A city guy on his podcast went on and on about how much he loves animals. Too bad I couldn’t invite him over, because he could experience animals here in Three Rivers, in my yard and in my house.
A giant black beetle in the kitchen sink (they’ve been in almost every room in the house lately).
A lizard ran under the fridge.
A little frog was in the shower and then hopped under the clothes hamper.
A raccoon got into the garage, made his way into the workshop, and pulled the bag of catfood off the shelf, dragging it into the RV garage (yes, we have a three-in-one building where the cats are supposed to be safe at night.)
Coyotes were howling at a siren passing by on the highway while I was walking in the morning.
There are at least 3 new fawns in our yard, learning how to destroy our plants.
Squirrels are now getting into the fenced off tomatoes.
Turkeys are EVERYWHERE, in great numbers.
A bunny was at the bottom of the driveway. Good thing they reproduce so abundantly, because everything wants to kill them.
Another bunny succumbed to the vicious nature of our 3 cats; I had the privilege of scraping up and burying the remains after they had their way with it.
At least we don’t have any snakes right now. HOWEVER, some guests at a vacation rental accidentally transported a RATTLESNAKE home to Iowa in their luggage!!
The cats can’t keep up with the gophers and squirrels, but they are trying.
There is a creepy thing that has entered our lives via our cell phones. Here is my experience: I bought a charging device at Best Buy. Immediately, that same day, I began receiving spam emails faking to be from Best Buy. Best Buy did NOT have my email address, nor did they have my phone number. When I returned the following week to buy a new phone, I checked. I am being stalked! This is with Location Services turned off.
2. Learning to use an iPhone 14 is more difficult than I expected. It doesn’t have a push-button, and the whole swipe-thing just doesn’t work very well for my fat clumsy ever-so-slightly numb fingers. There is also a charging problem—the portable charger? the cord? Elevation? Sigh. And although the camera is far superior to what I am accustomed to, I can’t figure out how to make it focus on what I am trying to capture. And what good is it if it won’t recharge?
3. That phone charger went back to BestBuy, along with my phone, the cord, the plug-in unit, and a bunch of questions. The same guy was there, there was no waiting line, and he showed me how to do some sort of a reset procedure on the phone, which is supposed to “clean up glitches”. Then he looked up some stuff about that charger, called a Ugreen Magnetic Power Bank and showed me that it can magnetically attach itself to the phone. When I got home, I tried it, and it worked. Then I found the “instructions” that came with it: many languages, a few tiny illustrations, and lots of information gaps, all of it requiring both cheater glasses AND a magnifying glass. Okay, I admit it: I AM OLD.
4. Thinking through all the potential questions to ask a customer before starting a commission is something that I still don’t always get right. Slow down, JB. Think carefully before picking up your pencils (and this after accepting commissioned pencil drawings since 1985… I seem to be a slow learner.) Because I like to protect people’s identities, I will just leave this learned thing here without showing you the hoops I had to jump through.
Can’t Find Scratch, pencil and colored pencil, 11×14”, $275, unframed, AVAILABLE HERE
5. Biscoff is a combo of “biscuit” and “coffee”, a cookie (because “biscuit” means “cookie” if you are in the UK) to be eaten with coffee. The Duck defines it thus: “a type of spiced cookie, also known as speculoos, originating from Belgium and the Netherlands. It is known for its caramelized, cinnamon-flavored taste”. I learned about this from my friend Elisabeth who has spent the last 2-1/2 months traveling and living all over Europe with her husband and 2 offspring. Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist is her blog. (P.S. I saw some at Winco, read the ingredients and put them back on the shelf.)
Saw this on a recent morning walk.
6. You know how the health industry keeps changing what will help us and what will harm us? The latest evil in processed foods is seed oils; apparently they have overtaken high fructose corn syrup in the category of TERRIBLE FOR YOU. While at Winco, I looked at every type of cracker, and every single one contains seed oils. What happened to butter? olive oil? avocado oil? coconut oil? (because these are now the “good” ones.) Those seed oils are what we used to love, called “vegetable oils”, because they were going to save our lives. Now we learn that they are all RBD: refined, bleached, and deodorized. That just ain’t natural-like; it also ain’t vegetables. Weird.
7. My inner lazy self is beginning to assert herself more than I think is healthy. After listening to Mike Rowe interview Michael Easter (author of The Comfort Crisis) a second time (episode 489 The Hard Way), I put 10 lbs. in a daypack, and have begun wearing it on my morning walks rucks. My walking partner put 2 lbs. in her daypack, and we are just huffing and puffing along together, doing our best to squelch those inner lazy people.
8. A friend in Texas sent me this screenshot from FaceBook (I guess that’s where she saw it) which made me laugh. All those towns except Salinas are in the Central Valley, right here in California’s fly-over country. I’d say this is why Trader Joe’s refuses to come to Tulare County, but Bakersfield has a TJ’s. Who knows where this stuff comes from, or why it says “Advertisement” on the bottom. Here is the link to the actual article: Visalia is the best at being the worst (that’s my paraphrase)
Screenshot
9. One more thing about that new-to-me iPhone: the sales kid offered me a choice of blue or black. Silly me, thinking this mattered—the case covers the phone and the color is invisible. The sales kid should have told me about the % of battery remaining and perhaps I should have known to ask. Turns out that my phone battery is at 79%, and Apple recommends replacing batteries when they drop to 80%. I wonder what percentage of battery was remaining in the black phone? When my phone decides to recharge (see #3 above), if it reaches 100% charged, it is only 79% full. Now I have to figure out how to get the battery replaced. In case you were wondering, I hate all this. I want a landline and a camera. Period.
Now I think I’ll just go read an old fashioned paper book from the library. While sitting. In air conditioning. So there.
OH NO! LOOKS AS IF THE INNER LAZY CHICK HAS ESCAPED AGAIN!
Never again will I wear anything remotely resembling these shoes. Thank you, Lord, for Crocs.
Last month I had my head in the sand or something. This month I did so much learning that I’m publishing this post 1/2-way through the month, with the (always reckless) assumption that there will be more to learn in the second half of the month.
TECH
My iphone is too old for a new battery because of planned obsolescence. It still worked but only charged intermittently, and although it is an inferior camera because of pixelation, it was able to capture colors and light better than my PHD (Press Here, Dummy) Canon Elph. Thus, I bought a “pre-owned” (remember when we used to say “used”?) iPhone 14 (the latest version that will work with all the portable charging equipment I just spent too much money for) to use both as a phone and as a camera (like normal people do). There is much to learn, since it has no home button, and things just work differently. Good grief, life is So Very Complicated.
2. The new solve-all-your-problems iphone goes straight to voicemail without ringing. When I asked the Duck, the first answer is that it can take up to 72 hours for it to be ready to ring (to “finish porting”.) To quote my Dad, “Humph”. (It fixed itself, so the Learning here was to just wait.)
3. When I told a friend about my tech decision and the need to find a used iphone 14 for photography, she told me about a site called Swappa. Have you heard of this? BestBuy in Visalia had the phone for $399; Swappa has them for $200-$400. Even in this decision, there are many more decisions to be made—14, 14 Pro, 14 Plus, 14 Pro Max.two lenses or three lenses? Locked or unlocked? JUST STOP ALREADY! (Is this why I frequently escape into fiction?) Forget it. I bought mine in person at Best Buy where 2 different very nice helpful and mostly knowledgeable people helped me. (and I read a library book while I waited for all the transferring to finish.)
4. I learned to transfer all the stuff from the old phone to the new one, along with how to set up email in the new phone (by carefully copying all the weird nonsensical answers used on the email account on my laptop, including everything that said “optional” because no, it’s not optional; you MUST fill in all the blanks.)
5. When emails arrive and say “This email has no content”, I can drag the message out of email onto the desktop and the text will appear. No one understands why, so I’m just glad I found this workaround instead of automatically deleting those emails.
Neighbor cat sometimes walks with us.Pippin, GET OFF THE ROAD!Tucker loves his grass.
6. Buy It Now is a way to put an easy button on my blog that takes people to Paypal to buy things. That’s great if the item is available. However, I learned (the hard way) that people can search out an item on my blog and the Buy It Now button still works in spite of no longer having the item. This meant that I also had to learn how to go through my PayPal account and delete every Buy It Now button.
7. Because of this Buy It Now button situation, someone ordered copies of Trail of Promises, which was out of publication. I learned that because I have the computer files for both the text and the cover of the book, it can be reprinted one book at a time (AKA Print-On-Demand) on Lulu.com. So, now Trail of Promises is once again available!
BOOKS
8. I learned about a book by some people called America’s Cheapest Family. If it is interesting enough (and if I remember), I’ll tell you about it next month.
9. Trail of Promises is available again after a several year hiatus, thanks to the marvelous print-on-demand services of Lulu.com. This book is a well-written true adventure story, my favorite of Louise Jackson.
10. The Visalia Electric Railroadalso now available on Lulu.com. Even if Tulare County history doesn’t float your boat, I think the book is worth it for the photos. Here is my favorite one:
11. Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, finally has a new book out: The Calamity Club.It is based during the depression and is a depressing story with a good ending. Hard to put it down, gave it 5 stars on GoodReads, but I don’t want to read it again.
MORE INTERESTING & MORE IMPORTANT
12. Davidson’s fritillari is a brand new-to-me flower in Mineral King. My new friend TC discovered it, marked the trail so I could find it, and then it still took me forever to spot it. What color would it be under in a wildflower book??
13. Restaurants, especially fast food types, have been closing because so many people are taking those appetite suppressant drugs. People are changing clothing sizes so quickly that stores are raising their prices to compensate for all the lost revenue that results from all the exchanges and restocking.
14. My friend Bill, William R. Winn, M.D., died. We spent 10 years working together on his two books, Tales of TB and Springville’sHospital. When we met, he told me it was “hard to get through one’s eighties”. He missed age 90 by 3 months. I will miss him for a very long time. Such a fine gentleman, humble, kind, eager to learn, determined to not be beaten by tech or health troubles, persistent, focused.
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.
On an overcast and chilly morning with our final fire of the season in the wood stove, I sat with my laptop and tackled some unpleasant tasks.
A new scanner: I went looking online to see if the one that served me well for 15 years was still available. It is not. A similar one appeared to be available, but it isn’t sold in the U S of A. So, begrudgingly, I went to the Big A and found (settled for?) a flatbed scanner made by a company called Plustek. I’m guessing that Mustek (my last scanner company) morphed into Plustek. Every piece of information available seems to indicate that it is easy to set up and will work with my outdated MacBook Pro.
2. My printer is one of those 4-way deals: print, scan, copy, and fax. (Fax?? Who does that any more besides medical offices, which I do my best to avoid?) It works as a scanner in a pinch, except that it only handles 8-1/2 x 11” documents and the lid isn’t removable for thick canvases. It is a good printer, but it uses SO MUCH INK. I always check the box for black & white copies, and somehow, the other ink cartridges run low. It is hard to buy only black, and the blue, red, and yellow cartridges appear to be multiplying in the dark while I wait yet again for another overpriced order of black ink. Rip-off.
3. An online printing company is where I get small amounts of notecards printed. In the last handful of years, suddenly they charge sales tax after I have submitted all my resale permit info. I learned that I have to resubmit the same forms, Every Year, Year After Year After Year. So tiresome. OF COURSE they don’t ever receive the email, which necessitates a “chat” or a phone call, where someone keeps reassuring me that they will look into it. The people are nice, and they are helpful, but WHY IS THIS NECESSARY, OVER AND OVER??
4. Someone asked me what other murals I have painted, and I realized that I don’t have them on my website, other than the page “What my customers are saying” or some such thing. So I spent a couple of long sessions make a new mural page, finding, organizing, and posting the photos. No dates or sizes are included. They don’t all show in full, due to my use of “galleries”, which means a cluster of photos with predetermined shapes and sizes. It was kind of cool to realize that I have that many under my belt.
Instead of all this administrative stuff, I just want to paint. Actually I just want to draw. Sure would be nice to have a secretary, administrative assistant, intern, apprentice, servant, butler, lady’s waiting maid, something.
However, then I’d have to work more to pay that person, and I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for all those ink cartridges or a new scanner.
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.
