NATURAL BATTLES AND NORTHERN LIGHTS

FRIENDS OF THE LIGHT STATION

VS

THE ICEPLANT

       The headline in the Cambrian, our weekly paper, declared the "Iceplant pickers prevailed at Piedras Blancas" light station.

You may recall from an earlier post regarding the Plant Police, there is a movement here by some naturalists to remove invasive species. It is done to allow natural plants to flourish.

As beautiful and fire retardant as iceplant may be, it is aggressive.

When the US Coast Guard  ran the Piedras Blancas Light Station, Ice plant was planted.

Over the last few years volunteers have been working to clear it and it appears they have indeed won.

Native species have begun to flourish.

The Volunteer coordinator Carole Adams and her team were recognized by the Bureau of Land Management for their efforts.

Piedras Blancas is a landmark on the central coast past San Simeon on the route to Big Sur.

It has a rich history and is a beautiful facility.

Outside the staircase the volunteers removed some 2,000 dry tons of iceplant. According to the Cambrian, a commercial effort to eradicate the growth would have cost 

$1.1 Million.

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IN THE SKY

I URGE YOU TO CLICK ON THIS LINK TO ACTIVATE A SPECTACULAR VIDEO OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. IT WAS CREATED IN NORWAY BY OLE CHRISTIAN SALOMONSEN AND FEATURES A BEAUTIFUL SOUNDTRACK AS WELL.

Enjoy.  See you down the trail.

WHEN A TREE DIES AND OTHER SCENES OF NATURE

DRIPS AND DROPS

       

        The middle of the latest Pacific storm to dampen the area is working its way through and while the Central Coast is an intense green, some of our old Monterey Pines are dying. Crews are working and dropping them to the ground before they come down in a wind, possibly striking a home or power lines.

I could view this old tree everyday. In better health it sometimes resembled the cartoon character Marvin.  Now it and a neighboring pine are being trimmed to be brought down.

The crew braved a strong wind and light sprinkles.

As you can see, branches are trimmed, making the work more safe.

 In the top right you can see a branch falling.

After which it is chopped and mulched and will be used by gardeners and landscapers.

It is an element in the natural cycle, though we can grow attached to trees.  They become 

a part of our daily reality and so we will miss them.

But this is an area with great sensitivity to the pine, and in most cases new trees will be planted where the old stood.

ANOTHER BIT OF NATURE AND IN THIS CASE SPECTACULAR

This is a marvelous trailer for a BBC program. It runs about 3:30 and is worth the time.

I suggest you watch it in a full screen mode by clicking on the Youtube icon.

Enjoy

See you down the trail.

NUCLEAR QUESTIONS & GETTING COZY

SOLID AS A ROCK?

NOT LIKELY

       As California continues a review of its nuclear facilities I continue to bang against what I think is either ignorance or arrogance. How can we in good conscience utilize a process that produces a lethal byproduct, that remains lethal for thousands of years and not have a solution for what to do with it?  

       For the time being, we put some of the stuff in cooling ponds, which the Japanese disaster demonstrates is vulnerable.  Under the best of circumstances we can take "cooled" waste and then "dry store" it in casks, which at best are guaranteed for only a hundred years.  That is a hundred year solution to a thousands of years problem.  Stupid or arrogant.  And then there was the halted plan to bury some of the waste in a mountain. Of course burying the nuclear cocktail is likely to contaminate aquifers.

       In Europe they use a different process and "reprocess" some of the waste.  A major downside is the "reprocessed" waste can soon be made weapons grade.

       There is no solution, but as we use nuclear energy, we continue to create waste which is the problem that demands a solution.  As I noted in an earlier post, atomic research is science, high end science and requires brilliance. But application of that science to date has been what-big bombs, small bombs, and an energy system that creates a killer byproduct for which there is no plan that will last as long as the lethality of the waste. And as I have asked before, is there anything in human history that gives you confidence we can plan and execute a strategy that requires a 1-10 thousand year operation?

       OK, if you could be sitting next to God, or looking at us from a distant star or galaxy or planet- take your choice of any of those options- do we look stupid and maybe even dangerous?

TIME TO CHILL

Days like these are good for a comfortable chair and a good book

or reading pad.

More rain.

A wet coast

You can't get there from here, because of the Highway 1 slide which has a life of its own now. For those of you away from the Pacific Coast, here is a report from Pelicannetwork

Folks have been asking what's going on in Big Sur?

Posted by Margie Whitnah

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/weblogs/news-blog/2011/mar/22/update-highway-1-damage-impact-big-sur/

Highway 1 Damage and Big Sur Headaches

By Joel.Ede

March 22, 2011

California Department of Transportation closed a severely damaged section of Highway 1 near Rocky Point to pedestrians and cyclists Monday, despite Big Sur residents’ requests to allow for grocery and pharmaceutical relays.

Jack Ellwanger of PelicanNetwork.net and a Big Sur resident agrees that the situation needs control, but is concerned at the number of non-residents showing up just to get a look at the damaged highway.

“There’s too many non-residents tramping around and that’s not a good situation,” Ellwanger says.

Big Sur residents are in the process of getting a shuttle and relay system going with the help of Cal-Trans, but the weather isn’t helping their cause. The only other options residents living to the south of the slide-out have to access Monterey is the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road—prone to closure itself—and the five-hour commute through Cambria to 101.

“Business sucks,” according to Redwood Grill’s Executive Chef Tommy Noel, “We were just gearing up for spring break and it just died.”

Noel says aside from lack of customers he’s “bummed out at the five-hour drive” he has to make in order for his kids to get to school in Carmel, luckily a host family has taken them in until other arrangements can be made.

Big Sur blogger Kate Woods Novoa reports that Nacimiento-Fergusson Road is accessible thanks to the County of Monterey road crew, but says its not an advised route for travelers due to its dangerously unforgiving nature.

As if things weren't bad enough on Highway 1 there have been a handful of rock slides near Soda Springs and it seems a stretch of the highway between ragged point and the county line is "showing movement in the increasing cracks in the pavement," according to Novoa.

Oakland based contractor Condon-Johnson & Associates has obtained the $2.5 million emergency project bid and is aiming for a temporary repair of Highway 1 slated for completion by April 16.

 ----------------

KSBW.com

Changes Announced To Big Sur Marathon Route

Routes Changed After Highway 1 Collapse

POSTED: 11:33 am PDT March 22, 2011

UPDATED: 11:44 am PDT March 22, 2011

http://www.ksbw.com/news/27282016/detail.html

BIG SUR, Calif. -- The Big Sur International Marathon will still take place as scheduled on May 1, but there are now significant changes to the race routes because of the collapse of a section of Highway 1 between Palo Colorado Road and Bixby Bridge. Race routes have been altered on three of the courses affected by last week's collapse. The marathon, marathon relay and 21-miler have been changed from point-to-point courses to out-and-back courses. The new course will begin just before the Carmel River Bridge and head south on Highway 1. The marathoners will start first at 6:45 a.m., followed by the 21-milers. The turnaround is yet to be determined but will be in the vicinity of Rocky Creek Bridge. The 21-milers will tentatively turn around at Rocky Point Restaurant. On the return trip, the marathoners will take an approximate 1.7 mile detour through Point Lobos State Park before returning to Highway 1. The final configuration of the marathon course will be announced when it is certified for distance. The 10.6 mile race will not be affected since those competitors start at Rocky Point Restaurant and run north. The 9-mile walk/run and the 5K run courses are also not affected. Both of those races will begin at the Carmel River Bridge shortly after 7 a.m. For more information, visit www.BSIM.org

Copyright 2011 by KSBW.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love;
We will love only what we understand:
And, we will understand only what we are taught."
Baba Dioum, Senegalese ecologist


Contact:   Jack Ellwanger      831 667 2025    PO Box 144    Big Sur, CA    93920

Even the wild life find this weather a day to curl or kick back

Or to hang together

Forces of nature are at work.

See you down the trail.

Hopefully, someplace where it is dry.

WAITING AND CONTENTMENT

STATES OF MIND

       I remember asking a yoga teacher many years ago, "can you get to be too zen?"

His look was memorable, his answer was to sputter something less memorable before saying he wasn't sure he understood the question.  I vaguely recall the motivation behind it.

       I still wonder what it is that drives us.  Back when I asked  I worried that if I got too mellow I would loose motivation, simply being too comfortable with simply being. On the flip side of a professional track, I wonder why the creative muse still seduces us.  In the end it is peace and stillness if not contentment that claims us. So in these intervening stretches what is it about us that pushes us to reach, climb, create, seek.  

       Just look at the picture above.  On the one hand there is an idyllic quality to boats in a harbor, safe and secure.  But we know these boats, like our own minds and inner beings will depart the mooring line of tranquility for the potential catch that awaits out there, be it on the Pacific or in something written, painted, sculpted, baked, found after a climb or on a wave and so on.

        Contentment is a form of that eternal peace that rings this life of ours.  It is probably an antidote to other forces that bombard us.  Still, we need to dance just a little beyond the ring.

        As for me, I'm going to work on waiting, and be content in effort given.  I've sent off a manuscript. This time of waiting does its own boggie dance with the psyche.  Well I've gone off and tried to create something new again, and so I guess I've never gotten 

"too zen!" 

       In the meantime I'll stare at my blue bush.  Blue is a mellowing color

DAY BOOK 

SHADES OF GREEN

The grass in a neighboring field is as tall as I've seen it.

It loves the rain.

We are told more rain is brewing up there.

So in the meantime lets learn about contentment

from professor Ziggy about to begin her lecture

Yea, that's it.  A roll on the back in the sun

and then a snooze.  

See you down the trail.

COLOR AND COLOR & RACISIM

EQUINOX

AND SPRING GREEN

We'll celebrate the play of light and spring green later.

First there is a matter of RACISM and clouds over College Basketball.

LIGHT AND DARK

The Jalen Rose, Grant Hill comments

       Controversy swirls around the war of words between the two basketball players and it has seeped into the NCAA atmosphere.  In an ESPN documentary on the University of Michigan's FAB FIVE of 20 years ago, Rose referred to Duke, Coach K and Duke basketball players as Uncle Tom's.  

        Rose was trying to draw the difference between his Michigan partners and the Duke team, which by the way always beat Michigan.  Some Rose defenders now say he was just trying to draw a difference between class and not race.  Well, he used the term Uncle Tom. That is, by virtue of American history, a well worn term about racism.

        Duke's outstanding athlete, Grant Hill responded in The New York Times and rejected the idea that Coach K or his charges at Duke or even Duke as institution was racist.  Hill himself is an African American and many African Americans have attended Duke and played for Coach K.

         Here are some givens: Duke is an outstanding academic and private institution and has the ability to draw the cream of the crop.  Michigan is a public school and their athlete graduation rate is significantly less than Duke.  Rose may have been trying to talk of the difference between inner city, less advantaged urban youth vs people like Hill who came from a more solid and affluent background.  But he used a race term. He should have said what he meant.

        I was a news director at an Indianapolis television station when Rose played for the Pacers.  You may remember the brawl in Detroit, when Rose and others waded into the stands. At the time Rose was also trying to getting a rap record career started. Rose had a temper issue and was not a paragon of virtue.  That Pacer team had many run ins with the law and some of them were simply thugs.  

        The FAB FIVE team he played on at Michigan was stripped of it's wins because of NCAA violations.  Contrast that with Duke's program and the reputation of Grant Hill.

         My point is-there is a difference between the lives of Hill and Rose.  They are both African Americans, but they come from vastly different cultural settings and history.

There are wide differences in the way African American youth, or all American youth, are raised.  Rose's use of the term Uncle Tom was wrong.  If a coach has a choice between recruiting well educated, or academic question marks, or between a young man from a solid home or a kid raised in less, or between a guy who evinces an understanding of rules, work ethic, team work and discipline or a "show time/face time" player, it seems clear to me whom to choose.

         Each coach and each program has choices to make. I am highly suspect and have little respect for those programs that have placed such a value on athleticism and winning that they have brought a dishonor or an odor to NCAA basketball. There is one coach in particular who has a history of leaving schools broken by NCAA violations. That mind set can destroy what should be a game for college students.

        Coach K at Duke is the second most winning coach in history. You can be an honorable man and be a winner.  His mentor, Bob Knight, who had his demons with anger control and, to my thinking emotional maturity, is the most winning coach in history.  Bob Knight had one of the highest academic standards, graduation rates and cleanest programs in the history of all college sport.  You don't have to be a street thug to succeed in the NCAA.  And to imply that if you aren't from a disadvantaged inner city environment, or that coaches don't recruit there, you are an uncle Tom is a stupid thing to say.  

         Clark Kellogg, who I have known since his days as an Indiana Pacer, made a point on this weekend's telecast.  "There are huge diversities in any group, racial, social or economic.  It is time to move on."  Rose should have been more temperate in his comments, but we don't need to give him anymore airtime or ink on this.  

NOW BACK TO GREEN

FRESHENED BY RAIN

      There is a special vibrancy of green that follows the California rains.

Look at the difference in luminosity in just a few minutes.

It will be an especially vivid spring this year, due to the extraordinary rain we've had in what was predicted to be a dry winter.  I've recorded over 30 inches in our gage on

the ridge top.

The water has been flowing.

and more rain is forecast.

See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER :) TRIPS AND COUNTING CORKS

DIFFERENT WAYS OF GETTING THERE

       My late brother John was a psychologist, therapist, counselor and by all reports was a super star in the field.  Hundreds came to his calling and recounted how their lives had been made better because of John's work. But he was a pioneer in the field and pushed the envelope.
       He was influenced by the Scot, R.D. Laing who was a bit of radical himself in the field of psycho therapy.  And John was influenced by Owsley Stanley, creator of a pure strain of LSD.  John believed that the pure hallucinogenic was a therapeutic tool.
       He was, as Jimi Hendrix might say, "experienced."  John was personally experimenting with a notion of genetic memory or previous life regression.  He was not opposed to people using mind benders for leisure, but thought they were best left to a therapeutic model.  As I read of Stanley's death, I recalled some of the successful work John had achieved with severely schizophrenic patients with a little help from his friends.

LINK HERE FOR NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON OWSLEY STANLEY

THEN MATTERS OF MORE

NATURAL DEPARTURES

AND TASTY....

       Did you notice the piece this week where it was reported that U.S. wine sales

have topped the French for the first time in history.  There is a big HOWEVER-

       When it comes to individual consumption, the French are number 1.  Average per capita wine consumption for the U.S. is 2.6 gallons per year, while the French average

12.2 gallons per year.  Drink up America--it is a matter of pride!

       CHEERS!  See you down the trail.

CURIOUS BUT HARMLESS THOUGHTS

PEOPLE AS ORCHIDS

       Maybe my eyes needed a break from the NCAA games I had been watching back to back, but I started looking at a couple of our orchids and was struck by how inscrutable they are, or can appear to be.

       That is particularly so as you look into the orchid, or into the bloom, still unfolding.

       And then, since I was already off track, it was easy to leap to the line of thought of seeing some people as being "orchid like."

       OK, this takes a little work, but I started with well known people who I consider to be, in many ways, inscrutable and exotic, like orchids.

WHO?

       This is my list, so it works for me, but you may wish to add your own.

       Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman came to mind.  Both possessed of an exotic beauty and skills as actresses that allow them to reveal inner moves, turns, emotions and dimension.

       When you see them interviewed as Cate and or Nicole, the actors, they also are "orchid like," leaving something in reserve, something not quite known.

       Robert Duvall and Daniel Day Lewis-same logic.  I met Duvall and was honored to spend time with him when I served on the board of the Heartland Film Festival.  In person he is deep, quiet, humble but evinces an inscrutability.  Both he and Lewis find places and artistic expression in their acting that are like the intricacy of an orchid coming to full bloom.

       OK, so it's time to get back to the basketball.  As I noted in the headline-

curious thoughts.

DAY BOOK

       A Pacific storm is forecast for this weekend and continuing into next week. Stay tuned.  See you down the trail.