MURPHYS OPEN HOUSE CONTINUED.

Yesterday was a struggle, with an extended brown out, 50% power. Bitterly cold for us with eight and a quarter inches of snow. I couldn't open my electric garage door. Karen chanced our driveway and went to town. A guy living on our road plowed the main road. The return was dicey. She slid and slipped back up the driveway and with heart racing,  barely made it back to the house. Since temperatures last night were predicted at 12*, she knew the ice would be a more harrowing journey today, when the slush freezes. It did melt some yesterday, then it snowed some more. Then we  had a full power outage for several hours. I saw PG&E working the pole on my property at 10:00 p.m. So, another day of ice and snow. I hope to walk later in the morning and take pictures. It is nice to have electricity back. So, to continue Murphys Open House where Becky, Janice, Leslie and I met Jan at the emergency shelter, see yesterday's late post:

Becky talked with another shelter worker, Tammy, mostly about the beds and blankets. The beds are red cots. The blankets  are made of ugly grey felt, unwashable,  and are thrown away or given to the person who uses them. I thought that was interesting. One person used the shelter last night. And, Jan reported to me this morning she left at midnight, barely made it home the snow was so heavy, got into her house and a tree went down on her driveway after she got in. (She has 4 wheel drive.)

The wine tasting rooms were busy and filled with tasters. At Hovey's we had a chocolate tasting as well. Everyone was in a festive happy mode, as we were. Enjoying the cookies or treats with cider.

A new store had its grand opening that night. The owner has a lavender farm in Arizona and kids that live in Arnold. They have all kinds of lavender based soaps and products. Very nice. We tasted a delicious lavender cookie. Reminds me of that song:

He was only a lavender cowboy, the hairs on his chest they were two, he wanted to be a big hero, and do as the heroes do. Red, green many color hair tonics, he rubbed on his chest every night. But when he woke up the next morning, no new hairs grew in sight. He battled for Red Nellie's honor, and cleaned out a hold-up's nest. He died with two six guns a blazing, but only two hairs on his chest.
Sorry but that song has been buzzing through my brain lately. I tried to sing it for Jim.

I like bags and hats. We have a great bag shop. This Little Volkswagen bag reminded me of Janis Joplin's Volkswagen. Such a sad story. We visited her home town of Port Arthur, Texas earlier this year. The owner was a Joplin fan. Me too.

A Christmas tree made from rough bits of left over wood. I'm an avid recycler and it appealed to me, along with the home-made decorations. I used to lavishly decorate for Christmas. I'm now in favor of items I can haul out that are already decorated and just need to be set up. (It is an age thing, I think.)

Stores in Murphys have changed hands so many times, I always remember the original name. This was Riedel's Grocery. I met neighbors Bitsy and Mike Cameron.

And, Suki Tutthill. She used to own a business in town. We were in the Business association together in the mid 1980's. Running into old friends is another thing I love about Open House.
My very favorite store in  Murphys, though, is the IDEA store, which carries bathroom machineries and sooooo much more. I tell everyone to go. New on this visit was a child size antique porcelain bath and sink.

And, a more modern child size toilet. Tom  imported a truckload of porcelain one-and-a- half- pint, flush toilets, which will be the new law in California soon. I forgot to take Tom's picture, another old friend from Murphys Business Association. We chatted and enjoyed cookies and cider. The best thing about the place is his ghost story and the story of the over too hundred tons of keys and locks he got from Great Britain. All antique. Marvelous place. Just ask and he will tell you.
The open house was officially over at 8:00 p.m. People lingered beyond that, enjoying the fire pits, hating to leave, music still wafting in the air from somewhere. The Highway Patrol patiently waited and didn't come in like commandos and reopen the street to traffic.  It started snowing just before we left town. It was heavy about 500 yards from my driveway. What a lovely night.

THE THREE GORGES DAM.

Aboard our ship, we eat sumptuous meals and last night, we danced the macarena. Our guide is obviously a political person. She tells us that the employees aboard the ship work horribly long hours. They get up before dawn and begin breakfast, cleaning and all those things that make our trip a smooth, seamless adventure. It is the army of workers that, after their toil, stay up late to entertain us. The costumes, the music, the dance.  It is a sobering experience and for our group, not unwelcome information. Today, we offload from the ship and are delivered to a landing where we take a motorized sampan ride up one of the canyons.

Many fishing families live on their sampans, most are motorized like this one. At one time they were hand paddled or poled along the river. The boatman demonstrated the woven rush garment the old-timers once wore when it rains. Now they have plastic tarps and jackets. Several members of our group were invited to try out the rain coat and pole the sampan.

We happen upon just such a family as we continue up the gorge.  Like the subsistence farmers, these people live hand to mouth. They have no medical care. We see a few monkeys and birds in this gorge and our guide tells us the locals kill and eat them.  In fact, it is eerie to realize that you hardly ever see a bird except domesticated ducks. You see no insects or animal life of any kind in the “wild”.  The monkeys are the rare survivors in this steep canyon where they cannot be hunted to extinction-yet!

This entrepreneurial fellow has positioned himself in this cliff house to take pictures of the tourists in sampans. Then he scurries ahead to the ship and has the pictures posted for sale before we leave the following morning.  Our guide says he also catches sturgeon and delivers it to the back-end of smaller tourist boats that serve meals. Fishermen below the dam love it. Sturgeon get three feet long. There are no fish ladders and they cannot get past the dam. Their environmental problems are still ahead of them.

From the sampan we see a wall of inaccessible caves.

Those that are within reach are not lived in as much as simply used for night-time shelter.

The next morning, we are bused to Wuhan City. There are newly built, modern apartment buildings here. Farmers have few city skills but many of their wives work as maids. Wuhan is in Hubei (hoo-bay) Province. We stopped at a brand new beautiful tourist center in Wuhan only to find the worst awful pit toilets on the trip so far. It kind of boggles the mind, this newly built center, in a newly built town has pit toilets? At the tourist center we saw a fight between two bus drivers from two different tours. We wondered if the Mau Zedong government had somehow erased every human emotion, but this proved it had not.

At the dam, this lock was in working condition and the engineers were testing operations by putting these empty boats through the lock.

This is the kind of traffic they will be getting through the locks. Notice the workers “hotel” at the back end of the barge.

They built a wonderful overlook to see the dam being built.
You get the idea of the immensity of the project even through the morning haze.

A view of the unfinished “front” of the dam. Our guide told us the power generated here will only supply 5% of China’s electrical needs. Seems kind of a shame to have displaced 1.24 million people, over one thousand villages, and I’ve forgotten how many cities for 5% of their power.

The visitor’s center did a good job of explaining the dam, its building process and design. They had a mock-up of the dam in a reflecting pool of water and it was all very interesting.  And this sculpture on the side of the overlook?  I was disappointed that it didn’t have one dragon sculpted in the stone.  In fact, the dam has been a very controversial project. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
There were many sites on the internet covering the controversial issues of this dam if you wish more detail.