Day one, day two

All photographs are © Robert Sommers 2011

My wife and I needed a vacation. The last several years we have managed to scrape our rubles together and chill out in Hawaii but this year we decided to do something different. Like most Americans, money is tight and we had neither the time, energy or the funds to do anything extravagant. One day a lightbulb went off in my head. I consulted a neurologist and he thought that the cranial blindness was probably only temporary and that is when I had the big idea - tap into the several hundred thousand AmEx reward points that had lain dormant in my account and use them for a getaway. I looked into going back to the Grand Hyatt in Poipu, Kauai and we could certainly swing it, but would the resultant hangover and guilt for spending the money come back and bite me on the ass later on? Would I feel like an idiot for eating the seed corn sometime down the road?

Leslie had never visited Yellowstone and it had been a former lifetime ago for me and I thought, why not? The kids are in school, the crowds are out of the park, the trees might be turning. If we could hit the narrow window before the park closed down and the only way in was on a snowmobile, the thing might actually work. For a fraction of the cost of a trip to Hawaii, which as much as I love it, was becoming sort of old hat. I think that Yellowstone is our most incredible National Park, for variety of scenery, wildlife and sheer beauty. At least of the ones I have visited. Glacier isn't far behind. In fact, I think it should be a requirement that every citizen of our fair land visit the park at least once in their lifetime.

I asked, she assented, we booked. Through AmEx travel, which gave us even more points, a self perpetuating circle. Plus, Leslie's younger brother has a second home in Jackson, one which we could use as a base camp, so we would save bucks on lodging as well. Free is always good.

We stopped the paper and made arrangements for our child Nigel, the black burmese cat that Leslie had once rescued from the alley. Paid the most pressing bills. Leslie and I went looking to fill the voids in our winter wardrobe. I visited the high end outdoor stores but couldn't pay the kind of gelt they were asking for the high end apparel and managed to get by with a new forty dollar shell jacket from the Sports Authority that would suit my needs just fine. We looked at bear spray, about forty five bucks a can and decided to pass. We could always get it there. I had hiking boots somewhere in the closet.

We drove up to Ontario, the most convenient local airport, for the flight to Salt Lake City and the next flight to Jackson. The flight delayed three hours and we started getting a bit chippy with each other. It is hard to get away, especially when one party is always pushing for punctuality (that would be me) and the other party is actually responsible for making sure that everything was covered. I am not going to retread the Utah stop and layover again and the resultant flight to Jackson except to say it is a gorgeous airport to fly into, with breathtaking views of the Snake River and the Tetons. The Tetons, the twin bumps that the early and horny french explorers thought looked like tits. When you are on the road that long, I guess everything looks like tits.

The Jackson Hole Airport looks like it was designed by Ralph Lauren. Faux hide couches, a long fireplace. Over saturated panoramic photographs so sweet that they give you a toothache. The place is really more ski lodge than airport, I was waiting for my hot chocolate and fondue. Upscale trendiness, pretty much like the whole town, replete with it's expensive clothing stores and galleries, it's fly fishing and outfitting shops and the other delicious little spots that are the favorite of the mega-rich.

Jackson sits at the foot of the Grand Tetons that are situated due west. Humans first arrived on the scene about 12,000 years ago. The indian tribes that lived in the area were the Crow (Absoroka), Blackfeet, Shoshone and Gros Ventre. Trappers and other folk stopped in the valley in the early 1800's but found that the native climate was too inhospitable, with its harsh winter and short growing season. Jackson is the name of the town, the hole being the whole forty eight mile long valley, bordered by the Hoback range to the south, the stately Teton range to the west and Gros Ventre Butte to the east. The town sits at slightly higher than six thousand feet while Grand Teton itself rises to 13,772' above sea level.

In the 1920's some of the local population thought about finding ways to keep the area pristine. An organization called the Snake River Land Company started buying up all the land it could gobble in the area. It turned out to be a front for John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the richest gents in the entire world, and he tried to give the land to the federal government for a new park. Locals were incensed, like today the native inhabitants having a tendency to want to exploit and despoil the natural finery. The government initially balked but finally assented when Rocky Jr. threatened to sell it to the highest bidder. FDR created the Jackson Hole National Monument in the forties and it was expanded in the fifties to its present form.

Anyway, that is a brief introduction to the city, surrounding a town square with it's arched antler entrance, shops and nice restaurants, a place where your average wall street CEO can get a little respite from the restless mob with their torches and pitchforks.

We got our car, a sweet little red Toyota Rav 4, which I heartily endorse by the way, and found our way to our host, a shirttail relative who has lived in the area for about five years and who has a passion for climbing, skiing and mountain biking. Really an incredible place for those who love both looking at and interacting with nature. He like many natives, tends to steer clear of the parks, the millions of visitors every summer having a way of terrorizing the local population. He said that he knew unknown roads that led fifty miles into the wilderness that matched the beauty and easily surpassed the congestion of Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

But not this week. We saw none of that, largely having the place to ourselves. But I skip ahead. David suggested that we try one of the better restaurants in the area and we settled on one called the Gun Barrel. It was near the K-Mart and Albertsons. I needed cough syrup, I have been coughing and hacking for a couple weeks and it was driving my wife crazy. I thought that going up to the cold mountains was probably just what I needed for my cold, that is if my aim was to contract long term pneumonia and get carted out of the quaint mountain burg with a toe tag.

Frankly, we were at each other's throat pretty good by this time. I couldn't do anything right and was failing on a thousand other counts. Because I am a "fucking asshole." The shrinks call the pattern the dark dance and she was about ready to get back on the plane. I apologized profusely, falling on my sword a good half dozen times and we agreed to a temporary truce as we entered the large rustic dining establishment.

The  room was filled with old reels and snowshoes and dominated by a large collection of animal mounts. I don't know about you but mounts make me kind of sick. We once sold a painting to a very rich guy from Beverly Hills who was actually a very little man. His office had a 9' tall mount of some giant bear that he shot in Alaska. His prowess must have made him feel about 6' tall or about 8" taller than his actual height. I am not anti hunting, if you need food for you or your family but find sport and trophy hunting really quite deplorable. Give the animal a gun, make it even.

Anyhow they sat us at a table near a stuffed cougar, bit nauseating, really a shame to take these magnificent predators out of the ecosystem, but explain that to your average god fearing conservative and they won't have a grasp of it. The concept of biological balance, healthiest for all of us if left to function naturally, a precept tough to square with man being given dominion over all the flora and fauna by the creator of your choice.

Be that as it may, end of sermon, the food was pretty damn good. The meat in this meat and game restaurant, was simply phenomenal. Leslie had trout stuffed with crab. I tried the elk chops, served with about five tired and limp green beans. Not a lot of fresh veggies in the wild northland. My elk chop, which was really four nice size chops was maybe the best bite of meat I have ever had, only challenged by the cabrito (baby goat) in Loreto many moons ago. The seasoning, the flavor of this elk was so extraordinary. Leslie had a bite and said that she was now off beef, elk being the best thing she ever tasted.

We were now getting along better, shaking off the long layover and the rushing and the bad mood and my bad attitude. We found our way back to the pad on the side of the ski slope and turned in for the night.

Next morning we got up early and found our way to the recommended breakfast place, the Bunnery. Leslie is a breakfast person, I am not, but I wanted to be a team player, being that kind of guy. A local favorite, it was so so for me. Cold hash browns, good bread. Nice waitress from Belarus. I met more Moldavans and Belarussians in the area, don't know why they congregated there but the area is thick with them. Maybe it has to do with a similar climate. Anyway we got hassled by a worker for not waiting outside in the cold after one of the locals told us to just walk in. Folks just don't know how to behave sometimes. Can't you read the signs?

After breakfast we headed into Grand Teton Park. We drove past the Gros Ventre River and saw four moose ambling through the willows. The locals call them swamp donkeys. We past an elk herd to the east and saw our first of many serious photographers with the zillion mm scope and lens outfit.

We stopped at a turn out and then drove up to south Jenny Lake. We started walking the trail around the lake and had our first commune with nature. A bald eagle sailed over head and landed on a tree limb above us. We walked the trail gingerly and unmolested. I am ashamed to say that we never did buy bear spray the entire week, confining ourselves to fairly short hikes and the whim of the fates. We felt the bears but didn't see them, at least while hiking. Once I climbed down to a shelf on the backside of Oxbow Bend and ran into deep and fresh tracks that put a chill on me, not knowing where the responsible ursid may lay. We had watched a film interview with a grizzly victim, picked up and shook like a ragdoll by a giant of a bear that covered 90 yards in a blink of an eye.

Our first walk together in the woods was fantastic, we were visited by a few birds that I don't ever recall seeing in the past. Leslie held her hand out once for one and the bird flew over and landed in her palm. There was an eery quiet and a brisk chill in the air. Our semi out of shape legs ached in the altitude and the clean air burned our lungs a bit.

We managed to finish our hike unmolested and continued driving to Oxbow Bend. Oxbow Bend is in the northern part of the park, west of the Moran Junction. This is one of the famously beautiful and most photographed spots in the region and we found it on a fine morning. The aspens were a bright gold color and got redder every day. They shimmered and glistened in the breeze. Ducks played in the water and geese flew overhead.

 From Oxbow we entered Yellowstone Park, the nation's first national park. Yellowstone is 3472 square miles of some of the most pristine scenery and wilderness known to man. Bigger than Rhode island and Delaware combined it has a enormous multitude of eco-zones, from mountain crags and plateaued prairies to alpen lakes, scenic river canyons and huge forests. The park is located over an enormous volcano caldera and is home to over 300 geysers and 10,000 thermal features, from fumaroles to mudpots.

Yellowstone was discovered by the white man in 1806 when John Colter, an advance scout for Lewis and Clark wandered into the area. He stayed for three years blissfully exploring his new found place of wonder. Those that followed him called the place Colter's Hell on account of the belching, sulphuric geothermal activity. Prior to his arrival the park was inhabited by a nomadic group of shoshonean indians called the Sheepeaters. There were also Crow and Blackfeet living in the region and a small insular nomadic band named the Bannock.

Leslie and I drove and stopped seemingly every two minutes to take pictures of some waterfall or cascade. Lewis Falls and Gibbon Falls and so many other wonderful spots in between. We drove to Old Faithful and checked out the geyser field. Leslie got up close and personal with some of the huge herd of bison in the area. We continued around the lower loop, to Madison, Norris and Canyon Village. Crawled around the huge Yellowstone Lake, the highest altitude lake in the United States, a particular point of which is the most remote spot in the whole country. We were headed to Cody, Wyoming for the night and slightly overshot the road to the east entrance. We doubled back and at Elephants back saw some cars stopped. In the distance was a grizzly  and her cub, foraging in the meadow. We stopped and took some photographs with my 300mm lens. Saw a bunch of elk in the woods. Then we started on our way east out of the park.

There was a lot of snow on the 20, the road that led us to Cody. We traveled past dark and foreboding vistas of black and white. We were practically alone for the roughly hour and a half it took for us to leave. Dark fallen trees were imprinted kinetically on the icy white background in a scrambled abstract worthy of Franz Kline.

We stopped at my favorite spot the whole week, a place of no color called Sylvan lake. In the late afternoon, the lake was pitch black like oil. Languid dark pools. The moment was perfectly sublime in its simple beauty and austerity. I didn't stop to take many pictures. I will have time to do it tomorrow. We continued through the 8530' high Sylvan Pass.

Sylvan Lake

We drove through the eerie and desolate landscape, seemingly forever, parallel to the Shoshone River.

Here is a picture of the sunset over Shosone Lake. The lake is dammed and just before you get to it you pass through a huge tunnel blasted through the base of the mountain to find the wild and wooly town of Cody, established by Wild Bill himself.

We booked a rather expensive cheap hotel, had a shot of whiskey at the Silver Dollar Bar (me - Bushmills, she - Makers Mark).  We went to dinner at the Wyoming Rib and Chop House located next to our friend's Colleen and Steve Aichle's Cody Fine Art. Cody is great, bad winter and all, one of my favorite small, funky towns in the country. I had a cedar planked salmon with a maple syrup glaze. Pretty wonderful, Les had a steak. Nice staff, nice glass of wine and a great evening after an exhausting but ginormous day. Tomorrow, breakfast at Buffalo Bill's Hotel Irma.

(to be continued)

What About Me?

Northern Trek

Oxbow Bend

Leslie and I have just completed an epic trip to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and the surrounding areas. We logged about 1100 miles on the rent a car in five days just tooling around the gorgeous and largely deserted landscape. We saw tons of wildlife - three grizzly, six moose, a wolf, pronghorn, elk, deer, grouse, bald eagles, scads of bison, just an amazing journey through the shimmering aspens at the perfect time of the year. Not a lot of humans, thankfully.

In the coming days, I am going to put my notes together and post a journal of my trip but thought I would give you a few photos as a little taste. After all they are worth at least a thousand words.

We were snowed in yesterday morning in Yellowstone and had to drive west through Montana and small town Idaho to get back to our plane in Jackson. We got lost but finally made it.

Please click on the photos and view them full size. Will try to write something tomorrow. Enjoy!

Castle Geyser

Morning Glory Pool

Grizzly, Big Thumb Creek

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Moose and calf, Signal Mountain

Bony maroni

I am sitting in the salt lake city airport, trying to survive a five hour delay. We plan on starting to drink very soon, that is if we can find anything stronger than sarsaparilla in this saintly town. On our way to points north and jellystone park to find picnic baskets.

The security was more intense than ever, the TSA now requiring you to even hand them your wallet. I also had to submit to the most intense full body scan I have ever undergone. I made a little comment about the new police state, which they apparently overheard and got to meet some of the more senior level security people. It is possible that I have been fingered as some sort of a bad apple.

We inquired about renting a car and tooling around the place but were informed that most of the places of great natural beauty were beyond our geographical and timely confines. so I will sit here and write and read my book, a collection by the great Portuguese author Antonio Lobo Antunes, The fat man and infinity.

I don't normally agree with the conservative columnist Debra Saunders but I had to laugh at her column this morning where she opined, and I paraphrase, that Obama is cool with bombing and incinerating terrorists and American citizens, just as long as they aren't water boarded. Even John Yoo is laughing at the hypocrisy of this administration.

I looked in the mirror this week and noticed that I have suddenly gotten old. My hair has a fine sprinkle of silver all over the top that was not there a few weeks ago. My cancer surgeon accidentally cutting a nerve on the left side of my stomach during my kidney removal and I now sport a misshapen hump on my left side. Thankfully it doesn't do a Marty Feldman and switch sides.

Anyway it is weird how suddenly the systems fall apart. New pains to wrist, knee, ankle and various other spots. We went over to our friend sheebz and she wanted to know what was in my hair the other night. Nothing I said, it's just gray. She wants me to start coloring it. Also complained about my driving, syntax, spelling, grammar, and a host of other personal ills. Said I had a bad haircut and probably bought a cheap jacket.

I am writing this on Leslie's new iPad. For some reason it is not importing photos from the iPad. Of course the new devices have no manual, users expected to be intuitive and smart enough to be geniuses right out of the box. Hope that I can figure it out so that I can send a nice shot or two from the Tetons and Yellowstone.

Supposedly hot as hell back home. Take care, all.

Steve Marriott

Toxins all around us

An interesting article in Scientific American by Patricia Hunt, Professor of Genetics in the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University, Pullman.

Professor Hunt is cautioning us about our continuing exposure on a daily basis to a host of substances that are quite possibly causing us great harm. Of course with a regulatory industry that operates with a revolving door to the food and chemical industries that it is supposed to protect us from, the chance of getting proper study and regulation for these chemical poisons is pretty bleak. Later on the companies can throw their hands up in the air and say that they didn't know or that it was a failure of the government to properly regulate them.

"Scientists have become increasingly worried that even extremely low levels of some environmental contaminants may have significant damaging effects on our bodies—and that fetuses are particularly vulnerable to such assaults. Some of the chemicals that are all around us have the ability to interfere with our endocrine systems, which regulate the hormones that control our weight, our biorhythms and our reproduction. Synthetic hormones are used clinically to prevent pregnancy, control insulin levels in diabetics, compensate for a deficient thyroid gland and alleviate menopausal symptoms. You wouldn’t think of taking these drugs without a prescription, but we unwittingly do something similar every day.

 An increasing number of clinicians and scientists are becoming convinced that these chemical exposures con­tribute to obesity, endometriosis, diabetes, autism, allergies, cancer and other diseases. Laboratory studies—mainly in mice but sometimes in human sub­jects—­have demonstrated that low levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in­duce subtle changes in the developing fetus that have profound health effects in adulthood and even on subsequent generations. The chemicals an expecting mother takes into her body during the course of a typical day may affect her children and her grandchildren."

Robot food

"Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."
Candidate Obama c. 2007

A recent poll shows that 93% of Americans want labeling to show if their food has been genetically modified. Currently an estimated 60 to 80% of processed food includes genetic modifications, depending on which study you believe. The FDA does not require and in fact in some cases prohibits the labeling and disclosure of genetically modified food. Even Whole Foods now admits that it is impossible to keep GMO food off of its shelves.

Once again under the reign of Obama, his campaign chatter turns out to be worthless.

Read an article on the subject by Ari LeVaux here.

This week the Center for Food Safety filed a legal petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking mandatory labeling for foods made from genetically engineered crops, a move long opposed by the big biotech companies. Gee, I wonder how the administration is going to react this time?

Redneck Entertainment

Animal Man

Happy Columbus Day from Ed V.

Here is a new way to celebrate Columbus Day.

Go to your neighbors house, knock on the door, go in and say  "This is my
house now, get out."

Happy Columbus day

Ed

My kind of town

It is surprising for many people to find out that I am a native San Diegan. People invariably think that I am from New York. Supposedly something about an attitude... Or maybe a remnant of a distant accent. Perhaps they still aren't used to loud semitic types in these parts. The truth is that I spent a mere four years in the city, albeit very formative years. The friends I made in the city were probably the most important people in terms of my personal growth, not to mention the most intelligent people that I ever crossed paths with. Many of them went on to live lives of great accomplishment. Unfortunately one by one, with one notable exception, Doug, I ceased to exist for these people at some point in time and they left me in their wake. Some of these relationships were quite pivotal and it bit deeply. I learned that for many New Yorkers, you don't exist if you stray beyond the westerly confines of the Hudson River.

I nursed wounds from the loss of certain people for many years. People that I had probably given too much to and never felt the need to reciprocate when it was their turn. Anyway, I shouldn't sound maudlin, people all over this great country of ours are capable of acting like total shits.

There is something about New York City that I get that doesn't really exist for me anywhere else in the world. Not that I have been everywhere mind you, but the two great cities for me are Paris and New York. For walking and for the "vibe."

I lived in Gramercy Park, in the last rent controlled apartment, two fifty a month when I left in 1973. I was a scholarship student, at two prep schools, Walden and Dwight York, the site of the infamous preppie murders. I wore a coat and tie, at least to the latter and managed to do pretty well in school.

My mother was dating a host of nefarious characters at the time. Walter, a loan shark, who taught me how to open a common penknife like a switchblade and once poured a bottle of whiskey down my throat. Michael, a printer. Sal, a huge biker who kicked the shit out of me for sport. Tony, a dutch revolutionary, brother to Tom V. from Television. He tried to throw me out of the house, said that a fifteen year old was old enough to be on the streets. We fought one night, maybe for a solid hour, causing multiple contusions and breaking several of each other's appendages and he never came back.

The neighbor came home one day and found his wife in bed with a man, who he shot. It turned out the guy was a cop. They wanted my mother to testify and bugged our phone, to try to blackmail her into testifying. If you are interested, ask me about it in person one day.

I never felt that scared in New York. I feel much more comfortable there than I do in places like New Orleans or San Francisco. Frankly I got that New York swagger that said that I owned the place. Because I did. Broke as I was. I panhandled in Central Park. We all did. I can remember hustling the hookers in front of the Waldorf for subway tokens in the middle of the night. Stupid? Maybe, fearless, absolutely. I do remember pulling a quadriceps muscle during a soccer game and having to walk by some guys in the park past 98th street that were looking at me like I was a thanksgiving lamb on a platter as they sharpened a knife on a rock. I dragged my sore leg past this wolfpack, understanding what the wildebeest must feel like on the veldt when confronted by the pack of hyenas. They didn't budge off the rock. Lucky me.

Maybe I shouldn't romanticize New York too much. It has changed and maybe the palce I remember is long gone. When I used to visit the first thing I would want to do was drive to Harlem. Now it is all corporate and safe. Damn those Clintons. Ditto Canal St., site of some of my greatest hijinx, courtesy of the late Dougie Monroe.


The New York of my youth had great antique stores downtown, and book stores and Weisers and the Automat and Katz's Deli and Second Avenue and Papaya King and the bandshell and frisbee and wacky tobaccy and the smartest people in the world that you ever wanted to meet. And St. Marks and the Academy and the Met. Burnt chestnuts at 59th. Sea broth and oyster crackers for three cents at the Fulton Street Fish Market. The IRT. Lindys. Chock full of nuts. Love to walk up Fifth on a sunday, one little ant in a giant anthill. Jackie O would have to step over the same bum you stepped over in the street. New York, the great equalizer. Rich or poor, you were all floating on the same island.  Maybe it's different now, with a condo starting at a million three and riffraff like me long relegated to Jersey or Forest Hills. I wonder why the people in Manhattan seem a bit more together than the people I meet in other places and perhaps a little more real? Or should I say, tempered by a hotter fire? Even if they do only dress in black.

Maybe I am a New Yorker?

Neal and Phish

Monday morning borgaschmord

The Occupy Wall Street crowd may not have a clue in regards to a specific agenda. They may not have a leader or even a unified message, 'tis true. Still it is heartening that these folks are getting politically active for the first time in their young lives and that they smell something dirty on Wall Street, seeing through the opposition narrative. A Wall Street mind you, that traded worthless paper, exported our jobs to third world countries, moved their corporate headquarters offshore to escape paying taxes, and blames all of their sins on a government not sufficiently wily enough to catch them. They are certainly no more ignorant than your average birther or bagger.

I see that the powers that be are trying to put a stop to the huge volume super computer trading, that operates in a millisecond and can destabilize markets and cause such turbulent market volatility. These computers work with very complicated algorithms. The creators of such systems are called "quants." There are all types of quantitative analysts, physicists who specialize in partial differential equations, algorithmic traders who utilize game theory, signal processing and time-series analysis, quantitative developers, front office quants, and many other extremely smart people who tinker with the arcane econometric models.

Being out of touch and off of t.v., I wasn't even aware of the term "quant" as it relates to a 21st century vocation, until Renée clued me in. A new word.

*

Seems not a day goes by where I am not receiving a gmail from Al Franken or Joe Biden or a myriad of other democratic apparatchiks hitting me up for money for the re-election or the great cause. As I have mentioned before, I have lost my taste for this president and his policies, on a host of fronts. If I vote for him again in the absence of a suitable opponent, it will only be about making sure that we don't get another John Robertsalitoscaliathomas on the SCOTUS. That is awful reason to vote for a president but it is unfortunately the most important issue affecting the balance of our lives. Saw where Mississippi is trying to institute a pretty draconian bill called a "personhood amendment," which legally defines a person as existing at the moment of fertilization. This type of bill is getting more and more popular and will wreak havoc on another reproductive fronts including abortion and the right to use contraception.

This kind of shit.

I don't even look anymore. Obama was cool, he used the new technology to energize his base. Bravo. Now it is just old. Because as an incumbent you have to run on your conduct and decisions from when you are in office, not the pretty crap in your campaign speeches. I think that the president's hypocritic about face on decriminalization is going to hit him much harder than he realizes. He can try to out-republican the republicans but the campaign strategy is going to be very unfortunate for him in the long run. Unless I am wrong.

*

Mr friend Ed's son has written a new book, Bicycles and Mobility.  University of Vermont anthropologist Luis Vivanco's newest book traces the history of bicycling in the Green Mountain State.
Apparently bicycling has a long and storied history in Vermont. Early wheelmen were known as "scorchers" and were thought to contribute to the region's moral turpitude.

Bicyclists were believed to be spoiled  elitists who could afford contraptions priced beyond the budgets of most of their countrymen. Congratulations. Sounds like an interesting read.

I love Vermont. My mother used to spend time at the Farm and Wilderness Quaker Camp near Plymouth. Established in 1939, this camp has been incredibly progressive on a host of matters including gender equality, organic food, racial integration and environmentalism. I remember visiting once in late september and having to chip the ice out of the barrels so that the cows could drink. The maples were getting tapped and the place had the delicious smell of sap and syrup and hardwood burning in the kilns. The ground was a gorgeous tapestry of yellow and orange, russet and red leaves set amongst the first snow.

F&W borders land that was owned by Abby Rockefeller and I remember walking up to her property and finding a large lake. I found a canoe squirreled away near the riverbank and spent a leisurely day canoeing through the waterways. One of the great days in my life.

*

Psycho Killer

Psychotraders

Remember a few weeks ago when a rogue trader at UBS, Kweku Adoboli, was arrested for squandering 2 billion dollars of the bank's funds on a risky investment scheme? A similar caper was discovered in France a few years ago when Jerome Kerviel blew a few billion francs on his own scam. Here in the United States J.P. Morgan helped start our own recession after peddling their trashy paper to Merrill Lynch.

There may be a very good reason that these events occur. A new study by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland shows that stockbrokers are actually more reckless and manipulative than psychopaths. After reading an abstract on the findings, I suppose that we should treat the pathological and predacious conduct of the folks on Wall Street with a bit more sympathy and understanding. These people are merely very sick. Like the scorpion who hitches the ride on the duck's back, it is their essential nature to be sociopathic.

From Spiegel:


Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study's co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.


"Naturally one can't characterize the traders as deranged," Noll told SPIEGEL. "But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test."


Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren't aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, "it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents," Noll explained. "And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents."


Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, "and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves."


The researchers were unable to explain this penchant for destruction, they said. 

Pouring its light into ashes

Dark Star Crashes

Nasa has just released these fantastic pictures of the Crab Nebula. Astronomers have detected gamma pulse radiations from this nebula that are higher than anything ever tested and beyond our ability to measure. The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) detected these emissions and their findings were published in Science on Friday.

The gamma ray energies detected range between 100 and 400 billion electronvolts, with previous detections only picking up 25 electronvolts. Up until now, the Crab Nebula was one of the best understood systems. But these new findings have thrown the experts an interstellar curveball.

About 6,500 light-years away from Earth, this system was born from a massive star explosion that is said to have occurred in 1054 a.d.. This event was recorded by chinese and native american stargazers. The dying star was located in the constellation Taurus when it exploded into a gigantic supernova.

A pulsar is what you have left after a star's core has exploded. The energy from this particular explosion is stronger than x-rays or 100 billion times stronger than visible light. Pulsars turn into spinning neutron stars. This one is spinning about 30 times a second and is so dense that it has a mass greater than our sun. This nebula is breaking new scientific ground. Scientists have detected high energy coming from the nebula but never before from the pulsar itself.

The pulsar was detected from the Smithsonian's Whipple Telescope, located south of Tucson.

Pentangle - Travelling Song

I have posted this once before but it is one of my favorite Pentangle songs and I play it once more in memory of the recently deceased Bert Jansch. His duets with the heavenly voice of Jacqui McShee are so lovely and pure. Renbourn and Jansch were one of the most muscular and competent guitar pairings of their time, weaving a sonic signature that became known as folk baroque. Jansch was a Scot from Glascow and died on October fifth, a week ago, after a long battle with cancer.

El Tigre

I am a casual golf fan at best. Like most americans, my interest in golf is usually tied to how Tiger Woods is doing on any particular weekend. Tiger Woods is certainly one of the two greatest golfers in history, a position he shares with Jack Nicklaus.

The idea that a man could so thoroughly dominate a tour for as long as he did, amongst the absolute best of the best is just really incredible to me.

Having said that, this is America after all. And there is nothing Americans love to watch as much as they love to watch a good train wreck. Woods' train careened off the track in one of the greatest and spectacular immolations in sports history. A serial philanderer, he would tap anything and everything, including the babysitter next door. Absolutely no conscience. Just like his pop.

For the last several months I have been reading golf stories every wednesday about how Tiger was now healthy and ready to make his move. And every week has been a disappointment. In the last 25 events, the boy wonder has been in the top 25 three times, his highest finish being a fourth at the Masters. Okay for mortals, not so good for Tiger Woods. Awful, in fact. In 2011, he has been in the top ten twice, at eight events.

Woods accuracy off the tee has plunged from 66 to 54.1%. Greens in regulation went from 70.1 to 65.1% inTotal Accuracy, a measure of Gir and Accuracy has nosedived from a rank of 20 to 45. Tiger barely made the cut today but made a couple timely pars and hung on.

I wonder about two things with Tiger and the loss of his game. It is a known fact that he was a patient of  the famed steroid doctor, Anthony Galea. Could he have been juicing? Could his past dominance be at least partly a result of obtaining some sort of biological and physiological edge? After seeing the evidence against the Lance Armstrongs and Roger Clemons of this world, I have little faith in any hero today.

What I find even more likely than Tiger's decline correlating to some loss of an outside edge is the possibility that when the guy stopped getting all that strange, his game went into the toilet. The pirate, swashbuckling bad boy who liked to get freaky with the slutty strippers gets his wings clipped and can't get his mojo back. Like Sampson and his hair, Tiger has the psychological ailment of the "wounded johnson." The key to his juju just might be his insatiable sexual appetite.

Millions of american golf fans are hoping that their golf idol can find a way to change his luck. The old fashioned way. Bang a skanky waitress or two, Tiger. Find your forgotten huevos and hopefully your game again. Your fans demand it. I think this golf gladiator is going to need an awful lot of fresh poontang if he ever hopes to be back on top of the leaderboard.

The Chocolate Watchband-Sweet Young Thing

melts in your brain, not on your wrist...

The lead guitar player for this band, Mark Loomis, lives or lived in Oceanside. I took this picture of Mark and his wife at my friend Kevin Kinnear's old guitar shop, Epic, a couple years ago. Many denizens of psychedelic and underground garage music consider the Watchband the best of the bunch. As this photograph shows, he may have flown just a little too close to the flame.

10.6.11

This photo from last week kind of hit me. An Alabama potato farmer leaning against his truck after only five of his twenty farm workers show up for work. This is the day after the new law passed that allowed the Alabama cops to check immigration status at routine stops and empowered school officials to do the same at enrollment. The latinos sort of up and vanished overnight. From the schools and from the jobs. Even many of the legal hispanics are leaving, hating the "vibes" in the current racial climate.

I am not an advocate for illegal immigration, in fact I am strongly against it. But I think that it is time to be careful what you wish for.  White people in this country, no matter how poor, are simply too soft and lazy to do farm work, or much of the other dirty occupations that are currently the province of illegals in this country. In Alabama they are trying to cover the shortage with prisoners and parolees. I think that I would rather take my chances with the illegals, thanks.

I read a story the other day about a bunch of white folks that showed up for a farm workers job, a job that paid over eleven bucks an hour. They all dropped out before noon. Soft. I can't wait until they pass the Alabama law in a bunch of other states and the rest of our industries that depend on a cheap labor force that is willing to do the hard work find themselves grinding to a halt. That big sucking sound will be the American economy going into the toilet.

Then instead of vilifying poor immigrants who are trying to feed their families, the tea baggers can go after the real enemy, an American working class not yet sufficiently poor enough to want to do the dirty work for their patrician masters.

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A solution to our economic woes requires fresh thinking and this Republican lawmaker from Florida may have just the trick - bring back dwarf tossing.

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French ban ketchup in the schools.

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Grok the egyptian woman who applied for parole twenty years after grilling her husband and feasting on his carcass. She didn't say she was having fun, she said she was having a ball. The psychiatrist at the trial testified that Nelson said she put on red shoes, a red hat and red lipstick before chopping up and cooking her husband's body. She said she prepared his ribs like in a restaurant and said aloud, "It's so sweet." A fashion and culinary statement. She says that she is not a monster. She meets a guy, marries him and then throws him in the stew pot after three weeks of convivial bliss, but she says she didn't swallow, so she doesn't qualify for full blown monsterhood.

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Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the man who posed nude in college, says that he hopes that he never has to see his opponent Elizabeth Warren with her clothes off. Why do men never get comments like this, that they aren't pretty or sexy enough? More bullshit high school style misogyny if you ask me.

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Ann Coulter is going after the Occupy Wall Street crowd as smelly hippies, steeped in patchouli, with an aversion to bathing. Uh, Ann, you said that you followed the Grateful Dead for years, by your account 67 shows, that crowd didn't exactly smell like roses, did it? Which parking lot were you scoring your kind veggie burritos and shrooms in? Did you try your elitist shtick on them?

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U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein punts on CIA sanctions, even after they violated his own order.

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Ronald Brownstein on Swing State Republicans and the environment - National Journal

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Feds declare war on medical marijuana. So much for Obama's lip service about respecting state laws and the will of the people.

The Doors

Crystal Ships

Fivefold 2d aperiodic pattern

“The main lesson that I have learned over time is that a good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he reads in the textbooks.”
Dan Shechtman


The neatest story I read today was about recent Israeli Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman. Apparently Shechtman noticed some crystal formations that weren't exactly behaving correctly, at least according to all the academic experts. He brought it to the attention of his colleagues at the university and he was vilified for it, even told that he was a humiliation to the whole department.

In 1982 Shechtman discovered a new class of solid matter called quasicrystals, with atoms so densely packed that their patterns would not repeat, as so called "normal" crystal forms are supposed to be constructed. Crystals are said to be periodic at the molecular level.

His discovery was not well received and he was forced to leave his research group, his hypothesis thought by skeptical scientists to be both preposterous and embarrassing and he was told that he "brought disgrace" to the group.

Shechtman's discovery dates to April 8, 1982, while on a sabbatical at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, he was studying an alloy of aluminium and manganese at the time.

Shechtman was looking at a section of chilled molten metal with an electron microscope when he realized that the atomic structure appeared in a pattern that was not known to comport with any known laws of crystal structure. The pattern of dots had a tenfold symmetric pattern, while only three, four or six were thought possible. He could turn the structure and view it from ten vantages that all looked identical. He noted the discovery in his notebook that day.

Shechtman was vilified by his peers, told that his research was contrary to the laws of nature itself but he kept battling for his beliefs and finally forced fellow scientists to reconsider the nature of crystal forms. One colleague initially said, “Go away, Danny.”

Linus Pauling, a double Nobel Laureate, for chemistry and for peace, once declared publicly that 'Danny Shechtman is talking nonsense. There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.'  Paulson believed that the base five structure was the result of a combinative event called twinning. When Pauling died in the early 1990's, people started looking at Shechtman's work with fresh eyes and opposition finally vanished.

The definition of crystal had to be changed. Previously, a crystal had been defined as having “a regularly ordered, repeating three-dimensional pattern,” according to the International Union of Crystallography. The new definition, adopted in 1992, states that a crystal is simply a solid with a “discrete diffraction diagram.”

The Tel Aviv born scientist teaches at the prestigious Technion University in Haifa and is the 10th Israeli to win the nobel and the fourth to win it in Chemistry. You have to love a guy who has made an empirical discovery, gets vilified and slandered and yet has enough faith and endurance to stick to his guns, gain acceptance and shut up his detractors.

I read an interesting article about his discovery today by Richard Allen Greene of CNN of which I excerpt:

Interestingly, the structure of quasicrystals seems to have been foreshadowed in medieval Islamic art that contradicts what Western geometry had always taught."If you want to tile a bathroom floor with squares, you can do it out to infinity," said Peter J. Lu, a Harvard University professor who has studied Islamic tile work."If you want to do it with five-sides figures, there are gaps," he explained.


But Islamic artists figured out how to do it without leaving gaps by making the pattern irregular rather than repeating -- the same thing that happens in quasicrystals, he said."Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level," the Swedish academy said.

Islamic tile patterns dating back to the early 1400s were put together in ways not understood in the West until 1973, Lu and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University argued in a paper in 2007 in the journal Science. The Muslim artists discovered ways to tile shapes with five, 10 or 12 shapes without leaving gaps between them -- a structure thought by standard geometry to be impossible.


British mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose explained in 1973 how it was done, and just over a decade later the same pattern was found at the molecular level in quasicrystals, according to a report in Lu and Steinhardt's work in the journal Nature in 2007.


Mueller, a principle research scientist at MIT, said he was "fascinated" by the structure of quasicrystals, even as he admitted he would not have the knowledge to analyze them himself. But specialists in quasicrystals will eventually "gain knowledge of some structures which we cannot analyze with conventional methods," he predicted. The academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry said quasicrystals have a "unique atomic structure" which makes them "bad conductors of heat and electricity, and (they) have nonstick surfaces."

Medicine Wheel

Company, fish and politics

Any one who was under the impression that the Obama Administration was going to bring some sort of virtue and probity to the Oval Office will need to repent for their foolishness and naiveté. I know, I know, this was going to be the administration that pushed transparency and wouldn't engage in the wanton croneyism of its predecessors. Right.


The environmental group Friends of the Earth secured emails on monday under the Freedom of Information Act that shed light on the ugly game of footsy mthe State Department is playing with the TransCanada Pipeline Company. In July they emailed the State Department that they planned to drop their request to operate the pipeline at pressures allowed in the United States and then reapply for the exception once the project had passed and the political smoke had cleared. Rather than fairly and objectively oversee the implications of this massive project that many environmentalists adamantly oppose, the State Department and EPA act as a hand maiden and facilitator for their lobbyist pals. Oh yes, the top lobbyist from TransCanada in an ex senior staffer for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Paul Elliott. So much for an end to favoritism.

Trans Canada was given total access to the corridors of power on this project, countless meetings with Assistant Secretaries of State and plenty of inside information no doubt, the environmentalists limited to one single meeting. The 1700 mile long proposed pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas. It is said that its construction will result in unacceptable emissions and wreak havoc on pristine ecosystems.

It also points to a quite cozy relationship between Marja Verloop at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa and industry groups, cheerleading for them and teaching them how to end around the political process. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is not powered to act on the authorization, even criticized the State Department environmental assessments as inadequate.

The project apparently bores right through the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the great plains' principal water sources. The crude is said to lay in subterranean oil sands and that removal from these areas will result in higher than normal emissions and will destroy forests.

The conduct of those employees of the United States government who are supposed to be acting independently, in our best national interest, is certainly called into question regarding this pipeline. The pipeline may or may not be in our best interest but it certainly seems like the State Department has already made up its mind. This will be an interesting story to follow.

Dean Martin

Tuesday with Tantor

Louis Nidorf has sent over the very cool Newseum link. Run your cursor over the map and you can click on front pages from over 800 newspapers.

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Have you noticed that many of the younger drivers today are totally clueless? Are they still teaching driver's training? My favorite move is the cut across four lanes and nail your exit at the last minute trick, but make sure not to signal or acknowledge the people that you are cutting off and extra style points if you miss my front bumper.

Another thing I have deduced is that the slow lane is officially dead. It is now the slingshot lane for the super speeders. I get a little pissed off getting tailgated doing sixty five or seventy in the slow lane.

Of course where I live there are lots of marines on motorcycles, back from the tour with a lot of adrenaline and a healthy dose of don't give a shit. They like to drive their rice rockets at near supersonic speeds. I don't feel comfortable getting passed by one of these guys at 100 mph, on the right, at 6:30 in the morning but it happens all the time and we lose about a couple a month.

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The Angels are purportedly looking at Padres Manager Bud Black for their recently vacated G.M. position. Black is a really good guy, a great manager and shouldn't pass up the chance to work for a major league club.

His boss, slick agent Jeff Moorad, signalled this week that the Padres are his team and his toy to run into the ground as he sees fit and that the fences would not be moved in. He has castrated every hitter he has brought to the club and just fired his sixth batting coach in the last seven years, Randy Ready.

Pitching and defense may win games but you better score at least a run. Couple that with an aged double play combination and a jaded absentee ownership and you have the 2012 Padres, ladies and gentlemen.

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Kudos to the Occupy Wall Street folks. A movement of mostly young people, aligning to seek redress from a band of thieves and merry men who have had carte blanche to dupe the american public with their AEG trash for a little too long. Nice for the kids to make a stand for something.

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I was reading a middle eastern newspaper the other day and the article I read spoke of the body guard killer of Afghanistan's Rabbani. Guy had been vetted by the CIA and Afghanis, trained and then turned into a suicide bomber, assassin.

Remember a few months ago when the Afghani soldiers were complaining about the american soldiers farting? Well this article said that part of the reason this guy flipped was because the american soldiers said fuck or the f-word too much and it hurt his tender sensitivities.

These people can stone their women, commit honor killings, play polo with a goat carcass, kill their neighbor because they practice the wrong brand of the native religion, lie, cheat and double deal, cut off women's sexual organs and blow themselves to bits on a moment's notice but god forbid you curse around them. What's that old saying; wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful. We aren't fighting a religion, maybe we are fighting a vile culture.

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I have not been shy about showing what a narrow minded snob I can be on a variety of fronts, and a tattoophobe of the highest order. Add eyebrow jewelry and stomach piercings to the tired rolls. Everyone has a nose stud, even some of the illegal women in my town and many of the septuagenarians. Can we officially call them over? Warren was in New York City last week and said he saw so many beautiful women and only about three of them inked, the whole time. Of course, this is a fashion statement with a rather unique shelf life.

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Michael just came back from Thailand and observed that the Blast has been more political of late. Has it? I hadn't really noticed. My friend R cautioned me that I maybe should be a little worried as the circulation is quite large, world wide now and forever and some unknown avenger might just set his sights on me for some unknown slight or slander. I have had a few hits and expletives from eastern european skinheads in the last several weeks. It's just my opinion folks. Don't take it too seriously.

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Pakistan moves towards China. Afghanistan countermoves and embraces India.

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According to Google, this is my twenty five hundredth blog post, notwithstanding the couple hundred that I deleted or expunged. Still going strong. Still no hits from Antarctica but holding steady in Iceland and starting to show up a bit more in South America and Africa. If you see an arctic hit on my blog, please take a screen shot for me. On the Mac it is shift, control, 4.

Who is my new steady reader in Hilo? Is that you S & T?

Samson and Delilah

Nigger Nate

Lots of folks are up in arms over presidential candidate Rick Perry's family hunting at an old lodge with the unfortunate name of Niggerhead. Although I have no truck with the man, I think he should get a break on this. If I can remember right, they wanted to ban Tom Sawyer because of the word nigger, should we throw Mark Twain out of the library too? Like it or not, such cruel epithets are a part of our history and culture. Rick Perry didn't name the rock that gives the lodge its sobriquet and our country is full of place names that allude to our racist past. In fact there is a town in Texas called Nigton, you can guess what it was shortened from, that was founded by former slaves in 1873. This type of place name was long a part of our cultural vernacular, and more recently than you might assume.

San Diego County has a very similar situation up on Palomar Mountain. Back as long as I can remember, people, without any intended malice, have called the dirt back road up the mountain, Nigger Nate Grade. This is the steep (10%) western route up the mountain and was the only way up until the 1940's when the more easterly "Road to the Stars" was built. It is the logical and unmarked extension of County Rd. S7.

The Nigger Nate was Nate Harrison, a runaway slave who was born sometime in the early 1800's and passed on in 1920. He was said to be 101 when he died but the figure is in some dispute. In any case he sought refuge and solace on the mountain in the 1860's. The diminutive Nate was much loved and a friend to all. He helped many travelers by giving them water from his fresh, cool spring. Read a nice story about the man in this link to the Journal of San Diego History, January 1958. Or here. This is a link to an interesting pdf by archaeologists who have discerned that Harrison was from Virginia, not Mississippi or Kentucky as he sometimes claimed and he once was the property of a Virginian named Lysander Utt.

Palomar was once known as Smith Mountain and Harrison was on the posse that tracked and strung up badmen, even finding the desperadoes that killed Smith himself. Everybody back then called Nate nigger, hell, that is what he called himself. Until the fifties the grade was marked Nigger Nate Grade or Nigger Grade on all the local maps. The NAACP made a stink in the 1950's and the name was finally cleaned up in 1955. Later, in 1967, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the names of 143 places throughout the country from “nigger” to “negro.”

San Diego County, even way out here in the liberal west, was certainly not immune from racism. I can remember seeing old pictures of the interior of the Del Dios Store in the 1950's with a sign that clearly said "white trade only." Blacks and jews were forbidden to live in the covenant of Rancho Santa Fe and in La Jolla until the early 1960's.

From A Brief History of the San Diego NAACP, 1917-2007:

In February 1924, San Diego NAACP president Elijah J. Gentry, a “shoe shiner” by trade and leader of the five year old branch sent a frank assessment of the racial climate in San Diego to NAACP field secretary James Weldon Johnson in New York.  “Colored people [in San Diego] are not allowed in restaurants, nor to drink soda water in drugstores, nor can they rent bathing suits at any bathing house or beach in this city,” Gentry revealed.  Despite the small number of blacks in the area and the perception of racial tolerance, San Diego was nonetheless “a very prejudice[d] city.” Moreover American-style racism had crept south of the border.  In 1926 when branch officials looked across the border in Tijuana, Mexico they saw signs in shops that proclaimed “colored not wanted.”  

(The NAACP) would be led by Jack Johnson Kimbrough, a gentlemanly, refined dentist from Lexington, Mississippi who arrived in San Diego from UC-Berkeley in 1935 and who held the branch presidency in 1947-1948.  


Humiliated and angered at having been refused a snack at a downtown “greasy spoon,” Kimbrough methodically devised a plan for redress that made him a pioneer in anti-discrimination protest tactics at the dawn of the civil rights revolution.  He recruited a group of black and white students at San Diego State College, carefully rehearsed them to act as customers and witnesses and then targeted white-owned restaurants that discriminated.  As the black students were denied service, the already seated white students would observe what transpired and be prepared to testify in court as to what they had witnessed.    
Using Kimbrough’s innovative scheme, the NAACP filed and won 31 of its 32 lawsuits against San Diego restaurants in little over a year, usually with court awards to plaintiffs of $300 per case which was split between the students and their attorney.  Kimbrough followed up this triumph with the desegregation of the Grant Grill at the prestigious U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego in 1948.  


From Wikipedia regarding La Jolla and antisemitism:

From its beginnings to the early 1960s, La Jolla was marketed by developers as a bastion of isolation and exclusivity. Antisemitic housing practices began in 1926 with the development of La Jolla Shores, and continued from the 1920s through about 1970.[27] In La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Hermosa, only people with pure European ancestry could own property (this excludes Jews, who were not considered "white"), and housing notices included racist comments against Jews and other minority groups. Housing restrictions were thought to be enough to keep "undesirable" ethnic groups from living in La Jolla, until the 1948 Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer prohibited such restrictive covenants. After the ruling, real estate companies used less obvious tactics to keep Jewish people out of La Jolla. Real estate agents would be fired if they sold a house to Jewish clients. There were no for-sale signs put up on properties, requiring the prospective buyer to go to a real estate office to find out what was available. If an agent suspected that a potential home buyer was a Jew, they would demand higher down payments and display green cards on their dashboards marked with the Star of David to warn the seller. The sellers would also send codes to their real estate agents; if their porch lights were on during the day, they did not want Jewish buyers.[28]

My family was one of the first openly jewish families when we moved into Rancho Santa Fe in the early 1970's. I can remember my little sisters bringing dreidle's to school, the small spinning tops that are synonymous with Chanukah. Other kids sheepishly admitted that they had similar objects at home but never felt comfortable disclosing their heritage in public. When the Protective Covenant of Rancho Santa Fe was first written back in the 1920s, there were restrictions or “Gentlemen’s Agreements” as to who could live in the Covenent, which excluded “Negroes, Asians and Jews.” Here is a pdf regarding the racial backstory to Rancho Santa Fe's Protective Covenant and the way it kept hispanics as a workforce yet denied them the right to live in the area, sending them instead to the balkanized community of Eden Gardens in nearby Solana Beach. 

I don't see a need to whitewash our racist heritage. Niggerhead in Texas or Nigger Nate right here in good old San Diego County, our crude and base language serves as an excellent legacy and grim reminder of a not too distant past.

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postscript - A San Diego County historian took me to task for not mentioning UCSD founder Roger Revelle's pressure on La Jolla to rescind the anti-semitic deed restrictions or risk not having professors and for not requiring Scripps researchers to sign loyalty oaths. His nemesis was a prominent attorney from the prestigious Gray, Cary, Ames and Frye law firm named Jim Archer.

In the early 1950s, Revelle had criticized the La Jolla Real Estate Brokers Association’s restrictive property deeds. “You can’t have a university without having Jewish professors,” he warned. “You’ll have to make up your minds whether you want a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You can’t have both.” Neither Archer nor the property owners of La Jolla were happy with his stance and as UC President Kerr later said: “Archer was a terror when his sense of patriotism was aroused.”

Thanks and duly noted.

Pretty Girl Why / Buffalo Springfield

beautiful evening, sunday.

My mom called today.
Your dad, he looks good.
Mom, he said he had never met me before.
Ya, but he looks good.

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Ain't No More Cane On This Brazos

Chad Mitchell Trio - Recorded in 1963

Mideast Chess

Fischer - Spassky, Game 6 - Reykjavic, 1972

Benjamin Netanyahu's recent announcement of plans to build 1100 new homes in the Har Homa settlement beyond the green line of East Jerusalem shows how disingenuous he really is about securing a two state solution with the Palestinians.

I do not blame the Palestinians for their end around and recent declaration at the United Nations. If I was in their shoes I would probably do the same thing. Netanyahu, a master of sophistry and end game strategy knows that he has the upper hand and that he can talk forever and never have to cede anything to the people of the West Bank and Gaza. He is not an honest broker or partner.

This so called position of strength is of course, totally illusory. Israel's actions only cement their position as a world pariah, further antagonize the Palestinians and their neighbors and makes the region more dangerous in the long term. It is in Israel's best interests to get out of their current role as occupier and jailer and fashion a contiguous state with which the Palestinian people can live in with pride and self respect. The status quo is simply unsustainable.

I heard Netanyahu try to downplay the building the other day..."they build their houses, we build our houses..." The reality is that building a settlement in the middle of a large arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem is both foolish and needlessly provocative.

And if Netanyahu has his way there will be nothing left for the Palestinians at all. The Israeli government needs to put themselves in their foe's position and craft a solution that serves the interests of all the parties in the region. These little games of the Likud and their far right religious allies only make the already remote prospects for future peace even less attainable.

Homer & Jethro - 16 tons

Monochrome