Volkswagens, the worlds most economical car, or the bane of the highway!


 






This is the model that broke the old hippies heart,
 it was the last V.W. bug to roll off the assembly line forever.
The 2003 Volkswagen Beetle 

 The Volkswagen Beetle, or “Bug” as it was affectionately known.

You either loved them or you hated them, there was no in-between. The Volkswagen Bug was manufactured from 1938 to 2003. There were 21,529,464 (twenty one million, five hundred twenty-nine thousand, four hundred sixty four) Volkswagen Beetles manufactured in all. It was the most manufactured and produced car in history. No other car maker sold as many of a single model than the Volkswagen Beetle.

…and, back before freeways, in the early ‘60s, it seemed like they were the single most impediment to traveling down the highway. I can still hear the whistley little four-banger air cooled engines in my ears. It seemed like no matter what hill that you were on, there was a Beetle up there in front, bugging you, leading the parade. Even though they were getting great mileage, they were holding up everybody behind them, causing trucks busses and passenger cars to use their very lowest gears. The wear and tear, plus the wasted fuel caused by slowing down to follow the whistley little annoying Beetle more than sapped any fuel savings that the Beetle could have saved the world. Not to mention all of the labor of the people that were providing time for the freight industry. Sales people, and people headed toward their jobs were held up. You could be late to work and you could tell your boss that you got caught behind a Volkswagen on Benbow hill. It was an acceptable excuse.

I have always over-thought everything, so being trapped behind a V.W. pulling a hill allowed me way to much time to think. I have never taken a psychology class, because I’m afraid of what I might find out about myself, but that doesn’t stop me from delving into the psychology of those around me. It always seemed to me that the people that drove V.W. Bugs were doing it with some kind of a smugness about them. Their philosophy seems to be: “If everybody drove bugs, the world would be a better place, we would be using less fuel, and we would be moving at a slower and more relaxed pace”. So, they feel obliged to hold you up, because they are better and smarter than you. No way would they ever pull over on a hill, they couldn’t afford to loose what little teeny-weeny bit of momentum that they had wound up in their little itty-bitty motors. If they pulled off, nobody would EVER let them back in in front of them. NO WAY! It was like a V.W. driver could die on a turn-out before anybody would let them back in. I think that people that drove real cars would be secretly happy to see a V.W stranded in a turn out forever. Plus, if the V.W. drivers were really that concerned about the environment, why weren’t they driving bicycles, hand-carved out of driftwood? They are all pretentious phonies. There, I said it, I feel better.

The early sixties were a time when more powerful and economical engines were being developed. Trucks were being produced with large diesel V-8 engines with magnesium frames and wheels that could move freight up hills and 55 miles per hour, only to be held up by a whistley little V.W. Bug. State and federal officials recognized the problems of the highway system. They realized that there was no sense in building faster, more powerful trucks and delivery systems if they were only to have the pace set on the highways by a V.W Bug. So, the Interstate Highway System was upgraded so that every state was to have a major freeway. After the freeways were built, the popularity of the V.W. dropped off, which proves something to me. Bugs are just no fun unless you are holding something up.

As you might have guessed, most of this was written a little tongue-in cheek. And, maybe some lingering annoyance at having had to follow way too many Volkswagens...  Deal with it.

My wife’s second car, way back before we were married, was a Volkswagen. She loved it because she liked to shift all those gears, I can understand that. It gave her great gas milage, and it was a time in her life that she was not in any big hurry to be anywhere. Ah... the freedom of youth.


Volkswagens awaiting restoration. Photo by Kim Sallaway.
kimbacam.com

VW Transporter

The den of the hippie bird, used to lure young chicks with
the promise of a whole wheat alfalpha sandwich.


 

Lost Seagull

Young seagull

At about 10:30 this morning, I went out to my truck in the parking lot across from our store in Garberville, I looked up into the sky, as I often do, day or night, and I saw a seagull flying over. As I watched it curiously it circled around to look at me curiously. It occurred to me that it might be hungry. I had just bought bag of corn chips, so I reached in the truck, grabbed the bag and opened it. I threw a few chips on the ground. Sure enough the gull swooped down. He landed on the parapet wall of the adjoining building. He eyed me curiously like he wasn't quite sure of my intentions. Smart bird! I walked over to the store and went inside. As soon as I stepped inside several crows, ravens and blackbirds swooped in to gobble up the corn chips. Soon the gull got brave enough to fly down and grab a few for himself,

Quite often I see seagulls in Garberville, but not often in the summertime. Usually there is a strong wind blowing or a storm out to sea, or maybe the gull came inland to get out of that darn fog that they have along the coast this time of the year. I can certainly understand that.

Anyway it was cool. The dishwasher next door said that there was another young gull joined the first one to help finish of the corn chips. Call me a romantic fool, but I concluded from that that they were probably a young couple eloping. Why else would they be in Garberville this time of the year.

Huckleberries

Ross Sherburn said...
What about Huckle Berries?



You can even buy huckleberies at the above website.



Wow, Ross doesn't realize how cruel some questions can be... Reminding me about huckleberries is like reminding a person about their true love that slipped away and married someone else. Huckleberries just happens to be my most favorite berry in the whole world. The long sad story is that huckleberries are too hard to come by anymore. Now that you are hooked, I'll back up and tell you the long sad story of one of my true heartbreaks.


Years ago, back when logging was a highly a highly revered profession, great orchards of huckleberries grew at the feet of the giant redwoods. When the Redwoods were selectively logged, it would let in just enough sun to cause the huckleberries to bear large quantities of big, fat, juicy and tender fruit. Being a logger allowed a person access to all of the huckleberries that you could pick. Many times when my family went huckleberry picking we would come home with four or five gallons of huckleberries. Those were the good old days before modern logging and rogue corporations bought up logging companies and started clear-cutting and spraying the forests for “conifer release”. I tell you, some times it almost makes a person be ashamed of being a logger. Many loggers didn’t approve of the corporations over-cutting, clear-cutting, and spraying of the forests. I was one.

Tip: To clean picked huckleberries, take a clean piece of synthetic fly screen, tack it to a frame four feet wide by eight feet long. Make the frame four feet wide at one end and two feet wide at the other end. Stretch the screen tight across the one end and let it sag down loose to the other. Sprinkle the berries across the top end then lightly tap the screen from underneath. The berries will slowly flow toward the sagging end. By the time that they get there they will have left all the leaves, stems, and twigs behind. Place a bucket under the sagging end to catch the berries. When the screen gets too many leaves on it, simply brush it off and start over. It makes picking berries much faster and easier, because you can simply strip the branches loosely with your hand. The few leaves that you get doing that can be sifted out using the separator screen.

Before modern forest practices, huckleberries were easy to get. Kids would pick various wild berries throughout the summer, they used the summer work to buy school clothes, or the boys were usually working to buy a bicycle or a new 22-caliber rifle. The berries were sometimes sold to the local restaurants to make their “homemade pies”. Most of the restaurants took great pride in their pie making. Many people frequented the coffee shops back in the ‘50s and ‘60s just for a cup of coffee and a nice slice of “homemade pie a la mode”. (pie, with a scoop of ice cream)

In the '70s, two things happened to ruin huckleberry picking, the timber companies started spraying herbicides for conifer release, and the newcomers started showing up. The newcomers were strangers to the local folks and there was no trust between them. The new people that were buying property were quick to put up "no trespassing" signs, so the berry patches that were available for generations to the local folks all but disappeared. Woe is us.

If you never saw the massive huckleberry patches that were in our hills before the '70s, you are a newcomer to this canyon. Huckleberry brush was so plentiful that we had a huckleberry brush picking industry. It was mostly a side industry of logging. If a logger lost his job, because of seasonal lay-offs or any other reason, they simply picked huckleberry brush or made redwood split stuff. The ones that picked huckleberry brush did quite well as a side job. The brush picking did not deplete the huckleberries, but encouraged new growth that delivered better berries. Yum!

The spays of brush were used in the florist industry for making floral displays. The brush pickers also picked fresh sword fern and sold them to the same processing facility. The large metal building behind the Lutheran Church in Redway was a huckleberry brush processing factory. (Now Johns auto repair?) It was run by the Hunt brothers. Not the famous ones, but the infamous ones. The thing that I liked about the factory is that they refrigerated the sprays of brush before shipping them. I used to get paid to maintain the refrigeration.

The brush was picked as flat sprays, as they were called. The flatter and the more foliated among them were the most premium. The sprays were delivered the processing plant in the metal building where they were graded and bunched for sale. The people that worked in the factory were SoHum’s first "trimmers". The brush was immediately placed in bins with a water spray over them to keep them from wilting, the dead leaves and braches were trimmed out, then they were placed into graded and counted bundles for sale. Once they were graded and bundled, they were wetted again and placed into the large cargo container sized walk-in refrigerator. The entire walk-in full was shipped out to a floral supply house in one big pay-day, then they would start all over again.

But, we were talking about huckleberries themselves, weren't we? As I was saying, huckleberries are my favorite berry. The huckleberries have a very strong sweet flavor, similar to a blueberry, but much more intense. I like to mix huckleberries about one third berry and two thirds apples for my pies. The huckleberry flavor completely dominates the flavor of the apple pie, yet the apple moderates the flavor of the berries for a super delicious pie. You could eat two or three pieces without going catatonic. Home-churned ice-cream goes well with it also.

You can still find huckleberries in the remote locations in the backs of state parks, but nothing like the "good old days". One of my favorite huckleberry picking stories takes place about thirty years ago when my wife, Janis, and I were picking berries in the back of a state park when we came across some bear "sign", that's a polite way of saying "crap". Bears like huckleberries as much as I do. In fact, they will even eat them before they are totally ripe, which seems kinda' like cheating. My wife said, "shouldn't we be worried?" I said "not really, black bears are really fairly timid and they try to get away from you if they can". I saw the look of doubt on her face. I just could not resist going on to say: "They don't usually bother you unless they have a cub. Or, maybe you surprise them or something". I told her, "Just look big if you can, and yell and scream a lot". Then I got to really enjoying her uncomfortable feeling and just could not resist saying: "For some reason, black bears will usually attack women first". Before she could ask why they would do that, we came across more sign... And it was still steaming. Being the gentleman that I am, I quickly escorted her out of there. My plan was that if the bear started following us, I would sprinkle my bucket of Huckleberries behind me. I know full well that if the bear truly liked huckleberries as much as I do, that it would stop to eat the berries instead of me or my wife.

Tip two: Huckleberry pie should ALWAYS be served with barbecued wild salmon.

An interesting side note:

"Huckleberry" was commonly used in the 1800's in conjunction with "persimmon" as a small unit of measure. "I'm a huckleberry over your persimmon" meant "I'm just a bit better than you." As a result, "huckleberry" came to denote idiomatically two things. First, it denoted a small unit of measure, a "tad," as it were, and a person who was a huckleberry could be a small, unimportant person--usually expressed ironically in mock self-depreciation. The second and more common usage came to mean, in the words of the "Dictionary of American Slang: Second Supplemented Edition" (Crowell, 1975):

Secret patch

I went blackberry picking again today. I have a secret patch of blackberries that grows in a spring. Because of the spring, the berries grow big fat and juicy. The berries also grow on the north side of the mountain so they ripen very slowly. The berries are just now getting ripe. They seem to ripen all at the same time, so it's like picking grapes or something. I usually only get one picking, because what is left is not worth coming back for.

The bad side of this berry patch is that a lot of berries are just out of reach, but I can't resist going after them anyway. Sometimes I end up in the middle of a berry bush and have a hard time getting back out. I always carry my cell phone just in case I have to call the Technical Rescue Team.

I know that nobody would believe my good berry picking, so I took pictures. I took the photos with my cell phone and I'm not nearly as clever as Kym Kemp at Photoshop, so what you see is what you get.

Branscomb Retires from the Redway Volunteer Fire Department

Just so you out of towners know. I retired from the fire department. This is a reprint from Redwood Times

Thanks for the memories; Ernie Branscomb reflects on 39 years of volunteer service Susan Gardner, Redwood Timesredwoodtimes.com


Posted: 08/01/2012 02:35:15 PM PDT
There isn't any organization more important that our volunteer fire departments. The key word here is volunteer. These men and women who are also our friends and neighbors give many, many personal hours to help save our property and sometimes even our lives and those we love. They all deserve a great big thank you.

One such volunteer comes to mind when you think of community service and volunteering. That is Ernie Branscomb. How many times have you seen him on the scene of an accident or fire? Or at a community event helping fix the refrigeration system for a local non-profit group?

Perhaps one of his greatest performances has been in the Garberville rodeo parade each year. He's usually the one who starts the water fight between fire departments. Unfortunately, this past June was the last time you will see him in that capacity. He had been warned that he shouldn't do it, but he went out with a splash, much to the delight of those watching the parade. After all, it's tradition and Ernie is all about tradition.

After 39 years of service to the Redway Volunteer Fire Department Ernie has hung up his turnouts and turned in his pager. He said it's so the “younger kids” can take over where he left off. Let it be known that these “younger kids” have some pretty big boots to fill.

The following is in Ernie's own words, with just a bit of editing by this very humble editor.

*****
How do you summarize 39 years in the Redway Volunteer Fire Department? You don't, so I won't try. I would like to make it clear that I didn't retire because they are threatening to make me stop having a water fight in the rodeo parade.

Kids love the water fight and that includes me. The parade is all about kids and having fun. With the water fight rumor gone, the real reason that I'm retiring is that all of my certifications are expiring and I am faced with once again studying for recertification as a Medical First Responder, CPR, and firefighter. Also, a firefighter must be licensed to drive fire trucks.



Being faced with all of that studying for the limited time that I might still feel young enough to drag a fire hose with the younger firefighters compelled me to consider retiring from the fire department. Recertification is no small task. Firefighters take their jobs very seriously and they consider certification to be very important, but it is also very time consuming.

Ernie Branscomb

A good friend of mine, also in the fire department, said, “being a first responder is the dues that you pay for the life that you get.” And, what a life you get. I would recommend to any young person that is capable, to become a volunteer first responder. There is no better feeling than knowing that you saved a family's home, or saved someone's life. Especially if you are part of a group that did those things as a team where everyone gets to share the credit.


Ernie (center) in his favorite habitat




We always had something to talk about back at the fire hall. The stories are much more glorious in the re-telling. There is no way to explain the bond between firefighters. You would have to have been a firefighter or soldier to know the bond of trust that forms when you trust your life to the person who “has your back.” My life has probably been saved several times by other firefighters. We watch out for each other. It is so routine that you don't even think about it, but you know when it happens.


I joined the fire department “officially” on March 14, 1973. I was a probational firefighter for a length of time before that. We had a serious call at least once a week back then. The houses were wood-framed and had board siding with no sheetrock inside. They had wood shingles on the roof with wood heat or fireplaces. They had copper pennies under the fuses in the fuse box. The houses were leftover from the mill camps that we had in this area. The average cost of a house back then wasn't much over $10,000. Losing a house wasn't much of a loss. We lose fewer houses today. Today's houses are built much better and they are worth a whole lot more, and of course, people are much more fire-conscious.

There is absolutely no way to summarize my experiences in the fire department. That's because each fire, or emergency, has it's own complete story, and there are just too many, but I was there at all of “The Big Ones.” My first call was to the Texaco bulk plant. We got our fire calls from the lady that lived behind the fire hall. If someone called in a fire, it went to her phone, she would sound the siren that called us to the station. After she sounded the alarm she would run to the fire hall and write the call on a chalkboard. I read that board as we were leaving the station on my first call. It said “Texaco Bulk Plant, Rusk Lane.” I swallowed my heart a couple of times and said, “What do I do?” The other firefighters told me to watch them, “and don't do anything stupid, or anything that scares you, and don't get hurt!” That was my very first training as a firefighter. Talk about trial by fire. As it turned out, it was just a broken filler-hose with about 100 gallons gasoline spilled. AND NO FIRE! Whew! Back then, we would wash down fuel spills to reduce the fire hazard. Now, we would soak up the gasoline and put it in containment barrels.

Ernie, shouldn't you be running to the fire?

My very first “real fire” was the Hartsook Inn down in Richardson Grove. With the exception of the north end, the whole building was a total loss. I was stationed at the north end of the building, and I had a lot to do with saving it. It was with a considerable amount of pride, for a new firefighter, that I humbly accepted the praise. It must have been like they say in the theater. The applause can be addictive. I knew from that moment on, how good it felt to be part of a team that could save buildings from fire. What a great feeling!



From the Hartsook to many small structure fires my volunteer career became more routine and my confidence level grew. Among the “big ones” was the Garberville Fireman's Hall fire. The sky was so bright from the fire that I could see to get in my truck at Benbow. I knew the fire was next to the propane bulk plant. I remember the surreal feeling of knowing that the fire was next to a propane plant and I was still headed in that direction. I felt somewhat vindicated that when I got there, all the other firefighters were showing up. I remember feeling that we must be insane. My first station was between the propane tanks and the fire to keep the tanks cool. In theory, if you keep them cool they don't blow up. We had to sacrifice a few small propane bottles to save the larger tanks. Some of the valves on the tops melted off. The flames would shoot like a rocket blast with a roaring blue flame about 25 feet into the air. The Garberville fire department was in the south end of the hall and they lost several of their fire trucks to the blaze. The only injuries that were suffered were some smoke-inhalation and exhaustion. I was totally unscathed, as was the rest of the team that I was stationed with behind the hall. We only had to stand there to hose down and cool the tanks. Some of the other firefighters had to drag numerous hydrant lines to the fire. They got pretty tired.
The next big fire was at the Murrish Food Center in Redway. I was late getting there, because I was responding from Benbow. When I arrived and asked the assistant chief, “Whatta we got?” He replied, “We're (screwed).” That's not an exact quote, but I can't repeat what he really said. It seemed like the fire was everywhere and we tried to keep the fire as cool as we could. After a few sections of the roof collapsed we went inside to start mopping up. One of our team members said that there was fire on the other side of the wall from us. I told him “No way, that's an eight-inch thick firewall.” As we got all the way over to it, flames were shooting 20 feet into the sky. After we finally got the fire completely out the investigators told us that it was an arson fire. They said that there had been 12 “sets.” No wonder the fire was on both sides of the firewall.

Then there was the Southern Humboldt Building Supply fire on March 17, Saint Patrick's Day. We were at a Rotary Club Saint Patrick's Day party and car raffle at the Hartsook Inn. We were coming back into town on the shuttle bus when we saw the fire shooting through the roof. I, and several others, were in tuxedos. I was the best-dressed firefighter in town that night until my wife brought me my fire turnout clothes. Two firefighters climbed up into the building from underneath with a hose and put the fire out. Due to some compromising circumstance I am sworn to secrecy as to who those firefighters were. It wasn't me but they were the ones that finally brought the fire under control. Southern Humboldt Builders and the Branding Iron (Chick's Bar) were total loses. That fire was also arson, but was set by a different person.

As you can see, I could go on and on. I was on the last real fire call that the 1937 American La France fire truck went on. I drove the truck to a house up the hill behind Ruby Valley. We still have the truck and we use it in the parades and to deliver Santa Claus to the Redway children. I was also at the fires at the Log House Museum, the Trees Restaurant, and The Branding Iron Saloon, once again. I was once involved in a fire on Hillcrest Drive that back-drafted while we were inside. I have worked at Landing Zone Safety training, at The Eel River Conservation Camp during several major wildland fires, and I have also worked on many wildland fires.

Of course the highlights of my career have to be the Redway Barbecue held every Memorial Day weekend and the rodeo parade water fight.

He that shall see this day and live t' old age...
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars...
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages what feats he did that day.
Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words ...
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered...
This story shall the good man teach his son...
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.
-Band of brothers, (greatly edited) Shakespeare

Copyright 2012 Redwood Times. All rights reserved.

Environmentalism, really?

Think locally act globally!

Rachel Carson
May 27, 1907-Apr 14, 1964

Rachel Carson probably awakened more people to the cause of environmentalism than any other person. Her Book "Silent Spring"(1962) was about the dangers of pesticides. Although DDT was labeled as completely harmless to man, it was found to soften the egg shells of top predator birds. Silent Spring probably saved the American Bald Eagle from certain extinction.

It is easy to be a good guy, all you have to do is label yourself as an environmentalist. I certainly don't want to take anything away from the true custodians of the environment that work hard to protect nature from harm, like Carson and many others, but what hurts the environment on the other side of the earth certainly hurts us here. If you want to see what I'm talking about, go to the beach and try to decide where the junk washing up on our shores is coming from. For the most part... it ain't ours. What are we doing about that? Beside continually picking it up!

Recently we've had to wonder if some of the junk from Japan might be radioactive flotsam from the Fukushima Nuclear plant. It was built to withstand a 7.2 earthquake, but it wasn't designed to withstand a tidal wave. How do they ever plan to sell us on the idea that nuclear power is safe if they can't even get past an earthquake. Japan is capable of providing an even larger quake than they had that caused the Fukushima disaster. Why aren't we all screaming for better standards? Not just here, but world-wide. They have sold us (some of us) on the idea that we "live in a world economy now" so they can sell us cheap products that can be made cheaply offshore, but at what expense? What countries adhere to the high environmental standards that we here in the U.S. do? Certainly not China.

Some of you have heard me say, repeatedly, that the Three Gorges Dam, that was just recently put into operation in China, is the direct equivalent of placing a dam across the Golden Gate in San Francisco and flooding the Sacramento valley. The dam displaced more Chinese citizens that we have people in the Sacramento valley, not to mention that they flooded antiquities and artifacts tens of thousand of years old. China did this for cheap power to provide cheap products to sell to the rest of the world. What do you think that the chances of placing a dam across the Golden Gate are? We would be able to compete with cheap Chinese products then. We would have almost unlimited free hydro-power. Think what a boon it would be to the U.S. economy. Anybody that wanted a job could be hired for the construction. America would be sitting in Fat City.

Our chances of a dam being placed across the Golden Gate are ZERO, because, rightfully every environmentalist in America would be against it. Man woman and child would be screaming at the top of their lungs that it shouldn’t happen. Politician’s heads would roll, there would be rioting in the streets, there would be pandemonium. Soooo… why is it okay with all of us “environmentalists”, that are so busy “thinking globally and acting locally“, while using cheap Chinese products and being grateful for the “good buy” that we are getting? Shouldn’t we be thinking locally and acting GLOBALLY?

They say that the Three Gorges Dam generates as much power as 15 nuclear power plants, but at what cost? The kinds of fish in the river will change, the valleys are gone, the antiquities are gone. The birds and animal life will change. Some say the they worlds weather will change because of the size of the dam. There are theories that the dam will cause earthquakes due to the weight of the water. The people that used to live in the valleys and grow their own food are no longer able to do so. The displaced people were moved in to large apartment complexes in the cities. I can’t believe that they are, in any way, happier. Our own local second district supervisor, Clif Clendenen, just lost his job, in part, because he suggested that the people that live in the hills should move to town where they would be easier to care for. Say What??? Not many people like living in a town compared to having their own space and garden in the country. So, why did we, in the rest of the world, allow China to do this to their people? Shouldn’t we have been fighting for them to be left on their farms? If we live in a “world economy” we should darn well have some say over what the rest of the world does to the environment and their people. Too bad we don’t have a vote in this “World Economy” that we live in.

Eric Kirk just did a post on GMO foods, and whether or not they should be labeled. It starts out like it's about Kepler, but it ends up about GMO labeling. It was one of the most interesting discussions that I’ve ever seen on a blog. The comments were educated and articulate. My only hope is that GMO foods would be labeled. If your are going to sell me food, you should be obligated to tell me all about it. One of the points that was made was that we would need genetically modified foods to feed the world. Maybe so, but we wouldn’t need GMO foods if we had more space to grow natural food. In our own valleys we have replaced prime agriculture land with brick and mortar industry. A good example of that is “Silicone Valley” thousand of prune and walnut trees were removed from the San Jose Valley to make room for buildings. The buildings would have probably been better placed in the foothills and the valleys left for agriculture, quite the opposite of the plan to move everybody to the cities. Sadly, The San Jose valley was known by the Indians as The Valley of the Acorn Oaks. The oak trees were removed to plant prunes and walnuts. I don’t necessarily disapprove of planting a better crop, as long as in doesn’t glow in the dark, like some GMO plants. Or if it glows in the dark, it should be at least labeled that does that.

I guess my whole point is, why are some of our “environmentalists” so darned obstructionalistic locally, when they don’t seem not to care a rat’s patooty about what the rest of the world does.

Link: Three Gorges dam
link: 17 facts about the three gorges dam

Richardson Grove realignment Bruhaha

In view of the recent Judge Dale A. Reinholtsen ruling on Richardson Grove approving of the project and soundly slapping the face of EPIC, who apposed the realignment of the grove, I looked back to a a time when blogging was semi-intelligent and fun. I found the following post in my archives and decided to make a link to it. Please read the intelligent comments!

Link: Pigs Fly

Have fun!




e

So sorry!

As much as I love blogging, I haven't been doing much lately... maybe you noticed. I do have a quite a few half-written posts that I have in my "Blog Drafts" file. Some are still timely and some are simply outdated, but I will probably go through them and see if there is anything still in there that will pique your interest. This is just a short note to say how sorry that I am that I haven't been keeping up.

But of course, you will be wanting to know why I haven't been here writing. Well the old cliche "I been busy" still holds true. I am very fortunate in these times that are difficult for some, because of the bad economy, I have been getting a lot of jobs. I hate turning down jobs for fear that there may not be as many in the future. Springtime is always good for refrigeration, but this have been a great year for me. Deferred maintainance can eventually catch up with people, and I believe that a lot of the majors repair calls that I've been getting are because people have put repairs off too long.

I have also been installing some new equipment, some has been in Fortuna. I bid the Fortuna job last summer and it is just now being finished. Gas prices went sky-high, so I tried to put in full days to minimize trips. Fortunatley gas is coming back down again, that and the job is 99% finished. I'm looking forward to catching back up again. Usually I catch up around the first week in July, but I don't see any end in sight this year.

I need to apologize to some people, Mainly Joe Erwin, who tried to meet with me for lunch. I was not able to reply in a timely fashion and my window of opportunity closed. Joe, if you are still reading, email me at my email address in the upper left corner on this blog. I don't get email addresses on comments, and yes, I'd like to meet for coffee or lunch. Also, a few other people have emailed me that I could not respond to, I regret that, but when you are up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that you were trying to drain the swamp.

The part that I enjoy the most about blogging is the comments that I get. I think that this blog has the better  comments than most other blogs. Did I say that right???

Estelle Fennell Elected 2nd Dist Supervisor

Estelle Fennell has been elected as Humboldt County's new second district Supervisor.
It is a new day in day dawning. Estelle worked very hard to gain this elected position. She is a very hard worker and she is very intelligent. She will find ways to help all the people of Humboldt County to get their fair due. Her job will be made even more difficult by the whole nations poor economy, but she is capable of doing quite well as a negotiator, and there will be a difference.

 Estelle's partner, Kathleen Creager, was the second most involved and equally as hard a worker in the campaign. She is one of the hardest working "behind the scenes" workers that there is. Estelle had a lot of people involved in her campaign, too numerous to name them all, but it seemed that if only Estelle's campaign workers voted for her she would be sure to be elected.

On a personal note, I often wondered if my support helped her or hurt her more, and I expressed that to her several times. She assured me that it didn't bother her that I might have lost her votes and that she appreciated my support. She ran her campaign honestly and enjoyed the people that tried to help her. She took an "it is what it is" approach. Her first comments when it started to become hopeful that she might be elected was to thank the people that supported her. Her text to me at 2:23 AM June 6th was, "I love you, Thank you for all you did to help". I couldn't help but think of all of the things that I did that was maybe not that helpful.

I have purposely avoid terming this election as a "win or lose" situation. I don't think that anyone truly wins or loses in an election. It is simply a changing of the guard. But, I do think that the people of Humboldt County have gained a great leader.

Irish Slaves?

If you have Irish ancestry, I do, your folks may have been sold into slavery. Sound strange? Not as strange as it may seem if you know the history of the British Isles. The British and the Irish had no love for each other. Indeed, Oliver Cromwell advocated the complete extermination of the Irish. Many Irish slaves were supposedly sold in Jamaica and other British colonies. I say supposedly, because, as you know history is written by the survivors, so room for actual facts are much debated. Some people even doubt the Holocaust.  Slavery was common in the world up until about the 1700s. Depending on what you term as "slavery", the Nazis had up to ten-million captives that were used as human medical experiments, used as labor in the Nazi factories and in the agriculture fields, most would call them slaves.

All of this is not to diminish the fact that America held blacks in slavery, and that fact is was very well documented, and seldom glossed over. Laws against slavery were passed in the British Isles in 1839 forbidding the selling of slaves, but there was still a good market for slaves in Jamaica long after those laws were passed. Just as many people today will do anything to make a buck, legal or not, I'm sure that the slave trade persisted long after laws were passed against it.

African Slaves were bought from African leaders that rounded up their own people to sell into the slave trade. The Irish were also famous as Slavers, as were the Dutch. It was much easier to get Irish slaves because most of them were criminals that the British rulers were glad to get rid of. The slave trade in Jamaica and Australia was mostly furnished from the British prisons. An Irish slave was only worth about one-tenth of what a black slave was worth. The Irish slaves were bred to the blacks to get a much higher quality slave.  They felt that the blacks could work harder in the heat, and the Irish were used as cheap breeding stock.  I'm not sure how I feel about that. It must have been horrible for everybody involved. The children automatically became slaves.

As I have said many times, we can't judge what happened in history by who we are today. We are all genetically the same people that lived two hundred years ago, but we are much better educated and we see the benefit of getting along with one another. Also, our laws are much more likely to be enforced. I often wonder what would happen to our nice cozy society if the law should happen to go away. Would that monster that lives inside us revert and make us the brutes we once were?

Please find the article below about the Irish slaves

The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves

The Slaves That Time Forgot

By John Martin

They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.

Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? After all, we know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade. But, are we talking about African slavery?

King James II and Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.

The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.

This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia.

There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry.

In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.

Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories. But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?

Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer? Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.

None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.

Some More Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain_and_Ireland

http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1638

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-last-slaves-of-the-20th-century-the-so-called-white-slaves-of-the-nazis-a-dirge-by-lion/

Estelle Fennell, Second District Supervisor Candidate.

I support Estelle Fennell, so, I was looking for some of her campaign speeches and I came across a few things on youtube. The first ad that I have posted shows the county road that I live on, Blue Rock Road. There are worse chuckholes up the hill a little further, but this hole had the best lighting. It just goes to show you that you can be the star of the show by being in the right place at the right time. The holes around the corner are called "Charles Holes". (You can't call holes that big "Chuck")

So far the campaign has been very fair with a few remarkable exceptions made by both sides. The hit and run artists never sign their names or take credit. If they were truly expressing great wisdom you would think that they would be proud to take credit wouldn't they?

Estelle is a very good public speaker and is very good at making her point. She is practiced at digging out the story. Her experience came from her tenure as a news director and anchor person. She uses a microphone very well. She has had a life with a lot of obstacles that she has had to overcome, so she is very comfortable in a fair fight. When the local schools needed money she went with us to Sacramento to help get funding from the State. If we had not made the trip it is a sure thing that we would not have gotten the funding. She is not one to play the cards that were handed to her and chose the best option, she will ask for a better hand for us all.

I got to know Estelle years ago when she covered the Bear Lincoln story. As you may know, Bear Lincoln was the man that killed the Mendocino Sheriff Deputy in Covelo, then hid out. He finally turned himself in, but he pleaded self defense. Estelle and her news team went to Covelo to cover the story. Having been raised in Laytonville, I was familiar with some of the problems that they have in Covelo. I was very impressed with the detailed account of what happened, and what was happening in the valley with the Indian People. She was one of the first newspeople that treated the Indian people fairly. I liked her approach to not take the easy way out.

Later, I got to know her on the fire-line of many of the local wild-fires in the area, and most of the house fires. During the Canoe Fire, west of Weott, she stayed on the fire line and reported it's spread and the direction that it was traveling almost continuously on the news. It is my opinion that her reporting may have saved some houses, and may have even saved some lives. I really admired her dedication and the effort that she put out for her community. I became a lifelong fan of Estelle's at that point. She was elected as Garberville's Citizen of the year, mostly for her efforts on the Canoe Fire, but also in recognition of her dedication as a caring community supporter.

Now she is running for the Second District Supervisor of Humboldt County. Of course, she has my vote.

SOME ADS:

Homeless in Korea

I ran across this while looking for a Jack White tune. It provokes a lot of heavy thinking on my part. I thought maybe I would let you try it. Click on the "X" in the box covering the captions at the bottom of the screen to get rid of it, or you won.t be able to read them.



The rest of the story... Sorry, this is all that I could find so far.

China, the new America

Payback is a bitch, or so it seems. China has gained prospertity so fast that they don't understand restraint. They smoke too much, eat too much, and they don't exercize enough. Sounds a lot like America used to sound doesn't it?

Please click on the following video about China's new middle class obese. Most Americans have learned about moderation and at least try to restrict their food intake. The Chinese people relate obesity with prosperity. They do not yet fully understand the negitive health aspects of being overweight.

This post is a little shocking to me. When I was little, and didn't eat all of my dinner, my mother would tell me how lucky that I was that I was not one of the poor little kids in China that were starving to death.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june10/china_06-01.html

Milton Anderson memorial this Saturday

For those that have been waiting for this announcement, they will be having services for Milton Anderson at The Begginings in Briceland:
There will be a celebration of life to laugh and share in remembering Milton’s life on April 14 at Beginnings in Briceland at 1 p.m. Please bring potluck side dishes. Barbecue will be provided.

Rest In Peace old friend.


Click here for Milton Anderson's Obituary in the Redwood Times

Treyvon Martin, George Zimmerman

For Your Information.

By now, everyone has heard about the shooting death of Treyvon Martin, a 17 year old 6 foot 1 inch, 150 lb, black young man, George Zimmerman is a 5 foot 9 inch, 170 lb, 28 year old Hispanic man that says that he shot Martin in self defense on the "stand your ground law" in Florida.

The news is abuzz with the Treyvon Martin shooting death by George Zimmerman. I myself just want to know the truth. I want a full and complete investigation by an independent party, then I want the details and reasons for what ever conclusion that they find. For some reason we never hear why the police reach the conclusions that they do. They never justify why they did or didn't do drug testing on either party. They don't explain what happened to set the public at ease that the police have done the right thing. Is it perhaps that they didn't do the right thing? I need assurance, the same as many others, that the police have reached the right decisions.

Why has most all the news services chosen to misrepresent the facts? NBC fraudulently doctored the 911 tapes. Why has Treyvon been pictured as a 13 year old kid in all the pictures? Is George Martin an aggressor? Did he chase down Treyvon and get in a scuffle and kill him, or did he turn around when he told the 911 dispatcher that he was following Treyvon and the dispatcher told him "I wouldn't do that".

The other thing that amazes me is that there are so many people able to reach dramatic conclusions on practically no bona-fide evidence. Also, why is it that the conclusions are so sharply divided along racial lines. I don't know enough to say who is at fault. I do know that most news services are no longer of any real service when most of them spread bald faced lies disguised as "News.

What about the lawyers? Why are they all going on television try to upstage each other. The DA says that she doesn't trust a Grand Jury to come to the right decision on whether to prosecute George Martin, so she is going to decide herself. That sounds a whole lot more like ego than judgement. And, two defense lawyers are out there jockeying for the best position to get their face on camera. They claim that they quit because they haven't heard from George Martin. I kind of wonder if Martin Really retained them in the fist place. The whole thing is shaping up like a civil rights and racism disaster.

The following is a Reprint From Politico
By DARIUS DIXON, 4/6/12 7:30 AM EDT

Americans are divided sharply along racial lines when it comes the shooting death of a black Florida teen, Trayvon Martin, a recent Gallup survey found. African-Americans are nearly five times more likely to be convinced that gunman George Zimmerman is “definitely guilty” of a crime than non-blacks, according to the Gallup poll released Thursday. Also striking: Blacks are twice as likely as non-blacks to believe that Zimmerman would have been arrested if the person he shot was white — 75 percent to 35 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 49 percent of non-blacks believe Martin’s race didn’t play a factor, compared to 20 percent of blacks.Yet, an equal portion of blacks and non-blacks surveyed — 21 percent — think Zimmerman is “probably guilty” of a crime. The survey results were derived from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted between April 2 and April 4 of 3,006 Americans, including 242 blacks, as part of Gallup Daily tracking.

Thursday’s Gallup poll gelled with the findings of an earlier survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that found opinions about the media coverage of the Martin case were sharply divided on race. Of those saying there was too much coverage of Martin’s death, 16 percent were black while 43 percent were white. In the Tuesday survey, 56 percent of Republicans say there’s been “too much” media about the February shooting, while only 25 percent of Democrats agreed.

Read more: Treyvon Martin

Columbus Day Windstorm, October 12th 1962. Humboldt Version

Steven Norman. Arcata forest blowdown (Not 1962)

Robin Shelley said that 70 mph wind, something I wasn't used to in L'ville, can be downright scary


I whole heartedly agree with her. Wind really bothers me. The scariest rescue calls that I go on with the fire department are windstorm calls. I’m reminded of Indiana Jones lowering himself by rope into and underground chamber, he holds out his torch and looks around on the floor and sees hundreds of snakes. He shudders and says, “Snakes! Why does it always have to be snakes!”. That’s the way that I feel about windstorms, “Wind! Why does it always have to be wind.” When the wind blows at night, I lay awake and listen to it hiss through the trees and wait for my pager to alert me to a wind rescue call. Most often our wind rescue calls are in lower Redway, where a virgin old-growth redwood forest exists. People love to live in, and about, the majestic redwood trees… that is until the wind blows and they start falling

Always, not just sometimes, the fire department gets called out when a strong wind blows. I always dread going on calls during a windstorm. I have been through way too many windstorms. I could tell wind stories for a week and not tell the same story twice. Some of the highlights are that trees and power lines are always down and people need to be evacuated. We had to rescue one lady numerous times, in numerous storms. She was in a wheel chair and couldn’t get out when the wind blew. She was always our first call in Redway in a windstorm. She lived the furthest in the back of the forest, so we would start with her and work our way out. Large, well established redwoods seldom blow over. Most often there limbs break off. The tree sacrifices it’s limbs to save the tree. As the limbs break off, the wind is less likely to push the tree over. In a strong wind, redwood limbs fall like rain, and often after a storm the forest floor is littered with limbs and duff. They are very dangerous. A person should never be in a redwood forest in the wind if it is at all possible to leave. One time this poor lady had seven limbs hit her roof. Several of them punctured straight though roof and through the floor in her living room. Needless to say she was terrified. Four of us grabbed her wheel chair, we packed her out and put her in the van and left. I think that was the fastest rescue we ever made. Nothing like limbs poking through the room to hurry you along!

Another woman in lower Redway, and her infant baby, had three large trees go through her house. Someone had told her that the safest place to stand was in a doorway, so, she was still standing in her doorway holding her baby when we found her. By then the storm had long past. We had to cut trees out of the road to get rescue vehicles in. The only part of her house still standing was the doorway that she was standing in and the fireplace across the room from the doorway. The trees that fell through her house had cut clear though her house and driven the foundation down flush with the ground. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it wasn’t the doorway that saved her, because if a tree had hit where she was standing she surely would have been killed.

This same storm, an older, very overweight man that a neighbor routinely took care of because of his inability to move around very much from being overweight, suddenly became weightless as he ran across the road to his neighbor’s house. The neighbor said that he shined a flashlight across the street toward the overweight man’s house to see how he was. Much to his surprise the man came running across the street…. Strip bare naked, with blubber bouncing in all directions. He said he looked like a great white whale running in slow motion. Shortly after he ran across the street, a top to one of the trees falling through the mother and babies house smashed through the porch where the naked man had just been standing.

In a different storm, a lady lived just north of the brass Rail in Redway just south of her house were two large trees. She was sitting on her couch holding her dog on her lap. In similar circumstance to the mother and child, the ladies couch was across the room from the fireplace. The two trees blew down together. One skimmed off the fireplace to the left and the other to the right, both trees missed the lady and her dog, one to each side of her. We put her in a kitchen chair and packed her over the trees to get her out.

Sadly, not all are as lucky. One night we got called out in a windstorm that a tree had fallen lengthwise of a trailer house. We made a cursory inspection. The only place that was inaccessible was the couch that the tree was squarely on top off. Everything was pancaked between the rubble from the roof the couch and the floor. We determined that if she was on the couch there was no hope. We advised everyone to get to safety because other trees were still falling, we told them that we would return when we cleared all the other scenes, and we left on other calls. The family of the woman refused our advice to leave. They took chainsaws, cut the tree in chunks and removed it. Their worst fears were realized. I felt bad that we had left, we rehashed things at the fire hall when we got done. We were all pretty convinced that we did the right thing by continuing on with our calls. I’m not sure the family felt that way, and I can’t say that I blame them. That is the trouble with rescues… Sometime they make you feel really good, and other times, they make you feel really bad.

The worse windstorm that I remember was on October 12th 1962. I was seventeen at the time and not part of any rescue group. We called the storm “the Columbus Day Storm” because October 12th is Columbus Day. Original, right? I remember whole forests being blown down, all laying in the same direction. The loggers had a real good season the next summer, with all the trees laying in the same direction and they were easy to buck up and get to the mill. Part of the “poor logging practices” that the newcomers like to point to, were not logging practices at all, but a clean-up of blown down timber. Then, as everybody already knows, the 1964 flood followed closely after the blow-down. You knew that didn’t you? It caused quite a mess. But, you knew that too, didn’t you?

There used to be a very thick forest north-east of the Garberville airport, where the roping arena and log ranch house stand now. Most of that forest was flattened. Two men in a jeep pick-up were driving through there when the trees blew down. One tree fell across the passenger side of the Jeep killing one man instantly. The driver lived with non-life-threatening injuries.

All the roads around Garberville were closed from the downed trees. Pete Starr was a mechanic that had a house in Garberville, but his shop was in Briceland. When the wind came up, he decided to head home. He made it as far as the South Fork of Eel River bridge in lower Redway. Just as he approached the bridge, a huge redwood tree went through the bridge. It was an Iron arch type bridge. The tree stopped all traffic in both directions, and the bridge was severely damaged. Pete turned around and tried to head back to Briceland, he no more than got turned around and the wind really started kicking up. Limbs and trees were falling everywhere. He got out of his truck and ran for Whitemore Valley. (now Ruby Valley, the post office changed the name) He said that limbs and trees were hitting all around him. He thought about going back to his truck, but his feet wouldn’t let him they just kept running. He got hit with a few minor limbs and he was able to eventually get back to Briceland. He spent the night there and headed back over the Old Briceland Road to Garberville. Downed trees were everywhere. Foot was the only way that anybody could travel for quite a few days. Of course some bridges were damaged by trees and some were destroyed. It was just going into winter, which didn’t help with the road openings and cleanup work.

The only way that a person could check on their family was to travel on foot. We were very primitive back then, we didn’t even have cell-phones!

The strange thing about the Columbus Day windstorm is that it was far worse to the north of us, up into Oregon and Washington. It was the worse wind in recorded history. Wind meters where ripped apart. Nobody really knows how strong the winds were except through extrapolation. Please follow this link for a Wikipedia version of the Columbus Day Wind storm.

California Superstorm possible

Meteoroligist Evelyn Taft KCAL, LA

Stand back non believers, I believe we are gonna' get some rain!
According to Evelyn Taft of KCAL in L.A. quoting Dr. Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey. California may be in some deep trouble of the wet kind. A super storm is possible. One so big it makes the flood of 1964 seem like a drizzly day. I have lived through the 1955 flood and the 1964 flood, and I have seen conditions that made me think that a bigger flood was possible. They say that the '55 flood was a flood that only happenes every hundred years, and the '64 flood was a "thousand year flood". So, I just realaxed and figured that I've seen the worst of the worse, and it was over. But nope, a storm so big and bad is on it's way that makes all other storms fade in comparison.

A bigger storm than the '64 flood storm is hard to fathom. Nobody that didn't see the '64 flood with their very own eyes still can't imagine how hard it rained. So, try to wrap your brains around the following storm description.

Dr.Lucy Jones, USGS

"Imagine a rainstorm so large that it would be like hurricane Katrina hitting every day for a month.

Countless homes would be destroyed as if a million tornadoes roared through the city, and the cost of cleaning up would plunge the entire world into an economic depression for decades.
"It sounds like a scary script from a disaster movie right? But scientists say this is no fantasy. It will happen, and will destroy much of California.
They're predicting a superstorm that would turn a flood control channel into a river the size of the Mississippi, and would literally wash away many buildings.
Metrorologist Evelyn Taft from KCAL in Los Angeles says the storm will dump more than ten feet of water.
"We could possibly see a third of the state under water in a storm like this," says Taft.
They're calling it the "ark storm" like the biblical storm that forced Noah and his animals into the ark.
It would leave more people homeless than the Haiti earthquake."

"Dr. Lucy Jones from the U.S. Geological Survey created a computer model of the storm. She says the ark storm would be the most expensive natural disaster in history, saying, "We estimate it could cost as much as a trillion dollars." When will it happen? No one can predict with certainty, but one thing is for sure—when it comes, it will leave behind devastation and destruction like we've never seen before."

Some of you may not know, but the winter of 1861-62 had what is reputed to be a worse storm than the 1964 flood. The following is a description of the flood on the north coast. Garberville didn't give any description of the Eel River, so we can only wonder what happened here.

Great Flood of 1862
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Great Flood of 1862 or Noachian Deluge was the largest flood in the recorded history of Oregon, Nevada and California, occurring from December 1861 to January 1862. It was preceded by weeks of continuous rains (or snows in the high elevations) that began in Oregon in November 1861 and continued into January 1862. This was followed by record quantitative precipitation in January 9-12th, which contributed to a flood which extended from the Columbia River southward in western Oregon and through California to San Diego, and extended as far inland as Idaho in Washington Territory, Nevada and Utah in Utah Territory and Arizona in western New Mexico Territory.

"It was climaxed by a warmer, more intense storm with much more rain that was made more serious by the earlier large accumulation of snow, now melted by the rain in the lower elevations of the mountains. Throughout the affected area, all the streams and rivers rose to great heights, flooded the valleys, inundated or swept away towns, mills, dams, flumes, houses, fences, and domestic animals, and ruined fields. Early estimates of property damage was at $10,000,000. However, later it was estimated that approximately one-quarter of the taxable real estate in the state of California was destroyed in the flood. Dependent on property taxes, the State of California went bankrupt. The governor, state legislature, and state employees were not paid for a year and a half."

Having seen the '64 flood, I really thought that I had seen it all. Now I know that I haven't seen nothin' yet.

Earthquake, tidal wave, coming to a beach near you... Sooner than you think.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/extreme-earth/01-big-one-earthquake-could-devastate-pacific-northwest/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C MONSTER CASCADIA QUAKE

Copalis Ghost Forest (Foreground)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 they are going to have a Tsunami drill on the north coast. These drills have been going on, on the north coast since time began. In the coastal Indian legends there is a saying, "when the sky thunders, seek low places. When the Earth thunders seek high places". What that basically means is, "In a lightning storm stay low. In an earthquake... run for the hills." Darn good advice, even in the modern world. With all of our technology, we still have no idea how to control earthquakes. They are many times more powerful than the largest bombs that we have made. We are still running for the hills in an earthquake.

What we know today that the Indians may not have known, is that these earthquakes happen on a somewhat predictable cycle. Say... The Cascadia Subduction zone has an earthquake every 245-485 years, give or take a few years. Our biggest fear on the north coast is a pop in the subduction zone that could rip from Petrolia to Canada, loosening a 9 plus earthquake. Land could drop into the sea, or lift like it did most recently in 1981? in Petrolia. Kings Peak got 16 inches taller in that little quake, and seashore along Petrolia lifted over 4 feet. It was just a mouse of a quake compared to the lion quake that we are facing if the Cascadia releases it's pent-up pressure. The Cascadia did that the last time in 1700, exactly in the year 1700. Let's see... that was exactly 312 years ago. If I have my math right, that means the the Cascadia is overdue, and we are in the give or take area of earthquake predictability. Wow... exciting times, huh? The Copalis Ghost forest sunk into the sea during the 1700 quake, and the remains of the dead Red Cedar forest still stands in Washington.

In 1700 the Cascadia earthquake was powerful enough to send a tidal wave toward Japan that was still 16 feet tall when it hit the Japanese shore. It was recorded there and the wave confirms the date of the last Cascadia super-quake. The bad news is that the 1700 quake was not the first...

"Oregon State University (OSU) used core samples from the ocean floor along the fault to establish that there have been at least 41 Cascadia events in the last ten thousand years. Nineteen of those events ripped the fault from end to end, a “full margin rupture.”

You have no idea how powerful a "full margine rupture is"! Now, I did the math for you: 10,000 years divided by 41 equals 243.9 years.  So we are long overdue for a major earthquake on the north coast of California. So, now you are wondering. "what are the odds of one happening?"

With a time line of 41 events the science team at OSU has now calculated that the California–Oregon end of Cascadia’s fault has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds are 10 percent that an even larger quake will strike the upper end, in a full-margin rupture, within 50 years. Given that the last big quake was 312 years ago, one might argue that a very bad day on the Cascadia Subduction Zone is ominously overdue. It appears that three centuries of silence along the fault has been entirely misleading. The monster is only sleeping."

When I was a wee lad I had a superstitious old great-grandmother that kept us kids scared to death with her endless “end or the world” predictions. I remember that she talked a lot about the “A-Tom bomb” that Russia was going to drop on us. I was too young at the time to not believe that the Ruskies thought that Laytonville would be some kind of a strategic target. The training at school was if you saw a long lasting bright light in the sky, more than lightning, that you should run inside hide under a desk and put your head between you legs. The joke at the time was that you put your head between your legs so you could “kiss your ass goodbye”. One of the things that my G-grandmother told us kids is that God was going to send a great Pacific tidal wave, that would come clear over Cahto Mountain. My uncle told me that she had been predicting that wave for years. He said that he used to run up the mountain behind the ranch house and hold onto a manzanita bush that grew on the very top and watch for the wave to come over Cahto. I still wonder about that wave.

Some excitment in Elsie's life!

I have been very busy the last two or three weeks. It's a tough life getting ready to go on a cruise, taking the cruise, then catching up after the cruise. Just about when I got caught back up, my mother Elsie had "a little spell" where her heart stopped beating and she passed out for a few minutes. She regained consciousness on her own, without C.P.R., much to her benefit, it hurts life hell to wake up after C.P.R. It has a tendency to break ribs and other maladies. We were very lucky. We took her to the hospital in Garberville. The doctor recommend that we have her transferred to a Hospital where her vital signs could be monitored and recorded. Well, of course we agreed. The Doctor worked for two hours on-and-off the phone to find a hospital that could care for her. It seems that Redwood Memorial in Fortuna couldn't take her, neither could Saint Joseph in Eureka, nor Mad River in Arcata. Something about a flu eppidemic and there was no room at the Inn.

It seems strange to me that no one in Humboldt could take her. I read just last week read that Saint Joeseph was laying off 50 people due to lack of hospital occupancy. Something stinks in Denmark. The Doctor asked if it was okay to transfer her south into Mendocino. Of course we also agreed to that, they have some very good hospitals to the south. Ukiah agreed to take her because there was no room at Willits. Before morning the situation had reversed and they had no room in Ukiah but Willits had a bed. Frank Howard Memorial put her on vital-signs-monitoring and they soon picked up an eradic heartbeat. They tranfered her to the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital were Doctor Chang-Sing installed a pacemaker.

She is home and feeling great again, albeit a little sore around the incision that they installed the pacemaker through.

The good side of the week-long episode, is we discovered how many friends that my mother has. We got endless text messages and phone calls inquiring about her well-being and her progress. We even learned how to send texts to multiple recipiants... never done that before.

All's well that ends well. Today is my birthday, quite a gift to have a well Mother don't you think?


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I've been on a cruise

Xunantunich

Say {Shoo-nan-two-nich}





My wife Janis earned a Radio Shack incentive trip. It was a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Belize and Cozumel Mexico. We are on our way back and I am now stuck in the San Francisco airport with a 1 1/2 hour layover. So... I need to kill some time. What better way than bloging?

I'm using a notebook that runs Windows 7. I'm using the touch screen keyboard which is a little weird for me.

It rained like crazy the last half of the cruise to Belize, and, the whole time that we were there. The locals were delighted because it cooled off. The rain didn't dampen our spirits, but our guide was disappointed that it ruined the view. We visited the Mayan ruins, Janis insisted that we climb to the top of the pyramid shaped temple. I tried to discourage her because she is not the most cat-footed person in the world, but what she lacks in grace she more than makes up in bravery. The steps on the temple are huge and they slope downward. Sneakers are slick as snot on the wet steps. I stayed under her the whole way to the top and back down, like I thought that I could catch her if she fell. I joked and told her that I thought that she was fairly safe, because the Gods only accepted virgin sacrifices.

Oops! time to go!
More later....