H2uh0

Richard Spindler is the publisher of Lattitude 38. He has a pretty great life when on vacation, but might work too hard when in the office. He does have a unique vision and has made a mint with his little sail rag.

Here are his latest words of wisdom: If you've read the February issue of Latitude 38, you know that the Wanderer, the pen name for the publisher of Latitude 38, celebrated the 30th year of publishing Latitude by spending six weeks in the Caribbean, most of it aboard the Leopard 45 cat 'ti Profligate. We weren't doing anything particularly grand, just living aboard, doing a bit of work, a bunch of playing with the ocean, and making friends with locals and other cruisers. It was sweet.

Now back, we'd like to share with you the one overriding impression we've gotten upon returning. The Bay Area, where we were born and have lived for almost our entire life, and certainly one of the garden spots of the world, turns out to be one strange and unnatural place. (Of course, we're certain the same can be said for most metro areas of the U.S., if not the world.) For until you've been away for a reasonable chunk of time, we think it's difficult to appreciate how much anxiety and fear-inducing sensationalist crap is pumped into our brains via all the various media, and what mountains are made out of molehills.

Doña de Mallorca and we got our first whiff of this a few days before coming home while at the Bath & Turtle Pub at Spanishtown in the British Virgin Islands. We hadn't watched television in six weeks, but they had CNN with Paula Zahn on, although the sound was off. We'd watched plenty of that stuff before we went to the islands, and it seemed normal. But having not seen it in a long time, it came across as completely bizarre.

For one thing, the set, as well as the outfits worn by the host and guests, were of vibrant primary colors such as aren't found anywhere in nature. As for Ms. Zahn, Wolf Blitzer, and the various 'experts', they looked more like freaks than the normal people. Their teeth were too white, they had enormous repertoires of phony expressions, and the endless over-the-top gestures they made had clearly been drummed into them by communication gurus. Plus, they made every stupid little thing seem so earth-shakingly important.

As for the 'news' itself, what a joke. The astronaut in diapers, Mayor Newsom's sex life, some preacher coming out of rehab for being gay, and God knows what else. We couldn't wait to get back to the boat and sit under the stars and listen to the wavelets slap against the hull.

The bottom line is to recognize that your brain is being inundated with so much bogus information that you can't help but develop a completely unnatural impression of the world and reality. The good news is that there is a real world, and the people who reside in it are much more pleasant than those normally found on television, in newspapers, and on the Internet. Plus the events are far less catastrophic. May we all more completely inhabit that world some day.