Tensegrity

I was at my neighbor Jerry's the other day. You may know him as the farmer in the Farmer and Adele as they used to open the yellow house on my street once a year and show off their amazing craftwork. 

Jerry is a retired math teacher and very smart guy but also very handy and crafty. He constructs these incredible shadow constructions that have to be seen to be believed! Very creative man.

Anyway I was there the other day and he showed me this wood and dental floss contraption and asked me how I supposed it stayed suspended?

Great question? So how does the upper portion stay suspended in space? 

The floss lines were not solid or especially taught.

I told him that I gave up but assumed that it was under compression.

Which I think is correct but I still don't know how you would physically assemble one and have it achieve stasis?

I looked it up on Wikipedia. The concept was originally formulated by a Latvian named Karlis Johansons in 1921. The term Tensegrity was given to the construction later by Buckminster Fuller.

Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially.^[1]

The term was coined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s as a portmanteau of "tensional integrity".

One would have to assume that this principle can scale to any size.

Many real world applications have already been constructed.

The tensegrity can also assume a myriad of geometric shapes. I think I need to construct one of these.

Scarlet Fire

I am a deadhead of long standing but don't take it all too seriously. Many of my pals don't really like them and that is okay too. It is an acquired taste to be sure. I certainly enjoyed them. They carved a playground in a chunk of space and called it their own.

This show is from 1977, in my and many other deadheads opinion their greatest year performing. Definitely my most fun year for seeing the band and having a good time. This show is from Cornell and many think this was the best show ever. It was good but I have others I  preferred. Then again I wasn't there.

I was looking for deadhead jokes this morning and found a couple sites chock full of them. 

I even saw a few new ones I thought were pretty funny like the fourth one here. But perhaps you had to be there.

Q: Why does the Grateful Dead have two drummers? 

A: In case one of them falls asleep.

Q: How can you tell if Deadheads have been in your house?
A: They're still there!

Q: How many Deadheads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None. Deadheads screw in dirty sleeping bags.

Q: Why do deadheads swirl their arms when they dance?
A: To keep the music out of their eyes. 

Q: What did one deadhead say to the other, when they ran out of weed?
A: This music sucks.

• A deadhead dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter's giving him a tour, and dude's awestruck. "Wow! Is that Janis over there? Holy crap! There's Jimi! Fuck, man! Morrison looks great!" Then he sees this bearded, grey-haired man off by himself. "Dude, is that Jerry? I didn't know he died!" St. Pete says, "No, that's God. He just thinks he's Jerry."

Q:What did Mike Tyson say to Jerry Garcia as he was leaving his house? A: Althea later!

Q:What did the hippie say when you told him to get out of your apartment? A: Namaste.

Q:How many deadheads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: None- they just wait 15 years for it to burnout and then follow it around.

Q:How many deadheads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Only one, they have enough acid to spin the room.

Q:How many dead heads can fit in a van?

A: Just one more and my dog, man...

Garcia and Clapton were on a safari and got sidetracked and captured by some natives who were going to kill them. "Any last requests?" they were asked and Garcia speaks up and says, "Yes, get me a guitar and just one last time, I want to play the long version of Truckin."
They look at Clapton and he says: "Kill me first!"

Orange

From the Aura album by Miles Davis. John McLaughlin on lead guitar.

To sweeten or not to sweeten, that is the question...

Researchers have recently warned that artificial sweeteners might be more harmful to humans than previously thought.

The artificial sweetener sucralose, which is sold under the brand name Splenda, could be metabolised in the gut to form a compound that damages DNA, in vivo studies have revealed. The harmful chemical sucralose-6-acetate was found to be formed during digestion, and can even be found in trace amounts in sucralose itself, as a byproduct of the sweetener’s synthesis. The researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill concluded that the trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate in a single, daily sucralose-sweetened drink exceeded the safe threshold of 0.15µg per person per day that the European Food Safety Authority has set. That doesn’t even factor in the sucralose-6-acetate could be produced during metabolism, the researchers noted.

Here is the study, published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health B by Susan S. Schiffman, lead writer. The conclusions: 

The 8 projects performed in this study add to the large and growing scientific literature that report adverse biological impacts attributed to exposure to sucralose. In the current investigation sucralose-6-acetate, a sucralose impurity and metabolite, was found to be genotoxic with a clastogenic MoA associated with induction of breaks in DNA. Exposure of intestinal epithelium in vitro to mM concentrations of both sucralose-6-acetate and sucralose in the absence of intestinal bacteria impaired the integrity of intestinal barrier function. Sucralose-6-acetate induced expression of genes in intestinal epithelium associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, and cancer including MT1G and SHMT2. Sucralose-6-acetate also blocked two members of the cytochrome P450 family (CYP1A2 and CYP2C19) that metabolize both endogenous and xenobiotic compounds that might consequently lead to adverse toxicological exposures. These findings raise health and safety concerns regarding the continued presence of sucralose in the food supply and indicate that a regulatory status review needs to be undertaken.

Last month, the WHO warned against the use of such sweeteners and advised against the use of them to control body weight. They said that these products do not decrease body fat in adults or children long-term, and that their use may in fact increase certain health risks like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Now I have never felt comfortable using them so I really don't have a horse in this race. But I saw an interesting article on Medium today debunking the findings. Healthy objective counterpoint is always good. It is written by a man named Gideon MK who says that he is an epidemiologist and writer. He says you would have to drink 50,000 cans of sweetened soda to get to the damage level!

If you are not a member you might not be able to read it so I will synopsize with a little cut and paste.

Artificial sweeteners make headlines with an almost boringly predictable regularity. Whether it’s a scary story about heart disease, or some new fears that they’re secretly plotting to blow up Mt Rushmore, there’s always some new worry that makes headlines about sweet things that we put in our bodies.

The news recently is no different. Headlines across the globe have been screaming that sucralose, the artificial sweetener found in Splenda and some cans of Diet Coke, is genotoxic and giving everyone cancer. Apparently if you eat Splenda, rather than losing weight, you’ll degrade your insides into a sludge-like goop. Scary.

Fortunately for all of us who like artificially-sweetened things, the news is not nearly as scary as the headlines suggest. In reality, it’s extremely unlikely that these results mean much if anything for human health.

The study that has everyone in a tizzy is what’s known as lab-bench research, sometimes called basic science. The authors took sucralose-6-acetate, a product of sucralose that is created in your gut when you eat sucralose, and added it to some petri dishes with rat and then human cells to see what happened. They then looked at several markers of potential cell damage, and found that these were slightly elevated at the highest concentrations of sucralose-6-acetate that they used.

This led them to conclude that sucralose possessed some genotoxic effect, something that is often implicated in cancer, which is where all the headlines came from. In addition, the authors tested sucralose and sucralose-6-acetate on human gut cells, and noticed some similar effects. This led to the lead author arguing publicly that sucralose causes “leaky gut” and that it’s very dangerous to human health.

There is one huge reason why this research means almost nothing to your life — the dose. The authors used an extremely conservative cutoff known as the Threshold for Toxicological Concern (TTC) to argue that the doses that people eat of sucralose are plausibly dangerous. The TTC is a threshold developed for novel chemicals that we have a strong suspicion of being carcinogenic, but haven’t had time to test in humans yet. It’s very low, because obviously if we have no information on how dangerous a substance is, we have to be very cautious about exposure.

And it’s true —many people’s intake of Splenda is well above the TTC for potential genotoxic compounds of 0.0025µg/kg/day. Indeed, a single packet of Splenda contains 12mg of the stuff, which is about 100x higher than this threshold!

What this data shows us is that there may be some potential impacts of sucralose at extraordinarily high doses that are unlikely to be seen in real human beings. This may relate to human health, but it seems quite unlikely that it’s very meaningful to your life. In general, it’s very rare that lab-bench data should have a direct impact on the decisions you make every day — cells in dishes are just very different to real people.

This is interesting to me in that I have a serious skepticism about chemicals and human bodies, having fought chemical caused cancer for the majority of my life now. I have an inherent distrust of corporate food companies, their research scientists and supposedly safe human toxicity levels. 

If a chemical causes cancer in a lab rat, or other research animal, no matter the size and scale, I tend to think that it will probably have a malignant effect on humans as well, somewhere down the line. But I am not a chemist, nor am I a research scientist who works in this field of testing, so what do I know?

I sent the Medium article to a friend that is, A. She sent me back this response this morning: I didn’t read the science paper, but I’ll just say that In vitro to in vivo translation isn’t necessarily supported and human data trumps a lab experiment.

*

What do you think? In reading the article and the counterpoint, do you think there is cause for concern? Any research scientists or chemists that care to weigh in?

Homeward bound

Loutish Swine

With all the attention on the classified document indictment, I was a bit taken aback yesterday when Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina asked that the $5 million dollar award in the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault claim be reduced because it was "grossly excessive."

If anything was grossly excessive it surely was the behavior of the former President with countless women.

Trump’s lawyers on Thursday noted in a written submission that the Manhattan federal court jury rejected the rape claim made by Carroll, concluding instead that she had been sexually abused in spring 1996 in the store’s dressing room.

“Such abuse could have included groping of plaintiff’s breasts through clothing, or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape,” the lawyers wrote.

Following the verdict, a revised award should consist of no more than $400,000 for sex abuse, no more than $100,000 for defamation and $368,000 or less for the cost of a campaign to repair Carroll’s reputation, the lawyers wrote. If a judge does not grant the suggested reduction in the award, then he should permit a new trial on damages, they said.

So let me get this straight. Are they honestly saying that the sexual assault could have merely been the unwanted groping of a woman's breasts or digital penetration and therefore should only be worth a million or so in damages because the jury could not ascertain if a penile rape actually took place?

What a freaking pig. Negotiating the price of his sexual assault. Charming. And so predictable.

Staubbach falls

My friend Kip Peterson has recently returned from a wonderful holiday with his daughter Elizabeth to Europe.  He visited southern France, Italy and Switzerland. 

This is a beautiful photo he took of the third highest waterfall in the Lauterbrunnen Valley of the Swiss Alps. Its 297m makes it one of the tallest waterfalls in the world based on vertical drop.

© Kip Peterson

Bumming around town

I have harped on this before and I know that the building is for sale. Still, it is amazing to me that an entity like the Mission Resource Conservation District, which ostensibly functions as a group that tells people how to optimally take care of their land, can be such pigs.

The weeds grow taller and taller inside and outside the building grounds, which is right next to my shop. I took this picture a month ago, it is even worse now, with weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt.

They took a beautiful landscape with lovely mature trees and turned into a chaotic bramble. Now honestly, I am all for organized chaos, I leave quite a bit of my own landscape au natural but I do tend it on occasion and I live far away from a busy downtown epicenter. They do nothing and it shows.

If they were trying to introduce a paradigm of sustainable native xeriscape, they have only showed it at its nadir and absolute worst. One can only hope that the next tenant has more concern for the building and the community.

* 

 

I love Julie Reeder, think she is a fantastic person, never have had a cross word with her and appreciate that she defends herself as required, even on my blog. But I can't read her Village News newspaper anymore, it always had a rightwing bent but has lost all semblance of neutrality and balance since a certain editor left.

I was in the dentist's office today and picked up the latest issue while I was waiting for my appointment, which was a half hour late. What did I find?

• An opinion from arch conservative County Supervisor Jim Desmond that the utility companies and young people today are engaged hip deep in a vast marxist conspiracy.

• A letter with an inference to a recent column where Jesus Christ was awarded employee of the week. Oh really, how did I miss that one?

• A single column in National News sourced from the Epoch Times that features an unproven accusation that a key informant witness in some Hunter/Joe Biden bribery conspiracy has been silenced or worse.

There is more but I don't need to go there. All of the national news items have a similar hard slant to the extreme right. It is obvious that there is an agenda at work here. Perhaps the publisher believes that she is imparting news that can not be obtained in other places because of the country's mainline news conspiracy, I don't know? Why print this in a small town newspaper? What exactly is at work here?

In a fairly evenly divided town I wonder how much sense it makes to alienate so many of us who do not share the right wing MAGA political philosophy? I am not even asking for balance. Give me local news, grange picnics, garage sales and obits, leave the other stuff to Breitbart and Newsmax.

*

My dentist of near forty years retired a couple years back. His name was Ronald Allison and he was the best. I went to the man who bought his practice but never felt truly simpatico. I went because Ron's dental hygienist Hamish joined the practice and I both liked him and was comfortable with him. Well, that practice was sold to another practice, one which a close friend actually helped start and I continued to get cleaning there.

I got word recently that Hamish retired because of medical problems. Bummer, it happens, he has faced a lot of crap in his life and I wish him well. Great guy, great laugh, easy to talk to.

I went to get a cleaning today and felt a little trepidation. They were late, then the twenty something girl started telling me that I needed to spend more money for fluoride, wasn't brushing my tongue enough, needed to do this and this and just wouldn't stop the hectoring. She was lecturing me and upselling me and after the sixth fluoride push and nag I finally had it and stopped the procedure.

"Miss, I am sixty five years old. I was a patient of your predecessor for over thirty years. I want you to know that I resent your patronizing tone and don't like being talked to like I am an eight year old. I don't want to sound like the pissy old man but you need to back off and stop harassing me."

She apologized and tried to explain herself and I apologized for blowing up. I can honestly not remember ever being talked to like this by a young person in my life. I will be finding a new practice. I have had two dentists since the 1970's and two hygienists and am now looking for a third. I am not perfect and can be an asshole, for sure, but the generational twain and tone was simply too wide to bridge.

*

Kudos to Fallbrook High's baseball team for our first CIF championship in a century!

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A woman on Alvarado on NextDoor said a crazy person was throwing rocks at cars the other night and included pics of her car which had a pretty big dent. Wonder if it could be connected to the old hospital on Elder which now serves the mental health community? I was told and am not sure if this is a fact, that the facility is contracted with Riverside County and only serves their mental patients. Like our San Diego whackjobs aren't good or nutty enough?

* 

from my yahoo bird group- rare bird sighted in o.c.

Good Morning,

For those of you who don’t subscribe to out of county reports, a CRESTED CARACARA was photographed in Los Angeles on 6/4/23. Yesterday it was seen at Seal Beach, in Orange County, flying in East to Southerly direction around 10:30 am. It was photographed and relocated sometime after 4:00 pm yesterday further southeast in Irvine ( https://ebird.org/checklist/S140858034 )
 
Keep your eyes open just in case it’s headed our way!!! Rumor has it Southbay is a previous stopping location.

Billy Cobham

Grub

I had to go to San Diego the other day for business and decided to try a new place to eat, Phuong Trang. Or should I say, new place for me, it has been there forever. 

I have Vietnamese and American friends that both say that it is the best Vietnamese food around. Lena loves the chicken wings, done in two styles.

I waited and I waited. No movement. 

There was only one other couple ahead of me on the waiting list but I noticed a twelve top that was just ordering and after a half hour decided to cut my losses and split.

Interminable wait.

I went to tried and true Jasmine for dim sum instead.

I can no longer afford dim sum, sadly. 

I ordered four dishes, won ton soup, shrimp shumai, pork shumai and roast pork and the bill was $53 dollars plus tip.

Can't do it, won't do it anymore.

*

RoxAnn had a surfeit of boysenberries and her husband Mick brought them by.

I made a berry cobbler with boysenberries, strawberries and blueberries last night. 

I made a buttermilk crust, top and bottom.

It was good but I couldn't find the sugar and the berries were a bit tart.

Vanilla ice cream made everything better!

*

Leslie brought several lbs. of organic peaches home grown by Mike Fenton. 

With her permission I think I will make a peach pie this weekend.

Text message from BD

Did you see Trump's video yesterday? It's the worst home video ever recorded. It is a masterpiece of missteps. On the Rushmore of Rushed-Work. A new high in low. Trump posted it at 7:57, from his golf club in Bedminster New Jersey, he is standing in front of a large painting, seemingly depicting a White House office scene from the late 19th Century. Trump has been positioned directly under a spotlight of some kind so his Flock of Seagulls combover that he has honed to exactly his preferred shade of spray-on Gold Rust-O-Leum has been bleached white and it looks like a yarmulke that has slid forward towards his bright white eyebrows. He is also perfectly placed in front of the painting in such a way that a man shown standing in the painting now appears to be one foot tall and standing ON TRUMP'S SHOULDER. And were that not stupid enough, he is twirling his mustache like Snidely Whiplash just back from tying Sweet Nell to the train tracks. It's startlingly fitting. 

Ray Gomez

Mick and I went over to Kip's today to listen to music. We rocked a little harder than usual. I thought of this 70's piece by drummer Lenny White, which features the greatest fusion guitar player nobody has ever heard of, Ray Gomez.

This is a an epic track.

Gomez was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1953 and emigrated with his family to Spain when he was 15. He has played with some of the greatest players in the world but might be best known for the work he did on Stanley Clarke's seminal School Days album. Give this guy a listen.

tick, tick, tick, tick....

 

Donald Trump has been indicted on criminal charges, a first second for our country. There will be no touchdown dances nor exuberant displays here at the Blue Heron Blast, although I may permit myself a brief private chortle.

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for a second time, this time on federal charges in relation to his handling of classified information while out of office, sources familiar confirm to ABC News.

The former president faces at least seven charges, sources tell ABC News, which include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statements and representations.

Maximum sentences for the respective charges, per their statutes, range from five up to 20 years, although any eventual sentence should Trump be convicted would likely be much lower.

This is a sad and solemn time for our republic but I can't say he didn't have it coming. He played every angle with the classified documents in his possession, thumbed his nose at the law and the Justice Department was evidently not amused. Laws and rules are supposed to apply to everybody and guys that try to start insurrections when they lose elections get no special favors or dispensations in our country.

When I was sixteen I dropped out of school and went hitchhiking. I ended up in Spokane, Washington at the World's Fair. Now I had no money to get into the fair but I watched as kid after kid hopped the fence and got in for free and I decided to take the plunge myself.

Unfortunately there was a cop waiting for me on the other side of the wall. I was arrested for tax evasion (there was a 25 cent state admissions tax) and thrown in jail for five days, it was Thursday and the judge showed up on Mondays.

I tried the everybody else was doing it defense (Donald Trump's favorite) but neither the cops nor the judge was buying it. I did my time and now thoroughly repentant, can attest to never having jumped over a fence at a World's Fair again. We can change our behavior, some of us anyway. Anyway, the defense didn't work for me and my guess is that it won't work for Trump, we all have to do our time when we do the crime.

*

I was thinking, perhaps to spare a divided country more national grief it might make sense to send him into exile with one of his dictator friends. In the last couple weeks he has swooned over Kim Jong Un, Erdogan, Putin and Orban. Surely one of these guys could spare an idle dachau for the Donald until the heat cools off?

It is the height of narcissism to quote yourself in your own blogposts but I once wrote what I consider is a doozy of an article on the birth of democracy in ancient Greece. Ah yes, here it is, Hail Kleisthenes. I shan't bore you with a lot of copying and pasting and dull Greek history that you will soon forget but will skip to the pertinent passage.

Every year at an assembly of 6000 citizens, the Athenian people would be queried if, in their opinion, there was a leader whose power was too great and a threat to democracy.

If the vote was affirmative that person would be exiled from Athens for a ten year period, without loss of property or civil rights, nor with any dishonor to his family. This power was called ostrakismos, which we now know as ostracism.

This would be perfect, Donald. Exile. Spend ten years with your pal at the Kremlin or Elba or maybe hole up with Melania's kin in Slovenia and then come back when everything is copacetic in 2033. You will be, what, 88? Your peeps will still love you and who knows, maybe you run again for the fourth time? We Americans have a very short memory and it might be the perfect time to mount the grand retrenchment.

I don't see you in the slam for more than two or three years tops anyway. Donald you could do that standing on your perfectly coiffed head. You can get through this.

Room to Move

Taking a few arrows

I got a very strange response after my recent Palos Verdes blog from friend B.F..

He said that it was rambling and disjointed and he was honestly wondering if I was going crazy or having a nervous breakdown.

I re-read it and can't quite figure out where he is coming from. I was tired, true, but the thing just doesn't seem all that whacked to me. Going crazy?

Really?

He said I was going from the show to flowers to food to whatever and he just couldn't keep up.

I am not going to try to defend myself, I hate when actually crazy people do that. 

But in my defense will say that if a show sucks, I am not going to whine for a whole blogpost and dwell on my misfortune because that is truly boring.

I prefer to throw a picture of a bird, flower or taco in and at least give you some local color to break through the angst and despair.

I took an informal poll of friends and asked them to read the thing and see if I had a bolt or two loose and most thought it sounded fairly normal. 

At least for me.

This morning I took more fire. B.H. called.

"Bobby, you're getting political again."

Excuse me? What are you referring to?

"The golf thing. You sound like a nineteen year old. All that idealism. You're old. Grow up."

Well, I asked my friend. Don't you have any convictions at this point in your life?

He laughed. "Hell no."

And there you have it.

Any other complaints?

I had a nice sale yesterday, just in the nick of time.

I tried to take the day off today and it didn't work out as planned. 

Got skunked at Torrey Pines looking for falcons.

No grand ascensions without a whole mess of losses and strikeouts.

Would be nice to put a couple hits together, try to get a little win streak going. 

Have to keep swinging the bat and looking for decent pitches to hit.

*

I went off on an "art expert" on linked in who published the smarmiest, most condescending piece on art and antique dealers who couldn't "crack it" any more in the brave new world and need to change or get out of the way.

I hit the guy back so hard, he erased his piece and muted me with his tail between his legs. Wish I had taken a screenshot of the thing and my response before it was excised.

*

I made a nice batch of short ribs last night. I used fresh sage and rosemary from the garden.

Leslie said this batch was the best yet. I think the Cote de Rhone wine works a lot better in the dish than the Manishewitz I used previously.

Who knew?

RoxAnn is bringing over a big container of boysenberries tomorrow so there is a berry cobbler awaiting us in the near future!

Should staunch the wounds.

Dead Flowers

This is a really good cover.

Unforced Triple Bogey

The PGA has decided to merge with the Saudi Golf Tour, the LIV, and put one of the Saudi directors and money men on their board. After two years of decrying Saudi sportswashing, I guess the oil money looked too good after all. Note that this happened the same week Riyadh cut the global oil supply in order to lift prices. The Saudis are not exactly nice people.

The Saudi kingdom has an unsavory reputation in some circles. Besides the Khashoggi murder, the kingdom does not recognize freedom of expression or association, routinely imprisons critics, and has grossly unfair trials. Prisoners there endure abuses of every kind, and receive draconian sentences sometimes including hundreds of lashes, crucifixions, or public executions. Women have extremely limited rights, and guest workers are routinely abused. And, as noted last week, the kingdom flogs and executes gays for being gay. Happy Pride Month, everyone!

15 of 19 of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudi and there is evidence that they were getting money and direct support from the government. Their ruler had journalist Adnan Khashoggi snuffed and cut into little pieces. But it doesn't matter to the boys at the PGA because the Saudis are spreading their oil money around pretty thick. Whoopie! 

Pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau thinks it is time to forgive the Saudis for 9-11, an event that saw them slamming planes into both the Pentagon and Word Trade Center. Really?

DeChambeau said he believes enough time has passed since the tragedy for those to embrace forgiveness to make the world a better place. “I’m not going to get into the politics of it. I’m not specialized in it. But what I can say is they’re trying to do good for the world and showcase themselves in a light that hasn’t been seen in a while — and nobody is perfect, but we’re all trying to improve in life.”

Ex President Donald Trump loves the deal, having bet big on the Saudis. 

“GREAT NEWS FROM LIV GOLF,” he crowed on his Truth Social platform, referring to the Saudi-backed golf league that will be merging with the PGA Tour. A BIG, BEAUTIFUL, AND GLAMOROUS DEAL FOR THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF GOLF. CONGRATS TO ALL!!!” Trump may be enjoying the schadenfreude, but he has a lot to gain financially, as well. While there were objections to LIV Golf based on style and format—it did away with large fields of golfers of varying abilities and limited its competitions to rosters of high-profile players on teams trying to win massive paydays—there was also a great deal of concern in the professional golf world over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. Trump, of course, has never been bothered by associating with the Saudis—during his 2016 run, Trump bragged about his business dealings. “Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them,” Trump said. “They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”

I don't particularly like professional golfers all that much. Don''t really see eye to eye with them culturally or politically. This old post of mine, a reprint of a Mark Zeigler article, might help you to understand why. They care about one thing and that is money.

Four years ago, Golf Digest magazine polled 34 Tour players about their preferences in the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Bob Tway threw his support behind Bush and predicted the magazine wouldn't “find anybody on this tour voting for Kerry.”

It didn't. Eight said they were undecided or refused to divulge their allegiance; the other 26 backed Bush.

It makes sense. Pro golfers tend to come from wealthy, white, Southern, evangelical Christian upbringings – demographics that traditionally skew right when it comes to politics.

“If you look at who hangs out around golf, it's people like Rush Limbaugh and Dan Quayle,” says Orin Starn, a Duke University professor of cultural anthropology who writes a Web blog devoted to golf politics. “If you go to John McCain's Web site, there's a golf gear buying opportunity. Golf has always been the official sport of business and capitalism and the American way, and country clubs have been bastions of Republican Party support and conservative ideology.

I am happy that this new golf deal is raising hackles from both the left and right.  The response from the organization representing the people killed in 9-11 perhaps said it best.

“PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation. But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake – we will never forget,” said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. 

“Mr. Monahan talked last summer about knowing people who lost loved ones on 9/11, then wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now – as does he. PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money – it was never to honor the great game of golf.”

Now we know what the pro golfers really stand for? Just money. 

Buteo News

I caught up with the young red tailed hawks this morning on an old dead oak tree about a hundred yards from their nest. 

You will note how quickly they have matured into their juvenile state. 

Mother stood at watch from  her perch at a far off utility pole.

These two are practicing their inchoate flying skills but still staying pretty close to home.

It was dark and I was shooting at 5000 iso so the quality of the photographs is not optimal.

Hopefully they will stick around for a while longer.

Zimmy

My week.

It would be both trite and a rank exaggeration to term my week a week from hell. It was not very productive but my show was in a lovely setting and my hosts took exceedingly good care of me. I was exhibiting at a small boutique show held at the St. Francis Episcopal Church in Palos Verdes, now in its 52nd year.

I wasn't hit by a car and I didn't come down with anything too contagious. Wasn't branded as an apostate. How bad could it be? I gave it my best shot and who knows, maybe somebody calls me up and buys something after thinking about it for a week or two...

But I am getting ahead of myself, now where do I start? Besides telling you that I am utterly exhausted?

Let's go back to last Sunday and fill in the blanks before I start the post mortem.

One of the high points was getting a visit from my friends Frank and Joy Purcell and their lovely daughter Kim from Palm Springs/ Taos. 

Frank is over 90 and about the sharpest and one of the most knowledgeable people I know. Joy is equally bright and it is a joy to be in their collective presence. 

To have their daughter along was a rare treat. They were in town visiting our mutual friend Linda Heald.

My garden is still bestowing daily gifts. 

Something new is blooming every day. Purple iris and lantana and the Mexican bird of paradise. The opuntia has more yellow blooms than I can ever remember.

Leslie and I went to Renee's house and made pizza Sunday.

The first one was a cooked tomato sauce with mozzarella, prosciutto, mushrooms and basil, the second a pesto, shrimp, artichoke heart number.

Both tasted great. 

But I think the consensus was that the margarita was better, a two step cook on the pizza stone. 

The pesto was a bit wet and made the crust a little soggy.

Live and learn. 

I had a show in Palos Verdes this week as I had mentioned I would. 

It was held at a beautiful Episcopalian Church and I forgot how lovely it was, not having exhibited there in a couple of decades.

I really can't remember ever being treated better. 

They cooked us lunch and had a formal tea, cooked us a going away dinner.

The parishioners and attendees were exceedingly nice. 

Were they collectors of my early California material?

Jury is out, a lot of interest but I am not sure they were entirely comfortable with the price point, being an older crowd that seemed perhaps beyond the aggressive buying stage and more interested in the decorative and who were not not necessarily "collectors."

But where do you find them these days?

I think I put up a really nice booth and our host Jamie could not have been any more kind and helpful. 

What more can you ask for?

Well, a few more sales but what are you going to do?

My old friend Joe Knoernschild came by and gave me a lovely Bill Ogden book, it was nice to catch up with him.

I found a killer taco stand in Torrance, Tacos El Goloso. 

I had never had deep fried potato tacos before and along with the birria, they were the bomb. 

Went twice.

I am thinking that it is a regional delicacy, I am guessing Oaxaca but could be completely wrong.

Wonderful sauces. PCH and Hawthorne.

Speaking of Mexico, for the second time in a month I found myself engaging in Spanish with Mexican kids that did not speak their native language. It was embarrassing for both me and them. Pochos. I asked the two kids at the show if it bothered their grandparents and they said it did. Very strange.

My sister in Florida texted me. Barbara had this guy on her front porch, had to call a trapper. Between reptiles and a reptilian governor, not a place I feel real comfortable.

I packed out Saturday night and it was not nearly as scary as it could have been. The boys helped me and I am very grateful. 

Limited parking I thought I wouldn't get home until midnight but it was one of my quickest packouts ever. They served a delicious free dinner before I left.

Would I try it again? Absolutely, it takes time for people to get comfortable and there was enough good discussion to make it promising. But then again I am a glutton for punishment.

Went to the shop at six yesterday morning and unpacked the van. 

I needed fuel desperately and decided to be really bad and go for the coronary stopper, the chicken fried steak. Honest to god, first time ever at Main Street but the gravy was so good I guarantee it won't be the last.

Returned home and drove to Encinitas where Dave and Amy had rented a house for a week while Dave attended a medical conference. 

They invited us to the Cubs and Padres game. We stopped off first for an overpriced meal at the Provisional at the Pendry. Close to the ballpark but pretty sad, not to mention expensive. 

I wanted to go to Cucina Urbana, maybe next time. I tell people that all the food in the Gaslamp District is terrible and always has been and always will be. They have enough dumb tourists down there that they don't have to raise their game.

Our baseball game was pretty bad. Padres got rocked about 7 to 1. I lost count. 

We had no shade near first base and it was hot as hell. 

And Dave, an ardent cubbies fan, was so happy. We always lose when he is in town.

Don't I look happy?

Les and I ended up walking around the halls of Petco out of the sun. I paid over nine bucks for a plain fudgesicle, and they gave me a break at that because it was melty.

We left in the eighth, I couldn't take anymore, went and got some noodles on Convoy and then over to Del Mar for some really good Gelato at Ans.

Leslie was in heaven.

Went in again at six today, working on fumes. A client friend is coming and I did what usually takes me a week to unpack in one day.

Not finished but took a big bite out of the apple.

On my way home to collapse.

Stratus - John McLaughlin

This is from the recent Jeff Beck tribute. The song was from Billy Cobham's Spectrum album, the original guitar part by the late Tommy Bolin. Amazing that John can play so incredibly at 81, my favorite guitar player for many years.