It's 8:15 pm Saturday, I'm sitting the the Sun Shoppe Cafe in Melbourne, Florida (where they have free customer WiFi access). Been up since 6 yesterday morning. Took the Delta red-eye outa Vegas at midnight, got here by way of Cincinnati late this morning. As my Delta/Comair flight approached Melbourne, the small jet banked hard left, turning east toward the ocean over the Indian River, and I noticed a familiar site, one I’d not before seen from above. It was Patrick Air Force Base, its golf course visible just to the south and east of the main runway. My retired officer Dad’s main Hang (to the endless irritation of my “golf widow” Mother), where he labored mightily to break 80 during his long retirement (he got to 80 once), and where his driving career ended one day when he ran his car up over a curb in the golf course parking lot, hitting a transformer unit and knocking out the electricity at the base golf club for hours (I had to pull Mom’s car keys earlier this year, before she ended up taking someone out).
Flight 5115 continued out over the ocean, and then the aircraft banked lazily right into a swooping 180 degree descending turn that put us on course back in toward Melbourne on final approach just north of the causeway connecting Indiatlantic Beach to the mainland. Approaching the runway, we passed right by Holmes Regional Medical Center, where both of my parents have spent so much of the last ten years. I have come to know the place well.
As she requested, I brought Mom’s hi-tech walker to the rehab hospital. As I wheeled it across the parking lot, I passed a couple exiting the facility. We exchanged hellos, and I smiled and said “I’m practicin’.”
Spent most of the afternoon with my Ma, watching her go through PT in the rehab hospital down in Palm Bay. We'll hang for Mothers' Day tomorrow. To my wife and daughter: I regret that I won't get to also be with you on Mothers' Day, but know I am thinking of you both. To my sister: Carole, you have long been an awesome Mother. Miss ya. Happy Mothers' Day. To all of the Santa Fe tribe: make sure your Mothers get the major props they deserve this Mothers' Day.
Monday: went to hang with my Dad today at the nursing home. I don't know what keeps him going. He'll be 90 next month.
Bought a book at McCarran on the way outa town, "The Weather Makers" by eminent scientist Tim Flannery. A depressing, scary read in some ways. Finished it today. It's about the issue of "global warming," an issue about which the scientific community is by now in overwhelming consensus: we gotta change, or the human race is in for some serious, wide-scale, unprecedented misery -- sooner than we'd like to think. Highly recommended, very well written, in a way making it accessible to the general reader.
If you care about the world your children and grandchildren will inherit, you might wanna read this. My general policy is to keep politics out of this blog, but this is not really about "politics," this is about our collective future as civilized, prospering humans. We talk a lot here about "healing," but our planet is undeniably in need of some serious love and healing as well.
MONDAY UPDATE: short book excerpt:
“In 1961 there was still room to maneuver. In that seemingly distant age there were just 3 billion people, and they were using just half of the total resources that our global ecosystem could sustainably provide. A short twenty-five years later, in 1986, we had reached a watershed, for that year our population topped 5 billion, and such was our collective thirst for resources that we were using all of Earth’s sustainable production.
In effect, 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth’s carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is sustained only by plundering our capital base. The plundering takes the form of overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing pasture until it becomes desert, destroying forests, and polluting our oceans and atmosphere, which in turn leads to the large number of environmental issues we face…
…By 2001 humanity’s deficit had ballooned to 20 percent, and our population to over 6 billion. By 2050 when the population is expected to level out at around 9 billion, the burden of human existence will be such that we will be using—it they can still be found – nearly two planets’ worth of resources. But for all the difficulty we’ll experience in finding those resources, it’s our waste – particularly the greenhouse gases – that is the limiting factor.” (pp 78-79)
Yikes. End of rant. Read the book.
NOTE: way cool "smooth jazz" FM station here in Melbourne now, 93.1 The Groove. A REAL one, unlike another I know of that inexplicably plays too much warmed-over MOR R&B. I've had 93.1 on in my rental car down here, diggin' it big-time. Major props, guys.
SAVE THE DATE: SATURDAY, MAY 20th. LAKE LAS VEGAS, MONTELAGO VILLAGE!
How cool is this? from the Cinevegas website:
"The CineVegas Film Festival will be hosting a screening at Lake Las Vegas on Saturday, May 20th. This screening, which is free and open to the public, is the first of its kind for CineVegas and will give festival fans a sneak peak of the 2006 festival. In addition, May 20th marks the official opening of the CineVegas box office and throughout the evening, a box office will be set up at Lake Las Vegas where tickets and passes to this year’s festival can be purchased.
The evening will commence at 5:30 pm with an electrifying performance by the band Santa Fe, followed by an invitation-only reception at Bistro Zinc at 6:30 pm. At 8:00 pm, CineVegas will screen its trailer for the first time, followed by the movie screening at 8:30 pm."
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You better believe it'll be "electrifying." Be there. Tell everyone to come out, it's gonna be a great evening.
Every Sunday night starting at 9:30 pm a lot of fine performers show up at the Hurricane Bar & Grill to sit in. Tommy says they been packin' 'em in lately.
I will be there tomorrow night to report on it for the blog. Be there. It's on the south side of town, on Bermuda, just off St. Rose Parkway. For directions, click here.
Also, FYI, esteemed jazz veterans Stanley Clarke and George Duke are performing in town this weekend, at The Orleans. Word is that they'll be coming to hang at The Artisan with Ronnie Foster after their gig. I will be there, for sure.
We thought Stanley and George were gonna sit in, but I had to leave, so I may have missed it (they were having a bite to eat in the Artisan dining room when I cut out). My 12 year old Grandson Keenan was in the finals of his latest tennis tournament, and I had to be at the Hilton to see it at 11 this morning. He torched it! Winning in 6-0, 6-1.
Keenan ended it with a rocket ace that had to be 100+ mph. Man, that serve! (click here, pic montage of the Grandson last December, age 11, at the USTA Claremont Nationals. Proud Grandaddy.)
