Robin redbreast

One summer evening, I was crossing the Church St. footbridge over the River Teith in Callendar, Scotland, when a small bird hopped up to me, expectantly eying my red boot. I let out a little squeal of delight when I recognized what he was. A real robin! I didn’t dare move for fear I would disturb or harm him. 

Of course I had no idea that the diminutive European robin redbreast of English literature and fairytale fame, a flycatcher, was a bird of a completely different feather than our rather robust north American robin, a large thrush built like a Sherman tank. Or a hefty bird in hand.

Both birds are more orange than red, but there, the similarity ends. The word for the color orange was a linguistic newcomer to 16th c. Britain. In those days, the color choices were either yellow or red, or both. But robin red-yellow breast doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And as it turns out that there are many species of birds that are called robins the world over. Australia’s flame robin is similar in size to our American robin.

Callendar was home to the famous Scottish outlaw, Rob Roy McGregor, or Raibeart Ruadh MacGriogair. Rob, or Robin was a diminutive form of Robert. In this case, Roy was an Anglicized form of Ruaidh, or the red one. Rob Roy Way separates the Highlands from the Lowlands. 

And Rob Roy, a Jacobite rabble-rouser, was a cattle rustler cum folk hero. The Highland outlaw, immortalized by Sir Walter Scott, became a legend within his own lifetime. Liam Neeson made for a big braw rogue in the movie.

The lingering twilight on the footbridge spanning the Teith River was beautiful. The long golden hours of summer, were as good as it gets. As I was taking photos of the river reflections, a tiny orange-breasted bird hopped right up to me on impossibly thin legs, and promptly fell in love with one of my red Reebok boots. 

I had never seen an European robin before, I had only heard about them from my Irish grandmother, and of course the Mother Goose nursery rhyme and finger games came to mind—for species identification purposes only, of course. 

Little Robin Redbreast
Sat upon a rail;
Niddle noble went his head,
Widdle waggle went his tail.— Little Robin Redbreast

There are many apocryphal stories associated with robins, mostly to do with Jesus and purgatory. They covered the bodies of two dead children with leaves in Babes of the Wood. In Irish mythology to kill a robin is to invoke bad luck for the rest of your life. There is no cure. They’ve become a ubiquitous symbol of Christmas, featured on Christmas cards and postage stamps. And of course, they’re also associated with Robin Hood, defender of the poor.

Legend has it that when Jesus was dying on the cross, the robin, then simply brown in colour, flew to his side and sang into his ear in order to comfort him in his pain. The blood from his wounds stained the robin's breast, and thereafter all robins carry the mark of Christ's blood upon them. —Wiki

It was not the first time my red Reeboks were siren sentinels to robins. Once, while I was exploring the Crystal Lakes rift near San Francisco, an American robin, perhaps seeking a sole-mate, became equally enamored of my red boot. 

I had to stand patiently on the Callander footbridge in the gloaming until the little love affair with my boot was over. The fading of the light brought a close to this little romance. Pure magic.

 robin redbreast

Califia, warrior queen

Someone on Facebook made a big fuss about Califia, the Amazonian warrior queen that California is named after, as being black. And I was off and running. I said, yes, she was called a black Amazonian warrior queen. But it’s complicated. Also, the term black wasn’t used quite the same in the 15th c. as it is now. Anyone dark-skinned or of another faith was referred to as black, even Levant Arabs, Moors, Egyptians, Touaregs, the Kush/Habesha. (In Spain, it could also be interpreted as a metaphor for a non-Catholic, therefore a pagan with a stained black soul.)

The reference is not always a straightforward reference to Black Africa, or Black America (a different kettle of fish) because the Maghrebine Amazigh (indigenous North African Berbers who’ve lived in North Africa and the Canary Islands since the Holocene), are often referred to as Moors, which also complicates things. The word Moor comes from Latin “Maurus,” later referred to the pre-Arab Berbers (sometimes also called Algerians, Lybians, Tunisians, or Tuareg) from the 3rd c. BC Roman province of Mauretania, which included Morocco and beyond), but later, the term also referred to those with dark skin! Yikes! 

Pikas in the Year of the Rabbit

Ili pika, Tianshan Mountains, Xingjiang Province, China. Li Weidong photo

A friend posted a photo of a weird-looking ili pika with big furry ears, dubbed the “magic rabbit” by its discoverer, conservationist Weidong Li in 1983. He named the new species Ochotona iliensis, after his hometown, Ili. 

Thought to be endangered 20 years after its discovery, then extinct by 2003, an ili pika was spotted in China in 2014. Few critters make a successful comeback from extirpation! However, they are in serious decline, with a loss of 70% of its species due to climate change (they croak at 80°), the ila pika is circling the drain of extinction, as are all the species of pikas in the world.

The ili pika of the Tianshan Mountains, in the Xinjiang province of China is a lagomorph, same order, but not the same family as hares and rabbits. They are more like distant cousins.

Since bad reprints of the story has eked its way across the internet via dubious websites, it took some doing to find the original story via CNN via Daily Mail (stories are from 2015). Also in Nat Geo. That was seven years ago. How many of the estimated 1000 ila pika still survive? During the past decade, the median world temperature has gotten progressively warmer each year.

When we hiked up Mount Whitney, long, long ago, their cousins, the diminutive American pikas, (we have two surviving N. American species—once there were seven), and burly golden mantled marmots were despotic little monsters ruling the base camp with ear-slitting arias and iron teeth. 

While we made our slow ascent to the top of the mountain, traversing the fabled 97 switchbacks and back again, they ate through the pockets of my backpack, and a massive hole right through the middle of my insulated foam sleeping pad so all I had left to sleep on was the head and feet part. I guess they were mining the foam as insulation for their nests. Sleeping on cold granite above timberline at 12,000 ft., even in late summer, was pure misery. 

Hiding in the talus scree, the pikas whistled and bleated in the pitch of  high A, while making little haystacks in the sunshine, and the golden mantled marmots screamed in the key of Queen of the Night. It was cold. We even had snow flurry in August. Luckily it was clear when we got to the top. 

When we reached the summit, there was a forest fire raging in King’s Canyon and a fighter jet flew so close, I could actually see the pilot’s face inside the cockpit. The stone hut at the top of the mountain, built by the Smithsonian in 1909 after a trail worker was killed by lightning while eating lunch, had a mini glacier parked inside of it. A good thing we didn’t decide to sleep at the top. 

I still can’t believe I made it all the way to the summit of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain the contiguous continental United States. Was it all a dream? My knees, old before their time, certainly don’t think so. The Paiute name for the mountain is Tumanguya, which means 'very old man.' It is said that the Great Spirit who presides over destiny once lived on the mountain. And now that I am old and grey, I am so glad I once stood on top of the world.

In those days (1974), Mt. Whitney was 14,494 feet. But we now have better tools by which to measure it, and the Sierra Nevada Range is still growing. Now the official elevation is 14,505 feet. But soon even that won’t be tall enough. Our alpine pikas are victims of global warming. An indicator species, they are disappearing all across the west at an alarming rate. 

At least the ili pika live at a higher altitude than our American pikas and northern Yukon collared pikas. Ain’t no mountain high enough in the contiguous continental United States where our American pikas can escape to. They just don’t do heat. And the ambiant world temperatures just keep on rising. Stay safe, little magic rabbits. It’s the year of the rabbit.

I’ve come a long way from first draft! Thanks Marc Nassar

SNOWBANK OR DROUGHT?

So much depends upon
The mad March weather,
Whether or not the snowpack
Melts or holds its own ground
When the depth of snow
Is measured at Lake Tahoe
On April Fool’s Day
In feet or in inches.
In the snowbank account
There are severe drought penalties
For early spring thaws
And late withdrawals.

1/3/23

Moors are not Black

A Facebook poster from LA, in an epic sleight of hand, repurposed the story of Calafia (yes, it’s spelled that way) to fit his own modern socio-political needs, wrote, “The state of California was named after the mythical Black(Moorish) Queen Califia. (Khalifa).” Ok. The story of Calafia stems from a series of medieval stories translated into Spanish from the Portuguese. The term in Spanish and Portuguese, that means dark or black, but not white—is a case of what gets lost in translation. This idea that Amazon warrior queen Calafia was a Black African is a modern American binary interpretation.

Then the poster went on to say, “It is well documented that of the 44 people who founded the City of Los Angeles, 26 were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. What is amazing and not taught in California schools is that the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent, or that Orange County, Beverly Hills and Malibu were once owned by people of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. According to the story, California was an island where only Black (Moorish) women lived, gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks. The women were the most powerful women in the world. When Cortez arrived in California, searching for this mythical queen, her influence on him was so severe, he paid tribute to this powerful Black (Moorish) Woman Queen Califia by naming California after her. California literally means, “the land where Black (Moorish) women live." History has been hidden for a long time.” 

Sigh. Of course he provided no references for that last bit of repurposed history. Whereas it is true that Hernán Córtez named the long peninsula Baja California Sur, thinking it was an island, after Calafia. But we seem to be mixing apples with oranges. Calafia was an Amazon from the Hyperborean north, beyond the realm civilized (Classical) Mediterranean world. She was other, therefore exotic. And the term negra could mean swarthy, or dark, but not African. And certainly not a Moor. This is like saying Cleopatra, a Ptolemaic Greek, was black.

Also the term, Moor is not synonymous with Black. If anything, it’s the opposite. A Moor can be anyone from Arabia to Iberia to North África—Egypt, Alexandria, Morocco Mauritania—which probably means homeland the Moors—regardless of skin color, and the Berbers of North Africa were all called Moors— because they converted to Islam, and spoke Arabic—and literally shoehorned their own culture into Arabic ideals in order to be considered part of the elite ruling classes.

The term Moorish refers more to religion and the Arabic language/culture rather than to skin color. Also, for centuries, the Arabs were the undisputed ruling class, so to self-identify as a Moor was to be part of the ruling elite, or not be a slave (Black). The matrilineal Berbers were in a fix and they had to wholesale invent patrilineal Semitic genealogies in order to fit into an Arabized world.

The Habesha Ethiopians, Eritreans (Abyssinians), and Tuareg—who self-identify as Berbers, though dark-skinned, do not consider themselves as Black, but Semitic, though some are also Christian. And for the record, sub-Saharan and Sahel Africans, the Arabized Maghreb Berbers, aka Moors, during the 15th c., are light-skinned.

Sadly when the Berbers began to identify with the ruling class Arabs they gave up their matrilineal society and had to construct a patrilineal Arabian lineage which create it all kinds of havoc—especially for the Berber women who lost most of their freedoms in a Moorish world.

Moorish means more than anything else—meant non-Christian, therefore, in European eyes, exotic. Shakespeare’s Othello was a Moor. You see where this leads to. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. And if you actually read the novella from which the name comes, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) penned or collected by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late 15th c., Calafia is referred to as an Amazonian warrior woman who lived in the far north—beyond civilization.

So here we have a strong woman, with warrior superpowers, from a post-Moorish subjugated world, call it Iberia, where women collectively had few personal rights. Perhaps the model for Calafia was a Sub-Saharan Greek, or a Maghreb woman. 

Note the use of the terms Moor and Arabic in this quote, taken from references of 14th c. Arabic scholars….

“In contemporary Hassaniyya Arabic, the language spoken by the Moors (Arabs) of Mauritania and Northern Mali, the terms ‘Whites’/‘Blacks’ (b ̄ıda ̄ n/su ̄ da ̄ n) are used to distinguish between Moors who are, in status, freemen, and those who have a slave past. A different Arabic word for ‘Blacks’ (kwa ̄r) is used to identify non-Moorish Africans. In contemporary Tuareg discourse, colour-based terminology is used to distinguish internal social status and to denote those who are termed ‘Blacks’ (koualnin), whether people of servile origin within Tuareg society, or to refer to non-Tuareg ‘Blacks’…. In the pre-colonial Arabic literature of the area, the term ‘su ̄da ̄n’ is most often used to refer to ‘Blacks’ who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Moors…” THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

But Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), a novela redacted by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the early 15th century, is a sequel to a popular 14th c. chivalric romance novela, Amadís de Gaula. While the novela suffers from a lack of literary style, it achieved notability “in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.”

“Sabed que ala diestra mano de las Indias ouo una Isla llamada California mucho llegada ala parte del paraiso terrenal la qual sue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun uaro entre ellas ouiesse: que casi como las amazonas …”

OK, not only do we have Amazons from somewhere beyond the Black Sea, but also a mythical knight from Gaul. A far cry from Africa. Here’s the thing, the Spanish term negra/o is also used to refer to any people with swarthy or dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). Including the Moors who were considered freemen vs. slaves. 

• Califia, warrior queen
• POETRY TEACHING NOTES: Naming Califia
• CALIFIA SPEAKS:
• I DREAM OF CALIFORNIA

True Quinces

Nascent fuzzy quince developing, Nicasio, ©Maureen Hurley 2018

The entire back yard of my friend, poet, Rebecca Morrison’s old Craftsman house in Sacramento was a vast impenetrable expanse of quince canes. She had no idea what to do with this advancing quince wicker thicket that looked like a bad case of Einstein’s hair on brillo pads and steroids. The rabbits and foxes, however, loved it, and called it home. 

The edible, or true quince of Asia Minor (with a range from Anatolia, to Armenia, Persia, and Iran), originally hailed from the Caucasus Mountains and the drought tolerant plant quickly spread to virtually all of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, North Africa and the Mediterranean, the Crimea, the Silk Road, and beyond.

Many old California homesteads often had quince thickets, planted alongside the prerequisite pears and apple orchards. When left to its own devices, the quince becomes a towering thicket, but it can be tamed, trained and pruned into a tree. Sort of. Their broad leathery leaves added vibrant colors to a fall landscape. Quince was also used as rootstock for finicky pear trees, and often went rogue if the pear tree died.

When I was a child, I loved the heavy perfumed odor of quince in late fall, picking the huge waxy fuzz-covered yellow orbs after the first frost, rubbing the fuzz off to make them shine like waxy golden suns, waiting for them to blett and ripen under my bed. Positively narcotic. 

I loved watching my grandmother canning quinces, mashing and straining the cooked pulp through layers of cheesecloth, which yielded a gorgeous blood-amber jelly laden with anthocyanins and tannins redolent with notes of apple, pear and citrus. Before the commercial invention of those little blue and white Knox gelatin packets, and commercial pectin such as Sure-jell (made with citrus), quince peels were used for their pugnacious pectin power to thicken canned fruit jams, jellies, and sauces.

Quinces, once considered food of the gods, associated with fertility and wedding feasts, became the infamous golden apples of discord in Classical literature, and associated with forbidden fruit in the Bible. They make scant appearance in modern literature, but there are occasional nods here and there in fairytales, and in medieval cookbooks. 

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's nurse said quinces will be eaten at the wedding feast. NURSE. They call for Dates and Quinces in the Pastrie. Alas, that did not end well, for the wedding party that never was. In the 1859 narrative poem, The Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti called quinces goblin fruits. Let’s hope that that Edward Lear’s owl and pussycat fared a little better as they dined most elegantly on slices of cooked quince.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince, which they ate with the runcible spoon; and hand and hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon. —Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear 1871

Quinces are astringent, and most varieties cannot be eaten raw unless your mouth is impervious to malic acid compounds and bitter tannins. Not to mention, they’re loaded with antioxidants. They are puckery, and hard as chalk, they will make your teeth hurt. You cannot eat them raw. Your tongue will fall mute, you will gag, and the lining of your mouth may want to run off with some olive oil to salve its wounds. 

Quinces, once imbued with magical powers, were reputed to stave off the plague and Black Death. Needless to say, quince, with its medicinal cornucopia, was extremely popular in the British Isles and northern Europe. Quinces were used as a condiment and digestive for fatty meats, such as goose. (Try reading this recipe aloud for shitzngiggles. Hint: þe is the, that odd þ is a th sound, called a thorn.)

Sawse madame. Take sawge, persel, ysope and saueray, quinces and peeres, garlek and grapes, and fylle the gees þerwith; and sowe the hole þat no grece come out, and roost hem wel, and kepe the grece þat fallith þerof. Take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet. Whan the gees buth rosted ynouh, take hem of & smyte hem on pecys, and take þat þat is withinne and do it in a possynet and put þerinne wyne, if it be to thyk; do þerto powdour of galyngale, powdour douce, and salt and boyle the sawse, and dresse þe gees in disshes & lay þe sowe onoward. —from The Forme of Cury

Still-life of quinces by Vincent van Gogh (1887), Wikipedia 

There is a train of thought that the golden quince was the original symbol for the apple tree of Eden—as the boreal ancestral apple trees don’t thrive in warm climates. They need sub-alpine conditions in order to grow and set fruit. Which throws a spanner into the idea that those apples of original sin fame were really quinces in the Garden of Eden. Maybe Adam and Eve’s tastebuds weren’t fully developed. Or they had a really heavy frost to blett the fruit. Or maybe that’s why raw quinces are generally inedible. All that original sin hooey just to ward you off. You’ve been duly warned!

But wait, the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, was an apple. The Bible tells us so. Nope. This is a rather long segue in what gets lost in translation: see, all those Greek references to apples, the ones mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, the famous apple tussle of Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, and the golden apples of discord—all need to be taken with a grain of salt as they are referring to these pome fruits, furry golden orbs, that is, quinces—not actual apples.

To keep abreast of the situation, the Greek word "μήλον" for apple—or any kind of globular, or round fruit (and apparently fat-bottomed girls) is malon, or melon. The word, "μήλον" also referred to fat sheep or fat goats. Pomaceous: anything-apple-shaped. Round. Fat. There must've been some seriously fat goats way back then. 

Sappho of Lesbos salaciously likened a young bride to a ‘sweet apple’ or (gluku’malon). Insert breast images here, or fat goats, and add a little Anthony Hopkins’ Silence of the Lambs slither sound with fava beans here. Here, have some chianti. Better yet, have some tinto riojo and gorgeous ruby hued membrillo quince paste with your manchego cheese from La Mancha. The Spanish word for quince paste, or cheese, membrillo comes from mimbre, for its wicker-like canes, and the word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmalao.

According to Wikipedia, “The fruit was known to the Akkadians, who called it supurgillu; Arabic سفرجل al safarjal"quinces" (collective plural), as well as in Judea of Israel during the Mishnaic era where it was called perishin (פרישין collective plural, or sing. prish); quince flourished in the heat of the Mesopotamian plain, where apples did not. It was cultivated from an archaic period around the Mediterranean. Some ancients called the fruit "golden apples"The Greeks associated it with Cydonia (Kydonia) on Crete, as the "Cydonian pome" while the Romans called it strythion.

Enter Eris, the goddess of discord, who wasn’t invited to the wedding party hosted by Zeusy-baby. So she crashed it and brought an “apple.” The quince, a potent fertility drug, was Mother Earth’s wedding gift to Hera, literally food of the gods. Upon the quince was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "To/for the fairest one"), thus fomenting a brawl between three reigning goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite—which ignited the Trojan War. Aphrodite won the beauty contest, by the way.

True quince was also used as an aromatic room freshener Wikipedia

Back to that harbinger of spring, those ornamental blood-red Japanese flowering pseudo-quinces in the garden, are not quinces at all, but they do look alike—except for their tiny serrated leaves. Quinces, that is, Cydonia oblonga, with their broad pear-like leaves, are often conflated with the three Southeast Asian ornamental flowering Pseudocydonia “quince” species in the genus Chaenomeles. 

Pseudo Japanese flowering “quince,”  Wikipedia

If you mixed up the two genera, don’t feel bad. The reason why I wrote this blog post is because a San Marcos native nursery man insisted that they were closely related species—nae, he called them mere varieties. As in one species. Since my childhood memories were so closely associated with true quince, I had to set him straight. I tend to get cranky when people don’t know the difference between genus and species. Especially a nurseryman. May you eat raw quince.

See, real quinces are orphans, they are their own sole genus and species, no close cousins whatsoever to speak of.  When you’re the only species in your genus, that’s something to crow about, evolutionarily speaking. It’s either good news, or really bad news. As in the last of your kind.

The large five-petaled flowers of the true quince, like showoff apple blossoms, tend to be white, or veined with a pale pink blush—kind of like the Chinese pseudo flowering quince. They even have similar looking fruit to the pseudo-quince. Five seeds in a star pattern like an apple or a pear cut crosswise. Blame it on a common ancestor of the Maleae tribe in the Rosaceae family. Call it convergent evolution. A divine model for a divine fruit. Not to mention the Judgement of Paris. You do know that Helen bribed Paris with a quince.

• 
  

  

  True quince blossoms, Manfred Heyde Wikipedia

A curious footnote of the history of wine in California (from the Gallo Girl post)

Note bene: This is a humbnail sketch of the California wine industry which dates back to 1769 when Father Junipero Serra planted the first vineyards at Mission San Juan Capistrano and at the other missions he founded in order to supply wine for meals, mass, and medicine. Fr. Junipero Serra wasn’t the first padre to plant vines. The first vines were planted in 1683 (in Baja?) but were later abandoned. (California has native grapes but they weren’t used for winemaking—yet). 

By 1823, all, but four of the 23 missions had thriving vineyards. The showcase, Mission San Gabriel, had thee wine presses, eight brandy stills, producing 8000 gallons of wine, and 3000 gallons of brandy a year. The missions San José, and San Francisco de Solano (Sonoma) were also among the most productive wineries. Packaging was the biggest problem, oak barrels were in short supply, augmented by big bota bags, made with an entire cowhide, were used. In 1782, Father Serra lamented that an oak barrel enroute to thirsty Mission San Carlos, fell off the wagon, or mule, and broke. His account does not mention if they brought straws. I’m not sure if Jesus wept, but I’m sure copious tears were shed.

The ranchos of the Los Angeles River Basin, not Northern California, were the birthplace of the first secular California vineyards. Rancho owners purloined grapestock from the missions. Louis Vignes opened the first winery in 1833, followed by William Wolfskill who planted 145 acres of vineyards. To encourage the wine industry, land planted in grapes paid no city taxes.

Wine was already a big industry in California by the 1880s, when it moved to Northern California from the LA Basin after an outbreak of Phylloxera, a plant louse, killed all the Old World Vitis vinefera vines. (The lousy louse hitched a ride to Europe, decimating Europe’s vineyards too. The solution: graft Old World stock onto native American Vitis labrusca roots.) The wine industry moved, lock, stock, and wine barrel to Northern California. San Francisco and the Bay Area proved to be ideal for growing grapes.

In Napa County, Joseph Osbourne, and George Yount were among the first anglo settlers to plant vines in 1836, Followed by Sam Brannan, but John Patchett is credited for building the first winery, planting vines in 1854, establishing a commercial wine cellar in 1859. However, bottling wine and getting it to market was prohibitive. Glass bottles were in short supply and pricy, at 20 cents each, so people brought their own jugs to be filled, at 25 cents a gallon. Enter the wine houses.

When the California Wine Association was founded in San Francisco, there were over 100 commercial  wine houses in SF alone. “Wine houses were large operations that bought grapes, made wine, and shipped it around the world.”

Sonoma County, not Napa, is considered to be the official birthplace of the modern California wine industry. Buena Vista is California's oldest extant winery. Count Agoston Haraszthy founded a winery in 1857, planting mission grapes purloined from the Sonoma Mission, and the famous Zinfandel grape. (BV was the only winery to stay open during the Prohibition as it made sacramental wines.) Buena Vista and Gundlach Bundschu were the first true commercial wineries. When President Abraham Lincoln purchased California wines, a stellar industry was born.

“After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the California Wine Association built the world’s largest winery on Pt. Molate near Richmond. Winehaven was a city-state, with housing for workers, a school, a big house for the boss, train tracks, a port, and the capacity to store 10 million gallons of wine at once. “

And to bring this rather long footnote on my aunt, the Gallo Girl, full circle: Ernest and Julio Gallo entered the wine business after the Prohibition ended, in 1933, having worked in their father’s vineyard. Giuseppe Gallo who hailed from Fossano, Northern Italy. Giuseppe was a menial laborer, who managed to save up his money and buy some land in Modesto, and plant a vineyard. But it seems life was hard. After their parents died (in a grisly murder suicide pact), Ernest and Julio decided to make their own wine, using a recipe they found in a local library. And with that, they founded an empire. A younger brother, dairy rancher Joseph Gallo, marketed his cheese, but a family feud ensued, they took him to court for using the family name. 

Ernest Gallo famously said, "We don't want most of the business. We want it all.” Gallo and its subsidiary wineries, is the largest exporter of California wines.

Sources The Wine Cellar Insider

The History Reader

California Mission Life

The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane

A Facebook memory about my aunt Jane resurfaced today, and I shared it with the group, California History. I expanded the Facebook post from the original version to a much longer piece, in order to give it some background to a larger audience. So, even though I posted a blog about her in 2015, (and another blogpost as the Gallo Girl) this version is significantly changed enough to warrant its own new blogpost page. Also, in the process of explaining the California wine industry to one reader, I wound up with a rather long thumbnail sketch (at the bottom of the page), which, by right, should be a separate blogpost unto itself, as it kept expanding itself exponentially, but I will keep it here, for context. —MH

The Gallo ad of my Aunt Jane appeared during the mid-1950s and 1960s in newspapers, on the back covers of magazines, and on billboards (including Times Square—my uncle, upon returning home from being deployed in Korea, saw the ad in Times Square and said, Hey, that looks like my sister. His army buddies said Nah. It’s just a coincidence. When he got home to San Francisco, he said men were lining up around the block trying to score a date with her. I don’t know if the ad generated that much buzz.)

Jane Reilly, an Irish-American, was the first model for Gallo's Paisano wines (the artist had to make her look Italian. The San Francisco Irish shared strong ties with the Italian-Swiss colony.) Various permutations of this ad appeared throughout the mid-1950s to the mid-60s in newspapers, magazines and on billboards across the nation—including in Times Square. An image I saw throughout my childhood. My Aunt Jane. I thought everybody's aunt appeared on the back page of the Sunday Comics. 

When Jane was young, she performed in amateur musical theater in San Francisco, including The Mikado, and a Barbary Coast musical review, The Golden Nugget, where she was the lead can-can girl. At nearly 6 feet tall, the auburn-haired beauty was statuesque, and resembled Maureen O'Hara, so photographers including Peter van Nghiem, sought her out as a model for their portfolios. That exposure landed her the job as a model for the Gallo ad.

Check out the half-page front section ad in the Food Section of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated July 1, 1954. Check the price of the wine. I found it rolled up inside an old Christmas wrapping paper tube that I had nearly thrown out.  I don’t know what made me go back and check it out. By the time we got around to cleaning out the basement, I found several artifacts that became the basis of this story. A true salvage job.

I found a very poor half-eaten version of the color ad in a shipping crate in my grandmother's basement. And a photo to back it up. Can we say provenance? I also found the hoop earrings she wore, and this photograph, crumpled up in a trashcan. Time was not kind to the photo. I had to clone much of it in order to digitally restore it. It seems the woodrats had become the sole curators of the family photos and tacky Christmas ornaments.

I don’t know when Gallo changed the brand name from Paisano to Carlo Rossi—it was probably ca. 1970. The Paisano trademark of E. & J. GALLO WINERY patent was filed June 8, 1953, they opened for business in 1954, so this is really the first ever ad; there were also television ads with Carlo Rossi as well.

Jane led an interesting life, including attending Cordon Bleu in Paris long before it was popular. She learned French in order to attend. But women were actively discouraged from becoming chefs. She fought back and got her Grand Diplôme. Landing a job as a female chef in Marin County in 1975 proved  be impossible, but she also had a petit diplôme for desserts up her sleeve, and catered her desserts to local restaurants. To make ends meet, she also cooked for the Marin County Civic Center cafeteria. All the lawyers would line up whenever she placed her prized lemon meringue pies in the glass showcase.

My aunt Jane bio, as the Gallo Girl, RIP. Jane B. Reilly obituary 6/26/1929 - 7/26/2015.

PCH is Highway 1. It’s all a matter of perspective.

PCH is Highway 1—in SoCal it’s called Pacific Coast Highway. When they try and call Highway 1 PCH in NorCal, we tend to lose our minds.... it’s not Highway 101 but to confuse things, 101 joins forces with Highway 1 at Oxnard and Ventura to Santa Barbara, heads inland at Gaviota, while HIghway 1 veers toward Lompoc and goes inland towards Santa Maria—but doesn’t follow the coast until Arroyo Grands and Pismo Beach.

Highway 101 and Highway 1 share a stretch roadbed at Leggett where it becomes 101 all the way to Port Angeles, where it circles the Olympic Peninsula—the coastal side of the loop is sometimes referred to as Highway 1 too. And when you cross the Straits, it resurfaces as a stretch of Highway 1 from Victoria to Naniamo to Vancouver but just to be ridiculous, then Highway 1 goes inland to Calgary to the East Coast. I blame it on the Canadian beer.

Besides, once you get to Northern California Highway 1 is no longer called Pacific Coast Highway. Then there’s Baja to consider too. That too is Highway 1...I think I’ve traveled every stretch of it from Calgary west and south to Cabo. One all the way. It’s all a matter of perspective depending upon where you live, alliances to the northern or southern part of the state.

The West Coast is burning

Oh great, I was sitting outside during a red alert. The West Coast is burning. Ashes from as far north as British Columbia, where there are 560 wildfires, as well as wildfires from WA, Or, and N. CA, were falling on my Mac screen. And now my eyes sting. My throat is raw. All that unshed grief and death of trees playing out in real time.

Pupfish sightings

Ash Meadows, Amargosa Valley

My first introduction to desert pupfish was in the early 1970s when I wandered across the saltflats from Badwater, Death Valley, following a dry salt stream, when I got to the other side of the saltflats, beneath Telescope Peak, there was a nascent aster-choked stream, Salt Creek, with tiny minnow-like fish. But some were as blue as peacock feathers, they were busy attacking my toes. So I had to know what they were. 

For years, I thought there was only one species of pupfish. Cyprinodon salinus. Ya seen one, ya seen 'em all. Was I ever wrong. There are actually two subspecies in Death Valley, once the pluvial bed of Lake Manly, Cyprinodon salinus salinus, and the northern subspecies, Cyprinodon salinus milleri.

Devil's Hole, Amargosa Valley

The Mojave Desert (SoCal & SW NV) is home to at least five species of pupfish, maybe more: Death Valley pupfish, Cyprinodon salinus, Cyprinodon nevadensis, Armagosa pupfish,  Devil's Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis.  Owens pupfish, Cyprinodon radiosus, and on the other side of the Sierras, Desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularis).

You're probably wondering, what the heck is a pupfish? A pupfish is a relic species from another epoch, left over from the Pleistocene era when the greater American Southwest was lush, and vast lakes and wetlands dominated the landscape. When the waters began to recede, leaving behind what we now call the Mojave desert, the pupfish survived by retreating into fossil water seeps and springs, many of which are saline hot springs. 

California water wars: It's not about the fish, Stupid. That's a red herring.

Note bene: This post is a response to Facebook people's knee-jerk comments on an article by Jack Stewart in California Political Review. You may want to scan the article and rabid comments before you read this particular diatribe, as I begin this fishy story in medias res. A response to Jack Stewart's opinion piece,  Well-being of Fish Valued Over CA’s Economy and Quality of Life

Smelts are a family of small fish, Osmeridae —Wiki

Let me begin this rant by pointing out the faulty logic in Jack Stewart's opening paragraph:"....all the rain falling on California will wash into the ocean, instead of being stored for the dry, hot summer to come." Even the tittle, Well-being of Fish Valued Over CA’s Economy and Quality of Life,  is a real knee-jerker. Talk about hyperbole! It's a lopsided opinion piece parading as naked news.

All the rain? Most of that rain falling in Northern California will wash into the ocean because Shasta Dam is full to capacity, and because the rain did not extend south past San Jose, where most of the reservoirs are located, it will not fill those dams.

Only a handful of reservoirs—only seven out of a total of 55 major reservoirs statewide—are nearly full to capacity. But more than 26 of the state's major reservoirs are under 40% full (and a dozen of those are under 20% full) because all the rain falling on California did not fall within their watersheds. Besides, many of those reservoirs are dependent upon snowmelt, not rain, so Stewart should've addressed global warming's impact on the shrinking Sierra snowpack instead of fish.

Lake Shasta June, 2014. It's now full, but more than 26 of the state's major reservoirs are under 40% full (and ten of those are under 20%). Only a handful of reservoirs, seven out of a total of 55 major reservoirs statewide, are nearly full to capacity.

The (rain) water that Stewart claims is being dumped into the ocean, in detriment of the farmer, in order to save, what he deems as a worthless fish, is being dumped from our northern California dams for flood control. It's overflow, Stupid.

There is literally no place to store all that water when parts of Northern California has received 200% to 300% of normal precipitation for the year. Do you remember the the great Central Valley floods of 1996? That's what happens when the flood control system (and the levees) fails.

But somehow Stewart has managed to construe a tall tale that makes a small fish responsible for all our water woes. He blames a lack of enough dams for our agricultural woes (not a lack of snowpack), he equates the decommissioning of defunct hydro-electric dams, the destruction of orchards, and the upsurge of Central Valley's fallow fields—on a fish. He blames environmentalists and smelt for a much more complex water picture than he can possibly grasp. Talk about a snowjob.

Let's take one idea: save all that water; how? Perhaps Stewart is unaware that there is no pipeline infrastructure to move the excess Shasta water to, say, The (Stanislas) New Melones Dam (which is at at 30% capacity. BTW, in 1944, Congress authorized the construction of 1979 New Melones Dam atop the old Melones damsite, to prevent flooding—from spring snowmelt).

Jack Stewart goes on to say "As for the water now filling the state’s reservoirs, billions of gallons will be flushed down rivers and out to sea in efforts to protect fish, rather than being used to irrigate food crops..."

Is he aware that most of California's dams are dependent upon Sierra snowmelt, and that 70% of northern California's water is already shipped to southern California dams? Does he know that Castaic Lake is funded by Northern California water? Or that San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara water also comes from the north? Clearly we're bogarting Northern California rainfall in favor of fish vs farmers.

Stewart is all over the place; he shifts his argument from Colusa County to San Joaquin County, and then illustrates his point with a photo of a very full Shasta Dam, when he should depict a photo of a Southern California Sierra foothill dam. Stewart opines, and conflates ideas but does not back up any of his statements with facts.

Of course, Stewart's shallow-minded wading pool readers have massive knee-jerk reactions. OMG, the sky is falling! And they curse the bad environmentalists and Governor Moonbeam. Instead, they should get off their high horses and get down on their knees and pray for more snow.

2016 rain map as of 3/30. The green band represents normal rainfall.
All that purple rain (sorry, Prince) in the north represents a deluge.
The brown, red & ochre spots are parts of the state still in drought,

Do you know where your water comes from?
Most of the Bay Area's water is from the San Joaquin delta.

Stewart writes that in recent years "trillions of gallons of water have been flushed through California rivers in recent years to protect fish." How about posting some supporting facts.

His statement is meant to inflame and enrage... Oh such waste. It's a crime. But think: is a dead riparian ecosystem better than a live one? The San Joaquin Delta is such a mess, thanks to over-allocation of water resources for upstream agriculture, that at times, it actually runs BACKWARDS, there's so little water in it. Now that's a crime against nature.

What's with the myopic thinking about diverting excess floodwater from the ocean, that's where the water is supposed to go, back into the ocean. We've already disrupted California's riverine and oceanic water systems to the point of massive fish population collapse, which in turn have triggered other massive species collapse. Not to mention the ramifications of the acidification of the oceans. Dead Sea ring a bell?

Smelt, salmon are not optional, nor are estuaries, which need fresh water to keep a massive ecosystem alive. Which, in turn, keeps us alive. 

I won't mention the problem of soil salt intrusion. Most of the Central Valley is at sea level. Flushing the rivers removes pooled agricultural run-off and halts salt intrusion. What's good for the smelt is good for the river. And that in turn, is good for the farmer. It keeps the soil and the water table sweet.

Has Stewart forgotten about what happens when the runoff from agriculture pools and stagnates? If the rivers aren't flushed, then the land becomes poisoned. Think toilet. Can I say Kesterson? Let me help you spell selenium poisoning.

Then, there's the downstream water table effect. A Contra Costa County friend, Robert Lee Haycock, stated that actively pursuing the death of of our great estuaries is not the answer. Smelt, or no smelt, fresh water still needs to flow out the Golden Gate. Saltwater intrusion is already a problem for East Contra Costa County's water table—Antioch's drinking water that comes from the San Joaquin Delta system, has been compromised. 

We've pretty much killed the San Joaquin River, not to mention, the demise of the King River, the Tulare Basin, and Colorado River, which no longer even flows to the Sea of Cortez, which has led to the near extinction of myriad species. (And has severely impacted the fishing industries.)

There is no longer a Mojave River, thanks to the 1971 Cedar Springs Dam which created Silverwood Lake in the San Gabriel mountains (part of the California Aqueduct which siphons water from Northern California too). From there, Northern California's water is shipped to Lake Perris and onto San Diego as well. 

And this unregulated water usage at the detriment of California's vast ecosystems is not just a Central Valley issue. On the back side of the Sierras, Owens Lake is no more, thanks to LA/San Fernando Valley, also responsible for Mono Lake's shrinking water surface. The Owens River is no more, LA/San Fernando Valley waterworks killed off the agriculture. Mulholland, et al, turned  the lush Owens Valley INTO a desert. Now that's ironic.

About the Damn Dams

CA has a thousand major reservoirs, many are flood control dams —Wiki

As to those few dams from the 1900s, that are being decommissioned, most are not even water storage dams, but outdated, inefficient hydroelectric dams no longer in use, and the water is not used for irrigation, etc. The dams are also silted up. Not to mention, old. As in cracked. To repair those Klamath hydro-electric dams, and add fish ladders would cost more than to tear them down. Of course, Stewart froths on about how it's a crime against humanity.

The Klamath is a mighty river, and those four hydroelectric dams should never have been constructed in the first place. The dams destroyed the massive chinook and coho salmon, steelhead (and rainbow trout) runs. Just like Klamath Falls, Oregon. Vast waterways were destroyed for "hydroelectricity." (But it was also the era of wilful destruction of native cultures. Destroy their food source. Destroy them. Don't call it genocide.)

Also, a minor detail, is Stewart even aware that all the good dam sites are taken up. Where does he suggest we put these new proposed dams? Or the crackpot suggestion to raise the height of Shasta Dam? There seem to be people living out there. Oh well...

Stewart never addresses the real problem, that we've outgrown and stripped our resources. (And the era of free federal funds for large dam projects is gone.) It's not about the evil Endangered Species Act, it's not about stupid smelt vs. the farmer.

I won't mention that we need those smaller fish to survive in order to feed the bigger fish, and that includes oceangoing fish...like salmon. And we've pretty much destroyed most of the salmon runs in California with a plethora of inefficient dams—especially those defunct hydro-electric dams slated for demolition.

Stewart states: "As a result [of the smelt?], nearly a million acres of the most fertile farmland in the world have been taken out of production, orchards are being bulldozed."

Most of those fallen orchards Stewart laments the loss of, are of recent vintage, and should never have been planted in the first place. Has he driven down I-5 lately and seen where speculative agri-farmers planting these orchards? On dry hillsides with thin soil. Are we talking of small farmers here, or agribusiness?

Pistachio and almond orchards are being planted in unprecedented numbers because they yield a much higher monetary return than, say, growing local food. (California nuts (the edible kind) are not primarily sold in California, but to the rest of the world, including Turkey, and the UAE).

Let's look at those pricey pistachios (one of California's top-ten crops): In 2012, a drought year, a record pistachio crop of over 550 million pounds (249,930 metric tons) was harvested, as compared to 1976 where 1.5 million pounds (680 tons) was gleaned. The average pistachio yield in 1982 was "1,468 pounds per acre," which ballooned to over "3,806 pounds per acre in 2010.... California comprises 99% of the total [US pistachio harvest] with over 294,000 acres planted in  22 counties."

The "annual “farm gate value” of pistachios represents more than $1.6 billion to the California economy..." That's after costs have been deducted. (American Pistachios) We grow enough pistachios to feed the entire world. And we do. And pistachios take water. Let's see, at $12 a pound,  250,000 metric tons is 551,155,655 pounds x 12 =  $6,613,867,860. It's not easy being green.

Now let's look at almonds (California's second largest agricultural commodity). "California produces 82% of the globe's almonds, harvesting 800,000 acres of the tree nut across a 400-mile stretch from northern Tehama County to southern Kern County" [read: dry desert land]. And "About 70% of California's almonds are sold overseas" [mostly to China], and "...the state will harvest its third-largest crop this year [2015] at 1.85 billion pounds" [down from 1.88 billion in 2014].

"That's more than three times what the state was producing in the late 1990s." Or  to put it into another perspective, that's "... twice as much almond acreage in California as there was two decades ago..."  (LA Times, 2015). Oh, and almonds are an extremely thirsty crop, more so than cotton. When I computed raw almonds @ $10 per pound x 1.85 billion pounds = ? Google answered with a smartass answer: what does a trillion dollars look like? No wonder almonds and pistachios are so green. And I don't mean that in a good way.

“The governor’s executive order said to the agricultural sector that it must only submit ‘plans’ for future drought,” he explains. But while the industry makes up only two percent of the state's economy, " agriculture is responsible for 80 percent … of all the water that’s used here in California." Hertsgaard has found that some of the biggest farmers of pistachios, almonds and walnuts, known as “thirsty crops,” are actually expanding operations and reaping record profits. At the core of the problem is the water pricing system in California, Hertsgaard says. Experts say water is still relatively inexpensive, so more of it is being used more than necessary.   —Agriculture is thriving in bone-dry California, and that's not a good thing (PRI 2015)

Most of the bulldozed nut orchards Stewart is referring to, were planted in the dry southern portion of the state within the past 20 years—where sagebrush, artemesia, and opuntia normally thrive. (Then there's the water-hungry alfalfa equation, hay being sold, not to our dairy industry, but to China and the UAE because of, well, for enormous profits...just like those greeny pistachios and almonds.)

According to California Agricultural Production Statistics, our number one agricultural commodity is milk? And we're selling all our hay ($1.3 billion's worth) down the Yangtzee River? What about the happy California cows? (See Saudi Arabia buying up [drought-stricken] farmland in US Southwest.. to grow alfalfa hay). (Jan, 2016).

It's a good thing that grapes are our third largest agricultural commodity. It's enough to drive you to drink. The cows, too.

I have not derailed. Yet. We were talking about smelt vs. water earlier, and something in Stewart's loose leaf argument sure is beginning to smell fishy. The center does not hold.

Much of the southern Central Valley is desert because we've already dammed and removed the major water sources. We've destroyed massive riparian ecosystems. Saving more water for crops in marginal farmlands won't reverse the desertification process once its begun.

The entire Central Valley was one vast marshy ecosystem/wetland: 16,000 square miles, one of the largest wetland ecosystem on the west coast of North America. All gone now. Twelve of the 29 native fish species are gone, smelt are endangered. Smelt are a major food source for other fish and marine animals.

What the hell is a smelt?

The Delta smelt, Hypomesus transpacificus, found in the Sacramento Delta, is a major food source for salmon, striped bass and lake trout. Like salmon, many species are anadromous, living most of their lives in the sea, but traveling into fresh water to breed. —Wiki

"The tiny delta smelt is a bigger deal than you think.... In the case of the delta, we're talking about a once-magnificent place that is in serious trouble. It is 16,000 square miles of wetland and open water -- the West Coast's largest estuary -- and the end point of about 40% of California's precipitation. When the Spanish arrived centuries ago, it was teeming with fish, crawling with bears and beavers, its skies periodically darkened with migrating birds."  (It's small, but it's a keeper - latimes, 2007

"The tiny delta smelt is one of the best indicators of environmental conditions in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, an ecologically important estuary that is a major hub for California's water system — and an ecosystem that is now rapidly unraveling." (Delta smelt - Center for Biological Diversity).

A smelt is an indicator species.

I agree that water needs to go back into the water table, and I don't mean by fracking. Agribusiness has already siphoned significant amounts of artesian water from the ground. Much of the Central Valley has sunken from 12 to 28 feet within the past five years.

"A spot near Corcoran, in the Tulare basin, sank 13 inches in an eight-month period" and "...UC Davis said farmers are pumping an additional 6 million acre-feet of groundwater this year, compared to 2011, the year before the drought started...." (SacBee, 2015, Central Valley sinking fast in drought, NASA study shows).

Garry Hayes, a professor of geology at Modesto Junior College, said, "The sucking of the water in the underground aquifers may be the worst part of all. Hard to replace, if ever, and yet running short too. There aren't a lot of good choices into the future."

Does Stewart think that we can ever undo that kind of colossal damage? Pump the compacted soil back up so it can again store water? Those collapsed aquifers will never, ever be replenished, as the ground has sunk. So the repercussions of the latest drought, in this case, are forever.

Ditto that process of over-taxing our water resources and destroyying ecosystems on the back side of the Sierras. Owens Lake, drained dry to supply LA, is an alkali sump. Ditto Mono Lake—we've diverted its fresh water supply too. When the wind blows, the air is toxic with alkali dust. Silicosis has become a chronic health issue for folks living there. (The Eternal Dustbowl, L.A. Weekly, 2006)

The amount of alkali dust billowing over Mono Lake the other day was like a vast white curtain, a death shroud that stings the eyes and irritated the nose and lungs. But I digress.

Owens Lake (10 x 17.5 miles long) held a significant amount of water until 1913, when most of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Now it's the largest single source of dust pollution in the U.S. Image from the International Space Station —Wiki

And that rampant disregard for, and destruction of our water resources continues, with Nestlé pumping vast amounts of water out of Southern California which it sells right back to you, courtesy of the BLM. Crystal Geyser and Nestlé are siphoning off trillions gallons of Southern California water on public lands (pretty much for free), and then selling it back to us at a dollar a pint. So, do you buy bottled water? It too, is part of the problem.

"Nestlé is draining California aquifers, from Sacramento alone taking 80 million gallons annually. Nestlé then sells the people's water back to them at great profit under many dozen brand names." (Nestle Continues Stealing World's Water During Drought 2015). And in the San Bernardino National Forest (read; Mojave Desert), a similar scenario is unfolding: that's 24,820,000 gallons a year that Nestlé bottles—for free. 

Nestlé should not be allowed to remove our public water with little to no oversight from the BLM, its siphoning off 705 million gallons of water per year from California’s groundwater water supply. "If the Forest Service renews Nestlé’s San Bernardino permit, it would not just be a catastrophe for California, but for the whole country -- because it creates a precedent that even in times of scarcity, corporations have a right to profit from our most precious shared resources." Sign the petition here: (SumofUs)

And Nestlé isn't the only water czar.

Calistoga based Crystal Geyser is mining whatever little water that would otherwise replenish Owens Lake, and bottling it as well. "According to the Inyo County Planning Department, Crystal Geyser would extract water from three existing on-site wells in the shallow aquifer up to 360 acre feet per year." That's something like 117,306,515 gallons a year. (Crystal Geyser plans bottling plant expansion, 2012).

And like Nestlé, Crystal Geyser is mining more Northern California water as well, in Shasta County. "Residents whose homes and wells border the Mount Shasta plant worry that Crystal Geyser’s facility could leave them dry, and contend that some wells ran low when Coca-Cola was pumping there." It also raised an ethical question: "Should bottlers be able to pump unlimited amounts of water for sale during a drought?" (Resident group files suit over Mount Shasta water bottling plant, La TImes, 2015).

Mono Lake, alkali duststorm (due to the low lake level), Earth Day, 4/22/2016

Water conservation begins at home. It's not about farmers, or our drinking water vs. the little fish. That's a red herring. There's money to be had. And a lot of it. It ain't easy being green.

As H. L. Menken said, "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." Now he was one smart feller.

Almonds or apricots are not the main water guzzlers. Alfalfa, used to feed the cows, is. So, dairy/beef is our biggest agricultural water user.

What percentage of California’s water is used by agriculture?

• 80% based on the developed water supply 
• 52%: based on the total water supply of a dry year 
• 29% based on the total water supply of a wet year   

—Blaine Hanson Department of Land, Air and Water Resources University of California, Davis

  It's not an Us vs Them (agribusiness, fracking) vs (consumers) equation.

We all eat food, we drive cars, All of us here, in California, almost 40,000,000 of us—we ARE the problem. Deferring blame to the farmer (or the smelt) is not the answer. Yes, we need to kick Nestle's buttnuts, and ban fracking, and quit driving cars, but I'm rather fond of eating. Not willing to give it up. The farmer is the man.

So, I'll save every drop of water I can. Because I can.

Bishop to Mono Lake (photos)

Leaving Bishop for Mammoth Lakes, beautiful weather.


Mammoth Mountain, storm brewing

Hot Creek

Mono Lake, alkali duststorm, Earth Day, 4/22/2016. That's a very late season snowstorm blowing in as well. We tried to outrun the storm from Mammoth to Reno, we managed to make it over seven passes above 7000 feet, but go caught at Donner Pass. All the other passes, including Hwy 89, which was open in the morning, were closed.


Mother of all storms brewing over Mammoth Lakes


So we headed for Donner Summit, and got caught. A foot of snow fell. we made off-color jokes about potlucks, and bought very expensive snow cables to get over the pass. We also had a slow leak on the rear tire that made it even more exciting....we made it home on a bum rim, running from air pump to air pump across I-80. Flat tire in the morning. I managed to pump up the tire with a bicycle pump.