A VISIT WITH DAO SANG

My friend Dao Sang was supposed to come for a visit on Monday, but he had a complication, a broken wrist,  and arrived on Tuesday about 10:00 a.m. instead. He is an ordained (if that is the correct word) Buddhist Monk, but sadly, he hasn't had much time to gather with his followers because of multiple health issues.
I'm known him for years,  before he went to Thailand to become a Buddhist Monk. He was a Buddhist and  had health problems when I met him. Something called cluster headaches.  He is also a disabled Marine Vet and returns to the Palo Alto Clinic for treatments, a nine hour drive from where he lives in Newport, Oregon.
I had planned on taking him to my favorite burrito joint in Rogue River for lunch, but we settled for lunch at my house instead. I wanted a ride in his new race car that can easily hit 120 miles per hour. He has always had to have special cars because of his height, now at 6 feet 5 inches. "I've shrunk," he says. And he has lost 50 pounds. We spent the afternoon visiting and then I said, "Let me sit in the new bomb".
With my hands and feet straight out, I couldn't reach the pedals. His knees almost come up to his chin when he drives.

I still wanted to vrooom, vroom around town. Maybe next time.

He is a gentle giant and I tried to get him to break up his trip and stay the night, but he declined. He told me he loves his car and a nine hour drive is fine with him. He says he occasionally has to stop for a bit of espresso if he gets sleepy.

My friend Michal and I went to China in 2007. We ran into Dao at the airport on his way to Thailand. We had a table and he got on his knees and talked to us for 15 minutes. He was taller than both of us seated while he was on his knees. And my former partner, John, a tall lanky 6 foot four, said to him the first time they met, "I'm not used to looking up at people, it hurts my neck."

Everyone plays fun with his height, but it is the cause of many problems. He inevitably bumps his head on something, Too many times. Too many concussions. Thus, the cluster headaches.  His youngest daughter stayed with his oldest daughter in Stockton and he headed back to Newport without her. She'll join him later.

TURKEY WARS.

 
Early this morning, I heard a big turkey fight going on. The two males were flying at each other and gobbling and kind of trilling. They were a long way off and I didn't get pictures. Later, this group of 13 was fending off another smaller group. But when I closed in for the picture, the other group turned and ran.

They made haste and I barely caught them moving away. I guess my presence put an end to the scrap.


I think it is territorial. The bigger group just continued eating as soon as the others fled.
Turkeys aren't as dumb as they are reputed to be. At least the wild ones. My son gave a couple of dudes permission to come on the property once, just once. One chance to hunt turkeys. He instructed them, "You can't shoot toward the road, my house or my neighbor's house." They were dressed in camo, and the minute they got out of the truck, the birds beelined for the neighbors property. They didn't get a chance at one shot. Do they recognize camouflage? Or the sight of a gun?

IS MY BREAD POISONED?

I arrived in Oregon yesterday about dinner time. I opened a cupboard and saw a package of English muffins I'd forgotten to take home. I looked at it carefully and the muffins had no mold, no sign of having sat in a plastic bag inside of a cupboard since the 26th of September. That is 44 days. Plus,  I'd had the package at least 4 days before I left, maybe more.

My stomach was turning a bit at the thought of tasting one. But, I put it in the toaster, buttered it and took a bite. No off taste of mold or spoilage. Just stale and a bit dry.
 
I read the ingredients and compared it to my package of San Luis Sour Dough bread that I often buy and had with me.  The difference was chemical dough conditioners and chemical anti-molding agents.

I began to think of other breads I've eaten that stay as fresh a week after I buy them as the day I brought them home. I actually noticed this phenomena especially since they are whole grain, seeded loaves, described as "healthy". I kept thinking that maybe they are irradiating bread, something tried in the 60's, but people were just afraid of the word irradiating as in radiation and irradiation failed.

Now, it seems like we are being fed a load of chemicals. I don't know who to call and ask about the dangers of consuming this crap. I do know I'm not going to buy bread products with so many chemicals in them. Hopefully I'll be able to find an answer and share it with you.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN.

When I left Oregon, I put in a couple of hours working on this bridge across Evans Creek. Not that I could help very much. Now, it looks like the bridge has bigger problems, according to emails I've received.

I have nice neighbors there and they keep me in the loop. Today, I'm headed back to Oregon and luckily Jim is here to hold down the fort because the Butte Fire recovery helpers, dedicated volunteer Sara Watson, and her husband, is coming to pick up, four barbeque pits, one picnic table, two smaller tables, shingles, building blocks, pavers, my old sink, plastic chairs, umbrellas...little stuff. Suffice it to say downsizing has its rewards. And, I like that my things are going to the right place.

I'm very admiring of this young woman who says, her house is a mess, but its okay. "We've got a house."  Their house was in the path of the fire, but missed. So, she trudges on, helping others, temporarily neglecting her own needs until she can help the families on her list.

What a great community to live in. People always rally for their neighbors. Giving also has its rewards.

So, I'm on the road again, temporarily. Yesterday's blog elicited this comment:

An interesting piece on contributions and politics. So you really don’t think it’s wise to keep upping the ante as regular folk to counter the wealthy contributors in some fashion? I reckon the change/ movement or responses needed are far deeper and there is a need to address our circumstances in a manner that a $100 here or there by individuals will do much.

I answered in detail:

I’ve done it. And, I no longer do it. I send a note saying when you get rid of Citizens United, I’ll be glad to donate. Presidential races are an exception. I do send cash for my chosen candidate. It has been shown that brave and courageous people can win elections in spite of millions of Koch etc. money, but it is definitely harder. Instead I donate to the organizations that help by pushing various bills that I agree with, and push those same legislators for change. I send money to Public Citizen, American Civil Liberties Union, Natural Resources Defense Council, Earth Justice, Forest Service Employees for Ethical Environment, Free Press, NPR, and National Public Television; Planned Parenthood, Common Cause. I donate to trusts that buy up land to hold property in perpetuity for the public. Anything that gets the issues before the public and pushes. They are working on the ground and have the best chance of leveraging change with those dollars. I have a long list. I can’t donate to all of them at the same time but when an important issue comes up, like fracking and the Keystone pipeline, I’ll monetarily support those fighting on the ground against it. Same goes for political issues, like hold Goldman Sachs and Wall Street accountability. I'm glad she asked.

IT IS WISDOM AND NOT GOLD WHICH IS THE REAL CROWN OF LEADERS.

DON'T THOW THE BUMS OUT.

Jon Grinspan wrote an article for Smithsonian Magazine noting the comparable issues of America's disenchantment with their representatives now and during our historical past.

I've often used the phrase, Throw The Bums Out when I was disgruntled over some fumble from our local Board of Supervisors, but more often over our state and national legislators.  I'm excerpting Grinspan's article because it gives a different perspective.

"Voters are in a bad mood. Again." he writes.  "We are routinely (and justifiably) frustrated with our politicians, but “throwing the bums out” doesn’t seem to change much. And we are all bracing for another anger-pageant that will stomp through American life for the next 12 months until election day.

It was too easy, the muckraker Lincoln Steffens began to argue, to believe that bad politicians were just immoral people. The young writer had bounced from California to Europe to Manhattan...where  he honed his scorching prose, and learned about New York’s “low-life,” as a crime reporter in rough-and-tumble Manhattan in the 1890s.  One politico called him “a born crook that’s gone straight.”

Like many Americans, Steffens grew up cursing his leaders. Between 1865 and 1900, frustrated citizens pointed to the never-ending string of political scandals and stolen elections, as leaders failed to address the massive traumas of the Gilded Age.

Attacking leaders was an easy route to becoming one. Self-impressed tycoons, high-toned editors and rising politicians “greedy for power” all insisted that they knew how to clean up politics. Replace bad, immoral men with “the best men”—wealthy, God-fearing, respectable—and the democracy would fix itself. And by “the best men,” they meant themselves.

Angry voters tried this approach, throwing the bums out in election after election.  Control of Congress changed hands with dizzying speed in the 1880s and 1890s, yet politics only grew more corrupt.

But as a crime reporter who befriended crooked cops and scheming politicos, Steffens stumbled onto a new approach to journalism. Instead of moralizing, he listened. People would talk, he found, if you let them. Steffens hung around police stations and pool halls, absorbing everything he could. He even tolerated the ceaseless lectures of a young police commissioner named Teddy Roosevelt (though Steffens devised ways to shut his new friend up). And he refused to sit, isolated, in New York, setting out across the country to study dirty tricks from Boston to San Francisco.

Steffens came away with two major insights. Bad politicians were not necessarily bad people.  Steffens concluded that the angry public was focused on the wrong problem. Political dirty tricks were not “exceptional, local, and criminal…not an accidental consequence of the wickedness of bad men...," Americans—obsessed with individualism—liked to rage against immoral men, but really it was big, impersonal structures—like the steady drip of campaign contributions—that did more to buy power and harm the democracy.

Steffens began to write, furiously, publishing his “dawning theory” in his famous “Shame of the Cities” series in McClure’s Magazine between 1901 and 1904.  Often, angry middle-class citizens, looking for someone to blame, perpetuated the pointless cycle of reform and relapse, throwing out individuals but failing to make real change. ...a way to avoid considering the deeper problems with their political system.

American voters began to see that the country’s political problems were, really, social problems. Instead of hollering about immoral bosses, reformers simply went around them, introducing primary elections, ballot initiatives, recall votes, and eventually the direct election of senators. Progressive activists focused on improving political structures, not electoral “lynchings” of the bad guys.

And in our time of anger at politicians, it’s important to consider where bad leaders come from. ...politicians are, as a group, no better or worse than the rest of us. If they stink, something’s rotten with the system that feeds them. As long as we see politics as a war between good and bad individuals, ignoring the structures that reward or punish them, this will continue.

The most compelling words, "the steady drip of campaign contributions" and the word "activists."

We need to be activists, and it is easy on-line to sign petitions and reply as a group to leverage change. When asked to contribute, I answer that as soon as YOU get the money out of politics, I'll be glad to contribute. Above all,  we need to get rid of Citizens United. Every chance to sign a petition or to vote to rid ourselves of that unrighteous production of the court, will help restore balance in our democracy.

TELEPHONE BOOKS KEPT ME WARM.

It was cold all day yesterday. The night-time temperature sunk to 36* Brrrr!  I have wood, but I was too busy with inside projects to venture out into the cold and breezy weather to haul in an armload of wood. I read about a guy who rolled up magazines and kept his house warm with them and cardboard and junk mail. Hmm!  I grabbed four old phone books and twigs from the back deck, some cereal boxes from the recycle, lit a fire that did warm up the house enough to keep the chill off, along with papers that were meant to be shredded. The propane heater went on once. Passive solar worked well by mid afternoon.

You know that collectiholics are incurable. And, if we have two of something, a little spring goes off in the brain and...whatta ya know? A catalog collection. I have an explanation of how this can happen. We lived off the land in a remote location when I was young and catalogs were the most appealing thing we had in our old log cabin. They were paper dolls, color, tracing material, cut and paste, reading material and the wish books of Christmas were the stuff of childhood dreams. Then, as an adult I'd read with humor excerpts from even older catalogs.  Dr J. Hostetters Stomach Bitters. Ida Wheelers Ladies corsets, guaranteed to give you a 20 inch waistline. Benjamins Rheumatism Cure. The pictures were hilarious and the cures such obvious shams. Catalogs had funny parts and tools and implements and inventions we never knew existed.

Then, I coveted various "little" mail order catalogs. Don't ask me why. These I'm tossing. The big ones I'm offering free on Craigslist before tossing. Downsizing is turning into a lot of fun. This morning, I got an email from someone who wants my first day covers stamp collection that I placed in the free section 16 days ago. Yay!

This morning, I gathered wood and brought it in. The last papers I put into the stove last night were still smoldering, but I won't be burning catalogs.

THE SIXTH GREAT EXTINCTION.

We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction on ear. The sumatran tiger went extinct this year. It is 2015 and we are losing large predator animals. Extinctions of birds, insects, amphibians and smaller mammals almost go unnoticed among the thousands of species we've lost.

This is lonesome George. A pinto Island tortoise that went extinct in the mid 1800s. George was discovered in 1971, the last of the breed. He lived until 2012, the only one of his kind.
 
A quaga. The face of a giraffe, the stripes of a zebra and the hind quarters of a horse.
 
Another giant tortoise, the seychelles. Their biggest fault is they taste good and were easy to catch.

A thylacine. I would have liked to have seen one of these in a zoo. A ferocious predator you wouldn't want to meet in the wild.
 
A barbary lion, with a unique looking tufted mane.
 
An Asian tarpan, a small wild horse that stood only 5 feet tall.
We've lost forever two amazing tigers, the caspian, the largest tiger ever seen and the smallest, the Bali tiger, no bigger than an average dog.

The beauty of the golden toad lead to its extinction in 1989.

The black rhino gone-2011. We know that the Chinese superstition that powdered rhino horn is an aphrodisiac is what is responsible for the wholesale killing of rhinos, like elephants for their ivory. Elephant losses are frightening. Will they be next?  Only in zoos?
Or will it be the polar bear?

With climate change, acidic oceans and rain, many fish and ocean animals endangered. Will various populations of humans go extinct for lack of food? I think that is a fair question.

A man... I'm remembering his name as Wilson, conceived the idea that we should return half the world in every country to its original wild condition. We've certainly made great strides in rehabilitating some of our most egregious mistakes, like the buffalo, grizzly bear, wolves, eagles. Wouldn't that be neat? 

POLITICS OF STAMP COLLECTING.

Stamp collecting is not as passive as people think. Consider a stamp that indirectly brought about the Panama Canal-in Panama.


My mother was an avid stamp collector,  a cheap and interesting thing to do during the depression. If you were poor you collected used stamps. If you could afford it, you collected new stamps. In my mother's case, she did both. Old stamps like these from the 1800's were pretty uninteresting compared to newer, brightly colored stamps like the sample below:

 For the most part, stamps commemorate historical events. And, stamps have changed the world in interesting ways.
Trout Stamps of the 1950's helped keep fishing healthy. Just as Duck Stamps supported wetlands. That money made an enormous difference even though they never landed on a letter.

A protest poster against President Reagan for ignoring the Aid's crisis through both of his terms resulted in this stamp:

Once the public swarmed to buy these stamps to support aids research and cures, the breast cancer stamp was issued and is still available.

Like everything else, stamp collecting evolved. More expensive then simple stamps soaked off the envelopes, collectors began buying First Day of Issue envelopes. The post marks were educational,  geography, exotic. Dig out the atlas and look to see where Titusville is and read why they chose that location.

If you collect, who wouldn't want better looking first day of issues than the old ones above? The way it works is a company would commission a drawing of what person, flower, building, etc. was being commemorated in a stamp and get them stamped for you. The presidential selections set me back $17.

California Statehood cost $12 for this single envelope. Stamp collecting is no longer cheap. If you kept up with your philatelic magazine, you could buy the stamp address the envelope to yourself and mail it inside of another envelope to the post office designated and request the postmaster to stamp you first day of issue. Timing was everything. If you missed the date, curses!

And regular stamps became more exotic. You can barely see the stamps among this beautiful scene. My husband would say, "...the US Postal Department is  pandering to collectors. You buy every stamp that comes along." It was true.  I promised him I'd quit after the year 2000. As it turned out, that was the year he died. And, I quit collecting stamps.

In the meantime, the Postal Department made a lot of money on stamp collecting since collectors didn't use the stamps. The popularity of  email has taken over the world. Now Postal Department revenues come from advertising. Email changed the equation for stamp collectors, as well. Selling a stamp collection is no longer an option. Young people have many diversified interests and aren't interested in stamps. Now, I'm using them on my letters and bills, and enjoying them anew, in a sense.

UP ON THE ROOF.

Yesterday and the day before, I worked on my evaporative coolers. I had expensive gutter covers installed two years ago and promised myself I'd never get up on the roof again. Those same two years I hired a guy to open up and shut down the coolers. My housemate pointed out to me my cooler was leaking. She is upstairs and can look out onto my roof and see it.

Several things were wrong. The guy wasn't able to, or didn't take the time to maneuver the back panel on it. Thus the leak. The float wasn't adjusted properly.  On the upper roof cooler, he had used too much oil and it was splattered all over the inside of the cooler. And, when I do it myself, I can tell if the belts are tight enough, or worn and need to be replaced. Ditto the straw batts. My kids scold because I go up on the roof but I can check my chimney for creosote, see how heavy the tree limbs hanging over my roof have become and hire help if I need it.
 
Then, to make matters worse, both pans were beginning to rust out. Jim copped these pictures but he came up and helped me. He also introduced me to Proflex, an amazing sealer. I painted over the rust with Proflex probably giving the coolers five more years of life. I know the mini-split heat pump I had installed in Oregon is an efficient heater and air conditioner with easier maintenance and cheaper to run. Mini-splits are just beginning to be advertised in California. Now I can budget for a replacement system.
After watching my yard service guys with a 30 foot pole  saw,  I adapted my pole saw by taking off the blade and duct taping a webster to it. It reached my high front windows up under the eaves without having to stand on a ladder.  Down came those nasty spider webs. All I have left to do is wipe clean the fascia boards after today's rain.  I'm ready for winter.

EVERYDAY CHALLENGES

There must be some law that says Saturday is a work day. I picked the late apples, and then my yard service had to cut half the tree away. Sprinkling system watering isn't healthy for trees.
 
 Maintaining spindly second-growth live oaks has always been tough. Jerod is using a pole saw at least 30 feet long.
 
Jerod and Dave, a father and son duo, backed their rig all over my yard and picked up piles of trimmings from months back and hauled it to the yard waste. My biggest challenge this morning was figuring out how to downsize pictures in my resizer. Less time to load them. Somehow they seem friendlier.
 
Laurie and Ken came by. They stopped at the "new" restaurant in town called the Lucky Penny and bragged about the quality of the food and drink. Located in what was once the Nugget, had me bursting with memories of events that happened there. (Another blog). Jim said sunny days are on the wane so they decided to put the top down.

Pretty cool, man!
 
It's a 1969 Mercury Montego and so long I could barely get it in the frame. All it needs is some dice hanging from the mirror.
 I reread my fast breeze through Texas. I hit the high spots, missed some and didn't give much flavor of the place. An old Texas saying  was coined around mid-1850s in South Texas. The Nueces Strip was notorious for outlaws, thieves and bushwhackers. The only way a man could be safe was to ride the trail with a loyal partner. From this time and place, the saying "He'll do to ride the river..." became the highest compliment one cowhand could pay another.

He'll Do to Ride the River

LaBree and I were partners, we shared a common trail.

We were friends and confidants, we kept each other out of jail.

I remember back last winter, he nursed me back to health.

It's a memory that I treasure, more than a rich man's wealth.

He put down my old sorrly that I'd had for fourteen years.

He knew I couldn't do it and ignored my childish tears.

Many a log we burned while riding open range.

We cut the barbed wire fences, we both resisted change.

We protected one another, it was life insurance then.

I was a lucky man to count LaBree my friend.

He never let me down, he covered all my bets.

Now my compadre's gone and I have but one regret.

I never told you how I felt so listen up LaBree.

You'll do to ride the river, I hope you'll say the same to me.

By Michael Darden Dowd.  (Published in the Stockyard Gazette.)