Flower Power

San Francisco is a very nice city ... I believe it is second only to NYC in terms of tourism here in the United States. It is a city that has a dark underbelly, though ... like Las Vegas, I can sense it. It's interesting ... the "darkness" I mention takes different forms, and it's something I can't quite describe. New York is different from Vegas, which is different from San Francisco, which is different from Seattle. When I was last in Seattle I was struck by the empty loneliness of the place. There were lots of people, but I had a general sense of emptiness there.

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I look back on the 1960's "flower power" stuff here in San Francisco and I have to smile. How utterly naive. It never occurred to them that if the whole world sat around in the park, smoking dope and strumming on a guitar ... there would be no food, no housing, no park.

Years ago I was dating a girl who was somewhat of an environmentalist. One night on TV there was a story of some group of people down in Tennessee "living out in nature" in some semi-communal style. They were sitting around campfires and strumming guitars. She sighed. "Wouldn't it be great if everyone did that?" I looked at her and at that moment I knew our relationship was doomed. "If everyone did that," I said. "The air would be a lot more polluted and there'd quickly be no forests or woods." She gave me a dull look. She didn't comprehend.

I met my lovely bride a short time later while on a business trip to Tampa, Florida. My bride is anything but dull and naive. She is ruthlessly practical ... and cute!

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The wireless service here in my hotel is not very good. It drops the connection too frequently. I'm not using my Sprint wireless EVDO (or whatever it's called) thingy.

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Here in the hotel there's a book on the shelf above the desk called, "The Compact Book of Facts." I was reading it this morning and came across a timeline of major battles throughout history. One that was listed was the "Viking" raids, which got me thinking about another book I read that provided a fictional account a Viking raid on a village. If indeed the Viking men were raised to be such fierce warriors, then they must have had much if not all the tenderness and humanity wiped out of them. How else could they sweep into a village and run their swords through small children, and split women open with their axes?

But this got my mind thinking in another direction -- if they were that brutual in general, was it possible they were similarly brutal within the confines of the tribal relationships? Did they have wives, or was childbearing a community thing? If wives, was there a tenderness between them? Or was the woman essentially an outlet for sexual aggression. Can you imagine the act of "lovemaking" in that setting?