Last week my relative from Argentina couldn’t get here due to the fallout from a major volcanic eruption in Chile which kept flights from leaving Buenos Aires – it was so massive it’s still affecting air travel as far away as Australia! Iceland recently experienced one as well, though not quite as disruptive as last year’s; Arizona and Southern Colorado are on fire and not in the ‘cool’ way; a massacres and secret wars are happening in the Middle East, the economy is imploding, but you wouldn’t know what’s really going on these days from watching the news.

There is no doubt that sex sells, but at what price to our dignity and destiny as individuals and as a country?  The media blitz about a certain Congressman with an unfortunate surname to match his current predicament clouded the media landscape to the point where we could not seem to find out much else, except perhaps the hot air being blown about by a former governor from Alaska’s accounts of American history and the news of her old emails or lunch with a NYC landmark with bad hair.

In the famous WWII battle which was one of the Nazi’s biggest attacks on Allied forces, particularly the Americans, Hitler’s divide and conquer strategy was helped by the weather – actual fog – that settled in for two days, grounding the Allies’ superior air power which was why we suffered greatly at the time.

Besides the literal wars that are currently taking place across the globe, we are experiencing a war over our minds and hearts, of what merits discussion and analysis and what is simply gossip. It’s easy to get sucked into whatever the media is trying to grab our attention with, so we must to fight to separate the wheat from the chaff in every area of our lives, and redirect our focus to something more productive and meaningful. 

Summer is a perfect time to expand your horizons, to travel and explore; if you can’t do it literally there is always dance, art, literature, and learning about other people’s realities not from a ‘reality’ show but through documentaries like those in the upcoming Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Can’t quite discern what the fog is preventing you from seeing, the volcanic ash is covering up or those smoke signals are trying to warn you about? Give me a buzz and I’ll help break through distractions that block you from dealing with the important stuff in your life and the world at large. Because it’s only On a Clear Day when we can see what’s really going  on in and around us so we can keep on reachin’ for that Higher Ground!