Here and There Blog

Ugh. Second summer in a row where the heat records are broken and using only fans is not working to cool down the house. Another hour before the sun sets enough to head outside and try my luck there. What's new in my corner? Not much. I've completed two weeks of "normal life" and somehow the time went by fast! This weekend brings a pool party and then a play so I'm sure it will also go by way to fast! Click here for  New Village Arts in Carlsbad "Return to the Forbidden Planet" Shakespeare, SF, Rock. What's not to like? Since it's Friday and I got distracted after posting the link to the play - the sun has slightly gone down and I've opened a beer. Cheers to the weekend!

With the jet lag getting me up early, I decided to go into the Carlsbad Village at sunrise and snap a few photos of local street art. When you're wandering out that early without distractions, you learn a few things. I've only been gone a few weeks but an entire block of auto repair and industrial building have been torn down and condos are going up in their place. The streets are blocked for repair. And the Cecil mural came up amid controversy. I get that many people are upset that we seem to care more about this lion than the millions of people starving to death in the world. It's easier to identify with one when the sheer numbers of the other are too much to comprehend. I also believe that if we can't care about the one, then there's no way we'll ever care about millions. Animals can't help themselves, people can. What else happened? Senor Grubby's has donated a wall to be a revolving mural for the next year to showcase Southern California artist...

Complete and total mess. After 3 weeks in New Delhi I find it hard to summarize my time there. I met plenty of kind and considerate people. The head Chef at the hotel, the people I worked with, the hotel security guards. Their life is hard compared to mine and a 1000 times better compared to the homeless on the street. I don't even know if homeless is the right word, since home is defined by different standards. Home is under the bridge, home is under the tree. Shelter is a tarp. Home is outside. It's rough. When it rains, you're wet. When not raining, you're hot. No solution in sight, no government desire to change, and only a few small signals in the media calling for change.  Inertia, stalemate, caste, population, religion. Power, corruption. Misery. Life.  History is in decay. New Delhi is not pleasant. I know my scope of what I saw was limited. Every year Blog Action Day brings light to a topic. Poverty, water, women's rights, children's rights, ...

When home is a corner street island with one tree and surrounded by cars life is only going to get worse. There's no way out and no foreseeable government action to stop the cycle. Poverty is life. When all you have is a shirt, it's important that the buttons are properly done in place. As traffic goes by you count on someone to heat the food and hope there's enough to go around. It looked like several families shared this corner, living on the handouts from begging. India has paperwork and regulations for everything. It seems this even applies to how you secure your life in a tree on a street.