Smoke filled the air today, from the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to the north of the Valley. Ironically, it happened because the wind finally stopped blowing. "Thank Heaven", I thought, because I wanted to go up to Aliso and finally get a hike in after two weeks of wind. The temp was 80 degrees. No wind. It was a perfect day. But by the time I got around to going up there, at 3pm, the sky over the Valley was filling with smoke, so much so that the Sun was turning red, and you could look right at it. You could look directly at the Sun without even squinting. It was weird. I probably shouldn't have gone on my hike with the smoke in the air. I thought about just going home instead, but I thought, "I'm already up here, and I haven't had a hike in two weeks", so I went down into Aliso for a 2.5 mile stroll. Tonight my lungs aren't too much the worse for wear. Slightly irritated, but at least I got a pic of the Sun, though as I mentioned, the color was ten times as amazing as the white balance on my little cam would allow me to capture. I was even thinking as I took the pic, "If Elizabeth was taking this photo, the colors would look exactly as I am seeing them". :)
The other thing I was thinking was "I don't recall any fire we've ever had that burned for two weeks". California is Fire Central, and in Southern California we've had some huge ones over the years, including the Station Fire of a few years ago, but almost always they were under control and almost put out within a week or so. But this Thomas Fire is not only still going after 12 days, it's still going strong, enough to fill the Valley with smoke almost two weeks after it began. It has now burned 400 square miles, or 20 by 20 miles. The climate change has caused these extreme conditions, where we have torrential rain last Winter, followed by lush growth in the mountains, followed by a ten month dry period without a drop of rain, followed by a late Summer that didn't really begin until September and has lasted until the week before Christmas, with Santana Winds that have come along and blown for two straight weeks until today, causing record breaking fires.
Other states have different and in some cases even more extreme examples of climate change, but that's ours.
No movie tonight, but I did watch a very good BBC production of Charles Dickens' "Hard Times", a title by Dickens that I hadn't heard of until I saw this dvd at the Libe. As you know, my Dickens Addiction comes around every Christmas Season, and I am always looking for stuff I haven't seen. "Hard Times" is probably not as well known as his most famous works, but it concerns the same social themes that were Dickens' staples; the plight of the poor and working class in Victorian England, the materialism of the wealthy and privileged, the moral certainty and judgementalism of the supposedly educated. It was a bad scene, and Old Charles chronicled the whole thing. Having only known him from "A Christmas Carol" at first, I branched out in recent years and watched many productions of his works, all by the BBC of course, and now I am hooked and constantly on the lookout each Christmas for a Dickens Fix. I am probably nearing the end of the line of available material, and "Hard Times" - in the production I watched tonight - was not a full length miniseries as some of the best Beeb adaptations have been, like "David Copperfield" or (my favorite) "The Old Curiosity Shop". "Hard Times" was done all in one shot as a 100 minute teleplay. It was quite good, though I love the extended TV editions of Dickens' work the best, where they really get into the story and the characters.
I am gonna wind up hooked on the BBC! I see that in my future. For one thing, you can't beat English actors. I am already hooked on "Inspector George Gently", the cop show that takes place in the 1960s. But I am really gonna have to catch up with all of the great "Masterpiece Theatre" stuff and classical Dickens and Shakespeare shows that I have not yet seen.
That was all the news for the day. I am reading "The Road To Jonestown" by an excellent author named Jeff Guinn. In my studies over the years, I am learning about very strange people like Jim Jones, people who don't need to sleep but two or three hours a night, people of nearly superhuman energy. I am very interested in the sociopathic personality, because these are people who are able to not only "fit in" with the rest of us, we normal humans with varying degrees of empathy, but to rise to the top of the power structures of society because of the incredible physical and mental energy they possess.
Reading about Jim Jones - who I must say is one of the creepiest people I have ever read about - the thing that I notice is that he has physical and psychological energy that is far beyond the limits of 99% of other human beings. In this regard, he is like Lyndon Johnson, another guy who did not need to sleep, and who got a ton of stuff done, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
We need to study not only the history of such people, i.e. what they did, but we also need to study the spiritual or supernatural aspects they may have inside them.
People who are so Driven. Who don't need much sleep, and can get monumental tasks accomplished, goals that involve dozens or even hundreds of other people, who must be motivated by the person possessing all of this unusual energy.
People like Jim Jones are under some kind of Force, and it needs to be studied. I mean, reading about him, he makes Charles Manson look like an amateur. He is, or was, a psycho of the highest level.
And I think we really need to begin to study the psychic makeup of people like Jim Jones, who exhibit such tremendous paranoid latent anger and megalomania, and I think we need to study such people, and the energy phenomenon that possesses and drives them, before they gain enough traction to carry out their goals.
I mean, the whole world simply stood in awe of Hitler until it was too late. Many were aware of what kind of person he was, but few knew what to do. What do we do with a man of such anger and charisma?
Well, now we know. You get rid of the MF, as soon as possible. You shut him down.
Jim Jones is a classic example. No one shut him down because no one cared to examine the evidence that was right in front of them.
But we know more now, and my study, if I were a psychologist, would be to undertake a deeply psychic and physiological study of the sociopathic personality - the People Who Have No Empathy For Other Human Beings, and Who Also Seem To Possess Almost Superhuman Physical Energy.
We need to generate a major scientific study into the nature of the Sociopath, because they often are driven to attain positions of great power, and it may take the energy of many of us to bring a power-mad sociopath down.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morn. :):)
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