Fallbrook Vintage Swap Meet

I had an idea the other day.  Four in the morning thing. I am a part owner of a large parking lot centrally located in my town. There are no antique shows this Covid impacted year and only Long Beach is open as a Flea Market as far as I know at this point.

My fellow antique dealers and I have been hurting, some worse than others. In California, events like antique shows that we count on to make a living are not permitted. But swap meets are. Why not have a monthly swap meet in the parking lot?

I checked with my fellow owners, they were all for it. So I sent this letter to Collector Magazine yesterday:

I copied a whole bunch of dealers I know, thanks to a couple great promoters who have offered to help, Rosemary and April. The response in the last 24 hours has been incredible, with many people requesting booths and one person already wanting two booths. Several people have already claimed my couch. Don't think that is going to happen, frankly.

I will be handing these flyers out to a few people at Long Beach tomorrow.

I will apply for my permit at the Sheriff's Department Monday. There are a million logistical things to consider, trashcans, toilets, move in lines, space layout and marking, insurance, manpower, tickets, waivers and releases, it is endless. I want to find a great food truck, do you know of any? Might even get some music for the first one. If it doesn't work out it will be a hell of a party and the pub is across the alley. Thankfully, some excellent dealers want to participate, think everything will work out peachy.

I am thinking of holding some spaces open so normal folk can get in on the fun too. Will see how it all shakes out. Maybe a plant seller, a bakery booth would be nice too.

If I missed contacting you and you want to get on my list, or if you know someone with a good attitude and interesting material please email me and let me know. This thing will work if the people of Fallbrook and North County find out about it and come visit. So when I get the okay it will be very important to really let it go on social media and spread the word.

If the experiment works it will continue, as long as it is necessary and fun for everybody and people make some money.

Let me know what you think.

The Colonel. Have to find me a hat...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020)

 

Comparatively speaking

 

Voodoo Child

Kip sent this over today:

From Boing Boing. 

A few days ago, this video of Hendrix performing "Voodoo Child" on Maui in 1970 was loaded to YouTube. This is part of an upcoming November release of the legendary Maui concert that Hendrix did as part of the psychedelic train wreck of a film known as Rainbow Bridge.

As far as I know, the complete concert footage has never been released. The Rainbow Bridge "soundtrack" that was released posthumously doesn't include anything actually recorded on Maui. This performance has always been something of a holy grail to Hendrix fans as many claim it was Jimi at the height of his inventive powers.

The documentary film, Music, Money, Madness, and the Maui Live concert recording will be released on November 20th.

Interesting. Finally. A good friend of mine was part of the Rainbow Bridge production team. I was just hunting for the first part of the song the other day when the sky turned a fiery red and could only find the slight return.

Tony Sirico

I was a Johnny come lately to the Sopranos but I eventually binged the whole thing. I had never seen this interview with the actor that played Paulie until yesterday. Pretty amazing story, the real thing. I had no idea. Serious tough guy. I knew people like this in New York.

Redbud and Yukon

 

Continuing with my virtual postcard theme, Jon Harwood contributes a somewhat other worldly one of his own.

I finally got around to buying a California Redbud tree yesterday, from Briggs in Vista. I have wanted one for a long time. I didn't take a picture of it but here is what it looks like when it is flowering.

The redbud's native haunts are the southern slopes of the Sierras. It likes four separate seasons to do its thing.

Should be perfect down in my river bottom. I get both extreme heat and cold, should take to it like a duck in water. Which it doesn't need much of being a rather drought tolerant tree or shrub.

I took my old van. I bought a fifteen gallon specimen for about eighty bucks, maybe a little less and it was so big that it spanned dashboard to tailgate and barely gave me room to sit.

I planted it at seven o'clock this morning before it got too hot. Unfortunately I hit a leach field and had to bore through river rock to dig a hole.

Oddly, the tree is blooming right now and it is not supposed to be, normally flowering directly from its branch in the Spring. But it is cool because Leslie favors purple over pink and mine is just the right hue. Will try to grab a shot tomorrow. I think I buy an eastern redbud next, probably the purple leafed forest pansy cultivar.

Some people think their meat comes from the store. My friend in Alaska knows exactly where his meat comes from that he feeds his family because he harvests it himself, legally and as humanely as possible. A moose feeds him for a year.

He and his grandson found a legal sized bull the other day, shot it and took to the laborious chore of breaking it down and preserving the meat.

By law the antlers must be preserved. I have way more respect for someone who harvests their own game and provisions then from a person who buys their meat at a store, probably raised at a factory feed lot. Here is the rack tied to his airplane.

Jeff sent a picture of last night's delicious dinner, fresh moose and carrots from the new greenhouse he built. Mashed potatoes too from the garden.

I really want to get to Alaska one day. I think an honest, independent life can still be found there. Would probably get a lot of nice pictures too.

Renee sent over the newest color from the Pantone chart, end of days orange. For those of us in California whose eyes are still watering.

Sandra and Brian sent over a video of a hawk in their birdbath. Somebody else sent me hawk pics too but I can't put my finger on them right now. I had lesser goldfinches in my birdbath today that were positively green.

The camera shop called, they can fix the lens for under $500 which is a godsend for me as a new 24 -70mm nikkor would really set me back. Yeah!

Warren in San Mateo is being visited by a deer,  a doe, a female deer as the song goes and a bit of a wine snob...

We have a doe who has been eating the garden, grapes, roses, orange tree, azalea’s.  She also comes here for water.  I keep thinking she will move on as there’s nothing left for her to eat.  She keeps finding something else she can stand.  Their taste preference are interesting.   I know she eats the merlot grapes first and the zinfandel last of the grapes.

Sopwith Camel

Rain, sleet, hail or snow but not Trump.

 

My insurance lady just called. They still have not received a check I sent to Garden Grove for my homeowners insurance about ten days ago.

Garden Grove is seventy five miles away from Fallbrook, even closer as the crow flies.

I was talking to a friend in the Bay Area yesterday. He had been talking to his broker about transferring money to his IRA account.

The broker had given him an option of express mailing the large sum of money or sending it first class. Unfortunately my friend cheaped out, trusting the USPS. Now he is paying the price.

This was over three weeks ago. The money has still not been received. My friend is sweating.

Unfortunately the whole country is suffering the same mail malaise right now. The Los Angeles Times wrote an exposé yesterday, more than half the mail was delayed in a mail test survey they ran recently.

Hiring United States Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to run the mail is like hiring Betsy DeVos to lead the public education system or David Legates, a climate change denier, to run NOAA. Ditto Wheeler at EPA and Bernhatdt at Interior. They are guaranteed to destroy whatever they touch. Fix it by killing it.

Since taking over as postmaster general, DeJoy has come under intense scrutiny from Democrats for changes he made to USPS that have caused widespread mailing delays. DeJoy's relationship with President Donald Trump as a megadonor, coupled with the President's continued false claims on mail-in voting, fueled allegations that the Trump administration was using USPS to influence the election, a charge DeJoy denies.

DeJoy has argued that his changes to USPS are designed to save the organization money in the short and long term. His initial changes, like restricting late and extra mail truck trips, have been blamed by many workers and union officials as a key cause for significant delays across the postal system. They also inadvertently caused reductions in overtime.

I have noticed that postal collection boxes have been disappearing in my fair town. There used to be four in the drive through now there are two. Now I have no idea what is behind the curtain but I hear that sorting machines are going the way of the cuckoo and postal workers are not happy. 

Carlos Barrios, a local supervisor in San Antonio, testified the emphasis to reduce late and extra trips—which he said came directly from headquarters—led to the mail delays. 

“They want to get the mail out by a certain time,” Barrios said, “so we can’t get it all out.” 

Antonio Cuevas, a postmaster at several locations before he retired earlier this year, told Government Executive that plant managers were not just “randomly making these decisions,” but rather following instructions that trickled down from headquarters. The memos that Cintron and Curtis denounced “mirrored what was said on conference calls,” he added. Cuevas said USPS brass' suggestion that local supervisors around the country all misinterpreted the initiative in the same way and that is what led to delays, seemed unlikely. 

“How could it be so well coordinated that the local managers are making the same bad decisions at the same time?” Cuevas said. “Managers and supervisors are following some instructions they are getting.”

DeJoy is a logistics CEO. And he would rather send out empty trucks that are on time than deliver the people's mail. A certain party in Washington wants to kill the mail system before the election. Looks like they are doing a great job.

Exercising while black

Good Rorschach test. Who do you sympathize with here, if anybody, the black dude or MAGA man? Neither or both? And over in Queens, the birthplace of our President, a white woman threw a glass bottle at a black jogger and said "Go back to Africa, Nigger." Good thing racism no longer exists in this country.

Spare parts

Have you read the whistleblower complaint filed against the Irwin Detention Center, an ICE facility in Georgia run by LaSalle Corrections?

Pretty damning stuff, if true. So much for the pro life party. For a good synopsis of the whole deal read this, “A SILENT PANDEMIC”: NURSE AT ICE FACILITY BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON CORONAVIRUS DANGERS.

And this article at HuffPo focuses on another sordid aspect of the whole mess: Whistleblower Says Doctor Performed Excessive Hysterectomies On ICE Detainees - Nurse Dawn Wooten says the doctor she dubbed the “uterus collector” also removed the wrong ovary of a patient at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center.

Several people, including a nurse, expressed alarm at the number of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Ocilla, Georgia, according to a new whistleblower complaint sent to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.

According to the nurse, female detainees are regularly sent to an off-site doctor who sometimes ends up removing all or part of their uteruses. Due to language barriers, many of the women may not be able to properly consent to the procedure. Some nurses end up “simply googling Spanish” to obtain patient consent, she alleged.

This will be an interesting one to follow.  Nothing would surprise me with this administration however.

Sue Cunningham, Under the Moon

Freaktopia

Craig McDean - Freaktopia

Every generation has its thing. In the forties it might be the jitterbug. The fifties took our youth to the sock hops or to the drive in with Linda Lou. My generation was a little bit different.

While some of my more responsible peers might be studiously prepping for finals on the weekends, my little group was as likely to find itself grooving to the sound of the Grateful Dead at some lysergically soaked venue somewhere in America's heartland.  

And so I read with some bemusement yesterday that Vogue Magazine is now featuring fashion born in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert in 1977, arguably one of the two greatest years for them musically, along with 1974. 

You can read the article here, Freaktopia Resurrects the Look and Vibe of a Grateful Dead Lot.

Despite existing travel bans, Freaktopia offers (visual) trips aplenty. This just-launched brand, a collaboration among photographers Craig McDean and David Mushegain, artists Phil Brown and Mikio, and others, has been about 12 years in the making, but the story really begins in a Grateful Dead lot in 1977. 

It’s there that Brown and Mikio met and started traveling with the band, which they did until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995. On this long, strange ride, the art partners were mentored by Ed Donahue, and like him, made and sold T-shirts in parking lots. “We always felt that we were doing work for a community that we were a part of,” noted Mikio on a recent call. “We all felt we were cocreating a scene.” 

I don't know why but I find this kind of hilarious for a variety of reasons. I was at a lot of those parking lots in 1977, knew Ed Donahue pretty well (and frankly loved the guy, who was a great artist and very sweet and humble man.) 

A lot of us stuck our old favorite t-shirts in a drawer but I think very few of us thought they would be selling now through designer boutiques for prices starting at $350, with many now turning over in the vintage market for over a grand. I think I remember ten bucks was tops at the time. Money was, for some reason, a very small part of the equation, no one cared about your status or your bank account. Were you kind? Did you listen to the music play?

There was a happy ethos back then, you didn't make money off your brethren, tickets sold at face value, it was more about tripping around having a good time, helping each other out and surviving frankly, perhaps not creating a fashion statement so much as a psychedelic or life statement. Money was something that hopefully could get you to the next gig. 

My how things have changed...

Vintage Ed Donohue t-shirt

I am a relatively young guy, was pretty late to the Grateful Dead, unfortunately didn't start listening until 1970 and 71 and didn't start going to shows for a year or two after that.

But when I did get on the bus, I was sold. Felt very lucky and very happy. Saw many hundreds of incredible shows and made lasting lifelong friendships that have stood the test of time to this day.

I look at the shows in 1977 with some reverence, from the Swing to Winterland to Cornell. It was a phenomenal year. And the scene truly coalesced as did the occasional purple dragon.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think it would become a sartorial cash cow in the future. But I guess in an age where people pay other people to tear holes in their blue jeans for them I should have expected it.
  

I like Mikio's work a lot and actually think this whole thing is quite hysterical. Make a buck, why not? Sell tie dies for thousands of dollars, when in the day we did it ourselves with some Rit dye and a bucket. I hear they look great with Jimmy Choos.

brain baked at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl

But what's next, kind veggie parking lot burritos at Chez Panisse starting at $38 an entree? Ripple sponsorships? We already have Grateful Dead underwear, shoes, socks and soap, an early idea of mine that I should have actualized. Maybe high end designer acid vacations, their time has certainly come.

Ankor Wat, Haleakala or Timbuk Five. Time to trip again before we all end up on oxygen tanks or in assisted living.

Wonder if all this chic placement stuff could pass the acid test? The old look at the mirror truth serum thing? Or is it just the right time to cash in and go mainstream? Or past time... Jokes definitely on me, easy to spot the actual anachronism.

Who may have something to sell you.

Headline hits all the stops

'Transgender Black Marxists' seek to overthrow U.S., Trump backer Michele Bachmann says.

Jonathan and Ray sent these over

 The Medical Community Responds to Covid-19

 
Should we open up the country? 

Here are the results by medical specialty:
 
The allergists were in favor of scratching it,
but the dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves.
The gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it,
 the neurologists thought the administration had a lot of nerve.
The veterinarians argued doggedly to purr-suade the public about the claws-and-effect consequences.
Meanwhile, obstetricians felt certain everyone was laboring under a misconception, while
the ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted .
Many pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!"  
While the pediatricians said, "Oh, grow up!"  
psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness,
while the radiologists could see right through it.  
surgeons decided to scrub the whole thing and the
internists claimed it would be a bitter pill to swallow .  
The plastic surgeons opined that this proposal would "put a whole new face on the matter."  
The podiatrists thought it was a step forward,
the urologists were pissed off at the whole idea.  
anesthesiologists thought the it was a gas,
and those lofty cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.  
In the end, the proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision to the assholes in Washington.    

*

Riots in The Villages in Florida. 

The rioting in major cities across the U.S. has spread to The Villages, Florida, a retirement community of over 100,000.

Looters in Florida’s friendliest hometown have especially broken into stores that sell items like laxatives, vitamins, hearing aids, reading glasses, energy drinks and surgical stockings.

The Seniors were easily caught and arrested since they were using their walkers and golf carts to flee.

The protests have been limited to the evening hours because most of the lawbreakers either had doctor’s appointments during the day or rioting would have interfered with their naps.

The marches didn’t last that long because many of the demonstrators had to get home to pee. In many cases, the demonstrators simply forgot why they were even there.

Officials considered a curfew starting at 9 p.m. but since that’s the time when most of the residents go to bed anyway, it was decided that it wasn’t needed.

Community leaders concluded that part of the problem was that residents were restless because they had too much time on their hands since the recreation centers, pools, theaters, boutique stores and especially the bars were closed due to the corona virus.

Community officials wanted to form a committee to look further into the problem, but the next day no one could remember why they needed a committee. 

Cheap travel

 

Funky Kingston

Atlas shrugs

An eight month old catches Covid 19 at a child care facility and brings it home to her parents. 

When I saw this article yesterday I thought, this can't be right? Kids catching the virus at child care centers and then infecting their parents? 

How can that be? Didn't Fox talking head and new Trump bff Dr. Scott Atlas say that kids never get covid and that asymptomatic kids couldn't spread the disease? 

The guy who said it is a "good thing" for younger, healthy Americans to be exposed to the coronavirus as children are at essentially "zero risk?"

I'm shocked, if you can't trust a retired radiologist to opine and set national health care policy on epidemiology and infectious diseases, just who the hell can you trust?

The Stanford medical community has written a rather harsh letter recently attacking and debunking Atlas, who must feel like he is carrying the whole world on his shoulders right now.

“Many of his opinions and statements run counter to establish science, and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy,” reads the letter addressed to colleagues on Wednesday. It lists a series of bullet-points, highlighting the importance of public health interventions like wearing masks and social distancing. The authors also point out that testing asymptomatic people is important, and children of all ages can be infected with the virus.

The letter also casts doubt on so-called herd immunity, noting that the safest path to controlling the pandemic is by deploying “rigorously evaluated, effective vaccines that have been approved by regulatory agencies.”

“Encouraging herd immunity through unchecked community transmission is not a safe public health strategy,” it says. 

The great thing about writing this blog is that I can be held accountable for what I write, right or wrong. It is all there in the archives. I don't go back and change things so that I look good. And you know, as soon as Supervisor Jim Desmond trotted out this modern day Rasputin I said that something didn't smell right and that he was clearly full of shit. Soon Trump had a new best friend prattling on, making absurd suggestions about herd immunity.

I want to hear from a radiologist when I have accidentally swallowed a nickel or found that the doctor left a small scalpel in my spleen, not opining about national health policy. I would love to say I hate it when I am right but that would be clearly a lie, I love it when I am right but this charlatan was an easy read so maybe I don't deserve much credit.

If this was feudal Japan we could demand that he publicly disembowel himself and commit seppaku for peddling such destructive tripe and harming the health and children of our nation. Watch him slink off into the shadows instead, after Trump is done using him.

Oops!

Headlines

 

Roger Stone Calls For Trump To ‘Declare Martial Law’ To Seize Power If He Loses.

Long-time Donald Trump confidant, and convicted felon, Roger Stone said that the president should declare “martial law” to seize power if he loses what Stone characterized as an already corrupt election. 

The results will only be legitimate if the “real winner” — Trump — takes office, regardless of what the votes say, Stone declared. A loss would apparently be justification for Trump to use force to take over the nation.

Stone, who worked as an adviser in the last Trump campaign, made the astonishing statements Thursday on the InfoWars program of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Both men talked of an ongoing “coup” against Trump, and Stone inexplicably claimed that he predicted “almost three decades ago that this moment would come.”

POTUS Threatens Aggressive Crackdown On Any Anti-Trump ‘Riots’ Spurred By Possible Reelection

President Donald Trump threatened militaristic crackdowns on any potential “riots” that break out on November 3 if he were to win reelection.

In a preview clip of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro’s interview with Trump set to air in full on Saturday, Pirro asked the President what he would do if his victory sparked an uproar among the anti-Trump crowd on Election Day.

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that,” Trump responded. “We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want.”

He described the potential protests as would-be “insurrection.”

“We just send in … and we do it very easy,” Trump said without specifying what agencies or enforcement would be dispatched. “I mean, it’s very easy.”

 

Taj Mahal

Virtual Vacation

 

Toots Hibbert

So sorry to hear today that Toots had died of Covid complications. I am so glad that I was able to see him perform live on several occasions, the last time at the Belly Up. He was a robust, powerful talent and will be greatly missed.

Broken World Deux

 

© Mike Reardon 2020

Fortunate Son

Broken World

 

My neighbor called and told me to run out and look at the twilight zone sun this morning.

I am sure that the same thing is being repeated all over California today.

The haze is said to be the worst smog that we have experienced in twenty six years. 

I didn't have my camera and the cell phones do weird things to the sun and leave artifacts but I did the best I could.

*

Speaking of camera, my workhorse Nikkor 24 -70mm G has stopped rotating completely, is binding severely. Not sure what happened but I don't believe that it was impacted or bumped. Nikon wants six hundred bucks to fix this, the lens cost well over 2k originally. I am going to call Kurt's Camera Repair in San Diego, will be really hard to function without this lens. Can't afford a new one. The Tamron G2 is pretty close and less money but not quite as sharp. It never happens at a good time.

*

Saw the very nice Fallbrook librarian August yesterday morning. She told the coffee group that the library opened for business yesterday. Boy that overdue book is going to be expensive! Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, limited schedule.

*

I just watched the first episode of the Umbrella Academy on Netflix. Originally a Dark Horse comic, the show is pretty cool. Always a sucker for a simian doorman. Show came out a couple years ago, I am always late to the party.

*

Mummy brown, cow pea yellow? Will sends over a very interesting article by Eleanor Smith at Medium, The Library of Colour, A discovery of the rarest pigments in the world. Fascinating read.

*

My neighbor who sent the picture of the bobcats said that he was talking to a resident biologist and that they said that there is something weird happening with the native wild cat population, hence the tall legs on some of the local bobcats in his recent pictures.

What he said was that due to the cutting off of wildlife corridors, the animals are inbreeding, not getting the necessary outside genes. He also says that pumas and bobcats are mating.

I looked it up. It does not happen or there is no record of breeding between the genus anyway. He must have misunderstood the feline expert. Has to be the inbreeding.

Speaking of animals, did you see that animal populations worldwide have been reduced by 68% since 1970, according to a new study?

Nearly 21,000 monitored populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, encompassing almost 4,400 species around the world, have declined an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report 2020. Species in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as global freshwater habitats, were disproportionately impacted, declining, on average, 94% and 84%, respectively.

Every two years, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) releases its landmark report, revealing how far species populations have declined since 1970 — an important marker for the overall health of ecosystems. The latest report indicates that the rate populations are declining "signal a fundamentally broken relationship between humans and the natural world, the consequences of which — as demonstrated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — can be catastrophic."

Great job, humans! You can link to the actual report here.

Orange Skies

The Youngbloods

You follow?

 

Northern skies

I've been receiving apocalyptic messages from my friends in the Bay Area and some very startling photographs today. The sun never came up this morning and it looks like Ragnarok has arrived with all the fire smoke. Hang in there, guys!

Bob - Berkeley

"The fires in Mendocino are leaving a layer of smoke about 3,000 feet above sea level and the fog has not yet dissipated.   All the street lights are still on, and it still seems like nighttime.  Armageddon is upon us.  It is very eerie."

 

Jessica B. - Berkeley 9:30 a.m., practically completely dark.

It is really bizarre, like a 4 hour eclipse of the sun. This picture was at 10:45am  It’s even darker now at 12:45pm.  The patio looks like at night. 

Warren - San Mateo

Looking toward Castro Street on Nineteenth at ten am. Looking up nineteenth toward the Haight at the same time. Isak

Dave - Burlingame

Kerry - Little Hollywood

Bob Schmid - Oregon

Anthem of the sun

Red sky at night, sailor's delight - red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

Sun came up blood red again over my palm and succulent garden.  

I didn't have my camera so you get what you get from the cheapest iphone, which is still head and shoulders over my old Motorola.

Sunrise and sunset have been downright spectacular lately, I imagine all over California.

It is so sad that stupidity once again raised its head with the gender reveal party starting the recent fire with their pyrotechnics.

But it made me think of the dummies in my own town. 

In late July we were about to go to bed one evening when we heard deafening fireworks.

The next morning, we saw roman candle bases still in the center of the dirt road, near the new Wildlands parking lot.

Now our valley hasn't fully burned in about one hundred years or more, the scrub is as dry as hell and only an idiot would think of letting fireworks off in such a place in the heat of summer. One spark and we were goners.

But Leslie showed me where a kid defended the fireworks shooting the next day on the Friends of Fallbrook website on Facebook. He said that you were supposed to be able to shoot fireworks off because it was July. Completely irrespective of the consequences.

That is the level of dumb we are dealing with here, of course it is reflected now on a national scale.

*

Speaking of dumb, I was remonstrated this morning for another improper word use by Kip. This bugs me as he is always right and I consider myself such a wordsmith. I said that Lou Brock was the penultimate base stealer, which does not mean the best in this case but second best.

I wiggled out by saying that he was the second best, because Ricky Henderson broke his record but the reality is that "irregardless" (like that Kip?) I was not using the word properly and that many others make the identical sin evidently. 

I really hate it when Kip is right and it happens all too often. Let's hope that we get spared more fires with the Santa Ana. There has been enough crap this year.

Pissed much?

 Covid 19 making you poopy? There might be a reason. Might be those pesky core emotions again.

San Jacinto in amber light

I have been so busy at work that I haven't taken pictures of birds in a month. The light has been really strange of late. Below is the sky last evening over Gavilan Mountain.

There is a lot of ash in the air and the chroma of the light has been simply other worldly.

Last night the temperature dropped forty degrees or more.

It was sprinkling this morning, about 71°, in contrast to 114° the day before yesterday.

I took this picture of the sea squill spike in my garden this morning. I sat down at my desk after coffee and honestly had no drive or focus.

I decided to play hooky and drive out to the nature preserve at San Jacinto. Midday, the worst time to visit. I knew that and didn't care, wanted to take personal and avian inventory at my sacred place.

I got there and the place was basically bone dry. The recent 120° weather had soaked up most of the ponds.

I did manage to see a couple birds and still have a wonderful time, imperfect conditions notwithstanding.

Like this female harrier gliding across the marsh, beak agape.

A Cassins kingbird on a wire, high lit by the peach sky.

Lots of stilts and ibis. It's really beautiful light, isn't it?

I know that I am easily amused but even with the paucity of birds I was content. I did see the normal hangers on, kestrels, red winged blackbirds, red necked phalaropes, black phoebes and even a loggerhead shrike, but not much else.

solitary sandpiper

The warm light of the ash filled sky gave everything a lovely glow.

Leslie warned me about breathing the ash, which is toxic.

I couldn't stop myself, took a short hike anyway.

Hopefully did not decrease my odds of hastening my mortality too much.

There is so little water out there and I really wanted to see what was hanging around.

Not much. That's all right. I like my spot in any season.

Did have a juvenile night heron fly by out of the corner of my eye. Very beautiful bird.

Slim pickings but glad I went and as always, can't wait to come back.