Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The mustard trail

California has a very brief spring, when the grass on the hills is actually green, after the winter rains, rather than its more usual brown and gold.  And  right now, the green hills are dusted with tall spindles in brilliant yellow, as though a landscape painter has scumbled a bright cadmium across them. It's mustard.

The story goes that as the Franciscans built the California missions, they marked the route between them by tossing mustard seed along the path. So when I see a hillside of mustard, sometimes I see a man in a dark habit, tossing the seeds along his way. Now of course there is mustard everywhere.

The padres of the missions were often harsh and even brutal to the native population. But that's all in history now, and we have bright yellow mustard reaching upwards to tell us that it's spring, and time for renewal.

8 comments:

Ann said...

Have you seen the movie "The Mission"?

JCF said...

Off-topic:

Blogger seems to have been reconfigured in the past few hours: I think the DEFAULT mode is only to allow registered comments (not Name/URL or Anonymous).

I obviously have a Google account, but I really PREFER to sign as "Name/URL" (always have). Can you (Mods) jiggle it back the way it was?

[JCF gets headache imagining making same request to all the DOZENS of Blogger blogs I view on a regular basis, that DID allow Name/URL comments, till tonight. }-p]

IT said...

JCF, that's a blogger issue and they are aware of it.

JCF said...

Thanks, IT.

dr.primrose said...

From the N.Y. Times - How the Law Accepted Gays:

"THE prestigious law firm King & Spalding has not fully explained its decision this week to stop assisting Congress in defending the law that forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriage. But its reversal suggests the extent to which gay men and lesbians have persuaded much of the legal profession to accept the basic proposition that sexual orientation is irrelevant to a person’s worth and that the law should reflect this judgment. The decision cannot be dismissed simply as a matter of political correctness or bullying by gays.

"Gay-rights supporters have transformed the law and the legal profession, opening the doors of law firms, law schools and courts to people who were once casually and cruelly shut out because of their sexual orientation."

(wv: "ethette"!)

dr.primrose said...

previous comment apparently went to spam

JCF said...

Oh great: just when Blogger gets the sign-in problem fixed, have they reverted on the "Include hyperlink, get swept up into Spam" problem? O_o

IT said...

I will retrieve it!