest of life is bookkeeping, maintenance, and these moments are your reason to be.
I so hope you've been there.
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