Occupation of Independence

Once again I am quite affected by the movie, "Paradise Now." It seems that I rewatch it every year that I revisit the Patagonia library. During my years of travel, there have been a handful of public libraries that stood out. They offered something of quality -- not just the usual mass market drivel. It feels good to see somebody "come through" for you, like that.  But why doesn't it happen more often? Isn't a high quality selection of books, music, and movies seen as part of the culture of society, and isn't culture important?  I could offer four of five bullet-points on possible answers to this question. But analyzing it would kill the mood I feel after watching this marvelous movie.  More generally it seems that most places are content to be like every place.

Pop quiz: what was the last movie you saw? What year did you last see a movie at the theatre? It is getting so I am not even sure which decade it was when I last went to a movie theatre. I guess you could say that movie DVD rentals still make the movie industry important. But isn't it strange that there is still so much hype and hoopla over the Academy Awards, when the movie industry is sinking into irrelevancy? Is so-and-so going to say something against Trump at the awards? Will Hottie Buns win an award, or expose 80% of her body during a speech, or will it be 82%? How earth-shaking! Stay tuned!!! Why not spew out vast amounts of publicity over who won the Pulitzer Prize, despite the fact that the newspaper industry is dying? Or why not glorify the hero who works for the United States Post Office and won this year's "Employee of the Year" award?  

If it is possible for the smirk to become seated permanently in the muscles and wrinkles of the human face, then I am running a risk right now. It is impossible to read a history of early Christianity and not see parallels with bloggers, vloggers, and self-proclaimed holy men of the winter camping scene. But my smirking is not mean-spirited. I just find the parallels amusing. After all, times are so different now than 400 A.D.; and yet certain psychological drives persist. Why I even know one blowhard on the internet who brags about not using any heat in his camper! (grin.) Should I give a list of quotes from the book? Maybe that would get too drawn-out. Perhaps it suffices to put in an endorsement for "The First Thousand Years," by Robert Milken (A Global History of Christianity.) Asceticism is only one parallel between early Christianity and modern desert camping. Consider: The growing pains in any movement; certain forms of decay. Fire-breathing rebellions agains

It certainly is ironic how a desert is at its best when it is temporarily acting like an un-desert. Do you think there is a 'moral' to this story? It was wonderful to experience the slow rain in the desert this morning. Numerically it might have amounted to only a couple hundredths of an inch. But every drop soaked in. The desert even seemed soggy. And it smelled so good! Of course it is easy to praise rain when there is no soil and therefore no mud. The roads are pure gravel and rock around here. ________________________________ By the way, the photograph above answers the question that a commenter recently asked about 'why I was even troubling myself over shopping for a new camera.' Objectively, the scene was of pendulous raindrops, clinging to desert vegetation. But the camera's response to the harsh backlight turned the scene into luminous globules or water balloons. Thus the photograph is a visual representation of the theme of this post. This can