Pirate Dreams

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Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 8, Abundant Practice

Several students have requested more basic time traveling practice.

Period hopping in Walnut Canyon, near Flagstaff Arizona, is a straightforward exercise. A very short hike of twenty or thirty minutes down the main trail at this national monument, takes the dedicated student of space and time, on an inspiring visit with the cliff dwelling Sinagua people.

This activity is a simple exercise in century movement. Remember that’s seven HUNDRED years back. There’s been a bit too much casual attitude when it comes to zeros in this class. The professor will not be held responsible for those of you who have been ending up in the Neolithic Era. Nor will she hold students excused from required papers or exams.

Click on the picture above for a detailed preview of this time-traveling experience.

Dancin' with the Dinosaurs

My daughter and I were listening to her ipod, in the car driving down to San Luis Obispo on a recent there-and-back trip.

Me: "Oh I remember when the original version of this song came out."

Mollie : "Is that what the dinosaurs danced to, Mom?"

Community Standing on the Beach

No concern over who's got the most money, whose the prettiest or whose dog is cuter.

Everybody's got equal standing in this community.

Go ahead and click on the picture above to take a closer look at the beauty of diversity.

The Lady Vanishes -Today

The classic Alfred Hitchcock film, “The Lady Vanishes” is one of my favorite movies, but how long will it be, before our society doesn’t get it? We’ll need to make an updated version.

Challenges

1) Power Struggle: American and British people can no longer be the grand patrons in a tiny unknown Alpine country. No looking down on the locals and complaining about what a backwater the place is. Inhabitants, benefiting from the European Union, will be looking down on them, sneering at their disability to speak local and other European lingos.

Can you find the advertising slogan that represents the new world order, by clicking on my up-to-date teabag?

2) Environmental Correctness: The bowl of trash, which includes the clue of the Harriman’s HERBal tea bag, cannot be thrown out the open train window to the four winds. How will Michael Redgrave ever realize that Margaret Lockwood isn’t just flying along on a drug-induced experience, when she describes meeting Miss Froy?

3) Women’s Position in Society: Iris Henderson can be fresh from traveling around the world, but she can no longer depend on her parent’s money to send her there. She must have a job. In the Internet age, she can’t depend on being a journalist or a photographer, those careers are valid only up through the end of the 20’th century. A European fund-manager, perhaps? Or might she be promoting that American jam that represents her family business?

The evil doctor can no longer get away with implying that women are just a bundle of nerves when explaining away her condition. That’s ok because no doctor is going to be offering free health care to her nowadays anyway.

Iris would not be preparing to marry “the blue-blooded check chaser”. She might have a little flat with him in London though, and be considering marriage.

4) Gay Friendly: Charters and Caldicott , the two cricket-crazy friends are still trying to get back in time for the cricket finals. Instead of a dearth of Birtish sporting information in the newspaper, they will need to complain about lack of wifi reception or problems charging their hand-held electronic devices.

Very little updating needs to take place when it comes to the humor involved in their sharing the maid’s bed, and her frequent, and unexpected, access to her “wardrobe”.

5) Cute Meet: Gilbert and Iris’s classical love-hate, aggravated-meeting romantic comedy relationship can stand. Guess some things haven’t changed in nearly eighty years.

Unquestionably Native Americans, Wild Turkeys

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It's only been in the last few years that I've started to see flocks of wild turkeys in California. At first I was unsure if I was seeing the real deal, but they look just like the ones in the picture on the whiskey bottle.

Wild turkeys have the sort of native standing that I have. Once we lived in another part of the country now we think of ourselves as real Californians. I came here in the 60's. They were brought across, as game animals, in the 30's.

Wild turkeys and I are also both partial to forests, like the one into which, this flock I spotted in San Luis Obispo county is retreating.

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Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 7, Future Travel and Talk

I stumble on the remnants of the work of women who came before me, laying around in drawers, stores and flea markets. On a recent there-and-back-in-a-day trip to San Luis Obispo , I found 4 small embroidered napkins in an antique store for $1.50. I am not the person who will save the challenged economy with my spending habits.

I took the original photo of the street sign that I used to create this picture, in Madrid. (Go ahead and CLICK ON IT to enjoy the full beauty) It reminds me how much committed, work time hand embroidery takes. Even when I sit down to a spot of machine embroidery, it takes a good bit of labor.

These have definitely been well-used by a generation or more of mouth wipers, which was why they were priced so kindly. Who embroidered them? Did she enjoy herself, sitting out under the orchard on her farm in S.L.O. working away with that orange, yellow and red floss?

The napkins will work to line the inside top of a grocery carry bag I plan to sew . The embroidery can peep out and the stains will be down inside under the head of lettuce and can of beans. Somebody’s careful labor will live on for another generation or so and a San Luis Obispan farm woman, will travel forward in time to accompany me on my walk home.

She ought to be good for telling me a story.