Went to gay pride and had a GREAT time with rich, and took lots of photos with Rich. The are a couple of themes that run through the photos, and just like in Where's Waldo, Rich is always some place in the photo just waiting to be found. In one he even has a signage! So check out the album at
http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.herwatt/JulyPhotos
- there are HUNDREDS of photos so I did not want to upload them here. So check them out on my Picasaweb site! Url is above!
Our imaginations
create for us problems
that don’t yet exist!
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Today I went with anne and her nephew trevor to see the new indiana jones movie. The movie was an entertaining throw back to the good old movie days when a whip was a more entertaining way to deal with te bad guys than a cruise missle, when the does have to be a killing every 30 seconds, an explostuon will do, when movies weren,t afraid to laugh at themselves and to poke fun at modern culture. At one point there was a spoof of +izard of Oz which caused anne to proclaim ' we have flying monkeys and we aren'™afraid tó use them! There werr lots of spoofs of the first indiana jones movie, and one scene where the writing on the wall says things like 'not porno' and 'fcuk'. And you just know the message is good when one of the stars is a harley davidson motor cycle. More troubling than the movie which I enjoyed was anne and trevors lack of historical knowledge. When the movir was over I tried to infot. Trevor about the real history the movie was based on, and simple fact like 'on the entire length of of the amazon there is not a SINGLE water fall, and I blieve the water fall featured was POSSIBLE angle falls in south africa' I also tried to share with him the mayan beliefs about the 13 crystal skulls, and the mayan belief the world would come to an end in 2012, and that the 13 skulls must be brought together to save the world. I encouraged trevor to google it, and learn more about the mayan culture and their calender, which predates any other calendar by thousands of years. since he seems to be a videohead I was trying to entice his intetest in history by sharing the doomsday myths around the end of the mayan calenders, and what I remembered from my high school pre-columbian history class with Mr Gibbs. I tried to entice him to learn more by sharing that Mr Gibbs told us that astrometers have concluded that dec. 21 2021 was astrometrically imteresting I'm that the show that on that day the Earth will be in perfect alignment with the center of the milky way. And there were all sorts of predictions on what might occur on that day, everything from the reversal of the magnetic poles, to the return of dieties, including Jesus. Well that was to mucg for Anne, who told me to stop and told trevor the only truth was the bible, of course, I said ti &nne, I called them accient myths, from annother culture, but if he is intretriged maybe he would do some research, I don't say reading plato is historically correct, but studyong it does teach one about the greek culture, and the shows the roots of many of our culturial stories and myths. I started on trying to entice him to broaden his knowledge when he said he had to di a paper on walt disney, and all he could tell me about the man was that during the war hw drove an abulance with disney characters on it, which I don't even think is historically accurate, I seem to recall that mickey mouse was created in the 50's. When I asked what the were doing in history, he said he jusr wrote about the great state of hawaii, so I innocently asked what his TAKE AWAYS WERE, from his paper, what interesting thing did he learn about hawaiian history. I was expecting to hear how it was settled thousands of years ago by ocean explorering polyniasians, how the hawian culture had grown and evolved, about the unique language,whith only 12 consants, no written history, but an oral tradition that seems to be archialogically accurate spanning thousands of years, longer than any western oral traditions. Hawaii a state with a uniwue culture and history. I expected him to know that before it became a state it was a monarchy, I was even expecting a mention of some intersting fact like it had the last leper colony in the us. Boy was I surprised to learn that whar he knew of the history of hawaii was that it was the staging area for the nuclear bomb we dropped on Japan, though hé could not mention the name of the cities bombed. He also stated it was the staging area for the invasion of 'japan' which we then "occupied' for 3 years. HAWIIAN HISTORY, WOW! I bet any hawiian would be suprised that this was was a public school educated 3rd grader knew of their state and culture after an assignment to write about their states history. He didn't even know what year they joined the union, and when I stated the us never invadedjapanm he argued with me'uh huh!' he said, I wanted to ask where the troops landed, hoq many, what cities, but I dropped it, not nentioning Japan surrendered aftrr the nuclear bombs were dropped, and signed a peace treaty on a battleship without a singlw us troop setting foot on japan, thereby making it unique in history. Anne then made excuses for his lack of knowledge, saying he 'is a product of the public school system' SO WERE WE, us public schools used to ti be one of thr best educations in the world, something to be envied, not excuded. And from all accounts he is either upper middle, if not priveledged class, (mother is an ms rn, working on a phd, father is a professor, I believe.) he has a ps3, a wii, an intendo ds lite, has beeb to most R rated movies, (HE IS NINE!) HAS SEEN IRON MAN EITHER twice or 10 times, (what an educational movie that is, with such a wholesome message, (if you build weapons of mass destruction, in a captalist country, and islamic people buy them, you need to blow them the fuxk up! ) forget you are building them to earn a profit, and capitalism is all about providing products to anyone with the money to buy them. No, here we learn that you have the rigjt to take thir money, deliver the priduct, then sprout a conscience an destroy countless lives and prperty because you suddenly realize you don't like there religion. Great messagw for a 9 year old. But get this, the same mom said this nine year old could not go see JUNO, BECAUSE THE SUBJECT WAS TO MATURE! If you don't know juno is a wnderful PRO-LIFE movie that struggled with yhe isssue of teen preganxy, and valueing an unborn life so much that a 16 year old high school student would decide to go against popular opionionam and care so much that she decides to find A GOOD HOME FOR HE CHILD! How can this mesage of self sacrafice and personal responsibility be 'turn mature' for a young mind, bu™murding people for purchasing your weapons, and wholesale slaughter is an ok message for a young mind. Anne who belirves the only goos muselem 'terrorist' is DEAD ONE, QUICKLY JUMPED ME, though we have discussed this a million time, I believe ALL LIFE IS SACRED, MURDER FOR ANY REASON IA WRONG, I READ RHE SCRIPTURE AS STATING GOD GIVES LIFE, AND IT IS ONLY HE WHOM MAY TAKE IT. I nicely sidestepped that arguement by not taking the bait. And let drop the discussion she interrupted with her sister where I was stressing how JUNO might be a better choice for a young mind that IROÑMAN
]]>Today Dean and I went north to Occidental to pickup plants at a plant sale. And after the sale Dean took me on a Garden Tour of a very old (40+ years) garden at the Western Hill Nursery. Enjoy some of the interesting plants we saw.