My Notes

I remember the year it snowed in the Oakland hills - 1976. I remember the Week of Thunderstorms, when the SF Bay Area had more or less continuous heat lightning and thunder for a straight week. This was in the late 1990’s - I don’t remember the exact year. This little exercise of my faculties establishes two things. We don’t have a lot of extreme weather in this area. And I don’t remember those few very well.

This week, the SF Bay Area experienced record three-digit temperatures and some Severe Weather Alerts. Yes, we do get heat waves, but they’re unusual in May. No, citizens of Phoenix, you would not have found anything remarkable about this week, here up north, but it’s rare to find days when it’s hotter up here than down there.

Air conditioners are rare up here, so the trick is the old one used in homes of thick adobe walls in the old Southwest: open up all the doors and windows at night, and seal in the cold air by closing everything up during the day. Even so, I found myself working late “on call” at home the other night. It was still 86 in the computer room.

The heat wave is about over. Opening the apartment to the night air got the place down to 70 degrees. Early this morning, there is a slight breeze running through the apartment. I had to go and toss on a T-shirt. They’re calling for a high of 82 today. I can certainly welcome that!

Remember Marvel Comics? It seems action comic books have kept pace with technology in the last 50 years, the rational-yet-crazy plots have never grown up, and … Iron Man, a truly fortunate marriage of the imagination of Marvel with the staggering computer-generated imaging and resources of Paramount Pictures is now cooler than ever.

First of all, the plot has to have bad guys, else what do we need the good guys for? The action seems to begin in Pashtun territory in the high mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Add some truly nasty terrorists with a thirst for blood and hi-tech weapons of mass destruction. Throw in the latest missiles, manufactured and sold in the United States of America by Stark Industries. Give genius inventor Tony Stark a taste of his own medicine: let him be captured by the bad guys, see first-hand what his company is doing to women and children in the region, and let him figure out a high-tech solution for both escape and eventual neutralization of the bad guys.

Robert Downey Jr. does a wonderfully believable and likeable casting as Stark.  We don’t get to the movies that often, but our introduction to Gwyneth Paltrow as the Girl Friday was delightful. Supporting cast and other assorted good guys and bad guys were masterful.

You can click the Iron Man link to see a trailer and particulars about the film, released May 2. People who don’t ordinarily like action films might well like this one: when you want a good action film, team up with the folks who invented the action genre more than half a century ago.

 By the way, web searches on this topic suggest there will be a sequel. Well, Tony Stark stopped the terrorists, but (true to action comic form) he didn’t finish them off. Nor did he actually destroy the Iron Man prototype Stark used for his escape, and it was patiently reassembled by the bad guys …

Recommended.

A shaft of sunlight hits the cut crystal of the chandelier. It refracts into a rainbow of dots of color around the room: red, magenta, orange, yellow, and so on through the far end of the deep violets: thousands of little shards of the spectrum flood the floor, walls and ceiling.
 
“Look at me!” said the magenta. “Here I am, the sunlight!”

• Naizulam Vazerbeium, please call back and leave a message. We know it was you because our answering machine annunciator said so. Or was it Vaiuleranium Luzainnermon? Your call is important to us.
• US Rep. Tom Lantos’ passing was memorialized this week. A WWII resistance fighter who emigrated to the US in 1947, Lantos worked tirelessly as a champion of human rights. Much to the chagrin of conservative detractors, he saw gays and lesbians as humans who also have rights. His voting record won a perfect 0% from the hatemongering front group Family Research Council  — good enough for us.
• American Airlines grounded their entire fleet of aging MD-80’s, joining the ranks of other major US airlines in the limelight for flying aircraft that might be shunned by self-respecting Third World nations. No, it wasn’t the jackscrew problem this time, it was wiring harnesses. Meanwhile, a Texas consortium is negotiating to purchase the entire fleet of MD-80 fuselages for conversion to industrial rotisserie cookers.
• US Airways wasn’t one of those airlines. They had their own publicity problems with a pilot whose loaded handgun discharged in the cockpit of a flight on final approach to landing.
• This could actually be seen as good news for US Air, as it will help the public forget the incident with recently merged America West where one of their pilots was busted for flying while intoxicated.
• Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover from ailing Ford Motor Company for a song, at 1/3 the purchase price of what Ford paid to acquire the prestige British manufacturers some years back. You might think this is funny unless you know that Tata is one of the fastest rising industrial stars in India, one of the fastest growing economies in the world. There is, then, no truth to the rumor the vehicles will be converted to scooters or pedal cars, nor will they be rebranded as Jagutata and Land Rotata.

Dana Yeats of The San Mateo Daily Journal reports in the Wednesday 3/19 edition that Foster City hired a private contractor to begin poisoning ground squirrels along the levees. Foster City  is home to about 30,000 citizens. It was constructed as a moated, upscale California island bedroom comunity on massive landfill, in San Francisco Bay wetlands, in the 1960’s - about the year Rachel Carson published Silent Spring.

Animal lovers protested the city council’s decision to poison the squirrels. Reasons given were to protect the levees from burrowing, and the association of squirrels with the spread of bubonic plague in California. The city claims squirrels burrow faster than workers can fill the holes.  If poisoned squirrels should die before making it back to their burrows, the contractors will have to pick up the dead carcasses. There is no provision for private ceremonies.

Since 1925, the CDC reports there have been only “sporadic” cases of bubonic plague acquired from wild rodents, including ground squirrels, prairie dogs (Sierra marmots), and chipmunks. Fleas are the actual vector to humans and their pets, as we know. I was unable to find actual “incident” figures for California, but the CDC says the plague vaccine is no longer commercially available in the United States.

Dana Yeats of the Daily Journal also reports only a few known cases of plague in the county, ever, and none in Foster City.

We used to plant a lot of bulbs when we lived in San Mateo. Like most gardeners, we learned to protect them against Mr. Squirrel. We used chicken wire. We also had racoons. We didn’t try to bait or trap them, either. Little did we know - we actually enjoyed living in an urban environment that could be such a harmonious home to so many different birds and critters.

One source I Googled, “ihatesquirrels.com“, doesn’t seem to hate squirrels as much as Foster City does. The author advises:

NEVER use poison. You will end up poisoning your dog, cat, wildlife and yourself. If you poison, you will have to poison forever because the animals will adjust their breeding to fill the void of animals. It is physically impossible to poison all animals. Some will always survive. It’s illegal to poison tree squirrels. If you poison a ground squirrel, it will get thirsty and weak, venture out of its hole and your cat or dog will eat it and die. A hawk will also eat it and die. It is illegal to expose the poison to wildlife, pets, anywhere children might be or bodies of water. You must use bait boxes in these situations which is practically all the time. The rotting corpses attract flies which will lay maggots and attract other insects. Rotting corpses in the burrows and in your yard is a ripe breeding ground for deadly diseases. That’s how Anthrax is made naturally, mold spores growing on rotting bodies left in the dirt. If you walk outside you can also get the poison in your system through dermal contact with the dirt or inhalation. The poison has a long half life and you could be sick for a long time. It can kill you.

EXCLUSION IS THE CHEAPEST, EASIEST AND MOST LONG LASTING METHOD FOR CONTROLLING WILDLIFE.

We couldn’t have said it better. Now parents have yet another reason to tell kids not to play on the levees.

Ah, Phoenix! This first weekend of March, it’s T-shirt weather (low 70’s), the sun is bright and makes everything crystal clear, and the winter rains have brought a profusion of poppy blooms to the back yard (see also our posting in Photo NOTES).

It’s impossible not to sit out on the back porch. It’s quiet and peaceful. Some European Starling is doing a credible imitation of a cat meowing. Other Starlings are making their more celebrated “popslider” sound. The palms abound with a dozen different species of happily chirping birds, and one could only imagine that the whole worls is at peace.

Winter rains have also brought a profusion of weeds. I’ve hired a guy to tackle the front yard on his own timetable over the next two weeks, with the lure of cash when the job is complete. It’s too much for me to tackle by myself - I spent an hour on a 25 square foot patch out by the driveway. I hope it works out.

I return to the Bay Area early tomorrow AM - with Spring Training down here in Phoenix, all the other flights were already booked up weeks ago. People say you can rent out a house for a grand a night. I bet those houses don’t have weed-choked front yards, though. 

Wish I could stay here for a week. Right now, here, today, at this instant, the weather is the kind of cool idyllic tranquility you remember for years. But that’s the kind of treat that makes such a short weekend turnaround so especially worthwhile. 

Near our community’s Eden Hospital, we’ve acquired a number of ambulance drivers who’ve learned to toggle their electronic sirens to produce quasi-musical noises. Instead of the full ear-splitting 102 decibel ambulence siren shriek, these clowns can produce half-note bursts of varying frequencies. The resulting “woo-woo-wip” noise is fully as annoying as the unadulterated original, if not quite as loud, so it all balances out on the community disturbance scale.

None of these toggle-switch artists have any musical talent, so it’s very reminiscent of the college frat-house stunt where they would record the sounds of flatulence, splicing them together at varying pitches. The resulting strains of ”Yankee Doodle” or “Chopsticks” were said to be highly amusing, and we can only suppose that the best of these kids went on in life to become ambulance chasers, and the ones who didn’t make it could still become ambulance drivers, thereby continuing to vent their college antics upon the unsuspecting public.

On the theory that a little competition brings out the best - or worst - in the musically disinclined, I’m proposing 2008 playoffs between the ambulance drivers and the Castro Valley fire department, who do not fiddle with their sirens, but who do produce excellent midrange and bass notes. In theory, it’s possible they’d collectively be able to produce a plausible “Good Vibrations”, “Alley Oop” or even (who knows) “Tocatta and Fugue in D.”

Add the jackhammers and dump trucks of PG&E and CalTrans, and we could get  Gene Krupa  on steroids.

If if were possible to assemble the whole entourage on the deck of the decommissioned battleship  USS Massachusetts,  with a few salvos of the big 16″ guns, we could get an excellent finale to the 1812 Overture. This piece de resistance, of course, could always be performed at 2AM, the aspiring musician’s finest hour in these parts.

Attendance would be high, with the whole county auditioning - involuntarily. I cannot think of a finer way to bring fame to our sleepy little community.

When I’m Emperor, there will be some big changes in the advertising world. Here are the Top Ten rules, designed to cement my standing as Most Popular Tyrant …

1. No use of recorded doorbells and ringing telephones is allowed in any ad unless you are selling doorbells or telephones.
2. In a given week, only one oriental rug company gets to have a going out of business sale.
3. That oriental rug company only gets to go out of business once.
4. Car dealers are not allowed to do their own ads.
5. If there’s a treatable reason why an ad actor can’t get it up, we don’t need to hear about it.
6. Glaucoma is not an acceptable “side effect” of taking a medication for hay fever.
7. If we want to know what the phone number is, we only need to hear it once. You do NOT get to rattle it off repeatedly like we are in an auction.
8. Broadcasters must not run the same ad more than once in a half hour segment. If it was so bad we didn’t “get it” the first time, our attitude won’t improve the second time.
9. Credit card companies that promise you “rewards” for going into debt will be redirected into the  sale of oriental rugs instead.
10. Advertisers that read “fine print” disclosures at fast-forward speeds shall be fined at not less than  normal-speed rates.

This is what you get when, driving solo, you stick a point-and-shoot out the window, keeping your eyes on the road, and point, and shoot.

Eastbound on the I-210 Pasadena Freeway headed for Riverside CA and the junction of I-10, I missed a fine shot of Mt. Baldy and finally settled on these snow-capped peaks. Soon we will begin the ascent of the Tehachapis and the long descent back down into the Mojave, which is quite cool (about 79-81 degrees) this time of year.

The trip began when I departed Castro Valley at 6AM. I was going to top off the tank before getting onto the freeway, but somebody had run over a skunk by the gas station, and I thought better of stopping. It is dark this time of the morning, but you could see the faint glow of twilight off in the east. By Crow’s Landing on I-5, the sun was one solar diameter above the horizon of the San Joaquin Valley, a dark crimson orb pushing through light fog and haze.

By anyone’s accounting, the north-south I-5 through California’s great Central Valley is a stark, barren drive, with the highlights being the occasional vast feedstock lots, and, as you approach Bakersfield, the alkali deposits that leach out of the fields from decades of heavy fertilization and hard water irrigation. But I like it, except for the smell of the feedlots (which was oddly absent this year). To look at the land, with its white-laced powdery ashen sandy soil, you would never suspect that this state manages to grow enough food to supply the state and most of the nation with an unimaginable abundance of fruit, vegetable, and beef.

Further on around Bakersfield, the land projected an eery, otherworldly appearance as the “fog” thickened. Visibility was still several miles, but faded rapidly. Nearby objects appeared hazy, while distant objects revealed ghosts of disembodied appartions floating on the gloom. The fog revealed a faint trace of dirty reddish gray-brown, proof that a large component of the poor visibility was really just smog. Backlit by the low winter morning sun, this soup made for poor visibility and challenging driving.

A glimpse of the sky ahead of the horizon offered a truly jolting sight. The gray silhouette of a huge mountainscape towered over the highway for an instant through the haze: gray on gray. Then it disappeared, then loomed above once again, with hints of snow on the peaks. Signs announced “Grapevine” and “trucks use weigh station”. We began the mighty ascent to Gorman Pass. This is roughly the halfway point on the trip from the SF Bay Area to Phoenix.

I always underestimate the vastness of the LA basin, the intimidating traffic and the confusing, last-minute highway signing. I take the Pasadena Freeway at Sylmar to bypass as much of LA as possible. These freeways are engineered for commute traffic, not interstate traffic. Most people are afraid to use the HOV lanes (2 or more passengers) even on a Saturday. Traffic is skittish and can go from 75mph to a full stop in fifteen seconds. Honking motorists pass a lady on a cellphone crawling along at 35 mph in the fast lane in a brand-new SUV. I can hardly WAIT to get out of here.

You break loose of all this past Riverside. The Interstate-10 reduces to two good lanes in each direction. From here on out to Phoenix, truckers own the road. It’s trucks passing trucks passing trucks. With a little patience, a V-6 or V-8 can zip through this when breaks of clear lane are offered, though it’s divided freeway all the way, a smart move in my opinion. The days of pulling out into the oncoming lanes and stomping it into passing gear are long gone.

The other thing I always underestimate is the vastness of the desert. There’s over 100 miles of Mojave between Riverside and Blythe, on the Colorado River. Breaking through to the “Welcome to Arizona” sign on the bridge is always cause for cheering. “Phoenix: 196 miles” seems like it’s all downhill. 

At 100 miles outside of Phoenix, you can see the Superstition Mountains far away on the horizon, though dimly. You can also see an obvious white hemisphere of smog enveloping Phoenix, like a geodesic dome. As you approach mile 36, you realize the traffic and the atmosphere is not that much different from the LA basin you just fled.

From this point, the commute to the garage at the house in Phoenix took as long as the trip from Blythe to the outskirts of metro Phoenix.

But it is always good to get home. Pictured in the garage are the California car (backed in) and the Arizona car. It is the only other photo I was able to take.

Punxsutawney Phil may have seen his shadow in Pennsylvania yesterday, but Summitlake.com’s own C.Bear says: “I didn’t see nothin’ …”

Perhaps that’s because our photogenic little mascot was posing for the camera, as usual. Here, captured indelibly for the world to see, is the proof that C.Bear missed: behind him, his shadow.

Be that as it may, our household will have to grant that overstuffed hibernating Punxsutawney animal one thing: it’s going to be a long winter.

Here in Northern California, we survived the record once-a-decade torrential rains of January 4, though a bridge and the entire Marin County did get shut down for a while. Since then, it’s been wave after wave of wet storms cascading in from the Pacific, the reservoirs are starting to refill, and a sunny day in California has become a remarkable thing of wonder.

The commuter lanes are clogged daily with hundreds of thousands of clean, shiny cars - washed and rinsed in the purest rainwater. Car wash business is WAY down. The landscape gardeners still show up to shatter the still of the wet mornings with their Toro and Ryobi leaf blowers, as if they could actually disperse the sodden piles of leaves that are pasted to the pavements and walkways of urban America.

When the rains come, shoppers wait it out, staying off the roads. If you need to go to the store, this is the best time to avoid the crowds. Then, the asphalt begins to dry, and humans boil out of their homes and apartments like ants in a flooded garden. It is all part of the natural cycle of things.

Maniacs queue up in long lines in the Sierras, behind the snowplows and California Highway Patrol 4×4’s, to catch the skiing at the best resorts. It is cheaper than shoveling snow in New England and paying those huge heating oil bills. But, for the most part, by the lights of Midwesterners and veterans of the Northeast, we Californians are spoiled sissies. We don’t know how to drive in the snow. You can look at any rainy freeway and see that half of us don’t even know how to drive in the rain: we like to tailgate the swirling mists and spray of the big-rig semi trailers, where the visibility is almost zero.

Such are the  pitfalls of living in a temperate climate. My family came from New England to California in 1950 to avoid shoveling snow. In the next five decades, California’s population exploded exponentially as others claimed a slice of the easy life. Now, a small house in a bad part of town costs ten times as much as an acre with a sprawling modern home in Missouri - in fact California housing isn’t affordable at all.

 It appears it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. In the latest population trend, folks are fleeing California to inflate housing costs in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix. Oregonians were sick of us decades ago. Will the last Californian please turn out the lights?

So, while it’s true everybody tends to blame the weather, there are times when the weather explains almost everything, and, they say, in coming decades, global warming may explain wars.

While the world keeps a wary eye on the future, here at Summitlake.com we just keep a wary eye on the monthly electric bill, and C.Bear prepares for another six weeks of winter.