Trick or Treat ???? Why Bother

       This is of many snapshots taken of the delightfully outfitted trick or treaters at my house each year. Most are glad I'm impressed enough with their costumes to care to take a picture.  When parents are there, I immediately ask for permission, if not, I ask the kids.  If they say no, I respect that, but since it is my front porch on my property with someone knocking on my door, I do believe I have the right to record the moment.
      One parent, who apparently did not accompany their children complained to the police, and the next day I had 2 sheriff deputies on my door asking if I had taken pictures of children, and why?  I was astonished but responded that I put them on my flickr site to share with my contacts, as others would on facebook, and that I have a cousin in the Netherlands who was here once for Halloween and enjoyed it.  I was told that I had to have the parent's permission first, and that I had to put up a sign that said, "You may be photographed"

     Suddenly Halloween Lost its Charm.  The following is my sincere letter to the person who caused my loss of enthusiasm for preparing for Halloween. May a witch haunt your door this evening.

Letter to Parents of Child who called cops because I took picture of their kid in Halloween costume.

Dear folks,

        I'm sorry if I violated your expectations of what happens when kids go trick or treating without their parents, and that folks might actually like your kids costume well enough to want a snapshot.
May I ask, if this offended you why you didn't come to my door to discuss the matter with me.  If things like this concern you, might it not be better if you went trick or treating with your kids.
And finally, if this bothered you, why didn't you have the neighborly courtesy and decency to discuss the matter directly rather than attempt to make a criminal action out of a traditional neighborly celebration.
        You've caused me to seriously reconsider taking part in Halloween at all, even when my own childhood was full of memories of getting to know neighbors and celebrating evenings with other kids.
        Now your actions have caused me to associate what was a fun childhood memory to the realization that at every step America has become more and more an authoritarian state with common courtesy skipped so that we can't be held accountable for our thoughts and feelings.
       I am now conflicted....why bother to celebrate what was fun, when the mere snapshot of the creative kids asking for candy and tricking me if I don't give it...should have the moment captured so others can share the tradition of a fun-filled holiday centered on childhood, mischief, and fun.
     `Given your paranoia about who might answer the door, may I recommend you keep your kids at home this year, for regardless of their costumes, I would rather not see them, if I can't share the memory.

Apologies will be accepted.

Let me dive into my own universe....

         The more I hear and read about the current cosmological models of multiple universes, curved space, quantum leaps and waves and particles, I can't help but see all of those possibilities in a small stream with moving water, light, and the tools for stopping time for a mini-second view to realize how another second would entirely change the mini-universe in the photo.

     The surface world of water, is simultaneously a reflected distorted world above, and those distortions tell us volumes about the world below the surface, it's tension, flow, depths, speed, calmness, and what is being reflected...sky, clouds; in short, visually we have entered another microcosmic entrance to a world very different from the one we must live in, one of air, and three dimensional objects.

Piercing My Paradigm

Deep in Microspace

Bursting Forth

Looking up in a deep forest.

     The chill and dusk of winter has inspired me to dig out my Extreme Fractal Program and spend some weeks zooming in and out through mathematical algorithmic iterations for which we can thank Mandelbrot and Julia, and these are tied to computer programs that allow me to cruise through hypothetical universes at many scales and with an awesome complexity of colors and textures.

     Just after listening to Carl Sagan and Steven Hawkins describe multiple universes with multiple scales and dimensions, perhaps even laws of physics, I find my Mid-Twentieth Century academic mind was not prepared for this.     

     Only in 1980 when Benoit Mandelbrot put his fractal algorhythm to an IBM test, did we learn that there is order in chaos...that when we see chaos, it is because we haven't found the pattern; we're not looking at the right "ZOOM"   This expansion of my imagination allows a paradigm that says...

"Don't see order?; 

Then change your perspective!"

     For me, Mandelbrot set in motion a liberating chain of thoughts, for if the same fractal geometry that creates a spiraling spring fern has similar properties when seen as far away as a galaxy, then we can no longer deny a certain unity  between human ability to understand how nature programs creation...emergence as we now call it.

     Were all that not enough, the power of color to influence what we think we see is overwhelming is shown by the three images above, which are essentially from the same zoom, but have three different set of instructions for color and background.  It reassures my spirit to know that even in the infinite zooms of my cells, emergence of potential awareness exists.

• Rant relief, man with love for earth, for life, watching dysfunctional corporate leadership f____k with every personal right our forefather came for when the abandoned plutocratic European cultures with their Royal Corporate Domination of the world.
• --------------------------------HEALING________________________________
• 
  
• Stick your hands in the ground, 
• wet ground,
•  cold ground, 
• rich ground...
• ground you made to soil,
• with your own composted cow manure
• hauled by wheelbarrow.
• 
  
• Rub the mud on your nose, 
• and inhale your surrounding,
• Poke a hole in the soil, 
• push a spinach seed into the still,
• night frosted ground.
• Dream of bing cherries from the blossoms,
• Dream of heirloom tomatoes in the fall.
• 
  
• Push your filthy thumbs in your ears.
• Drown out that illusionary civilization 
• Brainwashed with advertisement and lobbying.
• 
  
• Shut out the noise of sirens!
•  the outer squabbles,
• The filth of political dialog in elections.
• Be  prepared to shout your anger,
• 
  
• As freedom,
• loses out to paranoia,
• and becomes virtually Illegal.
• 
  
• I'm thankful for a life
• Before surveillance cameras,
• Physically invasive airports, 
• Assumed guilt drug testing,
• Internet identity theft,
• Cell phones compulsively interrupting our lives, to drive us to compulsive response disorder 
• and the ability to focus for any length of time.
• A life before computers and drones,
• 
  
• Thanks, too, for our native ancestors
• Prior to us Caucasoids (White People) 
• To remind us what it would have taken,
• To have lived here sustainably.
• 
  
• As we've turned their garden of Eden only a few hundred years ago,
• Into quadratic subdivisions of green laws monoculturized by Roundup.
• 
  
• Enjoy the sun, 
• the rainbow, 
• the snowflakes, 
• the bowing trees,
• the moods of clouds,
• the scent of flowers, 
• the croaking of frogs, 
• the chirping of birds,
• for they could be gone tomorrow.

Contemposcribe 4-27-12

The Thinker 

Rodin

I am, therefore I think.Especially when I sit,What I see is then still.Details emerge.New associations sparkle.New perspectives light up.
Man am I and I am ManTwenty digits,Two arms,Two legs,Hands and feet.Self-mobilizing,
Now stationary,Now fist to chin,And hands to knee.Being,Not doing,An ancestral icon for me to ponder.

Peter Prehn

Apostrophes

'

     The apostrophe, like all punctuation, has a purpose in writing, but disrupts computer programming. and as such can't be used in an e-mail address.  But someone who didn't know that O'Ryan wasn't a geekspeak name, put an apostrophe in the name of one of my student's e-mail adresses, blocked the web pages I needed, to know the names and data about my students who were registered already 2 days into the quarter for my GED class. It was fixed a day later, but spun in motion another catastrophistic prophesy.

     Now an apostrophe may seem like a small matter, until you ask if a misplaced apostrophe could bring down the global network?  Creating network dysfunction is the mission of a whole new younger generation  of rebels with anarchistic tendencies, as in any era of dysfunctional societies.

     That network relies on Vigintillion (and yes that means:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  yes/no bytes, or ten to the 120th power, as defined in Europe, anyway.  These infinite numbers of yes/no bytes now rule the globe these days, to run our banks, our tax system, our finance system, our military, our electric grid, our communications grid, etc. etc.  Did I mention Nuclear bombs.

     Cataclysmic things can happen when someone can't or won't program.  And the solar system could also have a sun with nuclear energy having a flare or two at two or three times higher than usual, which for most knowledgeable people is not an if but when  event of a gigantic solar flare with intense magnetic fields crashed against our electrical/communication infrastructure the apostrophe wouldn't matter anymore, but in the meanwhile, any small error in programming has potentially huge consequences...especially when a hacker works hard to make it happen.

All of which is to say, from my perspective, that we've become more vulnerable to global collapse than at any time in our history, short of nuclear war.

It is really incredible to think of this global network  which is operating with a collective knowledge globally but which depends on nearly microscopic chips to contain more data than that unimaginable number of "yes-no" decisions...it's hard to believe this way of life can ultimately continue...yet we do nothing to plan for an alternative...is that sanity?

Hibernation Therapy

Cold feet,

The symbol of hesitation.

The Time for Sitting.

Feet against the heat,

Careful not to burn myself.

Coming is more darkness.

Coming is more cold.

Coming is an inner spiral,

Spinning out the new

Web of my paradigms.

Hibernation isn't necessarily,

Sleeping.

Sleeping isn't a coma.

Off comes all the camouflage,

The inner genuine me rules.