All posts by Steve Stern

Syria

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

syria2

I remember a story – during our intervention, along with several NATO allies, in Bosnia and Herzegovina – about United States Army Forward Operating Base Cobra. This was  in 1995 or so, after the majority of the fighting was over. FOB Cobra – if I may be so familiar – was the biggest American base around and it was surrounded by a plethora of concertina wire backed up by as many motion detectors as the supplier could talk the Army into. This was during the time when American soldiers going into town were required to wear helmets and body armor (other NATO troops wandered around in their uniforms with berets or other soft headgear).

Anyway, there was a farm nearby and the farmer had two teenage sons. They spent their teenage summer seeing how close they could get to FOB Cobra proper. When the teenagers were spotted by an motion detector, the lights would come on and sirens would go off. The base would go to Defcon One – or its local equivalent – with the entire base coming up to full attack defense status: all defensive positions were manned, the helicopter gunships were scrambled, and everybody was up and at their battle stations.

The thing is that after the first couple of attacks, everybody knew it was the kids but FOB Cobra couldn’t help itself. Every time the motion detectors were tripped, it reflexively reacted.  Not  in relation to a threat, everybody knew it wasn’t a threat, sort of like a reflexive knee jerk. I feel the same way about the United States and somebody else’s war. Somehow, we have to intervene.  We just can not help ourselves. Obama ran on a platform of staying out of stupid wars like Iraq, and, he knows better, but he can’t help himself. Our body politic won’t let him.

Happy Father’s Day

Psychological Musings

Daddy-1In my personal history – maybe personal mythology is more accurate, maybe something in between – my Dad was pretty much absent. But, today, a day after going to the Exploratorium with my grandkids, Charlotte and August, several – similar – memories of my father have surfaced.

He took me to my first car race and, several years later when I was thirteen, taught me how to drive. We argued over Dred Scott and the proposed tram from Palm Springs to near the top of San Jacinto Mountain. He took me to the 1960 National Democratic Convention and the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. I could bum cigarettes off of him but he wouldn’t sign a permission slip to let me smoke at school.

I was deeply embarrassed that he was a draft dodger – during World War II, a time when everybody’s father had been in The Service – and deeply proud when, at a church service, he outed himself  as an atheist by sitting while everybody else kneeled to pray. He was soft and tender with me, much more than my mother. When we saw each other we kissed, I am not sure we ever shook hands.

He often forgot my birthday and he paid for me to go to College at, what I now know, was a sacrifice on his part. He died 45 years ago last May and I still miss him.

He was my Daddy.

 

 

 

 

 

This Is the End

Film

end1We saw This Is the End Saturday night.  The first words of the movie are Hey Seth Rogen, what up?  so we know that Seth Rogen, the actor, is playing Seth Rogan, the actor, who is waiting at the L.A. airport for his friend Jay Baruchel to clear the gate.  What we know and he doesn’t – in the movie – is that the end of the world is coming. It is the funniest movie I have seen in years and the funniest end of the world movie I can remember. I am sure it helped that we saw it in a crowded theater where we could surf on the collective energy. By way of a full disclosure, I should point out that it is a man’s movie (as the picture above implies).

Turkey and Iran

Politics

Iran

 

Iran has a free election and elects a moderate who says This victory is a victory of wisdom, a victory of moderation, a victory of growth and awareness and a victory of commitment over extremism and ill-temper, while the riot police in Turkey use rubber bullets and teargas to breakup demonstrators in a public park. What is the world coming to?

 

 

“there is no there, there” department

Photography

Eppi #1-8

 

Eppi #1-2

“there is no there there” is a quote from Gertrude Stein in her Everybody’s Autobiography (although, I have to admit that I thought it was Virginia Wolfe). I often – often being used pretty liberally here – hear it  characterized as to mean that, after Paris, Oakland is nothing, but I like Oakland and I think it actually has another meaning. I think that it means that the emotional charge that her home and street carried while Stein was growing up in Oakland is no longer there when she returned.

In 2004, shorty after Michele gave me my first digital camera, I spent an afternoon photographing one or two giant, hybrid, Epiphyllums. I love the pictures from that afternoon. The two pictures above are from then. Over the years, I got more Epiphyllums and, over the years and I have shot more pictures of them. This year was particularly outstanding with lots of orange flowers, a couple of pink flowers, and for the first time, two white flowers. The flowers are better than ever

Eppi #1-0595

but the pictures aren’t.

Eppi #1-0565

Eppi #1-0578

There really is there is no there there and chasing the there doesn’t bring it back. The good news is that there are lots of other theres around.