Read the fine print

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

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....

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

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

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

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

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.