More Merriment

I was struck the other day with the thought that the desert environment we live in is much more like the conditions into which the Christ Child was born. Bethlehem is and was in the desert with palm trees and other prickly things. The vision of a white Christmas, with sleighs and evergreens, is purely European and American.

But even here on the desert, far away from home and family, the joy and excitement that is the Christmas Season do infect us. It’s true that most of us don’t get carried away with decorations in our restricted-space homes on wheels, but we still decorate. Some even find creative uses for the desert cacti and palm trees found everywhere around us.

In fact, some folks, mainly those who staff these resorts during the whole winter, do go all out—nearly over the top—in exterior holiday décor.

Of course the resort at which we stay has been fully decorated with animals made from the dry end of palm fronds decorating every street post and all of the various buildings sporting icicle lights and other decorations. One of the differences between these displays and typical commercial efforts is that these were all thought of, designed, and created and installed by the volunteer workers who staff these places in exchange for rent or having to move after a set number of days. They are a hard working group and did a great job on the decorations this year. The penguins sliding down the faux snow slope are especially cute.
Here at our house, Knute the polar bear (Yeah, named after what was the little orphan bear in Germany) sits proudly at the front of our yard greeting all who pass. The candy cane lights around him glow nicely in the dark.

Inside our little home we have our miniature tree with politically and environmentally correct LED lights and, since we normally hit the sack around ten, we have no problem complying with the resort’s request to extinguish holiday lights by eleven p.m.

The “Holly” channel on our XM Satellite radio is capable of playing Christmas music 24/7 and Forest our Alaskan Bear sits in the driver’s seat wearing his Christmas outfit—a Santa hat and his tee shirt from North Pole Alaska.

Oh yes, we’re very Christmassy – Christmassie – Christmassee – oh whatever. We’ve no place to store gifts so our clothes end up in plastic bags stuffed under the bed, but we work around the situation. The packages for back east have all been shipped and due to arrive any day now. Our stockings will be hung with care but that will have to wait until we journey back to our very own chimney in Grass Valley. There Judy will fill the house with the cherished decorations we’ve collected over the years and the wonderful smells of Christmas--cookies, pumpkin pie, apple cider, turkey, and who could forget—SWEDISH MEATBALLS.

The grandsons will visit with sugarplums dancing in their eyes, certainly not prepared for the disappointment of opening a package with a shirt or pair of pants inside. They’re still at the age when they believe all gifts should be things to play with. Underpants as gifts are just one of life’s hard lessons. Growing up is tough. Those cookies will soften the blow at least in part and they’ll look back and remember the warmth and love of Christmas at Grandma’s house.

Oh yeah, it’ll be Christmas 2008 at our home whether here or there.

Though not a Christmas picture at all, we came upon this scene in the resort with Mt. San Jacinto backlighted by the setting sun. Really pretty, don't you think?

Heading Home for Christmas?

Having been here in the Southwest for a month and a half, our activities are now focused on returning to Grass Valley, for the Christmas Holidays. As things stand now, on the 10th of December, our departure, scheduled for next Tuesday, the 16th, is in some doubt as a large, cold storm is headed for California. It’s due to arrive this weekend and persist into much of next week. For much of the state it will bring some much needed rain, but in the mountains snow is anticipated to quite low elevations.

The plan is to leave the motorhome in storage here on the desert and drive home in the Jeep.

We’ll keep a very close eye on the situation and may have to delay our departure or cancel our trip altogether, depending on the severity and duration of the storm. Yeah, Laurie, it looks like this year you could have had a white Christmas in Grass Valley. You also may have had to enjoy it without us.

We’ve just had a couple of the very windy days for which Desert Hot Springs is known. When you are located adjacent to hundreds of wind generators you have to expect some windy days. For the remainder of this week, as we await the arrival of the storm mentioned above, we’ll have lovely, warm weather.

This past weekend we attended the Indio International Tamale Festival along with our friends Lyle and Marge Hacke and an estimated 99,996 others. There were tamales of every size, shape, and filling imaginable—fruit tamales—pork, beef, chicken, turkey, cheese, and vegetarian. If you couldn’t find something that tickled your taste buds, there was something wrong with your buds.

Cynical Ron wondered if the latino guys loitering around the Border Patrol recruiting trailer were legal or not. He also was amused by a group of police officers enjoying a pleasant conversation with each other while the odor of marijuana drifted through the air around them. I guess it demonstrated that what law was being enforced was very selectively chosen.

It was a beautiful warm afternoon around 80 degrees with wall to wall sunshine and the crowd was well behaved.

Thanksgiving Greetings

This Thanksgiving morning we give thanks for the rains of the past two days that have significantly dampened a water-starved Southern California. Apparently there was not enough rain to cause the mudslides in the recent burn areas that so concerned local officials and residents. The sound of the raindrops on the roof awakened us numerous times overnight.

If you happened to spend the night at an altitude above 7000’ the precipitation was of a much quieter variety, falling as a light snow. When the clouds parted this morning we could see the snow-covered peak of Mt. San Jacinto, towering over Palm Springs.

For the past several years we have joined others here in the resort for Thanksgiving dinner in the dining hall at the recreation center. The problem is that we really enjoy turkey dinner and, more importantly, the leftovers after the dinner is done. The warmed up dinners on the days following the holiday, the turkey sandwiches, and the turkey “hash” to finish it off, are all favorites. Also, it’s such a traditional dinner that certain flavors and textures are expected and, while other people’s cooking can be very tasty, it’s not the same as what “MOM ALWAYS MADE.”


Therefore, Judy began the early morning by baking her version of a delicious traditional pumpkin pie.

Soon the turkey will go into the convection/microwave oven. Judy’s main concern is a lack of stove burners and cooking pots and dishes for all of the other stuff.

We’re a little light in the seasonal decorations department—we don’t have a lot of room to store that kind of stuff—but Mr. Turkey and some colorful imitation Fall leaves have decorated our mantel (think dashboard) for the past week and all of that will be replaced with Christmas decorations next week. Hey, you have to go all out no matter where you are, don’t you?

By the time dinner was done and being served Ron was ravenously hungry from the wonderful smells of dinner cooking and totally forgot to take more pictures.

Suffice it to say, the dinner was terrific and, in spite of a few small disasters in the tiny kitchen, went off without a hitch. Judy said, “That went very well. We’ll definitely do this again next year.

One of the best parts was enjoying the whole thing again a few nights later and the wonderful turkey sandwiches for lunch.

The Fall decorations will remain up for a few days before we put them away for another year and, though we’ll be heading home for Christmas, we do have a tree, an inflatable bear for outside, some rope lights that look like candy cane and other stuff that we’ll deploy until we put the coach in storage for a couple of weeks.

THE POLICE BLOTTER

The story of how we came to live in the little historic gold mining town of Grass Valley, Ca, bears telling.

Back in the mid-70’s I worked with a married couple one of whom had parents who lived in Grass Valley. They would frequently take a few days off and visit them and return with wonderful stories about this neat little town.

We, at the time, were living in a city/suburb of Los Angeles or Orange County, take your pick, and were not happy with the conditions there for raising our two kids. Thus we were open to ideas of places to which to move and Grass Valley was one option we investigated.

We subscribed to the one-and-only Grass Valley newspaper, mainly for the real estate ads of property for sale but also to get a better feel for the community. One day the paper contained an article about a vehicle accident in town. It seems the town had hired a motorcycle cop who came equipped with his own motorcycle fully rigged as a police vehicle. On that particular day he spotted what he believed to be a stolen car. He hit the red lights and chased the car through town. The car driver turned up a street the policeman knew to be a steep uphill dead end. “Ha, ha,” he thought, I’ve got you cornered now. As he rounded the corner to head up the hill he was faced with the fact that the car he had been chasing was now backing down the hill at high speed and heading directly for him. He managed to jump clear of the motorcycle before the car ran over the motorcycle, destroying it. The driver then drove off and escaped.

Well, being used to big city news this story really touched my funny bone and I told Judy that we had to go there and see this place. Shortly thereafter, an ad appeared for a new house that sounded like just what we were looking for so we packed up the kids after school and headed for the Gold Country. We bought a home on that trip and moved there in July of 1977,

Our home turned out to be just a mile away from the local airport where the California Department of Forestry operated an airbase with firefighting air tankers. Since it was summer and they were flying frequently I decided to buy a police scanner so we could know where they were going. It was an enjoyable and informative piece of equipment and we would listen to the fire channels during the day and the local police in the evening.

One evening the police dispatcher reported a man in kilts walking down the mainstreet of the downtown area. The police responded and soon reported they were “unable to locate anyone on stilts.” She corrected them and they continued their search. Shortly thereafter they reported a guy in a skirt behind the local department store who was, “either relieving himself or abusing himself.” All of us listening in our little house doubled over with laughter.

Anyone who came into town on a motorcycle was suspected to belong to the Hell’s Angels and would be followed closely by uniformed officers in a police cruiser until he or she left the city limits. That scanner was a great source of amusement.

Now here we are spending half of our lives back in Southern California, not too far from the greater Los Angeles area. We watch the television news from LA and it is replete with shootings, rapes, muggings. Why we even had a shootout in one of our local Toys r Us stores here near Palm Springs on the day after Thanksgiving in which two gang-bangers managed to kill each other while endangering several hundred innocent shoppers in the store. This is serious stuff and no where near as much fun as the news from home. I read today’s Grass Valley newspaper online this morning and wanted to share, for your comparison, their column entitled, “The Police Blotter.” I really miss the crime of Grass Valley.

So here are some actual selections taken from the “Police Blotter” from today’s GrassValley newspaper.

Grass Valley Police Department

Sunday9:22 a.m. — A caller from East Main Street at Idaho-Maryland Road reported someone just went the wrong way on the roundabout.

12:19 p.m. — A caller from the 100 block of Normandy Court reported being in an accident and exchanging names and telephone numbers with the other party. However, when the number was called to get insurance information, it had been disconnected.

12:47 p.m. — A caller from the 1100 block of East Main Street reported a physical fight. One of the people involved had blood on his face.

1:29 p.m. — A woman from a business on the 700 block of Taylorville Road reported the vehicle next to hers in the parking lot had hit her vehicle. The damage was not found to match that vehicle, however.

3:21 p.m. — A caller from the 400 block of Mill Street reported a stolen bicycle.

3:28 p.m. — A caller from Morgan Ranch Drive reported several youths skateboarding in the street, with a Toyota Tacoma following behind them, swerving back and forth.

3:56 p.m. — A man across from Memorial Park reported he was assaulted after a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

Monday
3:18 a.m. — A caller from the 400 block of Henderson Lane reported a diesel truck was running and making noise.Nevada County Sheriff’s Office

Sunday
10:59 a.m. — A caller from a veterinary clinic in Loomis reported a man from the 24000 block of Restive Way had been in with his dog, which had been shot by a neighbor. The man was threatening to shoot his neighbor.

4:13 p.m. — A caller from the 16000 block of Nomad Way reported a goat was “screaming, jumping, drooling, laying down.” It appeared to be in distress. (I love this one)

5:18 p.m. — A woman from the 10000 block of Carli Way reported being harassed by a man to whom she owes $800. He keeps coming to her residence because she has not paid him.

5:58 p.m. — A woman from the 22000 block of St. Helena Drive reported her daughter moved in while she was gone and refuses to leave.

8:21 p.m. — A man from the 16000 block of Duggans Road reported a woman was hitting him in the stomach and throwing things at him.9:20 p.m. — A caller from a business in the 16000 block of Penn Valley Drive reported a fight in front of the business.

11:16 p.m. — A woman from the 12000 block of Banner Lava Cap Road reported something was “being hit against her door.”

Monday

4:55 a.m. — A caller from Highway 174 and Greenhorn Access reported horses in the roadway, but sheriff’s deputies were unable to locate the horses. A woman from Orchard Springs Road called at 6 a.m. to report she had the horses blocked in with her car. The horses were returned to their owner.Nevada City Police Department

Monday

12:59 a.m. — A caller from the 200 block of Commercial Street reported an accident with a white SUV leaving the scene. A be-on-the-lookout advisory was issued for a white SUV with tinted windows and a sun roof, with possible front-end damage on the passenger side.— Liz Kellar

GRASS VALLEYFIRE DEPARTMENT

The Grass Valley Fire Department responded to 55 calls for service from Nov. 5 through Nov. 11, including those responded to as part of the joint operational relationship with Nevada County Consolidated Fire District and Nevada City Fire Department.

Here are some highlights:

10 a.m. Nov. 5 — A vehicle hit a house on South Auburn Street. Firefighters found significant damage to the front of the home with injuries to the vehicle’s occupant. Emergency personnel extricated the patient for transport to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital.

3 p.m. Nov. 5 — GVFD responded to a reported vehicle accident on Brunswick Rd near Sutton Way. Firefighters found two vehicles with moderate damage. Nobody involved in the accident was taken to the hospital.

2 p.m. Nov. 10 — GVFD and NCCFD responded to a chimney fire on Squirrel Creek Road. They discovered the fire was contained to the chimney with no damage to the rest of the home.

Nov. 11 — GVFD responded to a motorcycle down on Ridge Road. Responders found the driver on the side of the road with injuries, and they prepared the driver for transport to a hospital.

Now you tell me. Isn’t the Grass Valley crime scene a lot more fun than LA’s.

Hello from the Desert Southwest 2008

Hello again blog readers:

For those of you who do not yet know, we are back in our winter homeplace, the desert southwest. Specifically, the City of Desert Hot Springs.

We’ve been here for three weeks now enjoying the pleasantly warm mostly 80+ degree days, the hot mineral pools, and the community around us. It has become an interesting experience to live two separate lives with friends and activities exclusive to each of them.

Our family is weathering the economic downturn okay but Laurie has had her hours at work curtailed as well as a reduction in pay that is making life tough on she and Dani. Dani is a straight “A” student, including classes in Mandarin Chinese!

Though we had no opportunity to see him, Kevin was down here in Southern California during the recent fire disasters in the community of Yorba Linda. He and Dodie and the boys are also just fine. The boys are growing like weeds, of course.It’s amazing but I think the situation right now is less stressful for those of us living on a secure fixed income.

When we left this area at the end of April this year we were amazed at the amount of new construction going on. Not just residential—though there was plenty of that—but huge new commercial and shopping complexes everywhere. Now, sadly, most of that has come to a screeching halt and those commercial developments that were near completion are now finished and standing empty. Who knows how long that situation will last and I don’t usually spend a lot of time feeling either good or bad for land developers, but this situation is truly sad. The developments here in the greater Palm Springs area are, of course, mostly very upscale and to see the millions and millions of dollars spent with absolutely no return on the investment must be financially punishing to these developers.

With jobs being lost by the thousands, companies closing by the hundreds, and banks going belly-up faster than the fish that lived in my acquarium, it’s tough out there. If ones income depends on other people’s disposable income or the stock market, one had better look for a different line of work or income for a while.

You may recall that Ron had a Goiter removed last April before we returned home. It was discovered as a result of his being so short of breath. After returning to Grass Valley his breathing became even more labored, rather than improving, and it was determined that the surgeon in Palm Springs had left another huge goiter in place that extended beneath his breast bone down to his heart. To make a long story short, in September that mass of thyroid gland was removed in Sacramento. If an adult man places his two fists one on top of the other that is the approximate size of the thing they removed. To get it out they had to crack his chest, just as is done in open heart surgery. When they do that they press both shoulders downward to help open the cavity. Since Ron has two unresolved rotator cuff injuries they were both severely aggravated by this procedure resulting in an extended recuperation lasting several months.

Since he was virtually unable to do anything for the past six months, time has passed Ron by this year. Just this morning he finally realized that Thanksgiving is less than a week away and it’s only 3 weeks till we return home for Christmas. Up until our return to the desert his world has been his recliner and a paperback book since the first of May.

We had plans and reservations to attend the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, N M, again this year but, when the beginning of October arrived, Ron was not physically able to drive the motorhome. By November, he was finally well enough for us to head for the desert for the winter.

After three weeks of the kind of weather we all dream of when we say, “Southern California,” we expect some rain over the next few days, leading up to Thanksgiving. The recent wildfires just added an exclamation point to the desperate need for some precipitation to fall on the State and, while we all enjoy the idyllic 80 degree temperatures, we’re also sensible enough to realize how wonderful a couple of rainy days will be.

We’ll be here in Desert Hot Springs until the end of April—except for a two-week sojourn home for Christmas and an early January trip to the Phoenix, AZ, area to visit our friend Sue Anderson for a few days followed by a visit with the Don Youngs at Lake Havasu, before returning here.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL OF YOU AND YOURS.

The Wonderful "Age of Sail"

The official tall ship of the State of California, the Californian, aims her bowsprit to pass beneath the Oakland Bay Bridge.


Yesterday we traveled to San Francisco by sea, taking the wonderful high speed catamaran ferry out of Vallejo. If one has to go to "the City" it's the best way to get there from here as it eliminates all of the horrible traffic, the excessive tolls to cross the bridges, and even the time involved. It's a delightful one-hour ride from the extreme northern end of the bay to "Baghdad by the Bay."





We didn't go to just fill a need for fresh crab or egg rolls in China Town. No, our goal was more selfish, at least on my part, as the TALL SHIPS are paying a visit to The Bay. Well, some of the ships on display are locals still there were others that had voyaged considerable distances to show off for we fans of sail. Notably amongst this latter group is the U.S. Coast Guard training vessel Eagle (officially rated as a Barque due to the fore and aft sailplan on her mizzen). She had sailed through the Panama Canal from the left coast to be a part of the celebration. This regal old lady still struts the light fantastic on a breezy San Francisco Bay Afternoon.





As far as the sailing vessels were concerned, the only one in the parade that could legitimately be called a ship was the three-masted Bounty. A sailing vessel is only a ship when it has three masts, each rigged with square sails. Originally built for the filming of the film "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando in 1960, she currently is privately owned and sails frequently while participating in tall ship events around the world.

A recreation of one of the vessels sailing in the fleet used by Christopher Columbus, La Nina, sails along the San Francisco waterfront.

Also featured was the Jeremiah O'Brien, the WWII era Liberty Ship, one of only two (or is it three?) still operational. Lovingly restored and home-ported in San Francisco, she plied the waters, sans sails of course, thrilling the many hard-working volunteers aboard as she was loudly hailed by the thousands of onlookers along the shore.

It was a wonderful day and, though the parade of tall ships was not as large as that I've seen covered on television news programs throughout the years, it was still a thrill for me to watch them glide bye. Thanks to everyone who worked to make this event such a neat sight to see.

Are We Really Going to Elect These Guys?

Buried in the news for Saturday, 18 July 2008, was an item regarding the effort to give a "gasoline tax holiday" for the summer and the action in Congress regarding it on Friday.

Did you see this? The highway construction lobby raised holy hell, moaning about the number of jobs that would be lost nationally as the slush fund for road construction and maintenance is already in the red and, if the tax flow were to be cut off, it would only get worse.

That argument won the day as DEMOCRATS DECIDED A HOLIDAY WASN'T A GOOD SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM, AN INCREASE OF $ 0.10 IN THE TAX WAS REQUIRED INSTEAD. That's right, they now want to increase the federal tax on all motor fuels by a dime--gasoline, diesel, av gas, you name it. All of this to avoid some road workers losing their jobs while they put the rest of us in a world of hurt. How many working Americans will now lose their homes or their jobs because they can no longer afford the cost of fuel at a government imposed increased cost?

How can they expect to be elected with such proposals?

It's beyond me

A Happy Moment

Yesterday our Son Kevin successfully passed the Fire Captain's promotional examination and is now #2 on the promotions list. Many, if not most of you, know that Kev began his career as a Jr. Volunteer Firefighter and has been at it ever since.

He's justifiably proud as are Judy and I

Breathing a bit easier

After hitting a high of more than 1000 measurable quakes, the west seems to be calming down again as can be seen in the much lower 622 quakes on the chart above. Actually, a newer chart has that total below 600.

In the meantime, they've been adding up the numbers and costs of the quakes in the area of Reno, NV, where more than 5000 tremors have occurred since the swarm began. Many upscale homes have been built quite close the the previously unknown fault causing all of the problems and many of those homes have experienced some major cosmetic damage--lots of cracked plaster and loss of paintings and curious that ended up crashing to the floor.

With this region settling down some, the attention now shifts to other locations. The Cascadia Subduction Zone, running along the coasts of Oregon and Washington is apparently showing some movement. Microphones placed on the ocean floor during the cold war are picking up the unmistakable sound of large boulders rolling around and crashing into each other.

In addition, the vocano down in Chile, that hasn't erupted for more than 9000 years, is spouting an enormous cloud of ash and smoke that has drifted all the way across Argentina and out into the Atlantic Ocean. The ashfall in some areas is several feet deep.

Whatever happens in the near future, it is clear that old Mother Earth is a bit jiggly right now.

IS IT AN EARTHQUAKE SWARM OR JUST A SERIES OF SHAKERS?

The map above now shows 1076 measurable quakes in the past seven days throughout California and Nevada. Finally, network news stations have picked up on the fact if not the reason or concern. Today they reported 5 quakes over a magnitude 5 in the past 2 days.

Sooner or later some reporter somewhere will pick up the phone and talk to an expert at the U.S. Geological Service in an effort to ascertain whether anyone there has any idea at all about what is going on and why we're seeing so much shaking.