TAKING DOWN A GIANT.

A one hundred foot tree has shaded the west side of my house for 18 years. An old, giant, live oak. A tree expert pointed out a rotten core in the tree and warned me of the danger it posed hanging over my bedroom roof. I didn't want to do it. I just hugged that rugged trunk and called it my friend and thanked it for its many years of shade.  The smallest part of the trunk was an easy fall.

Down it went and it was just slice and dice.

Nate's Tree Service has a cherry picker to raise the sawyer up to the tree top. But the soil was so wet and muddy, it was in danger of getting stuck. The chipper could not maneuver between the trees, so the guys dragged the brush to the chipper.

That didn't stop the job. They came prepared. The climber took over. He whacked his way up the main trunk to the roof.

Some of the big laterals are the size of small trees.

Once into the over story, the climber struggled with the thick brush, hand cutting his way to follow the limb and gain a foothold and a place to drag his ropes and hooks along with the chain saw he was wearing.

The tree fills the sky, hovers over the roof and in one place a far reaching trunk bends heavily toward the ground. A tree close to the house doesn't crush the house when it falls. The danger is when a  distant  tree goes over and slams into the structure. I didn't want to cut this old friend. But wet soil, with nine days of steady rain in the forecast plus the possibility of a cold snap putting heavy snow on the limbs made me wary. I decided it had to go. The rotten core was just about roof level and about four feet long.

The sawdust and a huge chunk 0f a lateral branch fall to the ground.

All clear, the guys on the ground cut off the brush and haul it to the chipper.

With most of the big laterals removed, the tree is looking skinny but the top has to go first and there is still a lot of tree up in the air.

Finally, the top succumbs to the saw.

He cuts himself down the tree. That piece of blue sky on the right is where the tree used to be.

The biggest hunk goes down. Part of the rotten spot visible.

Piece by piece, by piece.

Goodbye, old friend.

When all was down on the ground, the rot wasn't bad. My tree could have stood for another 50 years-maybe.  I have yet to count the rings to determine its age.  But, I have already planted a replacement for this tree and now it will have a better chance to grow with more sunlight.
I was very impressed with Nate's Tree Service. The guys blew the sawdust off the roof, porches, my driveway, even places where they made no mess. They shoveled chips in any spots on the ground that were disturbed by the heavy truck tires and left my place looking great. They were, in a word, awesome.

BEAR ENCOUNTER.

Blogging right now is tough for me. Typing one finger with left hand is slow and tedious. I've hesitated to eat out since eating left-handed is "sloppy".  Neighbor Jan enticed me to a Sunday breakfast at the Native Sons Hall. And, I'm getting more adept with my left hand. She was just rewarded with a plaque for being the best CERT volunteer of the year. We celebrated, and heard a great bear story.

We sat across from two guys, one an electrician the other a general contractor. I took their cards and they are around-somewhere. I believe the contractor's name was Paul Belleni. He was fixing a broken water pipe at a house in Arnold and heard a sound. He turned around to face a mama bear with two cubs. She let out a distinct cry unlike anything he'd ever heard,  and the two cubs scooted up trees immediately. One tree bent to the ground with baby in it. Mama bear dashed past Belleni to protect her cub and he decided to run. He went down hill through a gully and ran for his life with mama behind him and eventually came out on the sixteenth tee at Sequoia Woods Golf course. One of the golfers said "Hey, you, what the hell are you doin'?" (Or something like that as Paul whizzed past.)  Then they spotted the bear. At that point the bear gave up and returned to her cubs. Whew!

He told us with emotion in his voice her claws were so long they were like a second hand.  Looks like a  bent tree saved his bacon. The story came to light as I told my recent encounter with a bear, I've had four, but none as dangerous as Paul Beleni's close call.  But, my cougar story, hey...another time.

TERRORISTS LURK AT EVERY CORNER.

It is true that no one is safe from terrorists here at home. You send your child to school and expect that she or he is safe. I have a cousin who claims he has no fear because he carries a gun on his hip where ever he goes. But, does he guard his grandchildren at their school? Could he prevent a mass killing? Could he defend himself against an assault rifle while he is drinking his coffee in a restaurant?

And what fear does, and what the media and now a presidential candidate does, is stir the pot of fear and hatred. It is preposterous to easily assume we are the victims of Muslim American Radicals.

Statistics prove otherwise. The people we should be afraid of is White Male Extremest Christians. They are most violent and so righteous when they kill.
Remember Christian mass murderers like Robert Lewis Dear? The Planned Parenthood Shooter. And, Dylann Roof, the Charleston Church shooter? And Seung-Hui Cho, who took out 32 Virginia Polytechnic students in seconds, and wounded 17 others. You've read he newspapers. You know the horror.

The statistics show that white Christian men are responsible for 64% of mass shootings. Blacks are responsible for 16%, and Asian Americans-9%. Latinos, Native Americans and "others" make up the rest.
I would challenge anyone who has submitted to the gun buying hysteria to show that we are safer with the proliferation of guns in our country than we were before the NRA began selling fear,  and gun ownership climbed into the gazillions. (I've forgotten the numbers of guns sloshing around the country right now. It is an outrageous number.)
The deaths keep coming. At bus stops, or coffee shops, at any event, even church. Even shootings by young male students at schools. And accidental shootings by children on shooting ranges.

   WE HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BAN CERTAIN WEAPONS - AND WE SHOULD DO IT.

 

In California, some signs of sanity:

Governor Brown Takes Guns Out of Schools.  Though it is old news, it is worth repeating.

 

SACRAMENTO – "Today, (October 10, 2015) Governor Brown signed into law Senate Bill 707, prohibiting gun owners issued a license by their local police chief or sheriff from carrying handguns for self-defense on California school grounds. It also subjects those with a carry permit, issued only after passing a strict, fingerprint-based background check and agency-approved training course, harsh new criminal liability for merely possessing a single round of ammunition on the grounds of any school or college campus, even if they don’t also possess a firearm."

 

Good for us and California Students.

FRACKING ENDANGERS OUR WATER AND AIR.

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting millions of gallons of water with sand and chemicals under high pressure down and across as far as 10,000 feet below the surface. The mixture causes rock layers to crack and open and allow the oil to penetrate the sand particles  so the natural gas from the fracture can flow up the well. Natural gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels like coal and oil, but not by much. It is mostly methane and it traps heat, it leaks readily and like the residents of Dish, Texas complained, "We have unexplained headaches and sickness in  people and animals since the drillers came to town". Air quality tests showed high benzene pollution in the area.

But, the big danger is water well contamination  and earthquakes. Thanks to intensive lobbying from then Vice-President Cheney under President George W., Big Oil and Gas is exempt from critical statutes in all major environmental protections, The Safe Drinking Water Act, The Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act and laws governing the disposal of toxic waste. Pretty Cushy if you are in the oil and gas business, right? And, frackers are allowed to keep secret what chemicals they are pumping into the ground.
How can that be? It's true.

Now let's talk about groundwater, supposedly it belongs to everyone. Like the air we breath, it is a life necessity and no one can buy our air and make us pay for it, and so far, we've managed to prevent corporations from buying control of our water. They've tried, though. In California, we think of our groundwater as a water savings account. We can always get water, right? That too, is beginning to change with high water crops, walnuts, pistachios, almonds draining away mega amounts of water.


The Western United States is typically dry. Our water supply is used from reservoirs because very few natural lakes exist in California. Reservoirs are man made. We've kind of kidded ourselves, or the powers that be have, by damming rivers and reducing them to a trickle. Holding water back worked but it  proved to be the wrong way to treat our rivers. And depending on a pipeline that steals water from the north to make the desert bloom in the south, was then and is now a questionable practice. The truth is that California groundwater would always save us in a drought. Now, that water is in big danger, we need to rethink that.  Fracking is only part of it. But, it is the most dangerous part of it.

More tomorrow.

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TAR SANDS?

Keystone XL pipeline was bad enough. Big oil downplays disasters as though leaking pipes, and lack of safety inspections are rare isolated incidents.  Big oil does not want you to remember  the huge  leak that closed a whole community in Arkansas in 2013, nor train that derailed and exploded in West Virginia in 2015, nor the mountain of toxic Coke waste piling up in East Chicago at the terminal off the great lakes, 6000 tons of it every day. They don’t want you to think about super-tankers carrying up to two million barrels of oil over sensitive ocean. Canada stands to benefit big time while we carry the risk. Don’t let it happen.

All that crude coming from the Alberta Tar Sands is so profitable that Big Oil wants to triple production and send as much as 6 Million barrels a day on these newly planned routes into the us, by pipeline, and tankers all around the east coast, Florida,The Gulf and California Coast. It seems to me investing in clean energy makes so much better sense. You can double click on the picture to get a better read on the proposed routes. Oil on trains, river barges, and lake barges, and ocean tankers does not spell safety to me. The Natural Resources Defense Council has made this public. It puts San Franciso Bay, Puget Sound, the Great Lakes, the Hudson river, and more at risk.
It means mile long trains of tank cars traveling through highly populated areas like Los Angeles, Seattle and Albany New York.
Tankers imperiling fragile sea life in the New England, the Great Lakes and the gulf of Mexico where those refineries are located and recovery from a spill is still not paid for, nor the gulf repaired to it’s “pre-leak” condition.
If you believe in government for the people and not corporations, whenever you see someone in your neck of the woods proposing pipeline legislation for tar sands. Make your voice heard. From me Governor Brown will hear, NO, NO and NO. Also my representative. Luckily we can make our voices heard, but even that freedom is under attack.

UNPREPARED FOR SNOW.

That first snow, at 5:00 a.m. surprised me. I'd never seen it that deep in Murphys. I wished my old friend Buster Reidel was still around to confer with. He would know how unique is was or wasn't back to 1920. He used to advise me not to plant my tomatoes until after Frog Jump. He was keen about local weather patterns.

Tree limbs bent over the roof and over the railing.

The small wires that hold my summer shade cloth were totally encased in snow.

It made for some pretty pictures.


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My housemate, Karen's car, isn't garaged. After a lot of melt, she braved the first day, and got out to the store for cigs. you can see where she was parked. Coming back was a different matter.

She was all over the driveway getting back. But, it was a smarter choice because that partly melted snow is now ice.

When the power went completely out, it was still light outside. People up here know to have a good supply of candles and flashlights. I covered the end of the table with an old tablecloth and set up the outage. I placed candles in strategic places in each room. We ate soup and bread for a light supper. People in the east probably chuckle at our unpreparedness for snow, but we do know how to weather a power outage.

THE TENNESSE RIVER TRAIL-SAVANNAH

As we move up the Tennessee River, through the river towns, signs explain we are traveling the Tennessee River Trail and much of that trail has to do with the Civil War. We spent an hour at the Savannah Museum and it was very comprehensive and well done. Well worth a visit for anyone passing through. It is divided into prehistoric history and early Native American history. Both of which I skimmed through except to say that flat Tennessee was an alluvial plain and shells and fossils are only 15 to 30 feet deep in their soil. Also from Tennessee 450 Chickasaw families were rounded up and made to follow the infamous Trail of Tears to Oklahoma Territory along with 16,000 Cherokees.

Along  the river, and nearby Savannah are some old Indian Mounds if you like archaeology. They are just mounds of earth but once resembled the photo above; ceremonial altars, honorable places for a chief to live.

All river towns have a steamboat history which was pretty exciting. Savannah has a steamboat logo for the town stamped in the sidewalks and on every sign and letterhead.

Joshua C. Stoddard invented the Calliope and every steamboat on the river had to have one. Made of from 8 to 56 graduated steam whistles the music could be heard for miles in every direction. Children squealed and screamed, dogs barked and grownups smiled and held their breath with excitement as all made a mad dash to the river to meet passengers, pick up their mail or goods.

The graceful old paddle-wheelers like this one were made on the Ohio river. It is obvious from this museum that rivers were the major roads of the day, with danger, excitement, and goods  traded up and down the river.

Steamboats came before train bridges. They carried trains across the river to the tracks on the opposite side. The displays explain the dangers and disasters that happened to them, hitting snags, or boiler fires, accidental rammings, and running aground on sandbars.
A steamboat needed a compass, whistle and a list indicator. I don't know why that amused me, it is so simple.

And those speaking pipes we saw on the old movies with submarines?  They were first used on steamships. You can whisper down this tube and your partner can hear it on the upper or lower deck.

Then there was war. The Iron Clads had six cannon per side and could guard the banks, deliver men and supplies to the battle. Many forts were built along rivers and the ships  played a vital role in the Civil War. Before the Iron Clads were built, regular steamers were outfitted with rail road iron three-quarters inch thick above the water line and special protection for her boilers.They were called Tinclads..

On land, within 300 yards, cannon were very effective. They could shoot two rounds per minute and a station of six cannon could pour about 9,700 balls at the enemy in two minutes. The balls could mow down small trees and expose soldiers cover. The history of this area cannot be told without the horrors of the Civil War.

A gruesome task made real.


Bedford was a hero. (Click to enlarge)

The City of Savannah has this to say about heroes posted on their war memorial near City Hall.
We visited City Hall, and drove by the River Park. More about that tomorrow.
After asking three people about where to enjoy good food, we got the same answer all three times:  The Hickory Pit for barbeque and Hakes for fish. Hakes wasn't open on Tuesday and since chicken was served at "The Pit" we enjoyed a great lunch.

Hickory smoked chicken and green fried tomatoes for me. Fried potato skins  served with REAL bacon, green onions, cheese and ranch dressing or sour cream and half a smoked chicken. Delicious. I asked was there a local specialty in the area. The waitress said no, but the menu was definitely a mine of specialties that may not seem special to her.
Deep fried dill pickles, green beans, mushrooms, mozzarella sticks, and corn nuggets. You can get chicky  and pig frys, which are french frys with pulled pork or chicken on top. And neon frys with cheese and meat on top. They offered nine different vegetables with okra, slaw and just about anything else you can think of.  And, the tomatoes and potato skins are nicely flavored, not over dependent on salt, home-made, delicious and all given with excellent service. Stop in and enjoy this very southern restaurant. (The southern accent is a bonus.)

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS.

I’ve been kind of ho-hum about genetically modified foods, except, I believe we have the right to know what we are eating and whether it is genetically modified or not. The right to know is important. We’ve had genetically modified products for ages. Just hand pollinating or cross pollinating is genetically modifying a plant. Or, grafting a scion from a different fruit tree onto another, is an example. But, adding chemicals to seed is an whole other step. My feeling is that the company who modifies it should know the end result if the seedlings spread to the wild or cause unwanted changes.
One negative about genetically modified seed comes from a farmer who bought seed at his supplier and the supplier said he had some of this “new” seed from Monsanto that someone had ordered, then failed to pick up. The farmer bought it, planted it and was crucified when the company found out he had it. He was put through a horrible rigamarole because he hadn’t permission to use it from the company, nor paid the full price. They harassed him through two growing seasons for fear of patent infringement. The hapless farmer was pretty unhappy with the way he was treated by this mega corporation.
But, now comes information from a study that is disturbing. However, I don’t know the size of the study and who conducted it. I read about it on MoveOn.org.

Rats fed a lifetime diet of Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn or exposed to the company’s popular Roundup herbicide, in amounts considered “safe” in drinking water and GM crops in the U.S., developed tumors and suffered severe kidney and liver damage, according to a study released this week.

We may not develop the same problems as rats, but even rats are part of the environmental balance we need. What else will it affect?  Birds? Or raptors that eat rats and gophers?

And this from the editors of On Earth Magazine, a publication that deals with environmental issues:

Carbon-fueled climate change is responsible for many terrifying things, but some normal-seeming rice plants in one recent study is a warning. Scientists from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture grew a feral, weedy from of rice alongside a cultivated form in controlled environments that reflected carbon dioxide levels of a century ago. As C0-2 levels went up, the weedy rice was better able to synchronize its flowering period to that of the cultivate rice, leading to cross pollination and resulting in a zombie-like hybrid with alarming characteristics. From the feral parent, came a diminished nutritional content and a weaker hull. But, the cultivated parent gave it a genetic resistance to weed killers. The weedy rice that always pops up in fields has been traditionally controlled by herbicides.

Now, add in climate change with genetically modified seeds with resistant chemicals in them?  Could be a horror movie.
We don’t have corporate soil and private soil. It’s everyone’s soil. So, when we put something in the soil, it should first be proved harmless. Back off, Monsanto. Prove your safety. But, that isn’t likely to happen now, is it?
Isn’t it wonderful to know that corporations and conglomerates always have our best interests at heart?