Some Words At The End Of The Year

There haven't been many words published here this year. Reasons vary, but it's probably a combination of needing a break from the self-imposed responsibility of updating this page and despairing over the current state of the world.

The latter, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned, continues to be well chronicled here.

By the numbers, I read this many books (which means I've been slacking compared to the previous year), walked lots of steps (still waiting for the official Fitbit year-end report on that one), and listened to lots of music in my quest to re-listen to all of my records (I've got to keep better track of how much, if only for my own obsessive reasons).

I think it's mainly my music-listening activity that keeps me away from the keyboard these days.

Lots of people died this year. The older we get, the more it's likely to happen. The three people I'll miss most are Jim Kaiser, Annie "Rattlesnake" Whitacre, and my aunt Jan Olander. I wrote about Jim here. Annie was a camper and later, a counselor, at my work. She was creative, rebellious, and talented. She was also one of the few counselors who attended our wedding back in 2012. A few photos are posted below. The fist one was taken during summer camp a number of years ago, and the rest are from our wedding.













Her obituary is here.

Her voice is here.

My aunt Jan died on November 19th. I'm glad that I, along with Willow and Greg, got a chance to reconnect with her (and the rest of my dad's side of the family) a few years ago. In Willow's case, the word "reconnect" isn't right. I'm glad that Willow got to meet her. Here is a trio of photos from the trip.







Greg made it out to Red Wing for the funeral. Due to work, I did not.

Three excellent people, all completely different from each other. It's the differences that make us stronger. The world is just a little less varied now.

It's hard to follow that with much of anything, but I want to mention trips taken this year before I end this post. The only one I wrote about is the trip to England that Jeanine and I took back in April. We stayed with my friend Nidge, who was an excellent host. I wrote about it here. I also managed to take a trip to Oregon with Greg, which I've already written about, a trip to Orlando with Jeanine, Eva, and Willow, and a trip to Baltimore for the Days of Darkness music festival.

Goodbye 2017. 2018 will be what we make it to be.

Eclipse and Such

Every August, between the end of summer camp and the beginning of science camp, I get two to three weeks off of work. I usually have big plans of things I want to accomplish during this time, but invariably the list languishes on a piece of paper while I relax. I could blame the fact that I work hard during the rest of the year, and I would be partially justified. Although I don't consider what I do "work", it does take a lot of energy and focus. It's nice to not wake up to an alarm and do whatever I want for a few weeks. Lately, I've been on a mission to re-listen to all of my old records, which has been taking up much of my free time. It's an interesting process, revisiting those old slabs of vinyl, some of which I haven't listened to in decades. I listen to many of them with different ears now, although I find that in many cases this process has inspired new purchases. Curse my acquisitive nature.

This also partially explains my unusual silence here. I won't write and listen to music at the same time, because doing anything while listening to music relegates the music to background status. Focus goes out the window.

That said, I have left the house a few times. This week, I went on hike at Hidden Villa with Willow, my cousin Peter, and his two girls. It was a hot day on the farm, but nothing compared to the temperatures this weekend (it was well over 100 degrees here, and approached 115 in the central valley, which is highly unusual). A few days ago, Jeanine, Eva, and I went the Dali museum in Monterey. It was very much worth the visit. The day after that, I went to Filoli with Jeanine and her friend, Alina. I had been there as a chaperon on an elementary school field trip with Sophie, but this was my first unstructured visit. We wandered through the mansion and gardens, which are really quite impressive. Then, a couple of nights ago, Eva and I went up to San Francisco to see Greg and company perform at the Lost Church. It was excellent. To give an idea of the current heatwave, it was still nearly 80 degrees in San Francisco after the performance. The micro-climate failed us.

The major event of the last few weeks though was the solar eclipse. I had a series of plans for this, one of which involved the Atlas Obscura festival in Oregon (sold out before I could buy a ticket), and another of which entailed first driving to Las Vegas for a multi-day music festival called Psycho Fest (distance and expense eventually ruled it out). Then, Greg's old friend Dana was going to let us stay at her place in Fort Collins, CO, which was a mere three hour drive from the path of totality. This fell through when it turned out her brother was bringing more people than originally planned. Family before old friends, it seems.

Then, Greg got in touch with his friend, Alan, who had his eclipse experience so thoroughly planned that all we had to do was throw a bunch of stuff in the car and head for the hinterlands of eastern Oregon. Alan, in a series of very thorough e-mails, explained that we would be camping at a campground called Priest Hole, along the John Day river. This would allow us to approach the nearby Painted Hills from the north, rather than the potentially traffic-choked south. Painted Hills State Park had the advantage of being smack dab in the center of the path of totality, not to mention the fact that it was worth a visit on its own merits.

We did the drive all in one go, only stopping to eat at the usual place in Weed, and for gas a couple of times. As we entered Oregon on 97, there was a big, home made sign stating, "Eclipse canceled! Go home!". We ignored it. Traffic wasn't bad, all things considered.

We arrived at the campground around 10:00 PM, guided in by the LED beacon mentioned in the e-mails (did I mention that Alan is very through in his planning?). We ended up not erecting a tent. The Milky Way smeared the black sky above us, and it was a warm night, so why not enjoy the view?

We had a day to kill before the event, so Greg and I waded across the river and into the high desert hills. This took up the morning and perhaps the early part of the afternoon. Back at camp, we lounged and chatted. All told, there were slightly over 30 people in our group, making ours one of the biggest campsites. During the day, other people filtered in, filling the flat, rocky expanse that passed for a campground. Many people played in the river.

The sunset was beautiful. We went to bed relatively early because we planned to get up at 4:00 AM to beat the rush to the Painted Hills.

We did just that.

At the Painted Hills, we ascended a convenient ridge and joined the other people already there. The view was beautiful, and excited chatter broke the silence. At some point, after hearing that a park ranger had warned of scorpions, I wandered off the trail and found one. At the time, I wasn't sure what species it was, but once home and able to research it, I discovered that it was Paruroctonus boreus, or Northern Scorpion. I consider this an added bonus. Icing on the cake, if you will. Beautiful little creature.

In due time, darkness spread, the temperature dropped, a few confused crickets started chirping, and a black hole appeared in the sky, ringed by the sun's corona. It was, quite simply, an amazing spectacle. A flock of birds flew across the sun as we watched.

Totality lasted two minutes, and then sunlight speared our eyes, making us reach once again for our solar-filtered glasses. We remained in place until the shadow had passed completely away again, and then left the ridge.

Back at the campsite, we packed up and hit the road, full of plans for the drive back. Our plans died in traffic. There are a lot of interesting volcanic monuments along highway 97, but by the time we got there, they were closed for the day. Further south, traffic slowed to a standstill. During the worst of it, we traveled a mere 15 miles in around 3 hours. By that point, our backup plan of camping at Lava Beds National Monument was looking like it wasn't going to happen, so I pulled over and we slept alongside the road.

Around 5 hours later, we awoke to find the traffic gone, so I started the car and we continued our journey. We visited Crater Lake, which was obscured by smoke from burning southern Oregon, ate a much needed breakfast at the park restaurant, where we commiserated with the people at the next table about the traffic. Once outside the park, we headed for I-5, with the intention of stopping in Ashland for lunch. Along the way, we were sucked into the Oregon Bee Store to buy honey and beeswax candles. In Ashland, we visited a book and a record store, had lunch at the bookstore cafe, and bought ice cream before heading back out to I-5.

Our next planned stop was Shasta Caverns. I had been there before, but Greg hadn't. We made it just in time for the last tour. It was pretty much like I remembered it from the last time. Worth doing.

Afterward, our tour guide recommended a Thai restaurant in nearby Redding. We headed there and ended eating next to a couple of women who had been on the tour and overheard the recommendation. They had watched the eclipse from an alpaca farm. One of them called it the "alpacalipse". I approved. We also commiserated about traffic.

Then, we hit the road for the long journey back to the bay area. Just like that.

Summer

How to distill summer down to a few words?

I worked nine weeks of summer camp, four of which were Summer Camp Classic, and five of which were Trailblazers, with one of the latter being a residential camp for the migrant education program. Badger, despite his attempts to retire, is still the director of the classic summer camp, and Sasquatch has stepped in as director of Trailblazers. He came laden with all sorts of new ideas, including shelter building, a blind walk, Jedi training (sort of a combination of tether ball and dodge ball), cooking, and new (to me) games such as Wolf Pack, Mission Sasquatch, and Nature Survival Experience. It was a blast, and over too fast.

Due to the storm-damaged road, we shuttled kids to and from camp in vans all summer. I was skeptical that it would work, but we managed.

Willow had summer school for much of the summer, but managed to spend two weeks as a camp counselor, one week for Wild Things (mostly 5 and 6 year olds), and one week with the older kids. Sophie was up for some Wild Things counseling too. By all reports, they both did great jobs. I'm a proud dad. Willow is sad that it's over, and is now back in school as a high schooler. Initial reports suggest that the biology teacher gives too much homework.

To mark the end of camp, on Friday I went and saw an uncut Italian language print of Dario Argento's Suspiria at the Roxie Theater in S.F., and on Saturday went up to camp in the evening with Jeanine and Willow, where we met Weasel, Night Hawk, Lion, Clover, and others for a Perseid Meteor Shower viewing party. We saw some big ones and had a fine old time. Weasel recently had both her vocal cords removed to combat the cancer growing there, but can still talk because the false vocal cords help create sound. She went through the whole ordeal with bravery and grace, plus some online diagrams showing what was happening.

Sunday, Jeanine, Willow, and I went up to see the most recent Central Works play, Winter, about the right to die with dignity. It was excellent, even by the high standards of Central Works.

Here is a photo set of all the photos I took during summer camp.

As far as this blog goes, I haven't been writing much mainly because I've been listening to records. It sounds funny when I write it that way, but I've been trying to re-listen to all of my old records, CDs, and cassettes, and since I have over 8000 of them, it's taking up a lot of time. I've rediscovered some gems along the way, but this has led to more purchases. But hey, it's a hobby.

I may or may not get back on track here. Time will tell.

A Few Photos From the Stormy Months

This looks like a California Newt emerging from a creek, but in reality it's just crossing a trail. Over the last couple of months, I've joked about how it seems that all of the rain withheld during the multiple-year California drought was unleashed over the course of this winter. In any event, the swiftly saturated ground couldn't handle the deluge, so runoff swamped many of the trails, either due to culverts being blocked or simply because the water had nowhere else to go. It made hiking an adventure.

Speaking of creeks, this is what Todd Creek in Sanborn Park looked like after a landslide dumped some extra trees, rock, and soil into it. For over a month, I was actually a bit nervous letting kids near the water, let alone hiking up the creek. Now, from the vantage point of Spring, things are more or less back to normal, although due to the flooding and sliding, in some places it's a new normal.

Just past Todd Creek there is an old landslide that took away a section of trail back in the nineties. The rangers put up a fence so hikers wouldn't march off the new cliff and die, and a single track detour trail eventually allowed access to where the main trail picked up on the other side. This winter, as one can see from the precarious condition of the fence, more earth slid away. Sometime after this photo was taken, the fence succumbed to gravity. It now lies broken at the bottom of the newly scoured ravine. Most of the trees that started growing after the original slide now lie shattered downhill somewhere. In addition to this, the detour trail is simply gone, like a giant took an ice cream scoop to the hillside.

Lastly, here's a photo taken up Todd Creek Road, showing one of several slides that temporarily blocked access. The only people who ever drive up this road are park rangers and camp maintenance staff, but we routinely hike groups of kids up and down it. It's a good thing we're flexible. Many plans were changed on the fly this winter.

Still Here

I'm looking out the window at bright blue sky. A breeze so gentle as to be almost nonexistent ruffles the foliage. It has been around two months since I've written here, and this will only be my second post of 2017. Two months is a long time to be silent. During this silence, a rainy Winter has given way to Spring, we have gone on a couple of trips (one to Orlando, and one to London), and the political situation in this country has continued to fester.

The trail pictured in the previous post is still closed, and the road to camp has sustained enough damage that we've had to shuttle kids up it using vans. Buses exceed the new weight limit and it is apparently against regulations to bus kids up compromised roads (as it should be). We have added several vans to our fleet though, and it is now part of the routine.

I'm using Willow's laptop now. Mine is barely functional. It's a good thing Willow has two.

My long silence is partially due to my laptop getting more difficult to use, and once I got out of the habit of posting regularly, the days just slipped by even after I switched laptops. I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things, so hopefully more posts will emerge over the forthcoming days. I realize that I'm mostly speaking into the void anyway, since I don't imagine many people read this (and nor should they, since these posts are usually unfocused personal ramblings). I continue to write just to keep in practice.

Perhaps it's time to rethink my approach.

A Month Off For No Good Reason

So it seems I've taken a month off from writing here. It wasn't planned, and there is no real reason behind the decision. I just haven't felt like writing.

The most significant thing to happen during January was the beginning of a new political era, one that is certain to end poorly for everybody. Some enterprising souls are taking notes on the slow motion train wreck here. Tensions run high. Rioting has occurred. Various scummy fringe groups suddenly feel empowered. Innocent people are already suffering.

Of greater personal significance was the sudden death of my friend, Jim Kaiser. Jim played music with my brother. I'll write about him over on my music blog soon, as it seems the more appropriate place to post about him.

Locally, we have gotten a truckload of rain. At work, I've seen water in places where I've never seen it before. Creeks have jumped banks, power lines have come down. Creeks that are normally mere trickles or dry washes have suddenly become raging, frothy torrents. Most significantly, the trail to the reservoir was subject to a landslide, and is going to be closed for months.

Here's what the John Nicholas Trail leading up to Lake Ranch Reservoir currently looks like.

Here are a couple of the trails in Sanborn Park.

We got a foggy day too:

The picture below was taken in a spot where this in normally no surface water.

Sometime over the holiday break, the deer carcass near the driveway in Sanborn Park was reduced to a pile of scattered bones.

There were a few chilly nights too.

The only noteworthy excursion (not counting musical ones, which are reported elsewhere) of the month was a short trip to Hacienda Cemetery to find the grave containing an arm (the owner of which is buried in another cemetery, but that will be a trip for another time). We succeeded. It was a nice little spot.