The Tuesday before the Wednesday

I was at a meeting for the local Amnesty International chapter on Saturday afternoon. Since I am not a member it was interesting to listen to a little of the organization's history and how it has evolved to what it is now. Since this meeting was associated with Pacific Union College there was a definite emphasis on cases involving Christians, especially SDA's (conscientious objectors still imprisoned from the conflict in Kosovo in 1999-2000; widespread religious harassment in Tajikistan even though their constitution protects freedom of religion) although that is not a particular emphasis of AI. One of the primary activities of AI is letter writing and one of their focuses right now leading up to the Olympics in China is the case of Shi Tao a journalist who is in prison for using a Yahoo email account to forward a government edict on suppressing news coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. It was a sobering reminder of how much we take for granted here in America and how free we still are despite the obscene erosions our freedoms are undergoing.

Later that afternoon I took a leisurely five mile hike in Bell Canyon to see the new construction going on there. There are a series of lots, about 20 acres each, that are landlocked with no easements (and therefore no access for the owners). One owner has apparently fought his way through the legal machinations to get a road put in to his piece and we went to see how it was going. There is already a beautiful horse barn built and they have started marking out the riding corral. The foundation for the main house has been spray painted on the site, but they have to wait until April 1st to do any earthwork for erosion control reasons. The siting is curious and probably so out of necessity, which is a shame. When you follow the driveway in you pass a couple exquisite viewpoints encompassing all of Bell Canyon, parts of the Napa Valley and even down to the East Bay, but by the time you get to the ridge finger where the home will be built you have dropped down enough that the view is obliterated. For all the money that will go into that palace it will be a let down to drive by that view every day and have none of it from the house.

Sunday was a work day. I loaded, hauled, and unloaded 4 truck loads of leaves to our mulch mountain, while my parents rototilled and weeded parts of the garden. We also trimmed several of the trees in the orchard (almost too late since they are in bloom, but it needed to be done), transplanted a bunch of lettuce back to where it belonged, and cleaned off the climbing fences for the tomatoes, peas, and cucumbers. I'm still sore from all the shoveling, but it was nice to be outside in the sun and get some variation to my exercise. Once the sun was down, I was free again and headed over to R+D's for a little barbecue. George was presiding over the kebobs and eggplant and a number of other people were coming and going. Richard got the new theatre sound system working and a few of us broke it in with "Bladerunner", the classic starring Uncle Harry. I had to look up Uncle Sugar's film after we talked about him. It was a masterpiece entitled "Escape from Survival Zone" and spawned the in-joke line "Let her goooooooooo!!!!!!!". While looking that up I was reminded of his 3 second head shot as Lawyer#1 in "The Game". Good times.

After getting home I watched "Tam, gdzie zyja Eskimosi" and was disappointed. It is a Polish/German film set in Bosnia circa 1995, with a phony UNICEF agent working for the child slavery/organ harvesting rings that prey on those with little hope. It is supposed to be a feel good journey of the boy and the man rediscovering their humanity together amid, but I never could buy into it. The boy is cute, things fall into place just a little too easily, and there was an aura of after school special hanging heavy over the whole production. For a really moving Polish film try and track down "Wrony". As far as I know it is only available on VHS in the US, but even so it is worth finding. I think I still have a working copy at home somewhere. Enough for this post... til tomorrow.