Your moment of Zen

A flying car The Convair Model 118, a prototype which unfortunately never made it into mass production, 1947. [photo via Historical Pics]

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Flying Wallendas

I was offline for about 36 hours and returned to discover Nik Wallenda was doing a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon. I was surprised to find a fair amount of mockery about it on the internets. Not to mention, nitpicking over the actual location of the walk. Does it really matter if Wallenda crossed above the Grand Canyon on Navajo land?

I remember when it was a BFD for a high wire walker to perform in the Big Top w/o a safety net. But nobody goes to the circus anymore. And an ever more jaded public demands greater thrills from its professional daredevils. Apparently risking certain death by walking a quarter mile on a wire suspended over a incredibly deep chasm just isn't impressive enough for some people.

It is for me. Wallendas have been aerial artists for generations. All praise to Nik Wallenda for keeping the family's legacy alive with this epic walk. [photo: Henrietta Wallenda - 1942]

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Why photojournalists are important

Also historians. Abraham Lincoln in the White House, 1864, upon having won his second nomination for POTUS. [via hudsonette]

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Your Moment of Zen

A tea garden in San Francisco in the past. And in the present.

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Oh baby, Ohio

[photo via Kent State 1970]

A lot of scary things happened at the 60s protests. People were killed more than once, in many places, but for some reason the deaths of the Kent State Four always felt the most tragic. Maybe it's because those kids were peaceful and innocent bystanders died at the hand of panicked law enforcement.

Will Bunch wrote the best Kent State retrospective today. Not sure I agree with him that it marked the spiritual end of the era. Think its demise was more gradual and ongoing. Like most movements, the hippie peace era was slowly strangled by grifters and opportunists who co-opted it for their own ends. For myself, it was the violent methodology eventually adopted by the SSD SDS and the Weathermen that killed what was then called flower power.

But Will is surely right about this:

The question of why the 1960s matter to me is one thing, but what's important is, should the events of 50 years ago matter to the rest of us? Is what happened on May 4, 1970 - and in the tumultuous years leading up to it -- still relevant on May 4, 2013? OK, I've clearly revealed my bias, but I think the answer is undeniably yes -- because there is a straight line between the skirmishes people fought then and the all-too-real war for the future of America that is taking place today.

Much of what's happening today feels like the 60s revisited to me. We're fighting the same battles all over again.

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Time waits for no one

You don't have to be a Republican for this list of GOP milestones to make you feel old. I remember the majority of them from having experienced them in real time. The item that seems most relevant to our present day politics is it's been almost 13 years since the first Bush Tax Cuts were signed into law.

They promised at the time it was going to make everybody part of the "ownership society." Predictably, 13 years later, the majority of Americans own less while the "original owners" who got the biggest cuts now own almost everything, including our government. And they still want more. The definition of of conservative economics has no become insatiable slavering greed. [Warning: if you click through you will see a disturbing photo of a young Rusty Limbaugh.]

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Bookplates worth a thousand words

I just can't with the intertoobz today. Everybody pissed off about something different and sniping at each other. Too much noise. Not enough contemplation. So here's bookplates of the famous. Worth the click to see all 34 more (all on one page) at the link.

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