May isn’t over yet, but since tomorrow is Friday during Mineral King season, May’s learnings are a little early.
Actually, I learned the first item in April, but since April’s Learned List was FOURTEEN ITEMS, I pushed it over onto May. May is a little lighter on learning than normal. Guess I read too many novels or slept late too often. . . Yes, May still has several days left for learning, so it is possible a few things will spill over onto June.
1.Gopher Hawk is the name of a tool that catches gophers. It is easier to set than the old Macabees traps, which I have only successfully set one time. It is expensive, but seems to be effective. I first tried a borrowed one without the tools to get it in place; when I read more about it, I ordered the whole trapping set (BEFORE I learned that our local hardware store sells it). Like everything, it takes a little practice and a lot of patience. I might need to order a second one, because the cats are catching squirrels instead of gophers this year so far. Gardening is war.
2. A stained glass window from a childhood memory is a story that I will tell you more about when it is closer to being finished. Here is a peek at this lovely artifact hanging behind that chandelier on someone else’s deck.
3. Waymo is something I heard about from a friend who traveled with an elderly couple in a city. She and the woman needed to get somewhere when their car wasn’t available, so my friend used Waymo. What is that? It is basically a driverless taxi. Yep, you get into a car that has no driver and it takes you where you ordered it to go, using your phone, of course. This blew my mind, and I blurted out, “NO DRIVER! I can’t even stand driving an automatic!” For me that is NO WAYmo.
4. Small town living: in reading an article from This Evergreen Home by Mike and Mollie Donghia, I realized that living in Three Rivers still has many of the benefits of “the good old days”. You might enjoy the article.
5. This quote on happiness from economist and philosopher AdamSmith caught and held my attention:
“What can be added to the happiness of a person who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” Source: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)(with thanks to James Clear’s newsletter)
I ordered a box of Springville’s Hospital books to be shipped to the author’s wife. When the notification of shipment came, it was shipping the books to MY BANK IN THREE RIVERS!! WHAT? HOW? WHY? I didn’t recognize the address so I looked it up on the internet. When I saw it was my bank, I called them to let them know that they’d be getting a package meant for someone they never heard of. Instead of it landing neatly where it belongs, I will have to retrieve it from the bank and then drive it down the hill. I have no idea how this address got onto the order. I’m flummoxed (and a bit irritated at all the automatic stuff that computers do, thinking they are being helpful, if they can be said to “think”.) At least it is going to my bank and not a vacant lot.
Blogging Alone Since 2008
I know no one else in real life who blogs. Through the years, I have made some friends across the continent who blog about as much as I do. None blog about the same things, but all are people I’d probably hang out with if we lived close. They all have much bigger followings than I do, and several have paid ads on their sites which provides income. In spite of having hundreds (or thousands?) of readers, they have been so kind as to comment on my blog, become email friends, and occasionally exchange mail, real mail, the snaily kind.
Check out the postcards I’ve recently received from two friends! On the left is from Elisabeth, of Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist and on the right is from Michelle from MG Doodle Studio. Both are taking a blogging break right now, like I expected to do, but the thoughts keep flowing so I’m still posting.
Writing notes and letters is something I’ve done my entire life. Writing thank you notes was very very difficult as a child; as it morphed into letter writing, it became a habit, one that I have never stopped.
The Kaweah Post Office is no longer operational. For years it was the smallest operating post office in the USA. It held on as long as it could, and now it is just a sad relic.
The more people become accustomed to texting, the more precious a hand written note will become. “No one has ever cherished an email”, read an ad for high end stationery many years ago. (Crane’s Crest—anyone else remember this paper?)
Stamps are going up in price again, maybe as high as $1 each. Sounds frightening, but considering that I can hand a piece of paper to someone and it arrives in the correct place a week or so later, for one lousy dollar, just ONE DOLLAR, it seems rather astonishing.
Unless, of course, your computer tells the sender to take it to your bank instead of to the intended recipient.
“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What should be the reward of such sacrifices?’ … If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” —Samuel Adams(1777)
After the tour of Terminus Dam, I had questions. Ranger Tim’s answers were posted yesterday. And as is usually the case, questions and answers beget more questions.
Here are my further questions and Ranger Tim’s answers.
1. What is a “stilling basin”?
Stilling Basins Behind Dams — USACE Design and Function
A stilling basin is a critical energy-dissipating structure located downstream of a dam’s spillway or outlet. Its purpose is to absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy of high-velocity water discharging from the dam, thereby protecting the spillway, outlet works, and downstream channel from erosion and undermining Association of State Dam Safety. – At Terminus Dam / Lake Kaweah it’s the area behind the dam that looks like a big pond. Its shallow, full of birds and wildlife, and slows the water before it heads downstream and gets split into the St. Johns and Kaweah Rivers.
The “pond” down there must be a stilling basin.
2. Those red bootprints—are they also for photographic accuracy?
Yes, the footprints are for photographic accuracy. An employee would stand in the boot prints and hold a camera to their chest at breast height so that every picture each year would be facing the same direction and be at a similar height. Very similar to how Giant Sequoias are measured – an employee would stand at their base and measure the circumference at breast height with a measuring device.
THANK YOU, RANGER TIM!
One more thing: he said the hydroelectric plant is operated by Eagle Creek. Here is a link to their website: Eagle Creek Renewable Energy.
My ducks may be in a row but my thoughts are random.
Consolation Prize
In talking with a friend recently, the connectedness of knowing people wherever I go came up. I told her that it was a consolation prize for living in the same county where I grew up.
Reunion Thoughts
As I was talking with one of those people that I encountered from my past (Redwood High School), she mentioned that she never goes to class reunions because the people she is friends with are already in her life, and the rest are not, which is fine with her. I’ve often thought the same things, but I go to reunions anyway because I feel guilty if I don’t. Some people come from a very long distance hoping to reconnect with old acquaintances, and I can’t be bothered to drive 35 miles? So I bother. I did request of the reunion committee that we not have loud music so that we can have conversations at the upcoming 50th (a year away).
I don’t think spouses belong at reunions unless they went to the same school and graduated near the same year. In general, people go to reunions to reunite with old friends, not to get to know spouses. Besides, Trail Guy would probably rather have a root canal.
Lots of women go all out to look good at reunions: hair gets reblonded or ungrayed, and straightened or curled, depending on the current trends; make-up is caked on, and many wear black, thinking it makes them look thinner, when in reality it makes them look haggard.
I like the idea of being with people my age, so I can see if I am deteriorating at an appropriate rate.
One year before a class reunion, my dearest old friend from high school and I swam in the river. Instead of getting all foofed up for the party, we picked green algae out of our hair.
Dual Living
Cabin time is here. This means lots of time in the Land of No Electricity or Internet or Phones (unless one has StarLink, which this one does not).
It might also mean sporadic posts to this blog, rather than consistent 5 a.m. posts, five days a week.
Tucker will miss me.
As I prep for living in two places, not much art is getting made. Instead, I am connecting timers to sprinklers, writing up lists, making schedules, and lining out people to look after the cats and the yard, figuring out which things to leave up the hill, which I might need at home, and if there is a way to not haul too much back and forth.
So, if you comment on the blog and don’t see it appear, it is because I am not in a place where I can “approve” the comments. I’ll get to it when I return to civilization.
In conclusion, if you don’t see a blog post, it is because I didn’t post.
(Thank you, Captain Obvious!)
However, I might start putting together posts showing old paintings or drawings, maybe bloviating on various topics, books I have read, or something else I haven’t thought of yet.
See? I didn’t think I had anything to write about, and look at the length of this post.
No more confusion* over “Lake Kaweah” or Kaweah Lake: here is an official sign.
The Mineral King Preservation Society organized a tour of the dam that creates Lake Kaweah. I have been there, but it was before the new fusegates were built in 2004. The purpose of that previous trip was to get photos for this drawing. That’s story for another blog post sometime. Maybe.
We met in the parking lot at the Lemon Hill Visitor Center. The name must be a nod to Lemon Cove, since the dam is closer to Lemon Cove than to Three Rivers. This photo looks over the marina where all the houseboats live, toward the dam. As usual, the lake is very full this time of year.
We drove back to the highway, headed downhill, then turned below the dam and went through a couple of security gates with cameras, to park near the tower.
We all loved the views in spite of the hazy quality of the air. Haze? Smog? Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Looking north up Greasy Cove.
Looking southeast toward the marina
Our guide was very very new and didn’t know a whole lot. We were all very curious about the bootprints imprinted on 4 concrete pads below us, and the 4 red bootprints under shallow water on the lake side and the 2 red bootprints on the spillway side.
These are the fusegates. Each of the six is a little different level, so that in the case of a giant flood, only one gate at a time will open and get pushed aside. This ensures that the water flooding downstream will go in a somewhat regulated fashion rather than all at once. (I learned this from a knowledgeable fellow tourist.) The guide thought that the gates get tested every so often to be sure that they will open if there is a catastrophic flood.
There was a hawk with a nest on something that looked as if it was constructed for that purpose.
I loved the views on the downstream side of the dam. Dry Creek Road is over there, heading up into the hills and eventually into the mountains.
Here are 2 more photos of the tower. I don’t know what purpose it serves; it has a radioactive symbol on it by the door, which we were not invited to go through. Maybe it is a place for a couple of people to hide in the event of a nuclear bomb. I don’t know who those 2 unlucky people would be.
After the tour, our MKPS organizer invited us to send her any questions that she will pass along to the normal tour guide. OF COURSE I HAD QUESTIONS!! (Are you surprised by this?)
QUESTIONS
1. How long would it take to go from minimum pool to full, if there was a huge storm? Maybe a better way to phrase this is: What is the shortest amount of time it has taken in the past for the lake to fill?
2. Why is there a radioactive symbol on the tower?
3. What purpose does the tower serve?
4. Was that round wooden platform near the tower built specifically for a hawk to build its nest?
5. Is the water ever used to generate electricity?
6. Why the red footprints (4 on the lake side and 2 on the spillway side) and the ones pressed into the concrete squares??
More will be revealed in the fullness of time. Maybe…. it seems that the more ways there are to communicate, the less likely that responses appear. I do feel quite hopeful about this set of questions.
*Provided I can remember because it is possible that the confusion is embedded too deeply in my memory.
1.Actually, I learned this on March 31, thanks to Reader Marjie: those tiny tangerines are called “Pixie Tangerines”, and many (all? prolly not) grow in Ojai.
2. DO NOT BUY THINGS ON THE INTERNET IN A HURRY! I got swept away by a good offer from Photo Affections that was about to expire, and I was so enamored with my iris that I ordered something that is just a waste of money—flat cards with no room to write instead of foldover cards. I thought I’d learned this lesson earlier, but nope, here I am again. Hmmm, I wonder if these fall into the category of Cruft. (See #4 on March Learned List.)
3. Have you ever programmed a complicated timer for a complicated irrigation system? It’s complicated. The fact that the directions use different words than the actual box (i.e. valve=station) further complicates a complicated situation. To add to the complications, many of the items in the box are not labeled so I keep forgetting which word applies to which knob/button/dial. But I think I have it figured out. Complicated, for sure. (Have I ruined the word “complicated” for you yet?)
4. There are friends in life who influence us deeply. Some friends are there for just a season or for a particular reason, but that doesn’t negate the marks they leave on our hearts, memories, and even habits. I have one such friend, a roommate for 2-3 years many decades ago, whose influence keeps appearing in multiple places in my life, in spite of only exchanging birthday cards (Can’t forget that because we share the same birthday). Recently we began a little bit of texting, and it is such a miraculous thing to be in instant touch, so special.
5. lagniappelan-yap noun: a small gift given with a purchase to a customer. I’ve done this but didn’t know it had an actual word. I wonder how a customer would respond if I handed him a painting and said, “I’ve thrown in a little lagniappe for you.” The customer would probably say, “A what? Looks like a package of cards to me!”
6. When formatting and designing a book, it is prudent to order a single copy for physical hands-on proofing and viewing. Recently I could not make a purchased InDesign book design template work and in frustration, I downloaded a free template from the printing/publishing company. Author Louise Jackson and I were thrilled with the cover, but the interior of the actual book was just unattractive. So, I persevered on the temperamental template until I figured out how to bypass its idiosyncracies (well, whaddaya expect when it is from 2015 and so is my laptop, which can no longer be updated, because Planned Obsolescence is trying to bankrupt us all), and REDID THE ENTIRE BOOK DESIGN. It was worth the effort.
Happy with the outer appearance (and dressed to match, of course).
6. I read something in a fluffy novel that really resonated deeply with me, and I will plagiarize it here, making it personal: When I walk past Fernando, I “feel a strange longing that can only be described as a deep psychological problem; I seem to be locked in a prison of my own nostalgia.” Clearly I am a disturbed individual rather than a rational, wise, and mature 66-year-old. Sigh. Please be gentle with me. (Now I forget which book I got this from.)
Yeppers, added the canoe to the sale of the car because I no longer have a way to transport it and my wrist hurts too much. Hmm, a lagniappe!Hi Buddy! Do you miss me? I miss you!
7. You can make brownies without flour using black beans. WHAT? This is so weird that I had to try it. Here is the link to the recipe I used, chosen because it had the least sugar and the most cocoa powder: Black Bean Brownies. Decent, but of course boxed brownie mix with a handful of chocolate chips added to the batter are better. If you are curious, out of flour, can’t eat wheat, have black beans you don’t need, whatever. . . try it.
8. Life is complicated and if when something breaks, we have 2 choices: figure it out or replace/toss it. “Figure it out” = “just Google it”. But how? Type in the appliance number and see what appears. Try to figure out what part is needed, have a “chat” with “someone” for help, get the name of the broken part, try to match it to the list of parts, oops the part name is different from what the Chat Someone called it, get back in line to clarify the part name, order the part (if it is available), and then try to find someone who will call you back and then actually show up to install it. Who is designing all this? Young “hipsters” who are supposedly concerned about the planet/climate change/putting junk in the landfills? Life is complicated AND exhausting, because I am supposed to be painting, not waiting for my turn in a “Chat Request” line. (THE PART WAS $104 FROM GE AND $28 FROM AMAZON, in case you were wondering, and a friend/repairman replaced it for $100.)
9. I sent some watches to The Veterans Watchmaker Initiative, Inc. (P.O. Box 329, Little Creek, DE 19961) and SOMEONE WROTE ME A THANK YOU NOTE!! (I sent 5 watches, but the thank you said 4; I’ll let it pass.) Their website ticks like a clock—let not your hearts be troubled—At first I thought my laptop was about to explode.
10. Have you ever heard of a city named “Brno” or the country of Czechia? It was new to me, via my friend Elisabeth’s blog. She’s and her family are spending 3 months living and traveling in Europe, and her photos and information is terrific. The Czech Republic is now called “Czechia” and Brno is the 2nd largest city after Prague. The cities throughout her extended travels so far all kind of look alike to me; if I was doing such a trip, I’d be visiting the countryside and little villages, taking photos of barns, cottages, gates, fences, trails, roads, fields and streams. But I do love seeing the fancy architecture.
11. Sometimes it really helps to call for assistance. My MacBook Pro kept saying I was out of room, and Apple kept trying to sell me a larger “cloud” plan. (BUG OFF, I have an external hard drive and don’t need The Cloud, so there.) I called Apple for help, and after a few attempts, a supervisor did a screenshare with my laptop and discovered a bunch of useless and mysterious stuff slowing things down. It was thrilling to have it deleted, to see all the available space, and to have things working well again.
A different sort of apple; this is an exercise I devised to use teaching peope how to draw.
12. Egg doesn’t wash off once it dries on a wall. It also takes a few coast of paint to hide the shine left from the egg. I’ve heard it destroys the paint job on a car too. If eggs were still running around $7/dozen, maybe someone wouldn’t have wasted one on the Ivanhoe library mural.
13. I learned to use my Brother printer to scan pencil drawings. It isn’t big enough for most of my work, but it will help until I figure out another plan. Look at the difference in 2 scans of my drawing student’s artichoke picture; on the left is the Brother scan without any Photoshop touch-up and the Mustek scan is on the right (also no touch-up, duh).
14. I figured out how to add a page to the Store on my website. It’s called OTHER PEOPLE’S BOOKS, and it is where you can order any of the books I helped get printed, most of which are NOT on Amazon. My authors (and all authors unless you are like John Grisham or Danielle Steel) need help to sell their books. This is the only way I know to help them.
This 1st grade dork had no idea of the pitfalls and roadblocks ahead in life.
A pie.
About 40 years ago, I had a summer job as a baker, and the place was known for pies. A guy from church told me about a pie his mom used to make for him and asked if I would make it for him. I was willing to try, so he brought me the recipe. He called it “chocolate meringue” and the recipe called it “chocolate chiffon” —I call it “chocolate pie failure”.
I wrote this to a friend who inherited the baking job:
Everything was wrong: my Crisco had been in the fridge for probably 10 years and for some reason had oil all over the outside top of the lid. What?? And the stuff in the can looked dried out, so I put it in the trash and found a recipe for a pie crust with butter.
Why does EVERY pie dough recipe NEVER have enough water? “Add 1 T at a time, up to 1/4 cup” —useless, with tons of dry flour leftover in the bowl. But I persisted, and eventually was able to roll it out, using a spray bottle of water to get the cracks to glue together.
“Blind baking” is unfamiliar to me, but I lined the pan with foil on top of the dough and filled it with uncooked navy beans to hold it down. It worked well enough, but the butter melted and coated the crust with oil. Is this normal?
The pie filling used gelatin, and the envelopes I had were probably 2 or 3 decades old. So what? It’s gelatin, so I used it anyway.
It called for egg whites, beaten stiff. Kind of hard without an electric mixer or even a hand-crank egg beater, so I pulled out my immersion blender. Useless. Would NOT beat the egg whites stiff. Oh well, I added the called-for sugar despite the textural wrongness.
Then I thought that maybe I should give the egg whites another chance, so I started over with 3 more eggs. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No stiffness.
So I just mixed everything together and poured it into the pie crust, and then was horrified to see that the filling, which contains 3 eggs, DOES NOT GET COOKED.
It sat in the fridge overnight, in the hopes it would solidify. Alas, it did not, and when I dipped a spoon into the extra filling to test it, it was very grainy because apparently the gelatin did NOT jell, in spite of following the directions.
In reading an updated version of the recipe (from a more current Better Homes & Gardens red and white checked cookbook), I learned that there are many important steps that my old recipe did not happen to mention. In theory, it could turn out in a second attempt with all the nuances and proper tools, but in reality, I’m done. Because of the raw eggs, all the time wasted spent, and the fact that it was chocolate, I baked it (raw eggs—no thanks). It is weird but edible (CHOCOLATE!).
A Shawl
I found some almost thread-weight cotton yarn at a yard sale many years ago and this winter, in an attempt to work through my yarn stash (still extensive in spite of my severe yarn diet of the past 3-4 years), decided to turn it into a shawl. This is the kind of pattern that starts with about 3 stitches, and every other row you add another 4 stitches to grow it into a triangle shape. The rows get longer and longer, ending with 366 stitches, and the lace pattern chart gets harder and harder to follow as the piece grows. My shawl looks as if there is no lace pattern, just a random mess of disorganized lace. I knew I was off many times, and decided that it didn’t matter. If a person is wearing a shawl, the pattern isn’t usually visible. I just kept plowing ahead, and the results are a dog’s breakfast. A lacy pink dog’s breakfast.
The angle of my inferior phone camera doesn’t show the triangular shape.
A Phone
An elderly friend bought a cordless phone and couldn’t make it work. I went to her house and did some troubleshooting, concluding that the phone was defective. I ordered another, and she meticulously followed each step to set it up. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. All I can figure out is that her “old” landline is not up to the current technological requirements of telephone behaviors. This is someone who has no internet or cell phone, and she is very determined to keep her life simple. Together we decided that this is just a time waster, so we’ll return both phones.
We both think that mail is a fine and reliable way to communicate.
Not a failure
I can draw.
I can help people write books and get them printed. The books that I have shepherded from idea to publication but that I don’t sell can be found on this new page: OTHER PEOPLE’S BOOKS. This includes Tales of TB, Springville’s Hospital, The Crooked Cross of Diamond Lake, Only the Living, and Adventures in Boy Scouting.
Not gonna bore you with mundane details of life, just the productive and mildly interesting aspects that often fill a workday for me.
First I met some friends early and we slammed out 4 miles on foot. Sometimes I don’t have anyone to walk with, and so I pick shorter steeper walks. On this particular morning there were 3 friends!
Next, Trail Guy and I decided it was a good day to figure out spacing and irrigation for another planting project at church. I’ve been keeping these shrubs alive for awhile for this purpose. (Vitex—doesn’t that sound like a food supplement? AKA “chaste tree” and we call them “lupine trees”)
When we got home, I called a glass shop to make an appointment to have someone come estimate the replacement of 5 broken window panes. Most came with the property and have been ignorable for many years, but last week I broke the pane over my drawing table. The window was stuck, and when I pushed on the frame from the inside, it warped enough to break the glass. Since this one matters, I figured I might as well get them all repaired.
Next, I finished editing a paper? document? report? for someone who has done a bunch of research, created this 160 page document, and may have slept through high school English classes. He did good research, and It could make a good book in the future.
When that was finished, I submitted the reformatted file of The Crooked Cross of Diamond Lake and then resized the cover to fit the greater number of pages. Why would I do this? Although Louise and I were quite happy with the outer appearance of the book, the interior was substandard. I used a free standard (Wait, didn’t I just call this “substandard”?) template from the book printing company and it was just ugly. So I successfully fought through my 11-year-old template and got it to work. (I’ll let you know when the book is available for purchase and how to get a copy.)
Of course I dress to coordinate with my book covers—don’t you?
When all my productive procrastination wore itself down to nothing left that could pass for work, I went outside to paint. The mosquitoes make it fairly annoying, so I picked a couple of pieces of lemon geranium and rubbed it over exposed skin. I think it actually worked as a mosquito repellant!
The order of business was to finish the last 2 paintings of the Honeymoon Cabin, getting stocked up for the summer selling season at Silver City.
I forgot to take the final photo of the 10×10” square painting.
The next two paintings are to sell here in Three Rivers, probably at Kaweah Arts or Stem & Stone. This one is a bit challenging with many things to simplify, many textures that would be possible if this was a pencil drawing. However, oil paint is a different media. (Thank you, Captain Obvious)
Same here.
When I left the painting workshop, I took two finished paintings into the studio to scan. I am still holding out that I can keep this scanner going for awhile. I really don’t want to spend a ton of time reading about them on the internet, trying to figure out who is a paid reviewer and who is telling the truth, figuring out what extra stuff is necessary to force it to work with Mac, and then having my laptop bite the dust (it is a 2015 model) and then the new scanner won’t work. Sigh.
The first one is as it scanned; the second is repaired with Photoshop Elements to more closely resemble the painting.
Same thing with this one.
And finally, I put the photos from my inferior phone camera on the laptop and wrote this post.
We had a perfectly beautiful spring day in April after March’s unseasonable heat wrecked the green and prematurely caused most wildflowers to croak.
Buckeye trees actually are quite fragrant.
Mariposa lilies aren’t all that common in Three Rivers; we usually see a little different variety of this elegant lily in abundance in Mineral King. Some years I’ve seen a deep red version at Hume Lake.
This is a brodaeia called “pretty face”.
Mustang Clover—often it is white with a faint touch of lavender.
This isn’t a wildflower around here; it is a tamarisk tree, and this is the first time I’ve ever noticed it in bloom.
