Two items, late in the day

It's late. I need to think more before writing about the district attorney's refusal to prosecute a case in which signs were illegally posted on utility poles. See this story in today's Oregonian. The ordinance prohibiting such postings may be unconstitutional, saith the DA.

I tear down these signs all the time. Ripped down about eight (an employment agency pitch) this very day and called the number on the sign to tell one "Alice," who answered, that I had done so. My defense is the self-same ordinance.

And the DA won't prosecute? Am I now the one who is guilty for removing Alice's signs?

I have consulted one of the best and most convenient legal minds I know about this matter and will report my findings tomorrow. I may also put in a call to Michael Schrunk, the DA himself. I may want to post my own signs on the utility poles in front of his house. "Prosecute this! Mr. Schrunk."

This could get weird. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, there are two items late in this bizarre weather day to be considered. Neither has to do with the weather, even with thunder and lightning outside my window.

The first is this statement from "Time and the Art of Living" by Robert Grudin. That's a book I've referred to before and recommend highly for bursts of mind stretching.

The statement: "The mind is as limited by what it rebels against as it is by what it accepts."

Item two is how Michael Thomas Ponder figured out where I was last week. Here, in his own words, is his explanation.

"It was an open book test right? Using the power of Google I searched
for Blue Horse using island & WA as key words since it looked like a San
Juan island setting. Restaurant & lodging listings popped up and once I
saw Ganges Rd, I figured I was on the right path with your Indian
clue...."

To see the clues, visit the original post. The answer, lest you have forgotten or didn't care or weren't here for the explication, was Salt Spring Island and its Ganges Harbor in British Columbia.

Denial and "Lost"

One of the take-aways from Matt Stockton’s “Television and the Presentation of Reality” class at PCC was a mental note to myself to critically assess “Lost,” a TV series Matt recommended for its complex, involving plotlines.

It’s about marooned plane crash victims…and then some.

I started to watch the first episode (replete with the gore, confusion and mayhem at the crash site) but allowed myself to be distracted when the script came unhinged. A doctor describes his botched surgery in a monologue that compares his doomed patient’s spinal fluid to angel hair spaghetti.

I mean really.

I may get back to “Lost,” but right now, and for the indefinite future, I have better things to do.

Maybe it’s just where I am in life. Maybe multiple TV episodes are for the young and their seemingly endless lives. Or maybe they are for those who really don’t have anything better to do. That’s harsh, I know, but I’ll put it out there for consideration.

Thoughts like this take me to Robert Grudin’s magnificent book “Time and the Art of Living.” You can pretty much dip into it anywhere.

Here’s were I dipped today. It’s about how our failures to act are as important as our actions. The notion isn’t unrelated to the above.

“….time keeps nothing with as deadly care as the ledger of our omissions. This is nowhere as apparent as in our personal relationships. We lose what is valuable in these — love, joy, communality — less through conflict and tragedy than through long series of shadowy and often unconscious refusals. Withdrawing, forgetting, falling out of touch, ignoring or avoiding or withholding the unpretentious but essential details of friendship, destroy more relationships than death or anger and tend to isolate their perpetrators quite early in the solitary confinement of old age. To the Latin adage Qui tacit consentit (‘He who is silent consents’), we might add another, Qui non agit negat (‘He who does not act, denies’)”

To me, at this point in my life, watching episode after episode of “Lost” denies.