Feb 25, 2024

Wintering time is coming to a close. I can feel the wind up of spring. The signs are beginning to show…
My midnight callers, the mockingbirds have started up late in the night, if they were jazz singers it would be the final set before last call, but for them it’s just the beginning. Their time to stake territory and tune their voices.

Mud will turn to clay and then to dust. The mushrooms will go into hiding and snakes will wake up.

Walks will be timed by the temperature gauge and the canteens will be filled.

Soon the sycamores will fill their barren branches with broad green leaves and make dappled shadows in the sunlight.

Clocks will leap forward, sunsets will come later.

My wintering time is coming to a close, somethings is starting to burn. I think it’s my wanderlust.

Feb 24, 2024 – Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

I love a good date, and in this instance I don’t mean the sweet kind from the palm trees, although I am a big date fan. Nor do I mean the kind when friends or special friends select a time to meet up. No I mean when the calendar numbers wake you up. Like on 2-23-24 or 2-24-24. There’s a symmetry that strums a tone that sets the day. Yes, I love a good date.

Feb 15, 2024 – Contrails Abound

There are enough contrails in the sky these days to remind you of the penmanship workbooks we had growing up. You know the ones with perfectly spaced lines solid lines with dotted ones in the middle to help guide your lower and upper case lettering. The notebooks were designed to, if not perfect, at least make legible the handwriting of 3rd graders. Handwriting exercise, such an innocuous thing to think about given the sky has been striped with the contrails of military planes for days. And it seems like a lot more of recent. Mornings, afternoons, and I can’t say about evening when it’s too dark to spot them. Never see the planes or rockets, just their aftermath.

When you stop to think about it, “America’s finest city”, though home to a world class zoo and beautiful beaches, is actually one big military base. To the north, there’s Camp Pendleton. 17 miles of shoreline carved out for one of California’s largest Marine bases. 195 sq miles and houses 42,000 military personnel.

To east 99 miles sits what is known as the Marine Combat Center in 29 Palms covering 931 sq miles and housing another 20,000 Marines. A “Combat Center” sounds much more ominous than a “camp”. To the south, there are another 12,200 marines at Miramar. This WAS the home to the Tom Cruise Top Gun fighters, the area was once known as “fighter town”, but those folks have since moved on to Nevada. Still a sizable military base and now testing new types of aircraft and rockets

Then there are 3 naval base: Point Loma, Coronado, and San Diego Naval. With another 47,000 in US uniforms. A bay cruise will remind you that we’re a border town and there’s a fleet sitting in the harbor and just off shore.

That makes 6 major bases and 121,200 people willing to fight for Uncle Sam. So I guess it’s no wonder that the skies are lined in contrails and that we hear their bombing exercises across North County. Windows shake and car alarms go off so often that the training schedule is published so as to not panic us civilians in thinking that we’re under fire. “That’s the sound of freedom” is what the locals say. That’s the sound of the heartbeat of United States in America’s finest city and it seems to be on the move.

Feb 14, 2024 – Love comes in all forms

I didn’t think I could love my dog Bru, but today proved me wrong.

Bru, the 130lb husky/great Pyrenees, banished from the ranch for killing a kitten, among others, now living with me in suburbia, was laying poolside exhausted from our usual morning walk among the scrub oaks and ducks. Basking in the warmth of a sunny San Diego day in February, letting the heat seep up from the flagstones into his bones, he was dozing.

Ruby, the free ranging chicken who has issues with boundaries, such as insisting on coming into the house to watch me cook, was strutting by Bru and decided to take a peck at his paw. As embarrassing an act that might be for a mighty dog like Bru, all the act warranted was a lift of the head and a very deep sigh. And I fell a little bit deeper in love.