Category Archives: Regional

A Good Day

Thursday was a darn good day, the best I’d had in awhile. First, I have new walking shoes that fit. So I took a short, slow constitutional in the morning. Then I picked up my friend to deliver him to the San Francisco airport (he’s off to Spain to vacation with his wife); once that was done, I hit Babies ‘R’ Us to use the last bit of a gift card, and then I took a slow route down Middlefield Road to Palo Alto. I was ready for some refreshment, so I stopped at a Peet’s Coffee & Tea for a bit of shortbread and an Americano. While there I pulled out my journal and pens, because I developed a small crowd at my feet, where I tossed my crumbs, and I was feeling creative.

sparrows at peet's

After finishing the drawing (which has terrible perspective, but whatever), I headed home. My energy was ample today, and I like that. The evening was spent organizing photos and puttering around the house. Oh, one more tidbit; last weekend the friends we had over for dinner shared happy news that they are pregnant — first trimester still, but so far all is well. We’re going to have company with our new lifestyle!

Okay, I Was Wrong

Remember I wrote that it never rains in the summer here? I ought to know better than to use an absolute. From the San Jose Mercury News:

In more than 70 years of record-keeping, it has never rained in San Jose on July 18.

Expect that streak to keep going.

Rain did fall as far south as Mountain View this morning.

San Francisco made weather history today by recording one-hundredth of an inch of rain, the storm system “is weakening rapidly” and will exit in the late morning hours, according to Dan Gudgel, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

“I think it’s opportunity may have passed,” Gudgel said of San Jose’s chance for rain.

Still, the cold front will leave unseasonably cool temperatures around the South Bay, Gudgel said. San Jose is expected to have a high of 74 degrees today — about 10 degrees below normal — with southwest winds at 10 mph.

Overnight lows are expected to drop to 56.

Gudgel said the downtown climate station in San Francisco recorded a measurable amount of rain — at least one-hundredth of an inch — for the first time on this date in more than 150 years.

It is raining here in Santa Clara, very lightly. And last week, we did have an odd sprinkle in the middle of the night.

So I will amend my statement: it rarely rains here during the summer, although the rain we do get is a pittance compared to what we need.

Reasons to Stay Home

I hate air travel since 9/11. I’ve been pulled over for extra inspection almost every time I’ve tried to board an airplane. On top of that, changes in airline business practices make flying odious. I never wrote about our Christmas trip, but leaving San Jose was nearly impossible due to massive airline screw-ups and delays (due to a recent merger of one airline with another). We arrived two hours early to the airport; we stood in line for two hours just to check our bags and get boarding passes. We barely made the plane, but then it sat for another 45 minutes. This late start on the first leg of our flight made us miss our Las Vegas connection, which caused us to have to re-book our second connection through Pittsburgh while our luggage went to the original connection point of Atlanta. We did arrive in Syracuse, finally, but it took our luggage another day. Due to the time-zone shift, flying east is hard on the body. So it was, in all, an unpleasant flight experience. At least the trip home was smooth.

So in addition to the fact that air travel is expensive and our budget is tight right now, there are more reasons to stay on the ground. Here’s a sampling. Those of you who have the patience and fortitude to fly, more power to ya.

Over all, this could be a dreadful summer to fly. In the first five months of 2007, more than a quarter of all flights within the United States arrived at least 15 minutes late. And more of those flights were delayed for long stretches, an average of 39 percent longer than a year earlier. … If a flight taxies out, sits for hours, and then taxies back in and is canceled, the delay is not recorded. Likewise, flights diverted to cities other than their destination are not figured into delay statistics.

—Ugly Airline Math: Planes Late, Fliers Even Later

Right now, it’s far cheaper for airlines to screw over their passengers and say “Sorry, your flight is canceled, please come back tomorrow” than it is to maintain enough staff and equipment to run their operations. After years of cost-cutting, they are running so close to the bone that they can’t deal with problems when they occur.

If airline executives want to run lean, that’s their business decision, but passengers should be adequately compensated when that system fails. This is something that simply switching carriers won’t fix — the problem pervades the entire industry, and in many cities, one or two carriers control most of the flights anyway.

If you cancel your reservation or don’t show up for a flight, the airline charges you a penalty all the way to the full price of your ticket. It’s only fair that when the airline fails to deliver on its side of the bargain, it should pay you.

—As summer air travel horror begins, Congress should give passengers more rights

Debbie Chaklos of the South Side booked a four-day Father’s Day trip to Paris with her father and 17-year-old brother for June 13. Due to bad weather elsewhere, they were still on the tarmac in Pittsburgh when their flight from Philadelphia to Paris took off. No other flights were leaving that night. After failing to get their bags back, Ms. Chaklos said, she called some 25 Philadelphia-area hotels before finding a vacancy.

A US Airways attendant re-booked them on an Air France flight the next day, but, on getting to Paris, they found their three bags were missing. They spent days haggling on the phone with Air France and washing their clothes in the sink before two of the bags finally arrived — 10 hours before the trio was set to fly back to the States. Once back, they realized the bags were lost again.

—It’s Summertime, and the Flying’s Anything But Easy

After three hours of sitting on a runway at LaGuardia International Airport the night of June 19, and the single glass of water and the mini granola bar issued to her long gone, Alice Norris got off her US Airways flight to look for another plane back to Pittsburgh. None was available. She returned to her seat and sat for another two hours before the pilots announced the federal limit on their flight time had run out and the flight had been canceled.

It was now around midnight. The Butler County woman waited through the crowded customer service line, saying she was an inexperienced flier and didn’t know what to do. The customer representative shrugged.

“I’m tired,” Mrs. Norris said.

“I am too,” the rep replied.

“I’m 70,” Mrs. Norris said.

Such experiences are becoming more and more common this summer, with passengers facing mounting cancellations, delays, lost bags, ruined vacations and emotional scenes at the ticket counter. A product of dangerous summer weather and systemic industry problems, the situation is poised to get even worse as the traveling season gets into full swing this week.

Passengers are finding the trade-offs offered for canceled flights — such as hotel rooms — are not as readily offered anymore, and when they are, rooms are sold out. Free ticket offers aren’t as desirable either — why come back to the airport and face a delayed flight again?

That night, while walking around the darkened terminal, Mrs. Norris joined another increasingly common sight at American airports: a group of strangers huddled together for the night. Finding she couldn’t sleep, she returned to another crowded ticket line after 5 a.m., was erased from a 9 a.m. flight before finally finding another close to 11 a.m., all the while thinking of her treatment.

—It’s Summertime, and the Flying’s Anything But Easy

And now, for your viewing pleasure (?) (If the embedded video doesn’t work, click here):Thanks to Jen for pointing out the video.

It Begins

From Weather Underground, the forecast for today:

Sunny in the morning then becoming mostly sunny. Highs in the 90s to 105. Light winds…becoming northwest 5 to 15 mph in the afternoon.

On Tuesday we were notified that in two weeks our entire townhome community will be re-roofed. We’ve been told it will take “about” six to eight weeks to do this job. If they begin on the stated date, July 16, this means it might be September 16 before they’re done. Life’s soundtrack will be hammers and feet banging on the roofs. Nails will be everywhere. Lovely.

During the time they are working on the roofs, we’ve been told we will need to close all the windows in our home and not just the skylight (which provides a vital chimney effect venting hot air). With temperatures on the rise, methinks it will be rather oppressive. We have no air conditioning. Windows and fans are critical. We can open them after 5 p.m., and for this I’m thankful. I’ll just need to find places to hang out during the day (hurray for libraries), though I can’t bring my food or sleep on their chairs.

Sometime in this time frame (I hope after week 37) I’ll be going into labor. My goal is to labor at home as long as I can; I’d rather not go in and then be sent home again.

Oh, I rather dread this. I’m trying to accept it and not focus on something that’s not yet reality, but y’know, I’m not entirely rational these days.

If You Want Explosions

When we lived in Austin, we were outside the city limits, so every July 4 we didn’t have to go anywhere to see fireworks. Our neighbors on either side, along with dozens of others in the subdivision, put on quite a show. They used serious fireworks. The first year it upset us; we worried about our house burning down. We couldn’t fight it though, so we relaxed and enjoyed it. Boys (even man-boys) like the drama of pyrotechnics, so in our last year we actually purchased a few and set them off ourselves. I was very tense about this, and we were very cautious. That was the only time we ever played with fire, so to speak.

With July 4th, there will be a lot of celebrating. If you plan to set off fireworks, I encourage you to explore Bruce’s Bombs, Explosives, and Ordnance Pages. He explains the risks of playing with explosives, especially homemade M-80s and cherry bombs. He provides federal and California legal information which explains how one can go to prison for playing with explosives. If you need visual evidence to convince you, he also provides links to gory photos of victims of explosions (especially hand injuries). (Don’t worry if you click the link, because you won’t immediately see the photos. You can choose to view the ones you think you can tolerate.) I did view them all, and they provide great incentive to be cautious. Bruce’s website is offered as a public service to educate people, especially children, about the risks. He writes:

Most of the people who are injured by explosives are injured because of what they do not know, not by what they do know. Simple fireworks injure more people than high explosives. Each year, more than 10,000 injuries are caused by the use of fireworks in the United States. Seventy percent of those injuries are in children and young adults between the ages of 5 and 24 years. Half of all injuries are incurred in the week of the Fourth of July.

If you want to play with explosions, there are actually summer camps that you can attend where experts guide you. From the New York Times:

A group of high school students stood at the edge of a limestone quarry last month as three air horn blasts warned that something big was about to go boom. Across the quarry, with a roar and a cloud of dust and smoke, a 50-foot-high wall of rock sloughed away with a shudder and a long crashing fall, and 20,000 tons of rock was suddenly on the ground.

—A Summer Camp Where Fireworks Are the Point

The upshot: if you value your health and life, leave the fireworks to experts.

The Produce Basket of the U.S.

I was talking with my sister yesterday about the climate here, and the fact it does not rain (at all) from about April through September/October here. It is bone dry. She mused that there must not be much agriculture grown in the summer, but I assured her otherwise. I got curious about how much produce California supplies to the U.S. and spent a couple hours surfing for information. Below is a smidgen of what I found.

As a result, agriculture accounts for 83 percent of all water used in California.

First Pet Food, Then Toothpaste, Now Toys

Jeebus.

The latest recall, announced last week, involves 1.5 million Thomas & Friends trains and rail components — about 4 percent of all those sold in the United States over the last two years by RC2 Corporation of Oak Brook, Ill. The toys were coated at a factory in China with lead paint, which can damage brain cells, especially in children.

Just in the last month, a ghoulish fake eyeball toy made in China was recalled after it was found to be filled with kerosene. Sets of toy drums and a toy bear were also recalled because of lead paint, and an infant wrist rattle was recalled because of a choking hazard.

Over all, the number of products made in China that are being recalled in the United States by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in the last five years, driving the total number of recalls in the country to 467 last year, an annual record.

It also means that China today is responsible for about 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000.

Much of the rise in China’s ranking on the recall list has to do with its corresponding surge as the world’s toy chest: toys made in China make up 70 to 80 percent of the toys sold in the country, according to the Toy Industry Association.

—As More Toys Are Recalled, Trail Ends in China

You can sign up on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s automated notification system at the commission’s Web site (www.cpsc.gov) to stay on top of which toys are being recalled.

Managing Possessions: Do You Own Things, or Do They Own You?

Liora wrote a post about letting go of certain possessions and at the end, she asked her readers if anyone had ever done a massive unloading of keepsakes and if so, was that decision regretted.

An excellent question.

My relationship with “stuff” has long been ambivalent. When I was an adolescent, sometimes I received gifts for my trousseau, or hope chest, that were quite lovely but that I just could not embrace. These items took space in my bedroom and I felt claustrophobic; I also felt owned by them because a loved one had given them to me and not to keep them felt like an act of rejection. Since I had no intentions of following a traditional life path (i.e., getting married anytime in the next decade), the accumulation of such items was not as useful as it would be for someone destined to set up a household. The tension I felt arose from generational and personality differences. My parents’ generation had a tradition of women marrying young; that was simply what was expected of women, not college or career. My mother was preparing me as she had been prepared. Yet I was growing up in the feminist era and received the message that my life could include other choices. Also, what feels homey to one personality may feel too austere (or too cluttered) to another.

When I was 17 I dated my first love, an earthy granola-type who shared an interest in simplicity and non-materialism. That year I wrote a letter to my parents attempting to explain my position about owning stuff and asking them to consider giving less of it to me at Christmas. This resulted in hurt feelings. Because really, a gift is something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; a present. Learning to accept gifts graciously is an important social skill. One doesn’t dictate to the giver. Many people take pleasure bestowing presents that are symbolic and special to them. Of course, people also give gifts that are related to wishes the recipient expressed. The essential response to all gifts is a sincere “thank you.” You may not want or like the gift, but your expressed gratitude is for the intention, not the item. This person thought of you and make an effort to express it in the form of a present. That merits a warm and courteous response. I kept unwanted items for many years, until I learned that just because I am given a gift does not mean I must keep it. Likewise, if you give a present to another, you must release your interest in what becomes of it. Once you give something away, you have no claim on it and no business inquiring what the recipient did with it. To be a true gift, there must be no emotional or material strings attached.

Anyway, for most of my twenties I carried the trousseau items with me when I moved from place to place, which was frequent. I made very little income at my job and worked two jobs to get by. I often lived in cramped quarters (one room in a flat) and so could not take the possessions out to use. They remained boxed in closets wherever I lived. I fretted that I would live a life “owned by my possessions.” I feared losing them somehow in a fire or by theft, and I did not like the control I gave to that fear. I frequently purged things as well. When I was planning to return to school full-time and needed to pay off debt, I realized I would not need my childhood furniture while living in a dorm. So I sold the white French provincial desk and chair and other things to raise money. Other times I donated unwanted items to Goodwill. If I haven’t worn an outfit for a year, it gets donated. The small quarters in which I lived and the frequency of moving made owning and lugging possessions onerous; purging was one way to manage this. (The challenge is to limit acquisition of stuff as well, which is something I’ve not been as skilled at.)

I cherished owning books and correspondence. I had hundreds of books and two trunks of papers: old letters, yearbooks, and so on. These I lugged everywhere that I lived in New York state. But in late 1993 and January of 1994, I made a decision: I needed to move out of state, far away from Syracuse, to a place with a better economy, more graduate school choices, and better weather. It was imperative that I break out of my small and safe existence, or else my life would wither. I researched where I might move: New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas were contenders. I chose Austin, because it had similarities to upstate New York in terrain (lakes, trees, hills), numerous schools, a diverse and more liberal population, and a booming economy. Texas also had a number of large cities; if I couldn’t make it in Austin, there was Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, El Paso, Corpus Christi, and Lubbock to try. New Mexico and Arizona had fewer major metropolitan areas. It didn’t hurt that my brother and sister-in-law were also in Austin attending graduate school. I would know at least two people there.

The next step was the move. I researched what size of U-haul I would need to rent to move all of my belongings to Austin, Texas. I gulped when I learned it would cost $4,000. I did not have that much money on hand. I wanted to move with a couple thousand dollars in savings, and I didn’t even have that. If I waited until I had the money to cover the move and have savings, it would take several years. So I made a decision: all my furniture could be reacquired in Austin. That left the small possessions, and my task was to decide what to keep and ship to my brother.

That frigid winter I sorted through old yearbooks and decided to keep only my high school senior yearbook. I perused old love letters and decided to toss them. I did keep journals. I liberated a lot of old correspondence. I decided to keep my Christmas ornaments (many being gifts from my parents) and shadowboxes my father had made. I kept childhood stuffed animals but ditched the handmade woven napkins. Alas, I could not bring all my books: I owned six bookcases six feet tall, with books double-shelved on them. I chose the books I cherished (mostly childhood) and some from college. The rest I sold to a local bookstore for a criminally small amount. In the end, I shipped 20 boxes to my brother in Austin, and this included clothing, kitchen items, books, keepsakes, and other essentials. I also packed my little car to the ceiling with other items I could not ship (my stereo, some breakables). Then I headed out to my life. I have no regrets, because I gained so much more than I sacrificed.

One other possession of emotional importance I gave up right after the move. I’ve mentioned before a 10-year correspondence with a penpal that was also a type of journaling. I would photocopy my letters to him, and I also saved what he sent me. After the move, I got thinking that perhaps if I died suddenly I would not want others to read these letters. They went into the trash. There were thousands and thousands of pages, at least three photocopy paper-sized boxes. Here was my reasoning: I reckoned that I hung on to them because I harbored a fantasy of immortality through my words. Maybe someday I would be significant and famous, and these letters would be read by a biographer. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this fantasy. I just didn’t want to live by it, because lugging the weight of these letters interfered with living.

Occasionally I do wonder if tossing those letters or my old yearbooks was a good decision. Then I realize that’s my ego grappling with the Big Questions of significance and what happens to the memory of me after I die. I have a heart-to-heart talk with myself about the fact that living happens here and now, and ultimately these possessions are insignificant. The papers will crumble, the trinkets will break. Nothing lasts forever. My peace with the decision is reaffirmed.

We don’t live in a McMansion, and we move fairly often; it’s a fact of our life. Streamlining possessions is therefore vital. Husband and I must be careful about the keepsakes we collect. And there simply isn’t enough room to inherit generational tokens that others might like to see carried on in the family. I periodically sort through possessions and decide what to keep. I see little point in keeping items boxed in closets simply because they were owned by a family member in the past. It’s just stuff. I won’t take it with me when I die. If it isn’t useful to me now, if I don’t have the space to put it out, and if it isn’t deeply symbolic and meaningful to me to possess it, then it belongs somewhere else.

The inheritance we leave is the effect we’ve had on other people’s lives and hearts, not the things we owned. This is a realization I hope to impart to my daughter.

I Felt the Earth Move

On Sunday afternoon I was lying down trying to nap, when the bed and the room shook vigorously. It was very brief, as though someone had slammed a huge door shut. Yep, it was an earthquake. The epicenter was about 20 miles away and the magnitude 3.4, which is probably why the tremor felt so hardy. The earth shrugs her shoulders frequently around here, and one gets used to it. Still, it’s an odd sensation.

Scars on St. Helens

This photo captures part of the north face of the mountain that blew off laterally in the 1980 eruption. It was a hazy day (pollution?); the late afternoon sun lit the mountain, and the profile looked beautifully desolate.

mount st. helens, wa

The volcano is still active, simmering but potent. The report from May 19, 2007 (27 years plus one day after the last eruption):

Growth of the new lava dome inside the crater of Mount St. Helens continues, accompanied by low rates of seismicity, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases, and minor production of ash. During such eruptions, changes in the level of activity can occur over days to months. The eruption could intensify suddenly or with little warning and produce explosions that cause hazardous conditions within several miles of the crater and farther downwind. Small lahars could suddenly descend the Toutle River if triggered by heavy rain or by interaction of hot rocks with snow and ice. These lahars pose a negligible hazard below the Sediment Retention Structure (SRS) but could pose a hazard along the river channel upstream.

—Mount St. Helens Current Update