"UPPER LETT LD G L VOLUME £ TREE! NUMBLR. cXkAU >19?! U PPER L E F T COAST PRODUCTIONS * P O BOX 4 Z 2 2 CANNON BEACH 0 « ??«MO * 5 0 3 * 3 6 Z ^5 * b h u H s tp X i(icr.com * W W U .U p p c r k fk A y .c o r “I am also a Alan Watts Dev. Hults Editorial Now & Then Mr. Alan Watts has seemed to have made his presence known as of late. A dear friend visited lately and allowed as how she was living on the 'Vallajo', the ferry boat that Alan Watts lived on for several years in Sasalito. Your beloved Rev. had visited this craft in his younger years and felt the wonder of being where that man of wisdom had lived his days. Our friend was not really very familiar with Mr. Watts, so, it being a little after 10:30 on a Thursday night, we turned our radio on to KMUN, where one can regularly hear The Love of Wisdom', a series of lectures Mr. Watts made over his long career. She seemed delighted. For those readers who don't actually live in or visit our small village, we must explain that Cannon Beach is the home of, among many other things, the Christian Conference Center, which brings us locals in touch with a lot of 'true belivers' on a regular basis. Now don't get us wrong, they are, for the most part, pretty nice folks. They tend to smile a bit too much, but that is to be expected of folks who don't get to the ocean enough. We tend to get a lot of what we call 'button people' in the bookstore (the folks at the Conference Center wear buttons with their names on them, so they can be identified when they line up for meals as actual payed up and deserving of being fed), and this last fall a woman visited the store, who though she was not wearing the tell-tale button, was obviously a 'true believer'. Yes, our constant readers will notice that there seems to be a moral lesson in the offing here. YBR is the sole minister in the Rastified Church of the Cowboy Buddha, and has been known to tease folks who are more dogmatic than spiritual. Dogma can be learned, catachisms, chants, rituals, but the spirit must be felt. Sorry, it has to be brought into what we are calling the 'real' world these days. Well, needless to say the aforementioned woman and YBR began to go at it, theologically speaking. We debated faith and physics, law and love. It was great fun. Finally we seemed to agree that we should continue with our learning. We introduced her to Mr. Watts, she said she was confused, we thought this was a good sign. With all of the strange and frightening things that seem to be filling the current 'real world' it seems a good idea to bring something that encourages us to continue our learning and our attempt to understand each other, and to admit our confusion. And especially learning that when we say words like you and them and they, we arc confused and we arc really trying to say, I and us and we. Which is what we think Mr. Watts has to teach us, and thus our headline this month of May. BILL’S Tavern & Brewhouse 188 N. HEM LO CK CANNO N BEACH, OR 97110 436-2202 Bill says, “If you’re in a hurry, you don’t belong here." I Low er L e f t C o rn er by Victoria Sopieilo THE DRUG OF A NATION It's time to put the TV away. The last two nights we've watched it. The first night we watched a movie on video. The next night we watched an hour-long documentary about India. Our mistake was, while rewinding the tape, we turned to our few available broadcast channels and fell across the beginning of a movie. We watched that for two more hours. The movie was harmless enough and not totally mindless. The news came on and we were curious about the weather in Southern California. Another half hour passed, with tales of scandal in the White House, the deterioration of roads and streets in Portland, sports results, and "cop shoots suspect." You get the picture. In other words, without thinking about it, two adult people each spent three and a half hours watching television in one night. That's seven hours, almost a day's work in a lot of businesses. Let's say we only watched the India documentary; it was entertaining, educational and beautiful. That leaves five hours to do something else: Talk to each other, go for a stroll (with the dog if we had one), clean up the kitchen, sort through one of those piles on my desk, write a letter to far away friends or family, start a project—like the sewing or drawing we never feel we have time to do, go to a meeting, concert, or even read a book. In the summer, those five hours could be spent walking on the beach, weeding the garden, chatting with neighbors, mowing the lawn, or building something in the shop. Admittedly, these activities don't sound like a lot of fun to everyone. A kid, especially, probably isn't very excited about the prospect of doing the dishes or raking the lawn instead of watching TV, and some of us adults aren't much more self- disciplined. But, the point is that TV steals our time, eats away at it with little pleasurable bites, until it's devoured big chunks of our life energy. That would be okay if the rest of our lives were more abundant, but they're not. In the rest of our lives, we're busy, pressed for time, feel like there's too much to do. What part of that time pressure comes from too much TV? I can be just as bad a couch potato as the next person. Once it's on, I'm no better at turning it off than anyone else. It's like having cookies in the house. If they're here, I'll eat 'em. I can resist buying them in the store, but once they're at home, the battle's lost. It's the same with TV. As long as it's tucked away out of sight, I don't even think about it. I can choose to rent a video or check one out at the library; those are conscious choices about how to spend my time. But TV itself often takes away the "conscious" part of choice. The sound and images move along in one seamless current. There's never a page break where one chapter ends—where a program stops and another begins, a half minute of blank screen so you can return to the real world of your own home, think about what you saw, or decide you don't need to see more. This is the seduction of television, why one poet/performer, Gill Scott Heron, calls it "the drug of a nation." It's like chain smoking or binge drinking, or any other drug where you stop choosing how many doses you need and just keep absorbing it. There have been times in my life when I just wanted a break and TV provided it—when I was physically and mentally tired and wanted to be in some other reality at the end of the day. That's when I was going to school full time, holding down two part-time jobs, and caring for a house. I'm older and less energetic now, but the lure of a different reality still has its charms. Some people have a cocktail in the evening, others smoke a joint, a lot of us watch TV. In all cases, moderation should be the rule—we should realize we're dealing with a mind-altering substance, that when abused can have destructive results. We don't want our kids htxikcd on alcohol or pot at an early age. Why do we allow them to get hooked on TV? As far as I'm concerned it should be carefully prescribed, used in specific situations, with limited doses. CORRECTED FOR PACIFIC BEACH TIDES Tides M ay - WASHINGTON AND OREGON COAST TIDES DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME LOW TIDES H IG H TIDES time DATE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 ft. 4:20 8 4 Fri 5:16 7.7 Sat Sun 6 6:22 7.1 7:37 6.7 Mon 8:50 6 6 Tue 9:53 6.7 Wed 10:48 6.9 Thu 11:37 7.1 Fn Sat 0:14 8 5 Sun Mon © 0:43 8.5 1:12 8.6 Tue 1:42 8 6 Wed 2:13 8.6 Thu 2:49 8.5 Fri 3:30 8.3 Sat 4 19 8.0 Sun 5:20 7.5 Mon Tue > 6 35 7.1 7:59 6.9 Wed 9:17 7.0 Thu 10:26 7.3 Fn 11:28 7.5 Sat Sun Mon