Big Sur

This past Tuesday through Friday, my father and I drove up to Big Sur country (the California coastline for about 75 miles south of Carmel and Monterey), mainly in search of wildflowers. In most years mid-April is prime wildflower season, but unfortunately for us some odd weather patterns have distorted the normal season. We did have some wildflowers (most especially ceanothus), but not the abundance we were hoping for. But despite the relative dearth of wildflowers — and some inclement weather — we had a wonderful time. Lots of photos and some more description “below the fold"…

On our first full day in the Big Sur (Wednesday) it was raining all day long. Most of the time it was just hard enough to make a walk seem uncomfortable; sometimes it was pouring cats and dogs. And it was always wet out, so that if you walked through brush you’d be soaked. As a consequence, we only did a very little walking, and spent most of the day touring by car. We found a paved road (Namiciento Road) that crossed the coastal range, and took it all the way to the summit. At that point there was a reasonably good four-wheel road headed south along the summit ridge, so we took that — and ended up going about 15 miles through some very pretty country. For someone like me who’s used to the dry Southern California chaparral, this country looks like the rain forest — moss-covered tree trunks and an entirely different flora. Including these trees with odd, colorful bark: madrone.

While we were driving along that ridge road, we could look down below at the coastline — and we saw the sun peeking out. That was enough to make us turn around and head for the shore at high speed, hoping we could get a little weather good enough for walking. And we did get just a little — perhaps a half-hour’s worth of decent weather before the rains came back.

We used that half-hour to climb a hillside that looked like it might have wildflowers on it. We saw a little weather-beaten ceanothus, and several very nice Indian paintbrushes like the one at right. The Indian paintbrush up here is a more intense, saturated crimson than any we have down in San Diego County; beautiful stuff…

And that was about it for our Wednesday — lots of beautiful scenery, viewed for the most part through a filter of haze and rain. We ended the day with a fine dinner at the restaurant that’s part of the Big Sur Lodge, where we stayed. It’s inside of the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, in a stately redwood grove; a very pleasant spot. The food was good, and plentiful. We goofed around in our room for a couple of hours with a roaring, crackling fire, and then toddled off to bed.

The next morning we had a very pleasant surprise: blue sky was visible over our heads! And in fact it stayed sunny and nearly cloudless all day long — not a drop of rain. A glorious spring day in Big Sur country!

After a nice breakfast at the Lodge, we headed north to Garrapata State Park. There’s a beautiful rocky coastline here, and that’s where we headed first. We had a very pleasant walk along the coastal bluffs, a mile or so of constantly changing scenes. The path winds through coastal scrubs of various sorts, and there were enough flowers out to add some color. The air was full of a clean ocean scent, and there was a continuous background sound of crashing waves. When we lifted our eyes from the ground, the blue Pacific Ocean and California sky filled our vision.

There were several vantage points along the bluffs where we stopped for a while to enjoy the crashing waves. Every few minutes there was a set of quite large waves smashing into the bluffs; some of them sent spray 50 feet or more up into the air. Each wave could be enjoyed multiple times, as the wave crashed onto rocks and outcroppings that were successively closer to shore. One particular outcropping (the leftmost picture in the lower row at right) acted sort of like a plow, cleaving each wave into a left and right segment. The air around it was full of spray, but the actual top of the outcropping was calm enough for seabirds to perch on. Each wave would obscure them from us, as the spray and foam shot up — and each time when the wave subsided, the birds were still calmly perched. It all looked quite improbable from our vantage point. One bluff’s shape, for whatever reason, caused the spray from each wave to shoot almost straight up (center photo on lower row), often rising well above the bluff. We hiked over to that bluff, and sat just a few feet from these great sea-foam geysers that it shot up…

At the far right is a photo of a rocky beach, very common in this area. The incessant action of the waves rocks the stones back and forth, slowly shaping them into smooth ovoids. I was standing perhaps 100 feet from this beach as I took this photo, and even at that distance you could easily hear the chorus of thousands of rocks striking rocks as each wave receded. I’m sure that sound is also present when the wave first breaks, but the wave’s noise overwhelms the rocks, so you can’t hear it. The result is a very pleasant pattern of sound: an endless cycle of waves crashing, a kind of hiss as the wave flattens out against the beach, and then the random, slightly musical percussive symphony of the beach rocks as the wave recedes…

In this season there are thousands of small streams flowing out of the coast range. This one carves a typical little “canyon” as it descends, and over a series of small waterfalls as it makes its way down to the beach. In a few weeks this will most likely be a dry gully, but full of life as the plants make the most of the damp soil that was once a streambed…

The fine fellow in the leftmost photo perched nonchalantly on the coastal rocks, along with three or four bazillion of his brethren. On many of those rocks the plant at far right also perches, often on cliffs and even undercuts. It is, I believe, a seedum (I’d need to see the flowers to be sure). This particular one has a very variable red varigation; some plants (but none I could get close to) were entirely red. While you can find this seedum out on a meadow, it seems to specialize in niches where only the boldest plants will go, such as the cliff-dweller I photographed at right. I saw some, from a distance, on outcroppings that were dripping with salt water (from spray), on undercuts of almost 45 degrees. I wonder how its seed gets to places like that? Perhaps it’s carried on the waves…

After we finished with our coastal walk, we headed off in search of another walk, this time in some forest where it was cooler (we got quite warm along the coast, in the bright sunshine). I found a road (Palo Colorado Road) that headed inland, up a canyon. We took the road mostly hoping it would get us to the forests that we could see high up in the coastal range — we didn’t expect the road itself to be very interesting. So it was an unexpected pleasure to discover that this road winds its way for 8 or 10 miles up a canyon that is a nearly continuous redwood grove. For nearly its entire length we were in deep shade, oxalis in bloom around us, along with forget-me-not and some others we didn’t know. Gorgeous! Much of the length was private land, with tiny (and often very run down) houses built on tiny little lots amongst the streamlets and redwood trunks. We found out later that these properties were worth at minimum $600K, and most well over $1M — you’d never think it, to look at most of them. But what a beautiful setting! On one tuck into a ravine, we happened across the waterfall I photographed at right. These are all time exposures, which accounts for the “fuzzy” appearance of the water…

My father is in the photo at far right. For someone his age (82), he managed to get around quite well. But compared with his hiking adventures of years past, this was a very subdued, slow-paced trip. Certainly his enjoyment of the outdoors is undiminished, but the experience is very different for him now. Where he used to have the solid footing of a pack-mule, he’s now a little unsteady and finds a walking stick to be a big comfort. Where he once would have sprinted across a log bridge, he now moves carefully, slowly across it. Back in the day a twenty mile hike with several thousand feet of elevation change would have been a moderate day-hike; today a mile or two is the most he can manage. His sight is far less acute, his hearing practically gone were it not for hearing aids. All of that is hard for him, and hard for me to watch, giving rise to unwanted thoughts. Nonetheless I cherish this time, and I suspect he does as well…

And then of course there were the flowers…

Puppy Journal

I am so tired I could cry.

I am so tired that I called in sick today so I could sleep in until 6:20 a.m. and catch up on the whirlwind of events from the last two weeks. :-)

Someone please remind me to file my taxes this week!

On Saturday, April 1st, I had my van serviced. After I paid the bill, the attendant reminded me to come back in 3,000 miles. I said, “I guess I’ll see you in about three weeks”. Foreshadowing events to come. :-) The puppies adventure that day was visiting at the home of some friends. They got to go to a new place, meet new people, and even meet a new dog (6-month old goldie cross).

Sunday was the puppies 7th week birthday. We celebrated by taking our first walk in the desert. Usually puppies are unsure of themselves on that first big walk in the wilderness but these guys just trailed behind me with a “where are we going now?” attitude. They slept the rest of the day.

Monday was another big day for them. Temperament testing was done that evening by a friend of mine who owns a boarding kennel and breeds or has bred goldens, Bostons, and Aussies. I like to think of temperament testing as a puppy party. It is a test to see if I have properly socialized the litter. In a nutshell, I have. They handled all of the tests very well. No one exhibited any extremes of aggressiveness, dominance, or shyness. As Sharon said, “These puppies could be talked into doing anything”. That is what I am after. Sound and trainable puppies. 150 miles round trip for the PATest.

I took my last two of three personal days last Friday and this Monday. BIG trip to Portland for their structural evaluation. I stayed with a friend in Salem and kind of took over her house. When I came in I said I wasn’t traveling with a baby, I was traveling with sextuplets and proceeded to bring in load after load of stuff the puppies would need. What a great friend to allow 8-week old puppies into her home. What an even better friend to provide three grandchildren to entertain said puppies. :-) My two favorite comments of the weekend came from 3rd grader Madison. She said outside to rough-housing puppies, “Here! Here! Settle this over a game of tug of war!”. Then later she came in the house, leaned against the wall and said, “I can’t take it anymore. They are so mean to each other”. :-) She got over that later when they fell asleep in her lap. The only downside to the weekend was that it was in Oregon. You know, wet and soggy, the sun rarely shines in Oregon. It could have been worse. It could have “rained”. We only had “showers”. :-)

That Saturday I took the puppies up the road to Aloha for their evaluation by Pat Hastings. I am very pleased with the results. According to her, there are four show quality and two pet quality puppies in the litter. She rates their structure only (not breed type) on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best and 3 being average show quality for the breed. Any score less than 3 in any single category designates a puppy as pet quality. Purple Girl received a rating of 2.5 to 3 on her rear and that labeled her “pet”. Well, she is a darn pretty pet.

On Sunday, I again drove the puppies up the road to Portland this time to be one of the litters used in Pat’s “Puppy Puzzle” seminar for the Boston Terrier national. The puppies had a great time there. They have a bit of their grandma Juno in them and would scan the crowd from their x-pen until they made eye contact with someone. Then they just “reeled” them in. I found the seminar to be very interesting because of the questions people would ask. People sometimes have a hard time accepting faults in dogs. I think if you don’t know what faults your dog has, then you might think that your dog doesn’t have faults. All dogs have structural faults and all dogs deal with or compensate for those faults. A fault is a deviation from perfection. I was happy with the evaluation in that my puppies have one or two structural faults each instead of having collections of faults. None of them won’t be able to lead active, physical lives. My job now is to put all of the pieces together to match temperament, physical structure, and breed type and match puppy to puppy buyer. I am having the toughest time picking for myself. LOL

1300 miles round trip for the structural evaluation.

Today we went to Elko for their first set of shots, worming, vet check, and microchipping. Thumbs up all around. 150 miles round trip.

On Monday, we travel to Reno for eye exams. That will be 500 miles round trip. After that, the puppies are ready to be released to their new homes. All of my hard work with the litter will pay off when they get to develop their individual personalities and potentials with their own family.

Yup, should be time to service the van in another week or so…

Well, they are not afraid of the lawn mower.

We had two sunny days in a row so I figured I better mow the backyard while I had a chance. I started the mower (it actually started!!!) in the corner of the yard away from the puppies' kennel. They didn’t blink an eye. In fact, every time I mowed in their direction, they would rush up to the chain link to greet me. What an ordeal cutting the lawn was. I don’t know how you who live in the lands of regular rain do it. The long, wet grass kept clogging up the mower causing it to stall. My backyard only has a 50' by 60' patch of lawn but it took me almost two hours to cut half of it. Almost to the halfway mark, it choked on grass and died. I cleared the muck out (I could actually squeeze water out of it), pulled the cord, and the cord snapped. I can’t win for losing. :-(

Last year one of my math students drew me a little picture of how you attach a new cord. I attached the cord but didn’t save his directions. I brought all the dogs in for dinner and tried to remember how to do it. I knew it had something to do with a wire and winding the top part of the mower. With the big dogs crated for dinner, the puppies got the whole backyard to play. Do you know six puppies can all fit on top of a lawn mower at the same time IF that lawn mower is taken apart and someone is trying to fix it? They weren’t much help and thankfully with their short attention spans, they were eventually bored with the whole lawn mower thing and left me alone. I did manage to reattach the cord, wind it up, and start the mower (but the darn cord wouldn’t recoil). I held the excess cord in one hand and hurried up and finished mowing the lawn. Did that scare the puppies? Heck no. Just like with my adult dogs, I had to finish mowing to the tunes of “Get the hell out of the way!”. :-)

They ate way too much grass and are now crashed in the kitchen floor. No doubt later tonight we will experience the revenge of the green grass.

I DO have new pictures of the puppies. Head shots taken this weekend. Gosh they’re beautiful. Gee I hope I find time to upload them to the list file. :-)

Don’t let me forget about those taxes!

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

sdmiller@the-onramp.net

http://www.wolftreeacres.homestead.com

Humorous Quotes

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, “Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."

Lillian Carter ("Miss Lillian,” mother of 44th President Jimmy Carter)

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I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: “Not good in a bed, but fine against a wall."

Eleanor Roosevelt

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Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.

Mark Twain

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Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain

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Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

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What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.

Mark Twain

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The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.

George Burns

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Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.

Victor Borge

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By all means, marry If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. Socrates

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I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

Groucho Marx

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The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

Jilly Cooper

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I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

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Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.

Alex Levine

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Money can’t buy you happiness…but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

Spike Milligan

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What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

Henny Youngman

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Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was “shut up”.

Joe Namath

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Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

Herbert Henry Asquith

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I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.

WC Fields

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We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.

Will Rogers

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Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.

Winston Churchill

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It may be true that life begins at fifty, but everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.

Phyllis Diller

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The cardiologist’s diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.

Unknown

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By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.

Billy Crystal

Quail Gardens

Every year or two we make a point to visit the Quail Botanical Gardens, in Encinitas — and usually in the springtime, to see the wide variety of plants in bloom. My father (a botanist) is out visiting with us at the moment, so yesterday we made the trek yet again. What a lovely place! And even though it was a gorgeous San Diego springtime Saturday, there were relatively few people there. We were amused to see that almost everybody there was “armed” with a high-end digital camera.

I won’t even try to name all the plants we saw — just enjoy a little beauty. As always, you can click on any of these small photos to get a larger view.

Morning Sounds

We live on the sloping south side of a valley, a hundred feet or so higher than the valley floor. In the mornings we have often noticed a special clarity to the sounds we hear emanating from various places in the valley, up to a mile or so away from our home. Other times of the day the same sounds are quite noticably muted and “garbled”. What accounts for the difference?

Two differences between early mornings and other times come right to mind: ambient noise levels and humidity. The humidity differences are especially dramatic in the desert, as you can see from the green relatively humidity line on this chart (from my WeatherHawk weather station) of the past few days (use the right-hand scale). Ambient noise is a lot harder to quantify, though it is obviously much higher during the daytime, with many more cars running and with many people operating machinery. In the evenings, though, the ambient noise is much reduced while the humidity is still low — and my subjective observation is that the clarity I hear in the mornings is not there. That leaves relative humidity — and possibly temperature (for it is also usually much cooler in the early morning) — as the candidates.

With a little googling I found a very useful article at Simon Fraser University (in Canada). The graph at right comes from that article, and it shows that there are interesting attenuation effects of sound propagation in the atmosphere related to both temperature and humidity. The humidity variations are particularly interesting: at very low relative humidities, and at high (above 50% or so) relative humidities, there is very little attenuation of sound (e.g., sound travels very well under those conditions). But at relative humidities of about 5% to about 40% or 50%, there is significant attenuation. The difference in attentuation between 100% and 20% relative humidity is more than 3 to 1 — and that’s a difference that’s more than large enough to be perceived.

My next experiment is to try listening on a morning when the relative humidity is low (these occur here fairly frequently). It will be interesting to see, subjectively, whether the sound transmission is missing that special morning clarity.

And speaking of clarity, other sources I read made a simple point: the perception of clarity (as the word is meant in ordinary English) is primarily an effect of the loudness of the sound in question and the loudness of the background noise. So the unusual clarity we perceive in the morning is, I speculate, a combination of the reduced attenuation due to high relative humdity (making sounds louder), and the generally reduced level of background noise (because of reduced human activity at 4 or 5 AM)…

Assimilation

Starchild had this interesting comment on my earlier immigration post “Wretched Refuse":

Good comments, I largely agree. I also favor open borders, as well as ending the welfare state. But you also say you want to increase the societal pressures on immigrants to assimilate, and here I’m not so sure what you have in mind. Cutting off benefits would not guarantee cultural assimilation. You say you personally know a family that you say exemplifies the kind of non-assimilation you find objectionable. Do you have anything particular in mind besides not speaking English? If you mean his political views, have you asked him *why* he wants California to become part of Mexico again? Perhaps it’s simply because if it were part of Mexico, he wouldn’t have to worry about being branded as “illegal” and deported! Obviously, repealing the dumb immigration laws would solve this problem. But if you want people in the U.S. pressured to speak English or assimilate in other ways, you as an acquaintance of this family and someone who is apparently bilingual, seem to be in an ideal position to exert the kind of pressure you speak of. Have you done anything to exert this pressure? If it’s not going to come from people like you, who do you expect to do the job? Personally I don’t see any great need for everyone in America to speak English, but if you want them to, what are you doing about it in the case where you could make a direct impact? I’d love to hear more about this family and your interactions with them.

Starchild raises several interesting questions in here, but especially this one: exactly what is “assimilation” as I meant it in the earlier post?

I had to put the ponder to work on this one for a while, to find a way to express what seems so clear in my own mind. Fundamentally, what I come down to is this: “assimilation” is what happens as a consequence of an immigrant wanting to become an American, to live here permanently — as opposed to wanting to exploit America. Often, those in the latter group have no intention of staying in America — they expect, someday, to return “home", and “home", for them, is not America. In other words, assimilation (in the sense that I mean it) isn’t some defined process an immigrant goes through; there’s no 12-step plan leading to the perfectly assimilated immigrant. “Assimilated” is how you might describe an immigrant who wants to be an American, and who works hard at achieving that.

I can also observe that immigrants learning English often falls into the same category: those immigrants who want to become Americans tend to want to learn English. It isn’t that I see learning English as some sort of requirement for immigrants, it’s that I observe a strong correlation between the desire to learn English and those immigrants who want to become Americans, not exploit America. That correlation isn’t a perfect one, and I have myself noted some exceptions — most especially amongst older immigrants, where, most likely, learning a new language is a more difficult challenge.

With regard to increasing societal pressures: here I mostly mean changing our country’s programs, policies, and attitudes about immigrants and what we expect of them. One form of pressure is the requirement to work, to contribute, and to pay your share of the cost of running America (taxes). The programs and policies we have in place now — and the attitudes you can infer directly from them — directly contradict this ideal. Today we tell immigrants (to be blunt): please come here and mooch from us. We will, however stupidly and senselessly, make it possible for to come here and exploit us — and we’ll make sure you’re safe, comfortable, and well-fed while you’re doing it. Oh, and we’ll pay for your medical care, and educate your kids, too. And if you happen to accidentally commit some crime (say, murder), you can just go back to Mexico, where you’ll be safe from our police. These are examples of the opposite kind of societal pressures I’d like to see put in place. So, for example, I’d like to see the elimination of the vast array of free support programs that are in place today: for food, shelter, medical care, education, and so on. This is not because I don’t want to support immigrants, it’s because those programs, as currently constituted, act as lures for those immigrants would would exploit America. If a way could be found to help only those immigrants who actually want to become Americans, without incurring all the problems of the welfare state, I would be all for it. In my view this is very similar to the welfare program issues that led to welfare reform in the '90s; similar solutions would be solutions that I’d support.

Have I done my bit? With the family I previously mentioned — the unassimilated immigrants who live in our valley — I have made it clear to the father that I do not approve of his behavior and his attitude. I’ve also made it clear to him that he will get no work (he’s a “handyman” always looking for the odd job to do) from me so long as he and his family are so clearly not on a path to becoming American citizens. But I am not confident that he actually understood anything beyond the fact that I had no work for him, and that I was unhappy about something; his English is very rudimentary, and my Spanish is non-existant. However, this much is crystal clear to me, from several conversations with him: he is here (in America, I mean) because of all the freebies we hand out to him and his family, none of which are available to him in Mexico (his home country). He is completely open about his plan, which is to save the money he makes on odd jobs, while surviving on welfare and having his childred educated for free. When he has enough saved to retire, he’s heading back to Mexico with his family. He’s an expert on all the various benefit programs we have, and on how to bend (or break) the rules when a rule would otherwise impede his sucking at the teat, and how to avoid fees and taxes. I’ve learned more about the welfare programs available from him than from many years of reading the lamestream media…

On the question of why my immigrant neighbor wants California to become part of Mexico — I have asked him this. As best I understand his answer, it is simply that he believes the transfer of wealth from California to Mexico would benefit Mexicans, and therefore he and his family. He seems to believe that Mexico is intrinsically poor, that there’s nothing Mexico could do itself to change its sad economic state. Consistent with the foregoing, he seems to believe that California is intrinsically wealthy, and that transferring California to Mexico would automatically make Mexico wealthy, even with the Mexican government running it. Another element in his attitude seemed clear as well: he didn’t have any firmly held beliefs about the “rightness” of transferring California to Mexico — it’s simply that he’s Mexican, and transferring California to Mexico would be good for Mexico, so therefore he supports it. It seems to really be that simple-minded an “analysis” for him. This is basically the exact opposite of someone who is assimilating into America.

Light Blogging

My father is here for a visit for the next two weeks, so blogging will be light…

Holy Smokes!

A biker stops by the local Harley Shop to have his bike fixed. They couldn’t do it while he waited, so he said he would walk home as he didn’t live far. On the way he stopped by the hardware store and bought a bucket and an anvil. He stopped by the feed store and bought a couple of chickens and a goose.

Struggling outside the feed store, he now had a problem carrying all of his purchases home. As he was scratching his head, a little old lady approached him and said she was lost and asked how to get to 1603 Mocking Bird Lane?

The biker replied that he lived at 1616 Mocking Bird Lane and could walk her home but couldn’t carry all his purchases. The lady suggested he put the anvil in the bucket, carry the bucket in hand, put a chicken under each arm and carry the goose in the other hand.

“Thank you very much,” he said and proceeded to walk the lady home. On the way, he said “Let’s take my short-cut and go down this alley and we’ll be there in no time."

The little old lady looked him over caustiously, then said, “I’m a lonely widow without anyone to defend me and how do I know you won’t hold me up against the wall' pull up my skirt and have your way with me?"

The man says, “Holy Smokes lady! I’m carrying a bucket, an anvil, two chickens and a goose; how in the world could I hold you up against the wall and do that?"

She replied, “Set the goose down, cover him with the bucket, put the anvil on top of the bucket, and I’ll hold the chickens."

Wildfire and Fuel

When you live (as we do) in chaparral country, you tend to be more conscious of wildfires than most people — for wildfires are an integral part of the natural history of chaparral. I’ve read various estimates of the “natural” (meaning unconstrained by mankind’s actions) interval between wildfires in any given piece of chaparral; they vary from 10 years to 20 years. Most of the native plants in the chaparral have evolved specific mechanisms for dealing with — and taking advantage of — wildfire, especially in germination mechanisms. Many plants will only germinate after a fire, when conditions are perfect (and competition is light) for a new plant.

But of course mankind has come along and completely screwed up the natural cycle — especially fire control. The fact that we put out wildfires (certainly something that any property owner would support!) has two major negative consequences for the chaparral: (1) many chaparral plants (such as manzanita) actually die of old age instead of by fire, and (2) deadwood and brush accumulate incrementally every year, increasing the fuel for the next wildfire. Both of these effects accelerate as the chaparral gets older (e.g., the longer it has been since a wildfire burned it all off).

So, naturally, one of the things that chaparral residents carefully monitor is the “fuel load” that any particular area has. This fuel load is directly related (but non-linearly) to the time that has passed since an area was last burned off. More than 8 or 10 years and an area is at risk; over 15 or 20 years it is at very high risk (and increasing rapidly each year). This is a very general, long-term assessment; in the shorter term the risk in a particular area is more affected by the fuel moisture levels (very dry deadwood can cause a wildfire to almost explode; very damp deadwood, as we have now, makes it difficult for a fire to even get started).

The map at above right (and you really can’t see it unless you click for the larger view) shows the decades that fires have last burned off the areas around our home (the red dot in the middle). Basically what this shows is that most of the area around us has not burned since the 1980s. In fact we know that the area to the east of us (the direction most wildfires come from, driven by the dry, hot Santa Ana winds) has not burned since 1983.

That means we have over 20 years of accumulated fuel surrounding us, for miles and miles, especially to the east. That’s a scary thought, and even scarier when you look at a map of the whole county and see that this is the largest accumulation of fuels left in the county (the Cedar Fire in late 2003 burned off all the other old accumulations). On the positive side, the fire folks have taken notice of this, and have focused considerable energy on this relatively small area of high risk that’s left. They’ve pre-positioned firefighting equipment and have “mastication” projects underway to remove swathes of fuel to form preemptive firebreaks. They’re also more diligent about enforcing brush clearance rules (around buildings), and have been quite public in declaring that their first priority, when it comes to saving buildings, will be for those with adequate clearance around them.

We (and the vast majority of our neighbors) have cleared beyond the minimums around our homes. But, like many others, we have trees near our home that we cherish, both for their beauty and for their shade. In our case, the trees are Italian Stone pine and a couple of different kinds of eucalyptus. Both of these are very vulnerable to fire; basically they will just be torches when this area does burn off. We have several eucalyptus close enough to our house that they could fall on it; this is not a good thing at all. So almost inevitably we’re going to have to take some (and perhaps all) of these trees down, just to get the risk to our house down to an acceptable level. I’ve had this in the back of my mind for several years, always balancing the risk (because of both accumulated fuel and fuel moisture levels) against the benefit of keeping the trees. I came very close to cutting them down this past summer, as the fuel moisture kept going down and down. But the rains finally came before I made up my mind.

I suspect they won’t make it through next summer. Bummer.

Spam of the Week

I received this spam today:

Subject: did you see that on the news?

From: Vince V. Edwardsd, III <drNOshockertxef@zoznam.sk>

Tired of working a dead end job ?

C_al.l us now get any de_gr.ee you desire in 2weeks or less! _1.0.0% verifiable

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206-338-6061

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Sincerely,

Dionne Schmidt

The fact that this spam email even exists (along with others much like it) would seem to be an instance proof that they must work — that is, the sender of the spam must get enough of a response rate for it to be profitable. I can’t imagine anyone would do this over and over (for I get many dozens like this every single day) without reward.

Someone must respond to things like this. That’s alarming!

Someone gets an email selling college degrees — an email that claims to be sent from Slovakia and appears to be written by a crazed illiterate short on brain cells and high on something illegal — and that someone thinks it looks legitimate and calls that Washington (state) phone number.

Are there really people that dumb operating a computer?

I mean, I really have trouble accepting that.

Is there something else going on here that I’m missing? Some other reason why a spammer would send emails like this?

There are days when I think the evolution of the human species could use a little boost…

Yo, Darwin! Faster, please…

The Wretched Refuse

On a bronze plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty, this poem by Emma Lazarus is graven:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For me, and I think for many other Americans, this poem (especially the last stanza) captures the ideal of America’s acceptance — and welcoming — of immigrants. For the world’s most impoverished, most abused, most exploited…America is very profoundly the land of hope; the land where even the poor people are fat, and where anybody’s child can grow up to be president.

But for many people whose lives are described by Emma Lazarus' poem, the reality is much different. For reasons completely outside their control, their immigration into the U.S. is illegal. “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore” describes most of the Hispanic illegal aliens I’ve ever seen or met, but they are certainly not made welcome in today’s America — they can only get to the land of hope by sneaking in. Illegally.

Until 1875, there was no such thing as illegal immigration into the United States — anyone who showed up was welcome. How is it that we have illegal immigration today?

The beginning of it all was the “Chinese Exclusion Act” of 1882, which was aimed at preventing Chinese “coolies” and female prostitutes from entering the country. These people were lured by the huge numbers of jobs available for railroad construction, and the then-primarily Caucasian residents were unhappy (for various reasons both justified and unjustified) to have tens of thousands of very alien Chinese in their midst. That’s where it all started.

After that, a series of immigration acts more-or-less continuously increased the kinds of restrictions we put on immigration. Incrementally we have moved away from the spirit of Emma Lazarus' sonnet, to the point now where I doubt she’d feel motivated to write it. Today, if you’re a Cuban desperate to escape Casto’s hellhole, you can risk your life crossing the Carribean in a small boat — and if the U.S. Coast Guard happens to see you and pick you up 5 feet from shore, we’ll just send you right back to Cuba — you are not welcome here, bud, however wretched you might be, and however you yearn to breathe free. Today, if a high-tech employer in the United States wants to hire you and bring you to California from (say) Slovenia, chances are that you will be turned down. You’re not welcome, bud, no matter how much your education and skills would contribute to America, because the quota for the year was filled in March. There’s nothing about quotas or limits on our Statue of Liberty. The spirit that Emma so eloquently expressed has been lost somehow.

How did this happen? What’s different today than for the first hundred years of this country, when all immigrants were welcomed with open arms, and when there was no such thing as illegal immigration?

The answer to that is very complicated, and has many components. One of the major contributors to this, I believe, is modern liberalism and its desire to relieve the misery of the poor and down-trodden. Expressed as I just did, these goals sound wholly admirable and self-evidently good. But the long-term effect of the liberal programs and policies has done much to contribute to the situation today. Consider:

— In the first hundred years (and more, actually) of this country’s history, when someone immigrated to the United States, the only help they could count on was from relatives, employers, and the very few “safety net” kinds of charities. In the big cities there were some organized charities; in the countryside the help came from neighbors and churches. There was nothing even remotely like today’s network of assistance ("hand-outs") for everything from food to medical services. Generally (but not always) the children of immigrants were afforded an education equivalent to that of the citizens, but for just about everything else there was intense societal pressure on the new immigrants to work and to assimilate into the American way of life. They were expected to learn English, to work, and to earn their own way.

— Today, when someone immigrates into the United States (legally or illegally!), they have a vast array of assistance available to them. While it is certainly true that most immigrants still find work, they don’t actually have to do so. They can get medical care without cost; they can get free food; they have entitlements to education and job skills training. Their children are guaranteed access to free public education, and even special training programs. These are the programs and policies of modern liberalism — but look what the consequence has been: no longer do our immigrants feel pressure to assimilate; our society accepts their importation of language and culture. In parts of San Diego County today, you can easily imagine that you have somehow been transported to Mexico: all the signs are in Spanish, and the trashiness of Tijuana surrounds you. The people who live in these areas see no reason to become American — and in fact, many of these people would like to see California and Arizona returned to Mexico. And some of our institutions, including universities, support these notions!

It’s instructive, I think, to look at individual examples. I know many immigrants and some very well; California is quite a melting pot. I can, by and large, make a dichotomy from the immigrants I know: there are those who want to become Americans, and there are those who want to exploit America. Those are two very different mindsets, but in today’s America, both are equally welcomed. This is one of the bitter fruits of liberalism; the good intentions gone rotten. But here are a couple of examples that will serve to illustrate my points:

A couple who are friends of ours are immigrants from Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. They are roughly my age, so they grew up and became adults under the Soviet system. They immigrated into the United States in 2000, with some family members already here to act as a safety net. They were quickly gainfully employed; both have done very well. They have learned English, and continue to improve their English skills. They have — very deliberately — assimilated into American culture. They have not forgotten their own background and culture, and they continue to cherish things Estonian (and Russian, for they are ethnic Russians). Last year, they became U.S. citizens. As a lifelong American, I look at this couple and applaud them — and I am confident their arrival here is a good thing for my country. They are not exploiting America; they are enhancing it.

Another family I know lives in the same valley that we do. They came to the United States illegally, though I do not know what their current immigration status is. They have made almost no attempt to assimilate into American culture. The father speaks only rudimentary and limited English; not even enough to get by in the workplace. The wife speaks only Spanish. Their three children were educated in American public schools; the entire family’s medical care (including one episode of cancer) is paid for entirely by the U.S. taxpayer. The family has been on food stamps for most of their 15 years in this country, again at taxpayer expense. And in my most recent conversation with the husband, I discovered that he is very supportive of the efforts to have California become part of Mexico “again”. As a lifelong American, I look at this family and I am appalled. I am appalled at their miserable life — in America! — and at their lack of initiative to change that fact. And I am appalled that we Americans have created the conditions that allowed such families to be welcomed here. By that last sentence I do not mean that I favor stopping them at the border. Rather, I would like to see the return of the societal pressure to assimilate, and the removal of the modern liberal programs and policies that aid and abet the unassimilated immigrants. Yes, I really mean what I’m saying there, and I’ll say it more bluntly — I want to make life more difficult for immigrants. I want them to work, pay taxes, learn English, and…to have the freedom to fail. I want there to be consequences — economic and psychological — for the failure to assimilate and the failure to contribute.

And I want America to welcome all immigrants — again. I want Emma Lazarus' sonnet to describe my America — but only if the immigrants who yearn to breathe free want to breathe free as Americans. I want to see a return to the day when immigrants come to America, by and large, to become Americans and to enhance America, rather than to exploit America and its generosity. I would like to see a retreat from liberalism on this front, and a return to nasty old social Darwinism. I believe that would be very good for America, and that it would be quintessentially American.

But I don’t think it’s very likely to happen, sadly for me. Today’s liberals are promoting open borders with ever more liberal programs and policies that almost seem designed to entice immigrants away from assimilation and away from become Americans; these programs and policies positively encourage the exploitation of America. Our conservative politicians seem focused on border control and enforcement of our existing (stupid) immgration laws, probably for no better reason in general than political expediency — because many Americans seem to believe that building a fence is going to “solve” the immigration problem.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This is a lovely ode to an equally lovely idea. Today it is just words; mere political “spin”. In truth our welcome mat is no longer out. We routinely slam our door to the wretched, even to the point of returning them to regimes that execute them. We say to these people yearning to breathe free “Go away. Die; we don’t care."

As an American, I am deeply ashamed of this.

But I am angry at the exploiters, and angry at us for creating the conditions that encourage the exploiters. And frustrated that the fact of the exploiters — the fact that they exist, I mean — is driving many Americans to try to keep immigrants out. If the vast majority of immigrants were in the first part of my dichotomy — hard-working, contributing people who assimilate into and enhance America — then I believe the vast majority of Americans would welcome them with open arms. The exploiter immigrants — tolerated and even encouraged by us and our liberal policies and programs — are the driver behind the “build a fence” movement. No American that I know of actually wants the exploiters to be here, not even liberals. But our liberal policies and programs are like an irresistable bait — of course the exploiters are going to come here when we treat them as we do.

Can we change? I am, I’m afraid, not confident…

The Trip

Yesterday we — Vera and Konstantin Stankevich, Jim Barnick, and myself — spent the whole day on a grand tour of the Cuyamaca mountain area and the southern Anza-Borrego desert. Our itinerary was a little different than our original plan, but we all had a splendid time.

We started by meeting up at the Descanso Junction restaurant. This little place is one our favorite haunts, but Vera and Konstantin (who are from Lake Forest, in Orange County) had never been there before. They arrived a little before us, and had already ordered before Jim and I could warn them about the enormous size of the servings. Konstantin order eggs with pork chops, and he was very surprised when he saw his plate with two huge chops on it. And Vera got an omlette the size of a small loaf of bread. Amazingly, Vera ate almost of her omlette — she must have been hungry! Konstantin could only eat one pork chop; the other went home with him…

After leaving the restaurant, we headed out of Descanso along Boulder Creek Road, which traverses the west face of Cuyamaca mountain, down around 3000' to 4000' in altitude. I was hoping for both wildflowers and birds; we got almost none of either one. On the flowers it looks like we’re just a week or two early, and I’m sure the birds would follow the flowers. The scenery and views were nice, though.

We zoomed through Julian and down to Banner, where we hooked a right (to the south) on the road past the gold mines to Oriflamme Canyon. On this road the Indian paintbrush were still nice, but the bush poppies we saw last week — while still very pretty — were clearly past their prime, with blossoms all beat up by the wind. Jim spotted two mineshafts that somehow we had never seen before; Vera is standing in front of one at right that extended far out of sight into the mountain. I didn’t want to chance a collapse, so we didn’t try walking inside — though the footprints all over the place make it clear that many others feel no such caution. Just before we got to Oriflamme Canyon itself, we came upon this red-tailed hawk, eyeballing us as if considering whether we’d make a good meal. The drive down the canyon itself was full of beautiful views, but not a single blossom graced the hills within our sight. I could see small lupine plants with buds, and other plants that I could not identify, so it must be that we were just to early.

After leaving Oriflamme, we continued down towards S2. Very close to that paved road, we came across a nice patch of agave, sparsely populating an area of a few acres extent. When Vera and Konstantin learned that yes, this was the same agave that tequila is made from, we got to wondering what kind of crazy person looked at an agave one day and said: “Hey, let’s ferment this thing, then distill it, and we’ll have a great drink!” Assuming, of course, that you think tequila is a great drink. To me it seems to be closely related to lighter fluid and gasoline, but I’m certainly no expert on fine tequila. We didn’t really come to any conclusions, but there did seem to be a consensus on the unlikeliness of the whole notion…

After leaving the agave “grove", we headed south on S2 to Smuggler’s Canyon. Though last week we had found preciously little here in the way of flowers, we did find some birds — and I was hoping a few more flowers would have magically appeared. Well, we saw darned few birds, and the collection at right is nearly ever blossom we saw on our walk. From left to right: a prickly pear, a tiny little barrel-shaped cactus, and I have no idea. But despite the lack of flowers and birds, it was still an interesting walk — especially for Vera and Konstantin, who had never been in the desert before.

Speaking of which… Before we let Vera and Konstantin walk in Smuggler’s Canyon, we warned them about “jumping cholla” — we really did! But both of them managed to get jumped on anyway. Vera suffered only a minor attack (that’s her daintly little sneaker in the picture), but Konstantin was the victim of a full-fledged jumping cholla war, and he had direct hits on one leg and both feet. He took his battle wounds in good humor — just reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of folding pliers, which he used to pull all the thorns out. It took him several tries to get them all, but he finally emerged thorn-free, albeit minus some of his blood…

The photos below are of Vera, Konstantin, and Jim, walking in various parts of Smuggler’s Canyon. We walked up the wash, and the climbed the south slope and walked most of the way back over the generally flat top. At one point we all made our way down a fairly steep and scrabbly slope that was chock full of several species of cholla (including the wily jumping cholla) — and I was sure that at least one of us was going to have a bunch of holes punched in us. But we all made it down without incident…

After leaving Smuggler’s Canyon, we headed back up S2 and turned left on Oriflamme Canyon road. But a mile or so in, we took the right fork to go up Rogdriguez Canyon road, which I had not been on in a couple of years. This area burned out (I think four years ago), and the good birding we’d previously enjoyed there was destroyed. This road had always been a fairly challenging four-wheeling road, and I wan’t sure that it would even be passable after the rains last year. It turned out to be no worse than it ever was, but…Vera and Konstantin had never been four-wheeling before. This was quite an introduction for them! There’s a stretch of a half mile or so of this road that contains several challenging moments — some tight squeezes (at least for our LandCruiser!), some steep and scrabbly climbs, some big rocks to climb over, and some areas where large wheel traversal is required. But with all three differential locks engaged and in the low gear range, our vehicle made it up all of them without much trouble — and certainly no winch, jack, or shovel required. But Vera and Konstantin, especially at first, were not at all confident the vehicle would survive these challenges <smile>. Vera confided to me later that she was thinking about how could get out when the car got stuck. During the trip on the challenging parts, I was able to sneak in a few glances at Vera — she looked like she was in a state of both disbelief and shock. Konstantin was a little harder to read — but there were some moments, especially when the car was teetering, or when we were pointed steeply uphill, when his eyes got big and round, and he stuck his hands out front and made a noise like “whoa!” After we took a couple of these challenges and survived, both of them started to relax and enjoy it a bit more — and by the time we’d cleared them all, the car was full of delighted laughter. A whole bunch of fun was had by all…

After Rodriguez Canyon, the rest of the day was very tame and relaxed. We had some coffee in Julian, drove through the devastated Cuyamaca Park, and then back to the Descanso Junction restaurant (where Vera and Konstantin had left their car). There we parted company; Jim and I for the short drive home, Vera and Konstantin off for a much longer drive back to Lake Forest.

We had way too much fun!

We will do this again…

Global Warming

Global warming, in the sense that most people I know understand it, is the notion that the Earth is getting catastrophically hotter, and it’s all mankind’s fault. The thesis is that our activities create greenhouse gases, which in turn trap solar radiation on the Earth’s surface and raise the temperature.

If you’re interested in understanding the truth of the matter, rather than simply being comfortable as the lapdog of the politically-correct environmentalist whackos, there are two important questions here:

1. Is the temperature of the Earth rising?

2. If so, are mankind’s activities causing or contributing to that rise?

Despite all the blather you hear in the lamestream media (and worse, from pandering politicians), neither of these questions has been answered. There are competing theories on both sides of the questions, and a dearth of evidence to prove either one.

On the first question, the challenges are these: (a) mankind first learned how to measure temperatures accurately less than two hundred years ago, and we need thousands of years of data to know if things have changed in the past 150 years, and (b) the change we’re trying to observe is on the order of a few degrees, while the normal variations from day-to-day and year-to-year are tens of degrees. On the issue of temperatures in the past, clever scientists are coming up with lots of ways to infer and estimate past temperatures, and the results of those are, as you might expect, conflicting, uncertain, and not particularly accurate. Some of these estimates of past temperatures rely on modeling, which (despite my being a computer professional) I am always skeptical of. It’s not the fact that the models are created by computer that makes me skeptical, it’s the fact that models (no matter how they’re made) are based on a bunch of assumptions about the thing being modeled — and usually, to make the model easier to compute, the model is also based on estimates. Modern computer-based models produce beautiful graphics and “movies” that make terrific presentations — but I think they entrance their producers into belief, much like “spreadsheet syndrome” entrances business users into believing the financial model they’ve computed (to 14 decimal places!) on their Excel spreadsheet. Nevertheless, the scientific community, from my reading, seems to have arrived at a consensus that there is a small increase in global temperatures over the past couple hundred years. I’d say there’s a good chance the consensus is correct.

But that leads to the next question, and here’s where things get really uncertain. Why? Why is the earth getting warmer?

The easy answer, and one that’s very attractive to those of a certain political mindset, is that mankind’s activities did it. //iWe// did it, it’s all our fault. I’ve long been intuitively skeptical of this notion. The oft-repeated, hoary old saw of the anti-global-warming crowd resonates with my intuition: we can’t even make a little thing happen (say, rain when we need it) on purpose — so how is it that we’ve caused the whole planet to heat up inadvertently? Now I know that’s not a defensible piece of logical analysis, but it is nonetheless an interesting point. Do we really think that mankind’s puny little activities can compete with mother nature when it comes to climate change?

But lets set my intuition aside, and go look at the evidence. In general, one can observe that proving a cause is more challenging than proving a fact. To illustrate: I can easily prove that the sun is shining; to prove that it shines because of nuclear fusion is much more difficult. The same relative difficulty applies to proving (or even just guessing at) the cause(s) of global warming. First of all, there are many candidates, of various likelihoods, for the causes; greenhouse gases caused by mankind’s activities is but one of them. Others include greenhouse gases produced by volcanoes or biological activity, increased radiation (brightness) of the sun, meteorite strikes, and many more. Greenhouse gases in general feature in several of these propsed causes, but it turns out that it isn’t actually a certainty that greenhouse gases will increase temperatures. We can’t make experiments to actually observe this, so the scientists rely on computer models (alarm bells should be ringing in your head!). These models make all sorts of assumptions about the effects of greenhouse gases. One of these effects — arguably the most controversial one — is how increased temperatures would affect cloud formation (remember we don’t actually know, from observation, any of this — these are assumptions). One school of thought is that increased temperatures will cause increased cloud production, through increased plant life and more water in the air. If that’s the case, the increased clouds will reflect more of the sun’s radiation, which will tend to cool the earth, offsetting the effects of the greenhouse gases. The real point is that we just don’t know the effects for sure.

Another of the possible causes has been in the news recently: increased solar radiation. Two completely separate studies (of different phenomena) offer evidence of increased solar radiation in the past few centuries. One of those studies is earthbound, and provides evidence that the sun’s magnetic activity has increased (and this is correlated with increased radiation). The other study shows that Mars is coming out of an Ice Age of its own, and the only plausible cause for that (on Mars) is increased solar radiation. Interesting stuff, but not proof that increased solar radiation is causing the Earth’s global warming.

This is one of those complicated topics that can’t possibly be covered adequately in a short post (if you call this short!). I’ve provided links to much more reading below, if you’re interested. There’s good reason, I think, for all of us to become informed enough to have an opinion on this topic: various politicians (such as Al “father of the Internet” Gore) want to spend a large fraction of your money on the unproven assumption that mankind’s activities are causing global warming. If they’re wrong, we’d simply be wasting that money; you might as well just burn it on your front lawn. The really sad part, though, is this: even if they’re right, even radicals like Al Gore are proposing very small changes that will not even make a dent in mankind’s production of greenhouse gases. For example (something you won’t learn from the lamestream media): the much-ballyhooed “Kyoto Treaty” (a favorite of the Gore) would only reduce mankind’s production of greenhouse gases by 4% to 6%, even if fully implemented! The main reason for that is the Kyoto treaty completely excludes India and China — two of the largest greenhouse gas producers, and (under the Kyoto treaty) completely without incentive to improve. In fact, their economic incentive would be to not improve. One last little factoid on the Kyoto treaty (again, one you won’t read in the lamestream media): how have the signatories to the treaty been performing? Well, it looks like at best, one country will meet their obligations (Ireland). Every other signatory is far, far from the mark — and most have publicly given up. And to put the icing on that particular cake, the U.S. — without being a signatory — is out-performing every single one of the signatories. All that hand-wringing! All that despair from the Gore! And we’re beating every one of them without their economy-destroying policies.

Take that and smoke it in your pipe, you environmentalist wackos!

More reading here, here, here, here, here, and here.

House Bidding

My mom reports on birdly goings-ons in the remote nether regions of New Jersey (yes, that New Jersey):

Want to share a 'fun' thing that is going on in the yard. Outside of my office window in the Bald cypress tree is hanging a bird house that I painted and Dad climbed a big ladder to hang so we could observe it from the dining area and my office. It has two pairs of birds giving it the once over. One pair of Carolina Wrens and one pair of Chickadees. They come to the house together and sit on the perch and look inside of the house. The wren has been seen putting small twigs inside but only a couple of times. Now this is about the 8th day and mostly they sit and look in - go inside the house for a very short time, hop out and sit on a branch nearby just looking. Sometimes they hop onto the roof to observe from there. The birds seem to come at different times of the day - that is chickadees at one time and wrens at another etc. I have seen the chickadees there 6 times in one day and the same day I saw the wrens there 3 times. The 'appointments' are well timed but I haven’t seen the 'realtor' as yet. It really is comical to watch this. Now however, this morning a new phenomenon has occurred. The wren was in the house looking out for a full 7 + minutes then hopped out and has now been in a branch near by for 12 minutes (longest time period yet) Methinks he knows some other critter has been in the house and is guarding it from the invasion. We are waiting with bated breath to see which pair wins the beautiful home. The bids are getting higher each day and the owner of this home is going to get a wonderful yield on his/her investment. <big smile> I know some of you couldn’t care less Mark BUT, it sure makes mom smile. Love you all

My readers on the west coast will may be surprised to discover that New Jersey hosts any wildlife (as opposed to “wild life"). They may also be surprised to hear that I have relatives (or even talk to anyone) in that land of liberalism, iniquity, corruption, concrete, and noxious smells. I have but two defenses: (1) I was smart enough to leave, even if my parents weren’t, and (2) southern New Jersey isn’t as bad as northern New Jersey, in the same way that Lieberman isn’t quite as bad as Hillary…

Day Off

I’m headed off into our local mountains and down to the Anza-Borrego desert for a day of sightseeing with three good friends. If we have any luck at all, we’ll see some birds, some wildflowers, and some beautiful vistas. At worst case, we have an entire day together; I, for one, will cherish that. The rest is just a potential bonus…

We start with breakfast at the Descanso Junction restaurant, then up to Julian (via the Sunrise Highway), down to the desert (via Oriflamme Canyon jeep road), a walk in Smuggler’s Canyon, and possibly some other desert adventures. Then we’ll return by Rodriguez Canyon jeep road (if it’s passable), through Julian and south along the west face of Cuyamaca Mountain on Boulder Creek Road. A long day! Two of the friends I’m going with have never seen this area at all, so we’re motivated to give them the grand tour…

See you all tomorrow, hopefully with some pictures!