Sanders LaMont

More war than peace in one lifetime

2012-02-12T14:14:00.001-08:00

Murphys, Ca -- For some reason -- probably the lack of serious discussion during recent political debates -- I've been thinking about wars.
Technically, we are only engaged in one minor war at this moment, something of a record for us in the last 60 years or so. Afghanistan is so far away, and the impact so invisible, that it rarely makes the news any more -- only when a local soldier dies, or when a helicopter goes down with a dozen young men and women aboard.

My family history includes a long-time connection to the wars the United States has fought over the centuries. William Lamont fought in the French and Indian wars in the 1700s, and then his sons fought in the Revolutionary war against England, a country they grew to dislike when their ancestors had lived in Scotland and Ireland.

Then another Lamont served in the War of 1812 -- his widow got a $6/month pension. Fortunately for subsequent generations, the LaMont men managed through the next 150 years to serve in the military without ever having to shoot anyone, or be shot at.
That started with my maternal great-grandfather who was too old for the Civil War, and was a prison guard on weekends in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. He apparently never bragged or even talked about it, and it was not until the United Daughters of the Confederacy put a marker on his grave that anyone in the family even knew he served briefly in 1862.

My grandfather was too young for the Civil War, but managed to serve in the National Guard during riots in Birmingham in the early 1900s. He had a spiffy looking uniform but no scars.

My father enlisted to serve in World War One -- the war to end all wars -- in 1917. He did his Army basic training in Jacksonville, Florida, and then was aboard a troop train heading for the ship to take him to the trenches of Europe when the train, quite fortunately, was derailed in an accident that caused the troops aboard to miss the boat and the shooting war. He served till the end of the war as the chief executive of the draft board for the state. His veteran status earned him Veterans Administration Hospital care when he was broke, old and ill, a benefit the family appreciated then and now.

I had my turn as a "small unit combat leader" in the 1960s, and learned skills I am proud to say I never had to use. Most of the males my age served in some branch of the military unless they were physically unfit, or had an extremely rich political parent. It was what was expected of us, and what we did. The fact that my recent family experience was peaceful was just good luck.

I was born just before the United States became part of World War Two, the war to defeat the real Axis of Evil, and my dad was too old so we both missed that one "good war." Since that time the United States has been involved in 16 wars, or maybe 18 depending what you count. I count even minor confrontations that involved our people shooting at other, or others shooting at us.

Here is what has happened in my lifetime, which started with WW 2:
-- The Korean War, 1950-1953, sometimes called a police action;
-- The Lebanon Crisis of 1958 was the first war to be given a name "Operation Blue Bat;"
-- The Dominican intervention of 1965 (Operation Power Pack);
(The Cuban Missile Crisis does not qualify as a war because we only threatened each other, and did not actually send any U.S. troops anywhere beyond a South Florida tomato patch where a friend of mine had to jump out of a crashing plane that had been diverted from attacking Cuba.)
-- The Vietnam War actually lasted from our first advisers going in during 1955, until 1975. I can almost count this as my personal war, because I served in the Infantry as a reserve officer from 1962 until 1970 though no hard was ever done to or by me because I was kept at Fort Benning, Georgia, 90 miles from my hometown, for the entire time I served on active duty. No pictures are included because I weighed 128 pounds and had a crew cut ;
-- The Iran hostage crisis (Operation Eagle Claw) became a mini-war in 1980. Fortunately it was only a small unsuccessful disaster and few were killed;
-- The United States paratroopers, Marines and Rangers invaded (Operation Urgent Fury)and seized the Caribbean nation of Grenada in 1983;
-- Marines landed in Beirut in 1982, quite a few died in 1983, and then Ronald Reagan pulled us out two years later;
-- We launched air strikes against Libya in 1986 (Operation El Dorado Canyon) in response to a discotheque bombing in Berlin;
-- We invaded Panama in 1989 to kick out the dictator Manuel Noriega and ran that place until a new government was formed;
-- The U.S. and coalition forces (a new term in that decade) drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1990, Operation Desert Storm, but we called this the "Persian Gulf War," fighting that spilled over into Iraq and Saudi Arabia;
-- The US went into Somalia as peacekeepers (Operation Restore Hope)in 1992, but the population turned on our troops and killed 18 soldiers, and then we killed somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 on the other side (or collateral damage), and then we got out;
-- Haiti was next (Operation Uphold Democracy) because the military there overthrew the president so we threw them out in 1995;
-- Yugoslavia found U.S. troops (Operation Joint Endeavor)in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we bombed the country for four months during the Kosovo War in 1999;
-- By 2001 we had troops, some on horseback, in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom)to throw out the Taliban and destroy terrorist training camps;
-- By the next year we sent 2,000 troops to the Philippines (Operation Enduring Freedom-- Philippines)to help the local government fight al-Quaida;
-- We invaded Iraq again in 2003, and just called it the "Iraqi War,"kicked out Sadam Hussein, and occupied that country for the next nine years. We are still looking for those weapons of mass destruction;
-- When the Libyan uprising began in 2011 we shelled the coast from Navy ships and bombed military and political leader targets, and started using drones in combat. The U.S. maintains it was following the mandate to protect civilians.

As of today, the military troops have been pulled out of Iraq, and our interests there are protected by contractors.
Afghanistan, where we once thought we had won a decisive victory, is still pretty shaky but we have promised to leave soon.

So we have been involved in a shooting war in one place or another every three years or so since I was born.

We helped save Europe from Nazi destruction in World War Two, and saved South Korea from dictatorial rule from the north. And we helped rebuild those national, and others.

But the price for all those other wars, it seems to me, has been way to high.

We've built a country whose economy depends upon a giant military, fed by an even bigger military-industrial complex. Even when we are not fighting somewhere our elected officials make sure nothing interferes with the corporations selling weapons to almost any and every nation in the world. The Mid-East is just one example, but one that might some day lead us into another war.
No one says they are for war. People die, the losers are unhappy for generations and they cost a lot of money. But we seem to just fall into one after another, so maybe it is time to rethink this.

I think it is time we took a break, and tried some other approach. Maybe we need a 12-step program to break the bad habit of war.

One lesson I recall reading from such programs seems to apply here:

If you keep doing things the same way, you will get the same results.

The City by the Bay

2012-01-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

LaMonts on the dock alongside s/v "Good News"

One of the neighbors "walking" her dog.

Alameda, Ca.-- This small island city on the east side of San Francisco Bay was once known for Salmon fishing fleets that spent their time in Alaskan waters, ship-building to support the maritime military during World War Two, and then as home to a large naval air base.
Today it is mostly redeveloped into apartments and homes, a main street lined with great places to eat, and more marinas than you can count on both hands.The view from our front porch, er, deck.

It has become our second home, aboard our sailboat "Good News," which we keep at the Oakland Yacht Club which is in Alameda, across the Oakland Estuary from Jack London Square. That's a waterway that comes off of San Francisco Bay.The small red dot shows Alameda with the estuary on the east.
When we lived in cities, our cabin in the mountains was our second home. Now that we live in that cabin in the mountains, where most of our neighbors are absentee weekend folk, the boat is our happy place away from home when we need to be in touch with the ocean, the bay, the estuary.Oakland Yacht Club's marina on the Oakland Estuary
The reasons are many.
Pat and I both were raised on or near the water, we met and lived in Florida for years, and there is something therapeutic about being rocked to sleep at night by gentle waves with the sound of seabirds keeping us company.
Plus, it is a great location on and off the water. Eating out is our major recreation, and the places are plenty. The club itself offers a group of friends and part-time neighbors who share our interest in boats.
And it is within a short sail from the heart if San Francisco Bay, one of the most beautiful spots in North America.
Last week we took a mini-vacation. We motored out of the estuary, found the wind as we crossed under the Bay Bridge near the home of the San Francisco Giants, turned the corner past Pier 39 with Alcatraz off to the starboard side, and headed for the Golden Gate Bridge.
The view from the cockpit looking toward Marin.

Because it was mid-week in mid-winter, we almost had the bay to ourselves. The cold wind was blowing in the gate, pushing a layer of fog against the bridge and over toward Sausalito. The fog horns on the bridge were blowing loud, warning traffic to be aware.

We turned on the radar to watch out for big container ships that sometimes pop out of the fog, but saw none. Then we sailed back and forth across the bay, skirting the edge of the fog, and enjoying the moment.
The Palace of Fine Arts while the fog lifted

One other sailboat was near us, ghosting along on the edge of the fogbank.

Finally we began to get cold as the sun started sinking, and we turned and sailed back to our marina, where we turned on the heaters, taking away the chill below decks, and headed off for dinner.
A pretty darned nice day.
The next day we decided to drive through San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands, the worn-down mountains that frame the north side of the entrance to the bay, part of the National Park system. This is the spot for the most spectacular views of the city of San Francisco and the nearby coast, and we had not visited for 20 years or so.
Standing above the cliffs looking down into the bay, we could see the excact spot where we had been sailing the day before. The fog is gone as Pat takes in the view

Then we wandered out to the point of land where we could see the Point Bonita lighthouse, the flashing light the guards the north side of the bay entrance. Off in the distance enormous waves were breaking, both offshore and onto the rocks.
Point Bonita Lighthouse from the Marin Headlands

We ended our day with a bit of bad timing, but it provided a cultural experience. We were stuck in awful rush-hour Friday evening traffic in the heart of the city, where normal people fear to drive.
We made it safely home after a very slow reminder of why we never enjoyed commuting, but lacking a photo proof of the event because of fear of collision with taxicabs.

It matters not. 'Twas a lovely day on the bay.

Christmas past?

2011-12-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

This December was more like a warm Fall.
Last year we had snow, and more came almost every day.
The snow was thin in this picture, but it got much deeper!

Camp Connell, CA -- The Christmas season has been different, mostly for good reasons.
The weather has been unseasonably mild and dry. For those of you who recall last year's winter-from-Hell, that is quite a change.
My memory is that we spent most of the days between Christmas and New Years without power while snow came down and down and down. A couple of pictures will illustrate what it looked like last December.

Then this year we had an early snow, but less than a foot, and then it went away.
This week the nearby state park is crowded with visitors in shirtsleeves and tennis shoes, and there is not a sign of snow anywhere.

Another change is that this year Pat and I encouraged, and our family cooperated, giving gifts to people most in need. So while the family still exchanged small gifts, money went to the local Food Bank, and another family gift went to buy 50 meals for people somewhere in the world who are hungry. This is a good year for that.
And this year Pat and I were blessed to have Zack and Ruth and Brian and Katie and Delaney and Connor all here together.

This year we did not have to travel any further than Ruth and Brian's home 20 miles away, in sharp contrast to years past when we went from Florida to Atlanta, or the farm in Alabama, or some other distant point. Nothing can spoil a holiday quicker than sitting in an airport watching the rain, sleet and snow fall while waiting for a delayed flight.

I recall just a few years ago (40 or so) when I traveled to Birmingham to spend Christmas with my sister's family. Her husband got his first set of golf clubs, so we immediately took off that morning, found a golf course, and played a round in the snow.

Then there was a Christmas in Florida (1968) when an Apollo spacecraft was circling the moon and Pat and I were both working every day and night. Our tree was up, and partially decorated, and we never finished because we had to run off for work. We did have the pleasure of hosting Louis DeRoche of Agence France Presse as a dinner guest, a brief respite before we all went back t0 work. But our work that year included listening to Astronaut Frank Borman reading the Bible while circling the moon, something we will never forget.

Other Christmases were quieter and more normal. We went to my sister's Alabama farm a few times. Her house was always warm and welcoming, the food good and plentiful, and the children excited beyond all hope. Santa always made it, and one year my nephew taught me how to pay a new game on the television set, an astonishing invention called Mario Brothers.

Several years were spent in Florida, where Christmas weather was always a curiosity. Some years we went fishing on Christmas day, or just for a ride in the boat. Other years we watched our first child crawl around the carpet while the grandparents watched.

In later years we adapted to Ohio Christmases (stay indoors due to icy roads) and California Christmases (anything from fog to warm sunshine).

Our children's grandparents are missing now, as is my sister and any number of friends, but we were lucky enough this year to hear good news from friends all over the place and to be surrounded by all our children and grandchildren.

You can't beat that for good weather and good memories.

I said "Grin!" and they did!

No snow -- Losta wind

2011-12-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

The entrance station is no more....
One of the biggest pieces of equipment -- a snow plow/front end loader -- took a tree.

Park,. Supt/Ranger Gary Olson, who is well over 6 feet tall, stands by a root tangle where trees went down in the campground...

The good news is when this tree crushed part of the maintenance supervisor's home in the park, they were in another part of the house. They have moved.

Camp Connell, Ca -- We are just fine thank you for asking, but some of our neighborhood did not fare so well.
In the past week we've experienced the severest winds in memory.
The steady winds were around 40-50 mph with gusts up to 60 or 70. At the ski resort where our son works winds at the crest were around 100 mph.

Power was out for four days, an cable for five, but we managed reasonably well with the wood-burning stove and a small generator to keep the freezer, a light or two, and Zack's video games going.

Within a mile of our home at least a half dozen houses/cabins were destroyed by falling trees, but no one was hurt thanks to the fact most are weekend second homes and no one was foolish enough to come listen to the wind blow. e live in an area of very large trees, mostly Incense Cedar, Fir, Sugar Pine and Ponderosa. On our lot alone we have 30 or so trees taller than 150 feet.
But we also live in a creek bottom, protected somewhat from high winds, but watching the tops dance and sway was pretty darned interesting. And hearing branches and cones rattle off the roof for two days was tiresome.
At our house the acre was covered with broken limbs and branches, but no real damage to anything. One branch small fell so far (150 feet or so) it gouged a cut in the deck railing, and stuck into the wooden deck surface like an arrow. It is still sticking up an inch or two.
I have not had a chance to get out to take pictures, but a friend took photos of the state park where we volunteer two miles away. You'll get an idea of the force of the storm.
We were lucky, and have agreed the next time the weather forecast calls for this sort of wind -- if it ever happens again -- we will go find a motel at a lower elevation, or move in with friends for a day or so.
Incidentally, even though the damage within ten miles of our home probably will total over $10 million, no news organization gave it much attention. Cities and Lake Tahoe are more interesting to the news media.
Rural life has some interesting aspects.

How we spent our summer (Which was way too short)

2011-11-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

Hanging out in a waterfront pub in Oakland

Camp Connell, Ca- As I write this blog, there is new snow on the ground at our cabin home in the mountains, and a bit more in the forecast.
Summer was not very long, but it was busy, and I have been remiss at posting blogs so here comes a recap.

We jumped the season a bit in the Spring by going off to the desert near the Mexican border for an adventure with our friends Gary and Jeri in their BARV (Big-Assed-RV). Here we are sitting and eating after roaming the country in their Jeep, admiring wildflowers and rocks and stuff.Enjoying mild weather at Anza-Borrego State Park

As soon as the snow went away at home, which I recall was June, I started working on The Road Project. Our lane has been so damaged by snow and runoff that we had to have the road repaired, which took a lot longer ($$$$) than you would expect to arrange. I started getting bids in May and the job was finished in September.Zack was one of the laborers hired for the road crew

We managed to squeeze in a few sailing days on San Francisco Bay, after having the boat hauled out of the water at Berkeley Marine and bottom paint applied, and the electrical system worked on. Sailing on a near-perfect day
Me talking.
Pat working.

We also ran down the hill a couple of times to house-and-horse sit for Ruth and Brian and family so they could travel. Pat loves communing with the horses and chickens.Pat, Rocky and Teddi Jackson talking horse talk

Zack's daughter Katie visited her mom in the summer, than came back looking even more grown up than ever and ready for her eighth grade year at Junior High. Ruth's boy Connor is now attending the same school, which is neat, and his sister Delaney is now a High School Freshman at Brett Harte High School. It is great to have all our grandchildren so nearby. Here's some fun with the family.Zack looking good!
Connor, me and Brian at White Pines Lake
Ruth does not like wormsKatie at home during a photo session

We spent a lot of time this summer at Big Trees State Park, and even more time getting over the last hard winter (cleaning up downed trees, etc.) and getting firewood ready for the coming cold season.
A favorite spot along the North Grove Trail

So now Fall is here, the wood is stacked, and the snow has started. So Pat and I are house-sitting for a friend who has gone off to Mexico, at what we thought was below the snow line.

Guess what.

Florida Before Mickey Mouse

2011-09-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

Sunrise off Cocoa Beach

I miss a Florida that—maybe—never was. But I have distinct memories of days before the state was swallowed by Mickey Mouse, when the Keys were a place to get away from it all, and no one knew what a condominium was.
My family’s Florida roots go deep. My grandfather discovered Florida’s beaches and fishing around 1900. The family had a place, more of a camp than a home, on Perdido Bay where Florida meets Alabama. His photo albums reflect men with their pants rolled up to the knees with very long strings of large trout.
He loved Florida, and started a weekly newspaper out of a print shop in Molina, near Pensacola. It didn’t last, but he stuck with Florida for the rest of his life.
As a young adult my father visited him, almost always for the fishing and the interesting people who hung out in the bays and bayous. One of his old photos shows him standing on the pier at Pensacola looking at a bay filled with working sailing vessels.
He told stories of a beachcomber who wore dresses. People thought it odd at the time, but he was just one of the local beach characters. The year was 1910.
He had to take a boat to get to Pensacola Beach, as there were no bridges then.
Later, when a massive hurricane destroyed the railroad bridge into the keys in the 1920s, my father went down on a rescue boat. He saw a man’s body impaled on a telephone pole and never forgot it.
By the 1920s my grandfather moved to Miami to work for the Herald as a proofreader. He had a heart attack there and died, and is buried in a cemetery just off the TaMiami Trail—back then the only road to the west coast.
My first visits came in the 1940s as a child to the Gulf Coast beaches, and then to central Florida where my aunt and uncle lived in an old farm house in a citrus grove near Ocala. It was the year Hank Williams’ record “Honky Tonkin’” was a big hit. There was a packing house on the railroad and a general store.
I accompanied my father as he traveled Florida on business. He would reward me for not being a pest by taking me to any tourist attraction we passed on our way to his appointments. I became an expert on Silver Springs, then the biggest attraction in the state, and particularly on Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute where I watched amazed as the man milked rattlesnakes and water moccasins, and the Seminoles wrestled alligators. I loved the mermaids at Weeki Watchie Springs.

My mother father in the 1930s near Daytona Beach
We took day-long drives down very straight two-lane roads, often surrounded by orange groves. On hot days (this was before air conditioning) we would stop at the Suwanee River and take a swim. In fact, any good creek crossing was an excuse to stop and get wet in rural interior Florida in the summer.
Eventually my father moved to Coral Gables and I would spend every summer there. Hanging out with my father in the early 1950's at Crandon Park in Miami
Our idea of a big deal vacation was to go to North Miami Beach and spend the Fourth of July in a cheap motel right on the ocean. If my dad had a few more days off he would take me down to Islamorada and we would fish off the bridges, hanging over the side and being careful not to step back into the path of the few automobiles that passed us by.
Coral Gables was a great place for a twelve-year-old. I could ride a city bus to the best swimming pool in the state—the Venetian Pool—or walk to the Coliseum where I learned to ice skate.
I finally moved to Florida to live as an adult, to work for the same newspaper my grandfather had worked for four decades earlier, but assigned to a bureau office in Cocoa.
The highway from Orlando still had oyster shell shoulders in 1965, but the space program was booming and it was an exciting time to live on the beach and watch the world change.
Cocoa Beach was a party town, just suited to an ex-Army guy looking for a good time with late dinners at Wolfie’s and dancing to the bands at the Carnival Club.
I found a treasure on the beach, married her, and started a family from our first home—three bedrooms on a canal on Merritt Island purchased at a premium price of $21,000.
Once the bridge was built across Sebastian Inlet I would take off at night to fish with friends, hanging from the bumpers as the tide ripped along underneath us, trying to catch a snook, any snook. Never did.
We were there when Walt Disney began to build his dream in the Palmetto scrub, changing the state forever.
Our Florida days were numbered, but we managed to stay a few more years, moving from Cape Canaveral to Tallahassee, a different kind of Florida, and then to Fort Myers. At that time there was one condo on the beach, and lots of small motels and rental cottages.
We left the state when new opportunities came up, and have returned periodically to see how the place manages to survive.
Most of the things we enjoyed are gone.
The funky beach towns now are polished and expensive.
The Florida Keys have been so urbanized you can’t tell where Miami stops.
Cocoa Beach has been through so many boom and bust cycles no one remembers where the astronauts used to drink late at night, or which car dealer loaned them red, white and blue Corvettes when they were assigned to fly into space.
The beaches no longer allow driving, which is probably a good thing.
The manatees are making a comeback which is definitely a good thing.
The broad expanse of open beaches has been walled off by condominiums that sit empty most of the time.
Tingley’s Fish Camp on the Intra Coastal Waterway no longer is a hangout for fishermen, and doesn’t serve great seafood the way it once did. The mega-yachts have taken over.
But the old fish camp in the mangrove along the Indian River just south of Melbourne Beach is still there, with the weird chickens and the dog that retrieves conch shells from deep in the water.
And if you take a long enough walk along the beach after high tide near Sebastian Inlet you can still smell Florida as it once was, and feel the wind blow, and not hear anything but the cry of the gulls.
In Florida Bay off the Everglades in 2005

(Credit for this article, and the editing that helped it, go to Florence Poor of Melbourne, Florida, who publishes "The Contributor" a quarterly. She recently celebrated a big birthday among friends, and threatens to retire. I hope she won't.)

Goodby Shuttle, Hello ???

2011-07-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, Ca -- The first time I watched a man fly into space from the sands of Cape Canaveral, in 1965, I thought it was the most exciting thing I had ever seen in my life.
I managed to calm down long enough to write a story for the Miami Herald about the adventures the crew of Gemini 4, including America's first spacewalker Ed White.
But I will never forget the experience.
Any more than I will forget the excitement surrounding the world's first landing of human beings on another body in space -- the moon -- in 1969. I was working at my temporary desk at Mission Control's press center in Houston.
My good friend Louis DeRoche, correspondent for the French Press Agency, popped open a bottle of vermouth (awful stuff) and toasted the event even as he was filing bulletins to the people of Europe and Asia.
"You Americans," he said, "have no idea how important this is to the world."
Alas, Louie was correct.
We really don't get it, and now America's exploring years are behind us.
We can afford wars, and we can afford Wall Street institutional financial rescues, but we have forgotten how to explore. Just can't afford it.
Back when space was big news the television networks would start coverage in the middle of the night and stay live on the air until the flights ended. Gradually they backed off, of course, but they still reported constantly on the dangerous adventure of the men flying in space, carrying the American flag as the world leader in exploration.
Today the main networks devoted about five minutes or air time after liftoff, and cut away to commercials and other programs (including cooking shows) before the shuttle reached earth orbit.
Good things never last forever, but there is something very sad about a nation that seeks instant gratification from news of a murder trial in Florida, or a celebrity's drug problems, and doesn't care about exploring the universe.
I am reasonably optimistic that my grandchildren will live to see the United States send men and women into space again. I am sure a later generation will have the will and the means.
But I think the prediction the next manned space flight from the U.S. might happen in ten years or so is way off.
I do not expect to live long enough to see another U.S. manned space flight.
And that ticks me off.

Friends, sailing and music

2011-06-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Pat showing our guests the sites on San Francisco Bay.

Gary and Jeri just south of the Bay Bridge.

Jeri hauling on the staysail sheet, trimming the sail.

Alameda, Ca -- Pat and I looked hard last week at all the chores we needed to tackle after a hard winter, and immediately left the cabin and headed for San Francisco Bay to go sailing.
It wasn't difficult to talk our friends Gary and Jeri into joining us.
They arrived at our marina on Wednesday afternoon, just in time to watch the Beer Can Race Series from the upper deck at the Oakland Yacht Club.
We got very lucky and ran into an expert on racing -- he got there too late to join a crew -- and he explained the complexities of the races to us. I can't remember it all, but I know there were four different races, numerous types of boats, and a shotgun or horn going off every few minutes.
The wind was light but that made the race into a slow motion dance. We didn't know or care who won, but it was a pretty event followed by a good meal with friends.
Thursday morning we were up at the crack of dawn (about 9 a.m.) after proving four adults actually can sleep on our boat, ate muffin's Gary had cooked, and left the dock in time to catch the outgoing tide. (I always wanted to be able to say that. It sounds so darned nautical.)

We showed them the usual sights, like the port of Oakland cranes loading containers, and a very pretty schooner taking tourists along the cityfront;

And more unusual sites, like the workers building the new Bay Bridge high above the water, Japanese Navy ship tied up at the city docks, and an amphibious "Duck" that takes tourist into McCovey Cove at the baseball stadium.

And a special treat appeared as we approached Alcatraz. One of the Oracle catamarans built for races leading up to the America's Cup was practicing. You might remember the catamaran from the evening news. Two days earlier the twin to this boat flipped over, throwing the skipper through the wing (they have wings, not sails) and dumping everybody into the chilly bay on national television. Undaunted, the crew was back and we watched her fly along for quite awhile, moving at least four times faster than we were, and appearing to outrun her chase boat.

And we wrapped up a perfect day at Quinn's Lighthouse Restaurant for an evening of Chanty music in the pub, one of the best shows on the waterfront. I knew it was going to be good when the very first song was "Eddystone Light," a tune I learned 30 years ago, and then the rest of the set was all familiar from our visit to Mystic Seaport a few years ago.
A birthday party at the next table made it festive for everyone in the room.
Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch entertain every Thursday at Quinn's
Jeri and Gary feeling mellow.

Sanders (after a pint) and Pat (after a dinner) also feeling mellow.

Martin Caidin remembered

2011-05-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, Ca -- Back in the days when Pat and I were newlyweds living the good life on the beach in Florida, we had an unlikely neighbor named Martin Caidin.
We all lived in a beachfront apartment on Cocoa Beach, next door to Cape Canaveral. The Twin Towers was close to everything: the beach was a hundred yards away; the pool was outside our window; the NASA office where Pat worked was next door, and there were a half dozen bars and clubs within easy distance.
And Martin lived just above us.
He was hard to ignore, a man who worked hard at being colorful. He was loud, profane, funny and very entertaining. And smart.Martin at the broadcast console

Once when Martin saw someone trying to break into a car in the parking lot three stories below his balcony, he grabbed a pistol loaded with blanks, shouted "STOP THIEF!" and proceeded to blast away. The apartment was in an uproar, but the neighbors agreed the thief probably would never bother us again.
One night we heard Martin's voice, yelling at everybody, but it seemed to be coming from up in the air outside. It turned out he was flying his bi-plane that night, decided to cut the engine and float between the six-story towers and wake up his neighbors. He thought that was really funny.
Another time when Pat and I walked into Wolfie's, the local eating and drinking spot, Martin stood up and shouted to everyone that Pat -- who had great posture and a dancer's body --had "the best-looking damned legs in the state of Florida." He also climbed up on a table to yell for service when the waiter failed to show up.
According to Martin he had written and published over 60 books at the time, mostly non-fiction military and aviation books, as of the mid 1960s.
He was always working on a new novel. He was not rich at the time, churning out books that sold a few but not a lot, but he managed to keep a junky old car running and his alimony paid. And his airplane.
Junkers JU52 restored by Martin, who claimed it was used by Hitler

Martin worked for various news agencies, mostly doing broadcasting during launches of manned space missions. He was the "color" expert, rattling off personal tales of encounters with astronauts or technical details of giant rocket systems with ease. When I was drafted into doing radio broadcasts by my newspaper he offered me great advice: "Act like you know what you are talking about and everyone will believe you."
He was successful enough at the time to rent two one-bedroom apartments, knock out a wall between them, and created a living work space.
Martin's background was a little fuzzy. Everyone knew he was a pilot, and he let people think he had flown in the war (WW 2 or Korea was never clear). When I pressed him one time, prompted by a picture of him in fatigue uniform in the Pacific, he said he had been a sergeant in the Army Air Corps.
In later years he became recognized as an expert on warfare, aviation, nuclear weapons (including a stint on the Tonight Show), biomedical research, and a world of other stuff. He could sell himself to anyone, and even if you suspected some of it might be BS you enjoyed every moment.
He was extremely smart, and his expertise came from a mind like a sponge. He read everything he could get his hands on, and used his great memory and work ethic to develop a writing technique I'd never seen before. In his home/office he had a giant wall unit with cubbyholes, maybe fifty of them, filled with technical papers, notes, government handouts, clippings. Once he decided on a plot for a novel, he began collecting everything he could find on the subject and popped it into a cubbyhole with a chapter number.
For a novel involving terrorists building a nuclear weapon, he collected government handouts from a wide range of agencies.

For a science-fiction novel about a man with artificial parts ("Cyborg," the basis for the TV series The "Six Million Dollar Man") he collected all the biomedical and technical data he could find on bionics.
When he had enough data collected, and the plot in his brain, he would sit down at the typewriter and start pounding out the book. He said he could type 20,000 words in one day, but I never had a chance to test that. I know he could write a novel in about six weeks, particularly if he was broke.
His system worked. The books were not great art, but he told good stories well.
I treasure one novel where he gave me credit in the foreword for a description of the wilderness surrounding the Cape Canaveral launch pads, based on a magazine article I had written. He didn't ask permission, of course, but he gave me credit.
By the time Martin died he had written at least 80 books, including "Marooned," made into a movie with Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman and Richard Crenna. The money from movie rights was enough to improve his situation financially, and then he did "Cyborg" the television rights and royalties made him wealthy for the first time. He was even hired to write two books in the Indiana Jones series.
After we left Florida Martin married the young daughter of a British witch, and eventually moved to the University of Florida as a writer in residence. He died there of cancer shortly after finishing the Indiana Jones books.
Not a bad ending for a hard-working orphan boy from New York City.

Boat People

2011-05-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

Berkeley Marine Center, Berkeley, CA -- Kenneth Grahame knew what he was talking about.

Pat and I just spent the better part of two and one-half weeks working on our boat "Good News." And we are not done yet.

It is currently sitting on the hard in the boat yard, a nautical term for dry land, while a final few chores are being done by experts(a nautical term for "bring money").

A boat is a very personal thing, and we feel very attached to ours. Even the name has personal, professional and spiritual meaning to us. More important, it was named in a group effort with four good sailing friends and a bottle of champagne on a New Year's Eve in San Diego's harbor.

For various reasons the boat has been somewhat neglected for the past year, and as everyone knows, you always pay the price for deferred maintenance, and things do break on old boats.

Every four years or so we pay to have the boat hauled out of the water by a giant crane. The bottom is cleaned and sanded and then painted with a creepy-critter-and-grassy-stuff repellent paint .

We always have a few other chores taken care of at the same time, just so we can spend some more money.
"BOAT" stands for "Bring Out Another Thousand."

This year we began the process by beginning our personal chore list first. That always involves cleaning, painting and varnishing.

This year it also entailed a plumbing job (almost four days standing on my head swearing), lying flat on my stomach and/or face to reach down and check the bilge pump, building a rack for a propane tank, greasing the valves in the through-hulls, repairing a broken drawer (it probably has a nautical name I can't remember), painting a cabinet, installing new batteries (black wires go to black, red to red), repairing and re-repairing a reading light that mysteriously turns off in the middle of an exciting chapter of a murder mystery. And still does.

I changed the oil which is a really big deal on a boat with a diesel engine, for me at least, and started cleaning up clamps and hoses and stuff -- until part of the engine broke off in my hand.
Sometimes things are better left alone.

Pat spent a lot of time sanding and varnishing, the re-sanding and re-varnishing.
Anyway, after ten days or so of that sort of thing we finally got the boat to the boatyard. But even that was an adventure. I was single-handing from Alameda to Berkeley across San Francisco Bay, about ten miles, when the engine started going flaky on me, smoke appeared to be coming from the engine compartment, RPM dropping, and the electrical system threatened to fry my new batteries.

I made it to the boat yard, an hour or so late, fire extinguisher in hand, and just added the new mechanical/electrical mysteries to the list for the experts to deal with.

I am now on a first-name basis with my new-best-friend Howard the certified marine electrician, who discovered a potentially serious problem with the dock connection (as in OMG it is a FIRE HAZARD!), fixed that, and then diagnosed the source of four years worth of electrical weirdness, and fixed that with a new alternator/regulator. Bless him.

Then Carl, the wonder worker yard boss, cleaned up the heat exchanger (think radiator on a car), repaired the device that actually makes the engine stop, and pointed out various worn hoses and clamps and valves and thingys that needed replacing.

Meanwhile Dave (in the framed photo) finished off the detailed work on the hull while Omar watched Dave with an amused grin and polished our propeller and consulted expertly with Pat on the proper cleaning materials for waxing and polishing.

Pat and I spent what seemed like a month putting wax on, taking wax off, putting wax on, taking wax off. Very labor intensive, but worth it when you consider it costs about $700 to have an expert do it.

Pat is now an expert.

After one week in the boatyard we came home to take care of some other business.
Carl, Dave, Omar and the rest are still doing things to the boat. Howard the electrician, smarter than average, took off for Zihuatanejo (my favorite town in Mexico) to go sailing.

Pat and I are now at home watching the snow melt, and planning the trip back down the hill to retrieve the boat when we get the call that it is ready. We may have to rent a trailer to carry the money to give to the yard, but what the heck, it's our boat and we love her.

"Good News" is a 1979 Hunter sailboat, 37 feet long and 8 tons, cutter-rigged and designed by John Cherubini. It is solid, easy to sail, and comfortable. Our boat was the first of this model in San Francisco Bay back in '79. There are still several around.

The original owner was an anal engineer, which tells you all you need to know about the quality of workmanship he applied to every chore. (I was a liberal arts major, which says a lot about my mechanical skill level.)

Soaking up Culture in San Francisco

2011-05-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

San Francisco, Ca - Pat and I spent a lovely day at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park last week, a welcome change of pace from what had become a daily diet of either boat chores or snow shoveling.

This is the "new" de Young, which replaced the old one with much fanfare a few years ago. It seems we have been to the Academy of Science across the park often enough to watch the albino crocodile grow old, but haven't visited the city's art museums in a long time.

Two major exhibits are being offered right now, one on the Olmec culture's art (big carved stone heads, no photos allowed) and the other on Balenciaga's textiles (lots of red dresses and handbags, not my thing).

Pat and I enjoyed most the great sampling of art we experienced on three guided tours: a look of the entire museum's highlights; a detailed tour of the American art collection, and the Olmec sculptures and carved icons, a convergence of art, archeology and history.
And, the building and grounds are among the most thoughtful anywhere, from the ironic cracks in the courtyard (fault line art) and the greening copper sheathed structure, to the spectacular views of art, architecture and scenery everywhere you look.

Our volunteer tour guides made the day, particularly the serendipitous presence of one docent who turned out to be a neighbor of our old friend Frank McCulloch. (Frank, one of my journalistic heroes, happened to be my boss and mentor at The Bee in the 1980s.)
The guide, named Joan, was knowledgeable, witty, clear-voiced and friendly. She was as delighted as we were to find out we have a great friend in common, and I was able to tell her a few Frank stories she had not heard. Pat sent a hug back to Santa Rosa with Joan for Frank.

Joan was particularly knowledgeable about early American portraits, telling stories about the people and their place in history. Every painting seemed to have a story, whether it was how the subject was too cheap to have his or her hands painted (that cost extra) or why drapes figured so prominently in the background so often (cheaper and easier to paint than detailed landscapes or interiors). Even artists have to make a living.

I enjoyed hearing, for the first-time since Fourth Grade Art Appreciation Class, the role that painters played in different eras of our history, whether reflecting Manifest Destiny, sanctifying John Brown, or preserving a Boston Sea Captain's vanity.

The most surprising moment at the museum for me came when were looking at an abstract sculpture (construction?) made of burned pieces of wood suspended from the ceiling into a giant hanging cube. Not much to look at.

A museum guard, standing against the wall, quietly told me that the pieces of wood came from the African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four little girls were murdered by a racist bomber in the 1960s. The museum's official description of the work discussed the work in abstract terms, but he made it more real than he could have known.

I lived in Alabama in the 1960s, briefly covered Civil Rights as a journalist in that era. The ashes of that destroyed church, and four lives destroyed by hate, will never be an abstraction for me.

It never occurred to me to take a photo. I just looked and thought about where it came from, and where we came from and where we are heading.

The art wasn't all that moving. There were satirical paintings, grand landscapes, and a very nice portrait of George Washington made from one dollar bills.

One of the world's ugliest vases (pictured at the top) was adorned by a bird singing his or her heart out.

The museum is far too full of delightful stuff to go into more detail, but you owe it to yourself to visit the next time you are in the Bay Area.

And the view from the observation tower is one of the best you will ever see anywhere in San Francisco.

Sailing on "Good News"

2011-04-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

A happy moment for Pat at the helm on a sunny windy day.

San Francisco Bay -- If you can sail on this bay, according to local sailing instructors, you can sail anywhere.

Conditions can go from dead calm in thick cold winter fog to the winds howling at 35 knots on a chilly summer afternoon. Once in a while in the lee of an island, it is actually warm. But not often.

It is challenging and fun for us aboard our 37 foot cutter-rigged sailboat "Good News."

We have grown to love it, particularly the challenges.

After grumbling about having to do boat chores this past week, I pulled out this collection of pictures taken over the last year or two to remind me how wonderful it is, and so you could share the experience.

Looking aloft, a purist might criticize the sail trim but when you are going as fast as possible it doesn't really matter.

The approaching boats have the right of way as they blow down from Alcatraz Island.

We spend the night at Pier 39 occasionally, sharing the harbor with our furry friends.

It's usually a nice quiet sail along the city front, surely one of the best looking cities in the world.

The Bay Bridge isn't as famous as the Golden Gate, but still a stunning sight from underneath. And noisy too.

Real sailors do not worry about silly hats, so long as they keep the sun off.

Heading for the marina on a starboard tack.

The smile comes with the position and place.

The wind dies down a bit inside the South Beach area, looking out to the Slot.

These cranes at the Port of Oakland are rumored to have been the inspiration for Star Wars battle machines.

The workers at the port never seem to rest, particularly loading containers heading for China from the Oakland Estuary.

There's hardly anything better than messing around on a boat. Even chores can be fun at our berth at the Oakland Yacht Club across from Jack London Square. I'm oiling the teak step into the companionway.

Good News has all the amenities of home, including internet service at the dock.

Digging out at Bear Valley

2011-03-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, CA -- The big March storms have passed, and daffodils are actually appearing at the lower elevations.
The temperatures are up into the 50s and 60s, and the snow is melting fast -- except at the highest elevations.
Bear Valley is at 7,030 feet, and they have had a winter to remember. Longtime residents compare it to the big storm years of the early 1980s.
Our son Zack works at the ski resort, another thousand feet up the mountain, and he spent six days straight shoveling snow so the lifts could carry the skiers.
Today we went with friends Gary and Jeri to check out their cabin at the village at Bear Valley.
The pictures tell the story, even when I bounced the camera around a bit.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

2011-03-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, Ca -- Mar. 25, 2011 -- As of yesterday a neighbor had measured approximately 27 feet of snowfall this winter. And it is still snowing.

Our average, we think, is around 15 feet, so this has been an unusual year.

Long-time locals recall a similar winter in the 1970s, or maybe early 1980s.

Several neighbors have found they have urgent business down the hill, usually in the Bay Area with family or friends. After a certain point snow just becomes, well, snow.

The snow plow operators are worn out, and deserve a break.

I admit I am ready for a real Spring, not one on the calendar only.

But it is still pretty.

The video is very amateurish, shot with my little Flip Video camera. The editing -- such as it is -- is all my fault.

I do hope you notice the music. It was as appropriate as I could find.

Come see us.

Bring a shovel.

Spring Break in the desert

2011-03-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

Anza Borrego State Park, California -- Winter means lots of snow in our mountain home, and sand is what we spread on icy roads.,
The desert is not something I really know, despite a few visits over the years.
So when friends Gary and Jeri invited us to explore the desert country that bumps up against the Mexican border we jumped at the chance.It was an easy choice: they provided the giant RV, food, and friendship. We contributed our charming personalities and a few bucks for gas.
Our base in the desert was the giant Anza Borrego State Park, more than 600,000 acres of sand, mountains, hills, dry washes, oases, and lots of things that fly, crawl or run. Plus a lot of snowbirds in their RVs escaping winter, just as we were doing.
Campgrounds in the desert are not like the tree covered plots we know from the mountains or back east. Until you look closely the desert has a lot of sameness to it, and RV camping areas look a lot like RV sales lots. But the neighborhood is quieter, dominated at night by the yowls of coyote off in the brush,and the hoots of owls.
Definitely a lizard of some kind, maybe a Blue-tailed Skink?

At daybreak birds sing including the cooing of dove and western Quail calling their distinct “Chi-CA-go, Chi-CA-go,” sounds. (Seems like a western bird should be saying "Camp CON nel, Camp CON nel" or something more localized.)
Gary and Jeri have been coming to this spot for almost 40 years, and were our tour guides and enthusiastic encouragers when the trails got hot and dusty.
Among the highlights were spotting a group of Big Horn Sheep on the canyon wall and rim, and spotting a rare Red Diamondback Rattlesnake about four feet long who moved slow in the proper direction -- away from us.
The desert is full of life, waiting for you to visit.
The photos tell the story.

A landslide in the sandstone canyon blocked our four-wheel excursion after about 15 miles into the back country. But the tire tracks indicated someone got through!
Big Horn Sheep survive in this remote place. They keep their distance from hikers, and a watchful eye from the rim of the canyon wall.
Pat, Jeri and Gary take a close look at the complex geology. This used to be the bottom of the Salton sea when it was connected to what is now the Sea of Cortez.

The oases near the top of Palm Canyon was almost wiped out by a flash flood a few years ago, but is making a comeback.
Jeri takes a break in the shade, and a chance to dry her boots which were soaked crossing a creek.

Pat enjoying the warm weather and sunshine.
The start of the trail.
Toward the end of a perfect day, the perfect sunset.

Snowmobile excursion to Spicer, Union and Utica

2011-03-04T19:21:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA. -- Twenty years ago my friends Ralph Coley and Alan Christie would cross country ski from Highway 4, high in the mountains above where I live, into a trio of reservoirs miles off the highway.
Their annual adventure included hours of slogging along, often in bad weather, sub-freezing temperatures and camping in the cold wet snow. I was tempted, but declined, preferring the comfort of a lodge's roaring fire.

Today, courtesy of my neighbor Bill Minkel's snowmobiles, I retraced their trip in about 30 minutes in reasonable comfort. Our biggest hazard was sunburn.

Sorry Alan and Ralph, but it was a lot easier this way.
(Notice the stop sign which normally stands eight feet above the ground.)

Bill and I met at his house, had a cup of good coffee, hooked up the trailer for the trip up the mountain. The hardest work of the day, with one minor exception, was getting the trailer free from its bed of snow.

Bill managed to flip his machine on its side, but the snow was soft and it was not a big deal.

The forest roads into the reservoirs are not plowed, but they are groomed like a ski slope to make access easier for snowmobiles. We wandered around in the frozen wilderness all day and saw six other people, plus forest service folk digging out directional signs.

No cross country skiers were anywhere to be seen.

Lunch included a nice white wine from Indian Rock winery in Murphys, and a view to die for.

Ski Day

2011-02-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

Bear Valley, CA -- One of the great advantages of living in the mountains is proximity to a ski resort.
Bear Valley Ski Resort is 20 miles up the road from our house, and the pole that measures snow depth is ten feet tall -- and it disappeared more than a week ago under a blanket of new snow.

So this week when neighbor Bill Minkel called to see if I was interested, the answer was yes.

For a season pass holder I have not gotten in as many days skiing as I expected, only about ten days so far, but you get spoiled when you live this close. If the snow is not perfect, and the crowds minimal, I tend to stay away.

But this was about as perfect a day as you'll ever see.

Nothing fancy on this video clip because I am a determined intermediate skier, preferring groomed runs to powder and moderate slopes to terrifying steeps. And my video skills, even with Bill's help, are minimal. I was going to attach music, an Irish tune "Catch Me If You Can," but could not figure out how to do it.

The first portion is from the top of the mountain, around 8,000 feet, down to the lodge on a blue diamond run called Mokulume. Then a brief break at the lodge (we actually ate inside at the bar) and back to the top of Porridge Bowl, one of the few black diamond runs I am comfortable with.

All in all, a great day.

Lost and found stories

2011-01-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Arrington Strickland -- the grandmother I never knew

Camp Connell, CA - I've been thinking about family a lot lately.

Not the ones close by, who are always on my mind, nor even the extended family spread across the country.

But about ancestors. You know, those people we Americans generally forget after two generations.

I never met my grandparents. All four were dead before I was born. I know one died of "childbirth fever" in her late 20s, two of heart attacks in their 60s, and one of old age -- in her 80s.

What were they like? How did they live? Did they have some characteristics that were passed down in the gene pool? And does it matter?

A lot of wonderful stories are lost that should be saved. And I believe stories from our history help shape our present, and our future.

Besides, there are so many great-great-great stories out there.

For example:

Robert Lamont was a teenager when he became one of the earliest Scots-Irish immigrants to North America. His brother beat him to it, according to the story passed down, because the older brother was forced onto a British ship by a press gang when he made a mistake and hung out on the Antrim docks on the north coast of Ireland. Next thing you know, the brother jumped ship in New York in 1745, liked it better than starving in Ireland, and sent for his mother and brothers. Robert became a weaver and part of a small group of Scots that moved into the heart of Dutch-controlled Upstate New York. They did not always get along with their rich neighbors, and once broke an uncle out of jail in a dispute over taxes.

Hardy Strickland, a namesake without the "Devil"
Devil Hardy Strickland was born into a farming family in North Carolina in 1776. That was his real name, though the story behind it is unclear. As an adult he made his way to north Georgia before the Cherokee were run off. Married his first cousin Priscilla, they had 12 children and he lived to the ripe old age of 96. Family rumor has it that he was too mean to die. He named a son Devil.

Hiram Barry was board in Tidewater Virginia in 1802, but moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, where lived out his life as a well know printer. He probably knew President Andrew Jackson, since it was a small town, and Hiram lived into his 80s when his obituary praised his as "a venerable citizen." Think of the stories he would have to tell.

Thomas Pruitt was 20 years old when he landed on the Virgina shore from England in 1636. Ten years later he married and they had only six children. He died before the Revolution, still in Virginia, so we'll probably never know whose side he was on in the war between the upstart colonies and Mother England.
++++++++++

Thanks to my mother, who talked about her family, and my grandmother who wrote down the results of her research in the 1930s, I know some things about my grandparents that I never met.

Grandfather Roswell DeEstra LaMont (his father Frenchified the family names) left his New York birthplace, moved west to Michigan and then south to Alabama. He was a journeyman printer, a stout union man who could work almost anywhere, who wandered to pursue his craft and his taste for adventure. He ended up working with other printers, one named Barry and one named Pruitt, in a small town in Alabama after the Civil War. He met and married my grandmother, Mollie, daughter of a printer and a union member as well, who was a tad older. They had one child, and my grandfather stuck around till my father was grown and then hit the road again, staying in touch through letters. He worked in Florida and then Cuba for a few years, where the fishing was good and the sun warm. He had a heart attack in Cuba and came back to Miami to die. He was buried by the International Typographical Union and their symbol is on his headstone.

Mollie Barry's home at 508 Clayton Street, Montgomery
Grandmother Mary Earnest Barry LaMont, known as Mollie, was a child when the Civil War began, and witnessed missing families, orphaned cousins, troops camped in the front yard, and Yankees stealing the chickens when they swept through. Her younger brother John, 5 years old when the war ended, was terrified when the Yankees came by the gate and called him "Johnny Reb." He wondered how they knew his name. Her father re-appeared safely at the end of the war and they settled down in Montgomery.

Grandfather Fred Strickland was raised on a North Georgia farm, but in a family that believed in education and wanted to help him go to school. As a teenager, he spent some of his his spare time panning for gold in neighboring streams he knew as a boy. By the time he was ready to apply at Georgia Tech, he had a poke of gold that along with a football scholarship was enough to pay his way in 1899. he was an engineer, inventor, and eventually ran mills in the south. He put all of his children through college, or nursing schools. The Depression took away his job, and when his beloved oldest son died in an airplane crash in the 1930s, he had a heart attack and died soon after. He is buried near his son, not far from today's Atlanta International Airport.
Grandmother Elizabeth Arrington Strickland, pictured at the top, was a native of Alabama who moved slightly north. She met her husband when he was running a mill in Anderson, South Carolina, they were married and quickly had five children. She died of a fever after the birth of her youngest child, and is buried in Anderson. No is left alive who really knows anything about her.

And then there was Bina Mickle.
All I know about Bina Mickle is that the photograph was taken in 1931, apparently in or near Haneyville, Alabama, where my grandmother Barry was born.
And, there is letter surviving from the 1930s in which my grandmother wrote a family member to make sure that Bina was "properly taken care of" in her old age. A return letter assured my grandmother that she was, and there is no further correspondence.
Census records do not indicate the family owned slaves in 1860. Craftsmen and people who lived and worked in towns did not often have slaves, and the woman in the photo does not look 90 years old in any case.

But I will always wonder about her, and why my grandmother cared for her well being.
There has to be a story there.

Football culture -- The anthropology of the South

2011-01-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- A large number of my relatives -- Auburn fans all -- are enjoying post-BCS syndrome this morning.
For some that means sitting around telling each other "we always knew Auburn was a national champion," despite the fact it has been almost 50 years since Alabama Polytechnic Institute (then called "Auburn" and now named "Auburn University") actually won a championship.
But this is no time to quibble with a great success, and what I thought was a great football game even though I personally matriculated (is that a real word?) at the traditional football power in the south -- the University of Alabama aka The Crimson Tide.
(I went to graduate school at the University of Michigan, but only claim that school when they make it to the top ten rankings or discover a cure for disease...)

Auburn's last-second victory over Oregon will be celebrated for weeks, or years, by most of my relatives.

I take some pleasure in it, mostly because 70% of the New York Times readers picked Oregon to win, as did the columnists for the Los Angeles Times.
It is my humble opinion that people from outside the Southern United States have never really understood the SEC and regional pride that fuels these teams and their supporters.
Take THAT you effete western media snobs and you citified New York Yankees. (There, I feel better already. I have re-affirmed my football southern-ness.)

My father always used to cheer for Auburn or any other Southern school doing battle with universities from "up North." We had "schools" and they had "universities."

He used to say, rather politely, that he "attended" Auburn. He never really explained why he left school, but it later occurred to me that when he mentioned being arrested at a college football game for drinking from a flask under the stands, THAT probably was his memory of college.
It was the Prohibition Era, and he got off lightly.
And he always liked Auburn.

My brother-in-law Roy went to Auburn on the GI bill in the 1950s, and was such a fan he would sneak into games wearing a telephone lineman's belt to walk through the "authorized personnel only" gate when he could not afford tickets. He swore that he hung off a telephone pole to cheer Auburn on.
His support never flagged, even joining and leading his alumni association, something I never even considered. He has waited a long time for this recent victory.

His children adopted his fan-hood. Ben, the eldest, still lives in Alabama, and is a staunch Auburn fan, sending out Facebook messages every few minutes during the game and making sure I know of a web site where I can buy Auburn victory paraphernalia.

My niece Beth is an Auburn-trained engineer living in Colorado. I am sure the mountains were echoing late last night with shouts of joy.

Nephew Philip, who lives and works near my old stomping grounds on Mobile Bay, was unusually quiet until after the game, when he sent a short message: "WDE!" Translation: "War-damn-Eagle."
He is a sensitive soul, and was overcome by emotion.

And my late sister Mary would have been there cheering too, even though she went to the University of Miami. She was a convert, and you know how dedicated they are. She was probably cheering from on high.

May the joy in my Auburn family extend for weeks and months to come.

I, on the other hand, have never been an Auburn fan, or even for that matter a big football fan.

I attended the University of Alabama during the years when Joe Namath was quarterback, undefeated seasons were the norm, and we always went to educational places like New Orleans to play in bowl games. Alabama usually lost those bowl games, but we thought it only fair that the team had a chance to relax on Bourbon Street before the big game. And I furthered my education by closely studying the local culture as expressed in fruity drinks, great gumbo, and a variety of exotic dancers.Crowds seek educational opportunities on Bourbon Street

At Alabama's home games we drank a lot and left at halftime to go to parties because the game was usually wrapped up by then.
I once was hired to tend bar for the Law School students sitting together in the stands. Instead of "Roll Tide" I heard a chorus of "More bourbon!"

I even wrote a editorial once in the college paper saying Coach Bear Bryant was not a god and could not walk on water. No one took it seriously.

Nowadays there is too much money involved in college football for such frivolity and wasteful behavior.

Most of the talk is about how many millions the universities will get from the games, and whether the key players will drop out of college to join a professional team where they will earn even more than the university.

But the good old days still exist in my family.

And my relatives know that I cheer for them, and for one brief moment was actually happy that Auburn won a football game.

(I planned to insert a photograph of Auburn's "War Eagle, " or maybe even the "Tiger" mascot, but the University website charges a fee for that.)

Happy (?) New Year!

2011-01-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA - The year 2011 has officially begun, and so far so good.
I know. It is only two days old.
But.
Our elected officials are all on vacation so they have done no harm -- so far.

The ski resort up the road has had a booming holiday season, which has spilled over into the local businesses that have been struggling. That's good for my working neighbors.

Everyone in our immediate family is employed -- if they want to be.

All are healthy and seem happy.
Daughter Ruth, granddaughter Delaney, and best in-law Leroy, helped celebrate my 70th birthday at the Camp Connell store in 2010
Son Zack, granddaughter Katie and Pat celebrated Zack's birthday with a cake

It will be another year of transition for me, hopefully all positive.

Some things are required.
My IRA's have "matured" along with me, and I have to do something about them in the next three months. I hate that sort of decision making, but the clock is ticking.
Like many retired couples and families this year we will learn to get along with less, as the last few years have carved down our savings. The last time I ran the numbers our savings lost about 60% of their value in the past three years. Social Security suddenly is a lot more important that it used to be.
My body requires a certain amount of maintenance which seems to entail increasing doctor visits for probes and scans and examinations to make sure I am just aging, not deteriorating at an unnatural pace.
I have never been good at the type of exercise people get by working out in gyms, so I will have to try harder to get out and walk more, whether in the snow or not. I recall vividly the advice a physical therapist once passed along" "Use it or lose it."
Fortunately, there are plenty of trails to hike, mountains to ski, and lots of wood to haul to keep the home fires burning.
We have yet to hike the trails up Mount Whitney, seen here in the Fall, above the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore, but two things I want to do more of this year are sailing and get back to working on the family history.
The family history project, which my grandmother began in 1935, may move ahead thanks to Pat's gift of a subscription to an on-line genealogy service. It is an amazing tool and saves hours and hours of research. Now I just have to start writing.
"More sailing" has been an unrealized goal for several years. We love our boat, but it sits tied to the expensive dock in Alameda most of the time. Why is it when you retire you do not have time for things you claim you want to do?
So far we have decided to keep the boat and try to use it more. But each year we come closer to the inevitable decision that the cost and effort are not worth the ultimate pleasure. But owning a boat has never been logical, so do not expect a logical move in this area.
The other decision out there in our future is when will we have had enough snow and ice in the winter and need to move down the hill. Travel to warmer spots helps, but that has been limited recently by economic realities.
We will not leave the mountains, but the idea of living somewhere in the winter where we would not have to wait for the snowplow, shovel the deck, or worry about the power failing, well, that seems pretty attractive some days.

But for now the snow is falling prettily, the temperature is not bad, and the fire is going strong in the wood stove.

And whether I am ready or not, the new year is here.

Christmas in the Mountains

2010-12-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

At a Christmas fund-raiser in the state park

Camp Connell, CA - The sky is almost crystal blue today, not a cloud in sight and only a slight haze (from the wood-burning stove that keeps us warm) between us and a screen of bright green conifers.

Pat is somewhere in the back of the cabin, I suspect in a cleaning frenzy, and I am sitting by the picture windows doing as little as possible.
Christmas music is filling the room and the dog is carrying a tennis ball around out on the deck, dropping it into the snow then pouncing on it, perfectly happy to entertain himself. I could spend an hour watching him watching the ball, listening to a great version of "Silent Night" that includes the story of how it was written for a church service.
After a big snow the barbecue grill is hard to find!

The Advent season always seems like positive anticipation for us, and a time for looking back across the year and years to memories of friends and places and family.

Forty years ago we were living in Florida, and daughter Ruth was a tow-headed baby with a perpetual smile. I was reporting on the manned space program for Gannett Newspapers, and there was one year when we were so busy that we never finished decorating the tree. Just a few balls and no tinsel, and off to work.

We took a scuba diving course and I talked my way into writing assignments in the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. Life was good then.

Friends from those years remain in our hearts today: Benton and Sandy Bingham, our first close neighbors and friends with whom we shared dogs, children, cars, hikes and joys and a few sorrows; Bob Bentley, my editor and friend through great newspaper opportunities, and battles; Burke and Beth Edwards, 20 years older than us but a couple that knew no barriers to friendship and who took us on our first sailing voyage to the Bahamas, and Pat's parents Bob and Florence Taylor, parents, friends and great grandparents.

Thirty years ago we moved to California, with Ruth and Zack and an old dog named Fang, finding a new life and new friends that blessed up for another twenty years. We were welcomed to the neighborhood, work, and church as if we belonged. And we did.
The Coley and Christie families brought us into their homes for holidays and shared
food and friendship. Zack grew up through baseball and soccer and Ruth went off to college.
C.K. McClatchy and Frank McCulloch and Erwin Potts treated me as a colleague at McClatchy Newspapers, gave me unstinting support, and were mentors and good examples of what a journalist could be. How many people can claim to have great honest bosses for a 20-year span?
Mark Vasche', Dave Cummerow, Ray Nish, Dick LeGrand, Rich Petersen, Susan Windemuth and many others at The Modesto Bee made coming to work a daily joy.
The people at Centenary United Methodist Church, particularly the Nelson family, helped us learn and grow and share, and provided a place or worship and celebration, and even backpacking.
We discovered Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, and began coming to Calaveras County to camp and ski and hike, finding a beautiful place that later became our home.
Life was good then.

Ten years ago we moved again, that time to Sacramento as empty-nesters, and a whole new world and group of colleagues and neighbors. I learned to spell "ombudsman," and even how to define it, had a chance to write again, and we learned the joys of living in a big city.
Our friends Michael and Sylvia rekindled our love for sailing and re-introduced us to the beautiful people of Mexico.
When I retired early we spent two years in Florida with Pat's dad, then came back to California to live in our mountains. Renewed friendships with the Grassmyers, new friends like Jeri and Gary, and the bonus that both our grown children and their children live with 20 miles.

We are surrounded by forests, which is a good reason for me to oppose clear-cutting, and the state park is a short distance away with roaring rivers, giant trees, wonderful employees and terrific volunteers.
Life is good now.
The dog, Rusty, loves the snow

Christmas Eve 2010 was a day between storms, snow is due Christmas day and a good time for quiet pondering. I had good intentions of going skiing today, but a good book trapped me late last night and I decided to sleep in and hang out instead. Maybe later we will go walk in the state park just down the road.

For now I just want to remember good friends, good times, and the blessings of Christmas.

So dear friends, named or not, you are all in my thoughts on this lovely Christmas Eve.

Alleluia indeed!Okay everybody sing real pretty!

Okay, we have had enough rain for a while

2010-12-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

The "seasonal creek" runs through our property, but rarely this fast!

Camp Connell, Ca -- We were pretty happy when we had a long cool Spring, a mild summer and no forest fires within miles of where we live during the driest months of the year.
After several years of near-drought conditions it was a relief.
Fall was brief.
Snow started falling before Thanksgiving, and seemed as if it would not stop. We had six feet or so within two weeks, the ski resort opened early, and I managed two ski days without injury before Turkey Day.
Then the snow stopped at our elevation, we had a brief thaw, and then the rains came.
We lived a part of our lives in Florida so we are familiar with real rain, as opposed to what we normally get here in the mountains. Summer and Fall are dry here, while in Florida we could get four inches in an hour or so from one good summer thunderstorm. I think we lived here for several years before we even heard thunder.
In Florida you just pull off to the side of the road until it stops.
In California you wonder what the heck is going on.
The Winter of 2010-2011 is shaping up to be different in our mountains. It has been raining, really raining, for several days. Or weeks. I think I heard one of the TV guys say we are running about 150% of normal for snow pack before the normal heavy snow season begins. The rain must be three or four times normal for this time of year.
When you drive the roads of the Mother Lode country it looks like the Smokey Mountains, mist and fog and everything dripping wet. Beautiful, but very different from what we are used to.
We went by our daughter's home near Murphys today after church and Coyote Creek was out of its banks and into the road in large areas, around eight inches deep and getting deeper. All the gopher holes on their property were spouting water turned red by the mud. The gophers, presumably, have headed for higher ground.
My son Zack works at a ski resort at 7,000 feet and they have been shoveling for days to keep the place going. At that altitude it is almost all snow. They expect six to eight feet from this storm.
Here at our home at 5,000 feet it has rained and rained and rained. We've had 4 inches in the last two days, maybe a record. I suspect it will be ten inches or more from this storm by the end of the week.
The bridge to our neighbor's house is still above water, proof that FEMA was wrong and we are NOT in a flood zone.

The seasonal creek has gone ballistic, ripping down the hill below the house like white water rapids people pay to visit.
The wind has kicked up enough to bring down lots of limbs, and a tree or two We heard a big "boom" earlier but can't find out where it came from.
The latest series of storms to roar in off the Pacific came just as son Zack and Granddaughter Katie left to drive to Spokane Washington. At last report they are safe, but the first day of the trip was in pouring rain, and the last 300 miles or so have been in snow. They should arrive at Spokane tonight, where only two or three inches and cold temps are forecast.
They are fine, but as Zack said on the phone a while ago:"Thank God we are in the Subaru with snow tires." Lots of cars and trucks off on the side. (This is not a product placement advertisement: everyone here loves Subarus.)
Here the rain is still coming down as of 6 p.m. Sunday, but the temperature is dropping steadily. The expectation is that by 10 p.m. it will change to snow.
That figures, since I need to drive to the marina at San Francisco Bay to check on the boat, and it looks like a long day.
Pat will stay home and keep the fire going, take care of the nervous dog, and make soup. She will have the old pickup truck if she needs to escape. She will have quiet and beautiful snow for company.
And I will be driving in the rain.

The forecast is for rain and/or snow for the next five to seven days.

Santa better have his radar turned on.

This Christmas event Saturday was hoped-for as a sleigh ride, but the rain made it a covered carriage ride.

Note: I used to chuckle when Pat's dad included a detailed weather report in every letter and phone call from his Florida home. Now, I understand.

Snow way....

2010-11-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, Ca-- What we are experiencing is not the first snow of the year. That happened a few weeks ago with a polite three-inch covering that made good pictures but did not inconvenience anyone.
Today we are having what we call a dump. Twelve to 14 inches on Friday night, and an additional two feet or so (so far) since yesterday. The first of several we expect each winter, and this one came early.
It is beautiful, but the more years we live where winter is a reality, the less enamored I become with snow.
The snow plow has come by twice, and our lane is open enough to safely make it to the county road that connects us to the state highway.
But we opted to stay close to home after son Zack arrived this morning and warned us that the roads were extremely slick, and even careful drivers were sliding around playing bumper cars.
Yesterday afternoon Pat was driving home and just as she turned of the highway there was a young man beside his crushed pickup truck, looking a bit dazed. He told her he was alright, but his truck was demolished from the tree he slid into. His ATV had flown out of the back and landed nearby. His airbag inflated, though he said he was going so slow it didn't help much. He was driving down the mountain in his 4-wheel-drive vehicle when it began to slide sideways and he could not regain control.
This morning the local news website reporter trees down across a county road nearby, and several thousand people in our county without electric power.
We have to plan carefully any trip, even short ones. We carry chains, even for the all-wheel-drive Subaru and the four-wheel-drive truck. We carry shovels, drinking water and sleeping bag. And a First Aid Kit.
Just in case.
So this winter I have begun thinking about warm places, sunshine, and clear skies and roads.
Unfortunately our favorite sunny winter retreats have had recent setbacks.
The Pacific Coast of Mexico has changed through the last decade.
The resort area near Puerto Vallarta that we enjoyed for several years has become increasingly expensive, more isolated from Mexican people, and seems somehow less friendly than it once was, at least for me as a budget-minded visitor.
The beautiful little town of LaManzanilla on Tenacatita Bay is apparently as charming as ever, but Mexican politics, greedy and politically-connected resort developers and even some drug activity seem be be getting closer all the time.
The Florida that I used to know, as a child and a young adult, is disappearing faster than I can track. The coasts are now lined with condominiums, many of them empty or in the hands of the repo man, and the Everglades and "old Florida" beaches are dying faster than the aging population.
My native South -- Alabama and Georgia -- are not exactly winter travel destinations. I'd rather shovel snow off the deck than go through another cold wet winter that seems so typical in my memory.
The warm desert resorts of Southern California were interesting for a while, but require money by the bucket-load, and I have always been, and remain, cheap.

On the other hand, we've never been to Hawaii. Maybe it is time.

(Meanwhile, it is still snowing. Only three days into winter and I am ready for an escape. I think we'll walk to the general store for a candy bar.)

I'm Not Done Yet -- My Ten Year Plan

2010-11-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- Turning 70 years old has some advantages, and I've been looking for them.

(The downside is boring and nobody wants to hear about it.)

The upside is pretty darned good.

Here are ten top reasons 70 isn't so bad.

1. I'm still here.
2. Most of my parts are intact and in workable condition.
3. Pat still finds me amusing and tolerable and lovable.
4. My children are close by and tolerant of my eccentricities.
5. My grandchildren like me most of the time and act like I am important to them.
6. There are still things that I can do that may make a contribution to others, and at the very least does not do any harm.
7. Old friends get better and more important through the years. (You know who you are.)
8. New friends are a gift, a surprise and a joy. (You know who YOU are.)
9. I am surrounded by beauty every day. That includes Pat, the conifer forest, sun, water, snow and friends.
10. God is still working on me. I am not yet what I may someday be.

The list could, and does, go on much longer.

When I begin to grump about doctor appointments or bills or politicians, I remind myself that the good stuff has pretty much always outweighed the bad in my life.

I am no Pollyanna. I can worry myself into a snit as quickly as anyone. When people I love are sick, or out of work, or in need, or stressed, that bothers me.
The collapse of the real estate bubble and the stock market hurt our family too.
But in the long run, that doesn't amount to much.

The movie "Little Big Man" included the perfect metaphor for my limited experience with aging.

Martin Balsam played a snake oil salesman who befriends Dustin Hoffman's character. They keep running into each other through the passing years. At one point a drunken Hoffman looks up from the gutter to see a cheerful but older Balsam looking down at him from the wooden sidewalk. Balsam is wearing an eye patch, is missing a leg, uses crutches and has various other parts missing or scarred. He is battered by life.
A concerned Hoffman asks, "How ya doing Doc?"
And Balsam responds, "Well, they're whittling away at me but they ain't got to me yet." He departs cheerful, and visibly unaffected by life's scars, off to seek another adventure.
============================

What to do next?

As I start this eighth decade I plan to take the advice of my late friend and pastor Don Nelson who was asked by another friend what he should do when beset by doubts and fears and concerns.
When nothing else seems to work, Don told him, "go to work in the vineyard."

There are always things that need doing, people who need what you offer. Do that and the rest of those worries and concerns will fade or even disappear.

So Pat gave me the perfect birthday gift: a firefighter/trailworker's tool called a McLeod.

It's perfect for creating a clear path ahead.

Bryce Canyon National Park - Beyond Spectacular

2010-11-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah -- When you leave a place as beautiful as Zion National Park where you wander the bottoms of beautiful canyons in awe, it is hard to expect much of the next stop on our tour of Utah's parks.
Then you pull off the main road onto one of the overlooks at Bryce Canyon, and this is what you see:
and this:
and this:

It is really hard to compare one kind of spectacular beauty to another. But if forced to, Zion is like a cool quiet walk where you can look up and see the world, and Bryce is like standing on the rim of the world and admiring all of creation.
It is a different kind of place, and must be seen to be appreciated.

We found the campgrounds full because we arrived late, and stayed at a motel just outside the park. But it was literally just outside, and it was no problem to drive in and out as often as we wished.
We went by the visitor center to orient ourselves, had a friendly chat with a ranger or two, and then struck out to examine the hoodoos and towers and arches and glowing red colors so typical of this place.
That night we came back for a star show that took us on a trip to Virgo, and brought us back to earth to stand in line for several telescopes offered by the park staff and volunteers.
Staring into the universe with a hundred or so shivering people on a starry night in high desert country was extremely rewarding.
Most of our daylight time at Bryce was spent standing and staring. We did less hikes than earlier, but never felt we were missing anything when we watched people hiking back up the canyon walls. The entire park access is from the very top, like the Grand Canyon. so if you hike down there is only one way back. Up hill.

We'll leave that for another visit.

Free at last! .... almost

2010-11-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, CA -- One day before the election I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
My mailbox will belong to real mail again, maybe even with messages from friends, instead of over-sized slick sheets telling me how bad some candidate is.
When the telephone rings, there is at least a chance it might be a human being who really wants to talk to me.
I am not uninterested in candidates and propositions on the ballot, but as a reasonably aware adult I am capable of reading and studying away from the barrage of advertising.
Television is another thing altogether, but fortunately we don't turn it on much in our household. At the moment our granddaughter is home with a cold and watching a series of spooky movies on demand, and those seem to be free of political ads. Maybe they have figured out that 13-year-olds do not vote.
But I still have a bad case of pre-election fatigue, and one symptom of that disease is a desire to vote against everybody and everything. I understand that many people get so turned off they simply don't vote, which was exactly the intent of the advertiser.
My biggest concern right now is that this election will be bought by the big corporations that have poured billions into buying friendly congressmen. If it happens, I expect the Republic will survive, but we might be in for another bad decade.
It is a sad commentary on our times that the money spent on buying congress probably could have been spent helping those in need, creating new jobs and taking care of the sick and homeless.
My family will survive whoever wins tomorrow. But I will not vote for those who created this mess, or for propositions that benefit corporations and polluters and tax-evaders.
You can figure that out for yourself if you read the ballot closely, ignore the television, and vote your conscience.

(I'll review the ballot tonight, again, and vote tomorrow. They won't keep me away.)

Have a nice day.

Zion National Park --

2010-10-22T15:36:00.001-07:00

Zion National Park, Utah -- We arrived here late in the day after a long tiring drive across half of Nevada and then down the west side of Utah.
The campgrounds were full. Even the parking lots inside the national park were full when we pulled into the gateway town of Springdale, Utah. We used that as an excuse to find a decent meal and a motel.
The park was still a mystery to us but the scene out the back of the motel was very promising.

The little town, a former Mormon farming community now in the tourist business, was like a small-scale Gatlinburg, Tennessee, near the entrance to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park-- but without the carnival and sleaze. It felt like a ski resort town: expensive but semi-classy.

Despite doing some research on the internet we knew very little about Zion. The park's web site was not very helpful, except that it is one of several popular canyon parks in Utah and very pretty.
So pre-dawn the next morning we got one of the first parking spots in the park's lot (neither the gate kiosk nor the Visitor Center was open at 7 a.m.) and hopped onto the free shuttle bus to tour the canyon with four or five other early risers. You can also park outside the park gate, and ride a free shuttle in to the Visitor Center.

The Park Service shuttle system in Zion is a model of what good public systems should be. The road into the main canyon is too narrow and the visitors too numerous to allow private vehicles, but the buses run every seven minutes, the narration of what you are seeing out the window is interesting and audible, and the drivers were courteous and helpful.
At each stop the narrator/tour guide explained what trails and sites were available, how difficult or easy the walking would be, and what you could expect to see.
We rode to the end of the canyon to take the one-mile hike beyond where the road ends, gawking out the windows as we stared up at the multi-colored cliffs. The sun was still hiding so our photographs don't reflect the strong red colors of later in the day. The narrator provided some history, geology, and even a little poetry as we rode along. The place has a glowing sensual feel.
From the last shuttle stop we hiked to the end of the formal trail up the canyon, following the edge of the river. As the sun broke on the tops of the cliffs, the colors were breathtaking.
When the river takes over the entire narrow canyon floor, you have to make a choice.
Hearty walkers rent neoprene pants and walking staffs and continue up the canyon in the middle of the Virgin River for a mile or so more.
We watched that part, but kept our feet dry.

After spending most of the morning in the upper end of the canyon, we rode the shuttle back to the Zion Lodge to catch a late breakfast just before the lunch shift came on. The lodge was quiet, and beautiful, and did not seem crowded till much later in the day. Another pleasant surprise: the meal was excellent and reasonably priced, unlike many other national parks.

We found space in one of the campgrounds near the Visitor Center before getting back onto the shuttle for one more trip to explore the canyon. By the time we reached the excellent Human History Museum, one stop along the shuttle route, Pat was ready for a short nap on the benches out back.
I spent my time admiring the scenery, including a view of a very rare arch of stone high up the canyon wall. If it can be reached by today's hikers, I didn't ask or want to find out. It was pretty from a telephoto distance.
There were great views in all directions.
But soon it was back to the shuttle and a hike up to the verdant pools in the side canyons.
Unlike the dry desert flora of the highlands and the flat floor of the open canyon, these side canyons host pools that are wet constantly, producing entirely different vegetation and hosting different wildlife. Mostly German and French tourists.
We did see a few deer.
Our late afternoon ride out of the canyon was enhanced by three young Italian families, laughing, hugging their children, and celebrating being in a beautiful place.

As we drove out of Zion the next morning through a tunnel into higher terrain, we realized there are entirely different sections of the park we could have spent days in. The route out was one example, with amazing views and geology all around us. The northwest corner of the park, accessible from the Interstate, is much more remote and less visited.
Zion was not very crowded for our October visit, but I understand it can be very crowded in peak summer and holiday seasons. The campgrounds were full because of a long weekend holiday for the Utah school system children.
Go early.
Stay longer.

One of the smartest ideas we've seen in recent years was this effort by the Park Service to eliminate some of the millions of plastic bottles used for water. They do not sell bottle water in the park, but they do sell inexpensive refillable water bottles and provide fill-up stations along the way.
That's an idea I hope more parks will emulate.

Nevada's Lonely Roads

2010-10-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Hickison Summit, Nevada -- This is a very quiet place above 8,000 feet elevation in the middle of Nevada along Route 50, “The Loneliest Road in the World.”
We had started our ten-day tour of the West by driving east over Ebbetts Pass, through Carson City, Nevada, and then onto the best non-freeway road in the state.
Only the road isn’t near as lonely as it once was, what with trucks carry pipes for the thermal drilling in Eureka, the tourists looking to see the “real” Nevada or a quick blue route through the middle of the state. There is a speed limit, but no one seems to notice.
For us Hickison was a convenient place to spend the night en route to a circle tour of the National Parks in Utah. Hickison was a familiar spot where we had stopped before on trips on the way across the U.S.

The attractions here are the uncluttered views of the high desert, and the petroglyphs left behind by primitive -- oops --- ancient people about 800-1200 years ago.
The light was too poor and the hour too late for us to take pictures of the carvings in the stone walls, so you’ll have to trust me -- there are plenty there. Mysterious, not well understood, and numerous, the carvings are either of mythical creatures or giant men or the artists just couldn’t draw very well. Probably all of the above.
(I know you already know this, but a petroglyph is a prehistoric picture carved in stone, and a pictograph is a primitive painting on stone -- often in caves or canyon walls in the SouthWest.)

The campground is small, generally quiet, and has great views of the desert off to the East.

When we pulled in only four or so sites were occupied, of a dozen or so, and we spotted a good one and stopped to check it out. Unfortunately, giant RVs on each side were running their generators, so we kept moving and looking. When we came back to the same site for another look and listen, one of our neighbors came out of the RV and hastened to assure us he was going to turn off the generator within moments and he hated the noise too. Nice guy. Good neighbor.
We had a quiet evening in our van-turned-camper. When we woke up at dawn the van was covered with frost and ice, and the temperature was probably in the 20s.
A quick cup of coffee and we were off to the East and a big breakfast at the town of Eureka’s Owl Club and Casino (mostly a cafe and bar) where the local miners were having breakfast with their families, one or two were having a beer having come off the night shift, and a slightly worn woman was drinking vodka straight at the bar. They now mine something called molybendium, plus the area is having a mini-boom with well drillers probing the earth’s crust to generate steam for electric power turbines.

Nevada has its share of strange stuff, including two carloads of scudzy-looking fellows at a junction with a table, petition, and a signs that said “Impeach Obama” and “Unbama!” In the high desert there is a plant that apparently creeps up onto the highway, perhaps in the middle of the night when no one is watching. We saw a bunch waiting to cross the road.

And then there was the row of slot machines in the SaveMart grocery store, and the car burning along the roadside (fully involved, but no injuries).

The scenery was great.

And finally, near the Utah border of course, a town called Virgin. Who says old-fashioned values are dead.

Next: Zion National Park: beautiful, varied and efficient

Travel is broadening, and ???

2010-10-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Lone Pine, CA -- We are winding up a ten day trip around the West, fulfilling a long held desire to see the national parks in Utah.
We made the majority of the parks -- Zion, Bryce and Capitol Reef -- before turning back west toward home through Death Valley and Yosemite, and in the next few days I'll post mostly pictures and a few comments.
I'm not good at travel journals because I get so busy looking and enjoying I fail to take notes or remember to take pictures. The photos this time are a bit better because Pat and I took turns with the digital still and video cameras.
A quick look back at some highlights:
Starting across Nevada was a bit strange. In the first few hours we saw slot machines in a SaveMart grocery store, a car along the road on fire but no one stopped )no one was hurt), a roadside stand set up to impeach Obama, spent the night with thousand year-old petroglyphs, and a good breakfast at the Owl Club Cafe, Bar and Casino in Eureka.

But these photos are from the today in the Death Valley region, to give you a sample of the stunning scenery (the sand dunes) and interesting technology (water-free urinals at Scotty's Castle).
This water free device saves thousands of gallons of water a year. Every home should have one. They are becoming common in national parks.

Music for a lifetime of pleasure

2010-10-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, CA -- I've always liked music.

But I can't respond to the "Post your 15 Favorite Albums" requests floating around on Facebook because I have hundreds of favorites.

My earliest childhood memories are hearing my mother sing while preparing dinner after she came home from work. Even tired, she would hum or sing and the sound drifted through our apartment, often an Irish lullaby like "Tura lura lura" or something popular from the radio shows we listened to at night.

My father sang too, though almost always while driving on the highway between work assignments. He liked tunes he had learned in the 1920s including Stephen Foster stuff.
In the summers I would travel the South with him, singing loudly riding down the highways and being careful to quiet down when we passed through small towns. This was in the days before air conditioned cars and the windows were always open. We sang "Suwanee River" very loud when we crossed the bridge over dark black water in North Florida.

Music was a staple in public schools and teachers had us singing or playing instruments every day, usually a loud version of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" of something similar. In the Fifth Grade were were all required to sing in a city wide cantata. Lyrics were written for the Sugar Plum Fairy and more than a thousand of us sang our little hearts out in the town's biggest football stadium.

I started playing in bands when I was in junior high school and kept it up into junior college. There were a lot of Sousa marches, and I even got to play tympani in a city-wide high school orchestra once in the Orange Bowl in Miami.

The highlight of those years were numerous trips to march in Mardi Gras parades both in Mobile and in New Orleans. We played marching band versions of jazz tunes, but ended up at midnight in the bars on bourbon street listening to the real thing played by Al Hurt or Pete Fountain. We rarely paid attention to the trio backing up stripper Candy Bar, who became famous for going to prison for marijuana possession, as she peeled out of her clothes.

In my hometown of Mobile our informal high school parties had black musicians from across the South, many of them famous. Ivory Joe Turner played at a dance at the military prep school attended (to the chagrin of some very white parents).
Even our church choir had a junior/senior high choir that traveled to other cities.
I briefly played in a dance band and we did tunes like "Begin the Beguine" and a few songs we learned from the Hit Parade TV show, or jazz tunes we had heard on the radio.
And I even went to hear the Metropolitan Opera performances while in college, mostly so I could skip class and ride the bus shared with lots of college girls. But I liked it.

Music was everywhere. I went to hear a Grand Old Opry tour group including Minnie Pearl and the Geezinslaw Brothers at a local lodge hall with my parents with 25 or so people who paid about a dollar each.

Summer evening dances across the bay at Point Clear featured standard dance tunes and mosquitoes. Winter formal dances required fancy attire and bigger bands that tried to imitate the Dorsey Brothers.

By the time I was in the Army I was a full-blown folk music fan and could discuss Dylan and Baez and Seeger, play three chords on the guitar, and even knew what a Child Ballad was.
Albums from my college years included the Weavers and the Kingston Trio, the Four Freshmen, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, and lots of long-forgotten folk and jazz artists.

Rock and Roll music was always a part of what I liked, but never a passion.

I passed up a chance to see Elvis for free because he was a bit too hillbilly for me.

I heard the Fifth Dimension perform in Las Vegas once, and went to enough Jimmy Buffet concerts to tire of drunk college students.

I learned to like some country music, mostly the older performers who kept it basic, emotional, and a bit corny.

I had a John Denver period, and to this day am an avid admirer of Jimmy Buffet and Paul Simon.
About the only music I never learned to like was acid rock. Rap isn't musical enough to interest me (but then, Bob Dylan can't actually sing much either and I really like his stuff).
Today my iTunes file and book shelves are loaded with all the above, plus Celtic and Irish stuff, and one of the world's great song writers that I discovered a bit late in life: John Prine.

Before I share John Prine with you, here is an attempt at listing some of my favorite albums (or the artists) that have stood the test of time:

Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band et al (The best collection of old-time performers with modern admirers who happen to be great musicians)
Graceland by Paul Simon (Maybe the single most original album I have ever heard)
The Essential Doc Watson
Les Miserable by the London cast (I still cry when the little boy gets shot)
Doc & Dog
Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio (an album that set fire to the folk revival)
Finlandia by the London Philharmonic (stirs the soul)
Frank Sinatra, with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (no one ever sang his songs better)
Hell Freezes Over by The Eagles
Mahalia Jackson's Greatest Hits (1963)
Newport Folk Festival, 1963 (performances that sparked a revolution)
John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Album (don't laugh. It's great)
The Weavers at Carnegie Hall (history right there on the stage)
James Taylor's Greatest Hits
Fruitcakes by Jimmy Buffet (his best writing)
Boats from the Jimmy Buffett box set
Dr. Michael White, A Song For George Lewis (A New Orleans classic)
Feels Like Home by Norah Jones
Julie London's Cry Me a River (I was in love with her at 18)
The Best of Irish Folk

Scotland the Real
Men's Resource Center by DooDooWah
Club Trini (Buffet's Band at its best)
Four Freshmen and Four Saxes
Duke Ellington, Ellington at Newport
Dan Zane
Jim Croce
The Bill Gaither Quartet
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
Jay Unger and Molly Mason (anything they play)

I will be remembering albums I left off this list that belong there for weeks to come. You can get a sample of some of these artists by doing a Google search. Try it. You'll like it.
==============

If you want to expand your musical vocabulary and hear a gutsy and bawdy original song, try "In Spite of Ourselves" on this UTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8

Another Prine song, "In a Town This Size," captures life in a community like the one we live in as perfectly as Ansel Adams caught Yosemite Valley on film.

Consider this:

In a town this size, there is no place to hide.
Everywhere you go, you meet someone you know.
You can't steal a kiss, in a place like this
How the rumors do fly, in a town this size

In a smoky bar
in the back seat of your car
in your own little house
someone's sure to find you out

What you do, and what you think
What you eat, and what you drink
If you smoke a cigarette
They'll be talking about your breath

In a town this size.....

There's no place to hide...

==================
You can hear it at

==================
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwA4M7-8NZ8

Election Recommendations .... Kinda

2010-10-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

*(Explanation for Lady Gaga, who wants you to vote, at bottom)

Camp Connell, CA -- You know those post cards you get in the mail every election eve, indicating the "approved slate?"
Well, this is my version of the "LaMont Approved Slate," telling you why I will and won't vote for certain things and people in November.
You are not required to pay any attention to this, but please do not assume any party affiliation or political leanings based on my history as a journalist. I have been one of those "failure to declare" people for over 30 years.
I never picketed or carried a protest sign, though I should have. I served in the Army, went to church, and owned a gun or two. And I voted in every election since I was 21.
The candidates I voted for over the years include every conceivable party and non-party to get onto a ballot. My great-grandfather ran a Whig newspaper, but I am not a Whig.

And, I did NOT charge anyone to buy space on my election recommendations the way the post card people do.

I WILL vote for candidates that demonstrate they have these characteristics:
-- Honesty.
I know. I know. Nobody's perfect. But I think a candidate for public office should have demonstrated throughout his or her history consistent acquaintance with the truth, and a willingness to state it when necessary. I understand that everyone sees things through different eyes and experience, and I do not object to honest criticisms of opponents or issues. But a liar does not deserve to be elected;
-- Experience that will help in making public decisions about public money and policy.
My choices tend to be people who have some government experience at a lower level if they are trying to move up. Running a company is not the same thing, nor is owning a business, large or small. I was once an executive and have been a manager, so you should trust me I when I say that does not qualify me for public office;
-- I prefer candidates who have actually worked for a living. This pretty much excludes people who inherit money, made it in the stock market or banking business, or were otherwise subsidized by the federal or state governments(most doctors and lawyers) unless they admit it and paid back their student loans;
-- Knowledge of the government office which they seek.
I do not mean someone who took a class or read a position paper. I mean the kind of people who have attended those endless boring but necessary meetings that help government at all levels function. I hated those meetings as a newspaper reporter, but always understood that is how government really gets something done. It takes research and study to gain real knowledge;
-- I prefer someone intelligent, but I'd rather elect an honest average person than a sharp crook.

I will NOT vote for a candidate who does the following:
-- Runs against President Obama when running for county commission. It's not the same, folks;
-- An incumbent who claims he "led the fight" if he did not lead the fight, the fight was unsuccessful or unworthy in the first place, or if -- as is usually the case -- the result made no difference;
-- Attacks his or her opponent as a KoolAid drinker, liberal, Neanderthal, pinko. socialist, right-wing fanatic, Palin clone, Obama-ite, progressive, FDR lover or Beck sympathizer, words used to hide the speaker's lack of knowledge. I can handle someone calling an opponent an idiot because there are some out there running for office, but they had better be prepared to prove it;
-- Wants a return to the "Good Old Days," meaning the Reagan era. You know, the era that gave us inflation, deregulation of the oil drillers, polluters and Wall Street con men, and the subsequent destruction of my stock market account and 401k, but made rich people a whole lot richer;
-- Always allows a "highly paid spokesperson" to speak for them, answer questions for them or write meaningless position papers. Candidates need to face the public and the press in open forums, not hide;
-- Redirects criticism away from him or her self by blaming the media, the opponent, colleagues, friends, or best of all -- unidentified conspirators;
-- Refuses to answer questions about experience, events in the past, or ideas for making this a better world;
-- Claims global warming is hokum;
-- Uses the terms "envirofreaks" or "tree huggers" to avoid discussing serious issues. I am one, seriously;
-- Claims to have God on their side;
-- Offers only criticism of the other person or party, and has no suggestions for improvement.

My "for" and "against" list on ballot propositions is somewhat shorter.

I will NOT vote for a proposition if:

-- It was put on the ballot by big oil companies, auto manufacturers, the Koch brothers, or any corporation or political party who tries to hide their motives. Corporations are not our friends, and neither are the filthy rich;
-- The name of the ballot issue is an obvious false front, such as "The Good Government Incentive Act" which really gives lobbyist what they wanted but could not sneak through the legislature by bribing people;
-- It makes the lives of the poor and true middle class more difficult;
-- It makes the lives of the rich and corporations easier. Geeze, they already own the legislature and Congress, what more do they want?
-- The proposition is poorly written, which many are, and does nothing to reform California's broken government.

I WILL vote for a proposition if it:

-- Reduces the power of lobbyists, special interests, my Congressman, corporations, and the very wealthy;
-- Forces disclosure of every dollar, and every minute of every day of every elected official;
-- Fixes a real problem the legislature can't fix;
-- Punishes bad guys, like polluters and people who rip off the poor and underrepresented;
-- Protects natural resources from the exploiters;
-- Saves our state parks from a legislature unable to do anything meaningful. They can't even supply toilet paper for the public rears.

These lists are far too short, but i just realized I may have to vote "none of the above" in most elections if I stick to this. You don't really expect me to be that consistent do you?

* The New York Times reported that if a website or blog mentions Lady Gaga the number of hits will soar. Buy her records. Check her website. Lady Gaga wants you to vote.

Why we need state parks - or not

2010-09-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

Point Lobos SP

Camp Connell, CA -- In November voters in California are being asked whether or not they think state parks are worth saving for future generations.

I understand that not every voter or would-be voter sees the question as that significant. Some people, judging by the blogs and comments I have seen in recent weeks, think it is a simple matter of opposing a new "tax." Some think it is a "user's fee" and they don't see themselves as users. Others believe the legislature should just take care of it. (None of those positions is based in reality, but I'll try to keep this blog positive.)

I think the ballot proposition is important as a measure of what we truly value, and what investments we feel are worth protecting.

Mono Lake Tufa Towers SP

A grass roots collection of people who like state parks managed to get enough signatures to get Proposition 21 on the state ballot. This was not a push by a giant out-of-state corporation that wants to keep polluting, or even a political "reform measure" by Democrats or Republicans attempting to guarantee their party's futures.
It is not anti-union, or anti-business. About the only implied criticism in the proposition is that the California legislature is incompetent and/or corrupt, an opinion shared by a majority of Californians.
Park advocates in this state, mostly from non-profit organizations that support parks and recreation, see this as a way to protect the future, went to work, and got enough signatures to force an election issue.

Asilomar State Beach Park

Here's what the proposition will do if passed:
-- Create a stable source of funding for the long-neglected state parks system by charging $18 more annually for each private vehicle car tag (business and RVs are exempt). That will create enough money to operate all the state parks every year.
-- Provide every Californian driving a private family vehicle free admission to state parks, a bargain for frequent park users and an incentive for others.
-- Remove the need for the legislature to pay for state parks from the general fund, freeing millions of dollars for other essential state services.
-- Take park budgeting out of the hands of the legislature (which can't figure out how to write a workable budget) and the governor (who annually threatens to shut down parks).
-- Boost rural counties' economies by providing stability to parks that are often the largest tourist attraction in the region. (My county, for example, receives between $6 million and $10 million in revenues to local small businesses from our park's tourists every year.)
-- Protect a major contributor to children's education, both outdoor and historical.
-- Allow deferred maintenance, to the tune of billions of dollars, to be slowly caught up with. That means less broken toilets, flooded septic systems, and run down facilities.
-- Protect billions of dollars invested in rare, spectacular or unique treasures within the state. California parks include uncut Coastal Redwood trees, popular surfing beaches, historical treasures from the Gold Rush, the best Railroad Museum in the world, winter beach spots for tourists, critical habitat for endangered species, historic sites from World War Two and Giant Sequoia groves, to name a few of over 200 special places.
From the border below San Diego to the Oregon boundary, every Californian is within an easy half-day of some spectacular sanctuary or spot important to our sense of history.

Bodie Ghost Town SP

Here's what the proposition won't do:
-- Allow the legislature to tap into park funds to pay their own salaries, trips to Hawaii, or meet with corporate lobbyist. The funds will be secured against tampering.
-- Allow the governor to use parks and their employees as political chips in the endless game of chicken California loves so much.
-- Add any burden to the already struggling state treasury. It is entirely self funding.

Little organized opposition exists to the proposition, and it has lots of grass roots supporters though not much money is being spent.
But passage is far from assured due to several factors a work in California these days. Voters are really and truly fed up with state government. Some anti-tax groups are urging a no vote based on misunderstanding where the money comes from, and how it will be protected from the legislature. And really embarrassing to me, some of the state's newspapers have opposed the measure based on lack of research or understand of how the proposition will work.
And there's always the "what's in it for me" crowd that claim they never visit a state park and never will so don't want to pay anything to support them. These same people don't want to pay taxes for roads in another part of the state ("Never drive there...") or for any public schools or libraries or museums ("Don't have kids, don't read, don't look...)"

Angel Island SP, San Francisco Bay

Unless the voters understand what they are being asked, and what they stand to lose, I fear the measure will fail.

I don't want my children and grandchildren to miss out on all that the state parks provide, but if it fails I hope the governor shuts down every park in the state. I hope they padlock the gates, go into a mothball status, and then let the legislature and the voters see what they have done.

In a couple of years we will understand the important role parks play in our lives, and can begin to repair the damage.

My livelihood does not depend on the state parks staying open. The benefits I gain are more family oriented, as that is where we gather often to celebrate being together, and that is where I take long walks.
I also volunteer to keep the trails open (not enough maintenance staff), guide walks (not enough interpreters) and help people find their way (not enough directional signs).
But I can use my time doing other things, and can find another place to walk in the woods.

But I hate to think of the waste and short-sightedness that would create that situation.
-30-
Calaveras Big Trees State Park

For more on the campaign FOR state parks, go to the following web sites:

http://www.yesforstateparks.com

or

www.calparks.org

Retirement scorecard -- Give me a B!

2010-08-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, CA - I had simple goals when I retired six short years ago after 42 years working as a journalist:

-- Avoid wearing ties and suits;

-- Read more;

-- Complete a family history project begun in the 1930s by my grandmother;

-- Avoid meetings and committees;

-- Be outdoors more, and --hopefully -- use hiking and skiing as a way to stay in decent physical condition;

-- Go sailing more often;

-- Play more music;

-- Do something positive to protect the environment for those who follow;

-- Watch the trees, and my children and grandchildren, grow.

Here's a report on what I have done, with my wife's help, and the things that still need work.

I rarely put on a tie or suit. Almost never. They gather dust in the closet, and I am glad. I believe I actually am averaging once a year: four funerals and one formal dinner. In our mountain community we wear shorts to church in summer and snow boots in winter. If this were graded, I'd demand an "A."

I have read a lot of books. Currently I am reading two books a week, sometimes three. I was reading five a week but couldn't remember what I was reading! Most are paperback fiction by popular authors. I've read or re-read almost all the Tony Hillerman books about Navajo country, lots of Dick Francis' horsey mysteries and every spy/intrigue/cop novel I can find. I also have read extensively on the history and cultures of Scotland and Ireland, read about the history of the Mother Lode region where I live, and even read about Tristan Jones' sailing adventures, Bill Bryson's travels in Australia, some Leon Uris and MacKinley Cantor and "The Shack." A lot of my books come from the neighborhood used book store, and I have a paper bag full of books on my bedside table. I am currently reading a yellowed 1941 edition of an unusually well-written book called "The Last Frontier" by Howard Fast.
Lots of dead Lamonts in the churchyard near Dunoon, Scotland

My lack of progress on the family history project is an embarrassment. I've done more research, including trips across the country tracking LaMonts from earlier generations, and visited Scotland where the graveyards are filled with dead Lamonts, and Ireland where no one remembers them because they left for America in 1740. But despite good intentions, I have barely begun to write any of this into readable form except for a biography of my father which I posted as a blog. Maybe this winter. (I know, this deserves a "F.")

For the first few years after retirement I did quite well avoiding committees and meetings, and then I started volunteering for things that seemed interesting. At this point I am serving on two committees, two non-profit boards and one search committee, all of which I care about. I have mixed feelings about meetings, but once committed I tend to stay with it. (For mental health, I play poker with friends on a regular basis. We are definitely NOT a committee, though it is a non-profit endeavor.)
Not so hard at work in the South Grove of Big Trees

I have definitely been outdoors much more than in my office-bound days. I did a lot of beach-walking when we stayed in Florida for two years, and since coming home to the mountains hiking is a part of my routine. In the summer I probably hike (or saunter) 12 miles a week, sometimes more, most of it as a volunteer doing patrols or guided walks at the local state park. The average drops in winter when the snows come, but I still manage to ski and snowshoe fairly often. But my manly physique tends to portly, and the only changes I have made is that my belly has moved lower with age, and my butt seems to be disappearing. But I am OK with that.

Our time for sailing has suffered from too much other stuff, and distance. But we still have our sailboat Good News docked in Alameda, and we get down onto the water when we can. It's great therapy.

I am not satisfied with the time I take for music. I am just lazy. Unless I have promised to play guitar or sing somewhere, or attend a music function, the instruments remain encased. I do own three more instruments, having gained a mandolin and a dobro, and a "boat guitar," but I can't claim to have made much progress. This is true even though last weekend I sang "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" with friends as a warm-up act at a local concert. Progress still needed.

I am spending a lot of time on my local environment, working in different ways to try and make things better. Pat and I both volunteered for six weeks of work in Yosemite National Park with the Yosemite Association after a 30-year love affair with that most beautiful of national parks. And we work regularly as docents at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. I lead guided walks among the Giant Sequoias and break trail for snowshoe walks in winter. This year I began working on the Trail Maintenance Crew. We normally work two days a week clearing trails (neglected for years by the idiot legislators who can't understand the need for park maintenance) and doing minor repair work. We have a great team filled with energy and spirit, and have managed to clean up every mile of every major trail in the 6,000 acre park this summer. It is enormously rewarding and a great learning experience. (Who else gets to see a bear in the wild on the way to work?) Our group includes experts on everything from biology to botany, wildlife to construction, so I learn something new every day I am in the woods. Join us when you are ready.
The work in the park led me to serve as a board member for the Calaveras Big Trees Association, the outfit that raises money for the park (so it won't fall apart due to neglect by the state). Concerns about my neighborhood in the forest also prompted me to serve on the board of a grass roots group called Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch which promotes good forestry practice, not the clear-cutting rape-the-land type practiced by some of our neighboring timber companies. I've learned a bit about Timber Harvest Plans (almost always approved by the state), and biodiversity and habitat protection. I just hope it is not too late.

Finally, Pat and I have had a wonderful chance to watch our grandchildren, and their parents, grow. Shortly after Pat and I moved to the mountains daughter Ruth and her husband Brian and children Delaney and Connor moved only 20 miles away, and we see them frequently. Then our son Zack moved here for a job, and last Spring his daughter Katie came to live with us. Katie and Delaney attend the same school, and Zack and I are co-coaches for Connor's soccer team.
So we now have our own family village.

I hope I have miles to go before I sleep, but I have no complaints. I just hope Grandmother LaMont's ghost will forgive me for not getting on with that family history project.

Not a bad place to do a little "work"

Reflections on Manzanar and America

2010-08-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

I first met Denis Wolcott after I hired him straight from college to come to work at the Marietta Ohio Times, a small newspaper in a small town that must have seemed a million miles away from his home in Southern California.
He arrived in the Mid-West still wearing Southern California garb, for which he took an inordinate amount of kidding. Marietta's social norms were not quite the same as those of the University of Southern California.
He survived, prospered, did a good job as a reporter, and like the rest of us working for Gannett in the 1970s, moved on to bigger and better things.
He's back in Southern California where he began, a father and a grandfather, and made a recent trip to one of America's historical sites.

I copied this off his Facebook posting. I recommend it to you.

Tolerance?
By Denis Wolcott

A recent camping trip up to the Eastern Sierras in CA with my two youngest daughters meant an opportunity to stop on the way home at the Manzanar Historic Site. Set near the foot of Mt. Whitney, Manzanar was one of the 10 relocation camps where more than 100,000 Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II.

Seeing is much better than reading about it. The girls were at first reluctant to go. They were tired and needed a shower. And, they had both been to the Holocaust exhibit at Washington, D.C., and were not excited to see more examples of hate and ugliness. They also remembered the former instructions to not bring up this topic in front of their grandfather (my dad) because it would result in a long debate. You see, my dad was on the side of those who thought the government was doing Japanese Americans a favor to relocate them to "protect" them from the hatred and bigotry rising up in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

So, as we approached Manzanar, I persisted and they were thankful I suggested this stop. (If you want to check out this site with a virtual tour, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2ebc8sv). It is very easy to stop along Highway 395 and spend 30 minutes or longer at a place that could be the closest this country came to a concentration camp (of course, without the mass killings). As thousands of other motorists zipped by, we did the tour.

History provides a great platform for today's events. Mixed in with a very telling story about the bigotry and events that allowed our country to this horrific decision to inter U.S. citizens are other examples of where the the world made mistakes. From denying women the right to vote, to segregation to the 9/11 attacks.

At this point in the tour and as we left Manzanar (after the must-see stop at the cemetery), I told my two youngest that in spite of all the history lessons that should help guide us away from making the same mistake, we are witnessing two more similar events: the immigation battle in Arizona and the debate over an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center.

We all hope our past is behind us, but, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself. This is why they teach history in school. This is why they erect monuments to help us remember.

What I've told my children, and any friends who can stand my occasional rants, is to avoid the trappings of being caught up in the heated debates on highly sensitive and politicized issues. The better course of action is to investigate the facts yourself - not let others feed you - and to make decisions with information, knowledge and a cooler head.

Thankfully, I'm beginning to see some of this in action with the debate over the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan, just blocks from the former World Trade Center. Some of the facts are starting to gain more attention than the ill-informed rhetoric and "hate" radio (some call it "talk" radio). Bravery and rational thinking, like that demonstrated by New York City Mayor Bloomberg, are being commended.

I was glad to hear my children talk about our country's founding (people fleeing other countries because of religious persecution to find safe haven here), and why our first amendment was the first amendment.

So as my two youngest children settle back into their summertime routines and look to grab as much fun as they can before hitting the books (and my oldest begins to raise her own and offer life lessons to her daughter), I vow to still occasionally throw the lessons of rational thinking at them. I truly believe all bright, young minds are born without a prejudice gene. And my hope for them is that they use the power of their minds and convictions to help this country from repeating its ugly past. I see these strengths in them now.

I remain hopeful.

And, I hope their examples give pause to others. At first, reluctant to accept an ugly past exists or, at least, not wanting to see a depressing site. Sure, who wants to see this?! But, eventually, with a little coaxing, willing to peak inside the building and gain some additional perspective from a factual and very revealing display. The result? Thank you for showing this to us. It was educational and opened my mind to more things to contemplate.

John Muir Laws seminars

2010-07-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

Press Release
FROM: Calaveras Big Trees Association
TO: Local and regional media
Subject: Field Journal Writing/Sketching Seminars
Date: July 12, 2010
*
Calaveras Big Trees State Park -- Naturalist, biologist, educator and artist John Muir "Jack" Laws will lead three seminars in the state park in mid-August, sessions designed to help young people start and keep a daily illustrated field journal.
Laws is the author and artist whose “Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada” is the standard for hikers and outdoor lovers. He is a wildlife biologist, and an associate at the California Academy of Sciences, and has won awards for environmental education. He has been a featured speaker at the Yosemite Association and at Calaveras Big Trees State Park and throughout the Sierra Nevada.
The emphasis in all three sessions will be on developing awareness and skills in young people.
The first two-hour session will be Friday, Aug. 13, at 6 p.m. Laws will hold a workshop designed for teachers, park docents and naturalists who work with children. He will teach techniques for educators and interpreters to help young people observe and to draw nature. A fee of $10 will be charged for the evening session for adults, and includes park admission (normally $8).
On Saturday, Aug. 14, Laws will lead two free sessions for children and youth at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Sketch pads and pencils will be provided for students. For those coming from outside the park for the sessions, the normal vehicle admission fee applies.
All sessions will begin inside Jack Knight Hall in the park, and seating is limited.

Reservations are required for all the sessions. To pre-register contact Sue or Tami at the park Visitors’ Center at 209-795-3840 Mon. - Fri. , 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., by August 6.

This is a great way for kids of all ages to learn the appreciation of nature. Laws, who spent six years backpacking the Sierra Nevada to research and illustrate the "Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada", will share tricks and techniques for drawing birds, mammals, plants and landscapes. He will note signs of the season. He will also help attendees achieve the discipline and good habits that will help keep a journal going once begun.
Here is the chance to learn to observe and appreciate the natural world in a whole new way.
No drawing experience is necessary. Adults bring your own sketchpad and pencils.
(Photos of Laws are available the following web site:
www.johnmuirlaws.com/publicityphotos.html)

My Father - Louis Ernest LaMont

2010-06-20T07:48:00.001-07:00

About 1930
In Coral Gables in 1952

Thoughts by his son 50 years after his death

My father’s 65-year life encompassed a lot of positive times: a comfortable childhood in a secure family which left him with a strong sense of home; an exciting youth including a good education; a love for books and poetry and music; a strong faith; a sense of optimism in a changing world; an active social life with a wide circle of friends as a young adult; the experience of travel and developing business skills and contacts throughout his native region; marriage and children, and living in a warm and comfortable place with beaches and fish. He always had people who loved him.

There were negatives times as well: the disruption of World War One and the Great Depression; the uncertainties of World War Two and the post-war recession; constant travel; the challenge of having a young family as an older man; ill health for at least 30 years of his life; divorce; maintaining the role as father from miles away, and economic uncertainties in the final years of his life.

But he lived and loved well.

Friends enjoyed his company and admired his contributions to any group he joined. He was an honest man. His work was meticulous, even when he was more interested in doing other things. He served his country well. His entire family -- grandparents, parents, numerous cousins and his children -- loved and respected him and enjoyed his company. He did what he felt was his duty, without complaint. He was never hesitant to express affection and gratitude and respect to the people around him. And he had very good manners.
Above all he was absolutely constant in loving his family, and showing that love through his actions.
His children, and in their turn the grandchildren and descendants he never knew, still benefit from his care and concern he expressed throughout his life.

Louis Ernest “Lep” LaMont

Louis Ernest LaMont was born at his grandparents’ home in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 17, 1892.
Montgomery was the capitol of the state, and a major river shipping point for crops from the Black Belt region. The area was famous for rich dark soil and massive fields of cotton.
The South in this era was caught between painful memories of the Civil War, which all the adults in the family had lived through, and the extreme nationalistic and Jim Crow years that followed.
Ernest was christened in the Methodist Church where his grandfather was a lay leader. He wore a long white dress made by his mother from a pattern in a popular magazine.
The style of living was “old fashioned” even Victorian. The women of that era were trained in “womanly skills” such as sewing, music and painting. Entertainment centered around socials and theatrical and musical performances, often at church or in the home.
The men in the his extended family were printers and strong union supporters. Ernest’ grandfather had been a foreman at the Montgomery Advertiser since before the Civil War, and his uncles had worked there or at the Paragon Press, a local printing company.
Ernest’ parents, Roswell DeEstra LaMont and Mary “Mollie” Barry LaMont, met when Ernest’s father (known as R.D.) was working as a printer with his grandfather Barry.
The home Ernest he was born in was built before the Civil War. It was an oversized log cabin that had been added to over the years until it had a shaded porch on the front and was planked over. It looked like a frame house, rather than a cabin, and faced Whitman street. A garden was planted out front, and they had a milk cow in a shed.
The home was on a hill above downtown Montgomery, originally the edge of town.
Ernest’ parents were living In Birmingham at the time, where his father was working for the Birmingham News, but returned to the Barry home for the birth.
Roswell was a native of New York who had moved south from Michigan in the 1880s. Ernest’ mother Mollie was a native of Lowndes County southwest of Montgomery, where her grandparents still lived. She had moved with her parents to Montgomery in 1860.
Ernest always considered Montgomery his home.
His father Roswell lived and worked as a journeyman printer in different towns throughout Alabama. He owned print shops and newspapers in Geneva, in South Alabama, and in North Florida near Pensacola.
As an infant and young child, Ernest and his mother Mollie often accompanied Roswell and lived temporarily away from Montgomery. In 1900 they lived in Geneva long enough for him to take part in a Sunday School pageant.
Ernest attended schools in Montgomery and lived in the Barry family home most of his childhood.
The Barry family was reasonably prosperous. As tradesmen they lived in town, owned their own home and acquired some symbols of status: a large piano, massive furniture, a library of classic books, oil paintings and needlepoint on the wall, a Tiffany lamp in the parlor. They traveled to the Gulf Coast for fishing trips and vacations, and they owned property outside Montgomery at a place called Mountain Creek.
None of the LaMont relatives lived nearby, having scattered across New York, Michigan and Wisconsin in the 1800s. Most LaMonts were farmers or merchants.
Ernest was raised in town. He was never a farm boy. Social life centered on the family, church and school.
He was an only child, born relatively late in his parents’ lives, and was surrounded by Barry family members, particularly his aunts who remained single and at home.
Early photos of him show thin hair, a narrow face, a prominent nose, and stiff formal collar.
When he was a boy the United States was entering the industrialized 20th Century. His modern world included new marvels like radio, electricity and telephones, none of which were in his home when he was born.
Horse and buggy was the dominant transportation. People walked everywhere. Street cars were pulled by horses, and cotton bales were brought to the market in the heart of town by black men, many the sons of former slaves, in mule-draw wagons.
As a teenager he would have seen the first automobile drive through town, and watched his first airplane fly overhead.
At about 18 years old Ernest and another boy built a crystal receiver set from a mail-order house and were able to listen to wireless signals for the first time. The event was written up in the local newspaper.
While he was a student his parents and grandparents rebuilt the family home. The original log home sat at corner of Clayton, facing Whitman. They built a new Victorian-style house on the same lot but facing 508 Clayton Street. Builders incorporated the original log building into the back of the new house. Today the old log house serves as the kitchen of the home.
Family photo albums include pictures of what his mother called “the old home place” and the new home built around 1905. (She sold her home in the 1930s. The current owner discovered the old section and has stripped away the interior walls that hid the logs in the kitchen to reveal he history of the home.)
Ernest attended an all-male school called Boys High School. The curriculum included Latin and Greek and every student was trained in formal penmanship and studied classic literature.
In a school play he acted the part of a leopard, and was given the nickname “Lep.” His friends called him that for the rest of his life.
Around 1910 Ernest briefly attended college at Auburn University. There is no record of when he left or why.
At that time he and several friends plotted to get rich by going to Central America, then known as the Banana Republics, to make their fortunes. He claimed they saved enough money for passage, but spent it all when they got to New Orleans, and never got on the boat. They had to come home and go to work.
Ernest worked at a variety of jobs in Montgomery. He worked at a local florist shop, loaded gold and silver coins at the Fourth National Bank, and became an accounting clerk.
When World War One began he joined the Alabama National Guard. He worked two years as a civilian for the Adjutant General of the State of Alabama as disbursing officer for the state’s military department, responsible for delivering supplies and troops being moved to training posts and to ports bound for Europe. He was paid $4 a day.
He also went to work for the state draft board office while waiting to go on active duty in the Army, apparently holding down two jobs.
Ernest formally enlisted in the Army on July 4, 1917, and was assigned as a PFC in the Quartermaster Corps But he was not called up for training until December.
While waiting he ran the draft board office, replacing an Army officer who had been reassigned, and was named Draft Executive. He wore civilian clothes to work but was considered a member of the Army.
The appointment, the local newspaper noted, made him the youngest draft executive in the nation. He would have been 25 years old at the time.
Late in 1917 the Army sent him to train with the Quartermaster Corps at Camp Joseph E. Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was paid $30 a month.
Early in February 1918 Ernest was on a troop train heading for the port at Newport News, Virginia, to sail for Europe when the tracks were blocked by a derailment. His unit had been headed for the trenches but was pulled off the train and put to work cleaning up the mess left behind.
By the time his unit was ready to go again, new orders caught up with him.
The Army was advised by state officials that he was “irreplaceable” at the draft office in Montgomery, and he was released for reassignment back to his old job with the full title and a pending promotion to Major.
He went back to Montgomery a few days before his birthday in 1918 and took over as executive of the draft board.
That summer the Butler Alabama Choctaw Weekly Banner weekly newspaper blasted him in an editorial, “A Call to Americanism!!” and attacked “this Frenchman” for sending American boys off to war. The newspaper did not note my father was a Scots-Irish decent, his ancestors had fought in the Revolution, he had already enlisted in the Army and he was a native of Alabama.
He found the editorial amusing, though I suspect his mother did not.
That same summer a severe flu epidemic swept the nation, killing thousands. A photograph of Montgomery’s Fourth of July celebration shows crowds of people wearing protective face masks to avoid spreading infection.
Ernest stayed at the Draft Board job until Spring of 1919, closing out the office after the end of the war. His mementoes of the Army were a Colt 38 Special revolver which had been his sidearm in the service, and photos from the training camp in Jacksonville.
When the Roaring 20s began he was a 27 year-old bachelor from an “acceptable” local family and knew everybody in what was then a small town. He was a Mason and joined the American Legion. One of his classmates became Montgomery mayor. Another became a U.S. Senator. Another a judge. His best friend owned a jewelry store downtown.
He kept several photo albums from that time filled with pictures of social events, family musicals, summer camping outings at ”the creek” and fishing trips with his family to Perdido Bay and Pensacola, Florida.
He kept a notebook of poetry, some copied from things he liked and some apparently that he wrote. He shared poems with friends, and began to build a library including Dickens and the complete works of O. Henry.
Ernest was a charter member of Montgomery’s Beauvoir Country Club, though he never cared much for golf.
He attended, as did his family, the local Methodist-Episcopal church on Court Street that his grandfather Barry had helped establish in the 1800s.
He also was briefly arrested drinking from a flask underneath the grandstands at an Auburn Football game, his only run-in with the law. He laughed about it when he told the story as an incident from Prohibition Days.
His surviving papers don’t reveal details about what he did for a living at the time. A good friend chided him in a letter for a lack of ambition, but Ernest seemed always to be gainfully employed by a series of insurance companies.
In later years people who knew him in the 1920s and 1930s remembered him as a man with “perfect manners,” honest, a charming companion and good friend. He was “dapper” in a way that people understood in the 1920s and 1930s.
My mother (who married him later) said that that during the Roaring 20s he was acquainted with people like Zelda Sayre, whose family lived nearby She later married F. Scott Fitzgerald, a frequent Montgomery visitor during the war. There is a photo somewhere of Zelda, about age 16, along with young adults all in their 20s, at a creek side swimming party with his friends.
Ernest’ social life included a lot of social drinking-- he preferred Four Roses blended whiskey -- and at least two of his close friends died alcoholics.
Photos at the time show him to be neat and precise in appearance and dress, and unmarked by age. He was 5 foot 7 inches tall, and was thin or even skinny his entire life. Photographs of him from that era resemble similar photos of the dancer Fred Astair.
Ernest’ photos and letters to his mother indicate he enjoyed being single, traveling and working at different places throughout the South.
By 1927 he was living in Charlotte, N.C., working for an insurance company traveling the South. He wrote his mother regularly and visited Montgomery in a brand new 1927 Chevrolet Coupe which he bought for $540.
He left Charlotte briefly when his father, who had been working as a printer in Cuba and Miami, had a heart attack and died late that Spring. He corresponded the details of the burial and the small estate to his mother and then visited her by train before returning the Charlotte. He liked the climate and surroundings in the Miami area. He enjoyed the beaches, fishing and the horse races.
Around 1930 my father moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to live and work. Three of his best friends from a Montgomery family lived there -- Richard, Ed and Sanders Hickey. Ernest had been particularly close to Sanders, who died early, and he
eventually named me, his son, for him. He became good friends and roommate with Richard during the early 1930s, the last years of prohibition. (Richard later became my godfather.)
Ernest and Richard shared an apartment in a businessmen's hotel, the Cox-Carlton, near the corner of Ponce DeLeon and Peachtree streets. It is across the street from the movie theater where “Gone With The Wind” had its premier.
Friends stored kegs of illegal whiskey in the big cedar closet in their apartment, a service they were willing to render for a small “evaporation tax.”
Ernest traveled the South as an insurance auditor keeping track of claims and payments from firms, including the coal industry. A pattern of work was established that was followed for 25 years: traveling constantly by automobile throughout the South; staying in business-oriented hotels, and always keeping his roots in Montgomery. (When I was a child I thought my father knew every hotel manager and desk clerk in five states.)

Ernest was 40 and living a happy bachelor life in booming Atlanta when he met Dorothy Strickland, a 20-year-old nurse from North Georgia. They met through a mutual friend who had a detective agency and whose girl friend ran the women’s boarding house where Dorothy and her sister lived, not far off Peachtree Street.
Dorothy described Ernest, whom she always called “Lep,” as “charming and good looking” and said he had almost courtly good manners. “Lep” and “Dot” had friends and interests in common.
They went back to the Barry home on Clayton in Montgomery for the wedding on April 8, 1933, the height of the Great Depression.
Times were difficult all over the country but they seemed to survive reasonably well. Dorothy always had work at local hospitals. Ernest changed jobs several times in the 1930s, but was able to work despite the bad economy. He continued to travel. They moved several times.
They rented an apartment on Peachtree Street, and moved to a rented house in Decatur in the late 1930s.
Money was an issue for Dorothy later in their married life, but the lack of it never seemed to bother Ernest. He once wrote a letter to his mother that he would come to visit here when he could get enough money for a train ticket, less than $5 at the time.
During the late 30s they dealt with big changes in their new lives together.
Dorothy’s much-admired older brother was killed while training pilots at the Atlanta Air Field south of town. Her father had an severe heart attack after hearing the news over the telephone, and ended up living with them temporarily during his recovery. He died within a year.
In February 1937 their first child, Mary Elizabeth LaMont, was born in Atlanta.
Shortly after that Ernest’s mother Mollie, in her 80s, was forced to sell her Montgomery home. She lived with Ernest and Dorothy in Atlanta until she died in their home in 1939.
Ernest’s close connections to Montgomery were weakened, but not broken. He stayed in close touch with his Barry cousins and visited often.
In 1939 he bought a Plymouth Coupe for business and family. That car stayed in the family through the war years and beyond and he called it “Old Betsy.”
In November 1940 I was born while the family was still living in Atlanta, living in a small house they had purchased from Richard Hickey just off the golf course near East Lake Country Club.
More changes were in store as World War Two began to reshape the country.
Ernest and Dorothy moved the family to Mobile, Alabama, in 1942. He continued to work and travel for Bituminous Casualty Company, but in a different territory. Dorothy took a job working as a nurse in the county welfare clinic.
The family lived in an area known as Spring Hill in a development built to handle the crowds of war workers that flooded the town. The rented house was small, wood-framed, in a hilly area covered by pine trees. Most of the neighbors were young couples who had come to town to work for war industries. Single men lived in dormitories near war plants, or rented rooms in homes downtown.
Mobile at that time was one of the fastest growing towns in the country. Brookley Air Force Base, shipbuilding and major port facilities, made it a hub of war-based activity.
The housing area the family lived in provided outdoor movies on summer nights, sitting on blankets under the trees swatting mosquitoes. Entertainment included going down to the shipyards for the launching of Liberty Ships. Mardi Gras, a weeks-long festival more family oriented than in neighboring New Orleans, was a major annual entertainment.
Around 1944 the family moved further into the city, to the downstairs of a house carved into a duplex on the main street of town. They lived at 1214 Government street, the east-west thoroughfare which also served as U.S. Highway 90. It was a big pale yellow house with a large front porch, giant oak trees, azaleas in the front yard and pecan trees and collapsing servant quarters in the back.
Ernest traveled constantly and was seldom at home. Money seemed to be an constant issue between husband and wife.
One day in 1948 my father came by my elementary school to tell me that he and mother were getting a divorce and he would not be living with the family anymore.
He was full of reassurances, but was clearly unhappy. The marriage was over, and a new chapter in my father’s life had begun.
Much later my mother said she was “too young and silly” to marry a man his age and background. Neither ever explained exactly what happened, if they understood it. The legal reasons for the divorce were “irreconcilable differences.” She acknowledged later that she had expectations he could not meet. He never talked about it.
He also never made much adjustment from traveling, living in hotels and eating in restaurants to being a homebody. He was caring, kind and loving, but as children we did not expect him to show up for scout outings, swimming lessons or baseball games. We got encouraging letters instead.
His health, which had not been good for a decade, was getting worse. He smoked Camel cigarettes constantly, and the years of constant travel were wearing on him. He was in pain much of the time.
He had rheumatoid arthritis, was underweight and he was almost completely bald.
In 1948 Ernest moved his few belongings, most in an Army trunk filled with family papers and photo albums, to the basement of his cousin John Barry’s house on Cherry Street in Montgomery 200 miles away. That was his base for travel and work for the next few years.
He visited Mobile frequently and wrote letters constantly, making sure my sister and I knew of his attention and affection. He and Dorothy were cordial but distant. Both insisted that my sister and I respect and obey the other parent. I never heard him speak an ill word about my mother.
The next few years were difficult for him, but he always worked hard to remain in close touch with my sister and me.
He wrote at least one letter every week to both of us children for almost a decade. He would often tell funny stories or relate small events from his life. He reported on a trip to the race track, where he lost on a two dollar bet, and he would tell us about fishing in the Florida Keys.
He made up bedtime stories for us, in which we played starring roles, all typed meticulously onto hotel stationary on his Royal portable he used for business. He planned trips we could make together to interesting places. He monitored our progress in school.
Sometimes he wrote lonely letters asking us to write more often, wanting to know what were we doing and why we didn’t let him know what was going on. Once in a while his frustration would show and he would threaten, gently, to withhold our allowance until he heard from us. (We were both poor letter writers.)
During the first few years after the divorce Ernest would travel to Mobile and stay at the Battle House Hotel, and we children would visit or stay with him there. He insisted on being filled on in details of my sister’s increasingly active social life, and approved of most of her boyfriends and all of her school activities. Once when he did not approve of a boyfriend he wrote her a long thoughtful letter acknowledging her right to choose her friends but firmly stating his reasons for concern.
He taught Mary how to drive, and showed me how to to shoot his Army pistol, and then bought me a shotgun for hunting and taught me how to use it safely. He rented a small boat so we could go fishing.
In the summer my sister and I took turns spending several weeks with him while he worked, and we got to see a lot of the South from his un-air-conditioned car. We would travel with him, sometimes piling up in the back seat of the car with comic books and a candy bar. We waited in the car outside the offices of coal mines near Birmingham, and plants in Tennessee and Georgia, while he did audits inside.
We would ride down the highways with the windows wide open, summer heat blasting through, loudly singing songs he had known from his youth. When we would approach a town he would suggest we quiet down a bit so we would not shock the local residents.
My father provided rewards for us for accompanying him. We got to see Rock City, Ruby Falls, Civil War battlefields and large public swimming pools all over the South. He showed us the Confederate flag his aunts had sewn for the burial casket for Jefferson Davis in a museum.
If there was a beach nearby, we would detour for a quick visit.
He introduced us to his friends along the way, people he had known from decades of travel, or family friends from Montgomery and Atlanta.
He was lonely outside the summers, and his health grew steadily worse.
Even in the South the winters and wet seasons were brutal on his arthritis. Doctors kept trying different treatments and medicines that did not ease the increasing pain. One doctor told my father the source of his pain was his teeth, and so he had all of his teeth pulled. He got no relief.
He tried numerous strong medications, some of which made him ill.
In 1952 he announced to us in a letter that his “prayers had been answered” and he had been able to find a job in Miami, Florida, where it was warm, he had friends and little travel would be required.
He wrote hopeful cheerful letters about finding an apartment in Coral Gables that was near his work, close to fun things to do when we visited, and not too expensive.
By this time, primarily because of his health, he had been working on a “piece work” basis. The insurance company would send him payroll audits to accomplish by a certain date, and he was paid based on how many he completed.
The Florida job provided a regular salary, with a company car and benefits.
For a while.
The winters were mild, he had good friends who lived nearby, and he had a place to call home after living out of hotels for several years.
During the years he lived in South Florida my sister and I spent summers with him and would see him on some holidays during the school year. He could not see us often because of the distance and expense. But he kept up the steady stream of letters reporting on his life, asking about ours, and being supportive .
Long distance telephone phone calls were used only in emergencies in the early 1950s, and travel by airplane was a luxury affordable to few.
My father would drive 800 miles to see us, or we would take an overnight train trip to Miami via Jacksonville for our summer trips.
Letters were our primary connection, and my father was faithful and consistent. Every week brought a personal letter, often detailed. Every accomplishment or concern brought a quick response, by mail.
My sister and I were not good letter writers despite encouragement from our mother, but our father never stopped writing to us no matter where he was. I have more than 200 letters from those years, just a sampling of his constant efforts.
Summers together in Florida were fun for us children and for him. The beaches were not far way. A large ice skating rink was within walking distance. The public library was within two blocks, and the bus system was cheap, safe and efficient. We explored the Everglades and the Florida Keys, places my father had been with his father in the 1920s, and much of the rest of Florida. He knew how to catch fish.
He took us to the Methodist Church near the University of Miami on Sundays.
He read a Bible chapter aloud to us every night at bedtime, and marked each chapter off with a Number Two yellow pencil. He had read through the entire book several times, and the marks were adding up.
He took us to every big tourist attraction in the state: Silver Springs, Monkey Jungle, Gatorland and his favorite, Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute where we watched “explorers” milk rattlesnakes for venom.
Every Fourth of July we vacationed at a motel on the north end of Miami Beach, where the rooms were less expensive, and we spent the long weekend in beach-front luxury.
My sister and I were able to help my father with household tasks during the summers, as his health continued to fail.
In the Spring of 1955, while we were back in school in Mobile, my father wrote my sister and me and our mother asking for help. His health was getting worse, and he could barely work part-time. His arthritis was crippling him to the point it was very difficult to dress or shave or bathe.
My sister, a senior in high school, decided that she should attend college at the University of Miami and help our father manage. She became his caregiver, and both parents came up with the money for her tuition.
I spent that summer in Florida with my father, and my sister arrived and enrolled as a college freshman at the beginning of Fall semester.
By the time my sister moved to Florida to help our father’s health was so poor he was no longer able to work much. He had little or no savings.
I joined them in Florida in January of 1956, transferring to Coral Gables High School for the second semester that year. The three of us got along well except for occasional brother-sister disagreements which my father refereed.
Late that Spring my father decided he wanted to move back to Montgomery.
He was 64 years old, unemployed, emaciated, crippled to the point he could no longer type or put a shirt on by himself. He needed medical care and felt he could get it easier at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Montgomery.
He was stooped, frail, and tired. He looked 20 years older than he was.
He was not maudlin about it, but he told us frankly that he wanted to go back to Montgomery “to die at home.”
Our mother, his ex-wife, who had divorced him almost a decade earlier and had since remarried, jumped in to help do whatever was necessary for her children and their father.
My sister Mary gave up college after one year and started looking for work in Montgomery.
Our father -- we always called him Daddy -- accepted what he could not change, and looked forward to getting back to his home ground.
Our mother came to Coral Gables and picked us all up in May, and drove the 900 miles to Montgomery. My father and sister moved into an apartment a few blocks from where he had been born. She went to work.
Daddy’s health never improved. Every two or three months his doctor would put him into the Veteran’s hospital. The staff would build up his strength and send him home.
By late fall he had been in the hospital multiple times, but was unable to regain his health. It was painful to walk. He was sick most of the time, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, sometimes less. He would add a few pounds in the hospital, then lose it immediately.
He was no longer able to drive. That Fall he stayed inside the apartment most of the time, and was unable to reconnect with the remaining friends from his youth.
My sister had a job, kept house, and did what she could to make him comfortable.
He went back into the hospital for the last time on Christmas Eve 1956.
By this time our mother had moved close to Montgomery to help, and I was newly enrolled in a military school not far away. She and I spent a cold wet holiday in an old house at Mount Meigs, not far from the hospital.
January was spent waiting, and I visited every weekend. Daddy did not get better.
In January 1957 he wrote a list of items he needed on the back of an envelope, and reminded himself of questions to ask my sister: “When I am going to get out of here?”
He died during the early morning hours February 25, one week after his 65th birthday.
The cause of death on the death certificate was listed as “general debility.” He had developed tuberculosis and his weight had dropped to 80 pounds.
He didn’t leave a lot of material possessions.
Most of the things he owned were contained in one small suitcase-- he called it his “ditty bag.” He also left behind a few items of furniture that remained from the Barry home, and a life insurance policy that eventually helped pay my way through college.
He was buried at Montgomery’s old Oakwood Cemetery in the family plot. A Methodist minister was assisted by a military honor guard and representatives of the local Masonic Lodge. The pall bearers were Barry relatives and old friends. The small crowd was mostly made up of cousins, and a few old friends from the early days in Montgomery.
Within a hundred yards of his grave is a hillside covered with graves of unknown soldiers from the Civil War. Across the railroad tracks on the next hill is the popular grave of country music star Hank Williams.

Sanders Hickey LaMont, Camp Connell, CA, March 2009
----------------------------

The Evolution of LaMonts

2010-05-24T09:02:00.001-07:00

Camp Connell, CA - Remember all those dull seminars, usually entitled "Managing Change," or "Planning for Success in 2020" or something like that.
Our retired lifestyle in the mountains is exempt from the business-world platitudes, but not from change.
We hiked. We read lots of books. We traveled. We enjoyed our nearby children and grandchildren. We volunteered, each according to our skill set: Pat taught children at church and in the nearby state park, and I led guided walks and worked on the trail maintenance in the forest.
It was as comfortable as an AARP magazine article.
Starting last year we began to notice cosmic shifts in our universe. Pat tripped (chasing a 12-year-old) and ended up having minor surgery on her nose, which didn't work.
Son Zack found employment at a nearby ski resort, and came to live with us to be near his job.
I took a hard fall on icy snow the first day of ski season and had to lay off a month while my ribs healed. Then on a routine visit to the skin doctor he found a skin cancer which required minor surgery -- you guessed it -- on my nose. The surgery turned out to be a bit more extensive than I expected and required a graft, which did not improve my semi-rugged looks. I ended up with a notched nose, decided the pirate look was okay, but was grounded for two months during the healing process.
Then Cabin Fever set in.
Just as the endless winter seemed to be over (it snowed again this week) Zack's 12-year-old daughter Katelynn came to live with him, and us.
The empty nest is not so empty any more.
Katie's a joy and a blessing. Zack is a help, and a blessing.
And we are all very busy.
As you might imagine, the empty nest quiet has been replaced by Justin Beiber music, home schooling, and discussions about appropriate wear for an almost-teen.
We also have a new dog named Rusty. He's technically Katie's dog but she lets us share him.
Pat is principal of our "school," and carries most of the workload. A good friend Jim Lashbrook volunteered to teach her math class, which has been a blessing. For those who know anything about our family's math abilities, we can do math but don't really remember why.
I teach spelling and grammar, and Zack (who is working) works on reading.
Pat has learned a lot about home school requirements and resources, and the public school system here has been a great help.
So here we are, with both our children and their families nearby, and two of them living with us.
That's a blessing few people have in this modern world of scattered families, though we certainly know several.
Years ago Pat and I moved 3,000 miles away from our families to take a California job, leaving our parents and all our kinfolk back East.
We now feel a bit like the Waltons, with three generations under one roof, particularly at bedtime when voices from within the house call out:
"Goodnight Grandma. Goodnight Papa."
And then Zack chips in "Goodnight Mom. Goodnight Dad."

And then I say: "Did someone take the dog out?"

And it gets very quiet.

Read the fine print

2010-04-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Camp Connell, CA -- California voters are always being asked to vote for or against a long list of initiatives. The subjects are often obscure, and the meaning unclear.

Be sure and read the fine print. Better yet, do some research.

A good example is the mailing I just received at home from something called the "California Jobs Initiative." It is a request to sign a petition, but it is misleading and masks the real purpose.

It is a corporate-paid campaign to fool you and me. The have a legal right to try and change existing law this way, even if it is essentially dishonest. There is no law against lying to the public when politics are involved.

The mailing/petition claims to represent "working families and small businesses."

But in reality, it's just a sham for massive corporations that want to avoid being responsible citizens. There are no working families or small businesses paying for the expensive political campaign.

Guess what. It's the big oil companies and corporate representatives trying to avoid paying their fair share to help clean up the air they have been fouling for years with old equipment in refineries and bad practices.

There are no new taxes involved. This law was passed and approved by voters some time ago, but is just now coming into play because the corporations lobbied a big delay in implementation.
The list of "supporters" reads like a Who's Who of organizations that want to protect us: Chambers of Commerce and so-called Taxpayer Associations lead the list.

They claim energy rates will go through the roof if this "new" tax is passed, with no evidence to back the claim.

They do not point out that new jobs will be created, and some economists (not paid by oil corporations) believe it will actually stimulate the economy and bring major financial benefits.

If you are inclined to believe the mail, I encourage you to do more homework. Several independent news organizations in the state have reported on the financing and the reality of this campaign.

Even our Republican governor thinks this is a misleading campaign.

Find out for yourself. The back of the envelop gives you a clue when it says "major funding by Valero Energy..." That's the billion-dollar oil company.

Or, you can join me in tearing up the petition and returning it in the mail to the corporate sponsors.

Send them a message.

A Head Case

2010-04-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

A temporary solution to serious problem

Alameda, Ca- People take toilets for granted.
They sit, usually shiny and quiet, until needed. Then they work.

We don't have to think about them, fortunately, and we assume they will always be there, working, playing their part in modern America's disposal systems.

But not on a boat.

First off, and toilet is not a toilet on a boat. It is a head.

I do not know why.
It just is.

Sailors don't say words like "left" and "right." It's "port" and "starboard." "Up" and "down" become "topside" and "belowdecks." And "front" and "back" are "fore" and "aft."

And even though lots of ropes are all over the place, we never call a rope a rope. It is a line or a sheet.

That's probably why everything on a boat cost more. We have to pay someone to think up different names.

So a toilet on a boat is a marine head.

And the electric marine head on our boat "Good News" died.

Marine heads are so complicated they come with written instructions and warning labels. The boat will sink and "death or dying will result" if you do not follow instructions.

You can't put hardly anything in a marine head without breaking the rules.
We are people who always obey the rules, but the old head still broke.

I will never take the head on our boat for granted again after spending the better part of a week replacing it.

Unlike normal toilets, heads get old. The corrosion associated with salt water and other stuff destroys whatever it is that makes a head work. We had a ten-year-old electric head on our boat, and the signs had been more and more obvious in the past few months that it was dying.

Instead of a satisfying and steady WHIRRRRRR when you pushed the button, it tended to sound more like Whir-WHIR whir-whir WHIR-whir.

Then it stopped whirring completely.

Push the button, and the lights dimmed.

But nothing went away.

Fortunately we spotted this tendency before it became a crisis.

So I did what any sailor would do: I got my credit card out and went to the marine supply store (a hardware store for the incredibly wealthy) and bought a repair kit for only $65.

Shopping by Internet only works sometimes

Question: Why to they call it a boat?
Answer: That is an abbreviation for "Bring Out Another Thousand."

I went back to the boat, read the instructions, and discovered I had the wrong repair kit.

It turned out, after a day or so of wrestling with nuts and bolts and non-flexing flexible pipes, that hidden next to the head was a pump. A dead pump. A pump without which the electric marine head would not work.

No problem. I took the pump to several experts who know how to repair pumps. The first one told me he would charge $105 an hour to look at the pump, though he didn't want to. And it probably was dead anyway.
The second one said buy a new pump; old pumps rarely can be repaired. His advice was free, but the replacement pumps I found in the Internet cost around $400. For a lousy little pump.

Consensus was quickly reached: buy a brand new complete head, including pump. They are cheaper than the pumps alone.

Like I said, it is a boat. Logic does not apply.

The options ranged from a simple non-electric hand-pumped model for less than $200, to the whiz-bang super-duper electronic/vacuum model for somewhere around $800. Installation extra.

After two weeks of research and looking I bought a nice new electric head for about $400.

I considered briefly paying a professional to install it, but thought to myself, "Self, how hard can it be?"
Besides, it would probably cost $105 an hour plus travel time to get a specialist to deal with a marine head. A mere plumber would never do.

Fortunately, because I own a boat I have enough tools to rebuild the Space Shuttle so I did not have to buy new tools. I am somewhat limited in the skill area, however.

I began taking out the old plumbing on Monday. I finished the job on Friday, or at least I think I did. My wife requires at least one more series of leak tests when we get back to the boat.

Between Monday and Friday I found old pipes, theoretically flexible, needed replacing. A disgusting but manageable job, if you have a week to spend on it. (Note to do-it-your-selfers: when you remove an old pipe connected to a head, very quickly cap the pipe to avoid the dreaded septic scent pervading the atmosphere.)

That simple job required every tool I own, including a heat gun and a kitchen knife, plus more strength than I have.

The old head came out easily except for scrubbing down the entire area with chemicals and disinfectants. Several times. The pipes were not so simple.

More trips were required to to marine supply store where I bought the world's most expensive pipes and clamps. Did you know that a flexible pipe can cost as much as $3.99 a foot, and simple clamps can be almost $5 a pop?

I thought I would be done on the third day, but everything took longer and required more trips back to the store.

On Thursday, the fourth day, I thought I was done. Time for the fresh water test.

The head leaked. As if it had never been connected.
Fortunately, it was clean water pouring onto the floorboards (nautical term: "the deck.").

It turned out that the brand new fittings to connect various pipes, provided thoughtfully by the manufacturer, did not fit at all. Totally worthless, even when I tried my patented repair method of applying mountains of goopy stuff on them. I keep large quantities of goopy stuff, and duct tape, in my tool kit.

But every problem has an answer. Undaunted, I rescued an old pipe with good fittings from the trash, made sure they were thoroughly cleaned, and after several hours of ripping and sawing out the brand new expensive fittings and reinstalling the old, had the problem fixed.

It passed the leak test, and so we went sailing. Which is what sailing is actually supposed to be about.
A beautiful Spring day on San Francisco Bay
The reward for a job well done: a lovely afternoon on San Francisco Bay, and a good Mexican dinner with a cold Negra Modelo that night.

As we were getting ready to leave the boat for home the next morning, my wife pointed out as gently as possible that she detected a tiny bit of a fresh water had leaked around the base.

I thought about that briefly.

Then I decided to use what my generation knows as the "Vietnam Solution" adopted by Lyndon Johnson: I declared victory and left for home.

It'll be there when I get back.

The new head: it works, I think

But I may rename the boat.

Spring is trying real hard....

2010-03-10T17:34:00.001-08:00

Camp Connell, Ca -- That's a Black-capped Oregon Junco pecking away at out bird feeder outside the kitchen window,
The bird, and his flock of friends, have begun swarming around the house in the last week or so as the weather is trying to decide what season we are in. We are at 5,000 feet elevation so Winter is still toying with us.
We have had a wave of Spring storms, mostly cold and wet, move in from the North Pacific.
So we have rain, then it gets colder, and we get a new layer of snow, then the sun comes out and it starts melting. Then the cycle starts again.
The icicles on the bird feeder are a result of those cycles, but the birds don't seem to mind.
The Grey Squirrels are moving around a lot too, as are the Stellar's Jays. The deer have not yet returned, waiting on the ground-covering snow to melt any day now.

Just down the mountain, the grass is a brilliant green and other critters are on the move. This beautiful skunk was getting a drink of cool water from a ditch near the Ironstone Vineyard near Murphys. I kept a respectful distance and he waddled away, only slightly irritated. but not spinning around and aiming his artillery in my direction as he will do when really threatened.

At Murphys' elevation, somewhere around 2,000 feet, the oak trees are not yet ready but the grasses are.

When you hear about the beautiful rolling hills of California, this is the place. It is spectacular in Spring as the plants awaken and the animals return to warm-weather patterns. The grass looks like the scenes we saw in Ireland last Fall. Almost hurts your eyes.

Or makes you sing for joy.
The old hymn "How Great Thou Art"expresses it perfectly:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

I did not try to sing to the birds and skunks and squirrels. Didn't want to scare them off.

Earlier in the week I was driving on the highway near Calaveras Big Trees State Park and a coyote started to cross the road in front of me. He saw me coming, stopped, and backed up to the edge of the road and sat down to wait for me to pass, completely adapted to passing cars even here on the edge of the wilderness. Smart critters. No wonder they are the source of many legends among native people.

I missed a lot of good animal pictures because I was too busy looking, my mouth hanging open.

As I was standing beside a dirt road admiring the green grasses, a Red-Tailed Hawk soared overhead, intently watching the grass for a sign of a careless mouse.

One of the Scottish folk songs I love has a line in it about a hawk. He captures and eats only what he needs, the songwriter says, "not one mouse more."

Would that we were that conscious of what we do to the earth.

Back at our house, the snow plow came this morning around 7 a.m., scraping and blowing away the snow and ice from the drive so we could get out to work in the park's warming hut.

By late afternoon the icicles were gone from the bird feeder. The forecast for the next few days is warmer and sunny.

But you never know.

Spring Skiing at Bear Valley

2010-03-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- The night before we had about 18 inches of new snow, and then the sun came out the next morning.
So I went skiing.
It was one of those stunning days in the Sierra Nevada you can remember for years. Snow-capped trees, brilliant blue skies, fresh snow sparkling in the cold air.
I talked Pat into driving with me the 20 miles uphill to Bear Valley Ski Resort. The drive alone was worth the icy roads.
Because it was a Thursday even though we arrived late we still got a good parking space, one of my measures of a good ski day. No crowds at all. No lift lines.
Son Zack works as a lead ski lift operator, and we surprised him and had lunch together when it came time for a break.
It was a great day to be with family, even though Zack had to work and Pat stayed in the lodge where she read, ate, and made new friends.
Because of an inconvenient surgery in January I missed two months of prime skiing, and I don't have THAT many years of skiing left in my aging knees, so I was eager to catch up. But not so eager as to kill myself. I am a cruiser.
My Gulf Coast friends know I got a late start, only started skiing in my 40s, so I am happiest (and most competent) when I cruise the intermediate runs. I don't do a lot of flips, races, or deep powder.
But I love it, and it was a really good day.
The video is less than four minutes long, very amateurish, and a bit wobbly in places. But it will give you an idea of what it is like to soar on top of the mountains in winter.
And then I went home and took a nap.

Louie Johns - sailor and friend

2010-03-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, Ca -- Louis Johns, known to us as Louie, lived just down the dock from where we keep our boat at the Oakland Yacht Club.
The attached video shows a short trip we made together from Alameda across San Francisco Bay to Pier 39. We went over to see the Giants play with a group of friends, all on boats.
He was an energetic, entertaining, bright young bachelor in his 40s, though he seemed much younger. He lived the good life aboard his sailboat, and telecommuted for one the Bay Area high tech companies.
We saw him often, coming and going on the dock, hosting friends in his cockpit lit with Tiki Torches, and often carrying a giant rubber ball he used for his exercises to the end of the dock where he worked out. He worked hard, and played hard.
He recently spent a work/vacation in Hawaii, surfing and working and -- as he said -- searching for the perfect wife. He didn't find her but he was still happily looking the last time we saw him.
One night he was walking home, tripped on a curb and fell and hit his head, and died. But the tragedy of his death does not erase the joy of his life, or that he lived well. You can get a glimpse of that in the video.

RIP Louie.

Charitable Thoughts

2010-02-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA - Calamity in Haiti brought the actions of charities to the front pages of many newspapers and to the forefront of many people's minds.
As almost always happens when such disasters strike, the immediate human response was to want to help. And many did, as witnessed by the millions of dollars raised almost instantly by the relatively new idea of using your cell phone.
And then there were those people who who felt badly for the injured, homeless and dying, and then went back to watching TV, grumbling that charities don't do a good job and they don't trust them with their money.

It is easy to pretend nothing can be done, and even easier to just look the other way and avoid personal responsibility.

But in fact quite a lot can and is being done to help suffering people all over the world. And as part of the human family we all need to be part of that.

As a journalist I covered and watched numerous major disasters over the years. I've had a chance to see how charity works in a disaster, and many of them work very efficiently.

I recall standing in the wreckage of Gulfport, Mississippi, in the 1960s watching people with almost nothing left helping those who had absolutely nothing. I watched men and women and children whose only supply of drinking water was from Coke cans, filled with fresh water by a willing bottler, and delivered by the Red Cross (www.redcross.org/) the day after disaster struck. And I saw how devastated people depended upon that help.
And yet I heard folks back home say they would never donate money to the Red Cross because they heard they sold donuts to GIs during "the war" (probably the Civil War, but they were not specific).
The Red Cross is the largest and probably most efficient emergency-response charity in the world, with a budget in the Billions, almost every penny donated and well-managed. They led the way to help Katrina victims, and were among the first to react in Haiti. They manage money so well that 90% of every dollar goes into emergency relief, and less than 6% goes to administrative costs. That's an astonishing record of fiscal efficiency, usually ignored by the charity's critics who worry about those donut rumors.
My advice to rumor believers: Get over it and give.

Charities that put 80% or more into relief or programs are considered reasonably efficient by rating organizations.

For the record, here are a few other charities I have experience with as a journalist, as a witness to their activity, as a donor who checked their performance, or all three.

The Salvation Army (www.salvationarmyusa.org): if you look close into any urban area you will find the Salvation Army feeding and clothing and helping the poor, and doing it well. Some people are turned off by the fact these are "religious" people, but I found no religious test for aid, just caring efficient people working hard to alleviate misery. In Fort Myers, Florida, where I lived and worked, I discovered that with the help of volunteer nutritionists and money managers, the Sally folks designed the cheapest nutritious meal possible, and put those packaged into the hands of anyone who needed it.
Think about them when you walk by the kettle next Christmas.

Heifer International, (www.heifer.org) whose goal is to "end world hunger and protect the earth" is doing a good job. They teach people how to take care of themselves and provide the seeds or animals to get them started, and then require recipients to pass along the benefits. There's no way to measure the long-term benefits of a calf or pig or goat given to a poor village family, but those pigs and goats and cows just keep producing and spreading and generating healthier happier families and communities.
Think about them when you watch CNN reporting on hunger in Africa, or anywhere else.

Habitat for Humanity International,(www.habitat.org) and its many local affiliates help people find homes. They build, renovate, encourage, finance, and require sweat equity. They generate pride and safety and accomplishment in the form of a home for people who would not otherwise see the possibilities. Think about Jimmy Carter with a hammer in his hand helping a family create their first real home.

Compassion International (www.compassion.com)is an organization that helps children all over the world. We learned about it from a singer/songwriter more than 20 years ago. Randy Stonehill was performing in Modesto and outside the concert hall on the folding table along with his CDs for sale was a brochure about the work Compassion does. We make small monthly donations to support a boy named Vincent who lives in the Phillipines. We've had a great relationship with Vincent for almost ten years, despite some barriers of language and culture, and have loved watching him grow and learn and change.
Think about all the other little boys and girls who could use your help to stay in school, or have a warm meal.

Each of these charities are efficiently run, accountable for what they do and keep us posted on their needs and accomplishments. I like that.

But as a journalist I am skeptical enough to check once in awhile at an independent organization that rates charities to make sure they stay efficient. You can do the same for almost any charity at www.charitynavigator.org or any other sites that do the same service.

Many other wonderful organizations are ready to help the less fortunate in society. Your local church, or its national denomination headquarters, is probably one. And there are plenty of non-religious charities that you can help if you are one of the many turned off by organized religion.

Almost every town has a Food Bank or a Clothes Closet. Doctors Without Borders and other medical groups ease suffering wherever they go.

And you can go with them.

Just don't tell me about donuts being sold to GIs. That's an excuse to avoid our responsibility to each other.

Hotels I Have Known

2010-01-18T17:11:00.000-08:00

The San Carlos in Pensacola

Camp Connell, Ca. - Part of my family history is told through the hotels I stayed in with my father when I was a child.

He traveled constantly for a living for the better part of 30 years. For several years after he and my mother divorced he pretty much lived in hotels from Miami to Memphis, and from Charlotte to Meridian. I got to ride along with him during the summers from 1947 to 1952. There were few motels at the time, and no Interstate system, and hotels were good safe places to stay in the business center of America's towns.
The managers knew my dad, and he knew them and their families. Sometimes I was allowed to wander around exploring the hotel during the day while my dad worked. The employees kept an eye on me.
I doubt if he ever was told "no vacancy." The hotel managers took care of regular customers to the point that on one trip we ran into a convention-packed town, and the manager gave my father a room on the roof, usually reserved for employees.

His territory covered most of the South, and he went from town to town by car auditing the payroll records of companies for insurance firms. The reasons for the audits are a little vague to me today, but I recall it had something to do with workman's compensation.
Thumbing through a few of the hundreds of letters he wrote while traveling is like taking a tour of a bygone era of America. Hotels were actually places real people stayed; working people; families; relatives from out of town; and tourists. The hotels he stayed in usually catered to traveling men like him, but you could meet all sort of people in the lobbies. They were inexpensive, and the man at the front desk knew your name.

The Purefoy Hotel has disappeared, but it's famous cookbook lives via Google. The Purefoy Hotel in Talladega, Alabama, was a favorite of mine because it served food family style at long tables, and the menus promised "air conditioned bedrooms" and "We serve at least 30 of the following dishes each meal."

The Hotel Cherokee in Tallahassee, Florida, held mixed memories for me. I remember playing tourist at nearby Wakulla Springs while staying there. but I also remember being carsick and throwing up in the hotel lobby. My dad slipped the bellboy a dollar to clean up and we left.

Here are a few others I found in the old letters:
The Tutwiler in Birmingham
The Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the fancier places -- this was when the steel mills were still booming. It was owned by the Dinkler family and managed by Ira M. Patton.
The Benwalt Hotel in Philadelphia, Mississippi, promised "Courtesy/Cleanliness" as well as "Modern- Fireproof."
The San Carlos Hotel in Pensacola, Florida, "The Grey Lady of Palafox Street," had everything going for it: a good restaurant with fresh seafood, a waitress I still remember because for her bright red nails and the smiles she gave a little boy, and a radio station on the roof. Motels and the Interstate system killed it, unfortunately, and it was torn down in the early 1990s.
In Montgomery my dad often stayed with relatives, but when he needed a place he always stayed at The Greystone where Mr. L Loeb was manager.
The Hotel Collins in Jasper, Alabama, had been completely "RE-decorated and RE-furnished," and proudly showed the AAA symbol on its stationary.
The Evangeline Hotel in Lafayette, Louisiana, served flounder for dinner but my father was mildly irritated that the drug store down the street closed the ice cream parlor at 5 p.m., too early for his taste.
The Hotel Dixie-Sherman in Panama City, Florida, had one of the oddest combo names I found, probably hoping for loyal Southerners and Yankees to check in. That hotel was "offering every comfort and convenience in the better hotels."
There are too many to name or remember but here are a few more: The Biltmore Terrace on Miami Beach; The Houston Hotel in Dothan, Alabama (Peanut Capitol of the World); The Hotel Patten in Chattanooga, Tennessee (where it snowed in March) and the Hotel Stark in Starkville, Mississippi, where my dad saw Choctaw Indians and wrote "the men dress just like we do."
After the divorce my father always stayed at The Battle House, a rather grand old hotel in the heart of Mobile, Alabama, where I lived. I spent more time there than almost any other hotel, and got to know the service corridors, the bellmen, and which deck clerk would tolerate me sliding down the marble bannister which lined the entrance to the dining room.
The Battle House is one of the few that I am sure still operates, though in a somewhat different manner. It is now known as "Mariott's Renaissance Battle House Hotel and Spa" and probably charges more for a single room than it used to for a month-long stay.
The facade is exactly the same, including the balcony where we used to watch Mardi Gras parades, but everything else was torn down and a new high-rise constructed which now bears the name Battle House.

Winter survival tips

2010-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA - Lots of people enjoy being outside in the winter, and very few ever need to know what to do if they get in trouble.
But it happens, and as a result I worked up a short version of a Winter Preparedness and Survival sheet for the docents at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. When the weather is good I occasionally lead snowshoe tours in the park, and usually try to impart some of these common sense tips to people.

I suspect it is ironic that shortly after doing this the snow melted, and I had surgery which precludes me from doing much outdoors activity in the cold for a few weeks. No matter: more snow is on the way and I am healing fast.

So, here is some information you may be able to use if you want to enjoy the outdoors year round:

Being properly prepared to enjoy the outdoors in winter requires no technical skills, but a lot of common sense and some preparation.

Be Prepared

The odds are great that you will never be lost or in a survival situation.
The best way to survive is to not get lost or hurt. Most people do that every day by exercising reasonable care.

Be aware that being properly prepared means for a worst case situation, not an average day’s walk in the park on a well-defined trail.

Conditions can change rapidly in winter. A short sunny stroll can end up in a freezing whiteout. Extra preparation helps make for a pleasant visit.

So, check the weather forecast , and dress appropriately.

The most critical item to help a person survive in winter is adequate clothing. You cannot overemphasize the role clothing -- and a good attitude -- play in enhancing the chances for survival if something goes wrong.

TIP # 1: Remember ABC = “Anything But Cotton.” We all love blue jeans and fashionable shirts, but when cotton gets wet -- either from melting snow or sweat -- it loses the ability to provide warmth and actually drains heat from wet bodies.

Wool and synthetics, worn in layers, wick away dampness and provide warmth when you are active. An outer layer(jacket and pants) should be water proof or resistant .
Extremities get cold faster than the core body, so boots, gloves and a warm hat are essential ingredients to avoid hypothermia and even frostbite.

If you can convince yourself to think of tennis shoes, cotton socks, long-sleeved cotton T-shirts and denim blue jeans as dangerous in a winter wilderness, you will be better prepared for anything.

TIP # 2: Carry essential items with you to make sure you can survive,--even on a brief day hike-- if something happens and you get stuck hiking or skiing in the snow.

The minimal list should include an extra layer of clothing for warmth when not moving, drinking water, an energy bar, and ways to stay dry and warm. (A complete checklist is included below.)

Survival Tips

Survival in winter requires staying warm, staying put in a safe location(except in extraordinary circumstances) and making sure someone can find you by enhancing visibility.

So, let someone know where you are going and when to expect your return.

And, before you go into a winter wilderness, prepare properly.

Remember ABC means “Anything But Cotton” and “There is no bad weather, just bad clothing.”

Here is a longer memory jogger that outlines the essentials you should carry with you to assure winter survival:
Remember, For Wilderness Survival, Keeping My Cool Will Continue My Life

Remember ............Rope (long enough to rig a shelter, or make a snare)
For............................Food (granola or high calorie bars provide energy)
Wilderness..............Water ( absolutely essential)
Survival....................Shelter (large garbage bag, thermal blankets or a fly)
Keeping...................Knife (strong enough to cut branches or rope)*
My............................Map (a basic tool to locate yourself)
Cool.........................Compass (another basic tool; GPS will work)
Will...........................Whistle (one way to signal for help)
Continue..................Clothing (enough to keep you warm if sitting still)
My............................Matches (waterproof, or flint and steel and starter)**
Life...........................Light (small flashlight helps someone find you)
*Adding a wire saw would is worth the extra weight for back country trips.
** You may want a small amount of fire starter, or dryer lint. Also, if you carry a propane lighter, carry more than one. They fail often.

If you get lost or injured...

Remember to “STOP”:

S = Stop where you are. Don’t wander, calm down for a minute. Search and Rescue teams suggest we hug a tree to help calm down.

T = Think about where you are, what resources you have and what you need to do.

O = Observe your surroundings. Take note of the terrain, snow depths and conditions, weather, time of day, tracks and trails and anything else that might help you with the final step.

P = Plan what to do. Decide what is best to assure your survival based upon you condition, location, equipment and knowledge.

Your priorities should be:
Shelter -- Use clothing, a garbage bag, branches from trees, a snow cave or trench, or anything else that will protect you from wind and wet and cold. Separate your body from snow with something: a closed-cell foam pad is good, and lightweight.

Fire -- Low branches broken from a tree, or the inside of downed wood, will burn even if the exterior is damp. Split the wood. Start small. Add more wood slowly. Keep it going.

Signal -- Use your whistle, smoke, a mirror, bright colored jacket, or SOS stomped in the snow to increase your visibility. Try sending on your cell phone even if it says no service.

Water -- You must drink water to avoid dehydration. East snow sparingly. Melted is better.

Maintain a positive attitude. A strong will to survive, coupled with positive efforts to keep warm and healthy while awaiting rescue, has been the basis of many wonderful survival stories.

Some additional reading:
www.wilderness-survival-skills.com/winter-survival.html
www.gottagoitsnows.com/survival/
www.rbnc.org/schoolunits/survscen.htm
www.yosemitegifts.com/wisuskknca.html (flash cards for children)

Compiled for CBTA

No more sun tans

2010-01-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- I gave up basking in the sun years ago.

I've always known that I had lousy skin, subject to burning and other sorts of afflictions. That's probably a result of the Scots-Irish heritage, which gave me blond/reddish hair, blue eyes and fair skin.

And when I was young, it was considered a rite of passage to get a good sunburn at the start of every summer. I never tanned well, but went through many a Gulf Coast summer with peeling nose and shoulders. The worst sunburn I can remember was at about 12 years old when I let the top of my feet get burned. That really hurt. I finally wised up and quit doing that, and any sunburns in the past 30 years or so have been by accident.

But, as a result of those years of damage and generally less-than-perfect skin I've been a regular customer of dermatologists for over 50 years, beginning as a teenager and continuing through this week.

When it caught up with me.

During a routine examination two weeks ago my dermatologist spotted some things he did not like, and ordered a biopsy.

And yesterday I had surgery for skin cancer.

Today that cancer is gone, but I am missing a chunk of my nose (not a part I use for anything), and have a patch of skin taken from behind my ear for a skin graft. This particular skin cancer had some deep roots.

The doctor -- my new best friend -- tells me I will have a circular scar.

I won't be any prettier, but then I never was proud of my nose anyway.

I am hesitant to say that I have joined the ranks of cancer survivors, since so many people suffer much worse and this particular cancer is both common and treatable. In many ways, this is not a big deal. So far all I have to give up is chopping and hauling firewood for few days, an encouraging thing, and I will lay low while the stitches hold.

But I will admit it has given me time to consider the benefits of modern treatments, the progress we have made in the decades I have lived, and the possibility that I am not immune to the ravages of age and bad choices made in my youth.

I certainly plan to continue doing the things I enjoy outdoors: hiking, skiing and sailing in particular. And I plan to continue to visit my dermatologist on a regular basis.

But my awareness has been raised to a new level.

And I hope my experience will encourage you to do the same, and that when my children reach my age they will be able to report on more progress on all kinds of cancers.

===========================

The following is a quick look at basal cell carcinoma, what it is and how it is treated. (This is NOT my nose, but a representative one...)

"Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common form of skin cancer, affecting approximately one million Americans each year. In fact, it is the most common of all cancers. More than one out of every three new cancers are skin cancers, and the vast majority are basal cell carcinomas. These cancers arise in the basal cells, which line the deepest layer of the epidermis (top skin layer).

"Almost all basal cell carcinomas occur on parts of the body excessively exposed to the sun — especially the face, ears, neck, scalp, shoulders, and back. On rare occasions, however, tumors develop on unexposed areas. In a few cases, contact with arsenic, exposure to radiation, open sores that resist healing, chronic inflammatory skin conditions, and complications of burns, scars, infections, vaccinations, or even tattoos are contributing factors.

"Anyone with a history of sun exposure can develop basal cell carcinoma. However, people who are at highest risk have fair skin, blond or red hair, and blue, green, or grey eyes. Those most often affected are older people, but as the number of new cases has increased sharply each year in the last few decades, the average age of patients at onset has steadily decreased. The disease is rarely seen in children, but occasionally a teenager is affected. Dermatologists report that more and more people in their twenties and thirties are being treated for this skin cancer. Men with basal cell carcinoma have outnumbered women with the disease, but more women are getting basal cell carcinomas than in the past. Workers in occupations that require long hours outdoors and people who spend their leisure time in the sun are particularly susceptible.

"Basal cell carcinomas are easily treated in their early stages. The larger the tumor has grown, however, the more extensive the treatment needed. Although this skin cancer seldom spreads, or metastasizes, to vital organs, it can damage surrounding tissue, sometimes causing considerable destruction and disfigurement — and some basal cell carcinomas are more aggressive than others.

"When small skin cancers are removed, the scars are usually cosmetically acceptable. If the tumors are very large, a skin graft or flap may be used to repair the wound in order to achieve the best cosmetic result and facilitate healing."

Warning -- do not read this blog unless....

2009-12-21T14:23:00.001-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- Some of my friends are a tad cynical about annual Christmas letters tucked inside Christmas cards, so beware: what follows is a blog version of that year-in-review.

2009 -- Blessing abound and it is mostly good stuff!
Family got together recently to celebrate a birthday. Back row from left Brian, Zack and me. Front row Delaney, Ruth, Connor and Pat (Granddaughter Katie could not be with us)

The year began almost the way it ended: family nearby, hikes and snowshoe walks in the state park, a few ski days and a few visits to the doctor (routine at our ages).

A highlight last winter was a first-ever trip to the Palm Desert area of California to spend a week, courtesy of a raffle we won at the park where we volunteer. We had a lovely time at the Marriott Resort in a posh condo overlooking one of the golf courses, and visited Joshua Tree National Park and wandered the desert and ate out a lot -- our idea of a perfect vacation.

Our granddaughter Delaney has "ski days" for PE at her junior high school, so I went along a few times, plus used my season pass more often, and ended up getting in more ski days than ever -- and an injury-free season!

Local and regional theaters offered lots of music and drama, and we have season tickets to theater and catch as many other music events as possible.

Church is a constant part of our lives and Pat teaches and serves on the education board, and I am on the mission board. We now belong to the First Congregationalist Church of Murphys, though I suspect I will always be a Methodist at heart.
For spiritual balance I play poker every two weeks with a group of friends, and coming home on unplowed roads after a blizzard late one night proved to be an adventure, one that turned out well thanks to son Zack coming to the rescue in my old pickup truck.

We spent one week aboard s/v Good News in San Francisco Bay during the winter, then made a post-Easter trip to our favorite part of Mexico -- Tenacatita Bay -- to visit friends Michael and Sylvia. We left as a swine flu scare was spreading, but stayed healthy. The scariest thing was the Los Angeles airport.

One of the joys of having adult children living nearby is that we get to animal-sit for Ruth's and Brian's expanding menagerie -- one large dog, five cats, two horses and whatever wildlife wanders by (deer, bear, raccoon). They refuse to let us give them a goat, which they consider to be mountain lion bait.

Spring and summer were filled with days volunteering at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Pat teaches children 3-6 in the "Cubs" program, I lead guided walks of the Sequoia grove, and we both patrol the trails as part of the team watching out for visitors and helped with campfire programs..

We made short trips to San Francisco by boat to see the Giants play, to Yosemite to stare at waterfalls, to Santa Rosa to visit our friend Frank McCulloch, and on to the north coast to camp with Ruth's family in the coastal redwoods.
September was great. Friends Warren and Marsha King visited from Seattle, we met my big "brother" Roy Richardson and wife in San Francisco, and then flew off to Ireland and Scotland for two weeks of pubs and roots, castles and B&Bs.
Fall flew by with more time spent in the park, a good visit with sailor/friends Sylvia and Michael and Dan and Lorraine here at the cabin.
In late summer Pat fell and broke her nose -- not funny -- and had minor surgery as a result.
An early December snowfall makes everything look great!

One odd blessing came our way this year via Internet. We have managed to renew contact with old friends from school, distant relatives, newspapers and our former home towns across the country thanks to email and Facebook. We don't Tweet, but we do chat with friends by computer almost daily.

By the time December rolled around son Zack was hired to work at Bear Valley ski resort, and I was there for skiing the opening day. The second day I took a hard fall and bruised a few ribs, an experience I recall from my soccer-playing days in Modesto, but that will be healed in time for more skiing later. Pat is understanding.

My grandson Connor, who is smarter than most people, has pointed out that in 2010 I will turn 70 and -- in his opinion -- will officially become a codger. Or curmudgeon. I can't remember.

Not there yet.

A disadvantage of aging is that we lost some friends and family members this year to age, Cancer and accidents. But we know how privileged we were to have shared in their lives. Each brought joy to us and we have not forgotten them.

We are learning to live each day as a gift.

We've been blessed by each other, and our children and grandchildren, and good friends all across the country.

May the blessing continue for you and yours in 2010.

Turning bad environmental practice into a tax break

2009-11-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

Camp Connell, CA -- The attached story was published in the Sonora Union-Democrat in response to SPI's announcement it was "saving" Giant Sequoias -- the largest trees in the world-- and going to get a tax break for doing it.
Why am I not celebrating?

The company press release did not mention that the only Giant Sequoias on SPI land are all recent plants, no giants actually, and "saving the Sequoias" has absolutely nothing to do with the remaining natural Giant Sequoia trees, scattered in only 75 groves along California's Sierra Nevada.

In fact, SPI clear-cut big timber right adjacent to the state and federally protected groves in Tuolumne County's portion of the state park, a cut that made both state and federal officials very nervous about the impact on habitats and watersheds. But not nervous enough to take on the politicians who benefit from SPI.

There are some planted Giant Sequoias outside of protected parks including in a subdivision and a park in Murphys, in cemeteries of pioneers, and eight within a quarter mile of our home all planted by early cabin builders.
None constitute a grove and no one gets a tax break for leaving them alone.

I have one growing on my deck in a bucket, but never thought to ask for a tax break. If I can get a million dollars from the government for a $6 seedling, I may want to participate.

Anyway, some more details are available at his link:

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/2009100698021/News/Local-News/SPI-offset-deal-scoffed-at-by-some-observers

and here's most of the story from the newspaper:

SPI offset deal scoffed at by some observers
Written by James Damschroder, The Union Democrat October 06, 2009 11:40 am

About a week after a new state program was adopted to allow polluters to buy carbon offsets from logging companies, environmentalists say their fears are coming to fruition: logging companies earning millions of dollars for disguised clear-cutting practices.

California’s largest private landowner and logging giant, Sierra Pacific Industries, recently entered into the nation’s largest forest carbon offset deal to date.

SPI claims the deal will sequester an additional 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide — equal to taking 300,000 cars off the road for a year — over the next five years.

The highlighted project in the deal will be to “protect in perpetuity” about 20,000 giant sequoias on over 60,000 acres of SPI land — most of which are in Tuolumne County, said Mark Pawlicki, SPI spokesman.

“The only little sequoias that are growing on SPI lands are a few scattered small trees amidst its mostly pine-tree plantations that have been planted after fires or clear-cuts,” said John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.

Pawlicki admitted that the oldest of SPI’s giant sequoias are only about 30 years old, and many are just seedlings.

“They grow really fast, though,” he said. “They’re already big.”

Pawlicki wouldn’t say how much money SPI looks to gain from the deal — which came just a week after the program was pushed through the California Air Resources Control Board by the Schwarzenegger administration— but by all measurements it will be worth millions for the logging company.

Essentially, the program — called the Climate Action Reserve Forestry Protocol Version 3.0 — will allow industrial polluters, like power plants and oil refineries, to buy carbon credits from logging companies, like Sierra Pacific Industries, which adhere to forestry practices outlined in the plan.

This could become extremely profitable for logging companies, especially once Assembly Bill 32, the landmark global warming bill, goes into practice in two years. The bill will put caps on polluters so they have to either clean up their acts or buy carbon offsets.

SPI is one of the few logging companies that didn’t participate in an earlier version of the program, which did not allow clear-cutting practices.

In the new wording, according to a handful of environmental groups, the baseline is being set so low that SPI will be monetarily rewarded for its standard 17- to 20-acre clear-cuts. Environmentalists say it is already happening in this deal.

“This appears to be one of the biggest scams on the public that a lumber company and state officials have ever attempted to pull off,” said Buckley.

But SPI and Gov. Schwarzenegger say this is a landmark deal that will help stem global warming.

Deforestation American Style

2009-11-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

View Larger Map

Camp Connell, CA -- Thanks to Google, you can explore my neighborhood.
You can't really see the people or the general store, but you get an idea where we are located. In the woods.
Zoom in and out for an even better look.
There are no towns nearby, just villages and housing areas: Dorrington and Camp Connell and Big Trees Village subdivision.

Probably 90 per cent of the nearly thousand homes and cabins within three miles of us are unoccupied 95 per cent of the time. This is vacation cabin country, and most owners are absentee.
For example, there are 12 cabins on my road, and we are the only people who actually live here full-time. This Thanksgiving weekend, three other cabins on our road have been temporarily occupied, and that's about average for a holiday week at this time of year.
Maybe 200 or so people live in the immediate area.

We are all surrounded by tall trees; Ponderosa Pine, Sugar Pine, Incense Cedar, Oak, White Fir and a few Giant Redwoods planted in the last 100 years. The neighborhood is usually very quiet, and we really like it.

But if you take a close look at the Google map you will see it is not an untouched paradise. Large chunks have been removed, legally. It is sort of a a de-forestation blessed by local and state and federal governments.

Most of the forest immediately around us is owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, California's largest land-owner, and they have been cutting trees rapidly in the past few years. The pace has slowed a bit because of the housing industry collapse, but SPI's public relations department remains quite active selling the idea that the fault is elsewhere. They have to do it, they claim, because the Stanislaus National Forest lands where they used to cut trees owned by the public has tighter regulations.

Like a politician's "talking points," the corporation sells certain ideas: clear cutting is efficient and businesslike; herbicides are good for us; mono-culture forests are a sensible way to replant when they clear-cut a mixed conifer forest; the company is environmentally friendly and just wants to reduce the fire hazards, and problems for the industry are primarily caused by over-zealous environmentalists who don't understand good business practices.
I don't happen to believe it, and few of the people who actually live here do, but enough politicians accept the public relations pitch and the effective lobbying so the clear-cutting continues.

Look at the checkerboard pattern in the Google map, including acres adjacent to a major grove of Giant Sequoias protected by the state park.
The clear-cuts almost always leave a thin screen of trees to hide the scalped land from being visible from the roads.

None of my neighbors are anti-lumberjack, or against the use of timber, and almost no one here suggests trees should not be cut. We all live in wooden houses, burn wood in the fireplace, and sit on wooden-framed furniture.
But we'd like a more sensible approach.

The local economy is almost entirely dependent upon tourism: skiing, hiking, camping, fishing and hunting provide what little economy survives. In our mountain region, the biggest employer is the ski resort which is usually open five months at the most, and pays minimum wage to a lot of its seasonal employees.

Despite the massive tree cutting in the past few years, very few jobs in this economically depressed county are directly related to the corporate land owners. Their people mostly live in other areas, they have no mills operating in the county. The trucks come in, cut the trees, and haul them away to some other place. I suspect they pay a very small tax bill, if any.
The industry has created its own "green" non-profit organization to sell the idea that clear-cutting and mono-culture forest and herbicides are good for us, but people who live here know better.

Take a look for yourself.

==========================
*If you want to learn more, check out the website of a local organization that tries to balance economic necessity with smart forest practices: www.forestwatchers.org

The Snow Dance worked

2009-11-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

Tioga Pass in Yosemite via webcam

Camp Connell, CA -- A training class for people who lead snow shoe walks ended early this week with this encouragement from the leader: "Now let's go home and do the snow dance!"
We did, and it worked.
The snow started falling about 2 p.m. today while we were having lunch at the Just Delicious Cafe in Arnold, almost 1,000 feet down the mountain from where we live.
When we got home it became a steady drop, quietly hiding and healing all the scars of a long summer and Fall. This is one of the loveliest times of year here in the mountains. Come to think of it, there are no bad times.
But this is really nice.
The video was taken from our porch, and the still photograph borrowed from a web camera at Tioga Pass, in Yosemite National Park, a few miles south of us and at 9,900 feet.
Eventually snow gets old, particularly if I have to shovel a lot or the plow shows up late.
But for now, we love it.
Earlier in the week we attended the training session for snow shoe walks in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, bought brand new snow tires for Pat's Subaru. And then today I bought a new pair of downhill skis.
All I have to do now is get in some shape other than portly.

Bring it on!

This woman's from Venus

2009-11-14T19:03:00.000-08:00

Unloading the old purse, and checking her stuff

Camp Connell, CA-- After decades of careful research I have come to absolutely no conclusions regarding why my wife has to have a new purse.
I have been watching her longer than Jane Goodall lived with her chimps, clearly not a comparable experience, but nothing in my cultural anthropology classes at the University of Michigan explains the apparently routine need to change purses.
I understand what triggered the behavior: we had finished a nice mid-morning breakfast in the tourist town of Murphys with friends Sylvia and Michael, when Pat and Sylvia responded to a shared impulse to shop. "I need a new purse," Pat told her.
It was too early to visit the winery tasting rooms so Michael and I responded to our shared interests by sitting on a bench in sun and watch the people wander by.
About 30 minutes later they appeared with small shopping bags in hand. Mission accomplished.
Pat's new purse is smaller than the old one, more compact, and with a lot more pockets and sleeves to hold things with.

The old purse was purchased before we went on vacation because she needed something bigger for travel. It was a nice collection of muted Fall colors.

The new purse is red/orange, and it is "important" that it is brighter to help us brighten the winter. As Pat worked to move everything into the new purse she said, quietly, to herself, "I am not sure this purse is going to work. Bummer."
Going over the contents

When we got home Pat spread the contents on the dining table and made the change-over. Here is an inventory of the old purse' contents:
-- A wallet (no longer needed);
-- A fold-out plastic photo/card sleeve (no longer needed);
--A Starbucks card;
-- Cell phone;
-- Aria (local bakery) gift coupon;
-- Calaveras Library card;
-- Oakland Yacht Club membership card;
-- Credit cards;
-- Debit cards;
-- Medicare card;
-- AAA insurance and membership cards;
-- Calaveras Big Trees Association card;
-- Dental appointment cards (2);
-- Two key chains linked together with a carbiner and 12 keys;
-- Receipts;
-- Safe Deposit key;
-- Lipstick;
-- Tissues;
-- Deodorant;
-- Notes on the Mediterranean diet;
-- A postage free post card for "Discover" magazine;
-- A "proposed treatment plan" from our dentist for getting a cavity filled;
-- Two "to do"lists, one for Nov. 10 and one for Nov. 12;

The new purse, ready to go
She was able to get everything in, though it was a tight fit. She walked around with the new purse on her shoulder for a while, and then said: "I may have to take it back."

While I was typing this, she quietly unloaded the efficient pretty new red purse and put everything into a nice older green/brown purse that was apparently stored wherever old purses are stored.

I have no opinion about that.

UPDATE: The new red purse was returned, without prejudice, to the store on Sunday and exchanged for a new one, the same color, "just a little bit bigger."

Fall Color in the Sierra Nevada

2009-10-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

California's Highway 4 goes right by our house and east through the mountains almost to the Nevada border

Camp Connell, CA -- One of our favorite places on earth is the area near Ebbetts Pass, 8,730 feet high in the Sierra Nevada mountains and about 30 miles from our front door.
Today was the day we promised ourselves, time for a Fall hike before the pass is closed by snow and while the color is rippling through the canyons and along the roads. We've been coming up here for almost 30 years, and today had to be one of the best visits ever.
Just driving along the narrow mountain road is a joy, but the best part of the day was when we grabbed our packs and hiked north along the Pacific Crest Trail for a few miles. We got one more chance to see and smell and touch this spectacular place.
So here is a share of our wonderful day:Pat stopped here to admire a lake surrounded by conifers on one side and a snow-covered slope on the other.
Alongside the trail we found a warm rock in the sun where we had lunch and looked for animal tracks
You can't find too many beautiful lakes high in the mountainsAspen, deer brush and oaks were all showing off golden yellows in the high country
This grand old tree marks the start of one of our favorite hikes, a place paved with wildflowers in Spring. My mother loved this area, so we scattered her ashes on a nearby talus slope where wildflowers bloom

John Muir wrote books full of praise for these mountains. I can't top that, but we can witness that he was right.
This is a place to renew your spirit and lift your soul.
When you are ready for a visit, give us a call. We're always happy to go higher up and further in.

Jack Nelson -- RIP

2009-10-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Jack Nelson, reporter

Camp Connell, CA -- Democracy lost a friend when Jack Nelson passed away at age 80 this week.
Jack was a newspaper reporter, the type that movies should be made about. Honest. Tough. Uncompromising. Caring.
He hated dishonesty, particularly in public officials, and spent his long productive lifetime trying hard to make sure the public knew the facts of every situation so they could judge for themselves who deserved to be elected, or not.
Eulogies will be in the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere, but here is a brief picture of the Jack Nelson I knew.
When I was a 20-year-old reporting intern at the Atlanta Journal, Jack had just won a Pulitzer Prize for the Atlanta Constitution, then our rival newspaper. The prize was for reporting on abuses at the state-run mental hospital, a series of stories that got sleazy officials fired and won better treatment for sick people under government control.
Jack took time to meet and be supportive of the younger reporters, and spent an afternoon or two over beer across the street from the newspaper answering our questions about how good reporting was done. When he suspected voter rolls were faked in one Georgia County, he took the voter lists to the local cemeteries where he found a lot of dead voters. Despite threats to his personal safety he wrote stories about crooked sheriffs running speed traps to catch Florida-bound tourists, complete with hidden speed limit signs and cash-only fines.
When I went back to school for my senior year studying journalism, a handful of had the nerve to write and ask him if he could come speak to a new chapter of the student journalism association. Jack got into his car and drove from Atlanta to Tuscaloosa, made the requested speech, and encouraged our small group. He made it clear he was just a hard-working reporter who wanted to dig out and tell the truth.
He spent a long rewarding life doing just that.
Jack left the Atlanta newspapers to be the Southern-based writer for the Los Angeles Times, and later Washington Bureau Chief.
A decade after our first meeting, I was a bureau chief covering the announcement by George C. Wallace that he would make a run for President of the United States when Wallace stopped in mid-speech and said something like this: "Why all those pointy-headed bicycle-riding college professors think my campaign is not important, but there in the back of the room is Yankee reporter Jack Nelson from the ultra-liberal Losss Angell-ese Times writing down every word I say!"
Jack, a native Southerner who knew Wallace for the hypocrite he was, just smiled at the Alabama governor, took his notes, and went back to write another straight-as-an-arrow story about what the ex-governor said and did, without a hint of his own feelings.
He didn't tolerate hypocrites or fools, but he let the truth tell the tale.

We're all better off for having know Jack and benefited from his work.

Listening in Ireland and Scotland

2009-10-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Downtown Belfast swarms with crowds of workers, students and tourists -- all kinds of people from all over the world

Camp Connell, CA -- The best meal we had on vacation was in an Indian restaurant in Dunoon, Scotland.
The best music we heard was from Afro-Cuban drummers followed by romantic Romanian singers in a Belfast, Northern Ireland, bar.
In some of the places we traveled recently we listened to not-always-pleasant echoes of American conversations about immigration and its impact. It seems Ireland and Great Britain are struggling with some of the same sometimes-divisive issues that test Americans.
In the polite atmosphere of a Belfast pub during a celebration of many cultures in Northern Ireland a woman explained why she was handing out little blue bracelets that said "Unite Against Hate."
In this modern Belfast pub we listened to Afro-Cuban music, drank Guiness, and discussed the wave of immigration

The bracelet was, she said, part of a government program to help Ireland's people understand the benefits of diversity and the positive side of immigration's impact on society.
A copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was handed out to the crowd as they sipped their pints and listened to the music.
The world is changing fast, and most of the busy people in Dublin and Belfast and Edinburgh seem to be enjoying that.
The upscale pub's patrons, drawn by the prospect of international music, seemed sympathetic to the woman with the bracelets, and cheered the music, and overall it was a warm and friendly atmosphere. Even curious American tourists are welcome here.
But some conversations elsewhere indicated not everyone is so thrilled with the influx of workers from Eastern Europe and Africa, an influx which was a flood until the recent economic collapse. I heard people talk about how immigrants took jobs from "natives," how "those people" were getting money from the government that out-of-work Irish people could not.
Depending where you are on the Emerald Isle, the Irish are not all that thrilled with each other, either. They've had a rough few centuries dealing with Viking raiders, famine, clan or tribal warfare, British colonialism, popes and pretenders, and the biggest challenge of all -- themselves. Their civil war was decidedly uncivil, and much more recent than ours. Scars still show.
The issue of religion and political alliances came up a time or two, usually with a comment that "some of my best friends are ...", but with the clear sense that "they are not like us."
In Ireland and Northern Ireland I never heard anyone put down anyone's religion. But I heard a lot about "sectarian differences."
It has been less than 15 years since Irish extremists and British soldiers quit killing on a regular basis in the North. Now, on the rare occasion when it happens, it is seen as something unusual. It is overwhelmingly sad to a visitor, and confusing. But it is clear to the Irish, whatever their political affiliation and/or religion.

Tour guides point out a mural honoring Bobby Sands who starved himself to death in prison; sectarian strife is a popular tourist theme

Most of the people we met are very glad the "Troubles" seem to be over, but they haven't forgotten. And fences separate neighborhoods and gates are locked at night. That's still a part of daily life, as are pubs that serve all-Catholic or all-Protestant clientele. Tourists are always welcome.

For some people, particularly those on the political extremes, it will take more time to forgive the past. Somehow it makes life easier to talk about "sectarian" differences than to label disputes as religious or political.

In Dublin, history is on every street corner. Modern sculptures honor the dead heroes of the 1916 Rising against the British. They were shot, or hung, just across the street at the jail

In contrast, in Scotland people seemed quite comfortable to wear a kilt, listen to a bagpipe, and still be considered part of Great Britain. The Scottish parliament now meets in Edinburgh, a source of pride, but any serious effort to a complete political divorce from Great Britain is invisible to the visitor, and isn't making news.
The ultra-modern Scottish Parliament Building is across the street from the Queen of England's summer castle in Edinburgh. Ironic? No, just the way things are in Scotland today

The histories of all these people are linked in many ways. The Scots came from Ireland originally, and some went back to stay. The Irish who stayed put -- many left the country during bad times -- take pride in their deep roots. And all are linked to Celts everywhere, and centuries of dispute and common ancestry make them more alike than different in language and custom.
Everybody has been involved in fighting, often bloody, for centuries. That's a habit most are trying the break.
Young people seem less concerned about all this than their elders, which is not surprising. The young were told about the troubles. Their parents were stopped and searched on the street by armed soldiers.
It would take me a while to get over having my grocery bag searched for a bomb by a soldier with a machine gun.
As a good friend said before we made the trip, we were safer on the streets of Ireland than we would be in almost any American city. There is no fear in a visit like ours, but there is some sadness in the midst of all the excitement and beauty and memories of kind people.
My ancestors came from both the protestant North -- County Antrim -- and the Catholic South -- County Cork-- so I get no guidance from genetic memory on the quandary of modern Ireland.
Another few centuries and they will work all this out. I'm sure we can all get along, given time.
That's a lesson to bring home and ponder.

Ireland - Part One

2009-10-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

The "Kosie II" pub, a place for a pint, a pub meal, and conversation

Camp Connell, CA -- My Lamont ancestors were settlers who came to Ireland from Scotland in the 1640s, part of the migration spurred by the creation of the Ulster Plantation.
The Clan Lamont had its original roots in Ireland, as did many Scots in the western regions. You can see Ireland across the North Channel from the Scottish coast, and people went back and forth frequently.
The English used Protestant Scots to try and drive out the Catholic Irish natives, but within a hundred years the Lamont family I eventually came from got fed up and left for America, disenchanted with English policies and the real possibility of starvation.
Four family members came to New York in the 1740s: the mother -- described only as "an Irish woman" -- and her three sons Archibald, John and Robert. A daughter named Mary was left behind, and the father's fate is unknown. Even after 100 years in Ireland, they were still known as Scots. In the United States, our historians renamed them Scots-Irish, a name the folks in Northern Ireland do not appreciate. They are Ulster Scots, as stubborn today as they were 400 years ago.
So we went to Ireland in September to see what the place looked like, and how it felt.
It looked as beautiful as advertised.

Ponies graze in a rich green field along the County Antrim coast

Sheep dominate the pastoral scenes across Northern Ireland

Beauty was most obvious when we took a trip from Belfast along the northern coast, a scenic journey popular with tourists today and the area where the Lamonts settled for a while. The land is brilliant green, with glens reaching back from the ocean cliffs and harbors, and has a feel of gentleness. Old castles dot the coast, and the winding road reminds us of California's Big Sur region. It even has a geologic wonder called the Giant's Causeway, an ocean-front reminder of the Devil's Postpile in California's mountains -- except much grander.
Local fishermen built a rope bridge to connect the coast to the rocks, a place where there used to be a lot of salmon

But looking at the history, we had to deal with tragedy.
History is everywhere, in the names of towns and counties, and in the protective metal cages still surrounding police stations and even some pubs in Northern Ireland. Today's Irish are full of pride for their country, and a unique view of the history some have lived through.
Even though the Irish civil war ended in the 1920s, the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland officially ended in a truce only in the 1990s, there are still some long memories.
In case you have forgotten, and it is easy to forget for an American living so far away, the Emerald Isle is still split into two parts: The larger Republic of Ireland, freed less than 100 years ago from the colonial masters in England, and the smaller Northern Ireland, still part of Great Britain and still suffering from generations of animosity.
It is a very complex situation, as a tour guide in Belfast was quick to point out. Everyone is glad the killing has stopped, even if only tentatively, but he also mentioned that he and his Protestant friends do not go into Catholic neighborhoods if they can avoid it, and Catholics do not frequent Protestant pubs bedecked with Union Jacks and the color orange.
And a Catholic family living in the Republic of Ireland acknowledged that she had been uncomfortable when visiting in the north.
Memorials to the dead heroes of the "Troubles" are now featured on tours of Belfast

The situation reminded me of some of my older relatives' attitudes when I was a child, talking about how "the Yankees" treated Southerners badly, and the resentments on both sides. The stereotypes still exist today almost 145 years after that war ended.
Ireland still needs some time for the old wounds to heal. The younger generations usually are more willing to forgive the past they haven't lived through.
But tourists are exempt from the sectarian disagreements, and we were welcomed everywhere. We certainly felt safer on the streets of Belfast at night than we would in any American city of the same size. And Dublin was full of energy, and interesting people and sites.

On our first night in the Republic of Ireland, after grueling flights from San Francisco to Dublin by way of Germany, we were made to feel welcome in a very traditional way.
At the suggestion of the host at the Ferry House B&B in Dun Loaghaire, pronounced Dun Leery, we wandered over to the Kosie II Pub, just around the corner. The barman, Michael, introduced himself, shook our hands and welcomed us to Ireland with a smile and friendly conversation. The other customers, mostly older men, asked about our well being, wanted to know where we were from, and were interested in our impressions of their homeland. That was the sort of reception we had everywhere we went, north and south.
We had a pint of Guinness, a pub meal of soup and soda bread, and went off to see the sights the next morning.
Civil wars, British brutality, colonialism and the "Troubles" seemed ancient history when you are sharing a pint and stories with new friends.

Next: Ireland going though changes, accepting diversity and joining Europe.

Edinburgh, Scotland - Good castles and good people

2009-10-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

The entrance to Edinburgh Castle, the premier site to visit in Edinburgh

Camp Connell -- Edinburgh was the last stop on a two week tour of Ireland and Scotland for us, and it was a good place to end a lovely visit.
We stayed at the Priestville Guest House based on the recommendation in Rick Steve's Great Britain book and it was a good choice: comfortable, reasonable rates, close to public transportation, off the main drag so it was quieter, and the hosts were extremely helpful.
In a quiet neighborhood, close to the bus, this was the view from our B&B window

The first day we hopped a bus into the center of town and walked the
Royal Mile. It was rainy, but not uncomfortable, and by being in town in early October we did not have to fight big crowds.Somehow we resisted the temptation to try Haggis, though we actually met people who did

We dropped by St. Giles Cathedral, which proved to be a gem, and were fascinated by the tales told by the docent who showed us around. It was a small comfort to me to find the Duke of Argyll, a Campbell and the 17th century bad boy who hung 200 Lamonts from a tree in Dunoon in 1646, was buried here after he was executed.
The guide also tipped us to the stunning old court building across the courtyard, and to a fine small cafe in the basement where we had a reasonable lunch.
We then took the walking tour (with audio) of Edinburgh Castle. You could devote an entire day to the castle, and it provided great background on Scottish history and culture, canon and jewels, ramparts and dungeons.
The biggest canon around centuries ago, used stone canonballs

One of the more interesting places in the castle is the prison where prisoners of war were kept after being captured in sea battles: during the American Revolution. Those were our guys.
William Wallace, the real hero, before he was drawn and quartered

During the summer festivals the castle also has daily military tattoos, including bagpipe bands, but we missed that.
We walked back down the hill to the parliament building and the Holyrood House, the queen's home in Edinburgh, popping in and out of shops along the way.
The nicest surprise of the visit was the small free museum operated by the city council. It is called "The People's Story" and depicts life in Scotland for the working people, unlike castles which are always about the rich and the wars fought over territory. The displays showed the jobs people had, how they lived and worked, and the history of the struggles of the working class in Great Britain.

Our last full day the weather was cold and windy, and we opted to spend our time inside the National Museum of Scotland, another stunning example of great museums in the world. It is every bit as well-done as the Smithsonian museums in Washington, covered history from the dawn of settlement in Scotland to the present, and even offered hands-on learning/adventure sections for youngsters. Undoubtedly one of the best museums, and most interesting, I've ever been inside. And it did not romanticize the clans and their battles, but put them in perspective of Scottish history, including the struggles with England.
We ended our visit at the high-end and highly-rated restaurant upstairs in the museum. Maybe it was the end of a long trip, but it seemed overpriced and over-rated, high on pretensions and low on actual food quality. I suspect everyone there, except us, was on expense account, or they would not be having $75 lunches.
A word about the people: everywhere we went in Edinburgh people on the streets and buses were eager to help us. If we had a map out, someone stopped and offered help, and a friendly chat. When we were confused about where to get off the bus, a young couple with kids took us in hand and showed us the way.
A very hospitable city.
Our final day required an extremely early trip to the airport. Our B&B host at Priestville arranged for a cab to pick us up at 4 a.m., double-checked on the plan the night before, and made sure we had something to eat set aside the morning we left.

As we drove to the airport at 4 a.m. it was interesting to note that crowds of young adults were still on the streets, just heading home from a night of club-hopping. Obviously, there was a side of Edinburgh we did not have time to see.
All in all, a great city, well-represented by courteous and helpful people.
This is one of many tourist buses you can hop on and off anytime. We chose to ride the city buses, just as charming but warmer