Sharp-toothed Aliens Attack!!!!!

Camp Connell, Ca. - I am not making this up.
Something strange is eating my steps. There are teeth marks on what is left of the risers on the stairs, and I have been hearing strange gnawing sounds off and on recently.
Here's what it looks like at the entrance:

And then I started noticing that within a very short time after I put out feed for the birds in the neighborhood, it began to disapear. Like this:

And then I spotted this:

Using my keen investigative skills I figured out that aliens have penetrated the bodies of the normally benign squirrels in my area, and they are mounting a concentrated attack.
We have squirrels: grey squirrels, which are the biggest and lope around like foxes all around the house; ground squirrels, seen in the picture, which are the most voracious and can fill their cheek pouches with an endless stream of food types; Douglas squirrels, also known as Chickarees, which can eat 3,000 cones a year and often do; and assorted chipmunks, including the long-eared variety who clean up after their bigger cousins.
And we almost certainly have flying squirrels, though I have never seen one here. They only descend from the tree-tops at night, munching whatever they find including fungi, and then disappearing back into the heights before dawn. As a kid, my friends and I tried to tame them only to learn the basic Squirrel 101 lesson: squirrels bite.
Seen from one perspective they are cute little buggers, endlessly entertaining with their antics and scolding and squeaking.
But I think they are possessed by the devil, determined to eat my porch and drive the birds away.
The only thing worse are the feral cats that come around to hunt them, spawn of evil.
And then, I spotted these new guys, shortly after hearing my bird feeder rattle empty. to the ground.

If I don't re-appear in the next few days, call the secret Air Force UFO experts and tell them what happened.

Connections to good times/friends

Camp Connell, CA - Labor Day Weekend -- The photo which tops this blog really requires little arrows pointing in various directions, because each element of the picture has a story to tell about friendship, travel, adventure and maybe even aging well in good company.
Since I do not have the computer hardware to make the arrows go where I want, I'll try to do this simply in text so all my relatives can understand...
(That didn't sound right, but you can ask questions later in the comments section. Be sure and state exactly how we are related before asking anything serious.)

First, the location is the front deck of our home in the Sierra Nevada mountains, about 100 miles due east of San Francisco and 4,980 feet up Ebbetts Pass Highway.

Second, the time was Sunday morning, after everyone woke up after an evening of music and food, and a little wine, got cleaned up, and all were ready to smile.

Here comes the complicated part: how six different people came to be know each other.

From left to right, that's me with the umbrella growing out of my head. I would normally be wearing shorts and a T-shirt from Mexico, but I've worn most of them out hauling firewood so the shirt is a "Stomping Grayzies" team shirt from the annual Grape Stomp Festival in the gold-and-tourist-mining town of Murphys. My grand-daughter and son-in-law made up a team and I was a cheerleader. Symbolic of a slight shift in life style, don't you think?
Next is my beautiful spousal unit Pat, wearing normal clothes and a smile, and including a red flannel shirt to keep warm as it is beginning to feel like Fall in the early mornings.
Third in line is Dan Olson, sailor and retired state bigwig, from San Diego Sacramento El Dorado Hills in the past and this year from Cartagena Columbia. Dan stood in back because he is very tall. His wife Lorraine, dressed like a normal person, is probably the quietest of this group, which is a reflection of her high tolerance level. Maybe she is just being polite.
Dan is wearing a bright green T-shirt that says "Sabbatical" on it, even though his boats are named Zephyr and Zephrus. Sabbatical was a big sailboat owned by the couple on the far right (photographically, not politically) who have since swallowed the hook (translation: sold the boat) and moved to Mexico (more on that later, it gets too confusing).
Pat and I met Dan and Lorraine in San Diego almost ten years ago on a dock, and they were present the day we took ownership of our sailboat Good News. They showed up on a New Years Eve with champagne and a suggestion for the boat's name, which stuck. We since have been with them in places ranging from the Oakland Estuary to the backwaters of Tenacatita Bay in Mexico. Dan even hauled me up my 50 foot mast in a bosun's chair, once so you know I trust him.
Their current home is on a small sailboat in Alameda, near our boat Good News, and their normal home is a larger sailboat waiting for them in Columbia where they plan to continue their cruising the Western Hemisphere lifestyle in October. We may see them next in Belize, or maybe the Caribbean. Probably Oakland.
Next in line is Prof. Sylvia Fox, who with husband Michael Fitzgerald, also a professor, have been entangled with Olsons and LaMonts for years in various ways.
Michael is wearing a Tenacatita Bay Regatta T-shirt from several years back, the year he helped win the big race. Or came close. Or something like that.
Other than playing the fiddle, teaching journalism, marrying Michael, living aboard a sailboat, having a home on Seneca Lake in New York and the other in a small Mexican village with no other gringo residents, Sylvia's pretty normal. She is the brains behind a lot of the mischief these six people cook up, and almost all the fun.
Michael is part sailor part journalist, part politician and part musician. His current instrument is the ukulele, and his current residence in a shared home in Sacramento near the University where they both teach the Fall semesters. He shares those other homes in Mexico and New York, and may be planning to have a few more before he and Sylvia decide which continent is best. Don't be fooled by the smile and the happy uke songs, Michael is also a sharp critic of foolish politicians everywhere, and particularly anti-union forces in California. (We met through journalism, but got over it.)
Together Michael and Sylvia have begun to bring positive change to their village by providing a veterinarian to help the residents. More important, probably, is the bridges of friendship they have forged with Mexican neighbors and friends, and helping their animals get healthy, and providing free English language lessons for the village children. No guessing what they will do next, but it will be interesting.
It's hard to believe that we only go back a decade. We've shared interests in government, newspapers, politics, the web, sailing, Mexico, music, wine, and each other's families for long enough to feel thoroughly connected. We've lived together in shared homes a few times, even shared a great old dog once, and watched the children and grandchildren grow and mature.
We enjoy music together and I am pretty sure that our band "The Four Headlamps" has now become the "Six Headlamps" since we added Dan on a noisy apple-shaker and Lorraine played sticks this weekend. Someone suggested the "Dim Bulbs" would be a better name, but that did not carry the vote. Check out the band on one of Michael's blogs: http://thefourheadlamps.blogspot.com/

I'm sure we six would never agree on everything, but then again, we wouldn't care about that. Friendship does not require agreement.

None of these folks will ever starve so long as I have a can of beans in my cupboard.

They're on my friends "list" even without Facebook.

Even without arrows drawn on the picture, we are all connected.

Un-Greatful Dead

(picture courtesy of National Geographic)

Camp Connell, Ca -- Logic tells me, when I am swimming in the ocean, that sharks may live nearby but they don't really want to eat me.
But I could never get past the idea of them looking up at me, wondering if I would be stringy or tender.
And now I live in the forest with bears and mountain lions and other creatures, like spiders.
So I really appreciate this official list of how many people die by various critters that many of us fear. Note that the most dangerous is a Bee/Wasp. We have lots of those.


Average Number of Deaths per Year in the U.S
Bee/Wasp 53
Dogs 31
Spider 6.5
Rattlesnake 5.5
Mountain lion 1
Shark 1
Alligator 0.3
Bear 0.5
Scorpion 0.5
Centipede 0.5
Elephant 0.25
Wolf 0.1
Horse 20
Bull 3

I am always careful around dogs and horses anyway.

Cautiously yours,

Sanders

Fire on the Mountain

Camp Connell, Ca -- When the breeze picks up in the mornings, the smoke drifts through the top of the trees and creates a mild haze. You can smell the smoke, even though the fire is a dozen or so miles away.
The helicopter base for dropping fire retardents was relocated last week to the edge of a subdivision part-way down the mountain, apparently to avoid the congestion created by so many aircraft, fixed wing and helicopters, operating out of the base a few miles further south. They also have access to a pond to mix with retardents, and water is always at a premium around here.
Officially, we are watching the Mount Knight Fire, the sort of blaze Californians live with every summer and fall. All over the West this scene occurs again and again.
For thousands of people, this just another summer day in the mountains.
This fire is probably the most expensive one you have never heard of. Within a day or two the cost to fight this fire will probably top $10 million. More than one thousand fire fighters and hundreds of items of expensive equipment are involved in keeping the fire contained. Add up a thousand people working long shifts for ten days around the clock, and you get a big bill.
This particular fire has been burning for more than a week, tucked deep into a canyon above the South Fork of the Stanislaus River. As the crow flies, it is probably about 14 miles from our home, and about ten miles from the home of our daughter Ruth and her family.
We are not scared, but we watch it closely. We see and hear the helicopters when we travel up and down the highway to the grocery store, or church. We watch every day.
Because it is in a remote area, no homes have been destroyed and the big newspapers in the state rarely mention it. Television stations dropped the coverage after the first day or two: all the video shots look alike, and it was hard for folks not living close by to get excited.
So far, three fire fighters have been injured, apparently not too seriously.
The fire is slowly coming under control. As of today, it is 50% "contained" which means the borders on about half the fire are under control. More than 5,000 acres have burned, and the total will grow as more back-fires are set to remove fuel from the path of the blaze.
Further south, a new fire was triggered by lightening in Yosemite National Park. Because it is in the park, the are watching that fire closely but not fighting it.
The basic reason so much money and effort is being spent to fight the Mt. Knight Fire is because the population has spread from the coast and valleys into the mountains. Less than ten miles from the fire there are hundreds of cabins, businesses, and luxury homes.
One bad day, with high winds and low humidity, and this relatively quiet fire in the California mountains could explode. Just to the south is the town of Sonora, a major retirement and recreation region packed with people. Just north is the Gold Rush town of Murphys, and closer to us, the retirement/tourist town of Arnold.
It's a quandry.
If nature had its way, a fire would sweep through the area every 20 years or so, thin the underbrush, and make the forest a better place.
But because we fought fires vigorously for a century, and allowed the underbrush to thicken unnaturally, fires are harder and harder to control.
Oh yes: and because we live nearby, fire fighters in general and the How Shot crews in particular, are our local heroes.
So we are not afraid of forest fires any more than we are of earthquakes, or serial killers, or pile-ups on the freeway. Just cautious. We have a plan, and review it every summer.
It is time for a review.


The site below as a map and details of this fire:
http://inciweb.org/incident/1757/


As of Thursday morning, the number of fire fighters is dropping as the containment numbers rise, and officials say the fire is essentially under control.

Health Care Reform? Ask a Canadian

Camp Connell, Ca -- I am trying not to get discouraged as I read the latest news about the health care debate in Congress: millions of dollars being spent by insurance companies lobbying Congressmen; Congressmen who should know better, failing to do homework on the basic facts of the awful situation we are in; the medical professions monopolizing health care training, even to the number of doctors in the training system paid for by taxpayers; the White House compromising to try and get some sort of reform to a system all acknowledge is broke, and the cynicism of the rich talking heads convincing people -- even the poor and uninsured -- that some evil plot is behind reform.

Consider this fact from the article cited/linked below: we waste $800 Billion a year paying for unnecessary administrative costs for big insurance companies and lawyers defending their practices, and that is 6% of our GNP.

Read it to find out what a Canadian health care official thinks of the current systems in our two countries:


www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rachlis3-2009aug03,0,538126.story

(I could not get this link to work correctly, so try pasting it in and adding one word : "STORY" at the very end. Otherwise, just search the LA Times Opinion pages. It is worth the effort.)

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rachlis3-2009aug03,0,538126.story

Everything changed at that moment

Camp Connell, CA -- And forty years ago today, Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.
Very late that night, after filing numerous stories via Western Union from my desk in the press center at NASA's mission control center near Houston, I went outside for a moment alone.
I looked up at the moon, shining over Texas.
It was so unreal to think that a quarter-million miles away human beings were taking a walk on a foreign body. I just stood there and soaked it in.
I think I should go outside tonight and do it again, just to remind myself that such triumphs are possible.
Feel free to join me.
I may even howl while I am at it.

(FOOTNOTE: I tried, but couldn't find the moon for the forest. I know it's still there.)

Apollo launch to the moon

Camp Connell, CA -- I was one -- of many-- that went to the moon with Apollo.
Forty years ago today I was working as Aerospace Writer for the TODAY newspaper and Gannett News Service, covering the launch and moon mission of Apollo 11.
My wife Pat had only recently quit her job at NASA where she worked in the public information office She was at home, pregnant and dealing with morning sickness, glued to the television.
I had worked till midnight the night before the blastoff, and drove to the Kennedy Space Center before dawn so I could be there to watch the Apollo crew walk in their spacesuits from their crew quarters to a special bus that carried them to the launch site.
My family had driven down from Georgia and Alabama and were parked alongside a causeway, looking over the waters of the Banana River at the launch site with hundreds of thousands of other people.

No one who knew anything about the space program assumed the astronauts would survive that day, or that week. We all knew that great risks were involved. And great rewards.

But the crew was happy to be heading for the moon, as confident as only test pilots could be.

The goal of landing on the moon before the end of the decade, established by President Kennedy shortly before his death, was shared and accepted by most of America and the world.
The press site at the space center was a zoo. Thousands of people had managed to get press credentials, including more than a few barmaids from Cocoa Beach who had befriended the television folks from New York or newspaper publishers. The TV people all had trailers, some of them fancy, with air conditioning and refrigerators and chairs and gofers to run errands.
Most newspaper reporters had a work space in the press bleachers, with a telephone and a place for a portable typewriter. My typewriter was inherited from my father who used it for his work in the 1940s and 50s. (I still have it.) There wasn't a single laptop anywhere to be seen, not that we would have known what the word meant.
The countdown moved along and when Jack King's voice started the famous backward chant "ten, nine, eight...." the tension was incredible.
The rocket engines flashed into life, and by the time the sound reached the bleachers, rattling the roof and making the light fixtures dance, the rocket was clear of the tower and headed into space.
It was an enormously emotional moment for everyone who witnessed it, in person or on television. A woman standing near me was groaning loudly and crying, causing one of her companions to joke about the source of her ecstasy. More than one reporter cried with joy.
I was taking notes, watching through binoculars, and trying to help with a live radio broadcast. One of my jobs was to provide color and expertise to the newspaper-owned radio station. Another was to help my excitable friend Louis DeRoche with his instant reports to Agency France Press.
Once the astronauts were out of sight and well on their way, we were all glued to the communications system that provided a constant flow of information.
When things settled down enough to be sure the crew was safely in earth orbit, I went back to the newspaper office across the river and worked at my desk into the night. I had a radio link wired into my desk so I could monitor all the Apollo communications with Mission Control, and help the other reporters working on different aspects of the story.
Because we were THE local newspaper for the Cape Kennedy area, it was the biggest day in the newspaper's history and no detail went uncovered.
Around mid-night I finished working on the next day's stories, and went home for a few hours sleep.
The next morning, as the astronauts headed for the moon, I flew to Houston to cover the rest of the flight from the Mission Control Center.
At the time of Apollo 11 only a dozen or so men had ever flown into space, and we knew them all. This week, with the launch of the shuttle, the total has now reached 500 men and women, most unknown.
Forty years later some things have definitely not changed about my impressions on that July day:
I still believe Apollo was worth the effort, the money and even the lives it required to make that day possible;
I still believe the desire to explore is part of human nature which should be encouraged;
I still believe space travel represents the greatest adventure left for us and should be pursued;
I still believe the men who made that journey -- and the thousands of people who supported them - are heroes;

And, I still believe that I have been one of the luckiest journalist in the world. I was at the right place at the right time to witness and report on history.

Footnote: For the New York Times' coverage of the anniversary, follow the link below. The Times' John Noble Wilford, incidentally, is one of only two reporters still actively writing the space program forty years later. The other is Sue used to write for the Daytona Beach newspaper, and has a new last name unknown to me. Some of those colleagues have died, and many others have retired.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/space/index.html?hp?hp