oakland hula

summertime...and the living is easy

aaaahhhhh yes. what a nice, warm, summer-y weekend it was. i had a nice sunday taking advantage of my urge to purge (closets). and yesterday i enjoyed a lovely bbq at amy and brian's. i find i don't have a ton of friends with kids but i was fortunate enough to have spent the evening with several well balanced parent/kid combos. you know, parents that don't allow their kids to competely run rough-shod over all adult activity. the best kind of parents. and i find, these are the best kind of kids, too. happy.

soooo, here is a fun pic (from the bbq above). maybe with parental consent i will post some max and theo pics. the pic is of the eternal letson-waters bbq center-piece. many thanks to amy and brian for the lovely summer evenings.

Bocas Futbol

World Cup

each series i get a little more into it. so far today has been a saturday in front of the tube watching futbol. it's a sport that a person with like me can get into. see, i have the attention span of a gnat these days so endless timeouts, commercials and general lolly-gagging are an invitation for distraction. watching football would go something like this:

oh, i'll just pop in a load of laundry between plays (or time out or one of the million other reasons there seems to be for a break in football). well, now look at that.....i need to put these clothes away. while i am in here i should.......

futbol doesn't allow you that. not to mention the guys are better-looking.

so i rooted for ghana this morn and they won! good for the US hopes, since they beat czech republic, to whom we lost earlier. i would have rooted for them anyway. can't resist the reggae flag :). and then onto the US game against italy. well, the crazy ref calls won't do much to ingratiate soccer with more americans, but the US did well all things considered. tied.

so above i am posting my tribute pic to futbol: a game that you'll find in just about any corner of the globe, being played by kids on whatever patch of ground they can find. cheers!

laundry day

Life in Bocas

water taxi

big wheels keep on turning

billiards over water

cruising "around" bocas

Bay Area is Sizzlin!

it's a lovely, warm day in the bay area. unusually warm! and i just noticed that the last pics i posted were gray pics and they don't match my mood or the weather so i'm focusing on Bocas Del Toro, Panama today! a lovely archipelago in the caribbean. the batch below are some of the natural wonders i found. next i'll post some of my favorite people pics.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Starfish Point

Near Drago Beach on Isla Colon in Bocas

Red Frog Beach

this little guy is found only in Bocas on Isla Bastimentos
(on the aptly-named Red Frog Beach)

A Gray Day

i traveled this week to savannah, GA and DC. savannah is a lovely place. DC would be cool, if i didn't have to work in the suburbs while i was there. spring is here, though! too bad that i came home to a gray oakland :(.

the sky outside reminds me of some gray, spooky pictures i took in panama recently. ships anchor outside of the panama canal, awaiting cargo or passage. i took these while on a ferry to isla taboga, off the pacific coast of panama, near panama city. they looked like ghost ships.

Ghost Ships

Low Rider

Before War....Expect Haditha

The recent revelations about the actions of marines in haditha are tragic on so many levels and will certainly harm our objectives there. One cannot imagine justifying or condoning such behavior. There have been parallels drawn to atrocities in other wars. In news stories one sees haditha now commonly referred to as “Iraq’s My Lei” in reference to the massacre of hundreds of villagers in Vietnam.

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I started with an assertion that there can be no justifying the purposeful killing of civilians because the most important lesson, I believe, that should be learned from this is not about the nature of the soldiers who committed this crime, but on the nature of war itself and I want to stress that this is not an acceptance of the soldiers behavior. I do not, however, believe that we can underestimate how often war results in such tragedies. War is brutal. And in all wars terrible things happen to innocent people.

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And this is precisely the reason that war, in every case, should be a last resort. When war is undertaken it should be because the brutality and atrocities that will certainly ensue as a result of war will be less brutal than what will certainly ensue if war is not undertaken. Preemptive war can never meet this criterion. Consider iraq: it is now clear that the death and destruction resulting from the war in iraq is far greater than any harm saddam could have inflicted on the US if even the most modest of precautions were undertaken.

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How could the makers of our war Iraq ever have been certain that the brutality it created would be less than were saddam contained some other way? The makers of this war needed to have assumed that such acts would occur, as they always have, and that this was necessary to prevent what is CERTAIN to have been far worse.

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What kind of “culture of life” is this? I marvel at how much Bush has damaged our country, its people, and its perception abroad. It truly is astounding.

Bee Buzz

i thoroughly enjoyed watching the spelling bee. NBC carried the bee in primetime, hoping to ride a wave of popularity created by a best-selling book and upcoming movie about the subject. apparently, the ratings were low but i thought it was really fun to watch.

you can't imagine the words these kids must spell! these are not words in our everyday venacular. it is a lot of fun to learn new words, like the word that knocked out runner up Finola Hackett:

weltschmerz - (from the German meaning world-pain or world-weariness) is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that the physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind.

i don't know about you, but i'm occasionally a victim of weltschmerz and am pleased to have a word for it!

i was also struck by the demographics of the winner, runner-up and 2nd runner-up: 3 "whitish"chicks! i've posted a pic below. there are more and more stats showing that girls are outperforming boys at all levels of primary educations these days, as well as attending college in larger numbers. interesting!

looks like the hopes of the US remaining competetive in the world market will increasingly rely on women. Now if we could just get more women elected and bring some sense to our government!

Spelling Bee Finalists

Left to right:
runner-up Finola Hackett, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada;
winner Katherine Close, Ashbury Park, NJ;
2nd runner-up Saryn Hooks, Winston-Salem, NC.
Courtesy Scripps National Spelling Bee.

weltschmerz!!!

expect my post on this spelling bee stunner tomorrow!! this is MY american idol!! girlz rule!!

zzzzzzzzzz.......

while lying in bed last night i thought of an idea for my next post. but i don't remember it today. was it about my camping trip to big sur? it was a lovely weekend but i can't think of a topic i would have blogged about. i am awaiting the delivery of a new laptop, this one being wiped clean already, so it will be a bit before i have access to pics to post.

well, that kind of reminds me of something. what is it about camping that enhances one's senses? things taste better, sounds are more thrilling. i mean, a chili-dog is better than any haute cuisine in san francisco while turkey gobbles and fox yelps are more enchanting than any concert.

if you haven't camped lately - do it. and find someplace where it isn't all motorhomes. find a place where you can get away a bit from your neighbors and just chill. don't play any music in your campsite, but instead listen to the little sounds around you. let me know how it goes!!