Flag Hill at Sunol Wilderness is a slab of ancient sea floor which, in response to pressure from below, was tilted up more on one side than the other, revealing a cross-section of its sedimentary layers.
The hill shows a vegetation pattern typical of the inner coast ranges. During summer, the hot sun dries the south-facing slope. Only grassland and soft chaparral can survive under these conditions. On the north-facing slope where moisture lasts longer, trees thrive.
Sunol is one of the most beautiful parks in the Bay Area.
Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible – that ideas were deathless and truth immortal.
But that was true only in the subtlest sense, and not superficially true at all.
There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the non-moral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind & speech & culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture.
View from front yard of Willow Glen Community Center
“It is a long time since my last visit,” said Dumbledore, peering down his crooked nose at Uncle Vernon. “I must say, your agapanthus are flourishing.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K.Rowling
What else should our lives be but a series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.
UPDATE 2026: What’s happening is the weather. Rain this morning, sunshine later today. It’s all good.
UPDATE 2025: “Don’t Die!” is something Voldemort would espouse. “Stay Alive!” is closer to the wizard, Harry Potter”.
UPDATE 2024: Beliefs: 1. Women have a choice 2. No doubt there is a Highest power 3. Science seeks the Truth 4. Sex, like art, is what you make it 5. All good people are welcome to be a great country, yet scoundrels slide. It’s best to have a bias toward goodness unless proven otherwise.
UPDATE 2023: While the snail & snake proved to be problematic, and the mollusk impossible, at least I think I’m over Covid-19. Got one new YOGA pose out of all the suffering. It’s called Sleeping Bear; a good body position for taking the next breath while trying to sleep in the middle of the night.
From2022: What is on his mind?
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, having nothing to do: once she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures in it. “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?” ~Lewis Carroll
