A few weeks ago I wrote on these pages about Preparedness. I’d like to add to that list: Live near your family.  Without willing and able family or community nearby getting old is a daunting prospect.

Welcome home Jack.  We will help all we can.

Gregory Peck

Actor (1916 - 2003)

Have a wonderful day.  Focus on positive things.  We live in a meritocracy.  Most of us have enough to eat.  In our country civilians are safe and opportunities are abundant.

My Thanksgiving wish is that you are surrounded by family and friends and that you can argue with them without animosity.

Flotsam and jetsam (I don’t know the difference and neither do you) have been been put on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a beautiful Caribbean beach.

Stone piles have been built in Eaton Canyon Park in Pasadena.  These piles are near where the trail that leads to the waterfall and Henninger Flats crosses the stream

and are being built by school groups.  I admit to building some of them a few weeks ago when I first had this idea  just to see if they would become self perpetuating.  Within a week of my building four or five piles there were a dozen more.  Last week I observed a school group on a tour from the nature center.  The leader of the group asked the students to help build the “guiding stones.” And they did.

Building monuments like henges, pyramids and totem poles is the penultimate example of the harnessing of this human instinct to create mysterious structures.  The fairy homes, rock piles and driftwood collections I have shown are evidence that this instinct is common in people and can be harnessed by group leaders.  So if you are leading a group and are charged with keeping them busy, make up a story about ancient peoples or fairies and have the group use found materials to build homes or trees or stone piles.  It sounds crazy but it will work.

We went on a walking tour in Maine in September and while walking on Monhegan Island between the harbor

and the high cliff

we passed through a wooded glade.

Nestled in the roots of the trees were some mysterious little houses.

Our guide called them “fairy houses” and we stopped for a few minutes to admire them.  She explained that this was an enchanted wood that was the home of a forgotten group of faries.  Before long she suggested that we might like to help build some new houses for the fairies to replace the ones that had been destroyed by the long winter or some such malarkey. We took the bait and for a short while we were busy building little fairy houses.

It was only a few days ago that I realized that this event in Maine offered a solution to the puzzle of the Mysterious rock piles on Maui.  The answer is tour guides.  They distract their groups and help them to bond with each other and the area by allowing them to participate in what becomes a self perpetuating mystery.  Everybody benefits from this tiny subterfuge.  Tourism is slightly enhanced.  The tourists are entertained at no cost.  A little mystery is good in every-one’s life and we all connect a bit more.

Tomorrow two more examples that provide more evidence to support my brilliant solution to the mysterious structures mystery.

Alexander Tyler

Democracy is Temporary

and before the famous church,

you pass a barren cliff with a huge collection of rock piles on it.

The rock piles are “Mysterious Structures.”  They were built for no apparent purpose in a far away place.  Who or what built them and why?  We journeyed around the world to find out the answer to this question.  Read tomorrow’s installment to learn what we discovered.

Do you think you know?  Leave your answer as a comment below.

The benefits that would accrue to the local politicians would be national attention to a new idea and if it worked more people active in the political process.

The run off events could be filmed and shown on the public access channel so most of the infrastructure already exists.  The events could be things like talking to students, visiting neighborhoods, town hall meetings, entertaining friends and working at the homeless shelter.   There would still be a general election between the finalists.  Now this has a homer ring but Pasadena would be the perfect city to try this idea.  It is a creative city with lots of media savy people and access to production types from the LA film and TV industry.

Thanks to Dave Szamet a brilliant young film maker for this implementation enhancement of the original idea.

The Spanish verb for hope is Esperar.  Esperar is also the verb for wait. It illustrates the problem I see with hope.  Hope is fatalistic.  It presume that you don’t have control.  I reject that idea.  I believe that there are always some things you can do to affect your fate.

In English this is illustrated by the difference between affect meaning “make a difference to” and effect meaning “a consequence of an action.”  You can hope an effect is positive or you can try to affect a positive outcome.  One is active the other is passive.  Hope is almost never the best strategy except when trying to win an election.

Note to regular readers:  This completes a little run:  Faith, Hope and Charity.  What is the famous mention of these three virtues?